Logs:Might be a Thing
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| RL Date: 8 July, 2015 |
| Who: Dee, Ka'ge |
| Involves: Fort Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| What: Two weyrlings try very hard to follow at least some of the rules, while being a little less ridiculous than before. |
| Where: Hot Springs, Fort Weyr |
| When: Day 1, Month 3, Turn 38 (Interval 10) |
| Mentions: Ead/Mentions, Lilah/Mentions |
| OOC Notes: NSFW? Maybe? Suggestive content. |
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| Dee's trip to the baths was supposed to be a quick one. Sleep is something she gets little of and it shows in the darkness around her eyes. Sleep is something she should be getting now, but there's something about being in the baths at an hour when few are frequenting it and in one of those few blissful moments when Taeliyth is asleep that has kept her lingering in one of the more out of the way pools. The water warms everything but the tops of her shoulders and her head rests on a pillow made of a spare towel, short shock of hair wet. She's dimmed the glows nearby, not to 'dangerous' just to 'tranquil.' Hopefully none will find them to be the former instead. It's hard to see him with the dimmed glows around her, and even harder to hear him with the way he walks always so quietly. Ka'ge didn't follow Dee here, not this time. This late-hour is the time he always uses to bathe, even if the enforced day-light schedule has contributed to the exhaustion of everything pre-Impression and now everything post- which has surely brought some similar amount of extra shadowing under his eyes too that couldn't fully be blamed on his hood. A hood which he doesn't have on right now. A towel is draped over his shoulders; shoulders far more toned than one would expect of the too-skinny and younger-than-he-looks boy. Scars inscribe him, a dark tattoo courses over the right side of his back. The freshest wound of his chest being that of the dragonet's claws that mauled him, now pinkened with a month of healing to close its edges into a youthful scar. When he sees that the singular person in one of the out of the way pools is Dee, his stride stops. A hesitation, but only for a moment. Zymadiath sleeps soundly; he needed that second to check that as well. If the first thing Dee notices is the feeling of the water changing, moving when someone gets in the hot pool with her, that'd be what he prefers. Dee is obliging. It means that when dark lashes flutter, she sees that flesh first as just flesh, just another person slipping into the pool. It means the blush explodes into existence on her cheeks, delayed; it comes when her eyes find his face and the obvious realization that it's his body, which seems to matter. It has her jarring from her near meditative state, her body jumping slightly in her surprise. "Kael," is breathed with some measure of relief, but touched with something more akin to hurt and even the little uplift at the end doesn't quite make it a question. If there's pink to his own face, fortunately shadowed by their surroundings, perhaps it could be blamed on the flush from the heat of the pool. Perhaps. Ka'ge watches the surface of the water first, a long drawn-out moment from his place on the other side of the pool. When she says his name, though, his blue-green eyes travel over to her, over what can be seen of her, and eventually up to meet her gaze. He's ill-at-ease, tense, but with the plethora of things that could be causing that in this instant make that expected enough. "If you want me to go, I'll find another one." Pool, he must mean. His words are slow, a sense of treading carefully to them but otherwise unreadable. The fact her gold had warned him away before, as deserved as it was, brings about a less cocky and confident greeting, if that's what this is considered. "I--" starts the automatic answer that never comes. Dee falls silent looking at him. Her eyes close for a moment, two, on three, she murmurs. "I don't want to wake Taeliyth," but it doesn't sound like a 'go away', but rather a 'wait'. Her breathing slows and with effort her shoulder relax before she opens her eyes again. Then she moves in the water. It's not to invade his space, but to become closer to where they might speak without being overheard. "You didn't come," is observation and question. "I thought you didn't want to even before that, so why say you would--?" Her eyes search his face, seeking answers, always lingering briefly on his mouth and then far less briefly on his eyes. "My m-" The truth doesn't quite make it, switched to "I was called away." which is still truth, but more convoluted. His tone doesn't reach apologetic in its hushed state, but rather a level of annoyance at the fact. It certainly doesn't seem to be directed at her as his gaze drops away briefly. Only very briefly, for he struggles not to watch her. "Away?" The word puzzles her. "But we're weyrlings." The implication? Weyrlings don't go away. Dee catches herself leaning toward him and forces herself to turn toward the wall and stare that way, arms folding over top of it, her torso pressed to the stone, blemishless skin showing from shoulder blade up. Movement of water next to her suggests he's moving too, but the first confirmation of that comes with the feeling of his hand on her back between her shoulderblades. Gloveless, his hands are still a little rough, calloused from work somewhere doing something. Just a touch, light for him which may be a little more firm than he means. "Not far. Just to talk to someone. But I couldn't say no." Ka'ge tries to explain himself- when has he ever tried to do that?- his eyes studying her turned away expression or whatever he can see of it. The touch brings startled eyes turning on Ka'ge as Dee's head twists to look at him. The confusion in her expression is obvious. Possibly some part is just the matter of 'going away,' but it's so much more. Her voice catches when she says, "I thought you didn't want me to touch you." Dee doesn't shift enough to change position, just to be able to see him, her back still largely to him, though her front isn't quite so completely against the wall as it was moments before. Her startled reaction though probably more her words make him remove his hand, though Ka'ge's attention doesn't leave her. "I meant a long time ago, Dee. When we first met, just like you and Taeliyth are just now meeting." Not the same kind of touching, though he doesn't feel the need to explain that. "What I want and what I should have are two very different things." The edges of his lips turn just barely into what wants to be his smug grin, but it fails to achieve much, dissolving back into that attempt-at-level expression of before. "Oh," just that one sound of processing. Dee's eyes don't leave him. She turns, but so carefully, avoiding all the mishaps or brushes that would have her touching him, sinking further into the water as she does so the water can hide that which might be distracting. "What-" she starts to ask him before her eyes close again and she sighs. "We should talk," is said as if they weren't already. For all that he's known for skirting around rules, it's been rage-inducing to have to try so hard to follow this one particular one. Ka'ge leans back against the stone of the pools to close his own eyes, to take a breath. To think cold thoughts in this very warm place. But despite that, the arm nearest her is placed behind her on the stone as if it could be across her shoulders. And it might get there. And if she put her head back, it'd be on his arm. And yet there's those milimeters of space between her, as if that is the check in the box of following weyrlinghood rules. And as if it's the only thing they need to talk about : "If you still need them put back, I'll do it. I would have already, I just-" Got called away. The anger that touches that is stark and clear against the hushed tones of before. But it's controlled, dampened with another breath. "I have to do something, Kael," Dee sighs, setting her head back and freezing as soon as her neck touches boy-arm. It's a hitched breath later that has her going on as if she weren't touching him (does it count if neither of them acknowledges touching?), "Ead's said from the beginning that we're going to get caught. It was just a matter of when. So when we get caught now, now I'm to work with the very people who would be most angry. The very people who could have done it themselves and didn't. And my own dragon doesn't trust me to take care of the Weyr we will be weyrwomen for." It's fucked up says her tone. Her expression is pained and her eyes are closed. "I don't know what to do. I don't know what I need. Lilah asked what I needed. I thought maybe I could ask her for something that could help us. A weyr? So we'd have a private place to stash things altogether from the different places before we put things back?" She's really asking because she's wholly out of her depth here. "Only Ead told you that you'd get caught?" Kael's brow raises, the concept bringing with it a broader amusement. It's instinct when that single question draws an exasperated sigh from her. An exasperated sigh that also sees her turning into him, setting her forehead to his shoulder. Then, of course, as rational rule-abiding thought catches up in time to war with instincts that would take her further, Dee stills, tense, but not backing away. She'll give him the hard job~ The punishment for standing her up that night is escalating, but perhaps Ka'ge's a glutton for punishment (that's not a hard thing to assume), since the arm he'd had behind her falls to her shoulders to wrap around them and keep her there. In order to balance this, he can't look at her anymore, laying his head back, closing his eyes. A deep breath heaves his chest. And there's a tension about him that can't wholly be blamed on the situation. "And if you just.. used that favor to come clean with her?" a beat, a consideration of what he would use a private weyr for before he checks his 'mind' back into a more appropriate place, "Moving things around to another spot.. Just another chance to fuck it up more." Dee shifts very slightly from where she stilled, redistributing weight. "I could. I wanted to, then. When we talked." The girl's pregnant pause is enough of a 'but' without her saying the word. "Taeliyth says no one will ever trust us again." She turns her head now, enough to press her cheek against his shoulder. "I hate this." She might mean how things worked out for the Hoods, for the people who might even now be starving in Lux's Ledge. Only the hand that comes to rest against his side under the water probably indicates the clearly important relationship dynamics and rules that govern the teenage weyrlings. "...Damnit." He breathes, though the sound is more like a low growl as he feels her hand brush on his side. He keeps that contact for a few moments more. If it could be more difficult for him to talk business than right now, it would be in the middle of what he wants to be doing right now. Ka'ge eventually, slowly pulls away from Dee, the hot waters swirling around them as he reclaims his arm and gives them a few inches. The teen remains not-far though, eyes closed and quiet, letting her continue. "If Taeliyth and Zymadiath..." Dee starts, but sighs and shrugs her shoulders, shifting back in the water to give them just a little more space. "But they would. We can figure that out later." She tells herself as much as him. "You're so much more complicated than--" Than something that makes her shake her head and make a frustrated sound. "I can tell Lilah." This is not fact but tremulous assertion, and not related to her last blurt: "I didn't mean to want you this way. I'm sorry." For the complication it presents. "You are a problem." Ka'ge states, though if she's watching his expression that sarcastic one is back but with a very personal softening to it. "And I hated you for it." This, a bit more serious, as he leans back again, sinking slightly. He waits after that, a couple of moments that could make any sensitive one take it a bit too hard. "Now I hate that I can't have you." One could count this as a rare moment of full-truth. A heavy sigh, a re-focus of his thoughts. "Don't go alone." Seems as he is, for once, volunteering himself. It's good that he followed the first and second with the third. Dee's tender heart reacts to each, expression growing sadder with each comment. The last leaves her more confused than hurt, though. One hand reaches up to wetly wipe across her face and then push through her short hair. "Well, if things don't go horribly awry, we can see if you still want me in however many months until we're allowed to want each other." Her smile lacks in strength of resolve, but who'd be happy about having to wait where teenage hormones are concerned? "I can go alone," she answers that advice with a purse of her lips. "Zymadiath said it to Taeliyth, that we're valuable. I don't want anyone else to risk it. If they send me away... at least no one else will be implicated." The loss of his grin and a length of silence follows her positive outlook. If only time was the only gate to that. "I think you mean," his tone carries that smug sarcasm, "if you haven't picked a few other bronze suitors by then." Ka'ge's bluegreen gaze slides to her in a sidelong look, a tease that plays off the meaner thing(s) he's said before. "Zymadiath wouldn't forgive me if I let you go alone." The lie, even if may be partially true, is obvious given his continued smirk. "You are valuable. But that doesn't mean you should jump to potential doom by yourself. Besides, invite me or I'll just show up. Either way." "Kael, cut it out." Dee makes a face at him, her nose wrinked along with dipped brows and pursed lips. "I'm not that kind of girl. Sex has always just been sex. And I've never had suitors. I don't want or need suitors. I didn't even--" She gives him a frustrated look like, as much as he blames her, she does him also. "Taeliyth can go with me." She tries as a counter. "Then I won't be alone. It'll be a bonding experience." And don't they need those? Of course, this is more tactical a suggestion than Dee is likely capable of which is a sure sign that someone is awake now. "What good would it do to have you there, anyway? Why would I risk letting them send you away?" The laugh that follows that is not his typical chuckle, but a deeper laugh. A full one. While not loud enough to draw attention from afar, the lightness of his expression that comes with it is a relieving sort of relaxing thing. When the laughter subsides, the odd teen raises a dripping hand from under the water to reach over to touch her shortly cropped hair if she'd allow where it's cut at the back of her neck. Ka'ge appears briefly thoughtful, though the humor creates lines at the corners of his eyes, and he revokes his touch after a moment. "That doesn't count, she's already with you." A pause, a lopsided shrug against the stone. "You really don't want me there?" Curious yet still humored in the face of something that should be causing him at least some hint of problem or concern, but isn't. Dee never rejects his touch. She almost always should, but the rejection never seems to come. She's not laughing, but nor does she seem to be taking any offense at his laughter, though she probably isn't clear about what's so funny as her look is both stubborn and perplexed. "If I can protect you by your not being there, then no, I don't want you there. You made me promise about your involvement, Kael, I'm not about to out you now. Do you want to be punished?" She searches his face for more answers than what his words might reveal. She doesn't wait long enough for a real one before asking, "Or do you just want to be with me when I need you?" "I never made you promise to not let me out myself." Ka'ge answers easily. "You asked me to be there for you." That day, when he was so busy pushing her away. He doesn't, however, answer on her topic of wanting to be punished. "But if you really don't want me there-" A shrug is given to that, a lazy one as if he could care less. Granted, with what he said earlier, that may mean something else. "I like it." Is said eventually, likely in regards to her hair despite its disjointed notation as an afterthought. "Kael," Dee's tone is reprimanding. It evidently warrants her shifting to reach for his face with both of her wet hands, to cup his cheeks if he'll let her. "I want you safe." Her eyes search his face, obviously willing him to understand that that's important to her. "Where I need you is with me. If I get in trouble and they send me away, come after me," it's a reckless request, brash and poorly thought out. "I need you to be safe." And Jem and Ead and Paislie and-- but it sounds more personal if she leaves it there, doesn't it? "Safe." Ka'ge echoes, the lines on his face showing inappropriate amusement at the sentiment. "That'd be easier." He admits to her request, his gaze studying her perhaps to see how much she actually means that. "You just want to protect everyone." He calls her on it, "You can't do everything alone, but I won't fight you." Dee puffs out her cheeks in a show of exasperation. "Yes, but-" because how can she argue that? She can't really, and saying more only gets them into complicated emotions that aren't clear anyway. She just lets the air out in admission of defeat. "You know, we don't have to avoid each other." She says it testingly. "Just because we can't..." do things they're not doing now, "Doesn't mean that we couldn't spend some time together." She lifts her brows questioningly: would he like to? "It'd be easier." To avoid each other, that is. He repeats himself, though of course on an entirely different subject, still teasing in the way he says it. "I don't have.." He sighs, thinking on his wording, "the best self-control." Has this not been torture enough? "But-" He looks away from her, still with a small grin, turning in the water as if with intention to get out, but he pauses with his chest against the stone, sculpted arms laying over the edge as he takes his towel to rub his face with it. "I suppose so." A beat, "with caution." The last added cryptically, muffled slightly under the towel. Dee's self-control might easily be called into question as her fingertips find the tattoo and the scars, the tracery soft and delicate. At least, she's standing the full arm's length from him, but her hazel eyes follow her fingers. "In public?" The girl suggests, her words delayed by being the least of her focus. "We could work on lessons together. Weyrwoman Lilah said I start training at month three and am to focus on being a weyrling until then." Ka'ge doesn't move as she does, letting her explore the ink that crafts in depictions of runes and daggers that travels down almost the entirety of the right side of his back from his shoulder. "Aye." He says with a seriousness to it, "Do me a favor though." He pauses, his uneasiness not from her touch, "If-" The teen stops himself, reconsidering and then shrugging it off with a grin, "Forget it. When you start weyrwoman training, do you know how much time that takes?" Besides a lot, obviously. "What?" Dee wants to know of the favor. Kael will learn eventually that he shouldn't start a sentence without giving even odds that he'll be expected to finish it whether he wishes to or not. The girl's hand presses flatly to his tattoo, fingers spreading. "I don't." Then just as if it were part of the natural flow of conversation. "How long have you had this?" The tattoo. Ka'ge rests his head on his arms and the towel, watching her. Her question earns a grin that leans much towards a smirk, but he does what she should know he would, and skips the questions he chooses not to answer, "A long time." Seems insufficient, "It was a.. graduation gift." Seems better, though he doesn't seem of course willing to add onto that. "Should get you to bed. It's getting late." Even if.. nothing about him looks like he wants to leave. "Mm, shouldn't get me to bed for some months yet," Dee's absent-minded rejoinder is laced with dry humor. "What kind of graduation?" is curious, innocently so. "What's the favor?" is not as fingers change the kind of touch she's indulging in at the furthest south point. It's the kind of touch that threatens to make all of this so much harder if she doesn't get an answer. "I'm already on Taeliyth's bad side. If she wakes up and you aren't there, I'll never be allowed near your cot." Not in it, specifically. Ka'ge's comment itself is worded in such a way as to test if Dee knows what happened the subsequent nights prior to this. And distract her, potentially? The touch on his back had been almost soothing, even his shoulders seemed less tense as she played. And the increased pressure doesn't go unnoticed. "What're you gonna do?" He goads lightly, still avoiding. "I'm on Taeliyth's bad side," is Dee's rueful comment. "I'm sure she has a good side somewhere. Maybe when all the mess is sorted, I'll find my way to it." Her hand slides around his hip, fingers settling gingerly over the sloping crest of the bone. Daring but not too much. "Anything I might do, if you make me, will not have either of us any closer to her good side." The threat continues and places the blame squarely on his shoulders. "She's been awake since you startled me. So what's the favor?" Her fingertips curl a little, lightly pressing nails into skin. It's not a practiced thing, but an experiment. Ka'ge turns on her, though his eyes stay carefully on her face as he does so. His hands seek her waist but they don't play there as much as he'd, obviously, like them to. It does draw him close to her again, and he pauses in that moment, a beat in which something else could happen but doesn't. He aims to lift her onto the side of the pool, an easy thing, but to further promote getting her back to her gold. His hands linger there, a thumb brushed lightly over the edge of her own ink. "If you," He starts, looking away to his towel as he places both hands on the side and drags himself out beside where he'd placed her, "Are ever asked about me by someone you don't know well, I need you to tell me." In person, through dragons, it doesn't seem to matter, but the favor seems serious enough coming from him. He's already wrapped a towel around his waist, the other scratched briefly but roughly through his messy hair. "That's all." Dee's breath is trapped within her from the time he turns to when his hands finally release her. She doesn't hurry to reach for her towel, but that she reaches for it without hesitation to wrap around herself must count as modesty from the weyrbred Southerner. "Okay." There's a brief pause. "Will you do me a favor?" Presumably in some sort of exchange. She doesn't wait. "When I confess," she stutters over the word, looking shamefaced at the water, "keep Jem from doing anything unbelievably stupid?" Now she looks to Kael; does he understand she's entrusting him with what is her most selfish desire? It's there for him to see in her face. Ka'ge has his back to her for a short while, the time it takes him to pull his clothes on which is quick, efficient. Oddly so, really. When he turns back, it's with his eyes still averted, a hand fishing in a pocket for the gloves stashed there. "I'm not sure I can promise to keep Jem from doing something stupid." The degree of amusement and, possibly, truth with that is about equivalent. "But," for you is implied, "I'll keep an eye on him." Noted with the typical lazy drawl he usually has, and only after does his bluegreen gaze glance towards her again as he begins tugging those gloves back over his hands. "Give me a day before you go." may seem a strange request in regards to Operation Confession, especially since he's not to attend the meeting with her. Dee's nose wrinkles, "More than a day." She can't be ready in just a day. "I told Lilah I'd have an answer about what I need by the end of the seven. And even then, it'll be-- well, I don't want to bother her." This is all to say that Dee's said she'll do it, but first she has to find the courage. "Don't put it off that long, or what you don't want to happen, will." Ka'ge returns to her, his hood still down, a dry towel in his hands. "Up." A command. He holds the towel as if he's intending to wrap her in it if she does as he asks. "It's not going to be comfortable conversation, even if you have it over some tea in those.. nice little cups." is said lightly, as if they're no longer on any sort of serious material. "Tea cups," Dee provides helpfully as she looks at him with a little bafflement. She keeps the towel she grabbed for modesty in front, but glances at the one he places around her. "Tea cups on saucers are even fancier," she notes it absent-mindedly. "I won't put it off, Kael, I just... I need some time to prepare." She gives him a long earnest look before her hands move to take the towel he's wrapped around her into her own hands. "You should go back first. Can only imagine Weyrlingmaster Ebeny's face if we came in together at this hour." With wet hair and all. "I'll be along," is promised in the way of one who'll probably be longer than the one being promised would like. Ka'ge is not as quick to release the towel he wraps around her, standing too-close again, studying her expression for a long time but not really hearing anything about tea cups. One hand does let go for sake of coming up to touch beneath her chin to tilt it up. Maybe it's the weyrlingmaster's name that makes him step away again, this time with the replacement of his hood to be tugged down over his eyes despite damp hair. "Come soon." is simple, but drawing on the fact that he caught the way she said it. But he won't stay any longer, turning to leave as quietly as he'd come just beyond the reach of most of the glows' light. |
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