Percy I. Chapman | Ἑρμης (polytropus) wrote in paxletalelogs, @ 2017-10-08 23:13:00 |
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Entry tags: | bastet, hermes |
lying on our backs and counting the stars
Who: Max and Percy
What: A date night with literal fireworks
Where: The Tchaikovsky Spectacular with Fireworks, at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles
When: Backdated to August 18th, mid-evening
He wasn’t a stranger to mixing business with pleasure. In fact, Percy considered himself rather talented at multitasking, combining together the two crucial elements of day to day life to make matters more interesting. Life was too short, after all, to waste time on uninteresting endeavors.
Max, with her guile and quick wit, succeeded at capturing Percy’s attention. They’d arrived together at the Hollywood Bowl, Percy gaining security clearance for his camera. He wore a badge marking him as being granted this special opportunity: masterful writer of a rare fluff piece, celebrating the majestic tones of Tchaikovsky.
Sure, he hadn’t been over-excited about this assignment, but when Max agreed to come along with him, it made it infinitely better. He’d taken overview shots of the stage, glimpses of crowd-filled moments, the sky turning a milky pink and orange as the sun dipped lower behind the horizon. Later, he’d get a couple pictures of the fireworks when they were set off, but for now, work could be nudged over to the side.
Percy carried a small cooler in one hand and a folded blanket tucked under his other arm. They meandered along the grass, taking heed to not stumble upon another person’s lawnside seating arrangements. He nodded towards a grassy clearing on the hill, surprisingly not yet filled with classical music enthusiasts.
“This looks like a nice spot,” he said amiably, smiling over at Max. He set down the cooler, filled with ice and a few assorted beers, and unfolded his blanket. “And we’re in luck--there’s not one anthill to be seen.” Grinning, he spread out the blanket, affording both of them a comfortable place to sit and watch the show. “You’re an absolute savior, by the way. I thought I might have to suffer through elegant music and beautiful fireworks completely by myself. What a sorry fate that might’ve been, huh?”
Max had surprised herself by accepting the invitation to see fireworks and listen to classical music in the park. The fact that it would be with Percy was definitely a deciding factor, plus her appreciation for shiny things. She couldn’t help but smile as they made their way through the crowd, unintentionally flashing her fangs at various people. She didn’t care...she’d long since embraced her new look, accepting it as part of who she was now, and no longer trying to hide them with close-mouthed smiles and hands over her face.
“Ohh, it would have been intolerable,” she chided, looking around them at the beautiful spot he’d chosen, with a gorgeous view of the sunset. “I mean, sitting outside to watch the sunset and some fireworks on a beautiful summer evening, with musical accompaniment? Sounds like hell,” she teased, grinning at him and helping him spread out the blanket on the grass. “I’m glad I could at least make it bearable for you,” she said, settling cross-legged on the blanket and reaching for the cooler he brought. She slipped the bottle opener out of her pocket and opened two beers for them, handing one to him, her hand lingering a little longer than necessary before letting it go. “To shared misery,” she said with a smirk, tapping the neck of her bottle to his and then taking a drink.
He situated himself comfortably on the blanket near Max, removing his camera from around his neck while she helped herself to the cooler’s contents. Percy placed the device carefully onto the blanket within an arm’s reach and an eye’s glance. He was openly grateful for the offered beer, glad to clink his bottle against Max’s; he afforded her a wink, entertained by her spoken vow of their shared state of abject and utter despair.
The beer was cold and refreshing in the heat which still lingered in the air, despite dusk drawing ever near. Fortunately for him, Max clearly had no objections to craft beer, albeit it was a far different beast than, say, aged tequila. “I have to admit,” Percy said openly, “I was a little surprised you’d want to go with me for a work assignment. Not that I’m breaking any rules right now, if you’re worried.” He returned her smirk with a pointed, sidelong look. “But I doubt you’d let yourself be deterred by something as silly as rules. Where would the fun in it be if you did?”
He wasn’t completely lying, but nor was he telling the entire truth. Technically, he shouldn’t have had company with him--a finicky, old-fashioned rule in his opinion, given that he was still more than capable of getting enough pictures for his article. In the end, it’d be on his boss, anyway. Who, after all, would be ever so cruel as to assign a fluff piece at a perfect date location, and expect an unattached fellow to cross all of his i’s, and dot the appropriate t’s? Heaven forbid such a thing.
Max scoffed with a light chuckle. “Rules are made to be broken,” she said, “except mine. Mine are to be obeyed,” she added with a smirk. She took another drink from her bottle and then settled back on the blanket. “So how did you end up pulling fluff duty with this assignment?” she asked, “not that I’m complaining,” she added. The sky was steadily darkening and murmurs were starting to grow louder in anticipation of the coming light show.
Her jest--or was it?--brought forth a peal of laughter from him, and he shook his head in wonderment at the woman next to him, before looking back over the crowd gathered upon the lawn. The constant motion of people moving here and there, all eagerly awaiting the eventual fireworks display coupled with musical entertainment, satisfied him. Life seemed awfully nice when it was busy, even during moments of attempted relaxation.
“It’s been a slow summer for money laundering and identity theft,” Percy answered Max’s question, not without a touch of disappointment. Max chuckled at the comment and took another swig of beer. “If you ask me, this is the right time to make an illegal move--people are focused on vacations and theme parks, not their bank accounts. But I’m not the criminal, so,” he said with a false note of ruefulness. “I’ll take whatever work I can get,” Percy smiled over at her, the light fading from the sky but nevertheless still reflecting in her mischievous brown eyes. “It keeps the apartment monsters at bay,” he added as a joke, nothing more than a casual reference to the previous month’s slew of creatures that must have crawled out of another dimension.
Max chuckled again and smirked at him, “what, you had monsters in your closet?” she taunted, not knowing how very close to the mark she was. “I actually had...a something...stealing food from my fridge,” she admitted. “I enlisted a neighbour into some undercover work to figure out what it was, but...no dice,” she said with a disappointed grimace.
His brows raised with interest, diluted momentarily only by a drink of his beer. He glanced at the colorful label wrapped around the bottle, some overly fancy decoration printed around the name and brewing company. It was too extravagant for a simple tasting beer, but it fit this evening; Max was too extravagant for such a simple date, and he--well. He simply avoided such indulgences as extravagance, didn’t he? Well enough.
“Which do you suppose was the worse of the two: having your food stolen or your home broken into?” Percy gave Max a serious look, blue eyes bright and eager for answers.
“You know,” Max replied with an impish grin, “my home had to have been broken into to have my food stolen,” she pointed out, but then let it go with a shrug and another swig of beer.
“I actually did have a monster in my closet. Hold your laughter, because I’m telling the truth. I tried to vanquish it with my best friend, but...it escaped.” Percy shrugged, for surely it must have done so; he hadn’t seen the monster since the end of July. And Max didn’t need to know that he’d nearly pissed himself out of fear, or that Lucas had been just as afraid, too.
“I’ll admit, I personally felt more annoyed that the monster didn’t at least knock and ask to come inside before making himself at home in my closet.”
Max had been biting her lip while he told the tale, and then finally had to let out a short laugh when he finished. “So you…were unable to vanquish...the monster in your closet?” she asked with badly contained mirth. She leant forward and put a hand on his arm as a gesture of empathy. “It’s okay you know...next time I can come kick its ass for you if you’d like,” she offered, though the smirk as she spoke may have somewhat reduced the amount of comfort that statement might have given him.
“I’m sorry, it’s just...you have to admit...if I’d told you this story you would probably be laughing right now,” she chuckled. “But I do believe you. There’s been enough weird shit going on in our building to fill a new season of The X-Files.”
He accepted her jests in stride, knowing full well how ludicrous it all sounded--but also knowing that it was highly possible Max had dealt with her own version of his closet monster. Percy grinned from ear to ear, shaking his head slightly at the very thought of this absurd situation, brought to light as the sky above them finally dropped its warm-hued colors for milky blues and blacks.
“I can accept your sense of humor about the perils of my life,” he said solemnly, a playful glint to his eye. “But if you’re going to try to be the Mulder to my Scully tonight, we might have words between us.” Percy peered over at Max, pretending to scrutinize her for a moment before breaking into a short laugh of his own. “You haven’t had your own closet monster to deal with, have you?” He paused, also wanting to ask her if she’d had any particularly interesting dreams lately, but decided to wait. They had plenty of time, judging by the orchestra meandering about on the stage; someone had likely lost their oboe and needed to find it.
Max shook her head, “nope, but something was definitely in my apartment. And my friend, Nish...it sounded as if she had the same sort of thing in hers. And she found this gigantic feather in her kitchen,” she said, holding up her hands a fair distance apart to illustrate its size. “So...definitely not something that could fit in a closet,” she concluded. And she couldn’t decide whether that was more or less terrifying.
“Anyway,” she said with a swig of her beer, noting that she was almost finished the bottle. “Are we here to talk about our messed up living arrangements or are you here to work?” she asked with a grin. She peered over to the stage and nodded towards it. “Looks like they’re almost ready to start...you gotta snap a few photos?”
“I’m here to do both, actually,” Percy said with a serious air, playing at being the studious businessman for the night, though he’d left his three-piece suit at home. “I consider interesting living conditions and work the better highlights of my life,” he continued, now simply amusing himself for the sake of it. He placed his own nearly empty bottle out of the way, tucked next to the blanket--but only close enough that a spill would land on the grass instead of on the fabric.
“Not that I want to bore you with my source of income,” he put forth with a wry grin, reaching for his camera. Max smirked and sat up on her knees, watching what he was doing with interest. Percy glanced up at the stage briefly, then went about removing the camera’s lens cap and readjusting the settings for the recently lessened light levels. “You know, I’ve got to hand it to you, Max. You take things in stride,” Percy looked at her sidelong with a touch of sincerity. “I like to think I do the same.”
With that, he focused on the stage, looking through the camera’s viewer and zooming out, aiming for a shot of the entire ensemble with the sky lit up with stars above them. A few shots later, and he decided he’d readjust the focal length for his next set of shots--nothing wrong with a little variety to spice up a fluff article.
Max shrugged and took the compliment for what it was, finding that she had to work to cover up how flattered she was by it. “Ohh you know, I try not to let anything bother me,” she said as nonchalantly as she could. “What really bothers me, at least right now, is how many homeless cats there are in the city,” she said, watching him work and allowing herself the time to ramble. “My cat was a stray, and she was lucky I found her. But others aren’t so lucky. I didn’t tell you, but I started volunteering at a nearby cat shelter to help out. I just...I can’t stand the idea of so many cats with nowhere to go and no one to love them, you know?”
Although he’d been fiddling with his camera, Percy had nonetheless been listening to Max. He couldn’t find it within his heart of hearts to feel the same sympathy--or was it pure empathy?--she had for the stray cats, but he’d been raised better than to act flippantly towards someone else’s passion. Especially when he was on a work assignment slash date with the particular someone.
“Too many litters in an economy like this, it’s absolutely atrocious,” he murmured, though his jest lacked any edge. Max nodded too, not seeing the jest in his words, but agreeing with them.
“That’s why it’s so important for people to spay or neuter their cats,” she said with a nod. “If I could I’d help trap strays and ferals to have them done before releasing them.” She trailed off, still battling with herself over the right of a cat to it’s own body, but also the lives saved by controlling the population by sterilizing as many cats as possible.
“Really, though, cats are fickle, but I’m sure they appreciate what you’re doing for them,” he continued, peering through his camera. She watched him for another minute with no response, and then just when he had the perfect shot lined up, she ducked into frame and made a funny face. When the shutter next clicked, it captured not just the stage set before them, but Max, too.
It might have captured Max twice, or was it three times? before he had to set the camera down, laughing too much at her antics. He ran a hand through unruly curls as he let the humor brighten his expression, looking at Max with nothing less than amusement.
“Just for that, I’m only going to adopt five cats instead of seven,” Percy teased, leaning slightly forward into her personal space. “And I’m not even a fan of the whiskered little things--even if you’re their personal hero.”
Max, still giggling from her repeated photobombing, leant forward a little on her knees. “Well that’ll be five grateful cats then,” she replied, though she knew he had no intention of adopting any cats. She nipped at her lower lip and fixed her eyes on his. “I was promised fireworks,” she said, her voice a little lower, a little warmer.
“I’ll keep them busy with cat-nip so they’ll leave Stella alone,” Percy promised, though he sounded a little distracted. With one more glance towards the stage, the music now filling the air with decently reproduced Russian talent, he focused intently on Max. He broke their shared gaze only to let his eyes wander down to her full lips and bared neck. “The fireworks are on their way,” he continued, still in a hazy, distracted manner. “Let the band finish the first few symphonies, and then maybe, if we’re lucky, we’ll see a few.”
“Or,” he said with an undeniable smirk, “we might miss them altogether.” There was a moment’s pause, the crowd gathered on the lawn breaking into applause for the end of the most recent song. Percy took advantage of the lull in the music to lean forward the remaining distance needed to promptly kiss Max, the lover and savior of all cats, everywhere--at least, as far as Newport Beach was concerned.
She returned his kiss with a hungry one of her own, sitting on the blanket with hands splayed on her knees and leaning into him. “For some reason, I suddenly don’t care about fireworks anymore,” she murmured against his lips smiling as she cupped his face with her hands and kissed him again, slowly, savouring it before pulling away again.
“You’re a hard one to please,” Percy said lowly, teasingly. “And here I thought that every woman went crazy over exploding pyrotechnics. The brighter the colors, the better the enjoyment.” As he spoke, he felt himself growing less interested in the fireworks as well, knowing that the truth was likely all too evident upon his face. “But that’s only what I’ve heard, and there’s obviously room for experience to broaden my horizons.” He ducked close to Max again for another kiss, his job assignment temporarily placed at bay; hadn’t he taken enough pictures for the article? It wasn’t as if he needed to use all of them, anyway.
Close to her, their faces lit only by the symphony of dazzling, crackling colors in the sky above them, and the distant lights from the stage, Percy smiled self-assuredly at his date. He touched her leg boldly with one hand, trailing his fingers slowly over her thigh, lazily rather than thoughtfully. “However, you don’t want to miss the grand finale, do you?”
Max grinned at his forwardness, quite enjoying his hand wandering over her. “I hear it’s an explosion of colour and light,” she purred, sliding closer to him on the blanket. Somewhere, in the back of her mind, she had a vague sense of deja vu, as if she had sat with him like this before, although she had a sense that it wasn’t on a blanket in the open, but on grass and under a large tree. She enjoyed the sensation, and it made her bolder. “Are you looking to better understand my world, Percy?” she murmured, the words coming to her out of nowhere, their true meaning hidden from her.
“You could say that I'm more than intrigued,” he agreed with little to no shame whatsoever. He couldn't help the suggestive, upward quirk to his mouth at Max’s flirtatious banter. It almost seemed a repeat of an earlier time between the two of them, though her skin was--as far as he'd seen--unmarred by decorative body art.
Not completely certain where that particular thought came from, Percy chalked it up to a long day that, with any luck, might end with a more careful assessment of any hidden secrets held by Max.
“What do you say to getting out of here before the show ends?” He asked without a hint of hesitation, propelled forward into his decision by attraction, beer, and a quiet push that came from somewhere within his soul’s marrow.
Max nipped at her bottom lip and laced her arms arms behind his neck, pulling him to her for a kiss. “I say I thought you’d never ask,” she murmured against his lips. “Won’t your boss be unhappy you didn’t get the story?” she wondered, though she didn’t sound too concerned about it. One hand began to wander from her own to his neck, mischievous fingers slipping under his shirt collar.
He offered up a half-shrug, not bothering to hide his own lack of interest in the article. “The big man knows better; give me crime or petty tomfoolery, anything but pure fluff,” Percy said by means of an explanation. He warmed to Max’s touch, but bravely sought to add further cushion to his own minimal concern level. “I've already gotten as much of the story as I need, and one fireworks finale looks like another after awhile.”
“Besides, we've got better things to do,” Percy declared, now determined to seal the deal. “There's a half empty bottle of tequila at my place that needs to be tended to, post-haste.” The grin on his face could likely cause even the most robust of stern matrons to falter, nothing more than pure, open charm.
Max’s brows rose. “I’d hate for it to be kept waiting,” she said smoothly, toying with the top button of his shirt without actually unfastening it. “And besides, I think we would have a lot more fun without an audience,” she smirked, glancing to a couple on the grass about ten feet away who were now openly watching them. Max smiled sweetly at them and waggled her fingers, and then turned back to Percy. She reluctantly slid away from him, starting to clean up their little picnic with perhaps a little more haste than was necessary, one thing only on her mind now.
“You're probably right,” Percy hurriedly agreed, though his motions to pack up his camera and collect their empty beer bottles revealed a carefully measured restraint--calm and cool, despite the flurry of warm excitement that threatened to dominate the rest of the night.
He'd let it, of course, all in due time. But he thought himself to be something akin to a gentleman, and thus would wait until they'd arrived back at his place.
“I’ll drive,” he stated with a winning smile, standing from their makeshift picnic’s ruins, and holding his hand out for Max to take, which she did, happily lacing her fingers with his.