Logs:Successes and Failures in Friendship
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| RL Date: 7 November, 2015 |
| Who: Dahlia, N'rov |
| Involves: Fort Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| What: Dahlia tries to do something nice for her friend, N'rov. There's varying degrees of success and complaint. |
| Where: Dee's Touch of Pink Weyr, Fort Weyr |
| When: Day 20, Month 3, Turn 39 (Interval 10) |
| Mentions: Cora/Mentions, E'dre/Mentions, Ebeny/Mentions, G'vri/Mentions, Hattie/Mentions, J'zen/Mentions, Jubee/Mentions, Ka'ge/Mentions, Paislie/Mentions |
| OOC Notes: Back-dated. |
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| Traps come in all shapes and forms, limited only by creativity of the imagination and means to make everything come together. No one could say that Dee's for N'rov's was particularly sophisticated. Sure, when she asked him to come by after dinner, she let it be assumed that it would be a normal evening of sorting through salvaged items and putting in a little work on the bungalow motif, but the fact that she has placed all her bottles of alcohol on the table before the loveseat in the sleeping room isn't hidden. There's even two glasses already poured and Dee waiting, cross-legged on the seat, in some of her most comfortable sleep pants and baggy t-shirt, so he can see the trap he's walking into once he passes the curtain over the wide doorway. "In here!" invites him pleasantly past that point. N'rov's got his coat hung up, his sleeves pushed up, and a distracted expression when he enters; even so, gray eyes slant towards her even before he's fully surveyed the room, the half-fallen curtain snagged on his shoulder from where he'd stopped. "That," he announces, "is not a pile of wood." "It isn't?" Dee's eyes are just so wide when she asks it. She turns her head to regard the booze and then looks back to him an exaggeratedly uncertain expression. Then she pats the other side of the loveseat. "We did once say we would have drinks, but every other time you've come, I've put you to work, and it really seems about time that we did that other thing." She bites her lower lip to stem the flow of babble that certainly precedes whatever it is she hasn't said yet. Just the fact that there are bottles, plural, might get the bronzerider's attention; that there are lots, and not in the reception area where they belong... N'rov skulks inward, letting the curtain fall where it chooses, and yet there's a smile tugging at his mouth. "It's not that these are empty," he checks before leaning against that loveseat's back, "and we're going to see how high we can stack them?" "No, I just didn't want you to have the excuse of saying there was nothing I had that you liked, or that we would have to walk all the way out there to get it as a reason why we shouldn't have some drinks." Dee returns with her token stubborn look that both is playful and mildly challenging. "But if we drink enough of them to empty, we can try to stack them if we can get balance enough to try, how's that?" She can compromise! "Quite a high priority, excuse-managing," N'rov drawls. "So first we empty them, and then we stack them, and then we go visit the healers," only then he pushes off to crouch by the low table, the better to start sorting through the bottles in question: which are close to being emptied? Which actually look good? While he's at it, "It's not my Turnday, you know." Dahlia's grunt and, "It is with you," requires that she also shift enough to free a foot to push a colorful striped socked foot against his leg before it drops to the floor. "I know it's not your turnday." Has she checked the records? It's not a time for that kind of admission. It's not his turnday, but it is something. "I heard you might be the sort of man one offers a drink. In congratulations, or commiseration." N'rov grunts too, in perfunctory 'pain,' even if it is a beat too late. Bottles clink. He doesn't quiz her on her records; rather, he looks over his shoulder at her before getting back to his selections. "Early or late, your news." "It's probably my fault for being busy, or being not the sort who eagerly seeks gossip," Dee points out, sitting back and pulling the rainbow blanket across her knees, picking at the fibers. "I started us off with whiskey," she nods to the cups with things in them already. "How are you?" "Not planning to gossip." N'rov eyes her, then the whiskey, and gets back to his own bottles. "Some of these could mix together, spike your klah." If there's a bartender lurking behind the bed, he might be risking his doom. "Of course not, dope," Dee rolls her eyes in exasperation (perhaps feigned, perhaps--). "You're my friend. I'm--" She shrugs her shoulders helplessly. "I've never had a friend who fathered a flight baby by his wingleader's weyrmate before. So I thought-- drinks, talking," her expression flickers to uncertainty. "Is this-- not--?" Ok? Right? Help her out here, N'rov! "Drinks, talking, ordering her to go back and live with him?" N'rov can hope. "And like it." "If only getting a bigger knot made it easier to interfere that way." Dee would probably do it for him, if she thought such a thing would help. "I could maybe talk to E'dre," she hedges, "but I don't think it would help anything. But if it would help us not talking, we could drink and not talk about that and instead-- talk about something else." It's an awkward end to the sentence, but she's trying. "Yeah, no, don't," N'rov says shortly, just short of expounding upon Dee's potential inner Lessa (and the kettle of fish that could open). He picks at a label, then flattens it down; when he lets go, it springs right back up. "Listen. Dee." He shifts to sit instead, not with a sense of permanence but just for now, there on the floor with one knee bent up. "If there's something on your mind that you want to know about, or whatever, you can ask. But don't think that you have to because it's your job or anything." Even her job as a friend. Dahlia is silent some moments, looking at him. At least it probably means that she's listened to what he's said. Finally, "I meddle." It's an admission. "I'm trying not to because that's how I ended up so... well, nevermind. I try not to now, but you're my friend, N'rov," there's a pause and a hiccup of breath that isn't tears, "the only friend I have here that I can be sure of, and that means a lot to me. I just want to know if you're okay. If there's anything I can do for you. To help. Anything you would want me to do, because anything I would do without your wanting it would just make me a bad friend." "'Ended up'?" N'rov picks up; never mind the nevermind. But he doesn't actively seek to stem the flow of her words; he winds up just scrubbing his cheek with his knuckles. "I'm fine," he says. "Thanks." He's looking at her, gray eyes half-hooded, somehow boyishly awkward at the very same time. It passes, though it isn't yet gone. "E'dre and I are managing." Arguably, if not argumentatively. "I'm going to look up another healer, or someone in the nursery, to find out more about how this will work. I haven't done anything to incite her moving out." He hesitates, even so. Nevermind. (Dee does!) "Can I give you a hug?" Dee asks, "You somehow always look like you could use one. Under all the-- bravado." She concludes lamely, drinking from her glass. "You could ask Hattie, about a healer. She had that special one for her pregnancy and she seemed--" Dee shrugs, "nice." Another lame ending. "It's not your fault, N'rov. Babies happen. Particularly to riders. Particularly given flights. It's what we're taught. I can't imagine that makes any of it any easier." She bites her lip again, again not saying. "No." N'rov eyes her, his shoulders twitching once as though to swat away the very idea. When the hug-monger doesn't immediately leap upon him, he says dryly, "She has to work with the man. I'd save us all the awkwardness. It'll be fine." And as long as she's got that tell, he asks in better humor, "What aren't you telling me now?" "Fine," is unhappy, but no, the hug-monger doesn't leap upon him. In fact, Dee draws all her limbs in toward herself arms wrapping around her knees and nursing her whiskey. "She has to work with the man," is mimicked back to him, "Don't you think she must know? If people are eager to tell me the rumors..." She lifts a brow as if to point out the absurdity of the idea that Hattie mightn't be aware already. Still, she shrugs. "Nothing important. If you're fine, then that's-- all there is to be said, right?" "It's like you wanted that hug," N'rov says of her repositioning, quite as though the idea had only just occurred to him; between that and the mimicry, he cracks a fraction of a smile. "There's knowing and there's in your face. I'd hope she has better things to do." But he's still eyeing her, too. "More rumors?" "I might," Dee admits, but doesn't renew her offer. "This is all harder than I thought it would be. My job, I mean. I thought maybe things would get easier after graduation but--" Nope. "The rumors probably aren't anything you haven't heard." She shrugs, dismissing. Her arms tighten around her legs and she drinks more deeply. N'rov stands all at once, if not swiftly; he's abandoned his glass, but then he never touched it. "Why not?" he asks, moving away. Away to her bed, to raid it. Pillow first. "Still so much to learn, so much only experience will teach me. I think..." Dee is quiet a moment, "I have trouble relating to Hattie. I know I can ask her when I have questions, but we don't see the world the same way and that makes it harder to relate. Maybe it's an age thing too, I don't know." The young woman shifts. "In a way, I'm glad it's busy. I'm glad I come home exhausted. It saves so much effort being too tired to feel things." She frowns, but drinks. Why not, a second pillow. No stuffed creatures, so N'rov doesn't take any, and after prodding the frighteningly soft coverlet, he leaves it alone; returning with his haul, he waves the pillow in front of her until she either moves to take it or looks stubborn, at which point it might get dropped atop her head. Sitting on the arm of the short couch, his own prize padding his elbows, "Saves so many marks by not doing it through drink," he remarks with too-sober practicality. "Do you have to relate to her?" Is this a goldrider thing? The pillow is taken, but then put in her lap, legs sliding to the floor and blanket being spread out over them. Dee's fingers moosh the pillow idly, though she doesn't seem to have a notion of what to do with it. "It does. I don't actually drink much these days. And you don't seem to be drinking at all," is observed with just the briefest sideeye that somehow manages to be a little guarded. "I don't have to relate to her, but not having that friendly feeling makes work so much more like-- well, work instead of a collaboration or something. Not that it isn't a collaboration because-- It's hard to describe." She finishes with a look of frustration, leaning to set her glass aside. "I'm getting to it," N'rov claims, although he doesn't immediately, only when she's explained and set her own glass down; when he does, it's without real reservation, and with a slouch along the back of the couch. "I suppose I can see that. Most of our work's work, what with drills being top-down," but fun, says his brief grin. "And sweeps are a bunch of riding, but it's better for the camaraderie. Even for griping together." He lifts his glass before his next swallow. "Well, since I don't have that at work, I guess that's what drinking with a friend is for," Dee gives him a meaningful look: clearly, somehow this experience isn't measuring up. "Which is completely un-worklike," N'rov says, and gives her a smirk right back. "Do you drink at work? That might help. Hattie strikes me as either the 'red wine with fruit in it' woman, or something hard." "Shockingly," Dee drawls, "I try to keep a clear head while I'm working. Although," she considers a moment, "I actually drink a lot more now to not get drunk than I used to. I was never one for savoring my drinks, but now it's social, and what's acceptable and what puts people at their ease in talking to me. If I share a glass of wine with them while we talk business, maybe I'm just another person after all, you know?" She looks at him a moment and then concludes, "It's silly." Regardless, N'rov leans over to pour a fingerwidth into her glass: something not wine, but rather almost clear, with a bottle whose label happens to stay concealed by the angle of his forearm. Not that she mightn't recognize it anyway, being hers and all. "Did you have that in the Farmcraft, the whole 'work until I can't? Or was that where the drinking came in." "Ha, ha," Dee intones almost drearily. "Drinking was for the beaches, for friends and good times. Innocent times where it was just good to be friends. The only times things got-- non-platonic was when a gold would rise." That tangent leaves her shaking her head. "Anyway, no. Apprentices didn't drink, but I did work hard. Old Guzman wasn't really old, but old enough to want help for manual labor and I never minded. Work makes me feel well. Hard work, like that, I mean." And yet, no wood for them. N'rov nudges her glass towards her, so a little of its base pokes out over the table's edge, now that he's delivered the bottle to the bottle forest; he sits back with his own drink. Also, the pillow. "Azaylia used to ride the odd sweep," he supposes. "Though it's not the same as," a flex of biceps, as though his glass were just that heavy. She obediently reaches for the glass, her movements slowing as he flexes his biceps so she can eye him as though to make sure he knows just how ridiculous he looks doing that. Dee brings her drink the rest of the way to her lips and sips, exhaling hard at the burn. "No, that's not the same. Sweeps are good in a different way, but not the same as working with your hands. I don't really have time for either, except--" Dee glances to where some of their salvage is stacked, laying in wait. "But not tonight," she tells him firmly. "I did this for you, so the least you can do is humor me," she gestures to the bottles. So heavy. So ridiculous. Which just means that N'rov's arm has to wilt under the weight of it, never mind how he's grimacing more and more at it while she talks, until he has to prop it up with his other hand. "Humoring," he says, only it's an awful lot like a grunt. Dahlia frowns. It's an abrupt change of mood, but maybe she's just too tired to keep trying so hard. "Nevermind." Then she's up, setting her drink aside, feet going into her slippers. "Not the humoring you had in mind," supposes N'rov, dryly. He has the pillow; controlling the glass without real thought, he slides down into the small couch's seat and reaches for the blanket lest she run off with that. "I just don't get you sometimes," Dee tells him as she does, indeed, gather the blanket up in her arms, "which is fine but-- I just want to be the kind of friend you need, and I don't even know what that is." She moves with pillow and blanket back toward their real home. "I'm going to bed." And so she moves to do, tossing blanket and pillow onto the bed before moving to start covering the glows. "I've got Vhaeryth." The words tumble out into the darkening room. N'rov pushes air out through his teeth, after; abruptly, in a different tone, "I know that's not what you meant. I thought this was fine. Good." Dee stops at the last glow, pausing with her hand on the basket closure, "If the world shrunk to be just Taeliyth and I, I would survive. She would love me, support me, help me. I would survive, but surviving isn't living. I need people, N'rov. People to be my friends, to care, to bring me joy and laughter and tears to share. Maybe you don't need any of that, maybe you don't need to feel any of that and surviving is good enough for you. I don't know." She sighs, closing the basket and reducing the light to that which comes from the hearth and the baskets left unlidded just enough that in some moments eyes can adjust to the bare bit of light. "Whatever you need, N'rov. I don't have to get it to get there's something I don't get. Maybe it sounds silly to say aloud," it might be a bit of the booze talking now, "but I accept you for how you are, even if it's not what I expect. I'll figure you out eventually." While she's doing all that, N'rov slouches further, until he's leaning back against one arm of the short couch with his legs (and their boots, which don't need to become acquainted with her upholstery) dangling over the other; "I am what I am," he recounts like a quote, "and that's all that I am." He doesn't accuse of her threats, not even in jest. But, "Listen. Dee. I like people. I like all that, minus the tears since my license to distribute has been revoked, and on neither moon is it just 'surviving.'" There ought to be a flash of smile, somewhere in there, but it's his voice that grows reflective. "And the thing is, that hardened, hollow loner may have dramatic appeal," time-honored tradition that it is, "but it isn't me. Let there be one thing in your life that you don't have to try to fix." Her hands get thrown up in the dark. "Ugh," is annoyed. "I'm not trying to fix you, N'rov. I'm trying to enjoy you. To be your friend. To not feel like I'm going to misstep somehow and you'll wall me out or something." This is booze (and probably Dee's issues) talking. "I keep losing everyone I care about. Suicide, transfers, or complicated sex. I just want one relationship that isn't complicated. That it's okay for me to want to help, to want to be useful, to care about a person and for it not to end horribly." Suici... ah, that. N'rov gives her a sidelong look even before he coughs into the scant amount left of his whiskey; after a gulp, he has to refill. With it too dark to really see the labels, if not too dark to guess, he shuts his eyes and moves his hand above the bottles until finally one comes to him; still careful not to look, he pours very, very shallowly and returns the bottle to the edge. "It's all right to want to help. All you have to do is remember what you said: anything I'd want you to do." He sips; there aren't any sputtering sounds, at least. "Or if you find me drunk under a table without a smile on my face, you have my leave to intercede too... Do transfers happen that often?" "J'zen went home," is said distantly. "G'vri, too." It goes unsaid that Dee has not, is not. She moves through the space and settles on the edge of her bed, hands on either side of her thighs. "I'm going to make mistakes, N'rov. Being your friend. People think I'm good at friends because I care about people, but that's not really right. It's harder to be a good friend when you care about people because if you don't have as much self-control as you should, you help and hurt as one. Or don't help enough. Or never could help enough to begin with. And people leave, but you're the nice one so you don't say anything to make it worse, to make it harder on them to leave you. You just let them leave because it's what they want to do." She sighs, "When I make mistakes, will we still be friends? When I try to fix things for you?" N'rov's low whistle is quiet. "'Home.'" Not Fort. Not for them, not for... "Sometimes they want to be persuaded," has a dark quality that, somehow, doesn't suggest it's something she should have done. He doesn't speak, doesn't pretend it's simple to be even just a betweening away. With the lift of his brows, "When you meddle?" A beat. Not just a beat. "I expect so." It isn't a promise, but it is intention. "I hope so," is quiet, but vehement. "It sucks to lose friends," Dee tells him plainly, then shakes her head. "I don't need to tell you." Then, "Sorry." "I didn't," N'rov says more amiably, "think you thought I didn't know." See: uncomplicated. While he's at it, "I thought we, weyrlings, would stick together more than we did after we graduated. Some of us have, more or less, and it's not like we weren't busy. But it was a surprise. Some transferred, too." If he isn't reminded of the things Dee thinks he might have been, she's smart enough not to remind him now. "I'm already not friends with most of the weyrlings I was with. But I suppose that's alright. It's going to be a long time before any of them really cross paths with me again. Have I mentioned lately that it would've been nice if Taeliyth could've just been a little greener? So I could go to a nice normal wing?" If he is, it hasn't shown in his expression, nor the expressive finger-tap up his glass before he sips. "Funny, I hadn't thought you smelled particularly noisome," is even close to affable. "No, not for at least a month. Possibly two. You're due." "Oh, I'm sure that's not true. I'm certain that's why you're so opposed to hugs." Dee quips back over the large space between them. "In any case, I might've tried harder to make and keep friends with them, only I was already so much set apart from what their lives were going to be. Practically the only thing we have in common anymore is paperwork and having a dragon." "What will you do differently," N'rov asks from his slouch, from his angling to add another mysterious taste to his glass, "when it's your junior in the weyrling barracks?" "My junior. Oh, for Faranth's sake, I don't want to think about my junior. That means that there will have been a flight, maybe even flights and that there will have been a gold egg, and maybe the dragon inside will Impress to someone older and wiser than me and I have to figure out how to lead always feeling inferior to them." Dee prattles her complaints about the question. He did say she was due; he brought this on himself. He did. "Or," N'rov notes, "she could be ineffectual and ask you how to wipe her," quick substitution, "rear. And follow you around with big huge eyes and always be around the corner when you think you've escaped. Or she'll be older and just think she's wiser; or maybe she'll just be interested in other things, like the intricacies of... dragonhealing." Like E'ten. "Or maybe she'll be perfectly nice," 'nice' is good, right? "and you'll get on just fine. Braid each other's hair and have pillowfights." "Oh, you wish. Goldrider pillowfights, that's every bronzerider's wet dream, isn't it?" Dee queries sarcastically. "I need another drink." "That's the story," N'rov says with untrustworthy enthusiasm. "Jubee and Cora, Cora for the knockout." "No fair, you can put faces to names." Dee complains again. "How am I supposed to know if you're telling me true or pulling my leg?" She still hasn't moved to do anything about that drink. He just smirks at her, and whistles an innocent bar or two. Though, "I'm going to take that as an implicit request, complete with, 'Dear N'rov, please fetch me liquid sustenance. I will be ever so grateful.'" Which he proceeds to do, choosing one of the almost-empty bottles; while he's at it, "Just turn what problems you've got into what you'd do differently, and don't get bogged down in 'all these other variables could change too'; that way it's productive instead of an abyss. Like this: 'When I have a junior, I will take her out of the barracks after the first sevenday, wine and dine her into a life of ease and complacency, and teach her to delegate... by which I mean assign her a drink-fetcher of her very own, lest she risk stubbing her tiniest toe.' But in the meantime, go to sleep." "Dear N'rov," Dee begins lightly, "You're a pain in the ass, but please, yes, take pity on me in my time of lushy need. Booze, prettiest of pretty pleases." By the end, she might be rolling her eyes, but who can say in the dark? "When I have a junior," she mimics, "I will pay attention to what she needs and help facilitate her individual needs so she can learn the most. If she wants to be in the barracks, she can be in the barracks, if she wants to be isolated after the first little while, then she can do that too." She shakes her head, "I'm sharding well going to get to know the candidates in more than passing, too." Because she clearly doesn't have enough on her plate. "And if you're telling me to go to sleep, does that mean you won't bring me another drink? I thought we were friends," she affects a moue, equally ineffective as eyerolling in the dark. "'Because I'll have so much time to be doing that in,'" isn't disagreement. "Patience, I'll get there. What do you do if she doesn't know what she wants? What do you do if you think you know better?" By now, N'rov's navigated the expanse, such as it is; he even pours... and, at the very last, aims to thumb the mouth of the bottle and add a last drop for her brow. "Shut up," Dee complains of the first, but halfheartedly. There's an exaggeratedly weary sigh for the second. "Then we try different things until we sort what works best for her. I don't think it was ever meant not to work for me, but I think there are things that might work better for some people that didn't happen that way this-- with me." So much complaining, and yet N'rov somehow looks pleased for it. Or, briefly, smug. "Fair enough," he says, and disappears long enough to replace the emptied bottle with another that's nearly so. That done, he aims to steal the little blanket and head off... to the couch. Good night. "Good night," is said almost dreamily, and definitely after a long swallow from the glass. "N'rov?" is asked into the quiet some moments later. "Hm?" "Thanks." |
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