Baby you're a firework [4th of July Gathering]

[jeongbro]

From Candlewood, Henry could hear the party going on northeast of town, the thud of distance bass and the pop of fireworks and the shrill of cars put to the test. And how shit was that?

He texted Blue, first. A soft, subtle inquiry, a joke of an invitation, but a broad one. One for all of them. He remembered Ronan's arm in that cast, and him saying it was from Kavinsky, and Henry had no duty to them, but it would be good to keep all of them away from the mess that was going on at that party outside of town. None of them had to come, of course. They were all their own people, adults--and a ghost who was as good as one, in Henry's eyes--and they were each allowed their own decisions.

So Henry texted Any plans for the 4th Wendybird? And then he followed it up, even before she could answer, I think my place could use some Virginian charms.

He had no decorations. Fourth of July over the past two years had become a thing tainted by Joseph Kavinsky. But he could, easily, go down a couple blocks and buy more two-liter bottles of Pipsy and lemon-lime soda than he could possibly need, and some liquor and mixers, and chips and dip. If he didn't use it all up, he'd bring it to Panoptes. And that seemed like a good enough way to ignore that Joseph Kavinsky was trying to blow himself up, to him.


[Running as a gathering]

Comments

[formicine]

It takes Blue just a moment to recall, and she grins at the reference. "Yeah, I noticed that at prom -- I mean, I'm not the most aware of music, but that was Darrow pop."

She tilts her head. "I wonder sometimes how much of the culture here is cobbled-together, you know? Some of this stuff is ours, but was it always like that, just overlapping, or did people bring it here and put it on the radio? Someone had to have an iPod with them when they arrived, right? Or play cover songs? And then, there are people like Curt Wild or Poison who aren't rock stars where we come from. Or if -- Krem sang a song from where he came from, that wouldn't be Darrow or ours."

She shrugs her shoulders up and grins, realizing she's rambling. Her interest in cultural anthropology isn't limited to hidden-away rainforest cultures. "It probably doesn't matter for any real purpose, it's just interesting."

[jeongbro]

Just to listen to Blue's cross-sectional study of the subcultures of Darrow was of interest to Henry. He wondered who they would have to speak to to get her funding for research for an anthropological or sociological study; the university, probably. Maybe one of the private firms, though Henry liked the idea of university money better. Where was that money coming from though?

He was thinking too much like Tony Stark for a moment, maybe. He stopped that right in the tracks.

"Come on," he said, and offered his hand so they could get up and go to his laptop, sitting on the breakfast bar that separated kitchen from living room. "Help me pick something good to start with. I trust your judgment."

[formicine]

Henry's listening despite her apology, more interested than feigning politeness, but his eyes have gone slightly distant and Blue doesn't follow why; she tilts her head at him with a curious smile.

Then he's got a hand out, though, and she takes it and pulls herself up to her feet. "Good," she declares, "that saves all the having to persuade you sort of thing. What've you got?"

[jeongbro]

Henry smiled and opened up his laptop, pulling up the streaming library he had. It was enthusiastically bright. He may or may not have circumvented the 'sign up for a free trial now, pay later!' bullshit with some of the programming code that Tony Stark had shown him. It was for the good of his sanity.

"Alright, we have individual stations, can run a mix of all the stations I am currently cultivating, or we can search playlists and see what comes up."

[formicine]

The screen that pops up is bursting with color, and she grins, leaning to inspect his taste in music with an admittedly not-knowledgeable eye. "I wouldn't know what to search for," she laughs.

"Let's run a mix of your stations," she decides. "I think that'll end up appropriately random."

[jeongbro]

"You don't have to know what to look for," Henry assured, but he acquiesced turning the shuffle on and putting his stations all together into the mix.

The first song it kicked back was something with a female vocal track under an EDM beat. Henry smiled a little and shrugged. "Better than nothing, I suppose. It could have given us something distastefully Korean."

[formicine]

[OOC: I'm totally on lunch break at work so it won't let me listen >_> So I'm making up the description as I go sry]]

The song's party-ready, the kind of beat she expects from Ronan's car but closer to the sort of singer she likes to listen to, maybe a little more pop than that. Danceable, and she lets her shoulders catch the beat.

Blue tips her head at him, trying to figure out how many layers of sarcasm are being used there. "No one in this room decides what's in taste," she points out. "Anyway, you promised to teach me how to dance to K-pop and I'm holding you to that."

[jeongbro]

Henry watched Blue settle into the music a little, and beyond her shoulders, he saw Ronan's sharp gaze soften by half a step. Still judgmental, still critical. But it was, at least, not going to cut from a distance.

Blue was watching him then, when he looked back, and Henry smiled at her.

"Ah...Yes, yes, we will! I will. Maybe not right now? Which is my own embarrassment, and nothing to do with you, I promise."

[formicine]

"Oh, I didn't mean right now," she assures, smiling. "I just meant. You know, there are people beside you who are looking forward to the scandalously Korean tracks."

She perches on the edge of the arm of the couch, aware after a second that she should not be putting her weight on the wrong part of someone else's furniture and pushing herself up off it.

"You do that a lot," she says, frowning a little pensively at a chip. "Laugh off things about being Korean. Too many other people will do that for you."

[jeongbro]

Henry watched her settle and then unsettle, and he wanted to assure her that it was fine, but instead he just kept sort of smiling. He wanted to curl himself up with her and fidget her barrettes around into different configurations, listening to the music, talk about what they liked and disliked about whatever came up.

So, instead, he leaned back against the breakfast bar. "Before anyone else can," he observed. "If I do it first, then it takes away some of their power. It is much easier to be critical than it is to be angry."

[formicine]

Henry smiles at Blue in a sort of thoughtful way, and she finds herself a little self-conscious, wondering what he's thinking. He's often a little internal -- hadn't he said as much? -- and, much like some other self-contained boys she knows, Blue feels the sudden urge to jostle his thoughts free.

She takes that in, nodding slowly. "Oh, it's easy for me to be angry," she admits, and grins. "But I get that. Takes the wind out of their sails." It makes her feel better, a little, that it's intentional. Or started that way. "I mean, it's still bullshit that it's like that."

[jeongbro]

Henry wobbled his hand, because that hadn't been what he meant. He was often angry, resentful, bitter. He hated that about himself. But what was that to give other people? If he showed it to them, it gave them power to dismiss him, to say he was blowing things out of proportion, to say he would never get anything he wanted because he wasn't being a model minority--not submissive, not scholarly or academic, not white enough.

But he knew he had things that Blue did not--that Adam did not--even that Ronan did not. He did not count himself lucky, because that supposed that there was probability at work. No; he had been given things, they had been given things, their boxes of tools were different.

"It is," he said, because he realized he'd been quiet for too long. "It is bullshit. But, I would much rather smile and laugh at my short comings, and learn to improve myself, then I would suppose to tell people how they ought to improve. Being cynical is bad for my skin."

[formicine]

Blue is a little nicer than she used to be, but she lives in a constant state of preparedness for You thought that was me being a bitch?; you'll regret you ever said hysterical, etc, and though it's not her very favorite aspect of herself, the idea of quiet being-better-than requires a level of patience that Blue rarely has.

"Is that how I got all these freckles?" she deadpans, and laughs.

[jeongbro]

"Your freckles are very nice," Henry said. Then, he seemed to realize the words that had just fallen out of his mouth, but it was too late to take them back. So he smiled. Because he meant it, and he could laugh it off, friendly and innocent, just as easily as he'd said it in the first place.

"Anyway, I can get away with being a smart ass much more than I can get away with being belligerent. I've very little stomach for an actual argument. I turn into putty."

[formicine]

Blue blinks, feeling her cheeks heat up a little despite herself, and she smiles. It's not even so much the bluntness of the compliment as how little she was expecting it, and how honest it seems -- a compliment, as Adam would say, that doesn't cost anything.

"Thanks," she says. Blue thought she'd come a long ways from hating her skin for the nicknames and stupid questions it used to attract -- she manages vanity, these days, at least at her own creation of herself. Apparently, she has a way to go to get to very nice.

"I'll remember the squishy insides next time I get wound up," she says, and pokes him affectionately. "Is that why Ronan's so sulky, because you won't fight back?"

[jeongbro]

Henry wanted to follow that up, but the moment was a tender, fledgling thing, and it seemed better to let it be alone. He knew what it was like to hate yourself for too long, for things that couldn't be changed.

But, Henry reminded himself that the next time he paid Blue a compliment, it should be about something beside her body.

He laughed as she reached out and poked at him, swatting gently and ineffectually at her finger. The question prompted a bit of a hiss of discontent. "No, no. Lynch and I do not get on very well for ideological purposes beyond my pacifism. And we--we argued, when everyone had those words on their backs? Things came up and I told him some things, and it didn't go over well."

[formicine]

There's a silence that isn't quite pregnant and isn't quite awkward, and is both a little, too, and Blue lets it pass, moving over to the counter next to Henry to pour herself a drink.

Her eyes go a little more serious; Ronan hasn't really described what happened or what there is between them (besides, she suspects, jealousy over Gansey having other friends). It doesn't go unnoticed that Henry's usually specific choice of words escapes him in favor of vagueness, either. Either he's trying not to say to her what he said to Ronan, or he's in his head a little.

"What sort of things?" she asks, keeping her tone casual if curious.

[jeongbro]

Henry sighed. Were his hair not gelled back, it would have been the sort of explosive exhalation that would have gotten the fringe of his hair to flutter up off his forehead and out of his eyes. But, as always, his hair was carefully, dutifully styled.

"Things like how our families, his and mine, know each other," Henry said softly. "Things like how I knew--know--what Lynch can do, know that he and Adam are magic."

Henry drummed his fingers against his palm, shrugging a little. Things that Henry Cheng shouldn't have been able to know, but that he did, by virtue of a mother that needed to know these things, that did know these things.

[formicine]

She looks at him, sizing that statement up with a little wariness. Blue's not exactly sure why she should be wary: it's just that, historically, a majority of people who know about Ronan and Adam without being told haven't been the safest.

But they're close, back home, and he's loyal to Gansey; though she doesn't have the context to trace how any of that happened, her gut here, now says that Henry's no threat to her.

And a threat to the boys is a threat to her, simple as that.

"How do they know each other?" she asks instead, tilting her head in real curiosity.

[jeongbro]

This was the Blue that Henry had been waiting for since his arrival. Not the one that had folded him into the pitch neatly, but the one that had scowled and disliked him on principal of his being Aglionby, up on the ridge overlooking Henrietta when the Fisker broke down and Henry had to ask Gansey for his phone.

Henry didn't want to backtrack that far, that many months--both here in Darrow, and back in Henrietta. They'd taken such great strides.

"Niall Lynch was a purveyor of magical and exotic goods and artifacts," Henry said, very quiet but matter-of-factly. Now, only two people in this room besides him knew the truth. "Seondeok, my mother, is a third party dealer, in Canada and East Asia. And I was sent to Virginia to be her eyes, just before Niall was killed."

[formicine]

She nods, taking that in, and trying not to draw attention. She isn't retreating, judging, as much as she is unsettled. Both by the sudden revelation, and by her instinct that Henry himself is safe to trust. Her gut instincts are good, but very little is safe to trust.

It sounds so very corporate, this selling and dealing of magical goods. Vendors and suppliers of all sorts had scions who went to Aglionby; why not magical ones?

"I assume the timing wasn't a coincidence?" she asks quietly, thinking of The Grey Man, and his mysterious Greywaren-seeking boss. "That Niall's death wasn't entirely out of nowhere?"

[jeongbro]

"She wasn't related to it, if that's what you mean," Henry assured softly, shaking his head. Seondeok kept Henry in the know, and he knew what had happened to Niall, but in a cautionary these men would have killed you in that hole sort of way. In a I would have let them, to protect my investments sort of way. Seondeok loved him, but it was a strange love.

"Niall was...not universally liked, in the trade," Henry said. "He once sold my mother something that he'd also offered to three other people, and when they found out--that's how I was kidnapped. But that was just business."

Henry shrugged a little. "Seondeok wasn't expecting Niall's death. No one was, particularly, I think. It just--happened. And then Declan took over purveying, which was suitable for my mother, because I could make exchanges for her at school if I needed to."

He was quiet a moment and then, softly, urgently, said to Blue, "Don't tell Ronan that. I didn't tell him. I don't think he knows about Declan...?"

[formicine]

"I know. I mean, I already knew that, mostly." She gives Henry a small, terse smile and offers, "The man who actually did the killing has...sort of a thing for my mom."

"A Lynch, not universally liked?" she quips, but shuts herself up and frowns, because here's a part of the story she doesn't know and feels as though she should. "You were kidnapped?"

She blinks, suddenly aware of quite a lot of truth she hasn't been in on before, and pieces start fitting themselves together in her mind. "No, of course I won't," she says back softly. It seems a little unfair, to lie to Ronan, but Declan isn't here, anyway, and there's nothing made better by him knowing, here in Darrow, not really. But quite a few things that could be worse.

[jeongbro]

"We are all a bit of a mess of things, coming together, aren't we?" Henry said with a soft laugh. But he had seen the Gray Man shuffling about Henrietta two years ago, and he had seen him shuffling about Henrietta a few months back. And then there was Colin Greenmantle, and--the whole lot of it made Henry unnerved, leery, ultimately frightened. But it was good, Henry supposed, to know that the Gray Man was not a loose end. The Sargent women had good judge of character, Henry had found. Henry trusted the process.

He gestured at his back. "Hole in the ground. Wait, did I show you--when we all had those words on our back?" He thought, suddenly, that he might have avoided it at Prom. So he sighed and shrugged. Now, everyone knew. "Yes. Yes, I was kidnapped when I was ten."

[formicine]

"As it turns out," Blue deadpans, "all those incest jokes about the Appalachians are true, they just don't know by family we mean half the town." She smirks when she realizes she's just done what Henry does, cashing in on a joke about herself.

"You didn't," she says, shaking her head. "I didn't want to ask." "They put you in a --" She pulls back the questioning, blunt side of herself, chewing on her thumb and wincing. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have asked, you don't have to talk about this stuff."