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 Posted: Wed Mar 12, 2025 4:34 pm
Not often did Halia linger at her job after she clocked out, but today was an exception. It had been a long day, and a nice hot chai sounded like the perfect way to unwind before the long walk home. She sat at one of the tables, staring out the window as she waited for the steaming drink to cool, letting her mind wander. As the door opened, she looked up on reflex, having to stop herself from greeting the customer like she was still on shift.
Halia's brows knitted together as she looked at the customer, feeling an odd tug of familiarity. She knew this person somehow, but just couldn't quite place him yet. The more she watched him, however, it finally clicked into place. "....Preston?" Her voice was soft, almost hesitant as she spoke his name. Was this really the same person she knew all those years ago? Back when she was covered in scratches and bruises all the time, hiding behind her grandfathers legs?
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Posted: Thu Apr 03, 2025 12:48 pm
Preston was, generally speaking, a creature of habit. Routines helped him to think more clearly, to keep himself and his life relatively organized when they so often felt right on the verge of falling into chaos. Not the capital-C Chaos of the Negaverse, which helped him feel more in control of everything, but the lower-case c chaos that mostly made everything around him feel threatening and hostile. Going to a new café—or new to Preston personally, as the case was—didn’t generally fall under the heading of Things He Did Normally.
But he’d seen the Bentley—indisputably seen it, Brother Horace’s pristine white Bentley—out and about in town. Again. For the seventh time this week. In a moment of panic, desperate to get away from the Bentley and from the chance that he would need to actually enforce his order of protection, he darted into the first building whose door he could reach. He realized only after doing so that it was a café, which at least allowed him to relax a little. There was a crowd in here and that meant Brother Horace couldn’t safely try anything. Too many witnesses, too many people who could have noticed him violating the order of protection and backed Preston up about it.
Hearing his name startled him, made Preston tense up—but his nerves eased up when he looked in the direction of whoever had said his name. He blinked at the girl with the chai for a moment, tilting his head and wondering how she knew his name. One of the easiest possible explanations—that maybe she was a DCU undergrad—didn’t square with how she’d addressed him. Most of Dr. Sturm’s students preferred not to address Preston at all, and very rarely used his name when they did. But abruptly, like the lightning from so many of the weird storms of late, the answer struck him—
“……Halia?”
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Posted: Thu Apr 03, 2025 5:59 pm
Halia chewed her lip as she watched him look her over, though her eyes lit up like fireworks as he recognized her finally. She stood from her table and walked over to him to greet him properly, smiling brightly. It had been years since she had seen him last, and she was delighted that he remembered her. "It is you! I....was worried I misspoke after I called your name." Despite the sheepish smile, she seemed a thousand times more vibrant than when she had last seen him. Back then, even as a child, there had been deep, dark circles under her eyes, her skin covered in cuts and bruises and scrapes, and she was far scrawnier then as well. Compared to then, she had positively flourished, looking far more healthy, far less underweight and, aside from a colorful bandaid on the back of her hand, far less injured. "Would you like to join me? I was just taking time to relax after work before walking home." She gestured at the table she had gotten up from, where her cup, coat, and bag still sat.
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Posted: Fri Jul 11, 2025 12:32 am
Halia’s offer did briefly give Preston pause. Having a girlfriend was……well, not entirely new? He and Lucette had been seeing each other long enough that Preston had worked on learning how to make the tiny pastries that Lucette loved so much. He’d made them for her for Christmas, and thanks to his Negaverse salary, he could afford to make semi-regular gifts out of his experiments for her. She’d enchanted him so much that he wanted to bring her into the Negaverse, if that was something that Lucette also wanted.
But relative to a life previously defined by romantic solitude, having a girlfriend was new enough to Preston that he wasn’t entirely clear on the protocol about some things—such as something kind of date-adjacent happening with someone else? Even granted that Halia was an old friend from back home, were there unwritten rules about this that Preston would trip himself over if he accepted the offer? Even if Lucette didn’t think that said unwritten rules existed, would someone else try to claim friendship with her just to tell her that they did?
The café was busy, though, and Preston didn’t have long to think. Gesturing at the line, he nodded. “I’ll—just a minute, okay? I’ll be back?”
It didn’t seem right to take up table space during a busy time such as this without getting a drink. Even returning to Halia’s table with the biggest, blackest coffee that the café would sell him—not a particularly expensive drink, Preston realized—felt less disrespectful to the staff here than just……sitting there with nothing. Plus, waiting in the line gave him a few minutes to take a few deep breaths, to steady his nerves. Ground himself in the reality of the situation: he was in a coffee-shop, surrounded by people, and his so-called brother wouldn’t dare try anything under the circumstances. The order of protection existed to prevent that. So many potential witnesses was as dangerous to him as denying a child medical care.
With a soft sigh, Preston sat down opposite Halia and drank in the sight of her more fully. “…You look well,” he told her, because she did, the vibrant bandaid on her hand notwithstanding. “I do hope that goes deeper than mere appearances.… That you really have been well, I mean?”
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