Logs:Kissing and Cards
| |
|---|
| |
| RL Date: 8 December, 2015 |
| Who: Lys, V'ret |
| Involves: High Reaches Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| What: As planned, Lys and V'ret get together somewhere private to play cards. As it turns out, also to kiss. |
| Where: Storage Cavern, High Reaches Weyr |
| When: Day 27, Month 6, Turn 39 (Interval 10) |
| Mentions: Farideh/Mentions, H'vier/Mentions, Irianke/Mentions, Z'riah/Mentions |
| OOC Notes: KISSYFASES. |
  |
| It was easy enough to explain directions to the small cavern down several tunnels near the residents' quarters that's habitually used to store extra mattresses. Not a huge space, but comfortable enough for the purposes of cards. There's a little bit of a musty smell, indicating its uses are infrequent, which is all to the good when you're weyrlings in want of a little privacy. Lys brought a glow, large enough to cast a reasonable circle of light and she's tugged down a trio of twin sized mattresses from one stack into another to make for more comfortable sitting. She's dressed differently than she was for dinner, more femininely, in a blouse of pink and a skirt of tan that stops just at the knee. Sandals have been kicked off and she lounges on the mattress, on her stomach, a book splayed open and pen scratching away. She looks relaxed anyway. Even if V'ret had changed clothes, it might be hard to tell, seeing as there's so little variety in his usual clothing. But at some point or another he's cleaned up a bit--shaved, for one--and he arrives and lets himself in holding the promised bottle. Just the bottle, no glasses, but this is like roughing it, isn't it? Indoor camping. He pauses for just a moment with the door open, looking at her, then does a quick glance back to make sure nobody's noticed, and shuts it. "You look..." He bites off something that was almost certainly going to be a compliment, and instead sits down opposite her. His boots come off, too. No point in ruining anybody's sleeping down the road. "Hi," is a more abrupt greeting. The truncated compliment seems to be appreciated since the blonde smiles. Lys closes the book and stows the pen in a slot on the side of the book that seems made for it, "Glad you found-- here okay." It's a little awkward. "Thought it would be nice to use some of my other clothes for a change." No big deal! She pushes up and then back onto her knees, setting the book back against the patchwork bag that is a frequent companion for the young woman. "Hi." It's odd placement, but it comes with a smile, so perhaps it's better just to take it. "It's good. This is nice. I don't--you know, I was only here a little while before the queens rose. I don't know all the good spots." V'ret grins. He extracts a cloth-wrapped deck of cards from his pocket after settling the bottle on the floor. "White. Not too sweet. The cork's not fully in there--about half full. I could have gotten a whole bottle of something cheaper, but I thought..." It's a show of good faith, there. This is here for a drink, not an attempt to take advantage. It's probably because they're here where, save for untimely interruptions, they're not likely to have an audience that Lys' expressions seem less guarded, her smiles softer. The one that lasts as he talks is small, but gentle, and there's just the smallest touch of blush to her cheeks. "I only really know strong booze," she admits as she shifts forward on her knees to end up just in front of him, one hand reaching toward the bottle with a silent 'may I?' "I didn't drink at all until the last turn or so." The bottle is passed; V'ret lets her have it first. Gentleman. Nothing about what's happened so far has taken away that pattern of behavior. It's not that it's more authentic, it's just that it's practiced. Automatic. "There's drinking to get drunk, and then there's drinking to enjoy drinking. I prefer the latter." A slight pause, an appraising look. "How old are you? I guess I started young, but when I was younger it didn't seem like there was much else to do with myself." He busies himself with the cards. Those are often enough in his hands in the barracks that the ease of shuffling should be no surprise. But usually he's laying out a solitaire game, after. This time he just shuffles and shuffles. As V'ret speaks, the bottle is uncorked and sniffed and then brought to Lys' lips. It's with the bottle resting there on her lower lip that she says, "I learned to drink so I could fall asleep warm." She drinks, obviously making effort to drink like wine should be drunk in sips instead of gulps. After two, she offers the bottle back. "I'm twenty," the little tilt of her head and slight lift of brows asks the same question of him. "If you can deal it, I can probably play it," she offers helpfully. "Me, too. I wouldn't have guessed twenty. Eighteen, maybe. Twenty is a long time to wait for..." For That. But though the notion makes V'ret smile a little, he doesn't press the topic. "Did learning to play cards also help with the falling asleep warm? I never found it helped much on that score. Maybe this part helps keep my hands warm, but if they get cold it gets hard not to drop them." "Cards were a lot earlier than booze," Lys admits, "and had to do with boredom, not cold." It might seem for a moment that that's all she'll say, but instead, she manages, "I was never interested, before. Farideh once asked me if I was interested in girls, but I didn't have an answer for that either. I just wasn't interested. No one I've said that to ever seems to be able to wrap their mind around it, but-" She gives a single-shouldered shrug. 'It is what it is' seems to be the sentiment. "I got curious once." This is half-blurt, half-afterthought. Evidently V'ret's warmed the hands up enough to show off, get fancy with the shuffle. Despite the evidence that the showing off never goes as well as it should. It doesn't seem to occur that it might be unnecessary. "Poker is better with something to bet. Gin?" He's already dealing. "Maybe you're just a... late bloomer, as it were. There's nothing wrong with that." He leaves that last statement alone until he's finished and picked up his cards to inspect them. "What kind of curious?" Perhaps predictably, Lys doesn't look impressed by the fancy shuffles. What she does look, however, is keenly interested. She even shifts a little so she can see his handwork more clearly. It's the look of someone who has similar tricks up her non-existent sleeves and is looking for differences of technique, of particular motions that might be new to her. "Sure," is an easy answer for gin, though there's nothing for the matter of being a late bloomer. She takes her time to look at her own cards before there's a little shrug. "Kissed a couple of guys, under-- awkward-- circumstances. Wanted to see what the big deal was. It seemed important at the time." Her voice stays very neutral as she goes on, "Then I was running an errand for Irianke one day and--" another of those easy-lie shrugs, "the tunnel collapsed and I thought I was going to die for two sevens. It didn't seem important then. And not long after that I left to stay with the traders for a season, which turned into a turn. So you might say there hasn't been a lot of opportunity to be curious since." "Peril has a way of changing one's priorities," V'ret agrees. While she figures out her play, he takes the bottle to have a sip from it. A little more than one would traditionally have of decent wine, but traditionally one pours decent wine into glasses. "What did you think of it? The kissing. Aside from the awkward bits." Back to more pleasant subjects. "It changes more than just one's priorities," Lys tells him, expression serious. It's a nonchalant way of sharing and she doesn't elaborate, but somehow, she seems a little easier having told him of that particular event and at least generally that it impacted her. Her initial play is conservative, the sort of thing that buys time, that seeks to draw out the style of play of those she plays against. "I thought the first was terrifying and exciting and wet. And the second was sweet and nicer and he was gay. But it was nice of him to let me practice some, even if I was drunk by then." She frowns a little. That first gets V'ret looking at her, brow just slightly furrowed, for longer than is necessary. The game gets less of his attention on the whole than the conversation, his play casual, occasional faces made as he regards his hand. "Sometimes kissing," he says as he switches a few cards around in his hand, "can just be kissing. But if it was exciting--that does suggest you aren't entirely unmoved by such things." As though the fact that they're sitting in glowlight right now in a storage room isn't also some kind of evidence. "Yes, it does suggest that," Lys allows with a slightly chagrined smile. "I couldn't tell if it was exciting because of the kiss or because it was terrifying. I can't argue that I didn't--" She stops short, her blush deepening. "So when are you going to kiss me?" It's almost a blurt, and her eyes go darting down to her cards as if her strategy just became very interesting indeed. His eyes are only peripherally on her face, there. The cards are so interesting. So is the bottle, though V'ret offers it over to her rather than having a drink of his own. "When you ask me to, probably." It's deliberately casual. "The same as anything else." Of course the smile there is suggestive, but it's only a suggestion. He's still not getting up, though he shifts to stretch his legs out better where he's sitting. "I have to ask," Lys repeats though this seems to amuse her. She takes the bottle from him, though her fingers brush his as she does. "And what if there comes a point when you just can't help yourself?" It sounds like such an innocent question but the way she plays her hand issues a challenge echoed in her eyes. It's a daring move, as daring as things can get in gin. V'ret stares at the cards in his hand for a long moment. "If I have thus far managed to be in the proximity of your mouth on this many occasions without indulging everything that's crossed my mind during that time..." He's gotten more cautious with the cards, more conservative, even physically holding them closer. "I could risk a lot just to have you the once. I'm not doing this for once." Lys watches him, weighing his answers, perhaps deciding if she thinks that's real or 'the right' answer, or if they're one in the same this time. "Fair enough," she decides. She takes a couple of small sips and then leans to set the bottle down on the floor and take her turn. "V'ret?" Real, right, both, neither--it's hard to read the look on V'ret's face, which is entirely too serious for a flirtation. Not unhappy, but not honest enough to call it earnest. He picks through his cards again, unhurried, then looks up at her like it's taken these long seconds for the name to really get through. "Yes?" "I'd like to ask you something," Lys looks at him evenly over the top of her cards. The young man folds his own cards up and lays them face-down on the bare mattress in front of him, then reaches for the bottle. Apparently, this requires a bit of steeling of nerves, or else V'ret is just drawing the moment out... why? Just because? "Shoot." "Will you--" She starts slow. Lys takes a careful, measured breath, then faster, "--tell me if you were serious when you told Farideh you'd sooner skip being someone?" The smile is knowing, playful. The smile this gets in return, downright placid, suggests a certain... vindication. Like V'ret has suspected this could not be so easy. Of course, all the evidence so far has made that a reasonable conclusion. "It doesn't seem like it matters. I could no more do something to make myself Weyrleader, not for real, than make myself Lord Holder. It's all luck. As games go, I don't care for dice." Not that he's picked his cards back up. "I've already gotten lucky more than I deserve." "It matters to me," Lys returns simply. "You could work to be a wingleader, if that's what you wanted, I just-- I'd like to know you," which might sound odd but is also oddly sincere. "And I'd also like you to kiss me, when it seems like a good time." The two don't seem to be dependent on the other. Maybe it is that simple, this time. Then again 'a good time' seems rather vague... The cards are retrieved, now, just for V'ret to spend a little longer looking at them, sighing, rearranging, finally drawing and discarding and such, while Lys is talking. "I could. I'm not sure if I want to. Without Thread--and don't get me wrong, I'm much happier to expect to live to a ripe old age--but it seems as though being a wingleader is primarily a matter of being a minor bureaucrat. All the reports, all the meetings, and what impact do any of them have on the world?" Here, at the end, enough feeling creeping into it that this might be a real nerve, or at least something near to it. "Well, depending on how you look at it," Lys reasons as she sets her cards down and reaches for the wine bottle, "wingleaders have a more direct impact on the lives of their riders. I can imagine that it can be not enough reward for the work put in, not able to effect grand or sweeping changes, but my wingleader will probably always be more directly important to my life than my weyrleader. Unless my weyrleader decides to trade me away to Igen because they still need greens and blues." Her lips purse a moment before she drinks. A fed-up sort of noise is made at his hand, and V'ret lays it down again. "I think I can think of a few better ways to be directly important to your life than as a wingleader, though. And anybody else..." Somehow he seems to manage to simultaneously find it not worth it unless he's saving the world, and also care very little about most of the world. Life is, apparently, sometimes complicated. But rather than elaborate more, he cuts himself off, and shifts over instead to sit beside her. "Would you rather be a wingleader's girl, or would you rather have the knot yourself?" Don't mind that renewal of Lys' blush and slightly shallow draw of breath at V'ret moves closer. If it weren't for those damning physiological responses, Lys would appear utterly cool as she plays her hand, a simple, "Gin," heralding her win. Only then does she turn her face toward the bronze weyrling, "Hard question. I haven't really thought about being anyone's girl before. And when I first got this silver thread I thought I'd give it back right away, only-- I--" am a little embarrassed to admit, "--sort of like it, even if it is a lot of work." There's a moue for that which juts out her lower lip just a touch. Work. "Here, I thought I was going to get somewhere," says V'ret, not at all as regretful as he ought to be. "Well. Maybe next hand." Speaking of hands, one of his settles on the small of her back. "It is a lot of work, and that's why we have to have time to relax. We haven't had enough time to relax." Just a slight pause. "Are you feeling relaxed?" There's a subtle tension in the muscles of her back as his hand settles there, but no flinch, no shift away. "You make me nervous," Lys admits, biting her lower lip just a little. "It's hard to tell, but I think it might be the good kind of nervous? Is there a good kind of nervous?" A moment's thought, or just a moment to leave that hand just there. It could stay there forever. All the time in the world. "Excited, I think," says V'ret. It's the sort of calm people use when talking to skittish animals, his voice. "Excited is what we usually call good-nervous." His eyes are on her mouth when he smiles, and so the move in for this talked-about kiss is telegraphed well in advance. "Ohh," is soft, amused, as if the application of this term for this kind of feeling were new to her. In truth, it might just be. Lys, for all that there are nerves, manages not to freeze completely. True, he has to come most of the distance, but she moves at the last to meet him, lips soft in their welcome. Lips linger long enough for there to be a bit of tongue--there's patience and then there's inhuman levels of self-control when you're already right there--but V'ret doesn't draw it out overlong. When he pulls away, it's only to rest his forehead against hers, there. "Your... little experiments, before. Just kissing?" Lys follows V'ret's lead, seeming unbothered by the added complexity of the kiss. The kiss should be enough to tell V'ret that Lys hasn't played up her inexperience. She isn't awful, but she's tentative and needs his lead. Her eyes stay shut an extra moment in the wake of the kiss but she has a small smile for him. "I'm an excellent snuggler," she murmurs in half-amused, half-apologetic answer. Just kissing. "You want to sit in my lap, here, and show me?" There's snuggling and then there's snuggling, of course. But the invitation does seem to involve still sitting upright, so there's a certain degree of restraint in it. V'ret's other hand shifts up to stroke her cheek, her hair. Apparently a lot of touching is necessary now that the bounds of hand-holding have been properly crossed. Lys' recently occupied lips press together at the question, a look of pleasant surprise. "I've never snuggled like that," she probably means the exact physical combination. "My greenrider friend liked to snuggle when he was proddy. Mostly lying down." Still, not only does she not move away from his hand's explorations, she seems to be brave enough to try it, shifting to straddle his lap, a little awkwardly and with the question, "Is this alright?" Only after she's settled does she ask, "Can I ask another question I'd rather just have a real answer to?" Her hands stay oddly to herself for now. "This is more than alright," although V'ret does a reasonably good job at sounding just normally pleased with her proximity, and not like he had any sort of ulterior motives for it. "I think given that you've been indulging me, I'm not going to have much ground to say no to that, am I?" He manages for the most part to keep his eyes on her face, and while his hands settle on her hips, they're just resting there. "This isn't just for you," Lys is matter-of-fact in that. "You're a good distraction," holds humor but also truth. The blonde tilts her head just a little, "If you could have your way, would you rather this be just about sex? Or are you interested in me?" So far, she hasn't asked any question she hasn't been willing to hear the answer to; perhaps this is no exception. The question is whether V'ret is actually capable of believing that to be the case. His thumbs trace little circles there, and it could sound... a little nervous. No pat falsehoods forthcoming, but also no deep-cutting truths. "I don't know. Things are complicated right now." He licks his lips. Dry, now? They certainly weren't a moment ago. "That's not to say I'm not... interested." "Okay," Lys seems fine with that answer. "I'm-- I don't need you to know me, if this is just about sex. I don't need to-- open up that way, I guess." It's hard to find the words when none of them are familiar. "I'd really rather only tell you things about me if you actually want to know them, because it's a different dimension of hard to do that. And it's okay if you don't, I just--" am babbling a little now, "-want to know which. When you figure it out. Whenever that is." Easiest route to dealing with the babbling is to cut it short with another kiss. What V'ret lacks in the way of ability to talk about such things, well, his mouth is good at communicating some things better than others. Feelings, not so much. Interest, plenty. It also gives a little time to collect his thoughts. "Let's just... one step at a time. The last time I tried to do serious..." "Serious," Lys pulls back at the word, as though it were as unfriendly as their kisses had been friendly. "I-- Sorry. I meant, like, friends in addition to-- not-- Shells." She leans back into him to press her forehead against his shoulder, a deep blush on her cheeks. "Sorry," is a mumble. "Not that I'm-- I don't know, I don't think I'm opposed if things did-- but, this time I just meant-- did you want to be friends-- to talk about things or just-- kiss and so on." And so on. She dares to try to kiss his neck lightly, since it's there. It is there, and that gives V'ret a moment for a long breath. He strokes her hair. Since it's there. Another breath. "Of course. Sorry. Talking... is just also complicated. We'll see. I'm better at this." That hand still resting on her hair, the other moving up to her back. "It is," Lys agrees, so emphatically, something like relief coloring her tone. "Maybe less talking for now, if you think you can handle that we're only kissing, and if you think we can manage to still make curfew." By not completely losing track of time, one might presume. "Only kissing," V'ret agrees. After another 'only' kiss: "Don't think I can do this quite all night without... needing a break, anyway," grinning, seeming like he's already forgotten that there was ever anything bigger to be concerned with than his state of arousal. "Maybe if we make it more instructive. Like a lecture." Lys suggests it without a straight face, though she seems serious enough as things go on about occasionally finding out from him just what kinds of things she's doing well and what needs work. At least it seems, until they have to get back, that she's willing to put in all the practice it takes. |
Leave A Comment