Remy; Bahir
X-Men: Movieverse 2 - Sunday, March 15, 2009, 1:51 PM
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In an area of jungle off the beaten path, but with aforementioned path still in sight through the trees, some of the American tourists have opted to do a little birdwatching along the river, in company with a blanket for the ground to dissuade ants, and a packed lunch of Tia Dalia's finest. There are binoculars. There is a Remy. "I still can't get my head around it, y'know," he offers, breaking a prior silence where jungle noise had been carrying the day.
Natalie's willingness on this trip is perhaps, shall we say, less than enthusiastic. Her interest in birds approaching zero, her primary motivation is escaping the claustrophobic cloud of people constantly swarming around their small boat. Remy's company she can at least stand. She blinks over at him, attention turning from the rather exotic tree she'd been studying a moment earlier. "Sorry, what?"
"Alternate realities. Portals. All o' that shit," Remy elabourates, one hand swiping sweat from his brow and transferring it to the seam of his cargo pants as he turns to consider Natalie's tree. By the flick of his eyes, peering out from behind sunglasses thanks to the canopy shade, climbing is possibility. "We start with kidnappers an' end up with science fiction, y'know? And now I gotta plan out how I'm gonna help shut down the cameras on the Death Star so's we can resue our princesses."
"Oh," Natalie recognizes belatedly before she gives a slow, quiet nod. "Yeah. I forgot - you weren't in New York. You didn't-- /see/ all that stuff."
"Read about it in the papers, an' wondered if they been cribbin' from the Weekly World News," Remy confirms with a crooked smile, before he paces over to brush an experimental hand against the trunk of the exotic tree. "Got any insights to offer from that crazy New York life o'yours?"
Natalie shrugs slightly, turning her gaze toward the brush of Remy's hand rather than Remy himself. "New York is full of crazy," she finally answers quietly. "There's not much to offer. You just... live with it."
The brush becomes a rap, sussing out the creepy crawly content of the bark, before Remy turns and leans against the tree, apparently finding ant levels within acceptable tolerances. (A couple promptly begin nosing across the sweat-slicked cloth of his t-shirt. "Sounds a bit like the philosophy f'keepin' y'sanity around here," he offers, Nicaraguan jungle a stand-in for Old Home. "But that thing in New York, what was it like? What sort o'things could I be expectin'?"
"Dunno," Natalie replies a bit shortly. "I never saw the inside of it."
"That -was- a long odds question t'ask," Remy admits, with a quirk of his mouth for the shortness and one hand lifting to once more try and push hair out of his eyes.
There's a span of silence, during which Natalie busies herself in examining her own tree, before she turns to lean against it and glance briefly toward Remy. "I knew someone who did," she allows eventually, vaguely. Her eyes skip back toward the jungle, and she raises a hand to tug at the end of her ponytail in absent habit. "But he'd never talk about it."
"Rough scene?" Remy wonders, but allows Natalie her space and her pauses. He turns back to the tree once more, this time checking for hand- and toe-holds with the occasional hiss and whip-back of his hand at finding a crevasse of bark not quite empty.
Natalie glances over at Remy again, distracted. "Hm? Oh-- I don't really know." There's a brief pause, and the crook of a lopsided smile. "He never talked about it."
"I guess, good -or- bad, it'd be a hell of a thing t'try an' work into y'average conversation," Remy admits, catching the smile and mirroring it with one of his own. "Beats 'this one time, at band camp' f'a sentence opener for sure."
"No," Natalie says, careful correction. "That's not-- he /wouldn't/ talk about it."
"Ah," says Remy, with a cock of his head at the careful tone. He finds himself a good first few handholds, and pushes up from the ground, pausing to consider the first branches, a good thirty feet overhead. Happily, there are also vines. One is tugged on experimentally. "Figure it would've helped him if he had?"
Natalie snorts as she watches Remy climb, the sound full of old, stale bitterness. "How the hell would I know?"
"No way of knowin' anything about another person f'sure, at least without borrowin' Bahir's powers," says Remy-as-Tarzan, hands in fingerless gloves gripping at a vine and letting himself dangle with his feet four feet off the ground to test it. "Would it have helped -you-?" he wonders in an act of quiet daring, with a quick look down to her.
Natalie studies this exercise in stupidity (daring? Pft!) and then twists her lips. "Never having been through a hole into another dimension, I repeat my question."
"Well, you'd know y'self better than I would," says the Remy companionably, still dangling, although the vine is beginning to slither downwards under gravity's command. "Although that's not what I was bein' nosy about. Incdentally," he offers, as he lets himself drop into a crouch rather than wait on the vine's vagaries, "If you just want some peace and quiet, I ain't likely to be offended at bein' told to can it. Just bleedin' off some nerves, without the benefit o' the bar."
"Do you know how to fix /your/self whenever something's wrong?" Natalie asks, her chin tipped up so she can watch Remy. She breathes a small laugh and wonders, "What /were/ you being nosy about, then?"
"Depends on the somethin'," admits Remy with a brief grin as he crouches. "Mostly I was diggin' after whether it would've made things better f'you if he'd talked about it. Y'givin' off a few hints that it was a sore spot," he shares, the grin going almost sheepish for a moment as he admits further that "That do tend to make me curious, an' my 'none o' your business' settings, I do admit they a bit off."
That earns a look of pure amusement as Natalie pushes off from her tree to wander a few steps. "Next time, try just digging in the spot you want to know," she suggests. "I'll tell you to fuck off if I want to, you know."
"All right then," says Remy, laughter light in his eyes and on his lips. "So, -would- it have made it better f'you, if he'd talked about what happened?"
Natalie shrugs slightly, brushing past a low-hanging vine and slipping a little ways further. Tarzan can follow. "I think so," she says eventually. "Maybe it might have made some sense of things. But I don't know what it is that he might have told me. So."
Remy opts to walk instead of swing through the trees, casting a look back towards the packed lunch, but deciding they're not yet far enough away from it to risk opportunistic monkeys. "There's somethin' to be said for knowin' that someone'd talk to you about a thing, even if y'ain't sure of what the thing is. Sketches out the kind o' relationship y'have with 'em."
Natalie breaks into laughter, the sort of sound that bubbles up and floats away like steam from a teapot. "/Gosh/. There's an insight for you. Older and wiser now, I suppose."
"I ain't old enough t'dispense sage-like wisdom with every observation," Remy points out, eyes twinkling as he falls in behind her. "Also, I just don't think I can pull off the little ol' Asian monk look, y'know?" A pause and a hand gesture sweeps down to take in his jungle-stained eco-hippie looks.
Natalie snickers and turns to face Remy, letting her hands swing free to her sides. "I dunno. You've got a nugget or two in there, I think," she allows grudgingly, although the faint glint in her eyes might indicate teasing.
"Well, maybe it parsley-like wisdom, this stage o' the game," Remy allows in return, with a grin down at her.
"Better than none, I suppose," Natalie answers, caught for a moment by that grin as she looks up at him. There's a pause, and then a sudden, rapid blinking as she clears her throat and pushes forward, past him and back toward the food. "I'm hungry," she announces.
In response, the grin widens slowly, before settling back into a comfortable smirk. Remy's pace back to the food is a bit more leisurely: his hands are not in his pockets, sense of balance mistrustful of the rough footing, but there is an air of ambling about him all the same. "I hear that Tia Dalia makes the best tamales," he notes with mock-gravity.
"So I've been told," Natalie returns, already far enough to bend to the task of shuffling their food loose. She's chosen a relatively clean looking area of jungle floor, one marked more by leaves than bugs, and with a fallen log to perch on.
Remy, perhaps with the memory of midnight trap construction efforts in mind, gives the log a prudent kick to wake up anything napping in or under it. Stepping back far enough to be out of range if so, he falls silent for a time to study the jungle with an abstracted expression on his face.
Natalie lingers in the silence as well, enjoying the span of it as she unwraps tamales and other goodies. Eventually she notes, "It's kind of nice here, really. I mean. If we were on vacation."
"I ain't really looked into the pay grade we get," Remy admits, drifting over once the silence is broken to snag a tamale for himself. "But I could see myself comin' back here... or, well, a different section o' 'here'," he corrects, "Just to vacation some day."
"I mean. Don't get me wrong," Natalie inserts swiftly. "I don't like the bugs much, and not speaking the language is a pain in the ass, and I miss electricity and my laptop." She pauses, leaning back to tip her face up to the overhanging forest. "But," she allows.
"But," Remy agrees, as a Swiss Army knife is retrieved and used to cut the twine binding the tamale within its wrapper of banana leaves. "Y'don't get to see this anywhere else... wish I could've seen whatever waterfall they dammed up t'make that power plant," he muses, the glint to his eyes at the natural beauty somewhat dimmed by the recollection of what lies ahead, and why. Silently, he offers her the knife.
Silently, Natalie reaches to take it. She pries her own food free in silent thought, and then after a moment glances over at Remy. "After tomorrow," she says eventually. "Do you think-- I mean. Is this what the pace is usually like? California and Reno and Nicaragua, all over the place?"
The knife back in its pouch on his belt, Remy is delayed in answering by a mouthful of tamale, unhurried from bite to chew to swallow out of some vague internal notion of respecting the cook. But eventually he does swallow, chasing it with a sip of water from his canteen, and answers after that. "Ups and downs," he says, setting the canteen down between his boots. "Pied Piper's the biggest thing we ever had to face t'gether, but even with the smaller stuff y'get the mission being one big exercise in tension an' drive an' workin y'ass off, and then y'get downtime after until the next one comes down the wire. Time f'trainin', time t'get y'stress levels offa the red line. We gonna have t'have a big piss-up when we all get back."
There's a clear wash of relief that settles over Natalie, over expression and posture and the grip of her fingers around her tamale. "Good," she says fervently.
"Of course, I do got one little mission in mind f'when we get back," Remy admits, and lets suspense hang by taking another bite of his tamale. "Gotta get Tim a fake ID."
Natalie's brows shoot up at she glances over at Remy, and then she bursts into laughter, head shaking silently as she bends it to a bite.
"Kid deserves a drink, after this," is Remy's opinion, before he, too falls to eating lunch and then to studying the jungle once more. An elbow nudge points out a small troop of howler monkeys swinging inquisitively over to a nearby tree.
The boat is blissfully quieter now. Others seem to have slinked off for dinner or talking or just a spot of quiet away from the crowd. Thus does Natalie risk it again, sneaking back just as the sun starts to sink lower in the sky. She's already stripped out of clothing and into a sporty red bikini, haltered and boy-shorted, and stands now at the edge of the boat, considering the water below.
Floating on his back in the water below, Bahir lacks only a raft with cupholder (+plus drink) for perfect contentment. His dark hair is bound back with a few loose strands plastered to the column of his neck. His hands flap intermittently, keeping him afloat between breaths as he zigzags next to the boat.
Natalie's wandering gaze sweeps over and settles on Bahir with a moment of blinking surprise. She hesitates awkwardly next to the railing, leaning into it as she watches him float.
Bahir is not very good at floating. His body has a tendency to sink after exhalation, at which point he provides lift with the flap of his hands. It makes for a somewhat disjointed method of relaxation. His eyes open as he drifts toward the side of the boat and changes course to push farther away. Lifting along the side, he notes Natalie. Pausing a moment, he eventually nods.
Natalie startles, caught off-guard, as her gaze catches Bahir's. The awkward hesitation stretches only a moment longer before she frowns and moves forward to throw herself off the side of the boat in a swift dive.
Bahir rolls in the water, idle float becoming a somewhat more purposed sidestroke. He pulls in Natalie's direction, but not directly: his path cuts across at an angle, half a dozen feet between his course and the point at which he judges she will surface.
Natalie's momentum carries her far from the boat, far enough to get caught in the current and find herself swept downstream a few feet before she surfaces with a gasp and blinks water from her eyes, treading until she gains her bearings.
This is why Bahir is not a mathematician. The sweep of the current puts Natalie, oh, say, about half a dozen feet off his guess. His change of course is abrupt; his retreat involves minor splashing. "Oops."
Natalie's head turns toward Bahir as she scrubs water from her face with a hand. She blinks at him for a moment, then asks, "Oops?"
"Almost ran into you." Bahir treads water a few feet away, no longer in danger of a crash.
Natalie glances in the direction where she last saw Bahir, and then back to Bahir himself. She lifts her brows somewhat pointedly.
Bahir wrinkles his nose at Natalie. "I got tired of floating," he says, just a tiny hint of defensiveness creeping into his voice.
"So you thought you'd come run into me, huh?" Natalie returns, treading with the swish of one hand while she shoves loose dark hair over her shoulder with the other.
Not-so-horribly aggrieved, Bahir says, "That wasn't the plan." He pushes back a few strands of his hair, back toward the slipping knot. "I was going to go /by/ you. Apparently, you can't swim in a straight line."
"So the collision would have been my fault," Natalie supposes.
"Or the fault of the river," Bahir offers as compromise.
Natalie makes a small noise that may or may not be agreement and then flips to her back, letting her feet kick up. If she splashes Bahir in the process, well...!
Bahir suffers it, head turned away, and wipes his face with a low cough as he turns forward again. He opens his mouth, and then closes it, smalltalk failing.
Natalie smirks and moves away with a sudden, swift kick that carries her up against the river's current.
After watching her a moment, Bahir drifts forward into a smooth, even crawl that pulls him up toward, and then alongside of Natalie. He moderates his pace so as not to pass her. His form could be better: he keeps his head largely above the water.
Natalie backstrokes this way for awhile, moving in silence until they're several yards away from the boat, upriver. Eventually she pauses, shifting arms and the flip of legs to maintain. She turns her head slightly to look over at Bahir, smiling despite herself. "Show-off," she accuses.
"A pity that if I paused to flex, I'd sink," Bahir answers, a slight grin flickering in response as he treads water.
Natalie snorts and flips, pulling her head up as she treads properly. "Try," she challenges.
"Hmm." Bahir lifts one arm, the other beneath the water, while the stir of water at his feet increases just slightly. Awkwardly, he attempts to flex. It is not that impressive. It is /pretty dorky/. He gives up, hand falling back beneath the water, and sighs. "Not worth it."
Natalie lifts her brows again and makes a noncommittal sound before she glances back toward the boat and then swandives, surfacing to move back toward it with long, strong strokes.
Backstroke long, Bahir follows. As they head toward the boat, over the sound of their combined splashing, he asks, "Are you nervous about tomorrow?"
Natalie continues for several more strokes before she pulls up, treading, to look over at Bahir. There's a pause while she watches him in silence, her gaze tracing the lines of his face as if she's forgotten them. Eventually, she allows a very small nod and admits, "Terrified. You?"
Although he stops at about the same time she does, greater inertia carries Bahir just a trifle past Natalie in the water before they drift apace. His eyes are turned upward, and the lines of his expression are etched with a clean severity that speaks of underlying tension. "Yeah. I guess that's about the word for it."
There's another pause, this one filled with all the awkwardness she can muster before Natalie allows, "You ought to be able to go across to find her. I wish you could."
There is awkwardness on Bahir's end, as well, but not quite enough to match the near-legendary mustering that Natalie managed. He puffs a breath out in a sudden sigh. "I wish. You know? I'm not really scared of what will happen. Not here. Not even over there, as much. I know that will be, uh, complicated, but...." He is silent a long, long moment before finishing the thought. "It isn't what will happen. It's what we'll find."
Natalie nods, her eyes gone dark with worry and sympathy as she shifts in the water. "Yeah," she says. "Me too."
Bahir quiets. The small sounds of the river occupy the silence between them: the low flow of the water through the banks, with its ripples against dirt and stone and boat; the small noises made by the emergence of fingertips, of arms, as they tread water; indeterminate noises from aboard the boat; at a greater distance, the noise of the forest, subdued now, but carrying over water well enough.
Natalie finds the silence unsettling, and she shivers in the chill of the water as she tears her eyes away and looks back toward the boat, where lights are just beginning to show as the sky streaks with the brilliant colors of a tropical sunset. After awhile, she moves again, pushing off toward the boat.
Bahir drifts after Natalie: half due to the current, naturally pushing him back, and half admittedly his own effort, as he slightly adjusts his course. He is much slower. His eyes remain turned upward, tracking the change of colors in the sky.
Pulling close to the boat, Natalie reaches a hand forward to latch onto it, and after a moment she hefts herself upward to the deck with ease. Orange-and-red tinted water streams after her, reflecting the sunset, and she draws in a deep breath, almost a gasp, as the chilling evening air hits her skin.
Bahir's eyes still remain turned upwards. They do, however, shift. (Natalie, after all, is upwards!) He remains in the water, quiet and barely moving.
Natalie pauses, turning slightly to look down at Bahir as she rubs her hands briskly along damp, goosebumped arms. "Aren't you cold?"
"I like water," Bahir says. "Besides, it's colder when you get out than when you are in. I'll get out somewhere before hypothermia sets in."
Natalie looks dubious, but she doesn't argue. She rubs her arms briskly again and then swings her hair forward over her shoulder, squeezing water free from it. "I'm going to dry off and go in," she offers.
Bahir looks from Natalie to the sky above, and then across the surface of the water. He sighs. After a moment, he stirs himself to follow her: up, out of the water, and onto the deck of the boat. "Gets even colder when the sun goes down," he mutters, making /swiftly/ for a towel.
Natalie's lips quirk into a smile that flickers and then fades so quickly it's almost non-existant. "Uh huh," she says, moving for her own towel now that her hair's no longer dripping. "You think the tropics are always warm, but..."
"Rivers are never warm," Bahir says, tone of light complaint a little affected, but easy enough for him to assume. Bahir? Bitching that things aren't warm enough for him? How bizarre.
"No," Natalie allows, wrapping herself tight and warm in her towel as she sneaks another to squeeze her hair drier still.
Bahir does /not/ take a towel for his hair. There are limits. He does, however, dry his legs quickly so that he can skin back into his jeans, and then wraps the towel tight around his torso. He shivers, just slightly. "I hate getting out of water," he bitches mildly. "/Always/ colder."
"Could've stayed in," Natalie suggests, milder, as she scrubs the towel through her hair and shivers, on cue.
Bahir glances from Natalie to the railing and then back again. He visibly fights with temptation. /Visibly/.
Good thing Natalie's not watching, then! She flips her towel over her shoulder and swings wet hair around to glance briefly toward Bahir.
By this time, Bahir has moved on to squeezing his hair, angled away from his body in a way that requires awkward leaning. He scans the shoreline, frowning slightly, and then looks back at Natalie.
Natalie catches Bahir's gaze just before she moves to duck inside and is caught short. She pauses, brows arching in question at his frown.
Bahir gives a slight shake of his head, although the frown doesn't clear. "Get some rest," he suggests, expression slightly ironic.
Natalie snorts quietly, acknowledging irony, and she stands for a moment with her hand on the doorframe, watching him in silence before she allows, "You too," and ducks inside.
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In an area of jungle off the beaten path, but with aforementioned path still in sight through the trees, some of the American tourists have opted to do a little birdwatching along the river, in company with a blanket for the ground to dissuade ants, and a packed lunch of Tia Dalia's finest. There are binoculars. There is a Remy. "I still can't get my head around it, y'know," he offers, breaking a prior silence where jungle noise had been carrying the day.
Natalie's willingness on this trip is perhaps, shall we say, less than enthusiastic. Her interest in birds approaching zero, her primary motivation is escaping the claustrophobic cloud of people constantly swarming around their small boat. Remy's company she can at least stand. She blinks over at him, attention turning from the rather exotic tree she'd been studying a moment earlier. "Sorry, what?"
"Alternate realities. Portals. All o' that shit," Remy elabourates, one hand swiping sweat from his brow and transferring it to the seam of his cargo pants as he turns to consider Natalie's tree. By the flick of his eyes, peering out from behind sunglasses thanks to the canopy shade, climbing is possibility. "We start with kidnappers an' end up with science fiction, y'know? And now I gotta plan out how I'm gonna help shut down the cameras on the Death Star so's we can resue our princesses."
"Oh," Natalie recognizes belatedly before she gives a slow, quiet nod. "Yeah. I forgot - you weren't in New York. You didn't-- /see/ all that stuff."
"Read about it in the papers, an' wondered if they been cribbin' from the Weekly World News," Remy confirms with a crooked smile, before he paces over to brush an experimental hand against the trunk of the exotic tree. "Got any insights to offer from that crazy New York life o'yours?"
Natalie shrugs slightly, turning her gaze toward the brush of Remy's hand rather than Remy himself. "New York is full of crazy," she finally answers quietly. "There's not much to offer. You just... live with it."
The brush becomes a rap, sussing out the creepy crawly content of the bark, before Remy turns and leans against the tree, apparently finding ant levels within acceptable tolerances. (A couple promptly begin nosing across the sweat-slicked cloth of his t-shirt. "Sounds a bit like the philosophy f'keepin' y'sanity around here," he offers, Nicaraguan jungle a stand-in for Old Home. "But that thing in New York, what was it like? What sort o'things could I be expectin'?"
"Dunno," Natalie replies a bit shortly. "I never saw the inside of it."
"That -was- a long odds question t'ask," Remy admits, with a quirk of his mouth for the shortness and one hand lifting to once more try and push hair out of his eyes.
There's a span of silence, during which Natalie busies herself in examining her own tree, before she turns to lean against it and glance briefly toward Remy. "I knew someone who did," she allows eventually, vaguely. Her eyes skip back toward the jungle, and she raises a hand to tug at the end of her ponytail in absent habit. "But he'd never talk about it."
"Rough scene?" Remy wonders, but allows Natalie her space and her pauses. He turns back to the tree once more, this time checking for hand- and toe-holds with the occasional hiss and whip-back of his hand at finding a crevasse of bark not quite empty.
Natalie glances over at Remy again, distracted. "Hm? Oh-- I don't really know." There's a brief pause, and the crook of a lopsided smile. "He never talked about it."
"I guess, good -or- bad, it'd be a hell of a thing t'try an' work into y'average conversation," Remy admits, catching the smile and mirroring it with one of his own. "Beats 'this one time, at band camp' f'a sentence opener for sure."
"No," Natalie says, careful correction. "That's not-- he /wouldn't/ talk about it."
"Ah," says Remy, with a cock of his head at the careful tone. He finds himself a good first few handholds, and pushes up from the ground, pausing to consider the first branches, a good thirty feet overhead. Happily, there are also vines. One is tugged on experimentally. "Figure it would've helped him if he had?"
Natalie snorts as she watches Remy climb, the sound full of old, stale bitterness. "How the hell would I know?"
"No way of knowin' anything about another person f'sure, at least without borrowin' Bahir's powers," says Remy-as-Tarzan, hands in fingerless gloves gripping at a vine and letting himself dangle with his feet four feet off the ground to test it. "Would it have helped -you-?" he wonders in an act of quiet daring, with a quick look down to her.
Natalie studies this exercise in stupidity (daring? Pft!) and then twists her lips. "Never having been through a hole into another dimension, I repeat my question."
"Well, you'd know y'self better than I would," says the Remy companionably, still dangling, although the vine is beginning to slither downwards under gravity's command. "Although that's not what I was bein' nosy about. Incdentally," he offers, as he lets himself drop into a crouch rather than wait on the vine's vagaries, "If you just want some peace and quiet, I ain't likely to be offended at bein' told to can it. Just bleedin' off some nerves, without the benefit o' the bar."
"Do you know how to fix /your/self whenever something's wrong?" Natalie asks, her chin tipped up so she can watch Remy. She breathes a small laugh and wonders, "What /were/ you being nosy about, then?"
"Depends on the somethin'," admits Remy with a brief grin as he crouches. "Mostly I was diggin' after whether it would've made things better f'you if he'd talked about it. Y'givin' off a few hints that it was a sore spot," he shares, the grin going almost sheepish for a moment as he admits further that "That do tend to make me curious, an' my 'none o' your business' settings, I do admit they a bit off."
That earns a look of pure amusement as Natalie pushes off from her tree to wander a few steps. "Next time, try just digging in the spot you want to know," she suggests. "I'll tell you to fuck off if I want to, you know."
"All right then," says Remy, laughter light in his eyes and on his lips. "So, -would- it have made it better f'you, if he'd talked about what happened?"
Natalie shrugs slightly, brushing past a low-hanging vine and slipping a little ways further. Tarzan can follow. "I think so," she says eventually. "Maybe it might have made some sense of things. But I don't know what it is that he might have told me. So."
Remy opts to walk instead of swing through the trees, casting a look back towards the packed lunch, but deciding they're not yet far enough away from it to risk opportunistic monkeys. "There's somethin' to be said for knowin' that someone'd talk to you about a thing, even if y'ain't sure of what the thing is. Sketches out the kind o' relationship y'have with 'em."
Natalie breaks into laughter, the sort of sound that bubbles up and floats away like steam from a teapot. "/Gosh/. There's an insight for you. Older and wiser now, I suppose."
"I ain't old enough t'dispense sage-like wisdom with every observation," Remy points out, eyes twinkling as he falls in behind her. "Also, I just don't think I can pull off the little ol' Asian monk look, y'know?" A pause and a hand gesture sweeps down to take in his jungle-stained eco-hippie looks.
Natalie snickers and turns to face Remy, letting her hands swing free to her sides. "I dunno. You've got a nugget or two in there, I think," she allows grudgingly, although the faint glint in her eyes might indicate teasing.
"Well, maybe it parsley-like wisdom, this stage o' the game," Remy allows in return, with a grin down at her.
"Better than none, I suppose," Natalie answers, caught for a moment by that grin as she looks up at him. There's a pause, and then a sudden, rapid blinking as she clears her throat and pushes forward, past him and back toward the food. "I'm hungry," she announces.
In response, the grin widens slowly, before settling back into a comfortable smirk. Remy's pace back to the food is a bit more leisurely: his hands are not in his pockets, sense of balance mistrustful of the rough footing, but there is an air of ambling about him all the same. "I hear that Tia Dalia makes the best tamales," he notes with mock-gravity.
"So I've been told," Natalie returns, already far enough to bend to the task of shuffling their food loose. She's chosen a relatively clean looking area of jungle floor, one marked more by leaves than bugs, and with a fallen log to perch on.
Remy, perhaps with the memory of midnight trap construction efforts in mind, gives the log a prudent kick to wake up anything napping in or under it. Stepping back far enough to be out of range if so, he falls silent for a time to study the jungle with an abstracted expression on his face.
Natalie lingers in the silence as well, enjoying the span of it as she unwraps tamales and other goodies. Eventually she notes, "It's kind of nice here, really. I mean. If we were on vacation."
"I ain't really looked into the pay grade we get," Remy admits, drifting over once the silence is broken to snag a tamale for himself. "But I could see myself comin' back here... or, well, a different section o' 'here'," he corrects, "Just to vacation some day."
"I mean. Don't get me wrong," Natalie inserts swiftly. "I don't like the bugs much, and not speaking the language is a pain in the ass, and I miss electricity and my laptop." She pauses, leaning back to tip her face up to the overhanging forest. "But," she allows.
"But," Remy agrees, as a Swiss Army knife is retrieved and used to cut the twine binding the tamale within its wrapper of banana leaves. "Y'don't get to see this anywhere else... wish I could've seen whatever waterfall they dammed up t'make that power plant," he muses, the glint to his eyes at the natural beauty somewhat dimmed by the recollection of what lies ahead, and why. Silently, he offers her the knife.
Silently, Natalie reaches to take it. She pries her own food free in silent thought, and then after a moment glances over at Remy. "After tomorrow," she says eventually. "Do you think-- I mean. Is this what the pace is usually like? California and Reno and Nicaragua, all over the place?"
The knife back in its pouch on his belt, Remy is delayed in answering by a mouthful of tamale, unhurried from bite to chew to swallow out of some vague internal notion of respecting the cook. But eventually he does swallow, chasing it with a sip of water from his canteen, and answers after that. "Ups and downs," he says, setting the canteen down between his boots. "Pied Piper's the biggest thing we ever had to face t'gether, but even with the smaller stuff y'get the mission being one big exercise in tension an' drive an' workin y'ass off, and then y'get downtime after until the next one comes down the wire. Time f'trainin', time t'get y'stress levels offa the red line. We gonna have t'have a big piss-up when we all get back."
There's a clear wash of relief that settles over Natalie, over expression and posture and the grip of her fingers around her tamale. "Good," she says fervently.
"Of course, I do got one little mission in mind f'when we get back," Remy admits, and lets suspense hang by taking another bite of his tamale. "Gotta get Tim a fake ID."
Natalie's brows shoot up at she glances over at Remy, and then she bursts into laughter, head shaking silently as she bends it to a bite.
"Kid deserves a drink, after this," is Remy's opinion, before he, too falls to eating lunch and then to studying the jungle once more. An elbow nudge points out a small troop of howler monkeys swinging inquisitively over to a nearby tree.
The boat is blissfully quieter now. Others seem to have slinked off for dinner or talking or just a spot of quiet away from the crowd. Thus does Natalie risk it again, sneaking back just as the sun starts to sink lower in the sky. She's already stripped out of clothing and into a sporty red bikini, haltered and boy-shorted, and stands now at the edge of the boat, considering the water below.
Floating on his back in the water below, Bahir lacks only a raft with cupholder (+plus drink) for perfect contentment. His dark hair is bound back with a few loose strands plastered to the column of his neck. His hands flap intermittently, keeping him afloat between breaths as he zigzags next to the boat.
Natalie's wandering gaze sweeps over and settles on Bahir with a moment of blinking surprise. She hesitates awkwardly next to the railing, leaning into it as she watches him float.
Bahir is not very good at floating. His body has a tendency to sink after exhalation, at which point he provides lift with the flap of his hands. It makes for a somewhat disjointed method of relaxation. His eyes open as he drifts toward the side of the boat and changes course to push farther away. Lifting along the side, he notes Natalie. Pausing a moment, he eventually nods.
Natalie startles, caught off-guard, as her gaze catches Bahir's. The awkward hesitation stretches only a moment longer before she frowns and moves forward to throw herself off the side of the boat in a swift dive.
Bahir rolls in the water, idle float becoming a somewhat more purposed sidestroke. He pulls in Natalie's direction, but not directly: his path cuts across at an angle, half a dozen feet between his course and the point at which he judges she will surface.
Natalie's momentum carries her far from the boat, far enough to get caught in the current and find herself swept downstream a few feet before she surfaces with a gasp and blinks water from her eyes, treading until she gains her bearings.
This is why Bahir is not a mathematician. The sweep of the current puts Natalie, oh, say, about half a dozen feet off his guess. His change of course is abrupt; his retreat involves minor splashing. "Oops."
Natalie's head turns toward Bahir as she scrubs water from her face with a hand. She blinks at him for a moment, then asks, "Oops?"
"Almost ran into you." Bahir treads water a few feet away, no longer in danger of a crash.
Natalie glances in the direction where she last saw Bahir, and then back to Bahir himself. She lifts her brows somewhat pointedly.
Bahir wrinkles his nose at Natalie. "I got tired of floating," he says, just a tiny hint of defensiveness creeping into his voice.
"So you thought you'd come run into me, huh?" Natalie returns, treading with the swish of one hand while she shoves loose dark hair over her shoulder with the other.
Not-so-horribly aggrieved, Bahir says, "That wasn't the plan." He pushes back a few strands of his hair, back toward the slipping knot. "I was going to go /by/ you. Apparently, you can't swim in a straight line."
"So the collision would have been my fault," Natalie supposes.
"Or the fault of the river," Bahir offers as compromise.
Natalie makes a small noise that may or may not be agreement and then flips to her back, letting her feet kick up. If she splashes Bahir in the process, well...!
Bahir suffers it, head turned away, and wipes his face with a low cough as he turns forward again. He opens his mouth, and then closes it, smalltalk failing.
Natalie smirks and moves away with a sudden, swift kick that carries her up against the river's current.
After watching her a moment, Bahir drifts forward into a smooth, even crawl that pulls him up toward, and then alongside of Natalie. He moderates his pace so as not to pass her. His form could be better: he keeps his head largely above the water.
Natalie backstrokes this way for awhile, moving in silence until they're several yards away from the boat, upriver. Eventually she pauses, shifting arms and the flip of legs to maintain. She turns her head slightly to look over at Bahir, smiling despite herself. "Show-off," she accuses.
"A pity that if I paused to flex, I'd sink," Bahir answers, a slight grin flickering in response as he treads water.
Natalie snorts and flips, pulling her head up as she treads properly. "Try," she challenges.
"Hmm." Bahir lifts one arm, the other beneath the water, while the stir of water at his feet increases just slightly. Awkwardly, he attempts to flex. It is not that impressive. It is /pretty dorky/. He gives up, hand falling back beneath the water, and sighs. "Not worth it."
Natalie lifts her brows again and makes a noncommittal sound before she glances back toward the boat and then swandives, surfacing to move back toward it with long, strong strokes.
Backstroke long, Bahir follows. As they head toward the boat, over the sound of their combined splashing, he asks, "Are you nervous about tomorrow?"
Natalie continues for several more strokes before she pulls up, treading, to look over at Bahir. There's a pause while she watches him in silence, her gaze tracing the lines of his face as if she's forgotten them. Eventually, she allows a very small nod and admits, "Terrified. You?"
Although he stops at about the same time she does, greater inertia carries Bahir just a trifle past Natalie in the water before they drift apace. His eyes are turned upward, and the lines of his expression are etched with a clean severity that speaks of underlying tension. "Yeah. I guess that's about the word for it."
There's another pause, this one filled with all the awkwardness she can muster before Natalie allows, "You ought to be able to go across to find her. I wish you could."
There is awkwardness on Bahir's end, as well, but not quite enough to match the near-legendary mustering that Natalie managed. He puffs a breath out in a sudden sigh. "I wish. You know? I'm not really scared of what will happen. Not here. Not even over there, as much. I know that will be, uh, complicated, but...." He is silent a long, long moment before finishing the thought. "It isn't what will happen. It's what we'll find."
Natalie nods, her eyes gone dark with worry and sympathy as she shifts in the water. "Yeah," she says. "Me too."
Bahir quiets. The small sounds of the river occupy the silence between them: the low flow of the water through the banks, with its ripples against dirt and stone and boat; the small noises made by the emergence of fingertips, of arms, as they tread water; indeterminate noises from aboard the boat; at a greater distance, the noise of the forest, subdued now, but carrying over water well enough.
Natalie finds the silence unsettling, and she shivers in the chill of the water as she tears her eyes away and looks back toward the boat, where lights are just beginning to show as the sky streaks with the brilliant colors of a tropical sunset. After awhile, she moves again, pushing off toward the boat.
Bahir drifts after Natalie: half due to the current, naturally pushing him back, and half admittedly his own effort, as he slightly adjusts his course. He is much slower. His eyes remain turned upward, tracking the change of colors in the sky.
Pulling close to the boat, Natalie reaches a hand forward to latch onto it, and after a moment she hefts herself upward to the deck with ease. Orange-and-red tinted water streams after her, reflecting the sunset, and she draws in a deep breath, almost a gasp, as the chilling evening air hits her skin.
Bahir's eyes still remain turned upwards. They do, however, shift. (Natalie, after all, is upwards!) He remains in the water, quiet and barely moving.
Natalie pauses, turning slightly to look down at Bahir as she rubs her hands briskly along damp, goosebumped arms. "Aren't you cold?"
"I like water," Bahir says. "Besides, it's colder when you get out than when you are in. I'll get out somewhere before hypothermia sets in."
Natalie looks dubious, but she doesn't argue. She rubs her arms briskly again and then swings her hair forward over her shoulder, squeezing water free from it. "I'm going to dry off and go in," she offers.
Bahir looks from Natalie to the sky above, and then across the surface of the water. He sighs. After a moment, he stirs himself to follow her: up, out of the water, and onto the deck of the boat. "Gets even colder when the sun goes down," he mutters, making /swiftly/ for a towel.
Natalie's lips quirk into a smile that flickers and then fades so quickly it's almost non-existant. "Uh huh," she says, moving for her own towel now that her hair's no longer dripping. "You think the tropics are always warm, but..."
"Rivers are never warm," Bahir says, tone of light complaint a little affected, but easy enough for him to assume. Bahir? Bitching that things aren't warm enough for him? How bizarre.
"No," Natalie allows, wrapping herself tight and warm in her towel as she sneaks another to squeeze her hair drier still.
Bahir does /not/ take a towel for his hair. There are limits. He does, however, dry his legs quickly so that he can skin back into his jeans, and then wraps the towel tight around his torso. He shivers, just slightly. "I hate getting out of water," he bitches mildly. "/Always/ colder."
"Could've stayed in," Natalie suggests, milder, as she scrubs the towel through her hair and shivers, on cue.
Bahir glances from Natalie to the railing and then back again. He visibly fights with temptation. /Visibly/.
Good thing Natalie's not watching, then! She flips her towel over her shoulder and swings wet hair around to glance briefly toward Bahir.
By this time, Bahir has moved on to squeezing his hair, angled away from his body in a way that requires awkward leaning. He scans the shoreline, frowning slightly, and then looks back at Natalie.
Natalie catches Bahir's gaze just before she moves to duck inside and is caught short. She pauses, brows arching in question at his frown.
Bahir gives a slight shake of his head, although the frown doesn't clear. "Get some rest," he suggests, expression slightly ironic.
Natalie snorts quietly, acknowledging irony, and she stands for a moment with her hand on the doorframe, watching him in silence before she allows, "You too," and ducks inside.