K H A O S

“And I was starting to wonder if you were avoiding me, I was contemplating telling on you to Elias.” Casey called out towards Roman as she emerged from the elevator connecting Lux and her penthouse, her heels on the wooden floor making a loud clicking noise. She was dressed for court in her pristine black suit, red souled shoes, not a hair out of place which was no easy task considering she’d just said goodbye to two very handsy eight month olds who had a significant interest currently in grabbing hair. It had been almost a week since she’d seen the man she had an almost sibling type relationship with, not that the girl would ever admit that, it would kill her reputation as an ice queen. Though those closest to her knew she had softened over the last year since becoming a mother. “Something more interesting been holding your attention?” @romvnix​

“I am quaking in my custom baby seal leather boots,” he offered in return, turning on his heel with his hands tucked behind his back, clad in an all black suit. The walking definition of ‘a dignified ass-beating’. He couldn’t classify himself as a bodyguard, but he would take a bullet for Casey and her family. She reminded him of Lucille; a little more sane but just as powerful in her own way. It was a relationship that just fell into all the right criteria for a sibling dynamic. He adored her--- he’d kill for her--- but he knew better to keep a professional distance in mixed company. He brought the flowers out from behind his back, offering them to her. “Company stuff--- too boring for any palette.”

If there was one place around town that Carmella frequented a lot, it was the coffee shop. It didn’t matter which one it was, as long as the coffee was decent and would keep her awake long enough to finish her work. Today, with her luck— the coffee shop she’d ended up at seemed pretty quite. She’d gotten her coffee in a take away cup, but had decided to sit down for a little while to enjoy it before she carried on with her day. “I don’t own that seat. Or any of the seats in this place, so no.” she responded as soon as she heard the man. “I am, however, going to sit at the table beside you because it’s the only other available place to sit near the window. Is that cool with you?” she asked, taking a seat anyway.

He watched her take the seat through his peripherals, the temptation to utter a comment withdrew as he faced his work again. It didn’t bother him even if she’d taken the seat directly across from him. Hell, she could’ve demanded the seat, he’d move and he still wouldn’t have minded the slightest. Now he did mind that she was in his peripherals taking up that portion of his attention. If he could shift without being obvious--- and he was overthinking.

“Could you be a little quieter?” 

It was only a quick glance. Or so Eva thought. She didn’t think the man noticed her at all until he spoke up. “Oh no,” She stumbled over the words a bit,  "I was just curious about what book you were reading. I see it’s Great Gatsby. I saw the movie again recently.“ Eva would have tugged on the ends of her sleeves but she was holding a latte in her hand. "I read a lot. Like everything… I’ve read it like four times now.” She opened her mouth to speak again, but she knew the struggle of being interrupted while reading. So she withdrew. “I’m… I’ll leave you… I didn’t mean to be a bother.”

“Movie’s a little different from the book, but you’re on the right track.” To be frank, the movie was right along with the plot. It didn’t put anything unnecessary and could cover most of what was in the book, but part of him wanted his niece to figure that out in her own way. He wouldn’t put it past cheating, but he could excuse innovation. The fact she’d gone to him and not her father meant a lot. Now he just needed her to prove herself. “Oh--- could I get another Americano?” 

Typically, Ángel very much so preferred having her usual coffee in her condo. At least then she could be working on her laptop without any prying eyes possibly seeing what was on her screen. Because trust me, the last thing anyone wanted was to see what was on her screen…not necessarily because of what was on the screen itself, but because of what Ángel would do if they saw her work. But anyways, enough about her strict work tendencies, there she was, walking into the café. Despite the fact that she was confident that half of her blood was actually coffee at this point, after a red eye from Rome even she needed a cup of coffee. Her brothers and mother (who were the only people who’d actually seen her in the morning before coffee) could attest that typically being surrounded by people in the morning before caffeine wasn’t a good combination for Ángel. But right now, she wanted to just sit down and drink her coffee before she fell over with it.

Looking around she saw a man who (for her) seemed approachable enough, and made her way over. A soft chuckle left her lips. “Actually I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind some company. I won’t even talk if you don’t want me to.”

“I would mind,” he stated flatly, taking a measured sip from his coffee cup. He was in his zone and couldn’t care less if she’d simply walked up and took the seat across from him anyway. He liked testing the waters--- seeing how people would react if he were to put on his ‘most serious’ face and act like the world was against him. He wouldn’t mind the company, no, but he figured why ask if you’re going to do it anyway? Courtesy, he supposed. In most cases, it would be rude to assume the seat wasn’t already taken or that the person sitting alone wanted company at all. It would be the polite thing to decline with something like: ‘I get easily distracted and the noise in here is already deafening, sorry’ or ‘I’m actually just about to leave, you can have this seat if you’d like’. It all depended on just how nice one was willing to be. Roman was not inherently nice. He could be a real dick sometimes. Without looking up at her, he paused typing. “I didn’t say no.”

The holidays were always Roman’s favourite. It didn’t matter what was happening or what was going to happen--- he just enjoyed the spirit it gave him. It was odd. Being happy around this time of year, but he learned to accept it. Feed off of it. A reminder that new beginnings were underway and he would shed this skin and take on another form (in a totally metaphorical way because the thought of getting skinned was always in the back of his mind as probably the worst possible way to go). 

He shivered. 

Part of the reason was his involvement with the family. He gave his all to them and received so much more than he bargained for. Elias was like his brother (better, if he were being honest. His brothers were all sociopaths that couldn’t give a single shit if one of them popped off the edge of the Earth). He valued their dynamic so much so it felt weird not getting any gifts for him. It felt nice giving for a change. 

He had been gone for most of the month dealing with legal matters back home. His brother trying to gain full control of the company, the less-than-elegant passing of their sister, Alastair’s upper-East-side-takeover; it was a lot to stomach. He had to value the time he got away from them. He passed a ribbon-laced box over to the other, pairing it with a bottle of Goût de Diamants to soften the blow. He had responsibilities here, too, and he wanted Elias to know that he knew.

“Is a hair cut beneath you now or are you gearing up for the winter?”

Callie was oblivious, but she’d always been that way. She was too absorbed in the painting, lost in the colors, to realize that her company was feeling perhaps the exact opposite emotions than she was. His words shocked her out of her trance and prompted her to look around, realizing that he was correct. She just shrugged. “ There’s a lot of people looking around - maybe they’re all just occupied. ” She preferred to give them all the benefit of the doubt but…while there was a lot going on, she’d have to admit that she hadn’t seen anyone with a volunteer’s badge wandering near in a long time. “ Oh, no. No, no, no. I could never afford anything like this. ” Although the price tag was only at $2,000, relatively meager for art, it wasn’t an amount she could dream to pay. “ But my boss might. I work at a gallery. ” Callie looked at him for the first time, tearing her gaze away from the painting. He was tall - much taller than he seemed from her peripheral vision before. All she could think was that he was indimidating in the same way her brother was, but without the comfort of a family relationship, all that was left was a daunting stranger.“ Uhm, what about you? Are you going to buy any of the pieces? ”

“Nothing in here matches the decor in my office,” he added, resisting the urge to sneer. Not an art connosieur, no--- just hated artists. A lot of them had their heads filled with gas; enormous egos that squeezed through the straw-tip openings of their shirts and were only ever filtered on ‘wow, look at my art that took sixteen hours of pensive staring and two minutes to throw acrylic at a canvas and call it abstract’. It gave him a headache being this close in proximity to failure. He didn’t even know why he’d bothered coming. He never enjoyed himself. He bit his tongue at any snide comments that bubbled up to the surface. “Which gallery?”

“Technically– you are,” since she was the owner of the Diner, every seat in there belonged to her. “Hello my darling,” Veronica greeted her fellow mafia member, giving his shoulder a tender squeeze. With a wicked grin, she slid into the booth, glancing over at whatever captured his attention before she joined him. “Or should I say– old sport?” Veronica recalled liking the Great Gatsby but she’d only read it once. Never bothered to pick it up again and give it another go as the woman preferred being outside, her adventurous spirit not letting her stay put for long. “Have you ever thought about starting a book club?”

“Hee-haw-haw,” he noted monotonously, not bothering to take his eyes off the screen but returning her shoulder squeeze with a reciprocative touch instead. “It’s my niece’s homework. If I ever showed any recreational interest in anything from F. Scott Fitzgerald, I’d die of shock.” It was a firm statement but he had to wonder, was it the absolute truth. He enjoyed reading, but admitting to it really killed the ‘himbo’ vibe he tried to convey most days. “Why? Are you in one?”

~

It probably wasn’t any of his business. It definitely wasn’t any of his business. But Emrys had always had difficulty with boundaries. He’d been planning on just walking by the table but something had made him glance at the guy’s screen, reading the big title which then caused him to slow a bit and his eyebrows to furrow together as he tried to read more. Honestly he hadn’t even really noticed he had stopped completely until the guy addressed him, making him jump just slightly. Emrys blushed and looked away from the laptop, shaking his head even though Roman wasn’t looking at him. “I’m sorry,” he started. “I shouldn’t’a been readin’ over your shoulder but it’s been a long time since I’ve seen anyone doin’ anythin’ with The Great Gatsby,” he explained with a shrug of his shoulders, carefully moving his coffee to his left hand. “But um no, not my seat. Can you really claim a seat in a coffee shop? I always thought that was the worst thing about Friends.”

Roman gave him a lighthearted smile in return. It wasn’t often he allowed that little gesture, but it was followed by a sound caught somewhere between a scoff and a chuckle, his eyes finding the ground with a quick shake of his head. He agreed. ‘Friends’ was unrealistic, but then again, he didn’t frequent coffeeshops around that time period. It could’ve been true for all he knew.

“It’s fine,” he insisted. “I was saying it for comedic measure but I probably came off like a dick.” He tapped his fingers against the table, glancing to his laptop once more. “It’s my niece’s homework. She wanted me to look over it before sending it in.” A beat. “You sound like you have more experience with this sort of thing.” He faced the laptop towards the other. Maybe it was his genuine curiosity to see why the other had stopped dead in his tracks, or maybe it was a simple test, he didn’t think about it too long. “You wanna take a crack at it?”

The man sat at his usual post in the quiet cafe with--- as cliché as it sounded--- a laptop perched on the table in front of him. The Great Gatsby in big bold letters adorning the first page of his niece’s homework lighting up the screen. Growing up, he never gave himself the opportunity to fall in love but reading about it had always been seemingly enough. Love stories intrigued him and he wondered what they brought to those who genuinely felt that way about someone. Gatsby, for instance, loved Daisy so much that he was quite literally searching for a way to turn back the time. Daisy, however, much more in love with the idea of being in love, she didn’t care who was giving her attention. He related strongly to her but in a more superficial sense. So engrossed in the familiar words, he didn’t acknowledge the footsteps approaching him. Without looking up, he navigated to the next page as if continuing to read.

“Let me guess— I’m sitting in your seat?”

There are fireworks going off in the background, loud and bright and everyone is cheering. He has just finished his set, a mix of his own music and traditional Hindu music, music that made him feel whole in the moment in a way that all of the partying and drugs never did before.  He’s still on stage, but he’s facing the water, and the fireworks display going off over it. Crystal City, he thinks, is not exactly where he had pictured his life before, it wasn’t Los Angeles, where when he was young he had expected to be living in some mansion, but it was home, and things like tonight felt like he was where he was supposed to be.

“Thank you all for coming out tonight, and this week, to celebrate Diwali with me, I hope you enjoyed the show. Saal Mubarak” he says into the mic, waving one last time before heading back and off the stage, wiping his face off on his shirt. He downs a bottle of water, and then stops when he finally sees a familiar face in the crowd.

“Hey! Thanks for staying! did you enjoy the show?” he asks, eyes bright from the adrenaline from being on stage. “Come on, come with me, I’ll buy you a drink.”

@crystalcitystarters​ 

“Who doesn’t like fireworks,” he offered, still staring out at the seemingly endless sky as the last of the smoke disappeared into the night. It instilled him with some form of tender longing--- for what, he didn’t quite know. Something so familiar yet so far from him. He was confident the other was referring to beforehand, but he had always been a little standoffish to begin with. He flit a sidelong glance to him before eventually turning. He was tempted to take him up on his offer. It had been a while since he allowed himself to let loose. A beat. “What if I don’t drink?”

@crystalcitystarters​

As if pulled by some invisible magnet, Callie found herself walking along the carefully erected aisles of paitings and sculptures. Some of the artists she’d read about in various articles, others were completed unknown to her but she would never forget their names now that she knew them. One canvas was splashed with color in haphazard fashion; another showed meticulous detail that formed what could have been a photograph. She would have to speak to her boss at POMEGRANATEart about featuring some of these works at a show there soon. No doubt it would bring them immense foot traffic.

Callie jumped a bit when she realized someone was standing beside her, gazing at the same artwork her eyes had been glued to. She cleared her throat, trying desperately not to be embarassed by her own anxiety, and offered, “ It’s gorgeous, isn’t it? I mean, it all is. I can’t begin to imagine the amount of work that went into this festival. ”

“It’s a helluva lot of fuelled egos,” he scoffed, tucking his arms into each other as his feet parted to steady his large frame. He wasn’t much of an elitist when it came to art, but he was a pessimist about most things. He had an ego himself, but there was something that rubbed him the wrong way about the particular canvas he had been staring at for close to three minutes prior. Was it the artists intention to provoke such a disgust or was it Roman getting pressed over the unimpressive palette presented before him. He would only assume she’d been wrapped up in the same predicament and was too nice to say otherwise. He let out a small huff, tapping his foot once in decision before giving his full attention to the woman at his side. A low chuckle matched with an even lower mumble passed through his mouth, “not much for volunteers, is there?” He digressed to his normal tone. “Are you considering buying this one?”