RP:I Remember A Party

Part of the Laugh Now, Cry Later Arc

Summary: Back solo from his mysterious family vacation, Hudson has moved into the presidential suite at the Six Seasons, Cenril’s premier luxury waterfront hotel, the very same hotel at which he’d gotten married some time ago. He makes walking the boardwalk his evening routine. In so doing, encounters a familiar face, the mermaid Fairfax from his past. She wants a gift, but in reality she’s given him one: the reminder that Cenril is still a mob town, his town. And he should make the most of it.

Beach, off the Cenril Boardwalk

Hudson, since his return to Cenril has taken up walking along the beach after dinner. The hotel he’s been staying at is right there, after all. There aren’t really crowds at dusk, and certainly no crowds in winter. It’s a habit that evokes a simpler time. Sometimes his second in command, Milo, goes with him, for security, or to talk through the day’s docket, but today Hudson’s here solo in his sweats, white sneakers getting crusty with sand. Someone else, one of the several hotel staffers assigned to his suite, will clean them tomorrow, while he holds court at the hotel bar. Dirty clothes and shoes, like many other things in his life, just aren’t his problem anymore.

Fairfax has been two things of recent: away, and on her best behavior. She's been away for a while, mostly pestering people in Rynvale, exacting tolls from trade routes, with whom she's generally been on friendly terms; but mostly she's just been away. Boredom has chased her back to Cenril. No one's on edge anymore, but she knows the people still remember, the seaborn uprising, the days their streets and homes were flooded when the kraken finally broke free. She's on a bit of flotsam in the sea that's close to shore, enjoying the bobbing of the gentle waves of low tide like one might enjoy a hammock, most of her tail draped in the water, while she 'reads' a newspaper that's half drenched and likely weeks, if not months old.

Hudson puts his hands in the pockets of his sweatshirt as a chill wind kicks up, directing his gaze away and at the water to avoid the fistful of sand that feels like it’s being blown at him personally. So he’s not glancing at the water in search of anything in particular, but then he sees something, or someone, in particular whom he recognizes: Fairfax. He shields his face with his arm, taking a second to appraise the mermaid as the very same one who’d last been seen (by his eyes, at least) on his arm at a … was it a halloween party? Many years ago. He gets a better look when the wind dies down. “Fairfax,” he calls out to her, picking his way through beach debris toward her. “Hey!” the tone of his voice is warm, and he picks up the pace to close the distance between them. “It’s me, Hudson,” he is saying, as if surely she would recall, because of course it was memorable for him. He’d only ever really befriended, if that was the term, one mermaid. What a flex that had been! When was the last time he’d mentioned it? How much has changed, though he looks mostly the same, except he has a beard now. He hadn’t had one when they first met. He hadn’t been a lot of things when they first met.

Fairfax rolls over from her back to her stomach as she hears her name. She's curious, instantly, and wary, secondly, prepared to dip, just in case, but her expression brightens when she recognizes the voice. In rolling to her stomach, she nearly upsets the door she's lying on, but it just tilts precariously as she shifts her weight back. She sits up and waves buoyantly to Hudson, letting him do the literal legwork in reaching her. She's not in deep water -- maybe thigh-high or so. "Hi," she answers, drawing the word out with emphasis. Her eyes glitter with curiosity and her nostrils flare as he approaches and she catches his scent. "Hudsson. How are you? Did you bring me a gift?" She draws her hair over her shoulder, finger combing the damp strands idly as she straightens, sitting primly on her small piece of wreckage.

Hudson stops just short of the water coming in. “Hi,” he answers her back, not quite drawing the word out but more like depositing it at her feet. He grins a vintage boyish grin when she calls him by his name. “I’m better now that I’ve seen you, it’s been forever,” he answers her. “A gift,” he sounds less certain. He reaches into his pockets. Not got much of interest there. He examines a few receipts, and after tucking them away, he crouches, easing himself into a seated position just out of reach of the tide. “I don’t have anything interesting for you right now, but I’ll bring you something next time.” He’d always been a bit reckless with her, but now his demeanor has matured. She’d last seen him just after he’d become a werewolf but now he’s grown comfortable in that skin. Grown more comfortable still in being the man whose bloody hands held the reins of Cenril. No longer just a boy speaking to a mermaid though the thrill is the same. “Where’ve you been? Do you remember,” he asks Fairfax. “When I took you to that party?”

Fairfax doesn't leave her debris, but she uses her tail to propel it a little closer so it bumps up against the rocks near Hudson. She leans forward as he digs around in his pockets, nearly tipping over in anticipation of receiving something very rewarding. When he doesn't produce anything, merely a promise, she frowns, but it's replaced soon with a cat-like grin because she knows Hudson is good for it. "Good," she purrs. "Maybe I remember a party." She shrugs a slender shoulder at him. "But I always remember a handsome face. I like your walker parties. You may take me to another if you wish." She brushes a hand over her smooth wet tail, scales dark and glittering -- healthy and vibrant. "You are different from before. Like you have more thoughts, maybe."

Hudson returns Fairfax’s grin. He’d have to bring something clever tomorrow night, though only the gods know if she’ll be here. The whims of a mermaid ... In any event, it’s harmless fun, he’ll not be caught empty handed again. She flatters ‘walker parties,’ and him, and he grins again, he wonders, watching her so casually groom her glistening tail, whether she still eats men, or rather whether she specifically does. He doesn’t know if he ever knew, but her kind is certainly known for it. He glances down the beach. No sign of the guard, but someone would patrol eventually. And sightings of a mermaid - or missing beachgoers suspected to have been drowned by one - would give her up anyway. Make her hunted, if she wasn’t already. “Yeah. Some things changed in my life,” he says carefully, his gaze cutting back to hers. “It’s probably not very safe for you to hang out too long here, Fairfax, you know. Some people might find you,” he pauses, “a little dangerous.” He smiles a knowing smile and considers her, letting the roar of the ocean punctuate a pause that swells between them. No question her beauty has a savage caliber to it. No human has a look like it. “How long have you been hanging back around here … Have the guards seen you?” he asks her.

Fairfax tilts her head just slightly as Hudson deftly answers and avoids her question. "Mm," she answers quietly. "Only the sea remains constant." It's some old sailor saying, likely, that Fairfax now repeats sagely and knowingly, as though it is Known and unequivocally true. "No, it's probably not *too* safe." She lays back down, shifting to her back and staring up at the evening sky, the stars scattered across it. She feels his eyes on her and she preens a little, enjoying it, savoring the attention. "No one has seen me that I don't want to see me?" She abruptly shifts, rolling off the plank and dragging herself closer to the shore to reach for Hudson's shirt. "Don't you want to see me? You could see me for longer. We could go to another party, Hudssson."

Hudson had cocked his head at Fairfax when she’d surprised him by coming out with some sort of … saying, but she hadn’t elaborated and the conversation had moved quickly past it. She seems unbothered by the risks her existence in this general area likely pose to herself. Not unlike the risk he runs by continuing to stay here, in Cenril, living large, with the public asking questions. Careless predator things, maybe. He doesn’t flinch as she pulls herself closer, her hand clamping around the edge of his sweatshirt. An elegant woman’s hand but for the nails, which are more accurately called claws. Up close her face is poreless and dewy, lush with an ethereal beauty that over millennia has been perfected to lure men to their deaths. Her quiet ferocity swells between them. They are very still together, and in the stillness of that moment he remembers kissing her - had he kissed her, really, or had he simply told his friends that, and over time believed it to have been true? The memory feels real and vibrant, in three-dimensional color. He grins at her. “I’ll take you to a party,” he closes his hand over hers and carefully extracts his sweatshirt. He rises to his feet. He says, pocketing his hands, “I do want to see you. I feel like doing whatever I want.”

Fairfax curls her nails into Hudson's sweatshirt a little tighter as he tries to extract them, but she flattens her hand a second later and allows him to delicately detach her. "Good." She captures his hand before he can withdraw and she takes it to press a plush kiss to his open palm. "You can take me to a party. And bring me a gift." She lets him go and shifts back, shrinking back toward the water as the tide starts to come in, which will make escaping the shallows a great deal easier for her. "You can do whatever you want," she echoes, adding just a bit of that siren call to her inflection as though to solidify the thought for him, because he doesn't sound entirely sure of himself. She glances down the beach, vague figures in the distance that she can't make out, can't see if they are coming toward or away. "You look good," she tells Hudson as she lets the current pull her out a few paces, water pooling at her shoulders and causing her hair to fan out around her. "I have not changed, of course. Did you ever marry that human woman? Ah, maybe a story for another day. "Don't forget my pressent, Hudsson. Yes? Goodbye. For now."

Hudson hears her repeat what he’d said, forging the words with her voice but limning them in something Other. Something Other that curls like a fist around his heart and squeezes. Mermaid, he thinks, watching her, but thinking also: killer. She is talking to him still, but the words refract in the air between them and he doesn’t answer her. He watches as she slinks into the water like a second skin, and is gone.