arsgoetia | [Pre-Game 16] New York, The Time In-Between

November, 2013
"I have to live there sometimes, too," Tristan had said, as he lounged on the couch with a laptop on his lap, Fon and Kieran on either side, safe from wandering hands only because Tristan's first true love, the iBook, was taking up most of his attention. "So it's fine if it's a nice place, right?"

"Your idea of nice is enough to give me an inferiority complex and Maddy a panic attack," Kieran had responded dryly. "Try to be . . . reasonable."

The smile Tristan had given him left nobody any reason to believe that he would compromise in the slightest.

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December, 2013
So, the townhouse was very nice. But the decor was warm and dark instead of being the big white and open airy concepts that Tristan liked—something a little more earthy and comforting, with walls of bookshelves, not a lot of windows, and a small backyard with a flower garden and a fish pond and a high wrought iron fence.

The walls were stone and meticulously covered with ivy, and Tristan kept trying to bring home alarming lawn ornaments until one of the animatronic reindeer made Maddy shriek inexplicably loud, and then they were just quietly no longer there and nobody asked about them anymore.

Tristan had the Master bedroom on the top floor. He left shortly before Christmas on 'business,' as it were, with not a lot more in terms of details, and probably nobody asked anything more. His room remained locked. He hung a sign on the door that said "Bluebeard's Room."

There were several spare rooms in the basement—just in case, of course—one of which unofficially became Maddy's room (though both he and Itachi stayed at the school), then a little more officially as he started to spend weekends there more often than not. Robin, Fon, and Kieran each had their own rooms on the upper floor, though Tristan made sure to arrange for an unreasonably comfortable den and study, complete with entertainment center, so the main floor of course saw most of the action.

And of course, there was the espresso machine.

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January, 2014
Christmas was more-or-less uneventful. Warm, but quiet. Even Kieran took a bit of a break from studying (a little bit . . .); Maddy and Robin had time off school, and Itachi didn't have to work. Even Maddy's anxiety, which had been increasing lately, seemed to unwind a little over the holidays.

It was the first weekend of the Winter semester where everything started to get topsy-turvy again. Namely, Maddy showed up for that weekend's planned pizza-and-movie-trilogies (it was original Star Wars this week) with . . . well.

A distinctly uninvited guest.