sanctuaryrpg | They don't make jukeboxes like they used to...

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Current Location: D-Level
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They don't make jukeboxes like they used to...

To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To reach the unreachable staaaaaaaaaar....

From the kitchen that she'd designated as the focal point for de and reconstruction, Sabine barked, "Mimi!" and then choked out a laugh that was half a sob. Man of La Mancha had always been one of Byron's favorite musicals.

"What? You can't build without music and you don't have a boombox!"

"No one has a boombox anymore. Don't make me regret manifesting you." She shook a finger at the showgirl ghost who was lounging on the back of the couch like it was a baby grand.

Unrepentant, Mimi went on singing,

To right the unrightable wrong
To love pure and chaste from afar
To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star.

"I love that line, don't you?" Mimi teased not just Sabine but Scott, even though he was out of earshot.

"Zip it, or it's Tsura's turn," Sabine snapped, cringing at the reference to their chaste, but far less than pure love.

"What was that?" Scott emerged from the next-door apartment through the hole he'd put between them to make testing the walls for support beams easier. There were two more like it in the filthy foursquare they'd chosen to turn into a community area -- for the time being.

"Nothing. Mimi was just asking your favorite musical so she could sing for you. Isn't that right, Mimi?" Mind-to-ghost she sent #Don't even contradict me.# Forbidding it with power was the simplest of her abilities, but Sabine didn't abridge her free will.

Mimi just laughed and laughed, sticking to Impossible Dream until the next person joined them Then she started in on songs from Annie:

It's a hard knock life for us!
It's a hard knock life for us!

Sighing, Sabine shot Scott and the newcomer an apologetic look then shrugged helplessly. "It's not like she's wrong."

[ooc: Gathering post! Sabine and Scott are clearing out a group of four apartments to start with to make a communal kitchen, dining, sitting area on level D. Mimi is audible and vaguely visible as a holographic figure of a showgirl with an indistinct face. She won't interact unless you ping me and ask for her. Will, Molly, Marie, Jack, Sebastian, Nick, Porthos, Maggie, all got a message inviting them for potluck and construction. Anyone else can have heard from them or have seen the 'excuse our dust' sign and stop by. Feel free; all are welcome. Tag Sabine with a note in the subject line; all other tags are top levels.]

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Marie had gotten a note. An invitation, which had sent her into spiraling about when to show up, what to wear (well that was easy), and did she had to bring something?

Living life alone was so much easier. But here she was, lingering around the Excuse our dust sign in the outfit she had left for class for, not that long ago. Less than a week ago? Was she seriously going to lounge around until someone found her?

She grabbed the chance when she spotted Sabine. "I'm better at deconstruction?" Ordinary people started with a greeting? "I mean, hi! Hi, Sabine!"

Nick snorted out a laugh as he made his way to the communal area, back in his standard issue scrubs for the construction needed. He saw a vague shape next to Sabine and frowned slightly, his mind already thinking Shade but not about to ask it to reveal itself.

"Yeah, well, so long as no one expects me to turn my hair red and badly permed, it's all good. I hear you need some construction work in here?"

Molly had the invite arrive with a gentle tone on the tablet she'd been given and she'd gone mostly out of curiosity. She wasn't about to cook anything. No one deserved to eat her cooking.

She'd arrived to find Sabine and a guy she was introduced to as Scott working on demolishing the walls between two larger apartments. Both were run down, but Molly could see the potential in the space.

Humming along with the ghost girl singing show tunes, Molly rolled up her sleeves and got to work.

Will hadn't expected this exact scene when he'd received his invitation, though he wasn't sure what he'd been imagining instead. The only person he could see when he entered the space at first was Mimi, whom Will remembered from their meeting a few days before. Mimi's face shimmered as Will smiled at her, the gesture returned, but she didn't pause in her singing.

He could hear something that sounded like construction, and he assumed Sabine had someone helping her knock down walls to make one large space out of several smaller ones. He wasn't sure how big this gathering was intended to be, but he hoped there wouldn't be too many people. He'd finally purchased some different clothes (the ones he'd gotten back from quarantine were his pajamas) and his glasses had appeared (though Will had no idea how) in one of the drawers in his room a few days ago, so he felt less out of place than he had. Still, he didn't know many people on the station, and he could feel anxiety starting to mount.

"Hello?" he called out, the bottle of wine he'd purchased in the marketplace in hand. Like his better half, Will wasn't known for his cooking; an offering of alcohol was always a better bet where potlucks were concerned.

Wandering out of the first room Will had entered, he headed toward the sound of demolition, looking for Sabine or anyone else who had already arrived. He supposed it shouldn't have surprised him that the first person he saw was Molly, golden hair knotted at the nape of her neck while she worked. He stood back and watched her for a few minutes, aware that she could sense him in the room, able to read the admiration and attraction from him without turning to face him.

When she did finally turn around, he smiled and made his way across the room to meet her.

"Don't mind me," he said, his grin gaining a teasingly lustful edge. "I'm just adding 'construction worker' to my list of sexy fantasies about you."

Sabine laughed at Marie's so transparent thought processes and welcomed her with a genuine smile. "Ciao, bella." She set down the rag she'd been using to clean out the storage units and beckoned Marie to join her. "You sound like starting with a beer for a job well done is going to be better than finishing one. Lucky for you, Scott and I pooled resources to get some. They're in the mini-fridge there."

"Ciao, bello," Sabine called to Nick in greeting.

He'd been polite and even kind when first they met, and that had been enough to justify getting to know him better. Especially since Scott had also met him, and Scott needed more people in his life here--for however long it would last--than she.

"Apologies for the music. The jukebox appears to be busted--" In fact, nonexistent. "--and no one seems to have turned up with a boombox, so we're stuck with showtunes for the moment. Eventually she'll tire of them."

"Will!" Sabine's response to his tentative greeting was all but gleeful. Her mind was still a mess, but with rest, and Scott present (and the bond she'd suspected Jean of suppressing beginning to grow in) to stabilize her, she was capable of much greater coherence and brighter emotions.

For his sake, however, as she approached, she quieted her smile to one more on the tender side than the brilliant wattage his presence called forth in her. As she had wth Scott, she'd taken to Will immediately and it informed every aspect of her being when she was with him. "Ciao, caro. I'm glad you've come. Tell me, how are you?"

Sabine had seen Molly arrive (and been alerted by Corwin who appreciated the blonde beauty rather more politely than Mimi did every attractive male within several hundred yards or her), but she'd been busy just then, wiping down the cooking surfaces so that she could put together a hearty but easy-to-eat meal from what she'd been able to acquire without expending her entire allowance for the month.

Now that she had a moment, she rinsed her hands and dried them, then grabbed two beers from the mini-fridge. After opening them, she went over to Molly with the open beer held out. "Thanks for showing up. We can definitely use the help."

"Caio, bella," Nick returned. "And unfortunately, my iPhone hasn't turned up yet, so no luck there for music. Luckly, I have a soft spot for showtunes, so by all means. I might end up singing along, and for that I apologize in advance. My singing voice is rather like a bucket dragged across concrete."

"As long as your songs aren't pointed, semi-coded messages, you're already one better than Mimi."

Who shook her tail-feathered skirt and hastened over at the mention of her name. Sabine invested a little of her power in the ghost so that she could appear more fully, although it did nothing to resolve her face. Still, she was a reasonably clear figure in silvery-blue with purpleish detail, more like a hologram than a person of substance.

"Nick, Mimi. Mimi, Nick," Sabine said and then her mouth curved in a playful little smile. "I'm not exactly human and she's not human any more."

She made a short bow to show how she appreciated both the compliment and the presence of beer. There was no clue how long her clothes would last here, but at least they made her feel slightly less alien and alienated. "Was I that obvious?"

"I'm not looking forward to having to find a job, at all. So I won't get more than one beer in squandering your edits. Credits, credits I mean. Beer just connects me to university, I guess."

Molly dropped the piece of something similar to plasterboard on the junk pile and brushed some dust off her face to make herself a little more presentable, probably only succeeding in spreading it around. Will had been watching her for a while, his attraction flowing over their connection and making her flushed and wishing they were alone right now.

She managed to school her immediate desire to kiss the life out of him and poked her tongue out at him instead, giving him a haughty look. "Hey, stop ogling the workforce and come get dirty with the rest of us." She said, laughter in her voice as she gave up the haughtiness and stepped into him, kissing him softly in greeting. "Hi."

Taking the bottle gratefully, Molly smiled and puffed a strand of hair out of her face.

"No problem. I will not inflict my cooking on you guys, but I can knock through walls with the best of them." Molly said, murmuring a purification charm over her bottle before she sipped it. It was surprisingly good. "Oh god...where did you find this? All I get from my little replicator thing is that weird soup-mush stuff and water."

Porthos isn't entirely sure about this place yet, but he's not one to turn down kindness. When he gets the invitation, he heads over to find a very strange figure. Ducking around it, he tries not to pay too much attention as he seeks out Sabine, grateful for the excuse to get out of his own head.

"So, is this a normal thing for you?" he wonders, once he's found the woman.

"And I was never human according to some," Nick returned with an easy smile. "Nice to meet you, Mimi. Sorry about the not being human anymore thing if you are. If you're happy the way you are, then cheers."

He looked at Sabine. "You're a medium?"

Scott wandered out in her wake, watching the other man with interest. Anyone who'd made that much of a connection to Sabine so quickly was probably worth getting to know. "Welcome to our humble abode," he said lightly.

Will opened his mouth to respond to Sabine's question, but pulled up short when the other man approached. He had an earnest face and an open expression, held himself with confidence and strength. There was an edge to him that Will had a difficult time reading, but he didn't feel threatened in the slightest. On the contrary, the guy had a protective sort of presence about him, a quality that made Will qualify him generically as a good guy.

"I like what you've done with the place," Will quipped, attempting to use humor to cover some of his twitchy nervousness.

"Will Graham," he said then, offering his hand in introduction. As he did, he turned to Sabine, adding, "Thank you for the invitation, Sabine."

"Will, this is Scott Summers. Scott's a--" The pause before she supplied "--dear friend from home" was too slight to alert most people to any particular emphasis, but Will wasn't most people. To the contrary, she'd met almost no one as perceptive ever, and she fully expected he would understand she meant to nuance 'friend' and request a certain extension of Will's compassion for her to Scott.

Of course, Scott could introduce himself and of course, he didn't require defending, from Will of all people, but in her way, Sabine was as protective of the people in her life (especially the men) as Dani. It said more about her feelings for Scott than anything else that she'd chosen to make the introduction for him--and Scott certainly knew her well enough to realize it, but she brushed her hand over his forearm affectionately for emphasis.

After, she took a step toward Will and leaned up to brush the most delicate of Continental kisses of greeting across his cheek, and took the opportunity to murmur, "You needn't stay long, caro, if the gathering becomes too much for you. I mean to invite you and Molly for dinner as soon as I've tracked down anything worth making an intimate meal of."

"This?" Sabine asked in French with a warm laugh that softened into a kind smile. "Do you mean the construction, or my aim to feed the masses?" Still smiling, she reached out to put a hand to his forearm, a touch of greeting, nothing more. "The former, not so much. The latter... I admit to cooking when I'm out of sorts, particularly if I have neither a camera nor paint and canvas." After a moment's pause and with a brightness in her eyes that suggested playfulness, "Hello to you to Porthos. I'm very glad you decided to come."

Will caught the intention in Sabine's pause immediately, not a falter in her speech but rather a hint to him, an unspoken nod to the conversation she and Will had shared the day they'd met. This man was important to Sabine, though not the soulmate Sabine had mentioned, the one with whom she shared a bond like the one Will and Molly possessed. Still, the body language was clear: Scott and Sabine were close, possibly even more attached to each other than either was allowing themselves to recognize.

The kiss, after the introduction, was unexpected but Will didn't back away as was his instinct whenever anyone who wasn't Molly got close to him. Instead he felt a calm descend as Sabine leaned close and barely brushed her lips against his cheek, the true reason coming as she whispered reassurance and understanding into his ear. He nodded minutely when she drew away, their eyes meeting and Will's comprehension and gratitude passing between them.

"It's nice to meet you, Scott," Will said once he'd broken eye contact with Sabine. "A dear friend of Sabine's is definitely someone I'm glad to meet."

Mimi flashed a ghostly smile and scooted toward Nick with a hand out. Sabine appeared only to give her a stern look, but actually sent a firm #Don't. Best behavior, please.# It wasn't an order, but a polite request, and Mimi acknowledged it with a nod and returned to her post on the couch back.

"She says hello, but I wouldn't let her say it with her fingers and your derriere, which is why she's gone back to the couch," Sabine explained and only then let out a quiet sigh. "Among other things, yes, I have the gifts of a medium. Although I really dislike channeling them. The risk of possession for me isn't as high as it would be for others, but a particularly malevolent spirit might manage it, and then we'd all be fucked until I could fight my way back."

Sabine noticed the murmur and wondered at it but took no offense. After a decade of working through countless issues with spirits from hundreds of cultures, she tended to accept anything that wasn't outright threatening in stride. Instead, she had a sip of her own beer--not her personal preference, but it tended to be less risky than wine or spirits in a new place.

"Ghosts make surprisingly good scouts. Especially ghosts that were gourmands in their lifetime." Sabine laughed and manifested Sal, who of all of her spirits had the most pronounced features owing to his powerful sense of selfhood. He swept a bow that was no less graceful for the portliness of his figure and dipped his head. "He says he's charmed to meet you. Molly, meet Sal."

Ducking her head to avoid laughing outright, Sabine nevertheless grinned and her eyes brimmed with laughter. "You remind me of someone very dear." For reasons that made absolutely no sense, she supposed. Marie and Clarice were almost nothing alike, but they tended to provoke the same mirth in her. "For you, I would happily squander the credits for another beer. After you put in a bit of work, of course." She winked conspiratorially, since the truth was, she'd deny Marie almost nothing. For if she reminded her of Clarice, she also reminded her of her dear cousine and already she missed Em desperately.

Marie wriggled her eyebrows in a way that had taken a lot of time to learn, but always delivered. "It can be a little bit though, right? I mean, if I would have understood that you meant work work I wouldn't have shown up in my favorite outfit. My only not-space-nurse outfit."

She wasn't sure she wanted to be someone's reminder. She had always rather been someone's someone. It was easy to ignore.

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They don't make jukeboxes like they used to...

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