Bittersweet

Dan

Bittersweet is a slow pour coffeehouse / mixology bar tucked away on a corner of LoDo, with a changing 'gallery' of local art on the walls. This month, the featured artist is Tish Evans, a local weaver / textile artist whose work spans the functional and the fantastical. The largest piece is a wall-hanging the size of a small buffalo like a sunset woven in negative: shadows where light should be, and light where the shadows belong.

Leonard Cohen on the soundsystem (Nevermind) and a low buzz of noise from the small crowd. They do a bang-up business mornings and weekends, but mid-evening - when local bar/restaurants are crowded enough to spill out onto the street on a warm October night - the coffee bar / bar bar (and that is what the sign outside says:

bittersweet

coffee bar / bar bar

) - is sparsely populated. Among the denizens: a bearded blond guy with a button-down flannel, the sleeves rolled quite neatly up to his elbows revealing a variety of intricate tattoos, portfolio open on the table, frowning at his Macbook, drinking coffee from a ceramic mug.

River

River was doing as River is want to do right now- which was exploring.

She knew the lay of the land, for the most part. Kept an ear to the ground so she would know which gang was where and whose turf she needed to stay out of. Where people dropped dead bodies in the event she needed to go and be an investigator. In the event she needed to stand on her own two feet. River's had her fill of dead things- she wants coffee. Contemplates being a barrista instead of a dancer and there she goes, pushes the door open with a jingle and she's got on a pair of shorts paired with cowbox boots. The shirt is a little long for her, button down and probably belonging to an ex-boyfriend.

She's got on a vest and carries a purse that is the size of a small duffelbag. It houses a world of wonders and her dakr hair is worn down. This place was a coffee bar and an actual bar. She contemplates mixing both before she sees the man with the blond beard. Hasn't she seen him before.

River makes a tentative approach, tries to act cool, like she's not trying to check Dan out. Maybe failing. Probably failing.

Aidan

[nightmares]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 7, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )

Dan

What's the point of checking someone out if they don't notice and return the look? Maybe there's a certain aesthetic appreciation there. Maybe some folks don't want to get caught. Most do, though. How else do you know if your regard might be returned?

--

He glances up. Blue eyes framed with slight crinkles that deepen when his mouth moves, as it does not, in a brief skimming grin. Notes the bag.

"That thing looks big enough to carry around three cases of beer or a side of beef."

Wry.

He looks tired, though.

He is tired.

Kiara

One of those days. That's what it is.

The weather doesn't offer a backdrop for it, not really. It's been cloudy all afternoon but the Denver wind hasn't taken up the mantle some locals have; pumpkins starting to dot porches with their garish, grinning smiles cut wide across their sides. It's not freezing, it just feels - a little heavy. Dull and gritty where the sun slides away and even when it returns - Denver today - feels like a city with secrets. It doesn't always.

Sometimes, on evenings like the one it's settling into, it feels - promising. Those secrets, the unknowns, they feel like an enticement to come along (come find us).

-

She almost collided with another car earlier. Intersection. Palms slammed down on horns. Guy cutting her off (and nearly cutting a slice out of her car). Then her engine stalled. One of those days. She had to circle the block twice to find a park so she could make a meeting.

-

She passes a crime scene on the way to find this mixology bar she's wanted to try forever. There's police tape flapping in the evening air and the sight of the lights (cutting blue and red, blue and red) against the windows is a strange visual tattoo against the night.

There's a crowd milling around, curious stares and quiet chatter as an ambulance rolls around a corner.

Kiara picks up her pace. She's around the corner before it pulls to a stop.

-

One of those days, now - evening. The Verbena finds Bittersweet on foot. One minute there's no sign of her and then; the door opens; a swirl of perfume and energy and red lipstick. Kiara Woolfe, adjusting her bag over her shoulder and frowning at the menu.

Kiara

[Oh right! Awareness, just in case.]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 5, 6, 9, 9) ( success x 3 )

River

"Sometimes, I like to carry a keg with me," she adjusts her purse, switches it over to the other shoulder, "true facts."

She sounds like she's not from here, or at the very least like she's not one who speaks English as a first language. Truth be told, River is from here, was born in the United States but she's spent enough time outside of the standard English-speaking populace that she doesn't have the same cadence and timbre of a native speaker.

"Can I buy you a coffee?" looks at the mug, realizes he has coffee, looks back and offers a smile anyway, as if smiling would cover up the fact that she completely missed he was drinking coffee before, "I'm River."

Dan

"False lies," he rejoins, this quick skim of a smile cutting through his beard. It reaches - but only just - his dark blue eyes. Watching as she shifts that purse, his eyes cutting across her frame - hand to strap to hand again - with a light precision that strikes one as aware rather than observant. "Now if you'd said a half-keg I might've believed you."

And so. Mouth slides from that into a slight smirk as she offers to buy him a coffee and yes, he already has coffee. Wasn't simply here to steal their wifi and he thinks about telling her that, but he doesn't.

Cuts a glance down at his mug like: yeah. "I already have one. You're welcome to buy yourself a coffee and pull up a chair, though."

--

Then he's sitting back in that chair, this long spare frame, button-down and fitted jeans and leather boots. Sits back enough and tall enough to catch Kiara's eye. Gives her a wave that could be taken as an invitation, if she's looking for one.

Kiara

So, Bittersweet. She takes two steps inside and nearly collides with a young man on his way out. It's Kiara's fault this time, she's staring down at her phone and tapping out some (vitally important no doubt) message with the fall of all that long, dark hair tumbling over a shoulder and then - jostled. She looks up, startled and is reaching to apologize when he's doing the same; adjusting glasses up a thin nose and waving her apology off, because - well - it's probably the eyes and the hair.

It usually was, with the pagan.

Still, she's breathing out and pushing back all that hair with a bracelet-laden wrist when she spots (feels that resolute splash of radiance) Dan and the hand flowers out. He gets a smile and she nods toward the bar - universal I'm going to order first gesture - before she's moving. Kiara often seems to be perpetually doing that. In motion. Moving. (Running).

She's in jeans and boots and a calf length cream trench-coat, the brunette; the bag over her shoulder is old and worn and looks battle-scarred; it's stitched at one edge; there's a feather attached to the zip.

-

Returns to greet Dan and - "River, right?" - A gesture with her coffee, Kiara's dark eyes find the other woman. "Did your pants pull through?" Smilingly, a curl at the edge of her mouth.

River

She does take the invitation, does take a moment to order coffee- vanilla chai latte- waits with the kind of careful patience that one has to have when ordering nice coffee. It comes out in an avocado mug with a nice, open top. As though she were going to read tea leaves in her oversized beverage receptacle.

She turns around, catches a look at Kiara and smiles. Raises a hand and with a little wiggle of her fingers lets the woman know that, yes, she sees her. With the curve of her lips (full, unpainted, she lets the woman know that she is pleased to see her. The first person whose name she remembered in this city. A woman, most importantly, who wasn't going to hold a pair of ripped yoga pants against her because River can be a walking ball of embarrassment waiting to happen.

She sits down, "Aaaand... Kiara?"

Waits for confirmation.

Did your pants pull through?

And this is the part where her cheeks turn bright pink. She clears her throat, takes a long drink of her coffee-infused chai drink and she sets it down. Hands on her glass, "oh, uh... no? The yoga pants sleep with the fishes."

Dan

The tables are only so large, and his is more-or-less full. The open portfolio (leather, quite as scarred as Kiara's bag) is closed with a neat sweep of his tattooed hand. This glimpse of scrawled notes, a handful of suggestions of chord progressions, little more. Then he folds up the Macbook and tucks both away in his own rather indispensible bag. Battered black leather, a Ramones pin naturally skewered through one of the stresspoints to either hide or hold together the largest of the holes where the leather and its lining have worn-through.

Leaves his phone on the table, though, Dan. He's waiting for a call.

Still gives them both a quick-wry-smirk, more for Kiara in that moment than for River - but that's familiarity, more than anything. The function of it. "There some particular reason you are throwing yoga-pants into the river?" (Sleep with the fishes, see). Gets a glimpse of River's frothy coffee-thing, "Is it the coffee you like in that, or the rest of it?"

Kiara

River's embarrassed and Kiara's smile grows a little at the edges. She's taken her coffee black - perhaps that says enough. Still, when she says the pants sleep with the fishes, there's a flash of sympathy there. She makes a soft noise of it as she finds a chair - maybe hooks in one from another table if room is too cramped - and settles in this flourish.

Bag hung over the back, legs neatly crossing at the knee. Those boots, which have rather a tendency toward complicated laces that criss-cross up the length and a zip that runs along the side - those are black too.

"Technically, it's all your fault, Dan." She begins with a pointed little lift of fine dark brows. "We were playing the game you started and River here went for a spectacular throw," River gets the benefit of Kiara's eyes, then. They tick over to her and she delivers this little wink with her mouth still edging that little flux of teasing humor before continuing, raising her coffee to her mouth to sip from it when she concludes.

"And gravity took offense to her prowess. And Alexander's, as it turned out."

A beat, she swallows. Contemplates Dan for a brief pull. "Hey, how's Sera?"

River

"The rest of it. I like chai, but I like chai that lives dangerously. I don't like the coffee aftertaste- espresso lollipops, jelly beans, tiramisu-" she makes a face, nose scrunches up and she shakes her head, "-I like covert coffee."

But there was the question fo the yoga pants, realizing she didn't really carefully dodge that particular question well enough, River clears her throat. Tried to think of a witty reply but, at the end of the day, she's not the best with witty repartee; she's average. Honesty is the best policy and she meanders to her point.

Kiara covers this rest of the story and here she is trying to hide behind her coffee cup but it wasn't working. So! The Euthanatos, who was supposed to be bestowed with the kind of dignity befitting a wheel turner, cleared her throat and relaxed. Or tried to relax and ended up cross her legs to keep from figiting too bad. "When I got home they had unraveled to the point of being leg warmers so... they have failed me for the last time."

Dan

"When gravity fucks you over - " he is not precisely laughing, but there is humor in his lengthy frame, skimming over his underlying - what is it. Tension? Something like it. "Disbelieve."

Still though: the reference to the game, et cetera. His gaze slides from Kiara to River and there is a different note: first seeking, then recognition. One fits itself into the other, like a placing of puzzle pieces. "That's where I've seen you before."

River is confessing to enjoying covert coffee then: so Dan does not suggest that next time she's here she try a plain, slow-poured something. You're a coffee person on you aren't. River doesn't seem to be. Dan's so hipster it hurts, right? But he's not an ass about it.

--

Then Hey, how's Sera? flick of his gaze back to Kiara and something like hang-time there. A second really, no more. And it is not so much that tension asserts itself, as it is a lessening of his temporary ease. "Tan, I suppose. Last I heard from her, she was still in Thailand."

Kiara

The talk of coffee pulls at a thread of memory. Corona Street, not so long ago, but months, now. Kiara hadn't been in Denver so long and there was a party - Dan had quizzed her on her preferences and she remembers it now in that abstract, fuzzy-at-the-edges like an old photograph way:

(French press or drip?

Press.

Woman after my own heart)

There's some awareness of that time in Kiara's expression as she watches Dan and in the way her mouth adjusts itself into something a little less joyful. Just - aware. Not without concern, perhaps. Somewhere tied into it. "She does love the sun. Why am I not surprised?"

Then, simple: "If you hear from her, tell her I said I want a souvenir. Something cheap and ridiculous."

Maybe she's been letting River recover her dignity, but Kiara's eyes return to her, now. "How is your friend? I got the impression she wasn't totally sold on whether or not I planned to do something dastardly with you both the other night?"

Dan

His mouth quirks, Dan, this glimmer of affection, yeah, or maybe respect framing the edges of the expression, which is otherwise banked and closed but not shuttered. "Will do." is the only assurance he offers Kiara.

He appreciates, though, her circumspection.

And sentiment.

--

Hangs around a little while longer, more background than foreground. Excuses himself to take a call not long after. Steps away and outside, where he digs through pockets and pulls out a kretek. Not a habit he indulges in much, except when Sera's around, but now he smokes it while he chats.

Later he might return. If River or Kiara or both are still there, he might suggest that they meet up later. Friend of his is playing at The Black Sheep - the set'll start about 10 if they're interested.

--