[LOG] Trouble.
This scene takes place in the same day as the last one, after it.
Garden and Pool, Ista Weyr(#456RJ)
From bowl to waterfall, the gardens of Ista stretch out across the plateau. Nearest the bowl are the practical plants--the herbs and crops and an orchard of fruit trees--but the closer to the stream one ventures, the more fanciful the foliage becomes. Lush dark leaves, flowers as big as a hand, jungle creepers hanging from old-growth trees--like most of Ista, the plant life grows rampant here, everything outsized and richly green. The streambanks in particular are impressively overgrown, until every rock is moss-covered and pockets of still water in pools on the banks teem with algae.
Only the waterfall itself seems to have escaped the onslaught of flora, cutting a channel through the rock and falling toward the pool below. The craggy cliffs leading downward post a number of places to sit and swing your feet, or to wade in the shallow puddles that collect in dips in rocks and around the edges of the water. For all the cliffs and their outcroppings, however, the best way down is still the steep, slick stairs switchbacking down the rock face.
Late in the afternoon, right after a rather stressful morning and midday, K'aus took himself on an errand to a certain place for a certain bottle of a certain something. He then took himself to the beach with the dragon, but that was no good because people were there. So /then/ he took himself to the garden to sit by the waterfall and drink, and that's where he stayed, where he is right now, with the sun only just now in the very earliest stages of going to sleep. Twilight.
Loe doesn't have a drink. As she comes wandering to the garden, it's a small bag she has in her hand and into it, periodically, she reaches to pull out a grape and pop it into her mouth. She's heading for the water's edge, not paying too much attention to who may or may not be around. She stops there and slips her feet out of her sandals, just ready to put her toes in the water when she looks over to see K'aus. So she stops.
Not that it matters. He's already seen her, he has the advantage. But it's been long enough since he acquired his poison of choice that by now he's acquired a very nice if slightly ineffectual buzz. That kind of thing tends to loosen up a person. Too bad K'aus's brand of 'loosened up' involves a lack of staring and... that's pretty much it.
Loe hesitates there, trying to decide what to do, trying to determine her approach. Then, with her toes, she picks up her sandals, transferring them to her hand so she can saunter, yes saunter, over to where the brownrider sits. "I've been looking for you," she tells him, the faint lift of her brows already awaiting his response, or possibly just commenting her own surprise that she should say such a thing.
Through his slightly fuzzy internal vision K'aus looks up at the headwoman with his body leaned back and the bottle dangling between his knees over the edge of the pool. Then away, at his naked feet in the water, at the hairy lines of his calves up to where his pants begin in a strange rolled cuff at his knees. On the back of a big sad sigh he says more than asks, "Why." Like 'why me' kind of why.
She drops the sandals there, near him, and takes a seat right beside him. The bag is offered across to him. "Grape?" she says, her smile growing. "Are you still..." Loe pauses there, still grinning even as her eyes narrow to search for the word. It doesn't turn up. "Whatever it is. Whatever had you walking out on me?" At least she seems over it; her mood seems rather good tonight.
"'Me'?" K'aus supplies like a genuine smartass, glancing over to regard and reluctantly accept his new companion. Her offer draws his eyes but instead he holds up his bottle by the neck. "I lack the patience." Ha. "What do you want, woman." Which is kind of like 'headwoman', only, you know, not.
Bottle beats grape. That's fine, she sets the bag aside and goes about rolling up her pant legs, far more neatly than K'aus's have turned out. "You do," she agrees. "Sometimes." The woman seems undeterred. "Sharing?" she wonders with a nod toward his drink.
Of course. Intrude on his location, instrude on his personal space, intrude on his booze. As accepting as if he'd asked her out here, K'aus hands the bottle over with a stiff arm across his chest and his head tilted down.
As much as her good mood is unfazed by his bad one, Loe's not oblivious. She takes the bottle, takes her drink and hands it back. "What's your trouble?" she asks rather lightly, dabbing a drop of liquor from her lip.
He takes it from her with about as much care as he used giving it, fist curled tightly and then all at once loosely around the neck near the mouth. Like he meant to strangle it but then thought better. But then he has to let go anyway, so he clenches his knees around it and flashes both hands at her over and over. Ten ten ten.
She eyes the fingers. What's this about? Huh? Palms. Fingers. Ten fingers. Ten. Questions. Loe snags herself another grape and then props herself on an arm so she's close, so close, to his shoulder. "Fine. One of the ten. What's your trouble?" she asks again, quiet words delivered with that quietly sly smile.
Fine. One of the ten. "I don't like having arguments with people when we both know I'm right and the only, y'know, the /only/ thing keeping them from admitting it is... whatever, something." Back to the bottle, K'aus takes a deep drink and artfully ignores how close she is. Once he can, "What do you want."
"Pride?" Loe supplies for 'whatever, something'. She looks like she'd like to say something else, of perhaps ask something else, but instead she bites her lip and smiles. "Who said I wanted something?"
She really should be careful with those questions. Sadly K'aus doesn't see that lovely attractive lip-biting, he's too focused on something playing on the inside of his mind. In fact when she answers his question with a question, even if he did prompt her to, he looks a little bemused. Oh, right. "Okay. Why were you looking for me." His glance over comes with lifted eyebrows. Better?
"Mm." Why was she looking for him. That's what he's asking. "It can wait," she decides. Loe lowers her bare feet into the water and lower her head to his shoulder. "Relax." Not a question. "Breathe out."
Not to the point of annoyance but still slightly unsatisfied by her answer, he takes a breath like he might sigh and that's when she rests her head on his shoulder. Always with the contact. Though he might bristle internally about it, K'aus does as instructed and lets that breath out when she tells him to. He had to anyway, so they both win. But after that he has to say, "Just spit it out, would you please."
Loe lets him bristle. She just swishes her feet slowly in the water, kicking gentle currents about. She doesn't lift her head. "It must have been a bad fight." Which is probably not what she was supposed to spit out.
No, it probably wasn't. She can't see it maybe, but K'aus's eyes lower as far and as best they can to try and look at the top of her head there. On his shoulder. Eventually, as his reply unfolds, he relaxes and acclimates himself to this closeness. "It was stupid. Pointless. Fights are supposed to be for something, either you're trying to win or if there's no winner then there's a greater good. That's the point. Otherwise you're just... talking."
"You don't like talking," Loe surmises. Head still rested on his shoulder, she reaches for and eats another grape. And around that grape she muses, "I wonder why." She chews a bit, he can probably feel the flex her of temple against his shoulder. "You're awfully put out over something that's pointless."
"I don't like talking when there isn't a point. I've been listening to myself talk my whole life, frankly I don't know how you can stand it." Whatever little nudgings and and flexings he feels, K'aus is steady as a rock and just as patient about being one for her leaning. "And you're awfully interested in something I obviously don't want to talk about."
A beat of silence passes. She's formulating her responses more carefully tonight. And tonight she says, "Maybe I don't mind listening to you talk." She lifts her head from his shoulder and settles back on her straight arms, looking ahead and watching as she lifts wet toes from the water.
He wasn't expecting, hasn't been expecting, any of this. But he /really/ wasn't expecting that. Now that she isn't so very close he can look over at her with that slightly baffled look on his face. Whatever he's going to say, it starts with a 'w'; it's easy to tell because his mouth is poised on the brink of a 'w' for a drawn-out moment. "Why are you here." There.
Loe looks over him with that smirk tugging her mouth awry. "I wanted to put my feet in the water." She slaps a sole lightly on the surface in illustration. "And eat grapes." She pulls another one out and hands it toward him.
This time around a grape doesn't sound so bad. He plucks it between two long fingers and transports it to his mouth to be eaten. K'aus chews in silence, swallows. "So this is how this is gonna go. You either tell me why you were looking for me and we move on with our lives or you don't and we just sit out here, which would be a real shame because I think at least one of us should leave every encounter between, well, us, as satisfied as possible.
Loe goes to say something, with all her usual readiness, but she stops, closes her mouth. "I'm waiting for you to get over the argument you don't want to talk about." Yes, that's it. She eats another grapes, smiles and speaks with it tucked in her cheek, "I'm a very patient woman."
Oh. After thinking it over K'aus decides, "That's stupid." And remembers his bottle, keeps it company some more.
"All right," she says, not fighting him, not arguing, not asking any questions. She just gives in. "It's stupid then." But Loe doesn't move; she just stays there beside him and swishes her feet some more.
Which makes ripples and little wavelets that push up against or tickle at his legs. In a way it's like they're touching, a detail he dwells on. "Fine. I'm over it." Just like that? Maybe it is possible. Maybe he really just wants her to get on with it.
Loe turns to look at him. Just like that? Maybe she doesn't believe it. "Show me." How? She doesn't specify. She pulls a foot, just one, out of the water, setting it on the pools rim and waving her knee back and forth. "Show me you're over it. Do something." She smirks at him again, eyes shining eagerly just to see what he might come up with.
Do something. She makes it sound so easy. He knows better. K'aus looks over at her, eyebrows subtly drawn up when he notes the look on her face. No-good. But if she wants to play... Slowly, smoothly, he begins a gentle lean in her direction that will bring him close enough for a kiss-- and then he aborts it by tipping himself over like dead weight into the water. Splash.
He leans in and Loe's brows go up just a little more for every inch. And then he tips, fully clothed, there and suddenly gone, in the water. The splash hits her and she lets out a screech, but it's a laughing one, brightly laughing. And she's wiping water from her face, blotting it from her clothes and grinning at him. "That was something." She'll readily, cheerily, give him that.
And he'll take that, when he comes up again completely soaked, obviously. His hand pushes his hair off his forehead and up in a strange tuft just there atop his head and he reaches for the edge of the pool, his arm is his anchor until he folds both and rests his chin atop them. The rest of him floats below the surface. "Your turn." She said.
It's Loe's turn. Turn for what, exactly? She doesn't ask, and she doesn't hesitate. Instead she's getting to her feet and backing up from the edge of the water. Maybe it looks like she might leave, maybe, but her shoes and her grapes are still sitting there. And then she dashes for the water and leaps over K'aus's head to make her own hearty splash, fully dressed, in the water.
It wouldn't surprise him if she left. He's at a disadvantage, he's gotten wet for nothing if she walks away. He'd accept it as her move. A glance envelops the fact that her stuff's still on the ground and that's really all he has time for before she's running at him. He ducks! and she goes flying over and completely drowns him with her splash. When she comes up she'll find him shaking his hair out of his face.
Loe comes up grinning. It would be a giddy sort, but it still has that wry twist to it, a hint of cards she's holding close to her chest. "Better?" she asks him, swimming toward him and toward the pool's rocky edge. "Ugh! It's hard to swim in pants."
Hard to swim even if she has his hand to hold onto? She can if she wants, he's offering to tow her in to the edge. And though he doesn't smile or grin, there's an easiness in the lines of his face that wasn't there before. "Will 'better' coerce you into telling me what's going on?"
Loe takes his hand, lets him haul her to the edge so she can hang on to the rock. "I hear you fancy yourself to be the Weyrleader," she tells him, breathless for the swimming but grinning still. She wipes a bit of wet hair from her wet cheek.
His distinct lack of reaction might be a tell. K'aus watches her hand move against her cheek with an air of detachment. "Either you've been talking to a girl or you've been talking to the kid." The look he gives her is purely expectant. Well?
Perhaps he'll be less detached when that hand then moves to his shoulder, using him as one anchor while her other hand uses the pool's rim. Beneath the water, one foot rests against a craggy bit of rock, but the other kicks slowly back and forther, keeping her moving. "The kid. You don't like him?"
Again, her rock. "That's an interesting point to reach, I'd guess you have some kind of problem with him. Personally I think he's a kid, he has no idea what he's doing. A benefit for me."
"You'd guess wrong," Loe tells him, not that it alters her expression. "You think antagonizing him is going to work in your favor?" She lets that 'swimming' foot graze his leg beneath the water.
Like a creepy little tentacle. He doesn't respond unless you'd count his turning his other shoulder in against the edge of the pool so he can face her. She has to kick her leg to stay; he only has to hold himself in place. "I think we have a shared favor. I think I'm the only person in the joint who wants to actually see him succeed, not only because I have investments here. We're talking long-term goals here, sweetpea."
"It doesn't sound like it. It sounds like you want to walk all over him, consider him..." Loe doesn't pause to think on the word; she pauses to slip her hand further, so that it's her arm resting on his shoulder. "Negligible. A kid."
His arm moves too, to circle her waist. Not only that, it serves a purpose, to give her a little help in keeping afloat. It also puts them rather close. K'aus doesn't seem to mind that. The details of his face are easier to see close-up, like the droplets of water clinging his eyelashes together, the beads on his cheeks, the individual hair folicles, the lines around his mouth when he smiles slyly at her. "I bet you'd love to know what's going on in my head."
"Actually, I hadn't thought of it. Though I was surprised to hear your strategy for getting a promotion." Loe sinks against him just a bit, complete with all those bunchy, soaked clothes. She lifts her chin. "You can explain if you want," she says with a shrug and a grin that's just a little more smug now that he's smiling slyly back at her.
"Would you like to hear the details? The gritty, mechanical details? My brain is a machine." And so is the rest of him as well, suggested by the fact that he's keeping them both steady now with just that one arm. "Eh, drop it. Either he's gonna cave and I get what I want with the added bonus of knowing he's a pushover or he's gonna be the guy we want him to be and smack me down a peg or two. Both of those are acceptable. I just have to try harder in scenario two than I do in scenario one. I suppose you two talked about me."
Loe looks intrigued. But then he explains and she pouts at him. "Or you could help him. If you want him to succeed, you could help him instead of fucking with him." She leans in just a little bit, like she means to tempt him with her lips. "Wouldn't it be better all around if he thought of you as a friend instead of an enemy?"
His eyelids droop when he looks so obviously at those lips. Watches the move. Not distracted away from a reply, "You wanna hold his hand, darling. I wanna kick him in the ass until he gets better." A lull gives him a good opportunity to bump the tip of his nose against hers. His voice has lowered significantly for their closeness. "But I guess that's where you and me differ."
He gets his nose bump, but she pulls back just a touch afterwards, if only to smile at him without going cross-eyed. "How, exactly, do you plan on kicking him in the ass?" Loe wonders, a touch archly.
"Well. You know the answer to that already. Or else he never would've talked to you." K'aus's arm shifts around her, hitching her up after she's drifted low. "He did, didn't he."
The hitch has her sucking in a breath and she eyes him, the faintest hint of wariness behind her low, wet lashes. "I think he could use your help. If you really want a promotion," though she lifts a dubious eye on that point, "You might not want to behave like an ass." Just in case the insult stings, she arches against him just a bit, almost nothing at all.
Almost. In the moment following her move he pauses before his to consider her, his black eyes moving from her mouth to her eyes. His chin tilts up. "He sent the fleet when he could've sent the messenger," K'aus comments wryly.
Loe blinks a little and lifts her chin to match the tilt of his. "Hm?" she asks wordlessly. And maybe he feels her leaning in a bit more.
"You're overkill." There. Blunt enough? K'aus takes a deep breath that might be a little unsteady and traces the lines of her face with his eyes. "This is the part where you leave," he guesses. She's said what she had to say, presumably, and she's doing that thing where she gets close to him. Experience tells him where this is going.
"He didn't send me," Loe says, quiet now that they're so close, that he's so busy studying her face. "Do you want me to go?" She doesn't bother with faux-innocence or fake, melodramatic pouts, it's delivered evenly. But one other thing: "Does that mean you're going to play nice?"
A question worth thinking about. He does, with his head tilted slightly and his eyes not on her mouth but a little lower. Her chin maybe. K'aus's answer, "I'm out of practice."
"I have faith in you," she answers, though not without that little smirk. "I think you should apologize." She lets go of the wall and slips her other arm over his shoulder; now Loe isn't swimming at all, just clinging to him in the water. Of course, he probably has to hold onto the wall, lest they both drown.
Fully capable, and if he's getting tired she'd never know. "You mean to the kid." The apology. "I haven't done anything to be sorry for and I'm not gonna make one up. It's cheap. Tell you what I will do, I will tell him that I'm here to help him, that my intentions are good. And I'll do what he tells me to do. And I'll let him know you deserve a raise."
Loe does pout then. It's just a tiny one. "All right," she concedes with the coy tilt of her head. It hardly lasts very long when a smirk is growing there on her lips, shining through despite her efforts. "So, I'm the fleet, huh?" Does she like this notion? Oh yes.
She's appeased, good. The dawning of her smirk inspires his own version. "You're the fucking /armada/," he agrees and embellishes all at once. And that's not all. "I like it here." Him, up against a wall, hanging by an arm; that she's there too, stretched up against him, must be the tipping of the scales.
Well now Loe will just have to smile all the more, tip her head back and laugh while her hair spreads out in the water. Her eye on the sky she asks, "Feeling better?"
"Mm." It's as audible a reply as she's going to get, but it /sounds/ affirmative. With her head tilted back like that her neck is exposed, a fact that isn't lost on him. She'll feel the warmth of the kiss he leaves where her throat bends.
"Mm." She makes that noise too when K'aus's warm mouth finds her throat. Loe doesn't lift her head just yet either, so there's time for more. Meanwhile, she stretches an arm out into the water. "Tell me how I'm the fucking armada."
More? Never one to waste an opportunity if he can help it, K'aus leaves another kiss right below the last one. His breath on her skin, "You're smart," and another kiss, "and wicked," another one, below her ear, and that's as far as he can reach so he stops and pulls back only enough to look at her with his gaze hooded. "Beautiful."
Loe can't hide the way her breath starts to quicken with those kisses and those words. As he pulls back she lifts her head to meet his dark gaze with her own. "And I ask too many questions," she tacks onto the list, the humor barely coming through.
"Curious," counters K'aus, painting over what might have been a negative.
She just smiles, so wide and self-satisfied. And her head falls forward toward his shoulder. "Let's not swim in our clothes again. It was a bad idea. Your bad idea." Loe isn't the sort to let him forget it.
Her head, his shoulder; his mouth, her shoulder. Beyond it, his eyes stare at nothing and around her his arm tightens a little. Adjusting enough to speak, "I don't regret it. If we were both naked this wouldn't be happening."
"I'd say you're having a dream," Loe laughs quietly. "But I think you probably dream of dirtier things." No, she doesn't kiss his shoulder, but he can probably feel the way her lips curve in a smile. And then she's gently peeling herself away from him.
Dreams. "Mm." Again. This time, thoughtful while K'aus tilts his chin down and hides in her shoulder. Just in time for her to start going away, which he accepts. He isn't going anywhere, so he relaxes his arm to let her go.
He isn't going anywhere, so Loe gets out of the pool by herself, saturated clothes dripping madly down her legs, puddling on the stony rim. She starts trying to wring them out and she glances down at him, plainly wondering if he's getting out too.
He doesn't at first, but a glance up and back shows him /her/ glance. So with a small amount of effort he hauls himself up by both arms and gets a knee on the edge of the pool. Once he's standing he drips in silence, save for dripping, and watches her.
Loe narrows her gaze at him, thinking while he stands there so oddly silent and still. "What?" she asks finally, bending to pick up her bag of grapes. She eats one and holds the bag out for him to take one if he likes.
K'aus goes home. Fuck your grapes.
(...ok so maybe that last pose didn't actually happen, but I got too tired to keep going and I'm too lazy right now to think up something better.)
Garden and Pool, Ista Weyr(#456RJ)
From bowl to waterfall, the gardens of Ista stretch out across the plateau. Nearest the bowl are the practical plants--the herbs and crops and an orchard of fruit trees--but the closer to the stream one ventures, the more fanciful the foliage becomes. Lush dark leaves, flowers as big as a hand, jungle creepers hanging from old-growth trees--like most of Ista, the plant life grows rampant here, everything outsized and richly green. The streambanks in particular are impressively overgrown, until every rock is moss-covered and pockets of still water in pools on the banks teem with algae.
Only the waterfall itself seems to have escaped the onslaught of flora, cutting a channel through the rock and falling toward the pool below. The craggy cliffs leading downward post a number of places to sit and swing your feet, or to wade in the shallow puddles that collect in dips in rocks and around the edges of the water. For all the cliffs and their outcroppings, however, the best way down is still the steep, slick stairs switchbacking down the rock face.
Late in the afternoon, right after a rather stressful morning and midday, K'aus took himself on an errand to a certain place for a certain bottle of a certain something. He then took himself to the beach with the dragon, but that was no good because people were there. So /then/ he took himself to the garden to sit by the waterfall and drink, and that's where he stayed, where he is right now, with the sun only just now in the very earliest stages of going to sleep. Twilight.
Loe doesn't have a drink. As she comes wandering to the garden, it's a small bag she has in her hand and into it, periodically, she reaches to pull out a grape and pop it into her mouth. She's heading for the water's edge, not paying too much attention to who may or may not be around. She stops there and slips her feet out of her sandals, just ready to put her toes in the water when she looks over to see K'aus. So she stops.
Not that it matters. He's already seen her, he has the advantage. But it's been long enough since he acquired his poison of choice that by now he's acquired a very nice if slightly ineffectual buzz. That kind of thing tends to loosen up a person. Too bad K'aus's brand of 'loosened up' involves a lack of staring and... that's pretty much it.
Loe hesitates there, trying to decide what to do, trying to determine her approach. Then, with her toes, she picks up her sandals, transferring them to her hand so she can saunter, yes saunter, over to where the brownrider sits. "I've been looking for you," she tells him, the faint lift of her brows already awaiting his response, or possibly just commenting her own surprise that she should say such a thing.
Through his slightly fuzzy internal vision K'aus looks up at the headwoman with his body leaned back and the bottle dangling between his knees over the edge of the pool. Then away, at his naked feet in the water, at the hairy lines of his calves up to where his pants begin in a strange rolled cuff at his knees. On the back of a big sad sigh he says more than asks, "Why." Like 'why me' kind of why.
She drops the sandals there, near him, and takes a seat right beside him. The bag is offered across to him. "Grape?" she says, her smile growing. "Are you still..." Loe pauses there, still grinning even as her eyes narrow to search for the word. It doesn't turn up. "Whatever it is. Whatever had you walking out on me?" At least she seems over it; her mood seems rather good tonight.
"'Me'?" K'aus supplies like a genuine smartass, glancing over to regard and reluctantly accept his new companion. Her offer draws his eyes but instead he holds up his bottle by the neck. "I lack the patience." Ha. "What do you want, woman." Which is kind of like 'headwoman', only, you know, not.
Bottle beats grape. That's fine, she sets the bag aside and goes about rolling up her pant legs, far more neatly than K'aus's have turned out. "You do," she agrees. "Sometimes." The woman seems undeterred. "Sharing?" she wonders with a nod toward his drink.
Of course. Intrude on his location, instrude on his personal space, intrude on his booze. As accepting as if he'd asked her out here, K'aus hands the bottle over with a stiff arm across his chest and his head tilted down.
As much as her good mood is unfazed by his bad one, Loe's not oblivious. She takes the bottle, takes her drink and hands it back. "What's your trouble?" she asks rather lightly, dabbing a drop of liquor from her lip.
He takes it from her with about as much care as he used giving it, fist curled tightly and then all at once loosely around the neck near the mouth. Like he meant to strangle it but then thought better. But then he has to let go anyway, so he clenches his knees around it and flashes both hands at her over and over. Ten ten ten.
She eyes the fingers. What's this about? Huh? Palms. Fingers. Ten fingers. Ten. Questions. Loe snags herself another grape and then props herself on an arm so she's close, so close, to his shoulder. "Fine. One of the ten. What's your trouble?" she asks again, quiet words delivered with that quietly sly smile.
Fine. One of the ten. "I don't like having arguments with people when we both know I'm right and the only, y'know, the /only/ thing keeping them from admitting it is... whatever, something." Back to the bottle, K'aus takes a deep drink and artfully ignores how close she is. Once he can, "What do you want."
"Pride?" Loe supplies for 'whatever, something'. She looks like she'd like to say something else, of perhaps ask something else, but instead she bites her lip and smiles. "Who said I wanted something?"
She really should be careful with those questions. Sadly K'aus doesn't see that lovely attractive lip-biting, he's too focused on something playing on the inside of his mind. In fact when she answers his question with a question, even if he did prompt her to, he looks a little bemused. Oh, right. "Okay. Why were you looking for me." His glance over comes with lifted eyebrows. Better?
"Mm." Why was she looking for him. That's what he's asking. "It can wait," she decides. Loe lowers her bare feet into the water and lower her head to his shoulder. "Relax." Not a question. "Breathe out."
Not to the point of annoyance but still slightly unsatisfied by her answer, he takes a breath like he might sigh and that's when she rests her head on his shoulder. Always with the contact. Though he might bristle internally about it, K'aus does as instructed and lets that breath out when she tells him to. He had to anyway, so they both win. But after that he has to say, "Just spit it out, would you please."
Loe lets him bristle. She just swishes her feet slowly in the water, kicking gentle currents about. She doesn't lift her head. "It must have been a bad fight." Which is probably not what she was supposed to spit out.
No, it probably wasn't. She can't see it maybe, but K'aus's eyes lower as far and as best they can to try and look at the top of her head there. On his shoulder. Eventually, as his reply unfolds, he relaxes and acclimates himself to this closeness. "It was stupid. Pointless. Fights are supposed to be for something, either you're trying to win or if there's no winner then there's a greater good. That's the point. Otherwise you're just... talking."
"You don't like talking," Loe surmises. Head still rested on his shoulder, she reaches for and eats another grape. And around that grape she muses, "I wonder why." She chews a bit, he can probably feel the flex her of temple against his shoulder. "You're awfully put out over something that's pointless."
"I don't like talking when there isn't a point. I've been listening to myself talk my whole life, frankly I don't know how you can stand it." Whatever little nudgings and and flexings he feels, K'aus is steady as a rock and just as patient about being one for her leaning. "And you're awfully interested in something I obviously don't want to talk about."
A beat of silence passes. She's formulating her responses more carefully tonight. And tonight she says, "Maybe I don't mind listening to you talk." She lifts her head from his shoulder and settles back on her straight arms, looking ahead and watching as she lifts wet toes from the water.
He wasn't expecting, hasn't been expecting, any of this. But he /really/ wasn't expecting that. Now that she isn't so very close he can look over at her with that slightly baffled look on his face. Whatever he's going to say, it starts with a 'w'; it's easy to tell because his mouth is poised on the brink of a 'w' for a drawn-out moment. "Why are you here." There.
Loe looks over him with that smirk tugging her mouth awry. "I wanted to put my feet in the water." She slaps a sole lightly on the surface in illustration. "And eat grapes." She pulls another one out and hands it toward him.
This time around a grape doesn't sound so bad. He plucks it between two long fingers and transports it to his mouth to be eaten. K'aus chews in silence, swallows. "So this is how this is gonna go. You either tell me why you were looking for me and we move on with our lives or you don't and we just sit out here, which would be a real shame because I think at least one of us should leave every encounter between, well, us, as satisfied as possible.
Loe goes to say something, with all her usual readiness, but she stops, closes her mouth. "I'm waiting for you to get over the argument you don't want to talk about." Yes, that's it. She eats another grapes, smiles and speaks with it tucked in her cheek, "I'm a very patient woman."
Oh. After thinking it over K'aus decides, "That's stupid." And remembers his bottle, keeps it company some more.
"All right," she says, not fighting him, not arguing, not asking any questions. She just gives in. "It's stupid then." But Loe doesn't move; she just stays there beside him and swishes her feet some more.
Which makes ripples and little wavelets that push up against or tickle at his legs. In a way it's like they're touching, a detail he dwells on. "Fine. I'm over it." Just like that? Maybe it is possible. Maybe he really just wants her to get on with it.
Loe turns to look at him. Just like that? Maybe she doesn't believe it. "Show me." How? She doesn't specify. She pulls a foot, just one, out of the water, setting it on the pools rim and waving her knee back and forth. "Show me you're over it. Do something." She smirks at him again, eyes shining eagerly just to see what he might come up with.
Do something. She makes it sound so easy. He knows better. K'aus looks over at her, eyebrows subtly drawn up when he notes the look on her face. No-good. But if she wants to play... Slowly, smoothly, he begins a gentle lean in her direction that will bring him close enough for a kiss-- and then he aborts it by tipping himself over like dead weight into the water. Splash.
He leans in and Loe's brows go up just a little more for every inch. And then he tips, fully clothed, there and suddenly gone, in the water. The splash hits her and she lets out a screech, but it's a laughing one, brightly laughing. And she's wiping water from her face, blotting it from her clothes and grinning at him. "That was something." She'll readily, cheerily, give him that.
And he'll take that, when he comes up again completely soaked, obviously. His hand pushes his hair off his forehead and up in a strange tuft just there atop his head and he reaches for the edge of the pool, his arm is his anchor until he folds both and rests his chin atop them. The rest of him floats below the surface. "Your turn." She said.
It's Loe's turn. Turn for what, exactly? She doesn't ask, and she doesn't hesitate. Instead she's getting to her feet and backing up from the edge of the water. Maybe it looks like she might leave, maybe, but her shoes and her grapes are still sitting there. And then she dashes for the water and leaps over K'aus's head to make her own hearty splash, fully dressed, in the water.
It wouldn't surprise him if she left. He's at a disadvantage, he's gotten wet for nothing if she walks away. He'd accept it as her move. A glance envelops the fact that her stuff's still on the ground and that's really all he has time for before she's running at him. He ducks! and she goes flying over and completely drowns him with her splash. When she comes up she'll find him shaking his hair out of his face.
Loe comes up grinning. It would be a giddy sort, but it still has that wry twist to it, a hint of cards she's holding close to her chest. "Better?" she asks him, swimming toward him and toward the pool's rocky edge. "Ugh! It's hard to swim in pants."
Hard to swim even if she has his hand to hold onto? She can if she wants, he's offering to tow her in to the edge. And though he doesn't smile or grin, there's an easiness in the lines of his face that wasn't there before. "Will 'better' coerce you into telling me what's going on?"
Loe takes his hand, lets him haul her to the edge so she can hang on to the rock. "I hear you fancy yourself to be the Weyrleader," she tells him, breathless for the swimming but grinning still. She wipes a bit of wet hair from her wet cheek.
His distinct lack of reaction might be a tell. K'aus watches her hand move against her cheek with an air of detachment. "Either you've been talking to a girl or you've been talking to the kid." The look he gives her is purely expectant. Well?
Perhaps he'll be less detached when that hand then moves to his shoulder, using him as one anchor while her other hand uses the pool's rim. Beneath the water, one foot rests against a craggy bit of rock, but the other kicks slowly back and forther, keeping her moving. "The kid. You don't like him?"
Again, her rock. "That's an interesting point to reach, I'd guess you have some kind of problem with him. Personally I think he's a kid, he has no idea what he's doing. A benefit for me."
"You'd guess wrong," Loe tells him, not that it alters her expression. "You think antagonizing him is going to work in your favor?" She lets that 'swimming' foot graze his leg beneath the water.
Like a creepy little tentacle. He doesn't respond unless you'd count his turning his other shoulder in against the edge of the pool so he can face her. She has to kick her leg to stay; he only has to hold himself in place. "I think we have a shared favor. I think I'm the only person in the joint who wants to actually see him succeed, not only because I have investments here. We're talking long-term goals here, sweetpea."
"It doesn't sound like it. It sounds like you want to walk all over him, consider him..." Loe doesn't pause to think on the word; she pauses to slip her hand further, so that it's her arm resting on his shoulder. "Negligible. A kid."
His arm moves too, to circle her waist. Not only that, it serves a purpose, to give her a little help in keeping afloat. It also puts them rather close. K'aus doesn't seem to mind that. The details of his face are easier to see close-up, like the droplets of water clinging his eyelashes together, the beads on his cheeks, the individual hair folicles, the lines around his mouth when he smiles slyly at her. "I bet you'd love to know what's going on in my head."
"Actually, I hadn't thought of it. Though I was surprised to hear your strategy for getting a promotion." Loe sinks against him just a bit, complete with all those bunchy, soaked clothes. She lifts her chin. "You can explain if you want," she says with a shrug and a grin that's just a little more smug now that he's smiling slyly back at her.
"Would you like to hear the details? The gritty, mechanical details? My brain is a machine." And so is the rest of him as well, suggested by the fact that he's keeping them both steady now with just that one arm. "Eh, drop it. Either he's gonna cave and I get what I want with the added bonus of knowing he's a pushover or he's gonna be the guy we want him to be and smack me down a peg or two. Both of those are acceptable. I just have to try harder in scenario two than I do in scenario one. I suppose you two talked about me."
Loe looks intrigued. But then he explains and she pouts at him. "Or you could help him. If you want him to succeed, you could help him instead of fucking with him." She leans in just a little bit, like she means to tempt him with her lips. "Wouldn't it be better all around if he thought of you as a friend instead of an enemy?"
His eyelids droop when he looks so obviously at those lips. Watches the move. Not distracted away from a reply, "You wanna hold his hand, darling. I wanna kick him in the ass until he gets better." A lull gives him a good opportunity to bump the tip of his nose against hers. His voice has lowered significantly for their closeness. "But I guess that's where you and me differ."
He gets his nose bump, but she pulls back just a touch afterwards, if only to smile at him without going cross-eyed. "How, exactly, do you plan on kicking him in the ass?" Loe wonders, a touch archly.
"Well. You know the answer to that already. Or else he never would've talked to you." K'aus's arm shifts around her, hitching her up after she's drifted low. "He did, didn't he."
The hitch has her sucking in a breath and she eyes him, the faintest hint of wariness behind her low, wet lashes. "I think he could use your help. If you really want a promotion," though she lifts a dubious eye on that point, "You might not want to behave like an ass." Just in case the insult stings, she arches against him just a bit, almost nothing at all.
Almost. In the moment following her move he pauses before his to consider her, his black eyes moving from her mouth to her eyes. His chin tilts up. "He sent the fleet when he could've sent the messenger," K'aus comments wryly.
Loe blinks a little and lifts her chin to match the tilt of his. "Hm?" she asks wordlessly. And maybe he feels her leaning in a bit more.
"You're overkill." There. Blunt enough? K'aus takes a deep breath that might be a little unsteady and traces the lines of her face with his eyes. "This is the part where you leave," he guesses. She's said what she had to say, presumably, and she's doing that thing where she gets close to him. Experience tells him where this is going.
"He didn't send me," Loe says, quiet now that they're so close, that he's so busy studying her face. "Do you want me to go?" She doesn't bother with faux-innocence or fake, melodramatic pouts, it's delivered evenly. But one other thing: "Does that mean you're going to play nice?"
A question worth thinking about. He does, with his head tilted slightly and his eyes not on her mouth but a little lower. Her chin maybe. K'aus's answer, "I'm out of practice."
"I have faith in you," she answers, though not without that little smirk. "I think you should apologize." She lets go of the wall and slips her other arm over his shoulder; now Loe isn't swimming at all, just clinging to him in the water. Of course, he probably has to hold onto the wall, lest they both drown.
Fully capable, and if he's getting tired she'd never know. "You mean to the kid." The apology. "I haven't done anything to be sorry for and I'm not gonna make one up. It's cheap. Tell you what I will do, I will tell him that I'm here to help him, that my intentions are good. And I'll do what he tells me to do. And I'll let him know you deserve a raise."
Loe does pout then. It's just a tiny one. "All right," she concedes with the coy tilt of her head. It hardly lasts very long when a smirk is growing there on her lips, shining through despite her efforts. "So, I'm the fleet, huh?" Does she like this notion? Oh yes.
She's appeased, good. The dawning of her smirk inspires his own version. "You're the fucking /armada/," he agrees and embellishes all at once. And that's not all. "I like it here." Him, up against a wall, hanging by an arm; that she's there too, stretched up against him, must be the tipping of the scales.
Well now Loe will just have to smile all the more, tip her head back and laugh while her hair spreads out in the water. Her eye on the sky she asks, "Feeling better?"
"Mm." It's as audible a reply as she's going to get, but it /sounds/ affirmative. With her head tilted back like that her neck is exposed, a fact that isn't lost on him. She'll feel the warmth of the kiss he leaves where her throat bends.
"Mm." She makes that noise too when K'aus's warm mouth finds her throat. Loe doesn't lift her head just yet either, so there's time for more. Meanwhile, she stretches an arm out into the water. "Tell me how I'm the fucking armada."
More? Never one to waste an opportunity if he can help it, K'aus leaves another kiss right below the last one. His breath on her skin, "You're smart," and another kiss, "and wicked," another one, below her ear, and that's as far as he can reach so he stops and pulls back only enough to look at her with his gaze hooded. "Beautiful."
Loe can't hide the way her breath starts to quicken with those kisses and those words. As he pulls back she lifts her head to meet his dark gaze with her own. "And I ask too many questions," she tacks onto the list, the humor barely coming through.
"Curious," counters K'aus, painting over what might have been a negative.
She just smiles, so wide and self-satisfied. And her head falls forward toward his shoulder. "Let's not swim in our clothes again. It was a bad idea. Your bad idea." Loe isn't the sort to let him forget it.
Her head, his shoulder; his mouth, her shoulder. Beyond it, his eyes stare at nothing and around her his arm tightens a little. Adjusting enough to speak, "I don't regret it. If we were both naked this wouldn't be happening."
"I'd say you're having a dream," Loe laughs quietly. "But I think you probably dream of dirtier things." No, she doesn't kiss his shoulder, but he can probably feel the way her lips curve in a smile. And then she's gently peeling herself away from him.
Dreams. "Mm." Again. This time, thoughtful while K'aus tilts his chin down and hides in her shoulder. Just in time for her to start going away, which he accepts. He isn't going anywhere, so he relaxes his arm to let her go.
He isn't going anywhere, so Loe gets out of the pool by herself, saturated clothes dripping madly down her legs, puddling on the stony rim. She starts trying to wring them out and she glances down at him, plainly wondering if he's getting out too.
He doesn't at first, but a glance up and back shows him /her/ glance. So with a small amount of effort he hauls himself up by both arms and gets a knee on the edge of the pool. Once he's standing he drips in silence, save for dripping, and watches her.
Loe narrows her gaze at him, thinking while he stands there so oddly silent and still. "What?" she asks finally, bending to pick up her bag of grapes. She eats one and holds the bag out for him to take one if he likes.
K'aus goes home. Fuck your grapes.
(...ok so maybe that last pose didn't actually happen, but I got too tired to keep going and I'm too lazy right now to think up something better.)