You're my first, my last, my everything

[Maya Patel]

Maya twisted her body slightly, glancing dramatically at Mason over her left shoulder. "Come on, can't a lady have her secrets?" She then shrugged. "Samuel's cool. He likes scotch and cricket, and best of all, he likes leaving me alone when I'm fed up with everyone. Sound bloke, really. Plus, we've never been in direct competition for a job, so there's less of that whole... 'I'd slit your throat at any second' subtext to our conversations." Maya was exaggerating, but she was sure Mason had picked up on her aggressive, competitive side in the short time they'd known each other -- she didn't exactly hide it.

Maya followed Mason's gaze, looking around for Jenny. "Ugh, Ben gets out of everything. There's always a match or an interview or a contest... and he uses the whole 'time of the month' excuse more than a thirteen year old schoolgirl who doesn't want to play hockey," she commented, being ironically nonchalant about her brother's serious problem, the way they usually approached Ben's lycanthropy. Anyway, Maya appreciated the opportunity to hang out with Jenny one-on-one: it had taken ages for Ben to finally introduce them, but she really liked her. She never had a ton of female friends herself, so she hoped they'd be able to bond.

Maya looked down suddenly. "Sorry, I lied. Those three were actually my second, third and fourth choices. You were just the easiest to get a hold of. Just think, I could have been Berlusconi's inappropriately young fiancée..." she sighed wistfully before grinning at Mason.

She shook her head at his question about children and laughed just a little too hard and for too long at the absurdity of her raising a child. "Noooo no no no no. Not interested. I'll be a bad influence aunt someday, at the most. You?"

[Radhika Kumar]

Radhika grabbed two more glasses of champagne and handed one to David, nodding knowingly. Alcohol may not be able to stop them from saying awkward things -- in fact, it would probably only make their tendencies worse -- but at least they'd be less bothered about it. "Oh my God. David! Competing drag queens are everyone's thing. Jai showed me how to download the most recent season because all children are like criminal masterminds at pirating stuff, I guess. You should totally come watch it sometime." She watched her son babble at his best friend from across the room and beamed slightly. "Awwww David, you're great though! Uh, sorry, I didn't mean to 'aww' at you just then, like you're a kicked puppy or something," she clarified quickly, "I'm probably a little too cocky sometimes. I grew up idolizing big, bold, brassy divas. As a chubby kid with glasses who didn't look like anyone else, acting like I was hot shit got me through. So yeah, I hope I instilled some of that in Jai. Or maybe he learned it from Beyoncé. I'm honestly fine with either."

"Okay, wow, you don't know how much that means to me." Radhika put her hand to her heart dramatically and closed her eyes, treating his promise with the utmost sincerity. "Your mum can come along! Look, I don't want to jump the gun or anything, but I think there's serious reality show potential in this premise and we should probably start working on our catchphrases."

[Mason Mitchell]

Mason held her gaze purposefully for some quiet moments before he couldn’t take it anymore and had to let out a smirky grin, “Well if yeh put it like that, I like the sound of that so yeah, maybe a lady can have some secrets,” he conceded. Listening without an agenda then, he glanced over at the man in question as Maya talked of Samuel. “Scotch and cricket, eh? Sounds like a winner. The ‘not a competitor’ thing is probably just a nice additional perk, right?” he asked lightly before his tone turned serious and, faux-prim in manner, he continued, “Has anyone ever told you, Miss Patel, that you’re almost… alarmingly competitive?”

“I don’t see her. Damn how hard can it be to spot her in a crowd?” he grumbled, ceasing the search for Jenny to instead look down at her as she talked of her brother, “Yeah, Ben does seem to have a lot of excuses ready an’ waiting. I don’t think he’d bail on Jens unnecessarily though, right? I mean he’s like sickeningly into her so I’m guessing he wouldn’t say no unless he really needed to? Whatever, I don’t know their life,” he waved his hand as though to brush this thought away carelessly. Despite living in the same house as Ben, and having been friends with him for the best part of two decades, there were some areas of his best friend’s life that just didn’t cross over – his relationship with Jenny was one of them. Mason wasn’t entirely sure whether that was just because they were a bit ‘household of individuals in a state of arrested development’ whilst Jenny was a tad more together and mature and so probably didn’t find a household of rowdy drinking and partying, using the tiniest thing as an excuse for all-out celebration, as cool as they all did.

Mason let out a gasp, clutching a hand to his chest as though his heart had been pierced by her words, “You’re horrible, Maya, that really hurts, really, truly! What yer basically saying is ‘you were the only one who answered my call’… gee, now I really do feel like the prettiest gerl at the party,” he grumbled, fixing her with an unimpressed, hurt expression. “Yeah but then you’d’ve had to put up with Berlusconi slobbering all over yeh, could yeh handle that every day?” he questioned disbelievingly.

“So that’s a no?” he asked jokingly for clarification that really wasn’t required before grinning widely, “Nah, I get it, I’m down with that kind of thing. I reckon like I’ll be a bad excuse of an ‘uncle’ to someone’s kid someday, giving them cigarettes and alcohol at parties, introducing them to explicit music when they’re too young, living an utterly vagrant lifestyle that they look up and aspire to but their parents despise me for making seem appealing to their offspring.” Shrugging casually he was oddly candid at the next, “I wanted the whole ‘happy marriage to college sweetheart, terraced house and 2.5 kids’ deal when I was like 20, otherwise known as when I was too young to really know what I wanted out of life at all. And that went tits up. I was also smoking weed at the time though… so I dunno maybe that had more to do with my delusions?” he suggested with a confused shake of his head as if truly confused as to how he could once have thought that and yet now live the life he did. Looking away from her he suddenly spotted a familiar redhead, “Heyyyy we have contact! Jen!” he called over to the girl, smiling with a ‘come here’ gesture as she turned to him and started making her way through the crowd over to them both.

[Maya Patel]

"Don't get me wrong, I'm glad Ben and Jen aren't joined at the hip all the time; it would only make them more insufferable," Maya commented lightly before taking a small sip from her glass. She got the sense that her brother craved his personal space and alone time the same way she did, but he'd been able to balance that need with a function, committed relationship in a way that Maya was never able to manage.

"Aww, there there." Maya tilted her head to the side and patted Mason consolingly on the arm. "I couldn't do it every day for the rest of my life, but long enough to get a good story to sell to someone, definitely," she joked.

Her eyes widened suddenly. "Wait, you wanted that? When you were twenty? You. Mason Mitchell. At twenty!" she kept repeating, as if that would make this new knowledge make any more sense to her. "Well, that would have been pretty stupid. Bullet dodged there, well done you." She shook her head. "Look, nothing against people who want all that, I guess, but there are too many people on this planet to begin with... I'm not exactly desperate to having another one running around with my face on it..." she trailed off, lowering her voice so only Mason could hear her. "Oh hey Jenny! Over here!"

[Mason Mitchell]

((ooc: So this is late. But I've been watching New Girl so felt like replying to Maya.))

"Nah, I get yeh. It's like... they're really sweet and adorable and all that bollocks when they're together but they have their own lives and interests and shit too, they're not just one half of a couple," Mason commented, waving his hand round vaguely as though this explained his thoughts somehow. "Which is, y'know, really grand for them. Good luck to 'em, I say."

He side-eyed her as she jokingly patted him on the arm in the manner of consoling him about something, "No, not 'there, there', yeh've really hurt my feelings, Maya Patel, I might have to go into the toilets and cry one sad lonely tear about this whole event. And here I was thinking yeh didn't find my company wholly disgusting..." he trailed off as though he were unable to continue for fear of choking on his emotion and being unable to speak any more.

"Aye," the man shrugged, shoving his free hand casually into his trouser pocket and downing some of his drink with the other whilst Maya seemed freaked out by his little admission. "I was twenty, darl, I didn't have a fucking clue what I wanted, aside from Caitlin. Like I said, maybe it was the weed talking. Or maybe I just felt like in her eyes I wasn't a fuck-up as everyone else reckoned I was, like, she'd stuck by me and tolerated all my crap. And that made me want to put a ring on it, I guess?" he supposed in a baffled tone, shaking his head. "I dunno. Who knows? I dunno your excuse but I'm a little jaded about the whole marriage deal after what happened with her. In an ideal world, me and Cait might've been happily married for 10 years now, with a little 'un too. She wouldn't be a successful folk artist if we had, I don't think, I reckon I would've dragged her down with me. And of course, I wouldn't be here with you now. Funny how things work out."

"And that was way too emotionally candid. Ugh, I kind of hate myself for thinking that, even hypothetically," Mason scrunched up his face in a show of disgust, then adding to the appracohing Jenny, "This disgusted face isn't for you, love, me and Maya were discussing a... well a frankly horrific prospect. Marriage. You and Ben setting the date soon, Little J?" he asked the redhead conversationally, unable to help himself as she blushed deeply in spite of herself at his suggestion.

[Maya Patel]

(ooc: Ooh, how are you liking New Girl? My love for that show/those characters kind of snuck up on me tbh)

"She's a folk artist? Like... pipes and fiddles? Is that still a thing?" she wondered, a little dismissively. Like her brother, she grew up on a steady musical diet of 90's hip-hop. Mostly, she was trying to distract herself from the steadily creeping feeling that Mason had... feelings towards her that she hadn't entirely anticipated. He was good for a laugh and fun to flirt with, and under normal circumstances she'd have no problem casually hooking up with him and seeing what happened, but... he was her brother's best mate. She couldn't screw this up and bail like she normally did. What if she'd been leading him on? Fuck. Way to go, Maya. She waved her free hand around suddenly. "Anyway, you're just reinforcing my point, love. Twenty-year-old stoners are meant to focus on noble pursuits like building the world's tallest tower of pizza boxes, not stupid, irresponsible things like marriage and children."

"By the way, I don't have an excuse. No heartbreak, no messed-up childhood, no Freudian justification. Sorry to disappoint. I'm just... not into it," she asserted. She then nodded in greeting to Jenny. "Come on, no way Ben's asked yet. Need us to light a fire under his skinny ass?" Maya asked, raising her eyebrows at Jenny.

[Mason Mitchell]

((ooc: Sorry he's a bit bleh! I'll post with Jenny asap! Re: New Girl, I’ve not seen it in any kind of chronological order – hello student TV habits – but I really love it! Definitely need to catch up with it properly and to where you guys in the US are with it!))

Mason scrunched up his face in confusion, “I know, aye? I dunno, like apparently folk is still a thing people listen to. Who knew?” he shrugged it off, “She’s a fiddle player. Darl I can’t tell yeh the amount of very mature ‘fiddling’ jokes I got in there while we were together.” He couldn’t help but chuckle heartily then; she did have a rather valid point. “Maybe my head is just so fucked up that when it has sanity an’ weed-less clarity that’s actually the time it thinks ‘bout constructing towers of pizza boxes? And the whole marriage and kids bollocks is firmly pushed aside.”

He eyed her suspiciously, “There’s really nothing behind it? Really?” He always sort of assumed people would have had to have something bad happen to them to reject the ‘norm’ of marriage and children. Colour him surprised! He shrugged it off though, turning his attention to Jenny because it was so much more fun to needle Jenny about proposals, “I can slip in some really subtle hints, like, about it if you want, Jens? Like playing Single Ladies over and over until he gets the point through the medium of Beyonce?” he offered as though it were an entirely serious suggestion.