An ode to alcohol and aurae tinted sanity

Niccolò Belmonte

Ha! Score! Niccolò cheered mentally, not wanting to ruin this beautiful moment while it lasted. One unique aura, two people happy. That was the best equation of them all! He was so celebrating this...with more alcohol. Again. Being drunk was awesome when he knew that his body wouldn't be suffering at all because of it.

Grinning just as widely as Sasha was, the Italian stumbled up from his seat. The air was nice and warm and the sun was shining. Perfect day for discussing aurae with a guy who didn't seem ready to immediately press charges. "Hey, I know this bar a few blocks down," Niccolò proposed, gesturing in the direction. "Good drinks, good food. I'll pay and all, we can talk down there, yeah?"

I wonder if I should introduce this guy to Joshua, he wondered absently. Maybe they'd hit it off. Or maybe they'd kill each other. Eeehhhh. Better to hold that off for just a little bit.

Niccolò Belmonte

"Pfft, yeah," Niccolò scoffed through his sadly fading drunken haze. "I'm a full time lawyer but that's all right. I like doing that sort of thing sometimes. This aura thing is just a hobby, sadly. But it's a very nice hobby."

He was leading his new found friend to that bar now, not stumbling quite as much as before. Which told the Italian that it was time for another four or five drinks. Three at the very least. More if he took some of those fruity things with the bright colors. Oh sure, everybody was wrong about them -those things could be chuck full of alcohol hiding under sweetness- but they were also delicious in this way that also kind of made it feel like pure sugar was coming out of his pores. That probably wasn't a good thing but whatever.

"I have an agreement with one of the shopkeepers in the Underground," the Italian said cheerfully, nudging Sasha in the arm in the kind of way that one might tell a secret. "Joshua," he said in a very elongated fashion, "is a little money grubbing miser. But he's also one of the most amazing people I have ever met." This part was done very solemnly. For all of five seconds anyways, before he patted Sasha on the shoulder.

"Maybe I'll introduce you sometime," Niccolò mused out loud. "Would have to warn you not to bring any fancy electronics near him, though. They'll just go boom!" He made a mushroom cloud motion with his hands and laughed. "It's great! Annoying but, God! Anyways, I sell him some aurae that I'm willing to part with, he sells them to customers, we both make a profit." He shook his head mournfully. "Some people just don't understand how amazing aurae are!"

Offhandedly, he added, "Oh, yeah. And if you're a psionic or anything, don't read Josh's mind. It'll give you an awful headache and he'll kick you out of his shop. And if you touch anything the wrong way, and he thinks you're stealing from him, he'll break your wrists and then kick you out of his shop. He's a very reasonable man, Joshua is!"

Niccolò Belmonte

"Ah, will do!" Niccolò assured Sasha, as he herded the other man into a partially filled bar. The people there were familiar enough with him that there wasn't any protest to him grabbing a couple of menus and a booth in the corner himself. Clear view of the alcohol cabinet across the room, that was important. Settling into the seat, he waved over at the bartender with a grin and held up two fingers.

"But so yeah," the Italian said, turning back to the Russian man. "Now let me tell you about aurae, friend. It's a whole different world out there when you can see them." He made a sharp rainbow motion with his hands, once again proving to himself that he was just a little too sober at the moment. It wasn't like Niccolò had anything against sober. He just enjoyed being a fun drunk.

"It's all different colors, but you already probably know that." That was the simplest part on aurae, after all. "But it's so much more than that! Cause what plenty of people don't realize is that aurae have different feels and scents to them, too. Really interesting when I try to replicate them with perfumes, let me tell you. Temperature is always tricky to work with but I manage."

The drinks that he had ordered came then and he took one for himself while pushing the other off to Sasha. It was grappa, good and strong and fragrant. Odd as it might seem, it reminded him a little of what Joshua's aura smelled like. Ha. Joshua's aura smells like grapes.

Taking a sip of grappa, Niccolò had a sudden thought. "But, hey, hey. I'm kind of taking this conversation over, I guess. What do you do, anyways?"

Niccolò Belmonte

Niccolò nearly choked on his grappa as Sasha made the comment about his aura. "Oh, you haven't any idea at all!" he said, laughing boisterously. "That's what I thought at first, until I saw all of the colors flaring up! It's not often I see aurae have so many layers of color like that!"

As a testament to how often he came to this bar, barely any of the regulars even turned in his direction. On the contrary, a server came by to drop off a completely unasked for glass of water. Nice brunette young lady whose name sometimes slipped Niccolò's mind, saving up for college off the island. A really smart kid, wanted to go into law or something. To which the Italian was all eeehhhhhhh. But it seemed to make her happy and he thought she could probably make it. In any case, he'd leave her a good tip. Which absolutely not an apology for forgetting her name or anything, no not at all.

"That sounds like an interesting job you have there, eh?" Niccolò chuckled to himself. But he didn't pry in too much further because as a lawyer, it was a headache to keep automatically analyzing the actions of everybody around him that were only maybe borderline illegal. Or something. He had no idea how legal Sasha's activities were -he didn't have any indication of it right now- nor did the Italian particularly care at that moment. Even though he was fairly aware of how shady Manta Carlos really was, well. Why destroy the begins of a beautiful, probably dysfunctional friendship as it was budding?

To be fair, Niccolò didn't think it was a good idea. He just didn't think it was a bad idea either. Niccolò was being Niccolò, basically.

The nice brunette came back to their booth again and asked for their orders. Since he was feeling especially good that day, the Italian went ahead and got himself a piña colada. His grappa was already running down and the buzzed feeling was going on pleasantly in his head again. He supposed that he didn't want to be completely smashed around company. So he got two plates of nachos, too, just because screw real food.

"I could always use help finding interesting people," Niccolò said with a grin after the server had left. "I don't know how you're going to find them, though, if you can't see their aurae. Usually I just walk around and stumble into them myself by chance. If you'd like to try, though, well I'm certainly not going to say no to that! When are you good for?"

Niccolò Belmonte

The Italian beamed at Sasha as he made his compliment. "Glad to have caught your interest!" It was so infrequently that Niccolò managed to have serious conversation about aurae with people, let alone people who could actually appreciate the details. Yessir, this guy really has to meet Joshua. He almost completely certain that it wouldn't end in violence! Maybe. Maaayybeee. Well, as long as Sasha didn't break or steal anything or suddenly turn the The Antoinette into the seedy sort usually found in the Underground. Joshua not giving a damn was more or less the highest extent of the shopkeeper's cordiality.

"Ah, I'm sure there's some kind of system to how aurae pop up," Niccolò said musingly. "I've never really looked too much into connecting them with personalities and the like. The only clearly changing trait is size. Animals' are smaller than humans'. Haven't seen much of shifters or any of the really fancy people around, though, so I can't say anything about them." He thought for a moment. "You know, actually, I think Joshua's might be connected with his powers. In terms of shape and maybe texture anyways. I should really maybe be looking into it more."

He finished up his grappa as the server brought along his second drink and passed the empty glass to her with a tipsy grin. "My schedule tends to move about," Niccolò told the Russian man. "I usually have appointments booked in at nine in the morning to three in the afternoon from Tuesdays to Saturdays. Two to seven at night for Mondays. And then sometimes clients just give me a call whenever and I put them on the list where I have room."