Rain

@sage | Liam's Outfit

Liam had stuck around after drinks with Vesper. He had left a message for Constance with Temperance earlier that this was where he was going to be tonight, and so he thought that he would wait around for a little bit and see if she showed up. It was up to her really, if she would or not, and since he hadn't been able to find her earlier, he thought that she might have been at rehearsal, which would have meant that there was a chance that she was tired, and wouldn't want to come out at all. He thought that it would give it until a certain time, and then he would just head home for the night. It didn't matter to him one way or another if he would rather sleep. He would have liked to see her, but he knew that she worked her ass off when it came to ballet, and he would just as easily see her tomorrow if she just wanted to go to bed tonight. Liam was still proud of himself for not falling asleep either of the times that he had gone to see Sleeping Beauty last month. He had gone with her family on opening night, and he had gone again on closing night. 

No one had told him too, but he had thought that it was the thing to do. It was nice to be supportive. And he had sent her a bouquet of red roses every day that the show had run, with the same simple note. "Break a Leg." Liam had known better than to get in her way, and he had thought that it was a simple enough thing to just back off, and let her have her space. Let her do her thing. He was proud of her. He thought that she deserved to know that someone was going to always be there to stand beside her. someone that wasn't her mother, or her sister. Because he knew that they were always going to be there too. But he had meant him in a different way. He wasn't family. He wasn't obligated to go to more than one show, or send flowers every day, and he had. He had wanted her to know that he was supportive. That she was amazing enough to do whatever she wanted. 

And if what she wanted was to dance and study law, then who was he to get in her way? He didn't have that right. His job was to be supportive, and to tell her that she was good enough to do whatever it was that she put her mind to. That was his job. He wasn't her husband, he was her boyfriend, and by the example that his own parents had set, he didn't have a right to tell her what to do even if they were married. That just wasn't the way that he had been raised. If it came to her safety, and telling her to stay at home, he hoped that she would listen. He hoped that even now, she would listen to him if that was the case. But eh didn't think that there was any reason to worry about something like that. Her uncle wasn't the Minister anymore, his aunt was. There was no reason that anyone was going to attack her again. There was no reason to think that he wasn't going to kill anyone that tried. 

He didn't like to see her upset, and Liam thought that if there was one thing that his father had made sure had sunk in to both of his sons, it was that the women in their lives were to be treated with respect. That they were to be protected. He would protect her, and make sure that she knew that she was safe with him. That she could always speak her mind, be herself, and that no one was going to mind. She was free to be as strong as she wanted to be. A strong witch did not intimidate him at all. She scared him, sometimes, but a healthy amount of fear didn't seem like all that bad of a thing when he knew that her mother literally emitted fire when she was angry. As far as Liam was aware Constance wasn't about to start shooting flames from her fingertips, but it was better safe than sorry to have a healthy fear of pissing her off. Shaking his head a little bit at the thought he moved back to the bar and slipped into a stool there. "Can I get a beer, Sage?" 

RAIN

OUTFIT

Astronomy might be something that she loved more than most anything else, but it did not pay well. She wasn’t sure if any astronomer actually made money unless they were famous for discovering something or… doing something notable. Her mum would say that was why it was a bad choice for a career. There was no way to succeed in it, or at least that was what she had been told time and time again. But it was something that she loved, and money wasn’t something that meant all that much to her. As long as she made enough to get by, she was happy--and she did. She had a house, granted it wasn’t a nice house but it was still hers, and she had Grus. If she only had astronomy, her cat, and her house, she thought that she would be happy. Everything else was just background noise, just extra, and she didn’t need to worry about any of that. But she did have to pay the bills. That was just unavoidable. And since astronomy wasn’t always great at helping her make ends meet, she’d had to get a job here.

Bartending wasn’t something that she had all that much experience with. She had been surprised that she had gotten hired, in all actuality, just because she thought that they could have found someone that had some experience mixing drinks and just behind the bar in general. But she wasn’t going to complain, obviously. She had needed the money. She just had to admit that she hadn’t liked her chances. Sage had been sure that she would get the hang of it but she knew that wasn’t necessarily all that reassuring to a bar owner wanting a bartender, not someone that was going to try to teach herself what to do as she went along. But still, she had gotten hired so she’d decided that she was going to do her best to figure it out. She’d done plenty of reading on different drink recipes to try to get them engrained in her mind--hadn’t worked all that well, but she was trying. It had only been about two weeks since she had gotten the job. She obviously couldn’t memorize every drink they could make by then… but she’d gotten a fair few down.

What she had not expected was Justice. She had known from her interview that he was attractive, and that made it a little intimidating to talk to him. She wasn’t exactly great with men or flirting or reading signs or anything like that. She had dated before, but it had just never gone all that well--and certainly had never gotten serious. And she’d had no reason to think about that with her boss obviously. Until he had invited himself over one night when she had been talking about stargazing. It was a conversation that was always a safe bet when she was nervous because she could talk about it for hours and genuinely enjoy herself. Finding someone else that could keep up with a conversation like that was always a nice surprise, she just hadn’t expected him to invite himself over after that… and she hadn’t expected anything that had happened that night, or since. Sage honestly thought that he would have shagged her in her front yard and she would have let him if she hadn’t momentarily come to her senses. Shagging her boss still was… sort of frowned upon, but at least they had moved inside.

Then there was the whole vampire thing. That was just… something that she probably should have noticed. She didn’t think that he told people but he clearly didn’t hide it either--which became more obvious to her once she knew and started paying attention. In the past week or so since he’d come over, she had learned what to expect if he asked her to come to his office or into the storeroom. Today when she’d opted to wear a dress, she’d been even less surprised by everything that had happened once she’d gone into the storeroom. He always had dittany, she had come to learn that too, and so it had been right back to work once she’d headed back into the club. It was a Saturday night, so it was busy, but dying down a little as time went by. There was enough room to relax at the bar, which was just what a familiar face had decided to do. Liam had been a year below her in school. They weren’t even friends but she at least knew who he was. “Suppose so.” She said, with a small smile, before she grabbed the beer that he’d been drinking all night and popped the cap off. Then she set it on the bar in front for him. “Anything else?”

It had been a rather long day, for a day that he had ended up having off. It was funny, really, the differences in what a couple of months could do. He thought that even at the turn of the year, he wouldn't have been sitting here waiting to see if his girlfriend was going to show up. He would have been flirting with just about anyone in sight, he would have been trying to pick someone up, shag them in the bathroom, and then leave with someone else entirely. But that wasn't the case here. Things had changed, and he didn't think that he had any reason to believe that it was for the worse. Constance was great, and Liam had wound up spending all day trying to track her down before he had ended up here with Vesper. It was a simple enough night out, and he figured if Constance didn't show up soon he'd just call it a night, and there would be no need to worry about it beyond that. They could figure out something to do when she wasn't exhausted from rehearsals. When she had more desire to actually do something fun.

Dating a ballerina was more complicated than he had thought it was going to be, and he thought that the best part of it was always seeing how much he could get her to eat. Some nights it was barely anything, and other nights he thought she was going to clean her plate, pick off of his, and then ask what was for dessert. Either way, Liam thought it stayed interesting, and that was always something that he wanted to work for. He wanted it to be interesting, and not boring. Boring would not end well for either of them, and that was something he didn't want to think about either. This wasn't ending, this was just getting started. And he didn't want to hurt her. Not after everything that he knew that she had been through. That her family had been through. She had lost her father, she had been kidnapped. She had dealt with more death and destruction in a year than he thought anyone should have to. He didn't honestly know how any of her family was still managing to smile.

But they were, and he wanted to be part of what it was that made her smile. He thought that he had been trying with that at least. That they had made progress to finding her smile again. That wasn't the only thing that he was trying to develop though. Liam knew that he was going to have to focus a little more on his own work if he wanted to keep perfecting the charm that he was working on. If he wanted to recapture memories that they thought that they had forgotten. Things that they seemingly couldn't recall but could be pulled from the depths of the mind given the right spell. He was working on it. He wanted to recover memories like that, learn things about who people were, and how they grew up. The older generations especially. Before they were all gone. He wanted to know why they were the way that they were. There was something about all of them that just made them the way that they were, and Liam was determined to figure it out.

Whether or not that made sense to anyone else, or his findings could make sense to any historians or anything, he didn't know. But he wasn't a historian, not in that sense. He was a genealogist, and he was more concerned about where people came from, and how everyone tied together, than he was about whether or not things were working out in everyone's best interests. He didn't think that it would change anything, him finding old memories. He wasn't going to take them from people unwillingly, at least not right now. He thought that it might be useful in some ways, to use against someone that was being interrogated, or the like, but right now he was only trying to find them in family, friends, people that he knew wouldn't mind. And even then, he knew that there were family members that were off limits. People that he wouldn't ask. He wasn't about to go asking Constance's family either. Too many memories that he thought they liked repressed.

He understood that, even if he knew that it limited his study. He would figure it out though, and he thought that each time he extracted something, instead of erasing something else, they were one step closer to where they were going. Where he was going, because he had embarked on this little adventure of sorts all by himself. He nodded in thanks when she set the new beer down in front of him. "Nah… That's it." He had been drinking the same thing all night after all, "Unless you guys have started serving pizza or something…" It had been long enough since he had eaten last that he thought he could eat again, and if Constance didn't show here soon, he might just have to actually find himself a pizza before he headed back to the manor for the night. It wasn't fair to wake the elves up to make something just for him, and he thought that he could grab a pizza just as easy on the way through.

Sage had loved astronomy since she was a girl. Of course, when she was that young, she didn’t think about making a living with astronomy as her focus, or how difficult it would be. She had just known that she’d love it and that was all that had mattered back then. As she had gotten older, she had obviously learned that it wasn’t exactly going to make her millions of galleons a year to be an astronomer. But that hadn’t phased her. Some people picked what they wanted to do with their lives based off of what would make them the most money. There was nothing wrong with that. If that was what a person wanted to do, then she wasn’t going to judge them. Sage had just never been one to consider money when she thought about what she wanted her life to be like. She was more focused on what she was passionate about and what was going to make her happy. She knew that she needed enough money to survive, and that was honestly enough for her.

She didn’t think that she needed any more than enough to get by. If she could pay her bills, and buy food and other necessities, then she had enough. And for a long time, that had been possible for her just as an astronomer but it had gotten harder and harder. Sage knew that it wasn’t a job that necessarily brought in the big bucks. Money for an astronomer mostly came from teaching, or maybe discovering something big but that was hardly something that was easy to do. It was far more likely that she’d end up teaching, which she wouldn’t mind. Not really. She just wasn’t there yet. Sage was still teaching herself, still learning more and more about astronomy every day, so she didn’t think that she was in much of a place to teach anybody anything. And she was far too young anyway. She didn’t think that she would really be taken seriously for a teaching positions for at least another decade, and obviously she had to get by until then.

Finally she had realized that she only had two options: asking her mum for money, or getting a second job. The first option wasn’t an option at all. She knew that she would never hear the end of it from her mother if she asked her for anything. Sage was sure that she’d give it to her, of course, but not without strings attached and not without never-ending conversations about how she knew that astronomy was the wrong choice of a career and that she should get a real job in her magazine or somewhere similar. Sage didn’t think that the money she’d be able to borrow from her mother was worth all of that, and she didn’t want to ask for help anyhow. She thought that bartending would be enough to get her by for a while. She just hadn’t thought that she’d end up having a vampire for a boss--especially not one that was for some reason interested in her. That was probably what was most surprising about all of this.

But the attention was… she didn’t mind it. She couldn’t really explain it, didn’t understand why he was interested in her at all, but she liked it. It was new for her, all of it was new, and some of it involved him feeding on her which should have been absolutely terrifying--but for some reason, it wasn’t. If he wanted her, then she was fine with him feeding on her at work or any other time that he wanted to. Since he had dittany, she could go right back to work and no one had any idea that anything had even happened. He didn’t even take enough for her to get lightheaded, really--and if he did, she knew that he had blood-replenishing potions. So it had just been right back to work after he had called her into the storeroom to shag her and drink her blood. While that was enough for her to want to just lay down for a while, that wasn’t exactly an option. She was just glad that she had access to water behind the bar because staying hydrated seemed to help.

She needed to be on her game on a Saturday night, after all. Sage knew that she was hardly the best bartender around, on her best of days. She was still pretty much below average, so she couldn’t let blood loss or having just gotten shagged slow her down behind the bar. It was why she was relieved when she had seen Liam. At least he wouldn’t expect too much from her, since they were… acquaintances. He probably wouldn’t get mad if she was slow or anything--and he didn’t ask for anything all that complicated anyhow. Sage didn’t have to think all that much to pull out the same beer that he’d been drinking all night. “Sorry… no pizza. I wish.” It would have been nice to have access to some half-decent pub food around, but it was a club and obviously they didn’t deal all that much in food. Though now that he mentioned pizza, she was sort of tempted to order some and just have delivered to the bar. That might be… just a little bit frowned upon, though.

●●●

smells like

rain

on a summer

day

Running around all day had made him that much more annoyed with the lack of a proper communication system. Liam was half convinced to get some cheap muggle cell phones, just to see if it helped with the whole finding her when he was looking for her thing. He didn’t think that there was any reason that they actually needed to be together. He just liked hanging out with her, and he would have liked to have had her with him in here tonight. He still didn’t know when he had decided that he was in this for the way that he was. Because he had never been like this before. He had never actually wanted to be with someone when he already got somewhere. He had been the kind to find someone to shag in the bathroom before he left, and then take a completely different girl home with him. Liam didn’t think that that was the case anymore. He wasn’t going to go through girls like that, because none of them were her, and he would have rather waited for her, than had some pretty stranger in the bathroom of the club. That would never do.

He had had drinks with Vesper, after a day of returning her book, and talking to Malcolm, and who knew what else he had done today at this point. More than anything, Liam thought that he was glad that he had gotten the twin that he had. And that wasn’t meant as a slight to Temperance or anything, but he just thought that there was something special about Constance. And there was something that he couldn’t explain really, about her twin. It didn’t make sense to him, really, that they could be so different. He knew that who they were had nothing to do with the fact that they were born at the same time. That would be like saying that he and Charles needed to be the same. Or Constance and any of her other sisters. They weren’t identical. There was no need to think that they had to be similar. But he thought that they might have been a little more similar. Even Thea, who was wild, was more like the rest of them than Temperance was. And he didn’t think that he was going to actually understand that. Even if someone tried to explain it to him.

Liam wasn’t convinced that it was worth the effort really. He thought that there had to be more to it than that. That there had to be something that he was missing. But for the life of him, he didn’t really know what it could have been. Nothing that he actually wanted to worry about he was sure. Instead, he thought that he would focus on the fact that he had told Constance, or rather, left Constance a note, saying that this was where he was going to be for a while yet, and that she was more than welcome to come and join him if she wanted to. She might have had rehearsals of some sort tonight, but after Sleeping Beauty had wrapped up, he wasn’t entirely sure how soon it was that they started something else? Or if they just had rehearsals continuously for things? He didn’t know. He didn’t know how ballet worked, and he thought that if he asked, he was likely to receive a very boring lecture on things that he wasn’t going to remember again later anyway. So not asking saved them all the hassle really. He could appreciate the show enough to know that she did amazing when she was up there dancing, but his rather limited knowledge of ballet was kind of pathetic.

If he really wanted to understand a show some time, he figured that he would have to go with her sister. Or her mother. Anička might have been able to explain it to him, but he thought that Ella would have been the best bet. And that would get Elliot out of having to go to the ballet with her. He thought that he might just do that sometime. He could ask Ella to go, and she would enjoy it. A night to just relax, and not have to be anything. Because she didn’t have to impress him. It was the other way around. He had to impress Ella if he wanted to stick around for forever. He had a list of people that he had to get along with, and he thought that today with Malcolm had been okay. He didn’t think that the man minded him much, and Liam could work with that. It was the girls though, that he knew that he had to get past. And Anička. Even Philip, though he thought that like Malcolm, Philip didn’t much mind him either. Chuckling when Sage said that she wished he shrugged, “We could always order one, and see what happens.” He didn’t even know if there was anywhere close that would deliver a pizza. But they could try.

@ sage ●840 ● Liam's Outfit

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOXOGRAPHY 2.0

Smells like rain
On a summer day

❧

Sage knew that her life was not the one that her mother wanted for her. It was something that she made pretty clear to her at any given opportunity. She wasn’t married--she wasn’t even dating. She hadn’t even had a serious boyfriend in several years. Her job wasn’t one that her mother deemed as all that great either. It wasn’t as if she could make a living off of being a mediocre astronomer, or at least that was what she had told her. If she got a desk job at Witch Weekly, her mother would be a lot happier. But Sage knew that she would be absolutely miserable, which was why she had been ready to do whatever it took to make sure that she could support herself with the job that she loved. Yes, that had meant picking up a bartending job on the side, but she didn’t mind it. She wasn’t all that great at it, but she wasn’t as bad as she had been when she had first started either. That was some definite progress, in her opinion. When they got busy, she got a little flustered, but she thought that was understandable, quite frankly.

Bartending was not easy work, after all. Keeping track of everyone that was sitting at the bar, who needed new drinks, who was ready to go--and people sat down at dirty spots at the bar before she had a chance to clean them. If she was particularly busy, she didn’t always realize that it was a new person sitting there. Then she accidentally ignored them, and they got mad, and that obviously made her even more overwhelmed and flustered. That was usually when she started spilling drinks on accident--or trying to mix a drink and making a mess… with the glass going flying, on more than a few occasions. It could definitely get stressful, but she thought that she had to take the process that she’d made and be happy about it. She was getting better. And she thought that Justice saw that, maybe. Sage didn’t think that he was going to fire her or anything--and that wasn’t just because she was sleeping with him and letting him feed on her whenever he liked. Sage still thought that he’d sack her if she was doing horribly/

It was why she tried to do a good job when she was here. But she definitely was always relieved when someone just ordered a beer or some simple drink. Liam was someone that she recognized from school--though the fact that he’d known who she was, was more surprising than anything else. She had always been kind of… shy and had been pretty easy to ignore back then. That was honestly still true, really. She was an easy person to not notice, and that was fine with her. It didn’t bother her in the slightest. But somehow, he had known who she was and that was nice of him really. And it was even nicer that he was drinking something so simple. She knew that he wasn’t drinking beer because it was easy on her, but still. It was a nice break when all she had to do was open a beer bottle and hand it to someone. It was even easier than when someone wanted a beer that was on tap. That was pretty simple too, once she had figured out how to pour it without getting foam everywhere. That had been sufficiently embarrassing her first couple of shifts. Some people had been nice about it. Other people… less so.

There were always going to be people that weren’t all that nice, though, no matter what she did. Even if she poured them the perfect beer or got them their mixed drink in some impressively quick amount of time. She knew that there was little use in getting upset by that. As long as she was doing her best and really trying, she didn’t think that Justice was going to fire her just because of a customer complaint. Hopefully, anyway. She liked to think that he would believe her if she said that she had tried her best or that something hadn’t been her fault. That was something that she hadn’t had to deal with just yet, thankfully. “You can order one and see what happens. You are the customer, so you can do whatever you want.” She glanced behind her at Justice’s office door. She wasn’t going to risk getting in trouble with him because she decided to order a pizza on the clock. But if Liam ordered one, she certainly wasn’t going to stop him.

@ liam

[attr="class","cred"]MADE BY VEL OF WW + ADOX 2.0

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