So take my hand, you're treading water, and I feel sand slipping away from underneath our toes...

[definitivestep]

Gwen is waiting in the lobby of the Kashtta for Sam and Owen to get back. There might also be a Tosh hovering somewhere in the vicinity, sitting by the receptionist's desk with her laptop... just in case she's needed for anything

Comments

[nowinprint]

Okay. This? This atmosphere? Not encouraging in the least, and Dmitri is beginning to wonder if she should just quietly sneak back into the lounge and hide behind the robot.

Instead she darts down the stairs, ducking past Sam with a muttered "HeySamsorrytheworldsucksI'lltotallybringyouguyssomebourbonlater" and homing in on Tosh as the least likely one to disembowl her.

Then she ducks behind the reception desk and wraps her arms around Tosh. Tosh won't punch her! Tosh is nonviolent! ...she wonders if now would be a good time to bring up their hypothetical Movie Night.

[techniclybrill]

Tosh jumps a little, not having expected sudden Dmitri hugs, and then relaxes (in a sort of forced relaxation sort of way) when she realizes it's just Dmitri. After a moment of hesitation, she shifts back, leaning in toward Dmitri a little.

"Hi," she says quietly, and there's not much she can really say from there. Hi, so a dog ruined our best chance of capturing Thane and getting Jack back, and there's a possibility he might come to kill us all in retaliation just isn't the sort of thing you can really say.

[nowinprint]

Well, that tone always means great and wonderful things. Or things like all of Chigago's kittens coming down with the plague. One of those.

"I, um, brought you a lounge," she offers. The lounge is good. The lounge will cheer people up. The fact that she payed roughly $75 and a bottle of Jack Daniels for the lounge need not be mentioned. There will be movies, and if Tosh does not thoroughly enjoy herself at least she will boggle at the spectacle of a blue-haired woman fighting a squidmonster in a forest of wiring in zero-g with an electric tai chi blade while the earth may or may not lose its molecular cohesion and someone plays traditional Chinese instruments on the soundtrack. A boggling Tosh is better than a depressed Tosh, and Dmitri isn't above carrying her up there and sitting on her to make her watch it. Or... trying to.

[techniclybrill]

Tosh pulls back a little and blinks up at her. Of all the things she'd expected to hear... that wasn't on the list. "A... lounge? That's nice..." Does nothing to help their problems, but it was nice of her. You'll have to forgive Tosh if she's not exactly full of glee at the moment.

[nowinprint]

"A lounge," Dmitri confirms. "Comes complete with movies and popcorn. Good movies, too; you'll like them. Oh, and you will like them." Dmitri is not going to argue on this point. "Because you can take a few hours out of the sky falling on you and stop worrying whatever you're worrying because studies show that distancing yourself from a problem you've been working on for a long time helps to recontextualize it and bring solutions to the fore which you would otherwise not have struck upon and if you can find me an article in any peer-reviewed neuroscience journal that says beating your head against a problem until it submits is good practise for anything but woodpeckers I will buy you a parrot and you can train it to sit on your shoulder and say 'Toshiko is always right'. Okay?"

It's not quite all in a breath, but it's clearly delivered with the intent that by the time she gets to the end Toshiko will have agreed if only because she can't remember what she'd object against.

[techniclybrill]

Tosh just kind of... stares at her. Because Tosh isn't the type to interrupt, unless there's some urgent reason to do so, and there are few people who can carry on a sentence more impressively than Dmitri. And at the end of it, she's just left blinking at her, and finds herself nodding because really, what other response is there with Dmitri standing there, looking at her like that?

"Okay..."

[nowinprint]

"Good," Dmitri says, in that tone that suggests that Toshiko would have more luck weaselling out of a deal with the devil than this one. "Marshall can come too. And Gwen and Sam, if they don't want to curl up in a corner or scream at the walls or something." They kinda looked like they wanted to. "It'll be great, katje. Trust me. Carries a Dmitri Lang Good Times Guarantee."

She grins. Everything will be fine. The universe will be friendly or she will gouge out its eyes and FEED them to it.

[techniclybrill]

Tosh hesitates again, frowning a little. She hasn't seen Marshall since... they got out, and she's still been kind of avoiding him for no rational reason, but given the look on Dmitri's face... there's probably no real way to back out of this. Even if she's not entirely sure what she's agreed to.

She sighs and reaches out to close her laptop, which is as close to agreement as you can get with Tosh. The computer's away! Feel free to drag her wherever you like now, Dmitri.

[nowinprint]

"Great!" Well, movie night was going to start around... you know... night, but she has Tosh's attention, and she may as well keep her off-balance enough that she doesn't decide she really needs to be in an unexplored part of the tenth floor building perpetual motion cufflinks or something. So Dmitri hops up, hiking a thumb over her shoulder. "Okay, you have to see this. There's this critical age where couches start losing their structural integrity and become the softest things known to man aside from tiny kittens and Marshall's hair and only cost, like, ten bucks at the junk shop. I did get one couch that can still hold itself up under punishment. That's the jumping couch. I did test it. I plan these things."

And then she's moving off toward the stairs, keeping an eye on Tosh just to make sure she doesn't slip away. She's canny like that, Toshiko Sato.

[techniclybrill]

And Tosh trails after Dmitri, because that's kind of what you do when Dmitri starts walking somewhere while she's still talking to you (not to be confused with the times when Dmitri starts walking off while you're still sitting there blinking in confusion at whatever she's just said or done). The mention of the jumping couch earns Dmitri a somewhat skeptical look.

"Have you been planning this, or did it just... happen?" She'd ask if Dmitri asked if she could install a lounge in the Tower, but... well, it's a big building, and it's not like anyone is likely to complain about the sudden existence of a lounge.

[nowinprint]

"Struck my inspiration last night while I was out with Des," Dmitri says. "So it may actually have been the daiquiris. Besides, it wasn't like you people would get yourself a lounge. On occasion you really need someone to look after you."

She pauses for... maybe half a second.

"...hey, you think Gwen could use a room with a kinda ridiculous number of extra-soft couches? And a few blankets, though most of what the junk store had were quilts. I tried for the ones that weren't an affront to any modern standards of decency, but I still think Owen may spontaneously combust if he tries to set food in the room. It's far too homely. ...anyway, if Gwen's not quite to the point where she's biting people's noses off..."

Dmitri will MAKE her feel better about life. Don't think she won't.

[techniclybrill]

"I'm... not sure," Tosh says, frowning a little. "She was shouting at Owen, but..." But that doesn't mean much. Who doesn't want to shout at Owen every now and then? ...Well, Tosh usually doesn't, but she's well aware that other people do.

[nowinprint]

Dmitri considers that for a moment. She's feeling bolstered by her success in badgering Tosh out - or sort of out - of her funk, and Gwen's a friend. Even if she doesn't know it.

"Right," she says, giving Tosh a small push. "Second floor, we taped up a sign that says 'LOUNGE' on the door, and if that's not obvious enough, it'll be the room with the big TV and all the couches. I'm going Cooper-hunting."

Then she ducks down the hall toward the last Gwen-sighting.