WHO: Lyra and Avery, Hathor, and a bunch of trapeze NPCs WHEN: New Years Eve/Wedding Anniversary Eve WHERE: Williamsburg, Brooklyn WHAT: A party, new friends, new conversation topics that maybe should have come up already WARNINGS: TBD
Lyra’s excitement had ridden the bus with them, a third passenger crowded into the seats on their way to Fern's party. Avery could hardly get a word in cuz Lyra couldn’t stop talking, feeling too strongly that she had to tell him everything she could think of ‘bout all her new friends, so when they arrived he’d feel like he knew them all too, and maybe he wouldn’t feel so awkward? She knew throwing him into this kinda social situation would be kinda like… well, throwing Rosario into this kinda social situation, but she was also so brightly optimistic that he was gonna end up having as much fun as she did that it was easy enough not to directly acknowledge that (if she was gonna go Rosario and make a list about it) a, parties like this really weren't his thing and b, she was a little nervy that once again important people in her life weren't gonna get on. It could be his thing, if he wanted it to be, yeah?? And everyone would get on so long as no one got all uptight 'bout anything, yeah?
Yeah. It was way easier to focus on being excited and optimistic than focusing on being nervy, so that was the train she'd decided to ride.
The string of stories she was telling about who did what with their lives was fueled by the Red Bull cocktails (if you could count Red Bull and vodka as a cocktails, which of course she could) that she’d made while they were getting ready, and more than once she’d interrupted herself and switched from a story ‘bout Mackenzie tryna sneak into an award ceremony one of her movie producer parents had been nominated for into a sardonic joke Soledad had made about something tangential to how Lyra and Mackenzie really, really wanted Soledad to get on stage at Patrick’s-girlfriend-Thalia’s comedy club to how a few weeks ago Fern took them all to one of her friend’s performance art pieces and how it was impossible to describe how moving it’d been to anyone who hadn’t been there and oh my god she couldn’t wait for him to meet Viv and how tonight was just going to be so great, and then she laughed because Avery was just watching her with one brow up and she finally realised how quickly she’d been talking, how much of a miracle it’d be if he managed to keep names and stories straight. She grinned and shrugged one fluffy shoulder at him (tonight felt like the perfect night to wear her Vegas coat, just like tonight felt like the perfect night for magic, didn’t New Years always feel like the right night for magic?) refusing to feel admonished, and kissed him briefly on the lips before she slid her fingers through his. “You gonna have fun,” she promised him, smiling, reaching up with her free hand to hit the bus’s stop button before anyone else had a chance. “They all cool people, they all really cool people. You gonna love ‘em all.”
She did, after all, and he loved her, so like, clearly she wasn’t wrong here.