Colt Byron // Colin Craven (cravened) wrote in musingslogs, @ 2010-11-07 12:43:00 |
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Entry tags: | colin craven, mary lennox, river tam |
Who: Erin, Colt and Severin
What: Leaving
Where: The masquerade
When: At the end of the masquerade
Warnings: None
Severin was left disoriented and out of sorts after colliding with the man he’d assumed was attacking Erin. The tackle was strangely expert, calculated to take him to the ground and, for such a sudden attack, executed with a kind of grace. But when he rolled to his feet and positioned his hand to knock the man’s head against the ground hard enough to quickly incapacitate him, he found thought patterns that didn’t match up, at least not that he could tell.
He stumbled to his feet, backing up a few steps from the man before following after Colt and Erin, weaving a little. He looked behind himself a few times at the man in black and the few other people still clustered in the lower lounge.
Erin didn’t seem hurt, but she also wasn’t steady, her thoughts out of place in the way of the drunk. If he got too caught up in following those threads of thought it could be uncomfortably similar to being drunk himself. He focused on Colt instead, because Colt was sharp and familiar, latching on to keep from being overwhelmed when they went back upstairs. He just wanted to be out of here. Out, and somewhere quiet.
He touched Erin lightly on the shoulder: “I thought he was hurting you. You were screaming.” Then he shied away, staying a few paces behind them both.
Erin had done her best to pick herself up from the floor, thoughts a disoriented, grouchy tilt-a-whirl of extremes as her emotions held much sway over what she did and said. Her ankle hurt her and she never got to see who the man in the hood was and she’d never had a chance to dance with Colt or do the thing at the top of the stair that all princesses got to do when they went to the ball. Erin was very disgruntled at not having a chance to be a princess, and her costume held an authentic kind of grace that she liked a great deal despite the weight of the fabric and the necessity of moving carefully.
She must have said something polite and cheerful and maybe ever-so-faintly slurred to the man in the hood as they left, but she couldn’t remember what it was, and she didn’t really have much of an idea who the others were, but it didn’t really matter so much just then. “I just fell down because I hurt my ankle,” she said, willing to be cheerful even despite the great deal of falling down that she was doing lately. “And I broke my sandal.” She held it out, sadly, taking a couple limping steps forward in the general direction of the wall that probably led toward a door of some kind. She swayed this way and that without noticing what she was doing. “Didn’t you love the spooky drinks and the music?” she asked Severin, obliviously, wrinkling her nose a little against the cigarette smoke as he got very close.
Colt had helped Erin to her feet, and he’d started to help her to the door with his slow uneven gait. His arm around her waist, at least, was strong, and he didn’t interrupt when she kept talking to Severin. Getting her out was the goal. He could talk to the damn woman once he had her safe and sound in a cab, away from liquor and strange men dressed in black. He didn’t understand why women had to be such damn complicated creatures, always needed caring for and looking after.
Severin stayed just off to the side as they walked. He wanted to help, somehow, but Colt had an arm around Erin, and she seemed alright even if she was favoring her ankle. He tugged the sandal away from her so that she could reach out and catch herself if she fell. “I did,” he said, because Erin needed some good news after her disappointments. Then he smiled, totally out of place and rare, a brief moment of clarity, reassuring. “You already look like a princess,” he said. “Of the Edo period, maybe. You don’t need to do anything else.” Then something caught his attention and he moved a little ahead of them, forgetting to hold the door. He thought he heard something - more voices - and he had to be sure it was safe. There were too many people here, and they could be hiding anywhere in the crowd, or just outside the doors.
Erin accepted the assistance until they got far enough from the first room that the light changed and she could get a good look at her escort. “Colt,” she squealed, in a register that had to be two octaves higher than her normal conversational tone, “I didn’t know it was you! How come you didn’t come and find me, I tried to find you at first but then I got lost after the door. Did you have some champagne?” She twirled around (or attempted to twirl, as twirling sometimes required balance, more than one sandal, and/or two working ankles) and put her arms around his neck. Her eyes glistened with blissful appreciation that the alcohol was too happy to carry along for her. “I thought we were going to dance?”
Colt cursed his bum leg right then, because he wanted to scoop her up and just carry her outside. Talking someone through things, it hadn’t ever been his way in life, and he really just wanted to drag her up and clear her out of the restaurant. He couldn’t do that, and so he kept moving her forwards, trying to dredge up some form of useful psychology. When she wrapped her arms around his neck, he smiled down at her and rubbed a hand over the small of her back. “You look good enough to eat,” he told her with a wry grin and a truthful chuckle. “Real beautiful, and I’ll spin you round your living room once we get there. You inviting me over for the evening?” He looked up for Severin, and he decided he’d tan the boy if he wandered too far just now.
Severin was still hovering quietly behind them both, but his attention had wandered elsewhere. He listened, but didn’t speak. The closest he got to wandering away was a distracted stretch of fingers for the long, shimmering trail of a woman’s dress, made of flat sequins all worked together to look like a mermaid tail. He trailed the fabric through his fingers for a moment before he was past the woman and gone.
Colt noticed Severin’s movements, but barely. He led Erin outside, and he hailed a cab. He’d worried about everything else once he got her home.