Difference between revisions of "Logs:Awkward first meetings"

Greenhouse, High Reaches Weyr

Greenhouse, High Reaches Weyr A rustic and unadorned vestibule leads in from hewn spiral steps to a refitted ledge, enclosed by limestone pillars. Sturdy wooden framework captures elongated glass panes, tilted to absorb the most light during the day. The wash of heat from within, lush and humid, persists even into the dead of winter; the air is heady with the scent of fresh-turned soil and various flora. Long, deep troughs of soil line the inner stone wall, planted with an assortment of broad, leafy tropicals - practical and decorative alike. Fruit and vegetable baskets hang from rafters, optimizing space, tempting in reach with a perpetually ripening harvest. A series of stone shelving is devoted to flourishing, aromatic herbs and new green shoots; even the softest touch releases a burst of savory scent from tender leaves. Amidst the greenery, a handful of wooden benches have been scattered, making this a temptingly warm and secluded spot to sit. Shuttered vents serve to regulate humidity and heat given off from a small hot spring recessed into an alcove at the back; a secondary pool with cooler waters siphons off to provide a constant, fresh supply for irrigation. A small potting station nearby is cluttered with watering cans and gardening tools of various uses, with a wooden bin for composting materials tucked into strategic niches around the cavern.

Here in the greenhouse, when most people have knocked off work for a bit of lunch, there's a woman who is taking advantage of the hour to do some exploring in relative privacy. Everything about her is a little out of place here, or perhaps, in some ways, right at home. In the the warm humidity, she appears comfortable her downy, pale pink sweater and there's bit of color in her pale cheek that might suggest a sunnier, warmer climate than the one outside. The mincing, meandering steps she takes might be as much because she's poking about a strange place as because she doesn't want extra dirt on her little heeled boots. She's apparently touched something, though, and rather than wipe smudged hands on her pale, tan trousers, her slim fingers work together trying to flick off the offending matter. And meanwhile, she just pokes around, all eyes, ambling slowly down the aisle between troughs of soil and growing things.

The beastly keeper of High Reaches' plant-life gives savage grunts as he lowers himself carefully down to the floor below, arms trembling and elbows near the point of buckling under the strain. In a moment he thought private, he's taken to getting the physical exercise that pruning away dead leaves doesn't offer, and is in the midst of dripping sweat and gritting teeth when an unfamiliar pair of shoes comes around the corner and into his vision, their owner a temporary mystery to him. "H-hi!" The greeting is given at the peak of his modified push-up, his palms centered to the floor directly under his chest as opposed to out at his sides. "W-welcome to..." he doesn't get to complete that sentence, his arms finally giving, and his shirtless torso falling with a wet meaty smacking sound to the floor. "NNgfh.. the greenhouse." He uses what little strength he has to roll over onto his back, chest heaving with labored breaths. Exhausted but smiling, he finally looks up at his visitor, upside-down of course. "I'm Bones"

There isn't just her turn around the corner, there's also her little gasp that comes when the general sound of someone moving (which is not so alarming) turns into that savage grunting. And so her steps are even more tentative just before she comes into view, or just before the wild looking man comes into view, depending on perspective. And her eyes are even wider for all the drippy sweat and growly appearance of the man on the floor in front of her. "H-hi..." She stutters the greeting a bit too. "I'm sorry, I didn't realize.. I didn't mean to..." She's starting to back-pedal when he drops to the ground and gets out the rest of his welcome. The girl's head tips, curiosity taking over some of the flustered confusion that was on her face just a second ago. It takes a second or two for all the half-formed questions to coalesce into some kind of statement. "I'm Vienne. You're..." She lets out a guileless breathy laugh that brightens her tone. "Working out." Like, duh, what else do people do in greenhouses?

More interested in catching his breath for the first few moments, Bones gives Vienne ample time to collect her thoughts as he sucks in heavy breaths and slows his heart. "Don't tell nobody. I'm supposed to be working! Hehe." With a grunt only slightly less rough than the ones she had heard moments before, he manages to push himself up to his feet with his back towards the girl, long black dreads soaking up some of his back sweat. "So is his an awkward enough first meetin' for ya yet? Ha!" He reaches up to one of the low rafters, where hanging amongst the planters of fruit, his jacket had been hung before he set out for self-improvement. The tattered sleeveless thing is thrown on quick, finally turning to face her after it's secured on his torso.

"I think so," Vienne reflects, eyes narrowed in some appearence of real consideration. "Though there wasn't any kind of slapstick catastrophe." A quick gesture of her flighty hands describes a scene of things bouncing around and crashing. "I didn't trample a plant, break a ladder and end up crushing you under a massive rolling flower pot so... I don't know. I think we could have taken it a little further." And no, it doesn't matter that he wasn't actually facing her during her explosion-miming. Her smile bright and nervously playful when he turns, she aims a thumb over her shoulder, steps mincing in reverse. "Should I come back in again?" She pauses though, for a more serious question: "Why here? Why not somewhere cooler and..." Less sweaty? She doesn't say it. And she seems to be making actual effort not to pay attention to how damp he is while she casually keeps a good distance between them just in case some of that sweat (not to mention the aroma?) should leap off him and attach itself to her.

Grin only grows wider as she lays out in further detail how much more awkward things could have gone, nearly full Cheshire-cat status by the time she's done. He's still breathing a bit hard, though it's measured enough that he can manage it through his nose now. "Pfft. Anywhere else, and icicles start to hang off me before I'm done, ha!" A hand drifts to the back of his neck, tossing out some of the hair that he had inadvertently trapped between his jacket and bare back. "I ain't a local. My blood ain't thick enough for the cold 'round here for too long." Now, with his breath finally getting still, he gives her an obvious up-and-down. "I don't think I caught yer name?"

Icicles. Vienne's eyebrows creep a little higher as she no doubt starts to picture all that wild hairiness collecting sweaty ice out in the world. She lets out another light, nervous laugh, just the sort for awkward meetings. Maybe it's the mental image, maybe it's that great big grin he wears - either way, her hands go back to their flicky ministrations to remove what is surely invisible dirt from her fingers. At least there's no extra shying away when he looks her over. Instead, she stands her ground and turns her head to give him a three-quarter glance at her pale cheek. "Vienne," she says again. Maybe it's too short to register, because she certainly doesn't linger over the introduction. Rather, what she wonders is: "Where... are you from?"

Finally breaking free of his self-imposed stillness, he glances to the left and right to try and find where it was he had left his towel. He did get a towel right? "I'm uhh... from..." slightly distracted with his search, he glances up to spot the towel he had chosen, hanging from a different rafter. It's tugged down and wiped over his arms and neck as he answers her question. "I'm from a little bit of everywhere." Towel is ruffled in through his black hair, and then tossed back over a rafter to dry out. "But I was born in Saluda, if you wanna get technical on me. Little nothin' place on Nerat."

Vienne doesn't seem to have any need to get technical, but she does smile a bit more easily, emphatically. "Oh, Nerat is beautiful." And just as his eyes took their search around the space, so now do the bluerider's, looking about at all the plants and greenery -- things that might be familiar to a person from the Nerat region. "I guess it makes sense, then, that you'd work in a greenhouse." And even though it's probably not the foremost thing that could be wrong with that statement, she tosses in a quick disclaimer. "...If you work here. Not just work -out- here." Her smile turns a little more impish, which she wipes away almost as soon as it shows up. "I really didn't mean to interrupt. I mean, you didn't have to stop on my account. I don't even know if I'm supposed to be in here." Her shoulders hunch, half way between some well-admonished cowering and an oh-well shrug. Oops. And still her fingers twist together in front of her waist.

"Nah nah, I work here." Long arms stretch up to rest on one of the rafters that plants are normally hung from, wrists bearing some of his weight as he leans forwards towards the small bluerider. "Yeesh, ease your sphincter a little, Vi. Y'aint interruptin' nothin', and y'aint in some kinda restricted area, neither." His hands grasp at the rafter up above him, and suddenly his calves are tucked up against the back of his thighs, leaving him hanging for a few seconds before he continues. "Trust me, I'm harmless!" Just as he declares it, he starts to lift himself swiftly upwards, beginning a set of impressively fast pull ups. At least he isn't grunting for these. Yet.

This time when Vienne's eyebrows reach upward, there's a particularly wide and shocked smile that goes with it. "My sphincter?" she laughs with an extra helping of amused dismay. "Well now this -is- an awkward first meeting. I really didn't think that my -sphincter- was going to come up so soon. Or, you know, at all." At least she's laughing. No doubt feeling extra dwarfed with all his rafter-reaching, when he starts his sudden set of pull ups, she lets out another surprised gasp and tucks in close to some overgrown fronds, like she needs the protection. "Warn me for before you do that!" comes out before she can make any sense of it. It might all sound more serious if she wasn't smiling, and since she is, the tone is far more teasing. "Is this what you do all day? Working here? You check to see that the rafters are sturdy?" As it turns out that she doesn't actually need to hide in a bush, her arms cross and she steps back into the aisle. Her smile twists a bit more wryly. "Now why you need me to trust you?"

Bones answers her in short bursts, control over his breathing taking precedent over maintaining a perfectly even speaking tone. "Hey, of all the- mmph, body parts I could be bringin' up. Your butthole ain't the worst." If it were any other man, that comment might have been construed as flirtatious, but he was so matter-of-fact about it that it didn't seem his intention. "And actually I... do just about everything. Water the... hanging plants. Prune the dead leaves and..." He had done a swift ten to fifteen, but the last few are slower, arms once again forced to tremble under his own weight. He drops back down to his feet. "... plant new seeds?" He's breathing hard again, but smiles as he takes in the breaths through open mouth. "Alright, then don't trust me. I'm a dangerous maniac who's gonna follow you home tonight. OOoooo scary! Hehe!"

"You're right," she agrees sarcastically, eyes going up and down with him as he heaves himself at the rafter over and over. "I am very sensitive about my toes." Insert an exaggerated, overly-anxious expression here. "I'm so glad you didn't bring them up. Buttholes, however? Totally normal conversation topic for strangers." It wouldn't seem as if Vienne's assuming any whiff of flirtation here, rather something more like she's a long-suffering sister in this relationship and talking about buttholes is just the latest in a long line of gross things she's had to put up with. She ignores his dangerous-maniac comments and instead, checks again, "So it's okay that I wander around here? It -is- nice to get warm. I'm a little afraid about what it'll be like when winter gets here." Just thinking about it has her hands taking hold of her sweater and pulling it tighter around her waist. "And your talk about icicles did not help."

The big man laughs as toes and buttholes are compared, cocking his head to the side as he gives her another up and down, this time his eyes lingering on her fidgeting fingertips. "Yeah, honestly the place doesn't have any real official closin' time, so you can tuck in here to get warm whenever you like. Just don't fuck with the plants and you're always welcome eh?" Towel is tugged down again, not quite working up the same level of sweat as before, but giving another quick rubdown before the thing is tossed over his shoulders, the ends dangling down in front of his chest. "Quit bein' such a worrier, will ya?" Eyes make their way back up to her face. "Just grab yourself a good coat." He took a heavy sigh, his smile finally fading a little at a grim realization. He had to go back to work. "Hey, you're okay unsupervised aint'cha? I gotta go grab some supplies from the stores before it gets dark. We got these new purple ridgeback thornflowers comin' in that need some extra special soil. They're really kickass, I wanna get to plantin' em tonight."

He can give her a once over. Vienne's eyes are lifted toward the rafter, now used only for structural purposes and not exercise equipment. "Can I come and work out here, too? Or is that just for employees?" Given that she appears to have the bare minimum amount of muscle and with some hinted aversion to sweatiness, not to mention the quirked smile, this is probably a facetious query. She meets his eyes when he looks back at her face, curiosity in her gaze as she's probably seeing his eyes for the first time, and not just Hair and Sweat. But she gives him a no-worries grin. "The stores are at the top of my to-do list," she assures him. "As soon as I find them." And since he's ready to get back to work, she lets her weight shift backward, ready to move on as well. "I think I'm good. Warm now. It was nice to meet you... Bones." She did catch his name, and the oddness of it, which is surely not so odd to him, hitches her grin a bit to one side.

Comments

Azaylia (Dragonshy) left a comment on Fri, 18 Jan 2013 23:32:12 GMT.

...Bones, don't talk about ladies' sphincters. I FEEL LIKE I SHOULDN'T HAVE TO SAY THIS. >_