Difference between revisions of "Logs:Ceiling Caprine"

"You're not coming off a flight loss, right?" is the greeting from his couch. That Lya is settled there, her coat still on and her bag still in her lap means she's probably ready to skiddadle if that's the case. But given that there hasn't been a green flight locally, she probably feels the chances are slimmer.

"No," answers H'vier as though he expects nothing less than Lycinea randomly showing up in his weyr without notice. "What's up?" Even if they're going to be friends, he expects her to be here for a reason and not just for the pleasure of his company.

The roll of Lya's shoulders says otherwise. "I just thought I'd see if you were free tonight. Friends hang out, right?" There's a beat. "I'm supposed to be helping rearrange shelves in the stores and I don't want to." So here she is. This will surely help her bid for apprenticing if she ever gets 'round to it.

"I suppose I'll take it, being a more attractive option than rearranging shelves in stores." H'vier makes some gesture for her to make herself comfortable as he sets down a folder of papers on the table and then moves along to change into something less flight leather-y.

"Wing reports?" She inquires idly of the folders as she stands to remove her own coat, predictably not looking in the bronzerider's direction. Now that Lya knows she's staying, she can afford to get more comfortable. She leaves her coat on the back of the couch and moves to the rug in front of the hearth to build up the fire before sitting back on her rear.

"Aye," is his absent answer for the paperwork. H'vier is quick about changing, and modest enough not to talk to her or otherwise try to draw her attention for the duration. When he's finished, the bronzerider goes to the hearth to put on a kettle for tea rather than pouring himself a drink of something more alcoholic. He generally pays no mind to Lya's presence, though, except to ask, "Have you figured out how you'll apprentice yet?"

She sighs, ceasing the digging she'd begun in her bag to look up at him, "Not sure I want to still. Apprenticing is a lot of work. I'm not terrible in the kitchen, really, when I'm trying. After the storm they almost liked me there because I worked hard and knew what was going on. I think that's why they don't want me there all the time now. Now they know I know, before there was plausible deniability." Woe is her. Lya dips her head to squint into the depths of her bag. "So, I've been thinking, do you still want to buy me things? I mean, besides apprenticeships." Because he so wanted to do that, right?

H'vier listens while he hangs the kettle just so and still as he turns to fetch his paperwork and settle on the couch with it. It's not until her last question that he looks up at her directly, thoughtful. "What sorts of things?

"Clothes." It's a pretty typical answer. He's bought her stuff, of course, but hardly the makings of a full wardrobe, even when one doesn't need different outfits for each day of the month. "The things you've bought me are so much nicer than what I can find in the stores when I'm allowed to take things, which is back to never since my attitude still 'needs improving.'" Go figure. Lya pulls out from her bag finally a sock with eyes, nose and hair. She tosses it at the bronzerider. "I made this for your kids. I'm not sure you'd ever condescend to use it, but they might like it."

The sock steals most of his attention for several moments. H'vier picks it up to look at it curiously, even lifts it to his nose to take a sniff of it. "Is it clean? I suppose one of them might like it, yes." He sets it aside, looking at it for another moment before saying, "Thank you." Finally, "I'd be willing to buy you clothes, sure. Are you sure you want to risk people noticing you?"

Lya rolls her eyes at the first question before crawling toward the couch to pick up the sock from where he set it aside and to pull it onto her arm to show him how it works, just in case he's never seen a sock puppet before. It's through the puppet that the answer comes, her voice pitched a little squeakier and higher than usual, "Wearing raggy patched clothes that don't match get you noticed. Sensible work clothes shouldn't draw too much of an eye." Though she did wear makeup to the last gather, didn't she?

There's a roll of H'vier's eyes, too, when she starts talking through the puppet. "Raggy, patched clothes make a man less likely to want what's underneath," is his own point, even if it didn't hold entirely true even with him. But he knows her as more than just a raggy, patched wearing weirdo, so that might be his excuse. Her sparkling personality.

So sparkling. The puppet keeps talking, "If Lya dresses like a boy, it might be fine." Except for the Original Problem. "Lya's tired of the way people look at her for dressing all raggy and patchy." That's why they look at the weirdo with the sock puppet strangely, right?

"Your breasts are too big to pull off being a boy." H'vier isn't shy about addressing these issues. "And what about your hair?" He'll just ignore the fact that she's talking to him through a sock puppet. He's had some practice ignoring these sorts of weird communication things with his own children.

She sighs and pulls the sock off her arm, looking up at H'vier plaintively. "I could chop my hair off. Make myself thoroughly ugly. But what's the point? Z'riah says things get complicated and they never get uncomplicated, so I have to learn to deal with complicated sometime, don't I? I'm almost eighteen. It might as well be now." Lya doesn't look happy about it though. "You could teach me how to knee men in the balls, I'm sure. And I have the running away down pat." There's a grin for the latter, as if there's some sort of private joke there.

"I don't think chopping your hair off would make you ugly. Maybe if you shaved it. But the upkeep is a pain in the ass." H'vier eyes the sock once more before his attention shifts to the kettle that's just started to whistle. He rises up to his feet, setting the reports aside, to tend to that while he says, "Being an adult is complicated. So you should be good for a few more turns yet. You should have your friend teach you to knee men in the balls. He'd probably enjoy you practicing on him."

She makes a face and then sighs, turning to crawl back to the rug rather than make answer. Obviously, Lya doesn't want to shave her head. "I'm an adult." She lets her brows lower a little as she looks up at him. "And by the way it's weird for you to call Farideh a child since you've slept with her, and weird for you to call me a child since you wanted to," past tense. She reaches for her bag to do it up again now that its occupant has been freed and left in the dubious hands of H'vier. "I'm just not a very grown up adult yet," she qualifies with another sigh and a pucker of her lips into a displeased duck.

"That's what you wanted, isn't it? For me to view neither of you as attractive women." Or not. Whatever. They're children now! When H'vier's tea is finished brewing, he returns to his seat on the couch, saying, "There's tea," on his way. He's not going to get it for her.

"I wanted you not to come onto me." Lya might say more, but she leaves it at that. "Are the only people you don't come onto children?" Perhaps she should simply be grateful for that? But that whole idea is probably the reason behind the gross face she's making. She glances to the kettle and then shifts onto her knees to move to get it without having to actually stand up (too much work).

Since this is very likely the case, H'vier doesn't bother answering her question. He doesn't even watch her get tea. He'll just return to reading wing reports while he sips quietly at his own. He's very exciting company when he's being good.

Lya sips her tea. She's equally thrilling, but then she doesn't feel the need to fill the empty space of the weyr with her voice. Once the tea is emptied, she switches from sitting on the rug staring at the flames to lying on the rug, on her back, staring at the ceiling. It's probably not a need to fill the space that has her asking, "Does the ceiling look funny to you?" Followed by a little bit of a giggle. And then more.

At some point, reading his reports is probably not actually a very productive use of his time anymore. Instead, H'vier shifts on the couch, leaning into the corner with his legs drawn up comfortably. He watches Lya more than the flames, but he does squint up at the ceiling when she mentions it. "Funny how?"

"Like a caprine, with horns," Lya shifts enough to make them with her fingers on her head, and smile broadly at him. "I don't know that I've ever seen a ceiling caprine before."

"Certainly not one with horns," says H'vier as though a ceiling caprine all on its own would be perfectly reasonable. But one with horns? That's just weird, Lya.

"Pfft. What do you know anyway. You act all smart and then get all dumb and then call me a child," as if any of those things really go in some kind of order. "I'm not a child," Lya insists, though only sort of lazily. She only sees horned captives in ceiling stone.

"Why does it bother you that I call you a child anyway, hmm?" H'vier might be curious about this, but his voice holds little inflection. Or at least maybe not enough for high Lya to really pick up on. "And what is it about you that makes you not a child?"

"Because I haven't been a child since I was six and was sent here." Lya sighs a little as she considers the ceiling caprine and his horns (or nothing at all). "And maybe not before that, only I don't really remember before that very much. Just some little things. You might live with other littles in the caverns, but you're not little anymore. Not when there's no one to love you or protect you or even care if you had a good day or not." She rolls from her back onto her side, curling herself not quite into a ball, but certainly up a little.

"Why were you sent here?" H'vier even sounds legitimately curious about that, not just asking to be nosy. He's not exactly unaffected by the tea, though perhaps not to the same extent as the slighter girl. "You have people that care now."

"Do I? Farideh only cares when I do what she wants. Otherwise we fight. Like our kittens." Lya sighs, though she uncurls just a little. "Z'riah.... I don't know. I help him when he's proddy. Helped him when he didn't have anyone else to help him. But I don't know that that means he cares about me. Vesra's never cared," her boss in the kitchens. "I suppose Oliwer cares, but he doesn't really know me." She reaches up a hand to chew at her fingernails distractedly. "I don't really know." She finally answers the other question. "They said it would be better if I was with my own kind. But I don't even know what that means. Maybe my parents were dragonriders. Or maybe they just meant I'm a bastard and there's a lot of bastards in the Weyr. Like V'ros." Who gets a duck face, if briefly.

"What do you mean helped him when he's proddy?" Even highish H'vier doesn't like the sound of that. He doesn't comment on Oliwer. Or Farideh. Or Vesra. "I wouldn't buy you things if I didn't care about you." He's just not very good at acting like it, maybe. "Like me?" For some reason that makes him laugh to himself.

"He likes to cuddle," Lya sighs out in a frustrated sort of way. Maybe she can't sort just why she's telling H'vier this private detail. "He didn't have anyone the first time she rose here. So I told him I would if he would take me places I wanted to go since that hasn't worked out with anyone else, really." Not that she wants to go many places. "Are you?" She asks, rolling onto her stomach and pushing herself half way up to crane her neck and look at him. "A bastard, too?" Maybe that means something to me. "And I thought you only really cared about what's under my top and between my legs." Those are challenging eyebrows, even if her gaze is a little glassy.

H'vier doesn't seem entirely convinced about Z'riah, but he doesn't ask anymore questions about it. Maybe he doesn't want to know, given his agreement with G'laer not to break his face. "Aye. My mother was a whore. I don't know who my father was, but she always insisted he was a bronzerider." Given that he's since impressed a bronze, it's good enough for him. "I'm very interested in what's under your top and between your legs. But that doesn't mean I wouldn't break anyone," else, "that hurt you."

"So how does that work?" Lya focuses in this, pushing up onto her knees fully and then sitting back on her feet. "You're allowed to hurt me but you'd break someone else who tried?" She raises her eyebrows. Does he see the issue with the logic?

"I don't want to hurt you, Lya," H'vier tells her as though he's talking about someone else entirely. "I lose my head sometimes. And the people I care about get in the way." It might not be something he's proud of, but it's probably easier to compartmentalize when he's had less tea.

"Why do you have to lose your head with me though? It's not like I even did anything. I didn't wiggle my breasts in front of you or lift my skirt and say, 'uh-uh-uh!'" As if H'vier was some child to be scolded away from a tantalizing forbidden something. Lya looks imploringly at him. "Do you have so much trouble just being someone's friend? Why do you push people away?" Because she's noticed, and currently seems to have no filter. At all.

"We're friends now," says H'vier as if he thinks she doesn't really expect him to answer any of the rest of that. It's also possible that he just doesn't have a very good answer for any of it.

That makes her crawl back to the couch and lean up so she can plant her hands on the outside of his thigh, looking up at him with her stubborn face (it's less effective because Lya also looks like something shiny could make her lose focus entirely). "That doesn't answer any of my questions." And she wants those answers, yes she does.

"Do you really want me thinking about what's under your clothes right now, Lya?" Because that's basically what she's asking him to do. At least for the first question. H'vier glances at his tea, but finishes off his mug before setting it aside. "I only trust people I own. It makes having real friendships difficult."

"Noooo," Lya sighs, letting her fingers curl under into fists on his leg, though it doesn't seem a violent gesture, just something that happens. "I don't want you thinking about what's under my clothes ever," for clarity. "I wanted to know why you have to lose your head with me." She considers his answer then, her head tilting and messy braid falling over her shoulder to dangle. "People you own. Like... that you know secrets about? Or that... I don't... " She doesn't follow. Puzzled, that's what she is. "How do you own someone?"

"Some of them are people I have dirt on. Some of them are people I pay off. Some of them are people who work for me." He could probably add women who he's possessive of, but he'd probably rather not bring that up even while he's sort of high. Which was maybe not his best decision tonight, but at least H'vier is relaxed.

"Huh," Lya says, puckering her lips in a way that's not altogether pleased. She sits back on her heels and looks at him another moment, and then leans back, and falls back on a hand so she can look at the ceiling again.

The bronzerider turns his head to track her movement, but once she's settled, it's only another few moments before his gaze moves past her to watch the fire. "I have no intention of owning you, Lya." In case it needs to be said.

"Huh?" The sound is perplexed. The caprine had her full attention. Lya looks at H'vier surprised. "Of course not, that's just silly. I don't have any secrets worth knowing," that she knows of, anyway, "you can buy me things or not," but certainly that has never seemed to make her feel she owed him anything, "and I only sometimes work for you." With the gossip and all.

H'vier murmurs some agreeable sound but doesn't seem to have anything else worthwhile to say. He might just be lost in his drug-induced thoughts, but at least he hasn't tried to touch her or anything. That's always a plus.

Did he count on her not trying to touch him? Because not overly long later, Lya is sitting on the couch next to him and the seeking to stretch out, cat-like and sprawling.

It's hard to tell if the tea makes it harder or easier for H'vier to take this in stride. Maybe neither. He did promise not to touch her. But he doesn't try to keep her from touching him, though if she ends up in the right position, and she doesn't freak out, he might end up putting an arm around her.

Lya isn't in a frame of mind to freak out just now, nor for some hours hence, by which time after a mutter of "Caprines don't belong on the ceiling, there's nothing for them to eat there," which is really infallible logic, she's fallen asleep.

At some point H'vier will probably try to move Lya to his bed and cover her up in the comfy coziness. He, however, will return to his couch with a blanket and doze off the effects of the tea without company.