londoncallingrpg | Gathering Post - Singles' Night (These Are The Times)

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Gathering Post - Singles' Night (These Are The Times)

The Tavern, as it was called, brought to mind images of faded Tudor quaintness: of whitewashed exterior, black beams, windows barred with cast iron, mulled mead and a fireplace in every room.

In truth, the pub was anything but. Located in one of the gentrifying suburbs, it was a modern bulwark of concrete, iron and glass. The first two stories were the pub proper, and the next ten were apartments. The owners had called it 'The Tavern' in a display of hipster pride, as if it was the only pub that mattered. Snaking through the two levels were a series of pipes, as small-scale brewing took place on site.

It was usually a lively sort of pub, populated mostly by the fussy, the well-off, the well-educated and those that aspired to be, although situated near a tube station meant it also got a lot of randoms peering in to grab a pint. The alcohol menu was diverse, the food menu was dominated by various pulled meats and a cheese board (if anyone cared) and there were probably far too many male graduate students with neckbeards who nodded enthusiastically at each other as they discussed Kant.

Still, on Saturday night it was even more bustling than usual. People stood on the stairs, beers in hand, and chatted. Every seat was taken. The wait staff had their hands full (literally), and moved with ease and grace through the throng to deliver food to tables, and collect numbers and plates.

Tonight there would be music. Tonight there would be bands. Tonight was Singles' Night, a guarantee of no sappy love songs, no heart break, no angst. Two local bands were playing: first there would be a set from The Flamethrowers, with a mix of classic rock and pop standards, and then after a break, there would be an electro-synth duo to allow for dancing well past midnight.

So at about 9pm, patrons were treated to the sight of the first band tuning up. There wasn't really a performance space, so much as a corner on the ground floor of the pub that was currently unoccupied by tables. It was a four-piece band: some shaggy-haired cross between hobo and hipster on rhythm guitar and vocals, a slightly older british caribbean guy in glasses with goatee on double bass, a short-haired woman in her mid-20s on percussion and vocals and a tendency to beat the ever-living fuck out of the drum set, and another woman, more long-haired and willowy, on keyboards and vocals. Mr Hobo-Hipster of the shaggy hair and blond tips sang lead most of the time, but he gave it up for each of the women through their eleven song set, and there were duets. The keyboard was set to produce a more honky-tonk piano sound, and combined with the double bass, most of the covers had a dirty feel to them, all loose chords and guitar slaps. Clearly they'd played together for long enough to have a good feel for each other, which just added to the looseness, the occasional digression or ad hoc solo.

And Mr Hobo-Hipster didn't so much as introduce the band members as say "Hey. We're the Flamethrowers" and then let his guitar speak for itself as they launched into a funked-up version of Money. His voice was a little rough, almost a growl, and his stage presence was contained but not muted. Even without posturing, John made it very clear that he was the driving force behind the band: he didn't preen or strut, he didn't need to, and only the hint of a smirk could be seen around his eyes. There was no grinning, not now: now he was controlled and contained and came off a little bit contemptuous of having to perform. He sang, sure, and he played, and played pretty well, but his focus were the frets of his guitar, the lyrics of the songs. That night, he was sleek and dangerous and full of pride. That night, he had no reasons to smile or grin or show how happy he was: he'd lost those along the way. He was pared back to his disdainful core. Overall, the band was good but not great, and with John being Intense, the performance probably came off somewhere between 'bluesy rock band' and 'satanic death cult'.

Grooving through the set-list for roughly 45 minutes, the Flamethrowers played a series of stripped-back, funked-up covers. Rock the Casbah. a slowed-down take on Time after Time. Versions of Dangerous and Sweet Dreams (are made of this) that were dominated by the keyboards and a sparse double bass. Everybody Wants to Rule the World. John's wry grin came out for a guitar driven, lazy run on Carole King's "It's Too Late", before he paused to finally introduce the band, have some water, and explain that the point was to avoid the melancholic and romantic: to not make anyone feel bad for being single.

Four more songs, and they then closed with Mama Told Me Not To Come, having meandered their way past some INXS, Living End and Lynyrd Skynyrd.

In the end, John thanked the band (again), thanked everyone for showing up, and hoped they passed the audition. As a nicety, he promised there would now be some 'music you can dance to' after a little break, and then disappeared to pack up his guitar and amp and find himself a drink and a quiet corner.

The night went on without him, and that was just fine.

[OOC: Saturday night at an upmarket pub and destination of note. Feel free to show up before, during or after the band. Complain about the noise, the locally brewed artisan beer, the hipster food, the even more hipster band, or just dance the night away.]

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Appropriate or not, anybody who had a problem with the way Coby and Anael kissed just then could go suck a dick – hell, they'd probably be better for it, in Coby's opinion. He didn't have to see to know there were few people looking, either. But he also spent a lot of time on stages, playing his heart for all to hear.

So after a love-soft, "Hey, angel," he asked, "Did you want to finish your drink before we get out of here?"

"Let's get out of here," Anael answered without missing a beat. There might not be any rush, but the concert held much less appeal now, compared to Coby. He smiled at Coby, kissed him again - more briefly - then stepped back to take his hand, threading their fingers together on the way out of the bar.

Coby left the remains of his beer on the bar without a second thought, smiling into the kiss and for the way their hands fit together so perfectly. Once outside and away from the door, he turned them into the narrow space between buildings and pulled Anael into his arms. "That's better."

Anael hummed in agreement, lips skimming the line of Coby's jaw. "Want to go flying?"

One hand stroked over Anael's back where the wing would attach, as Coby's head tilted in offering under Anael's mouth. "When don't I?" he hummed. Flying with Anael – like most things with Anael – felt like music coming together and flowing just right.

Anael cloaked them with one thought, bringing his wings out the next. Until they were high up enough, keeping Coby in his arms, and cloaked, was necessary. His lips had locked on Coby's pulse point as he beat his wings, flying them up into the air, his hoid on Coby as secure as ever.

Coby felt the familiar swoop in his gut, just as likely to come from the feel of Anael's mouth on his throat as the pull against gravity as they rose into the air, from the warm strength of his arms around him or presence and power of his wings. "I love you," spilled from Coby's lips like a cup overflowing with the feeling.

The surge of feelings heralded the words, and Anael looked back at Coby as they broke past the roofs, smiling brightly at the warmth of it. "And I you," he answered, eyes reflecting both his smile and his love.

With anyone else it would be ridiculous, and there was a tiny voice in the back of Coby's head thinking so, while the rest of him was too wrapped up in loving and being loved – and all the ways they could feel and show it – to care about anything else. But getting lost in Anael wasn't like getting lost in Coby's head; Anael's love made Coby more not less, and each moment, no matter what it held, was amazing.

The city fell away beneath them, but Coby didn't notice or care, and that wasn't the only thing he didn't notice right away. Maybe it was the way they moved through the air or the way Anael made him feel, but Coby's wings appeared on their own.

Anael laughed happily at their appearance, and kept flying them up, up until the cold would probably begin to bite at Coby. "We should be high enough," he stated with a smile, but wasn't going to let go of Coby before he agreed.

Just as Coby wondered at Anael's laugh, he felt the drag of wind against his wings and understood. He pulled them in tight and out of the way as Anael took them higher, appreciating the extra warmth. But the wings wanted to spread wide and catch the wind, and when Anael thought they were high enough, Coby was ready.

He wasn't afraid. Anael would never let him fall. A kiss first, though, deep and loving and with an edge of excitement. When the kiss ended, he softly sang, "You got a prepaid invitation and that's the only way to fly," and nodded. He was really going to do this.

Anael might have heard the song before, but it didn't matter. What mattered was how Coby felt singing it, and he smiled after that kiss. "I love you," he told him, eyes warm with it, voice warm with it, cloak dropped so that Coby might see him once they parted. Then he let go and pushed Coby away, so that he might spread his wings without knocking into Anael's.

He was, also, ready to dive down and catch him should something go wrong.

The wings knew what to do better than Coby, and he'd been holding them back until now. Once he fell away from Anael, they snapped out and caught the air without him having to think. Adjusting and what to do next was a little more awkward than it probably should've been, but he wasn't falling, and he figured it out mostly soon enough. Nowhere near as smooth as Anael, yet, though.

It felt like surfing, except all the ways it totally wasn't like surfing at all. But he knew already why Anael loved it so much. He looked up, lopsided smile growing bright, and more than a little besotted.

"You're doing great!" Anael told him, flying down to his level. "Want to try and fly somewhere?" That would be another challenge, but Anael would help, and make sure the winds weren't working against Coby.

"Where the wind blows isn't somewhere?" Nothing wrong with going with the flow. On the other hand, if that somewhere ended up being Coby's place, they could go with a different flow that'd be all kinds of good.

"You know I'll go anywhere with you."

"Anywhere sounds good," Anael told him with a smile, turning in the air so that they could, in fact, go in the direction the wind was blowing.

It was going to take a while, Coby told himself, for how and how much to move the wings to become second nature. How to use the wind instead of fighting it, over (or under) reacting to it. But he was generally going the way he wanted to - he just wasn't quite up to 'as the crow flies' yet, and he had to work for it more than he thought he should.

Anael gave him advice as they flew, when he could think of something to say that might help. He'd never really had to learn, himself; flying had come naturally. So he was trying to put things into words that he had never needed to before, but it was an interesting exercise.

"I'm a terrible teacher," he laughed at himself after struggling, and mostly failing, to explain one last thing.

"More like I'm a bad student." Coby laughed along with him. "But I haven't plummeted towards my death." Which was the important thing.

"And I'm definitely hot for teacher."

"Your teacher wouldn't let you plummet towards much of anything," Anael assured him easily, his smile as warm as usual as he turned in the air to fly beside Coby, but facing him. "You're much too precious to him."

That was why Coby'd said plummet towards, not plummet to. Anael would never let him fall. "I have faith in you. No matter how slow I am figuring this shit out."

"You're not being slow," Anael answered warmly. "Or it doesn't feel that way to me, anyway. I might be biased." Time only seemed to stretch in the best of ways, around Coby, and in the end, it always passed by too quickly.

"I like you biased." And every other way too. "And I'm going to make the most of our flying lessons, as long as I can." More time with Anael was always good.

As long as he could. Time did pass by far too quickly, and Anael knew that it would not be long, relatively speaking, before he had to say goodbye to Coby. And who knew when he would run into Shamsiel again.

But those thoughts were not meant for now. Now was for Coby, now was for flying, and the freedom of being so high up in the air, with only the winds, and each other, for company. Birds tended to be wary of such large creatures and kept their distance.

"Making the most of everything sounds like the best plan," Anael replied, and closed his wings just long enough for him to plummet for a couple of metres, spreading them again to rise up to Coby's level on the other side of him, a handful of seconds later. He did so love this.

That got another laugh out of Coby, driving away the tiny, but pesky, thoughts that Anael was as old as creation, and Coby was as mortal as his past lives had been. "Show off. If I tried that, you'd have to dive down and catch me." Which didn't sound all that bad, now Coby thought of it.

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