let's go out tonight; chris.

[Ϛ Christopher Nightingale]

^{[npd woooooo! ;D]}

Chris didn't think he was easy to read. In fact, he thought his face rarely showed any emotion at all. But who was he to question what other people saw? Telepathy hadn't even occurred to him; he rarely remembered exactly what Claire's Gift was, and cared less often than that. As far as he was concerned, if she didn't read his thoughts it didn't matter, and if she did there was nothing he could do about it. He couldn't censor his thoughts and didn't even know how to begin to try, so why worry about it? Besides, it would be easier to communicate if he didn't have to verbalize every notion he thought up anyway, and Chris was all about ease.

"Yeah, well," he started, but he couldn't think of any decent comeback to that, so he dropped it and smiled a goofy smile instead. "And you are so not an idiot. But you get away with calling yourself one because you're adorable," he clarified, his smile shifting seamlessly into a grin.

Chris was happy to be headed indoors, if only because it meant Claire would be warm. As they reached the door and Claire reached out for it, he quickly grabbed the handle before she could and held it open for her with a look that was more victorious than chivalrous. However, the chivalrous thought was totally there, and the gesture was ingrained deeply into his very being.

"I know I have no reason to be jealous, but..." he tried to think of a way to put how he was feeling into words. "You know how... sometimes your brain just won't listen to reason? Like when you're in love, that kind of thing?"

Loooooooooooooooove.

Shaddup.

You totally love her.

Yeah, so?

The lack of indecision on the matter surprised a part of him, but he was sure of it. At the very least, if it wasn't a romantic sort of love (which it probably was, really), he loved her like a close friend or a family member.

"So yeah, I know, but that doesn't change much. Really though, it's cool," he said, smiling a reassuring sort of smile. He saw her fishing for change and mentally slapped himself; he'd have insisted on paying for the game, but he hadn't brought any change, and by the time he got some, she'd probably already have the game started. So he resigned himself to let her pay for the game and not dwell on it, since he'd be paying for her dinner afterward anyway.

"Yeah, a burger does sound good. Just buy two of them," Chris said. He didn't pull of cocky very well at all, but he did have a decent grin, and even though he knew he wouldn't win, he didn't want to ruin Claire's fun by just rolling over and dying.

[musk]

She crossed the room, heading for one of the gorgeous tables, already flipping quarters over in her palm as Chris, from somewhere behind her, tried to once again to explain the way he felt about her best friends. Bending over to slide the change into the side of the pool table, Chris mentioned something about ‘love’ and she raised her head, glancing at the boy over the edge of the table with raised eyebrows.

“Oh, so you love me now, is that what you‘re trying to say?” She laughed, doing her best to take it as a slip-up, a misinterpretation. “Well that‘s awful sweet of you Chris.” Dipping her head behind the billiard table again, the brunette began grabbing the pool balls and racking them up on the table, forcing her mind to wander away from their last subject of conversation, too afraid to say something embarrassing.

“Listen, Chris, Theo and Connor are -”

“- We’re what?”

Claire had been halfway through aligning the pool balls, stacking them into the wooden triangle at the head of the table as she looked up at Chris with her usual impish grin, beginning to reassure him once more about her boys, her strength and resolve, about her Musketeers. And then, to speak of the very devil, one of them at least, an all-too-familiar voice interrupted her thought and stole her attention. Theodore Griffin Rhodes was leaning languidly against the side of the table, looking indifferent and handsome with the most perfectly crafted smirk on his lips.

“Stalking me, apparently.” Claire paused, looking her best friend over with caution, skeptic about his sudden appearance. “Where‘s my brother?”

Theo chuckled, setting his beer down on a stool nearby. The older boy had been the one to teach Claire how to play pool, and as such, he was just as anal about the entire setup as Claire, and therefore, knew better than to set his beer down on such a lovely pool table without a coaster. “He‘s back at the flat, tinkering with some new lens or something for his camera.”

“...Oh,” The brunette paused for a moment, looking down at her hands. Theo’s eyes, that piercing, unearthly blue, still left her speechless at times, and she was quite sure it would always be that way. After all, you don’t’ love someone obsessively for five years and just stop getting butterflies. “What the hell are you doing here?” Regaining some composure, she met his gaze with inquiring eyes.

“I‘m drinking, stupid.” He gestured to his beer, crossing his arms over his chest before finally noticing Chris, and quite suddenly, his smile became much more devious. “Oh, this must be the new boyfriend Chris.” Claire threw an abandoned gum wrapped at his head, flushing as she realized she had forgotten all about her friend in the wake of Theo's steely gaze.

“Chris, Theo, Theo, Chris.” She waved her hand between them before reaching up to rub her cheek, feeling something like confounded. Theo on the other hand, was looking awful jovial.

"It's nice to finally meet you kid. I was afraid you had like, a foot growing out of your forehead the way you two were avoiding introducing us." He winked, looking amiable. "But it's nice to see that Claire's got good taste." The boy clapped Chris on the shoulder before taking a few steps back toward the other side of the room.

"I'll buy you guys a drink and then we can play a round or two." He obviously had no trouble with inviting himself into Claire's plans, and somewhere near the corner, the brunette was dropping her head into her hand, knowing that there was no way out of it. "Me and Chris against snooks?"

"Don't call me that!" But he didn't even wait for an answer, already heading toward the bar with a chuckle as Claire mouthed something like sorry across the table at Chris.

[Ϛ Christopher Nightingale]

Chris couldn't possibly have looked more petrified.

"That's not what... I didn't mean... I didn't say that!" Chris protested.

Smooth move Don Juan. 'Oh, no, I don't love you!' Nice.

Chris' eyes widened. "Not that I don't... Well...!" Things in his mind began to take on a feverish pace as he tried to dig his way out of a hole.

You're trapped nowDo I love her?I bet she did that on purposeShe would never!Just fess upI don't want to push her awayIt's bound to happen some time always doesThis is differentThey all think that

Luckily for Chris, something about the sound of Theo's voice snapped him out of it, though he was left with quite the confused-looking expression on his face as he tried to figure out just who it was. The guy looked tantalizingly familiar, which made sense, considering Chris had seen Theo and Connor before in pictures. However, he wasn't exactly thinking clearly at the moment, and his memory was far from good.

He zoned out completely for the majority of the tête-à-tête between the two friends, which was probably lucky because he didn't need any other reasons to worry and the way Claire was around Theo would likely qualify as such. Chris could usually read people well enough to know if there was something between them, but then again, he was also very unpredictable; sometimes the most obvious things just escaped him. Either way, it was probably better that he hadn't been paying attention.

He finally did snap out of it though, when Theo said his name. He hadn't heard the rest of the sentence, and so he simply started and smiled absently. For some reason it was just then that it occurred to him that it was Theo addressing him, Claire's good friend and another third of 'The Musketeers'. He had an urge to look around for the elder Langden, but Claire was introducing him, so he just went with it.

He offered Theo a polite-yet-guylike nod at the introduction. "Nice to meet you too. And no, I had the foot surgically removed a couple weeks ago," he joked, not bothering to embarrass himself with an attempt at returning the wink. The joke was, of course, a joke, but it was also his way of avoiding having to comment on, or think about, Theo commending Claire's taste. Chris didn't handle compliments from people he didn't know yet very well. Well, really, he didn't handle compliments from just about anyone well, but at least with people he knew he didn't just completely freeze up.

Chris gave Theo's suggestions a shrugging sort of smile-and-nod, basically signifying he was up for whatever. Far be it from him to disagree with Claire's best friend even if he didn't like the idea. "Sure, sounds good. I hope you can hold your own against her though, because that'll pretty much be what it is."

Give yourself some credit. You occasionally get lucky and sink a few in a row.

'Occasionally' and 'lucky' being the key words.

At Claire's silent apology, he merely shrugged and grinned. He didn't particularly mind the whole situation. Meeting Theo had gone pretty darn well so far, and meeting him separate from Connor like this was probably easier anyway. Things seemed to be looking up for him.

While they waited for Theo, Chris grabbed a pool cue and started putting what was most likely way too much chalk on it. He didn't even know what the chalk was for, but he knew it went on the pool cues, he knew it was blue, and that it was somehow appealing to see the end of the cue as blue as possible.

_{something like that anyway}

[musk]

"What an asshole," even though she was happy to see him, "just inviting himself in and all," despite how she would have asked him to play a round anyway. Claire was glad that Chris had finally met at least one of her best friends, and in truth, she had been more nervous about introducing him to Theo than Connor simply because Connor was polite and accepting by nature, and would smile and offer Chris a drink even if the kid did indeed, have a foot growing out of his forehead.

"Theo's a bloody prodigy with this game. He's the one who taught me." Because Connor would rather paint and the bartender paid her less attention if she was playing pool in the corner, instead of sitting up at the bar and pushing around the bar nuts in their greasy plastic bowl. “He measures it all in his head, calculates all the angles and shit. Makes it nearly impossibly for me to win. ” It was hard to tell if she was frowning or smirking at the admittance. Theo’s IQ score was up in the stratosphere; his mind was staggering and intimidating, as was the way he could wrap it around just about anything without effort. Most people wouldn’t guess that he was something of a genius child because he tried awful hard to hide it beneath his charming, easy-going and hard-partying exterior, but he had his moments to slip up, and Claire found them spellbinding.

"Beer!" Theo had appeared besides the pool table once again, cradiling two beers again his side in one arm, and carrying a glass with what Claire would guess to be Jagermeister in the opposite hand. Setting down his glass on an nearby stool, the boy held out one beer to Claire, and the other to Chris, grinning like the cat that got the canary - suddenly, it was obvious where Claire inherited her drinking problem. In truth, she would have been disposed to a slight case of alcoholism either way, but Theo had a knack of enabling, only adding fuel to the fire.

Claire smiled, reaching for her beer before handing her friend a pool stick in return, leaning against the table for a moment while she observed the boys before her. Inwardly, the brunette was crossing her fingers that the evening ahead would go well, because she couldn't honestly imagine what she would do if a rift grew between her old best friends, and her new one. The thought of choosing between them, leaving another behind, made her frown darkly. Brushing away these thoughts as Theo picked up triangle rack, hanging in on the wall behind her. Claire leaned over the billiard table, extending her beer to the other boys.

"Cheers," and as she caught Chris' eye across the table, her frown dissipated, leaving behind a rather brilliant smile.

[Ϛ Christopher Nightingale]

Chris laughed ambiguously at Claire's comment, careful to neither agree nor disagree with what was said. Obviously he didn't think Theo had done anything terribly wrong, maybe a little forward, and he wasn't quite sure Claire was serious either, but he thought it was safest to maintain an air of neutrality about the subject.

AKA, Chris wimps out once again.

Chris ignored the feeling that he should have been more gutsy, something he did so often it was almost a habit in and of itself. And while he occasionally regretted not actually doing something for once, the overwhelming feeling of safety that non-action brought him was too hard to simply give up, so it looked like things would be as such for a while yet.

"I guess it makes sense that I'm on his team then; I'm pretty much a handicap for the guy. Maybe if I suck enough the teams will be even," Chris joked, much more comfortable making wisecracks when it was just him and Claire. It was just a fact of life that he couldn't be fully comfortable around a person upon first meeting them, but it wasn't as if the feeling would last forever. He also refrained from mentioning that he calculated angles and such as well when he played, having always been pretty damn good with math (not that he saw it that way); he simply couldn't translate the theory into practice. Clumsy hands or something, but even if he knew where to hit the ball, it just never happened. It was a shame, really, but the same was true of just about anything coordinated; it worked fine until he tried to actually do it.

Chris, who had finished choking his pool cue with chalk by then, accepted the beer from Theo when he returned, not bothering to mention that beer just wasn't his thing. He'd learned by then that this was a great way to elicit groans and 'what are you, a woman?'s from any guys in the vicinity, and so squelched the feeling whenever it came up. Nevertheless, he wouldn't put up with the drink for any length of time, since while he didn't like them cold, he absolutely loathed them warm. He quickly emptied the neck and a good fraction of the body of the beer into his mouth, managing to simply look thirsty and not entirely too eager.

He nearly set the beer down on the edge of the pool table when he'd finished...

What the hell is wrong with you?!

Huh?

'Huh?'? Seriously? Wake up, man.

Staring down at his arm as if it wasn't even his, a look of recognition dawned on him and he quickly withdrew it from the vicinity of the pool table. He thought briefly of a coaster, but really, it was a better idea to just hold it. How he would play pool he didn't know; he could only hope Claire or Theo went first so he'd know what to do.

If they could play one-handed he'd probably jump off a bridge.

He had been a little too preoccupied to notice Claire's subtle change in mood; all he knew was that that smile of hers could make any problem go away, and a smile came to his own face as he sheepishly raised his already-tapped-into beer toward her, a little embarrassed of his apparent overzealousness.

"Cheers indeed."

_{i apologize if this doesn't make sense, i didn't sleep much last night :P}

[musk]

"Cheers!" Theo chimed in, tapping his drink against Chris and Claire's beers with his usual beaming grin, a constant poster boy for charm and good-looks. While the boy was nearly always in a cheerful mood, tonight he was more or less overjoyed at the strange coincidence of running into Claire at the little, out-of-the-way bar, and more importantly, at meeting Chris. While Connor's intentions and insistence on being introduced to the boy stemmed from his protective nature when it came to Claire, Theo was for the most part, simply curious. Though there was a part of him that seemed stilled, comforted, to officially know that the boy his best friend had been spending so much time with was in fact, not a mutant or axe murderer.

It might have seemed unfair for him to write the other boy off as not a threat so quickly, because perhaps Christopher Nightengale really was a madman and gruesome serial killer of sorts, but Theodore trusted Claire's judgment almost as much as his own, and so far, Chris was coming out ahead.

"Dibs on the break!" Claire said suddenly, and once the boys looked, they'd see that she had already set her beer aside on a stool and lined up the shot, hardly leaving either of them a chance to protest as she sent the cue ball zooming into the triangle pack of pool balls, sending them bouncing in all directions before the movement slowed, eventually to cease, and the striped 10 ball finally dropped into a corner pocket.

"Stripes it is." The brunette grinned, lining up another shot, this time aiming for the deep purple 12 as she bent over the pool table, her chestnut hair falling around her flushed face like a curtain.

"Solids are cooler anyway." Theo smirked, taking a huge gulp of his drink before walking around the pool table so that he could stand besides Chris, though his eyes were focused lazily on Claire.

"So, Chris, tell me about you." another long sip from his glass as he tipped his head to the side, watching Claire shoot and miss, the 12 ball rolling around the table aimlessly for a minute before she sighed loudly and reached for her beer. Finally Theo turned to look at Chris, his should-be-illegal blue eyes piercing, but never malicious, as he waited patiently for an answer, obviously not going to elaborate on the question any. He was just curious, as always, making small talk, interested in the boy beside him.

"Theo, quit harassing my friend. It's his turn to shoot anyway." Claire smiled genially, taking a generous sip from her beer as she hopped up on a stool, watching the two boys on the other side of the pool table carefully.

[Ϛ Christopher Nightingale]

Chris took what little time Claire had left to protest, though not very seriously; it was more of a simple noise and a pulled face than anything. Chris didn't care, really, but if he had to pick a favourite part of the game, it would have been the break, if only because it was damn hard to miss a break, and no one could blame you for not sinking a ball off of what is (unless you're of considerable skill) essentially a crapshoot.

He looked impressed when Claire managed to sink a ball off the break, even though he'd done so plenty of times (by accident of course). Perhaps he was convinced she'd done so completely on purpose, or perhaps it was simply his mindset at the moment that anything she or Theo did would be impressive. Either way, he looked a little too enthusiastic.

You look a little too enthusiastic.

It was a good shot!

It was a break.

He managed to force away the silly smile of one who'd seen something amazing, with some difficulty, and watched as she lined up her next shot. He willed himself to watch the cue and the ball as she leaned over, and not the enticing shape playing pool always put one's body in. There was almost a moony quality to his smile as he looked on, but luckily, Theo was at his side, and Claire was otherwise occupied, so the expression would be kept more or less to himself.

"Stripes. Definitely," he distractedly concurred.

Those jeans look really good on her...

Jinx!

........Aren't you supposed to be the mature one?

Well it worked, didn't it?"

Chris refused to believe some part of him had actually caused Claire to miss, though, and he simply offered her a consoling sort of shrug as her ball missed its target. Setting his beer on a stool as Claire had, he walked around the table a few times, looking for an easy shot, and thought about Theo's question as he did so.

"Uhhhh..."

Chris was bad at talking about himself. Any time he tried to describe himself, people rushed to correct him. 'You're not that quiet,' 'what do you mean, awkward?' and anything complimentary he just couldn't say out of principle; he hated braggarts and wasn't about to become one.

He continued his uhhing as he took a perfectly easy corner-pocket shot and missed by inches.

"I suck at pool?" he tried, a bashful smirk on his face.

[musk]

Theodore was an attentive boy. He paid attention to people and their mannerisms, the way the spoke and smiled and faltered - to an over extent sometimes. It was a quality that made him such a great listener and friend, because you could never sneak your sadness by the boy, and he was always the one to ask when you were just dying to tell someone something. It was another habit Claire had picked up, but not quite perfected, from the eldest Musketeer. And yet, one didn't have to be a master of ticks and tones to see the way Chris looked at Theo's best friend.

He was obviously crazy about the girl, and as he watched the younger boy not-so-subtly admire Claire as she leaned over the pool table, he had to laugh; though to his credit he tried to muffle it in his drink a second later. But it was more than the way Chris checked out the youngest Musketeer that had Theo grinning, and such was part of the reason he was so interested in probing the poor boy.

"Come on," he winced humorously as he watched Chris miss the terribly easy line up. "There's got to be more to you than a complete lack of billiards skill." Theo smiled, his expression unusually radiant this evening.

"He doesn't like to talk about himself Theo. He's not an ass." Claire smiled as she interrupted, but the way she said the word suggested that perhaps she thought someone else in the room was indeed, an ass. Sliding off her stool and emptying her beer, the brunette circled the table once, looking for a ball to sink.

"He's eighteen, clever as all hell and thankfully, terrible at pool." Looking up at her friend, Claire winked. Obviously, she didn't have any sort of problem speaking for Chris sometimes. "He likes orange juice, his middle name is Richard, he's almost as clumsy as I am -" Claire finally bent over the pool table, having found a decent enough shot before lining up her pool cue and pocketing another ball. Standing up, she grinned proudly, walking around the table once more until she was standing somewhere beside Chris.

"-He's protective, but a touch shy, his favorite color is sort of purple, his honest, sweet, brilliant, attentive and over all, pretty stellar." She looked up at Chris as she spoke now, grinning because she knew all too well how the boy took compliments. Standing on her tip toes, she kissed him on the cheek loudly before leaning forward and lining up her second shot only to miss again. Sighing loudly, the brunette stood up and looked over at Theo with her usual lopsided smirk.

"And he hates beer. So when you go to get me a refill," she motioned toward her own empty beer bottle offhandedly, "you should bring back something better."

Theo leaned against the wall, silently observing the two friends with an expression brimming with mirth. They were quite a pair, he would have to admit, and part of him was already wanting to get home just so he could relay everything to Connor. He knew the boy would get just as much amusement out of it all, if not more.

"Yes your majesty." As Claire waved off her empty beer, he pushed away from the wall without arguing. He was more than okay with buying the rounds for tonight - though he knew Claire would try to pay him back tomorrow and they'd surely get into one of their legendary fights over it all - and there was a very twisted part of Theo that was already set on the idea of getting the two kids before him absolutely plastered, just so he could sit back and watch the end result.

"Chris, take this shot for me?" Walking backwards toward the other side of the bar, Theo winked at the younger boy. "I've got faith in you. Besides, we both know if she wins we'll never hear the end of it."

[Ϛ Christopher Nightingale]

Theo's (stifled) laugh caught Chris' attention nonetheless, and he jerked his head quickly in Theo's direction. He didn't quite look right at him, though; it was closer to him just looking away from Claire as if nothing had been going on than anything. However, embarrassment was plastered across his face.

And when Claire started her Chris-rant, the situation didn't get any better. He covered his mouth with a fist while she talked and looked stubbornly down at the floor, away from both Claire and Theo, and winced to various degrees at the different things she said, in particular the last bit. His expression was a comical mix of 'oh god kill me now' and 'she thinks I'm stellar!' as she kissed him on the cheek, but after that gesture, a grin (if a sheepish one) won out, and his gaze shifted upward just enough to direct the grin at Claire.

He began to protest when she said he hated beer, but Theo was already gone by the time he had his wits about him again. "Hey! Be nice!" Chris chided not-very-seriously. "I was fine with the beer..." It was a blatant lie, really, but nothing would get in the way of Chris being politely doormat-like when it came to such things.

He didn't particularly want to take Theo's shot for him, especially since they were already down by two balls, but he figured it would turn out worse if he just sat there while Theo was gone, so he sighed and lined up another shot. Another corner pocket one, an easy in. But of course, when he hit it, it went completely awry, bouncing hither and thither across the table and finally falling into a side pocket.

He tried his very best to look like he was trying to convince everyone watching that he'd done it on purpose, and to Claire he said, "That counts, right? We're not calling shots...?" Either way, he didn't make to take the second shot; he knew his luck wouldn't hold out forever. The next shot could wait for Theo.

_><

[musk]

Claire perched herself on the wayward barstool beside the table, her pool cue propped up against her knee as she leaned back, looking at Chris with a laugh threatening to spill from her wide smile.

"Don't worry about it." Claire waved her arm airily, gesturing vaguely to the other side of the establishment, where Theo was surely ordering the two minors something lethal to drink. "And don't think you can lie to me Christopher -" pointing her finger over at her friend, Claire did her best to force a stern note into her expression, but the brunette quickly found that her smile was too resilient, too comfortable and fitting that she she couldn't even pretend to be anything less than content, not even for a second. " - nobody really likes beer. Especially the cheap crap Theo buys."

She laughed, and as Chris pocketed his ball, she clapped loudly, looking terribly proud of him all of a sudden. "See? It's not that bloody complicated." Another sweet-sounding laugh escaped her as she waited for him to line up another shot, but as the boy stepped back, obviously planning on waiting for Theo to take the second shot, she scoffed.

"Come on Nightingale, you can't step down now, you've finally hit some luck. Besides, you can't want to buy me dinner that bad." Sliding off her stool and setting aside the pool cue, the littlest Langden circled the pool table until she was standing beside him, determination set in the depths of her whiskey-colored eyes. "There's an easy one," she pointed at a solid that he had bumped during his shot and was now lingering just to the side wall of a pocket, "so line it up."

Her smile brightened in the face of his hesitancy and she snatched up his pool cue without warning, leaning over the table as her hip brushed his fleetingly as she lined up the shot. "Come here," Claire reached over and took Chris' hand once she had the cue aimed, curling it around the pool stick just above where her own rested.

"You shoot a little too hard, so try it a tick softer this time, but don't forget to follow through, alright?" Tearing her eyes away from the game in front of them, the girl finally realized how close the two of them really were standing, how they were sharing a tiny, cramped corner of space and time in this dingy bar and how she could suddenly feel his breath warm against her neck. After a weighty pause, Claire quickly slipped away from him, her smile, and the flush in her cheeks, wildly genuine as she retreated back a few more steps.

"Now I had it lined up perfect, so don't screw it up." She winked playfully, but quickly turned away a second later, her eyes wandering across the room to Theo, who was chatting up some skinny, indie-looking couple, and goddamn him, there weren't any drinks in his hand.

"Yeah, but the cinematography wasn't anything compared to his older flicks. I felt like he really settled." They were talking about George Romeo, maybe, this appetizing looking couple and himself, but honestly it was hard for Theo to keep his focus because he kept glancing back at his other friends, at the disgustingly adorable pair of kids back at the pool table who seemed too completely engrossed in each other for the time being to even notice his minor-league voyeurism.

Finally he watched the two break apart and Theo chuckled before pushing the drinks he had bought for the three of them farther down the bar and out of view just as Claire glanced over at him. A few more minutes went by before Theo could finally bring himself to tear himself away from the delicious and slinky couple that stood before him, and make his way back over to the corner billiard table that they had claimed for the evening.

"Well, kid, how'd you do?" He looked over at Chris with a cat-like curiousness to his smirk, asking questions he already knew the answer to. "Because I've got a double Dancing Captain¹ for you if you landed one." The handsome boy laughed, and offered the glass to Chris before he could even think to answer.

¹ Captain Morgan's Spiced Rum and Root Beer.

[Ϛ Christopher Nightingale]

"I wasn't lying, not really," Chris protested, a smile forcing its way through even as he was trying his best to be serious. "I said I was fine with it, not that I liked it. I'll openly admit I hate beer, just... not when someone is nice enough to buy me one without knowing that." He didn't laugh, not quite, but he gave his equivalent of a small chuckle, a mischievous grin and a short, forceful breath out his nose, that amounted to much the same thing if you knew the boy.

The shot he actually made seemed all that much sweeter to him when Claire cheered, and although he wouldn't have been terribly upset if it was a sarcastic, jesting gesture, since the shot had been a fluke anyway, he had the pleasant surprise of noting that she seemed genuinely proud of him. That was all it took to get him beaming, and try as he might to look nonchalant, he couldn't hold back a huge grin.

"Yeah, but did you see where I was aiming?" he said in defense of his pool skills, or rather, his lack of them, and he was almost sitting again before Claire insisted he shoot. He might have protested, but she was moving too quickly for him and he was swept up in it all. The next thing he knew, she had his shot lined up and they were nearly on top of each other. He swallowed the lump in his throat, but it didn't go down easy, so he did it again.

Get a hold of yourself, man!

I'm... fine!

Lying to yourself will get you nowhere.

"Follow... through, right. I actually never though of that, for pool."

Claire walked away, and he wasn't blushing, but if she'd stuck around she'd feel the heat rolling out of the neck of his shirt. This, in turn, made him even more nervous, because he knew he'd start sweating soon, and the last thing he wanted was to be all gross and sweaty when Claire kept coming so... wonderfully... close.

Shaking his head, figuratively anyway, of these thoughts, he stared down his lined up shot, and tried to remember if he'd accidentally shifted his cue to the right. In the end, he decided to give himself the benefit of the doubt and leave it where it was, and, keeping Claire's advice in mind, he shot, and followed through.

The shot was a little too soft, the product of his trying a little too hard to follow her advice, and by the time the ball reached the pocket (it turned out to be lined up correctly after all) it seemed as if it wasn't moving at all, but it dropped in. By a breath, it seemed, though not Chris', because he let his out a second later in a sigh of equal parts relief and amazement.

He straightened just after the shot to see Theo was back, and he had to smile at the older guy's query, which he had only just really heard, so wrapped up had he been in the shot. "Does that mean I get two drinks?" he asked cheekily, gesturing to the pool table as he accepted the drink. Before he could get an answer, though, he put the drink down, turned back to the table, and took another shot. It was a little hasty, and far from going in, but he noticed with no small amount of satisfaction that he had put the cue ball in a terrible position for Claire's next shot.

He set his cue down, grabbed his drink, and took a testing sort of sip, having absolutely no idea what a Dancing Captain was. The sip didn't tell him what it was made of, but it did answer what it was; delicious. Smiling like he was getting paid for it, and well, he bowed his head slightly toward Claire and gestured toward the pool table, assuming they'd give Claire one turn per each of theirs.

[musk]

"Two? Well damn boy, now we're tied!" Theo beamed over at the younger boy as he owned up to a pair of shots pocketed. "Maybe you're not such an awful pool player after all." Leaning back against the far wall now, Theodore took a long sip of his drink, watching Claire as she emptied half of the Sidecar he had ordered for her. There were moments, though they were always far too fleeting to make any sort of wave, were Theo regretted all the ways he enabled the girl, and all the parts of her childhood he had simply stolen away, as he knew Connor did from time to time. Nevertheless, the thought was as gone as quickly as it had come and in truth, he was already wondering about what to order the two lovebirds next.

Claire pulled a face as she set down her drink - which had been considerably lightened already - the heavy sip of lemon juice causing her lips to pucker as she buried her face in the crook over her elbow for second, eventually to be overcome with laughter as the bitterness faded from her lips. "Gee Theo, thanks." She finally chimed sarcastically, casting her friend a smirk before reaching for her pool cue. It was here that the brunette finally saw the terrible odds that Chris had left her with, and glancing across the table, she stuck her tongue out at him, looking predictably nothing short of immature.

"He's a step up from you, right?"
Theo's phone vibrated from somewhere in the depths of his jean pocket, and with a knowing smirk he extracted the cellphone, Connor's name flashing across the screen as he opened up the message. The first time he had disappeared off to the bar, Theo had sent his best friend a text, letting the other boy know that Claire's mystery man was no longer any sort of anonymous, and in typical fashion of a big brother, Connor simply wanted to know if the boy was worthy of his little sister's company and affections. As close as Theo and Connor were, the curly-haired artist had never much approved of Claire's wild obsession when it came to his best friend, and did everything in his power to encourage her to find someone more stable to pine over; perhaps his nagging was finally taking effect.

Looking up just as Claire missed her shot and sent Chris a playfully cruel look in means of a comeback, Theo chuckled, sent his reply, pocketed the phone and gathered up his pool cue.
"Absolutely."

Completely unaware of Theo's conversation with her homebody brother, Claire walked around the pool table and bumped the older boy's hip just as he went for his perfectly aligned shot, jarring him bad enough that he missed the shot and caused several balls to bounce around the table aimlessly. At first, Claire giggled at the sight, but reminders of the many years spent with Theo quickly kicked back in and the girl wised up and fled the scene, hurrying back around the table and hiding behind Chris as Theo decided to simply take another shot, instead of executing the obviously alternative punishment - tickling Claire until she threatened to pass out.

After a long moment, Claire finally peeked out from behind Chris, one hand cradling her drink and the other curled around his hip, an anchor against her already hazy head. For all her experience, Claire was a composed drunk, as well as a rarely sick and always spontaneous one, but unfortunately, she seemed unable to change the fact that it only took a handful of drinks before she was transformed into that generally composed, rarely sick, wildly spontaneous and completely knackered state of fully drunken consciousness; truthfully, she was already well on her way.

[Ϛ Christopher Nightingale]

"More like I'm lucky, and had Claire's help. I bet she could teach a brain-damaged rodent to play." He smiled in her direction and got stuck that way, the expression holding and intensifying when she stuck her tongue out at him. He hadn't been in such a lighthearted mood in a long time, things were going so well. He hadn't even noticed it, but even the cynical voice in his head that usually haunted him had seemingly shut up, for the time being at least. It was doing wonders for him, to the point that he was nearly in a stupor (not that the alcohol would be helping with that), and you could probably have called his mother unthinkable things to his face without the smile that had set up shop there packing its bags.

The smile split for a moment to allow the Dancing Captain admittance - sort of a reverse 'parting of the Red Sea' - but quickly returned as the glass left his lips, a good half of it gone (or half of it still remaining, if you were in such a good mood as Chris was). He swallowed just as Claire sent him a look that said, to him, 'Do that again, I dare you', but carried very little weight, and he was forced, due to his mouth full of wonderfully warming and yet refreshing cool liquid, to simply shrug in response to it. Though really, that would most likely have been his reaction even if speech was an option, so taken to avoiding words was he, due to a cavalcade of reasons.

The Smile (seeing as it had now taken up, at the very least, semi-permanent residence upon Chris' face and as such deserved a proper name), increased in brightness and launched a chuckle from within as Claire checked his partner, but the Captain hadn't quite danced his way through Chris' inhibitions yet, and so he remained predictably reserved despite his good mood. He did his very best to develop eyes in the back of his head when Claire hid behind him, that he might continue to stare while at the same time not denying his clear duty as a hiding spot, but when this course of action refused to work, he settled for basking in the comfort that was the girl's hand on his hip, and her body close to his.

This is going to be a good night, he thought, and the fact that there was no sarcastic reply made it seem that much more truthful.

* * *

[musk]

* * *

“Okay, okay, “ Claire’s words were halted as she suddenly started giggling at nothing in particular, squeezing Theo’s shoulders as she tried to convey her thoughts past the abrupt ripple of laughter. “I think I can walk from here.” The girl was slurring into her best fiend’s ear, her smile lopsided and charming as he carried her on his back with Chris wandering along somewhere beside them. After a few more steps and a haphazardly made decision, Theo finally stopped walking long enough to lower the brunette girl back down to the pavement, her ragged converse making a shaky connection as she wobbled in place for a second, her expression hovering somewhere between uncertainty and determination before finally blooming into another brilliant grin as she ultimately gained her bearings and offered Theo an eager thumbs up as reassurance.

It was closing in on midnight, the night was curiously clear and comfortable given the time of year, and as the three figures wandered home from a few rowdy hours at the little pool corner Claire and Theo had discovered, it was a safe bet that not one of them was thinking about either the time, or the weather. Truthfully, where they were headed wasn’t really ‘home’, except for Theo who had his name written on the lease in dark black ink beside his best friend and Claire’s brother, Connor, but for Claire it was just a safe harbor to rest her head, and the two drunken moron’s - who were serving very different agenda’s with the suggestion - had feverishly insisted that Chris tag along.

Looking over at the boy without bothering to veil away of the warmth he encouraged in her smile, Claire managed to stumble once more, tripping over her own feet as she hurriedly snatched up Chris’ hand in an effort to steady herself. Giggling softly upon regaining composure, Claire didn’t bother to drop his hand as they walked on, her eyes set firmly on the back of Theo’s red t-shirt regardless of how her lips were quirked.

It felt much warmer, a good deal later in the year than it really was, and Theo suspected that it had something to do with the reckless, lighthearted sentiment that was burning through him as they walked underneath the flickering streetlamps, that undeniable feeling that they were on the edge of something remarkable and new. It was the rush that summer and drunken adventures and young love brings, the feeling that breathes life into us and reminds us that anything is possible.

[Ϛ Christopher Nightingale]

Piggyback rides made Chris smile. Claire made Chris smile. Theo, it seemed, also made Chris smile, though at times with a hint of nervousness. Nighttime made Chris smile, the crisp winter air, not too cold tonight, made Chris smile and stare at the stars and contemplate his place in the universe. The fact that he knew he was important to at least a few people, and not quite as small as the sky made him feel, that also made him smile.

Tonight, though, everything made him smile. Lampposts and drunkards and the lines on the street, they all made him smile. Or perhaps more accurately, a combination of good company and high blood alcohol content made him smile at anything his eyes or ears came across. Some might denounce this as a sort of artificial bliss, but Chris would have informed them that no, this was not artificial, this was the reaction one should naturally have to the everyday miracles of life, once chemical reactions brought upon by fermented this-and-that removed all sense of inhibitions.

Well, perhaps not all sense. Chris' inhibitions were a little too deep-seated to be completely removed, but they sure had a damper put on them.

When Claire made a reach for his hand, Chris made sure she grabbed the opposite one, he having stretched it across his stomach, the sly bugger, so he could wrap his closer arm around her shoulders. He was under the impression, in his less-than-logical state of mind, that this would help with her stability, and thought he was more or less solid on his feet, but in reality he was just making the whole walking thing even more difficult. He did indeed have his balance under control, for the most part, but he'd effectively turned the pair of them into one drunken, shuffling entity, apparently without noticing his folly. Luckily it wasn't bad enough to cause them to actually fall, as he managed to catch their collective balance each time they stumbled.

"Where are we going?" Chris asked, for about the hundredth time. He thought he knew, but he had a paranoid suspicion, for whatever reason, that he had missed Theo and Claire changing their destination, to a variety store or something, maybe. And while this wasn't exactly a problem, he felt he really deeply needed to be aware of their goal, in case of emergency maybe. What if he got separated from the group?

As for his original suggestion that he accompany the pair of them to Theo's house, his intentions were actually quite noble, considering his state. While he had been a good deal more forward and flirty the length of the night, he simply wanted to go to Theo and Connor's because, for one thing, he wanted to meet Connor, seeing as meeting Theo had gone so well, and for another, he didn't feel that going back to the Academy (the closest he had to a home at the moment) illegally inebriated was the best of ideas.

As he sloppily pulled himself and Claire away from a puddle, just barely managing to keep Claire from stepping right into its sloppy depths, he couldn't help but laugh. Perhaps all the smiling had been too much, perhaps he simply thought puddles were the bee's knees, but either way, he was soon in the midst of an inescapable fit of the giggles.

"Can't... breathe....!" he gasped, leaning slightly over and, due to his arm being around Claire's shoulder, bringing Claire with him. "Quick! CPR, Claire!" This was altogether not a very helpful thing to say, as it hit him immediately with another laugh attack. He was in too good a mood to worry about whether he was the only one laughing, or about how he was being pretty darn loud in a public place, two things which normally would have made him sweat just at the idea.

Many thanks to rum for all of this.

I had a lot of trouble ending this post xD