Pryde and Wisdom's House - School House Road The front door opens into a large pale-green living room, in which there is quite possibly more furniture than there was in Pryde and Wisdom's entire last apartment. On the left-hand wall from the door, a couch covered with a plain white sheet is grouped with an armchair and a low table and a bookcase, all by a stone fireplace. Off to the right, more bookcases flank a computer table that looks slightly forlorn with just Kitty's laptop and a printer set up on it. The bookcases are mostly empty, though a scattering of paperbacks and an entire shelf of battered textbooks occupy one, and a few videotapes and a brass sextant keep another from looking entirely abandoned. The pirate flag from their last place is missing from the walls. Neither has the usual state of mild chaos quite reasserted itself - the stack of newspapers on the low table is orderly, and the ashtray at the far end of it is kept, if not empty, not overflowing either. Directly opposite the door, a staircase spirals up to the second floor; by it are a small hallway and the doorway into the brightly-lit kitchen. ****************************************************************************** Today's Weather: A snowstorm rages through the downtown streets of Beacon Harbor today, blanketting the ground in endless layers of blinding snow. Smoke rises from the rooftops of nearby homes, while shops are closing early to avoid the horrible road conditions sure to follow. ****************************************************************************** The good news is, the power isn't out. Still, the blue house is closed up tight, lights only in the living room and the inevitable one room upstairs - and there's been not even an attempt made to keep /anything/ outside the house clear of snow. Heck, the door hasn't even been opened in several inches' worth of time. The good news is... well, there isn't actually that much good news. Liam's still alive? And trying to fly in a blizzard, his currently-habitual flyby of the Pryde/Wisdom residence hampered by the fact that he's pretty much unable to see. Which has a great deal to do with why he glances off the chimney on his way down, which in /turn/ has a great deal to do with why he's swearing eloquently in Gaelic by the time he manages to splatter his way to the ground, pick himself up from the drifts of snow, ensure that nothing's broken, and hobble-flounder his way to the door. One angel, thoroughly snow-covered, knocking. In a word: ow. The noise attracts sufficient attention that even as Liam's knocking, the door's being hastily yanked open - and there's music emanating from the laptop inside. No, it's not Christmas music by any stretch of the imagination. It is, in fact, ska. Fear might be an appropriate reaction. "Are you okay?" Kitty's just short of yelping. Apparently she'd been curled up by that laptop with a book. At least, judging from the fact that the chair by her desk is overturned and there's a book lying splayed open, face-down, on the floor between that and the door. Liam actually begins to answer in Gaelic, tone quick and sharp, before he catches himself and switches to English, taking the opportunity to clear some of the irritation from his voice in the process. Some, not all. "Bloody fine," is the uncharacteristic near-growl. "Ask me how much I love your cursed winters." Ineffectually, he moves to brush at his sleeves, trying to clear off some of the fluffy whiteness. "Have a bloody bruise to show for it in the mornin', I expect, but no worse'n the one to my pride. An' give you good evenin', travesty of a greetin' that it is." "They're not /my/ winters," Kitty is quick to protest. "Mine are either in Chicago or Scotland, depending on how you feel like calculating. Here, come in and ... melt a little, or something." If he does, the door's shut hastily behind him and, as usual, locked and chained back into place. It's too cold out there to let it stay open. At all. A desire not to subject Kitty to said cold is the main reason Liam does limp in, despite his guilt at how he's about to start shedding melting bits all over the floor. "Gah," he says, articulately, and stands as near the entrance as possible, out of consideration for the floor. "Only be a minute. Y'alright?" "Fine, fine," Kitty reassures, with a remarkable lack of notice of melting bits. It takes acid demon blood for her to start getting annoyed by stuff dripping on the floor, really. "The hangover wore off eventually, and we've managed to dodge any other trouble. You? Lorne? Besides the ow just now, and the general freezingness?" She shifts weight from one foot to the other, forcibly keeping herself from trying to usher Liam further in for better snow-clearing. Liam, in turn, forcibly keeps himself from trying to get any more snow /off/ himself, and in fact stands quite still to try and prevent shedding any more of it. He's only gotten one wing properly back in the coat, and the other is still half-peeking through its slit, black feathers dusted with white. "Doin' alright," replies the angel, who looks chill and tired but no more so than usual. "Well as can be expected. Only speakin' of other trouble?" He pins his navy gaze on Kitty, lips quirking just slightly. "Much as I appreciate your obeyin' the dinner rules, I might've liked to be told about our black friends what attacked you an' were lookin' for an angel's heart." Chagrin might be a good way to describe Kitty's expression. She backs off and picks up the book carefully, closing it, giving it a little comforting pat, and setting it on the edge of her desk. "Well, I would've, but it wasn't really any /new/ information. We knew they were around. We knew what they were looking for. Just confirming they'd showed up again didn't seem worth fracturing the - Liam, if that stuff melts /on/ you, your clothes are going to get freeze solid when you go back outside. If you do go back outside and don't wind up staying here till there's more than five feet of visibility." "I'm tryin' to spare your floor," explains Liam, glancing down and making a face at the mess he's managed to make already. "Be out of your hair in a minute, anyway, only wanted to make sure things were alright. An' aye, suppose you're right at that, though it's not gettin' you off the hook for not tellin' your local concerned healer. Celliers said they couldn't take it from you?" "The floor," Kitty points out reasonably, "can be cleaned up in about five minutes. Frostbite can't. Neither can thawing out person-sized icicles." She leans back against the computer desk, hands propped on the edge. "Celliers was right, though. They showed up, and didn't push /too/ hard - I don't know whether that was because there were three of us and three of them, and they'd rather outnumber, or because they /can't/ take it, period, only intimidate. Which would explain Claire's thing about not panicking, I guess." "Not panickin' is generally a good idea in any situation," observes Liam, a bit wryly. He makes a face. "Glad they didn't hurt anyone. An' I've not seen hide nor hair of 'em myself -- or feather, as the case may be." Coughing, mildly, he sheds snow with the motion of his shoulders, and sets a hand on the doorknob. "Anyway. I'll get on, then. Weddin' comin' along alright?" Okay, /that/ gets Liam a look of that panic. "Don't ask?" Kitty pleads fervently. "I've been trying all day to figure out whether it'd be good luck or bad if the snow didn't let up till after the date." That gets a chuckle. "Sorry to bring it up, then. Anythin' I can help with?" A feathered eyebrow quirks; the look the angel levels at Kitty this time is vaguely amused. Kitty replies, dryer, "That depends on whether you're any good with the etiquette of complicated ex-boyfriend counterpart situations." She shakes her head and slumps back against the desk. "I /swear/ this city creates the weirdest problems." "Ah... sorry?" Liam's a bit puzzled at that, enough to forestall his imminent departure into the storm. He momentarily drops his hand from the door and tilts his head at Kitty. Kitty takes a deep breath, acquiring a profoundly resigned expression. "Okay. You know Pete and I are from ... sort of parallel histories. Lot of overlap. Well, we're not the only ones. There's another guy in the city from yet a /third/ version of the history we come from. In all three of our worlds, he and I were ... pretty close when I was a teenager. In mine, he died. In Pete's and his own, he didn't; we broke up. In /his/, that was pretty much the end of that story, and he still thinks of breaking up with me as a mistake. In /Pete's/, that 'thinking of it as a mistake' grew into a serious, stalker-type obsession. So, situation is: I like the guy, but he makes Pete incredibly nervous, and the guy himself isn't all that happy about me being with Pete in the first place." She pauses. "And with a week to go, we have /yet/ to figure out a way to break 'oh, hey, we're getting married' to him safely, let alone gently. Oh, yeah. And just in case this wasn't confusing and soap-opera enough? His name is /also/ Peter." She flashes Liam a tired grin. "And don't /you/ wish you hadn't asked. If this gets any more convoluted, I'm going to feel like a supermarket tabloid." ".... I'm so much better off in the snow," comments Liam, wryly, after a moment spent taking in the deluge of words. He reaches up a gloved hand to rub at the back of his neck -- the habitual gesture quickly aborted when he realizes that his gloves are both freezing and snow-covered. Augh. "Look... it's not the same bloke, is it? That's my main confusion with all of this alternate-universe.... stuff. I mean, I could go to Ireland, an' maybe I'd find a woman what looked like my mother, an' maybe she'd even be almost exactly like my mother. But it wouldn't /be/ her, would it?" "Nope." Eeee, snow down the back of the shirt. Kitty winces in sympathy. "Nope. Not the same person - technically. That's a mistake it's easy to make. The question is, really, when it's close enough." She rubs at the back of her own neck, as if to complete the gesture on Liam's behalf. "Heck, practically the first thing Pete and I did was pin down the /differences/. He doesn't drink as much as the one I was used to, and he's a lot more social -" which says some scary things about his counterpart - "and I, well, don't dress in blue and yellow spandex." Which says even scarier things about /her/ counterpart. "The most you can do is make guesses, look for tendencies that might be the same. Even that's not always reliable." Liam is just going to gloss over the blue and yellow spandex. He didn't hear that. "Only what I'm sayin' is, you've no obligation to be involvin' each other in your lives at all, do you? An' it shouldn't need to be any of his business what you're doin', as you aren't 'his' Kitty." His hand fidgets at his side. "An' while I understand you're nervous about what the bloke might do, or Pete is.... ach, lass. If you feel the need to tell him, I'd advise just bein' honest. An' if not...he's not someone you're owin' explanations to." "In other words," Kitty sums up with a little smile equal parts wry and grateful, "quit worrying and stop being a twit, huh." "Somethin' like that," concedes the healer, "but I'm much kinder, an' I'd never be so crass as to call you such undeserved names." Kitty even -- even! -- gets a wink. "Cheer up. An' I've snow goin' down the back of my bloody neck, so I'm for home an' a warm fire. You call if you need anythin', hear?" "There are moments when they're definitely not undeserved." Kitty grins back at him - then blows him a kiss, before heading to get the door. "Will if you will. Thanks, Liam. If anything happens - I'll keep you posted." Which she manages to say without looking sheepish, just barely.