[SE] can you see me through the ashes and the smoke?

Mateo

champagne, cocaine, gasoline
and most things in between

"Ah, I... sorry." Slouching in his seat and rubbing at the back of his neck, Mateo's gaze drops to the steam curling up from his mug. He might be thoroughly useless at romantic advice in this case, as it happens, but at least he can hold his hands up and admit it. "I have never had anything like what you have with Jack. I did not mean to be insensitive to you." Smiling weakly as she says she wants to go to bed, the botansit nods and drags his hand through the back of his curls to rub at his eyes now.

"I will probably join you," he agrees, about to pick up his tea to follow her when the knock sounds at the door. Raising an eyebrow as if to ask whether Flora wants to open it just in case it's Jack (maybe he knocks when he's been a dickhead, who knew?), he nevertheless nods as she shrugs it away. "I will tell them the Kaito-Taliesin household is closed for the evening," he says, sweeping into the entranceway to do just that.

Only it's not a stranger or a sorry looking captain on the doorstep, but their fucking father, and Mateo seems to bristle and grow awkward immediately. "Flora is just on her way to bed," he explains in a low voice. "She is not up to visitors right now, sorry."

I roam the city in a shopping cart
a pack of Camels and a smoke alarm