Comes And Goes (In Waves)

[drownondryland]

It's not that things are looking up exactly. It's that they just aren't looking so persistently down, which, for Meredith, is very nearly the same thing.

Or maybe they are looking up, maybe she's just being cautious. After all, every time she's thought things were working out before, she's found a way to crash and burn and she can't this time. Not

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[missingthekeep]

"Ye mean this one?" Sean asks, a hint of amusement in his voice as he takes a few steps back so he can retrieve the wayward pen in question for Meredith. "Real nice language, by the by."

[drownondryland]

"Because you're so squeaky clean," Meredith says wryly, crawling out the other side to straighten up, careful not to hit her head. She's done it before, far too many times. "Thank you. What are you doing in here?" He has every right to be, of course, every reason, too, but that doesn't mean she can't ask.

[missingthekeep]

Sean tries his best to look scandalized, but he gives it up quickly enough in the face of her question. He's here because she took away his usual source of entertainment, not that he's still bitter about that.

"Figgered I'd try ta find somethin' decent ta read," he says with a shrug, pulling up a chair and spinning it around to sit next to her, leaning over the back of it. "Lord knows we've nothin' left at home I havenae gone through a dozen times o'er. Maybe noodle about on the piano some if'n the place was empty."

[drownondryland]

"It'll clear out later," Meredith says, sitting on the edge of the table instead of going back to her seat. "And I like hearing you play. You should. When it's quieter." More books sounds like a good idea, too. She's got a bunch in the house, but like he said, they're pretty worn down. The shelf isn't nearly as cooperative as she'd like, although it's not too bad at providing textbooks at least. Those are hardly worth the reading for him, though.

[justsookie]

When Sookie tries her best to take a step back and look at everything that she has or looks to accomplish these days, nothing's changed since those few months ago, when she found herself reelected to office. She's still looking to take classes, she still has shifts at the Winchester. She's still a proponent of welcoming people as they arrive on the island and paying the most attention to their needs; she's still working with Jason to get domes built for newer islanders to take temporary residence in, greater privacy than most rooms in the Compound afford. She's still Mitchell's girlfriend, and through that, has still managed to hold his circle of friends close to her heart, even if there have been a few shifts in the dynamic lately. All things considered, there's no reason for her to feel any less capable of handling it all than she did those few months ago

[drownondryland]

It's a familiar voice that answers, and Meredith's quietly thankful for that. It's always better to do this kind of thing in front of someone she actually knows and likes than flail around on her hands and knees and come up to find a student there or a co-worker. Slipping out from under the table, she stands up, narrowly missing hitting her head, so she can look at the pen in Sookie's hand.

"That appears to be the one," she says cheerily, reaching for it. "They all look alike, so it might not be, but I'll take that chance. Hi. What are you up to?"

[justsookie]

Easily handing the pen over, Sookie doesn't need to think too deeply before she sinks into the seat next to Meredith. There are times when Sookie wonders if she's bothering people, if she's talking too much or burdening her friends far more than their due, but it's impossible to go through life without being able to rely on that select few, without bringing down the walls around a few people, at least. Meredith happens to be one of them, and already, she feels comforted in the other woman's presence, resting her chin against the heel of her palm with a curious sweep of her eyes over the paper.

"Oh, not much," she smiles, shaking her head. "Should be doing some stuff for the Council, but I've resolved to allow myself to kick back today until term starts. I can see that you, on the other hand, are totally hard at work and making me feel like a slacker."

[drownondryland]

"Please," Meredith says, grinning at her, "you work hard every day, Sookie. Much harder than I do, harder than a lot of people do. You've more than earned some time off to relax." She couldn't do all that Council stuff, she knows. Just being the clinic representative seems too administrative for her, and she's the head of the clinic which is all administration. Sookie, though, somehow manages to enfold it into everything else and keep her head above the water in a way Meredith has to admire, even if she's not always too vocal about it.

[lexiepedia]

"Hmm?" Lexie asks, instinctive, pausing at the question on her way past before she even stops to realize its source. That only takes her a moment, though - a glance underneath the table as she scans the floor for the missing pen - and then she's nodding, though the thing in question has yet to catch her eye. "Yeah, I'm sure it's right here somewhere," she says, ducking to a crouch, which seems to do the trick. She grabs the pen, then grins at Meredith, already straightening again. "Got it."

[drownondryland]

"Lexie, thanks," Meredith says, backing out the other way to stand up again. She sighs, hands coming to rest on the table. While Lexie may have been right that the drinking is a problem for Sean, she was wrong about the extent. He's cut back considerably and he's doing just fine as far as she's concerned, but at least he's listened to her, and Meredith's kept Lexie's prompting to herself. With how he reacted when she brought it up, though things have settled, she doesn't want him to resent his future sister-in-law for it. "It got away from me again."

[lexiepedia]

"Don't worry about it," Lexie says, setting the pen down on the tabletop near Meredith. Though it's been ages, now, since that debacle with Rapture and since she told Meredith what she'd meant to for a while, it's still something of a relief to have the mood seem so much lighter, everything settled in to something closer to normalcy. Smiling, she tips her chin in the direction of the papers on the table, not yet taking a seat. "What are you working on?"

[drownondryland]

"Oh, this," Meredith says, shaking her head. She waves a hand at it all and shrugs. "Course syllabi for First Aid and Anatomy." She's been teaching the same class for a while now, but she's never fully satisfied with what she's up to, refining it year by year and pondering whether or not she ought to start offering something a little more advanced for those who've survived the earlier courses. Whether or not she's a good enough teacher is the real question. "The school term's coming up on us fast."

[theboywhowaited]

"Erm." Rory winces before answering, even though -- maybe because -- Meredith can't see it. The thing is he had started walking towards her just as the pen dropped, only he hadn't known it was a pen. And the other thing is Rory is pretty sure he heard a soft crack as he had stepped up to the table.

He raises his left foot and pulls it back, so they can both see the pen, nib crushed and weeping ink from where Rory so luckily and smoothly struck it with the heel of his boot. "You mean that one?"

[drownondryland]

Meredith inches forward, brow raising. "That appears to be the one, yes," she says, "thank you, Rory." Picking it up carefully, she slips out from under the table, looking around for somewhere to set it before she gets ink all over her hand. It winds up on a spare piece of paper, and she looks back to him, shaking her head. "Well, there's always more where that came from."

[theboywhowaited]

“You’re welcome,” he sighs, mildly annoyed at himself. “And sorry.” It’s no great loss, and it was an accident, but it doesn’t exactly infuse one with confidence in oneself. Luckily, he gets that elsewhere.

“Do you want me to go fetch you one?” he offers. “What are you up to? Very serious paperwork on an unbreakable deadline?”

[drownondryland]

Meredith laughs. "It's fine," she says, "it's... well, I'm tampering with the syllabi for next term, the deadline is pretty flexible." It's not as if she has to actually write out the extra copies yet, when she doesn't even know how many students she'll have per class. She can more than spare the time. "What are you up to?"