2020-06-02 - Like Thunder at a Picnic

Thursday afternoon. 1:45. Harper couldn't get her assistant librarians in sooner than that. Itzhak texted the previous day. Would she like to have lunch? She returned the text. Would he like to have a picnic? It was supposed to be sunny the next day. Even warm enough spring that the promise of summer isn't too far off. She'd bring the food if he'd bring the drink, she promised.

So. Thursday afternoon. 1:45, the narrator reminds. They're not at one of the main parks in town. It's not really a parky vibe at all. Harper gave Itzhak a route number and directions that led him on a ten-minute drive away from the coastline and into the trees, around a winding two lane road that led toward the Olympic forest. Just ... there. Her midnight-blue Prius is parked on the side of the road. There's an old, wooden, two-bar fence. And beyond that fence there is a copse of trees. A grassy edge of a field. Harper is there in sunglasses, magenta jeans, a casual olive-hued blouse tied in a knot at her waist. White sneakers. The blue and white leather jacket is tossed to one side. Her dark, flyaway hair is held back by a rolled bandanna. She's spread everything out. There is an honest-to-god basket, but it's been emptied. There is a bowl full of sliced stone-fruit. A baguette. Some kosher meat. Separate from the meat are three cheeses that one would get from a cheese monger rather than the grocery store. A knife. Soft, linen napkins. The spread is basic but appetizing; she didn't do anything fancy.

She's laying on her back, knees drawn up a book held in the air above her head. Looks like she arrived early. The breeze is cool. The day is warm. Birds call back and forth. It's almost too damned idyllic.

The rumble of a muscle car rolls up the road, heard before it's seen. And when it's seen, it's a slinky deep purple Corvette Stingray, the paint imbued with metal flake (this is tough-guy talk for 'glitter'). The Stingray slithers off the side of the road to park next to Harper's Prius, sleek and reptilian. Itzhak gets out, wearing his usual beaten-to-softness very snug jeans, steel toe workboots, and a t-shirt that says 'I can play violin. What's your superpower?' He's also wearing a pair of mirrored aviator shades, which he pulls off as he comes over on his funny half-sauntering stride.

"Hey, uh, wow," he says, looking at the spread and at Harper with those expressive eyebrows up. "You didn't gotta do this, I woulda been happy with a sandwich."

Harper pushes up to her elbows at the sound of that sexy car. What did she think Itzhak drove? It pulls over and she rolls up to a seat, closing her book on a bookmark and laying it to the side. 'A Discovery of Witches', Deborah Harkness. From behind her dark glasses she watches Itzhak approach, a warm smile curving at her lips. "You found it," she announces brightly when he's close enough that she need not raise her voice. "Thanks for humoring me." And her request for a picnic. "I'm glad you could come."

She didn't have to do this? Itzhak doesn't know Harper yet. This is low key for her. "It pretty much is sandwiches, just, you know, deconstructed a little." She glances to the variety of meats and cheeses. "Plus I ... mmm, wasn't sure what you liked, so --" She waves a hand at the food. "-- indecision." That smile grows warm again, even without the input of her expressive brown eyes. "Come take a load off, Itzhak." It's almost startling when she does use his familiar name from time to time. But when she uses it, it's intentional.

"Uh, well, good point," Itzhak has to admit, half-grinning lopsidedly. "Deconstructed." He sits on down, crosslegged, long legs folding neatly. The sunglasses get rested in his profusion of black curly hair. "See ya separated out the meat and the dairy," he points at each platter, "good job. Some frum Jews wouldn't think this is good enough, because the meat is still touching things at the same time as the dairy. Frum, Orthodox, that is," he adds, to clarify, "grew up like that. Don't do it anymore." He's rattling on some. "Anyway, yeah, uh, thanks. Looks great. Harper." Deliberately he calls her by her first name, since she did it to him.

There's a quiet roll of sound in Harper's throat that might be amusement. Her head tips down as she follows him taking a seat on the blanket. He removes his aviators, so she does the same, pulling them off and tossing them over to the side with her book. He mentions her (intentional) separation of meats and cheese. A little frown wrinkles between her brows. "I was worried about that. But the other option was to only bring meat or cheese, and I wasn't sure what you'd have liked better." Oh! She gets a Jewish lesson. The frown dissolves and she watches the man with some fascination. "What sorts of 'kosher' do you observe? You know, for when I want to bring you some nibbles for Passover." Likely the word 'nibbles' doesn't fit at all with 'Passover'. She seems to understand this, if her rueful smile is any indication. She leans forward to nudge at his shoulder with a hand. "I don't know if you'd actually tell me if I'd done something wrong. I think you might have a problem," she confides. "Too kind." Those brown eyes twinkle. Of course, he brought the beverage and it's likely fantastic.

"So how's work?" He's told her he's a mechanic. She saw the car. From someone else the question would sound like empty patter. Harper actually wants to know.

Itzhak brought, indeed, bottles of hand-pressed cider from some local orchard. He flicks off their tops with his thumb in a subtle display of his power--the metal just listens to him, obeys his will--and sets one out for Harper. "Ehh, I don't keep kosher anymore," he says, absently, while he does this. "So you don't gotta worry about fleisheg versus milchig with me." He shrugs, mouth twisting. "Work, eh. Redoing the shop. It got busted up." Then huffs, shaking his head, when Harper calls him 'too kind', and looks at her sideways, a little bashfully. "I got a hell of a lotta problems, I dunno if that's one of 'em. How's your work?"

The cider was an excellent choice. Harper watches the deft maneuver that speaks to his Gift. She's observant, is the librarian. Then there are some words she doesn't know. Fleisheg. Milchig. She tips a brow. "What happened to your shop?" She reaches for the cider he offers and takes a drink that's neither coarse nor prim. He has problems. Harper just watches him there, not laughing it off, not taking it too deep. "The library is marvelous," Harper answers with warmth in her tone. "I'm working on some research. The new shipment of books is due in -- well, I hope tomorrow. And I've been meeting the most interesting people recently." That look right there? That would be a wry look. "But you can't possibly want to hear about library administrivia as much as I'd like to hear about your work." Playful rather than presumptuous.

Itzhak swigs from the cider, licks his lower lip. He gives Harper another of those sideways glances, this one gauging. Weighing. But she did touch his mind. "Them. The bad men. The ones that got no shape. They wrecked it for me." The day, a hint of the summer to come, is beautiful and cool and sunny. Itzhak's words don't change it at all. The birds don't stop chirping. The breeze doesn't die down. And yet, there is something.

Well, she asked. Itzhak keeps looking at Harper, unsure of her reaction, before he goes on to say anything else. He seems strained. Like he's very unhappy and hiding it, not all that well.

If there is something that Harper does well, it is paying attention when she wants to. There are other times, of course. Other times when she misses entire paragraphs that are right beneath her nose. This? This is the former. There is a quiet about her, a stillness as Itzhak drinks, speaks, pauses. Puffs of clouds kite past. The breeze teases at the edge of the blanket, a napkin tucked beneath the fruit bowl, at tendrils of her hair.

She asked. "They are antagonists of the worst sort," she bites. Harper isn't prone to obscenities. But she can make the average words sound just as bad. She likes some antagonists. But not Itzhak's 'bad men'. "Did you take a bite out of them?" Oh, Harper would like to hear that he did. "Are they lingering? Are you in danger, Itzhak?" Of course he is. Most people they know are in danger. She may mean the more imminent sort. "Talk to me." Harper's legs are crossed at the ankles, one hand is palm down on the blanket. The other hand holds her bottle of cider lightly against her knee.

Itzhak tilts his head and his eyebrows, mouth quirking. "Bite out of 'em? Yeah. Couple of times. So They took a bite outta me." He says it with a kind of Jewish resignation. Whaddayagonna do? But he shakes his head to the question of whether he's in danger. "Nah. Not more'n anybody else, not really. I'm just...strong. Real strong. And They know how to get to me. My tools, man." He looks at Harper, mournfully, on behalf of his tools. "They melted 'em, kinda? Took all the precision out of 'em. Anyway." One big, scarred, tattooed hand waves to dismiss all that. "Fuck Them."

Harper listens with a thoughtful expression, her brows furrowed just so. "Good," to him taking his bites. "Your tools? Damn, Itzhak. That sounds like a really big deal. If they destroyed my books, I would be on a warpath." Melted them. Briefly there's a glimpse of anger to see in Harper's brown eyes. But so fleeting that maybe he imagined it. It doesn't seem to fit. Not the woman she presents to the world. She nods slowly and, like a benediction, echoes slowly, "Fuck. Them." After a few moments she asks, "Where does that leave you now?"

"Yeah. Really big deal. Left me with an inoperable shop. So that's why I'm knockin' most of it down and rebuilding it. I got tools again, so that's a good thing." Itzhak's not looking at Harper, in that way he does, but now he glances at her--and catches that spark of anger. And it makes him flash a sudden smile at her, part rueful that she has cause to be angry, and part agreeing. Right? There's a lot to be angry about. "Rest of it's coming along. I'm working on it. I get in a lotta trouble, that's all." He sets to cutting a slab of baguette, because seriously, he's starving.

"The way I imagine it is that you get used to a tool. You know how it fits in your hand. You know its quirks. It knows your quirks. I really can't imagine that just buying replacement tools makes everything better." But perhaps she has it wrong, that look says. She catches the abrupt warmth of that smile and looks faintly startled, then returns it just as warmly. "You mean the Shadow kind of trouble? Or another kind?" Harper is equal opportunity. As for the food, she looks pleased when he helps himself. In fact, she reaches to the bowl of fruit to pick up a segment of juicy nectarine to pop into her mouth. "I'll tell you, Rosy -- " Back to the endearment. "-- you strike me as someone who would be quite adept at dealing with trouble." Is she mistaken? It's been known to happen. She licks her lips and rolls closer, pulling her legs in, shifting atop her knees so she can roll to one side on her hip while watching him eat. Harper finds a certain satisfaction in feeding people.

"It don't make it all better. But it's a step towards everything not sucking." Such a way with words, this Itzhak. He sets to eating, meat and cheese and bread and fruit and cider. Good thing Harper brought a lot, because he eats a lot. Being tall and yelling takes calories. And laughs, swallowing, when Harper says he strikes her as someone for whom trouble is a familiar thing. He licks nectarine juice off the calloused pad of his thumb, unselfconscious about it because he's not thinking about it. "Yeah, well, I ain't gonna lie to you, me and trouble got a long history together." His gray hazel eyes are mischievous, their corners crinkling. He's got a lot of lines on his face. It's a face that's had a life.

It's all so very charming. From the way he parses his words to the way he eats with gusto to his mannerisms when he's not being self-conscious. Now and again, Harper picks up another piece of fruit. No! Wait! She sliced a piece of Dubliner cheese. That gets nibbled like a delicacy. It's not particularly dainty, it's just done while her mind is full of thoughts. "You want to tell me any of that story? I've been told I'm a good listener. I keep a good confidence, and I'm rather fascinated by you, Itzhak. I might like you a bit more than is good for me." So many ways to take that. Harper might just fall a bit into that mischievous gaze. The woman wears her own kind of mask. It's not a weathered face, it's a cheerful, optimistic one. And it's a damn, fine shield from the eyes of most people.

Itzhak hikes his eyebrows at that statement. "Fascinated? By me?" Which he stresses the 'me' on, like Harper could totally be fascinated by other things or people, but Itzhak Rosencrantz? It makes him color a little. That becomes a lot more red at the idea of her liking him more than might be good for her. "Ehhhh, what's there to tell?" he says, trying for 'grandly amused at my own expense' and landing somewhere closer to 'oh god, what do I do now'. "Grew up in a rough part of Manhattan, fell in with a bad crowd, got in trouble, went to prison. Got out, couldn't get a job, dicked around until I came out here." His hands talk along with him, gesturing, fingers flicking out here and there until he finishes with a palms-up flourish. "Your turn." He grins at her crookedly. "What's your story? You're kinda fascinating yourself, yannow."

"Itzhak," Harper chides gently. "Don't you tell me what or who I can and cannot be fascinated by. That's not how it works. You're going to have to trust that I know what I'm doing." She lifts the bottle of cider and gestures with it around the blanket. "All this? This picnic? Why in the world would I invite someone to sit on a blanket with me on a spectacular, sunny afternoon if I wasn't utterly engrossed in learning more about them?" She watches him slowly turn red and she can't help but smile. "I have a feeling there is plenty to tell. I'm just not sure I've reached the rank of those in the know about Itzhak Rosencrantz."

But then he does begin to share. Harper leans in the slightest bit, as if a fraction of an inch might help her to hear what he says better. "Would it make a difference to you if I told you I'm in love with a man whose life followed almost that same trajectory?" She pauses, lifts the bottle for a few swallows of her delicate throat, then lowers it again. So many questions! They live there behind her warm, brown eyes.

"I'm not fascinating at all, my friend. Let's see. I was born here in Gray Harbor. My mother died when I was five in a car accident." Badly. Very badly. "In school I had friends over the years who ... also met tragic ends. Usually when I was around." Harper glances out over the field. "On my eighteenth birthday, my father fell in the shower and, well, ..." Harper swallows and looks back from the middle distance to Itzhak. "I cleaned the viscera and gray matter out of the shower myself." She breathes in slowly. Exhales even more slowly. It's a long-cultivated calm. A calm in the face of a scream. "I got my degree. Won the lead librarian job here in town. Used some of the insurance money to do some work on the house and pay my college tuition." The breeze kicks up and teases at her dark hair behind that rolled bandanna. "Up until my current relationship, they all ended badly. Very badly." She smiles. It's a weary smile. "People around me die, Itzhak. They die badly. Do me a favor: keep me at arm's length." This smile is a dark smile, "For the sake of your tools and your stunning neck."

Itzhak rubs his fingertips through his black curls, that curious half-smile tugging up one side of his mobile mouth. "I, uh, well, to be real honest, I kinda been asking myself why you did invite me on a picnic. Which is great, don't get me wrong. You brought good food and it's a gorgeous day, and, yannow, meeting a beautiful woman for lunch who wants to know about me, what, am I gonna say no?" He shifts to stretch his legs in front of him, crossing his boots at the ankle. "...Make a difference?" he echoes, but gentler. "Well, it tells me you ain't gonna write me off because of being an ex-con. Not that I thought you were gonna, because I'm pretty sure this," he twirls a couple of fingers in a circle to indicate all this jazz, "ain't writin' somebody off."

Then Harper talks, and he settles to listen, his attention keen. He doesn't look at her face while she talks; his eyes drop to somewhere on the blanket, but he's listening hard, the way a musician listens to an unknown piece of music. And--it's funny--there's no pity in him, when she's done. Only acceptance. She's had a hard life. He knows what that's like.

He takes a look at her face, gathering information. "You been tellin' me I don't get to tell you what you think about me." His tone is not carefully neutral, or comforting, or kinda anything except what it's been. "Well, same goes for you. Shit sucks. You been through a lot of hard stuff. And, nu? How's that supposed to get rid of me?"

Harper is an observer. Everything from the fingers through his hair to the fascinating smile informs her thinking, her thoughts. "Is that your tipping point? A girl who offers food on a blanket?" It's a teasing smile, playful. "You're right about that. Some of the best people are ex-cons. You might just be on the A-list." More solemnly she asks, "Do people tend to do that? Write you off based upon your past?"

It's a breath of fresh air. It's the feel of the sunlight on her shoulders. It's the way the earth is awakening and spreading out fingers of life. He doesn't have pity. An exuberant laugh bubbles up in her throat and Harper does something presumptuous. She swoops in, intending to throw her arms around the willowy man with the dark, dark hair. If he doesn't avoid said embrace, she listens to what he has to say with her ear somewhere near the place over his heart, hearing his voice through his chest just like his heartbeat. Same goes for you. She draws back. With macabre humor she answers, sing song, "I just don't want you to die, Rosy. I wouldn't like that at all."

Itzhak oofs, startled to find himself being hugged. He laughs low, his voice resonating in his chest. He is wiry, thin and tough, like a strip of rawhide. "Please. It'll take more than a little slip of a librarian to do me in." Harper gets hugged back, enthusiastically, before she draws away. He regards her with eyebrows tilted. "I got people to live for. Ain't plannin' on dying."

Looking wry, he kind of shrug-nods to the question of if people write him off on account of being an ex-con. "Yeah, I mean, sure they do. An ex-con who looks like me, acts like me, in other words a big autistic asshole. Not so much in this town, I gotta say. Probably because people got a lot more things to worry about than some guy went to prison. But in New York, I couldn't hardly get hired, or hold it down if I had a job. So maybe people write me off less because I'm an ex-con and more because I'm me."

Harper settles back to her hip with a quiet calm that is more what people tend to see of her. The low laughter is infectious, teasing her smile back, lighting her brown eyes. "Don't you underestimate me, Rosy," is her affectionate threat. "No. No, I don't see you doing anything close to planning on dying. Happiness lives behind your eyes more often than not. You fill the world with your spirit, your song, this ... ineffable magic that makes you beautiful." Harper is utterly sincere. No bullshit here.

"Looks like you and acts like you?" Harper is perplexed by this statement. A big autistic asshole. "I mean, you could be an asshole if you want, but some of my favorite people are assholes. So good luck with that." This town. "Why did you move from New York to Gray Harbor, Rosy? I can't even get my brain around that change. Ignacio did it too... was there some kind of magnetic draw?" Harper would believe that if he said it was true. "What did prison teach you?"

Itzhak smiles back, somewhat helplessly, like he can't not. And laughs out loud. "Ineffable magic! Ahhhh, Harpeleh, this way you see things. It's a better superpower than any of this mishegoss, that's for sure." Oops, Harper gets called an affectionate Yiddish nickname. He looks at her, swipes his forelock away from his eyes. (His hair's kinda long, he could really use a haircut.) "This place does have a magnetic draw. I didn't come here because I felt it, but..." hesitating, he glances away, at the nearby trees. "I came here, pretty sure, because I got the Song. It didn't happen like that. I didn't wake up one day and feel it. Some people tell me that's what happened to them. But let's just say my life is a series of weird fuckin' coincidences and this is one of 'em. I came out here so..." he hesitates again. One booted foot jiggles, anxious. "I, uh, shit. I hate lying about it. But it ain't safe for me to tell you the truth."

The good humor. The laughter. The teasing about her perspective. They all wrap up in what might as well be a pretty package that Itzhak hands to Harper for the responding warmth in her eyes and smile. "A superpower, you say? Or pretty-pretty bullshit?" The words are playful. If Harper minds nicknames, she'd be a significant hypocrite. It's likely that she sways much in the opposite direction. Her gaze flickers over that too-long hair as it's swiped back.

The magnetic draw of Gray Harbor. Itzhak's take on it all holds her interest; she lifts the cider bottle for another drink as he speaks. "'The Song'? Is that a reference to your talent or your innate power?" She'll toss it right out there, bluntly. A series of coincidences brought the man from New York to Washington. But when it comes down to it, don't many of life's next-steps happen that way?

It's not safe for him to tell her the truth? Harper straightens a bit in that one-hip pose with her knees tucked around to the side. "I suppose it's my line to say something about you not needing to share anything that doesn't suit you, Itzhak." It doesn't look like Harper is very pleased with her lines. "You do, however, strike me as a man who can handle trouble. However, I get a bit fierce about threats to people I've grown fond of." What's she going to do? Assess library fines? Ineffectual or not, she looks ready to go into battle.

Tapping his temple, Itzhak nods. "The Song. People talk about seeing it, seeing a shine or glitter or whatevah. I hear it. Nobody else ever told me that they can hear it. So far as I know, I'm the only one."

Finishing the cider, he swallows, and outright smirks, unpleasantly, looking not at Harper but at the bottle. "Yeah, uh, that's why it ain't safe for me to tell you. Last person I told went and stirred up trouble. Shit's dangerous. Not just for you. For me, too." An airy bitterness to his tone, he goes on, "And she dumped me for wantin' to protect her too much, so, yannow. I ain't exactly battin' a thousand right now."

For all her intent focus and warm aspect, Harper isn't expecting what follows, in several ways. Her expression travels from relaxed and inquisitive to something more circumspect with a hint of widened eyes at one point. She picks up another delicate slice of the Dubliner cheese and chews it slowly while listening. The woman seems to have an endless supply of patience.

Itzhak hears that shiver of power. Of course he does. "What you hear, Itzhak," she begins and splays fingertips at the sunny afternoon that embraces them on that blanket beneath the trees. "The poetry. The screaming cacophony. Those quietest of grace notes. The hum of energy. The riot of colors. I can only imagine. But when you play, I can almost hear it too, I think."

The unpleasant smirk? That's new. Harper is particularly good at not taking things personally, and this is no different. Given the topic, she doesn't doubt what he's thinking about deserves at least something of a snarl. "The last thing I would want would be to somehow make you less safe, Rosy." Such ringing sincerity. "I'm sorry to hear your confidence was broken like that. People can be fickle," she agrees quietly, her gaze dropping to Itzhak's fingers, musing. "Don't you worry about my safety, though. I've got it covered." Brown eyes warm, but the smile continues to hide.

That's where her eyes flare just so. He'd have to be watching for it. She dumped him. Which word there is the culprit though? "How dare you," she breathes. "Caring about a person you were ... with." He's not batting a thousand? "I don't know if your average is so bad, sweetheart." There's nothing patronizing about the affectionate word. "I've seen the way he looks at you."

Itzhak looks up at Harper, the smirk faded, his face neutral and serious. Possibly the first time she's seen him with a neutral expression. Usually that face of his is very busy pulling all kinds of emotions. "Yeah. I hear all those things," he says, quieter. "Sometimes I can feel 'em, or see 'em, too. Or vice versa, I can hear things I see." Then, a genuine little twitch upwards at one corner of his mouth. "That's one reason I play. So you can hear what I think. Violin's like that. Everything you have in you makes a sound between bow and strings. You flinch, you don't have the strength, you're too wound up, comes out in the sound."

He sighs, face resuming expressions, in a wry fashion....but a full and brilliant smile emerges, sudden as the sun between clouds, when Harper mentions 'him'. Who is him, Itzhak doesn't need to ask. "God knows how that happened. I'm so fuckin' grateful it did though. I'm crazy about that man, in a way I didn't even know existed."

Harper positively drinks in Itzhak's more serious expression, lifting her gaze from those talented fingers to his face. She nods when he agrees that he hears so much more than people listen for. He goes on to elaborate about what he sees and hears and how they are tangled up in his psyche. "I absolutely think that's one of the reasons your music speaks to me." No, she's not going to speak for other people. But damned if she cares about other people right now. Maybe a little of that recklessness is there to see in her brown eyes. Maybe if he looks just right. The bow, the strings, the response of the instrument to the dynamic of its player. Harper doesn't play an instrument, but she nods just the same. Who wouldn't believe the man when he talks like he does about music, emotion, and expression?

The radiant smile pleases Harper. She traces fingertips against the cider bottle that leans against her knee. A car speeds past, interrupting the idyllic setting for a breath before everything slows back to the afternoon's pace. It's impossible not to see the affection there. She's had the opportunity to behold it personally on almost a full handful of occasions now and it doesn't get old. "That's just the way, isn't it? At least that's how it was for me. Out of the blue. Lightning. And then nothing's the same." She shakes her head slowly with that playful, knowing smile. "He's crazy about you, too," she tells him, utterly unnecessarily.

"Speaks to you, huh?" Itzhak says, undeniably pleased by that news. "That's...that's good. I like hearing that. Any musician would." The recklessness, as he meets her eyes for a moment--just a moment, only that--seems to please him too. His eyes are multiply-colored, gray hazel with pigmented stripes of amber and green. Against the greenness of the forest, they look more green than gray. Then he's embarrassed again, looking away. To be fair, he seems not to look anybody in the eye overmuch, taking care to avoid it. "I can be all of me with him," he murmurs, brushing the blanket just to have something to do with his hands. "Don't have to hide nothin'."

He picks up the empty cider bottle. "Lemme show you something." He gives it a gentle toss into the air...and it doesn't come down. It hangs there, turning gently, like a soap bubble.

Harper dips her chin slowly in response to the query. She rolls from her hip back to her knees, settled with her behind atop her sneaker-clad feet, and she lifts the bottle up to finish off the cider. But halfway to her lips she finds Itzhak giving her the first real soul-glancing look she's ever seen from him. She only has time to begin to take in those fantastic eyes when he looks away. There's a faintest catch of her breath that she exhales with a quiet sigh that's not altogether unpleasant. "I'm so glad, Itzhak. I hope he can be the same with you." Implied: you deserve it. No hiding things. Though Harper is the last one to project that particular thought in any fashion.

Itzhak is going to show her something. A pixieish, ready smile teases at her lips. She's game. The bottle is tossed upward and floats there in the air as if gravity had just 'let go' in that sun-dappled space. She stares upward at it, lips parted. A lighthearted murmur of laughter warms her throat and she looks down. "But your tools," she argues before she can't help but look back up again. "I think I envy that bottle." For the play in the air, not the fingers and lips and drinking!

"Here's the thing about the Song," Itzhak says, his voice low and thrumming and private, his eyes on the bottle. Sunlight winks through the glass, sparkles off the curved surface. "We didn't get it so we could never sing it. Do They come sniffin' around, just dying to take chunks out of us? Yeah. Of course they do. They taken some pretty good ones out of me." His face tenses, his lip curls in a snarl of defiance. Not at Harper. Like his earlier smirk, this is for something he alone sees, he alone knows. The bottle begins to spin, on its lateral axis, flashing. "But God gave this gift to me and I'm gonna use it for all I'm fuckin' worth."

The bottle stops, halting entirely, holding perfectly still. Then it sinks to the blanket and sets itself gently upright. When Itzhak lets it go, withdrawing his power, it's easily tangible. He is strong. So very, very strong. Now he looks at Harper, meeting her eyes for a long, unbroken moment. Then he smiles at her, all arrogance, all confidence. "Everybody tells me I'm a showoff."

Itzhak enlightens Harper about the Song. She listens as if he were sharing the secrets of the universe. She lowers the bottle she forgot to drink from and props it between her magenta denim-clad knees, all while watching the acrobatics of the glass bottle hovering high above their heads. "I never looked at it that way," she admits. It's his. To use as he wants. He's not afraid of no stinkin' Dark Men. The man tips the bottle into a spin and Harper blows a puff of air upward as if she could do anything at all about the magic above her head. But that's Harper. She can't resist playing and more than she's able to resist a dare. Fortunately for her, not many people are aware of the latter weakness. "God?" She flicks a glance down at him and back up into the air. "You believe in God, Itzhak?" Her tone is easy and quiet. Nothing critical or insinuative.

He stops the spin and lowers the bottle slowly back down to the blanket which settles Harper's gaze fully on Itzhak once again. "You are," she agrees playfully. "Such an incredible show-off. You put the 'show' in show-off, Rosy. And you play." He really plays. That might be confirmation of something she saw in him from that first night at the bar with Joseph. "I can't do that at all. Sometimes I can play inside another person's head." He saw that. He joined in. "And sometimes I can --" A pause, a sidelong look at Itzhak as if Harper is ready for him to laugh her off the blanket. "-- zap werewolves like I was Dr. Frankenstein." That's mixing up a couple of lores, but who's counting?