WHO: @nottheoretical WHERE: Club Raven, Level Three. WHEN: On the cusp of midnight, 30 April 2003.
The night was swiftly drawing to a close and Blaise was ready to retire — or at least, he’d been ready to retire for the last half-an-hour spent waiting at the bar with a task set to him and an endless supply of drinks served in coconuts that had seemed inconsequential and a little mysterious until he’d seen the expression on Theo’s face change so drastically. For a man with precisely four expressions that Blaise knew of (exasperated, bored, too dark to see and moderately pleased) it was unsettling to see a fifth emerge. Luna had simply seemed perplexed and while Blaise had always enjoyed the attention of absolutely everybody whose path he ever crossed indulging him, he had found his appetite for attention had significantly dulled the more it infringed upon his rigidly set bedtime.
Scooping his coconut up for the ride as he slid to his feet, pressing a goodbye kiss to Luna’s cheek (because his mother had raised a gentleman, of sorts) and making his excuses as he headed for the painting he’d entered the bar through. He winked up at her as she blew a kiss back at him and accepted her (cold) painted hand up and through the paintings frame and to the hallway on the other side. Outside of the rippling lights of the underwater bar, he only had to wait two whole sips from his straw before Theo emerged behind him.
Predictable.
“If Daph spots us leaving, I won’t hesitate to sacrifice you,” he offered lazily, feeling the heady swim of one too many coconuts worth of drinks happily swishing around his brain as he pushed off the wall he’d been holding himself up on and turned to face the corridor he’d arrived at earlier. There was a staircase around here somewhere, behind one of the — doors? Or had it been another painting. Blaise stifled a yawn behind his coconut and continued down the hall. “I was wondering where you disappeared to.”