brighton | purl of the breeze; black of the sea { senna }

FEBRUARY 2004

KAI'S ROOF

“So yeah… My sister.” Kai adjusted his position a little, so that the uneven roof texture wasn’t digging into his back through the blanket they were lying on. He pulled the other blanket up to his chin; it was cold, even with the spells. “Crazy, right? Just showed up to my work…” He trailed off, his dark eyes searching for stars in the dark gaps in the clouds. It was pretty, he thought. Very windy all the way up there in the sky; enough so that the clouds appeared to have been dragged across the sky by some godly hand. The moon was bright enough to see the clouds as they moved, stretching across the sky... After an unknowable amount of time, he zoned back in, realising he’d left his story at a bit of a cliffhanger. “Um,” he said, knowing she’d have thoughts about this part.

“So then that night, I went drinking by myself – was cruising, you know, didn’t want to talk…” His English was evading him a little; he was speaking more simply than he was thinking. “And uh… Ran into Tony in a bar…” He took a deep breath, then sighed, imagining his sigh blowing through the trails of clouds above them. He hadn't seen Tony in a year and then somehow had ended up back at his place. Of course the first fucking person he saw that night had been Tony. He was sure she'd put it together. “So basically, I left the keys to the studio at his place, so I haven’t been painting these past couple months, no.”

"Just out of the blue?" she asked, more a curious statement than an actual question as she laid on her side, her head pillowed on her arm, her blonde hair shining like silver in the moonlight. She traced the edge of him, his face slightly in shadow as the serendipity of it all flowed over her. "You spent so much time looking for them only for her to find you," Senna added as she moved her legs under the blanket they shared so she was touching him, wanting both the contact but also whatever warmth she could siphon off of him. "Was she nice? Wait did she look like you? Probably not right? Are you going to see her again?" she asked question after question, unable to stop as new thoughts popped up, her curiosity at this new turn for him very intriguing.

She shifted a bit more onto her back to avoid being poked in the ribs by the roof tiles that felt scratchy even under the blanket she was laying on, her eyes trailing over the night sky. The light pollution put a damper on her desire to see the stars so instead she drew new constellations with her fingers, only to stop short at the mention of his name. "Tony? No way," she said, slowly sitting up on her elbow to turn and look at him, her eyes wide. She thought back to how he had been after their break up, her thoughts slow and a little hazy at remembering, but the memories had an edge she didn't like. She loved Kai but just like any of her close friends, she hated to see him sad and lost and unfortunately, he somehow seemed to do that to himself a lot of the time.

"So..." she started as she slowly leaned back, laying flat once more, her fingers playing with the fringe on the edge of the blanket. "Are you just going to avoid him forever? How did you leave it?"

Kai just nodded, though she couldn’t see him, staring at the sky as they were. He cringed a little as her cold knees touched his warmer leg – he could feel them through the layers of material that separated them – but didn’t move away. “Nothing alike at all,” he confirmed quietly, amused. He’d had the same thought process; searched Ellie’s face for signs that it was all real, and found none. “Yeah, someday,” Kai answered ambiguously. He should really write back to her… His thoughts trailed off guiltily and he steered himself away from the topic.

Her reaction to him mentioning Tony… He should have expected that. She shifted up onto her elbow; he glanced at her without turning his head.

Avoid him forever? “Yeah, maybe,” Kai said lightly, though he knew that that that was not the case. How did he leave it? Kai groaned a complaining groan, like he didn’t want to answer the question. His words always flowed easily with Senna, though. “We talked a bit. After the sex, I mean. Not about anything important, but…” But last time there had been very little talking, and this time he felt like he’d time travelled back to two thousand and one. He shrugged. “I left before he woke up,” he admitted, reaching up to run his hands through his hair.

At the time he’d thought it was probably better for Tony that he left before either of them were too sober. It was clear, however, that that thought process had been incredibly self-serving; he hadn’t really wanted to face the morning after the night they’d had. The good bits and – especially – the sweeter bits had taken him off guard. He hadn’t gone out that night looking for what he’d gotten. So… He’d crept out like a coward. “Need to get those keys at some point, I guess. Or leave the country, maybe,” he added, raising his eyebrows at her in quiet suggestion.

"I want to meet her," Senna mused, already imagining what Kai's sister might look like. Maybe not similar at all physically, but she wondered if their auras would reflect something similar. Then again, Kai's aura wasn't like anyone else's she had ever met - fiery red, so bright it sometimes was blinding, but with edges of rosy pink and threads of the darkest midnight blues.

Senna couldn't help the little indulgent smile she gave him as he mentioned maybe avoiding Tony forever. She had had a dream about Kai the other night, they had been riding in one of those muggle cars together, but neither were in control and didn't know how to work it. She wondered if that was somehow a foreshadowing of Kai and the.. disasters that sometimes followed his relationships. She wasn't much better in that department, honestly, not with the way her on again, off again boyfriend Jeff seemed to annoy her more than she enjoyed him, but Kai had a particular brand of catastrophe. Usually of his own making, not that she would ever tell him that. "Awww, why?" she asked, not in rebuke, but the quiet sort of curiosity she always had with him.

She grinned widely at him at the suggestion, her teeth gleaming in the dark as she tucked her silver hair behind her ear. "Anywhere you want and I'm there," she said immediately. "Morocco maybe?" she even offered, already thinking of a few different places that would be fun to explore with Kai. She couldn't help but tack on her thoughts though, like usual. "I think you should talk to him though. It's bad juju to leave all that hanging between you. Plus, I'm pretty sure you have my lucky rabbit foot on your keychain and I want that back at some point," she added.

“Do you,” Kai replied, amused. He didn’t inflect it like a question, instead making sure to sound just a little disapproving. His sober self would probably be extremely disapproving of the concept; Senna and Ellie? In the same room? He should really write back to her… “She was shocked that I’ve fucked men, it was quite funny,” he added, amused by the memory. “Boyfriend?” he said, round-eyed and trying to copy Ellie’s posher British accent, “I would never have thought…!” He rolled his eyes, glad to be in a space where he could feel amused and contemptuous instead of straight up pissed off.

“I dunno,” he responded. “Guess I didn’t want to talk to him sober.” He left it a bit ambiguous as to whose sobriety he was avoiding exactly — Tony’s or his own, as he wondered for the billionth time how sober Tony had been when Kai had approached him that night. Kai couldn’t really trust his own memories, but he thought he’d been a lot more wired than the other man. Kai turned it over in his head, only half listening to what Senna was saying. His dark eyes traced the outline of a cloud lazily.

“It’s been a while,” Kai said, unconvinced. “You think I should just show up on his doorstep, or…?”

"Of course, why not," she answered immediately. It was a standard Senna answer. Why say no to something when saying yes was always more fun. It had gotten her into trouble more times than she could count. But still. Meeting Ellie? "Sign me up." Then she glanced at him, deciphering his tone a little more. "You don't want me to? What? No way!" she said, her words tripping over one another as he gave her a little insight into his newly discovered sister, her eyes going wide, her grin flashing devilishly in the dark. She laughed quietly and turned to look at him. "So very sheltered," Senna summed up, very amused at Kai's impression of her. "What'd you think she'd do if I hit on her?" she asked a moment later waggling her brows once at him, an impish smile on her face.

She made a little humming noise at his response, nodding a bit. She understood him, sometimes on a level even she couldn't put into words, but she understood the situation and the small role she had played in the disastrous end of Tony and Kai. Sometimes it was easier to give in to your feelings when you had the 'I was drunk, it didn't count' excuse waiting in your pocket.

Lately, though, Senna had been leaning more heavily into sharing what she was feeling with others. She had always had the habit of sharing herself with others spontaneously, whenever the words were too much to hold inside, but even more so now, she felt the need to be honest with others about her feelings. Maybe it's why she thought Kai should do the same. "Maybe," she offered. "Definitely don't owl or anything. Would give him too much time to read into things." She was not much of a planner herself anyway.

Senna turned on her side so she was looking at him now rather than the dark sky above them. "What.. " she started but trailed off, not entirely sure what she was going to ask. "Are you into him again?" she asked curiously.

“Oh, no,” Kai said, amused and displeased at the idea at the same time. He turned his head away from her wriggling eyebrows, wrinkling his nose in response. “Don’t do that,” he said, “She might die.” One hand reached under the blankets, feeling for his cigarette packet. It was a little squished, in his pocket, and he was clumsier than usual so it took a minute to get one out.

“Into him again?” Kai repeated, feeling like there wasn’t really a good response for a question that fit so badly. He felt like he could answer it a thousand different ways. “I don’t really know him anymore, Sen,” he settled on, a slight crease in between his eyebrows. Into him again? It was pretty clear that there were ways he hadn’t really stopped being into him — physically, for one. Kai had seen him exactly two times since he’d walked out of Tony’s living room two years ago, and both times they’d hooked up. There was something about their dynamic, the way it felt to make Tony weak at the knees, the way it felt to have Tony on his knees… Kai’s thoughts trailed off and after a beat, he cleared his throat, reeling them back in. He needed a smoke.

Kai popped the cigarette in between his lips while he searched under the blanket for a lighter, the cool outside air stinging his cheeks a little. “It was weird, you know,” he said out of the corner of his lips, his mouth forming the words around a cigarette on the other side. He looked at her. “We had a shower together, fell asleep spooning, for fuck’s sake.” He shook his head. With the state he was in, he felt like he was fumbling to find the right english words to describe what he was trying to say. Lighter forgotten, Kai plucked the cigarette out from his lips so he could speak properly. “Like we’d apparated back to two thousand and one. But I know he still fucking hates me,” Kai said, heated as if he was interjecting, even though he was the only one talking.

"Die in a good way though, right?" she said with a smile as she leaned back at little as he fumbled under the blanket. "Maybe I could help her with her lesbian sexual awakening, you never know," she added in a sing song voice, teasing him just to see that look on his face again as she quietly laughed. She wasn't sure why, but now she really wanted to meet his sister. Or maybe she did know why, just so she could tease Kai about it, maybe make a few jokes that would most likely make Ellie blush, it would be fun. If only Kai weren't trying to kill her vibe so much.

She made a small humming noise at his 'I don't really know him anymore' line and nodded once, then again. "Sounds like you want to know him again though," she pushed as she watched the cigarette dangle from his lips and felt his aura pulsing dimly around him. She hadn't worked it all out exactly, but sometimes she thought that she had to make up for her part in how Tony and Kai had ended. Maybe that's why she was always encouraging him back toward Tony, even when he was arguing with himself.

Senna reached out above her head, her hand patting several roof tiles before she finally found her sycamore wood wand and beckoned him closer in the dark to help light his cigarette as she leaned up on one elbow. "I know, I know," she said, understanding how living in the past felt like. Memories of her own ghost relationships echoed in her mind. She gazed down at him as her silver blonde hair fell gently over her shoulder and gazed at him quietly for a moment. "I'm sure he doesn't hate you," she said kindly, even though she knew she had no business saying that. "He wouldn't have let you in--" Metaphorically? Physically? "--if he hated you, right?" she offered, more of a suggestion than a rebuttal, knowing he was probably going to argue both sides himself anyway.

Kai snorted. “Yeah,” he said, “they’ll never let her see me again. Probably for the best,” he added after a small pause. No more way-too-intense teenagers showing up at his work sounded good… Well, not ones that were intense for reasons personal to him, anyway. Intense teenagers was sort of the whole point of the centre, he thought distantly. Difficult to be his usual, calm-work self when his fucking sister was showing up out of the blue, though. “Why not,” he said, “lets take her to a gay bar.” He snorted again.

“Does it,” he answered flatly, eyes gazing far past her and out at the sky. After a beat, Kai tilted his head her way, far too comfortable on his back to push himself up on one elbow, like her. He glanced at her wand, then popped the cigarette back between his lips and let her light it for him. His lighter was nowhere to be found. “Hmm,” he said, before exhaling slowly out the corner of his lips. He took another deep, smokey breath, then exhaled that one with a sigh, the cigarette held to the side again for now. He tucked his other arm back under the blanket for warmth.

“I dunno,” Kai said, wanting to shrug but not quite managing it. He settled for a slight head shake. His eyes were a touch unfocused as he moved his gaze slowly from her face back to the sky above. “I just…” He trailed off, a little too far away from sober for his thoughts to be as coherent as he seemed to need them to talk about this. Senna’s tone was gentle, which was good, because if she’d been teasing or arguing then he probably would have found himself a bit more defensive. Or, then again, maybe it was worse like this. Tony would never forgive him, he thought. There wasn’t any point in entertaining a world in which he would. It was what it was — ancient history, arguably Kai’s biggest unforced fuck-up — and he should know better than to consider it. Plus, it had been so long; he really didn’t know him anymore, even if that hadn’t felt true with his hands on his body. The past was the past. And yet.

“It was nice,” he said; an admission. A confession. “The sex was good.” An afterthought. Kai took another drag of his cigarette, then sighed. “I dunno, Sen, it’s all a bit much for me right now,” he told her, tilting his head to look at her, an amused smile on his face. His brain wasn’t entirely functional; it had been more of a funny anecdote to bring up at the start, but now it was verging on troubled sort of territory. They weren’t sober enough. He wasn’t, in any case.

"They won't? They who? Her parents?" Then it occurred to her and she corrected herself. "I mean your parents?" That whole situation was still a little fuzzy to her and she didn't shy away from messiness like that. When it came to Kai, she tended to lean in to it, to help where she could, but she still couldn't shake the idea that it would be fun to take his little sheltered sister to a gay bar. She grinned at the idea, her teeth a flash in the dark. "Oh my goodness, can we! Maggie's on Fourth would be great. No- wait. What about Woody's?" Her eyes gleamed with the memories of the raucous and raunchy vibes that would surely scandalize someone as sheltered as his sister seemed to be. Senna wanted to owl her an invite immediately.

The dark sky wheeled above him as she waited patiently for him to collect his thoughts, to decide what he was going to share and she found her thoughts drifting away too before his voice brought her back. She traced the outline of him in the dark as she nodded at his confession, thinking both were good signs. Maybe it was just a gut feeling, but she had always felt that Kai and Tony would somehow make it back together. They seemed to fit together better somehow than Rhey and Kai did, not that she would tell either one of them that. "It's alright," she told him softly, waving her hand with a flutter as if she could bat away the heavier, more complicated emotions he was working through. She reached over with a pale hand to gently take the cigarette from his fingers and bring it to her own lips. Inhaling, holding it for a breath, before exhaling smoothly and then returning it to him, letting a comfortable silence crop up before she spoke again.

"I broke up with Jeff," she volunteered. A beat passed. "Again," she added and smiled softly at him, amusement on her face edged with a little frustration. It had been an on again, off again thing with Jeff, but something hadn't been sitting right when it came to him lately so she had to step back. "He cried a little when I told him," she said with a frown, sadness touching her features at having caused that in him and not knowing how to fix it without sacrificing her own happiness. It still settled around her heavily even if she tried to find the levity of the situation with Kai.

“Ugh,” Kai said, his lip curling a little in disgust at her phrasing. His parents? His parents? Kai had never felt particularly attached to the idea of having parents; his father had only ever been a vague concept, and his mother had only really been around at the start. His aunt was more of a parent than either of them had been, ergo, it didn’t seem like a relevant word.

Plus, the idea of being involved in that family? Another disdainful “Ugh,” slipped from his lips. He looked at her when she started mentioning places to take Ellie and couldn’t quite keep a smirk from appearing on his face as she went on. It faded soon after.

There was quiet for a little, and that was nice. A lot more Tony-related thoughts cropped up of course, but without her prompting he could stay away from anything complex and just think about things like Tony laughing in the shower, or Tony with his back pressed against his own front door, or…

Kai cleared his throat, holding his hand out for the cigarette again. “Was he all right?” he asked, tilting his head slightly to look at her again. Kai knew that she’d been feeling frustrated lately. Unhappy. “Ah.” He nodded. He’d probably cry too, he thought distantly, if someone broke up with him. It hadn’t happened in a long while, though… Did Tony count? It hadn’t really felt like he’d been dumped. Thinking about his ex slumped on the ground, and him, Kai, storming off… It looked more like the other way round, really, which was kind of messed up if he lingered on it…?

He stopped that quickly.

“How do you feel about it?” Kai asked, belatedly realising the cigarette was still in his hand, the wind picking up ash and little embery bits and fluttering them away. He brought it to his lips for a quick puff.

"Sorry, you know what I mean," Senna said as she heard his disdain in that one syllable and then the same sound repeated. She gave him a sympathetic look and patted this forearm a couple of times. She knew it wasn't easy to define and she hadn't meant to label it like that, but it didn't change the fact that she still wanted to hang out with his new-found sister.

Her fingers brushed his like petals on the wind as she handed his cigarette back to him and she pursed her lips as she thought back to her most recent breakup with Jeff. She gave a dainty one-shouldered shrug as he eyes returned to the sky above. "No? Not really I don't think but what was I supposed to do. We keep going in circles and he makes everything feel off, like nothing is aligned," Senna confessed to him, still trying to work through the intricacies of what she had had with Jeff. She missed him and didn't miss him at the same time and it was more of the second one lately so maybe it was a good thing. But it didn't help that she had these feelings of guilt on her conscience too.

"I feel.." she started and then drifted as she thought about it, sifting through her emotions. "..disconnected? Things are going well with the band, but everything else seems to be out of place. And like with Jeff, I don't know what much more I could do. He got insulted when I told him he uses vagueness as a shield, he just doesn't talk to me." She sighed heavily and reached out for the cigarette again, tapping it once to see the embers, dark and orange, fall off the end. "I don't know," she summed up and then her tone turned a little sour. "It's not like I was asking him for a blood oath or anything."

(( co star challenge completed mwahah)

Kai didn’t say anything as she patted his arm, opting to accept the comfort without having to delve. He didn’t want to delve into all of that bullshit; he felt like he’d already spent so fucking long dwelling on it. Wasn’t it the whole reason he’d come to the UK in the first place? Ostensibly, anyway. There was the whole fleeing-a-fucked-up-relationship thing, of course.

“Mmm,” Kai said, dismissing thoughts of Tony and replacing them with thoughts of Jeff. Jeff wasn’t his friend like Senna was, but he’d met him. He knew him. “Maybe break-up’s good, then,” he offered. “Be alone for a while. Or fall in love with someone new, or something…” He offered her the last bit of the cigarette, glancing at her as some sourness appeared in her tone.

“Guess you need someone more direct,” Kai said. Jeff was a vague sort of guy, he thought. “We should make an oath...” he said, the thoughts just tumbling out of his lips as he thought them. He drifted a bit, then came back in with a different thought. “It’s kind of fucked up that there’s so much pressure to be in a relationship, isn’t it? Like, I have my friends… And the friends I really care about… And isn’t that kind of, just as good?”

She nodded and then shrugged a little and then sighed. "Yeah, maybe it is good," she repeated as if trying to convince herself even though it was already done. She had initiated it and yet, she was still plagued with questions on whether or not she had been right in doing it. She felt lighter, freer, like she usually did when she broke off something with someone, but.. she also felt the cool, phantom fingers of loneliness touching her each day too. Maybe she did just need to find someone new to fall into. She shook her head in a silent no at the last offer of his cigarette, letting him have it, and gave him a small smile. "Perhaps Ellie..." she suggested innocently, thinking of this new person to fall in love with, before she started broke up into laughter.

Senna smiled at his suggestion. Jeff was the very opposite of direct and yet he couldn't see that for himself. But after so much on and off and on again and then back off again ups and down, maybe she was just fine with giving in that they were not written in the stars together. Her and Kai were different though. While not exactly romantic, whatever cosmic dust they were made of, it was the same for them and Senna had always found comfort in that.

"Yeah?" she asked, a smile playing about her lips, her eyes bright at his suggestion. "You want to do a blood oath with me?" she asked, her smile widening as her fingertips trailed over the back of his hand before she flipped over the palm and traced the lines there with a feather-light touch. "What kind of oath would be make though?" she asked with a glance at him.

It was so easy to drift in and out with Kai. Conversation wasn't forced, as easy as the wind, picking up and dropping off without need to work at it. One of those moments cropped up between them and her thoughts were lost on oaths she would swear to different people, perhaps to Rheya or him or even Ollie. But not Jeff. "Mmm," she murmured in a sound of agreement as he came back to her. "I think many people are afraid of being alone," she mused, not wanting to look too closely at that because she might find herself included in that large group of people as well.