for @mindful-mateo
He'd spent nearly an hour in Euphoria with shit to show for it but sweat and a puzzling encounter with the Swedish councilman that Soren still wasn't totally sure what to make of, but might actually have been positive. But no Taliesin. Maybe Soren should've expected that, but the throngs of people in the street and packed into every club made doing a one man search and recovery mission a lot fucking harder than he'd hoped for in abstract. Maybe his trouble was that he'd kept moving from place to place. Maybe they were just missing each other all this time.
Soren tried to comfort himself with that idea, leaned up against the wall outside the club near one of the heating lamps where the rest of the smokers and party-goers taking a break from the sweltering dance floor had started to congregate. He looked restlessly over the closest bodies, chatting and laughing in groups or pairs, exhaling a stream of smoke as he rubbed his thumb against the budding headache trying to come to fruition around one of his eyes. It was his third cigarette of the night; a nasty habit he'd sworn he'd quit in university and hadn't managed to shake. After all the stress of this Russian business, he was beginning to think he might not ever get rid of it.
Soren had just managed to tamp down the most disruptive of his thoughts when another individual eased between the bodies into the human's pool of warmth, Soren's gaze catching on the relatively subdued costume and an open, amiable face. "A little real estate left over here," He called out to the other man, nodding towards the stretch of brick beside him, "Vincent Vega, huh? Should we leave room for your dance partner?" It was supposed to be a joke, came out about a rough and tired as Soren felt. He offered up a crooked smile to the stranger to try to make up for it anyway.