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 Posted: Fri Apr 29, 2011 4:06 pm
For once, Jaimie wasn't up late because he was saving the universe... or at least a small section of Destiny City, from the Negaverse, he was up because he'd been doing research. He'd been out at the library until it closed, and shuffled in now to the book store with a heavy backpack full of books, notebooks and pencils dragging over his shoulder and a couple of decent sized bags under his eyes as well.
The coffee shop was busy, but then, the night life in DC tended to like to gather in brightly lit places these days, and it wasn't entirely surprising, just a little frustrating to realize he might not actually be able to locate a seat by the time he got through the line and ordered his coffee.
He yawned, stifling it with the back of his hand as he joined the line and looked around, trying to spot an empty chair, but they were filling up fast with clusters of friends, chattering over their steaming paper cups and over-sized china mugs of jazzed up java.
There was only one spot he could see that no one seemed to be aiming for, and that didn't look like it was being reserved for anyone. The girl looked a little older than him, and her body language didn't have the slight tension of waiting with that sort of 'half patience' people did when waiting for someone to finally join them at the table.
He didn't know her from eve, but he didn't plan on trying to study back in the dorm. The empty dorm room was kind of depressing, and he wanted the excuse to not be there.
"Hey." He called, as the line edged forward, leaning slightly sideways toward her to try and catch her attention from what she was doing. "Hey, sorry, I'm being crazy forward and I swear this isn't a pick up attempt. Can I bribe you with some coffee and baked goods to share your booth? This place is starting to look like a sardine can!"
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Posted: Fri Apr 29, 2011 5:10 pm
The night was...well actually it was getting quite old. The dark purple bruises under Sova's eyes spoke of hours spent awake, unable to even consider sleep. She was used to seeing way too much of the night life around DC, however, so she didn't look particularly bothered by tonight's attack of insomnia.
In fact, as she snuggled up in slouchy brown hoodie, boots kicked off under the table and knees pressed up to her chest, she was quite content to be lost in her novel. Even as the crowd pressed in around her, she hardly noticed, which was unusual for her. So lost was she in her novel, that as the heroine was wrapped into the lean, hard arms of her hero, she bit her lip and flushed with some color, taken with the romance novel that was such a rarity among her collection.
"Hey."
It took a dazed moment for Sova to lift her golden eyes from her novel, and even as she did she still seemed slightly out of it. Her teeth still worried her lip as she raised her brows at the man - slightly younger than she was, Sova noticed - and tried to straighten out what he had asked her.
Coffee and baked goods? Share her booth? She glanced around the shop and quickly wished she hadn't, noticing that it was, indeed, quite like a sardine can. She pushed back into her seat slightly and furrowed her brows, not wanting to be rude. "Uhm, yeah I guess that'd be alright." She tried to offer a smile, but it was probably far to small and uncomfortable to actually be considered such. But, in a gesture of good faith, she swept her feet down to pull her boots towards her side of the booth, and mooved her bag off the table and into her seat.
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Posted: Sat Apr 30, 2011 5:00 am
"Great!" Jaimie mustered a touch of enthusiasm despite his own desperate need for caffine. "Tell me what you'd like?"
He was guessing something with a triple shot of espresso, and maybe half a dozen shots of caramel for good measure, given the luggage she was packing under her own eyes. God could he ever sympathize.
He shifted the backpack on his shoulder but decided to wait before plunking it into the booth, she didn't need crowded by it any longer than necessary.
She looked a bit uncomfortable, but then he probably would have been as well with some stranger, who for all she knew could have been secretly a face eating monster or one of the negaverse, waiting to kill her and carve names into her, had asked to share her booth.
The Line inched forward and he moved with it, still trying to keep his eyes at least partially on the girl with the gold eyes so he could get her order.
"I could surprise you but... eh, you know. I don't know if you have a crippling allergy to Americano's or something." he offered, only half jokingly.
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Posted: Sat Apr 30, 2011 6:10 am
She was easily being hit with reality now that she had been dragged away from her book, and she wasn't sure how happy she was about it. She hugged the paperback to her chest and pressed her lips together. At least he seemed to be nice. But she wasn't going to let her guard down, even if she thought it were possible.
"Oh!" She flushed again, forgetting he had offered her a drink and something to eat. "A Cocoa Cappucino?" The chocolate would definitely make this a little better. "No baked goods for me."
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Posted: Sat Apr 30, 2011 11:36 am
"Cocoa Cappuccino, got it!" He replied, as the line shifted forward again, digging in his pants pocket for his wallet. He hadn't had one, but it didn't sound bad, sort of like the mutant, x-men cousin to hot chocolate.
He let the conversation temporarily drop, waiting in line as it moved forward... and then moved forward again as he craned his neck to scan the menu.
When his turn came around he was certain enough that his eyes only drifted over the options once more before he ordered, giving the barista (who didn't even register the look) a polite smile.
"Yeah, One large cocoa cappuccino, one large caramel latte, and a cheese danish please. Actually make that two." he added, as his stomach turned over in a growl, reminding him that he hadn't actually eaten dinner.
The Barista grunted, ringing in the order and exchanging cash, and then change, with an extreme economy of words. Jaimie couldn't blame him exactly. Firstly it was probably against goth code to make small talk, second, it was too busy to really be social. He edged down the line a moment later as he re-pocketed the wallet and change, and grabbed the tray when it was up, carefully picking his way back to the table with two steaming drinks and a pair of pastries.
He set the tray down first, sliding it carefully into a blank spot before tucking his backpack under a chair. Coffee and food first, he could balance a book on his knee afterward.
"Here you go, Cocoa Cappuccino." He offered. "Thanks again, by the way." He added. "Jaimie Leontyne, officially not a psycho. I have it on my business cards." He joked, sitting down.
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Posted: Sun May 01, 2011 9:13 am
As he became distracted with the line, Sova quickly sneaked her book into her bag, not particularly wanting some stranger to see the more risque side of her literary obsessions. She had a couple other books with her, so if she felt the need to read and distract herself arise, she wouldn't be completely lost.
She shifted slightly when he returned and took the offered mug with a soft, thankful smile. The warmth the drink offered he hands was enough to make her relax a little more, and she stuck her tongue out to lick up a little of the foam and chocolate off the top. She had been right - a little chocolate did improve the situation.
"You should probably bold that, actually. I think right now 'official not a psycho' is easy to miss," she returned the joke, eyes turned down as to avoid looking at him and feeling awkward. "Sova Matthews, psycho magnet."
She turned her wrist slightly to look at her watch, shocked that she'd been lost in reading for a couple hours now. No wonder the crowding had seemed so sudden - she'd missed the in-between stage.
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Posted: Sun May 01, 2011 10:07 am
"I think they put something in the water supply in DC these days that ups the innate psycho-magnet in people." Jaimie suggested, taking a careful sip of his own coffee and flinching as he scalded his tongue. It was always ironic when he got a burn, he thought, given what he doled out on patrol.
"Nice to meet you, Sova." He added, putting the cup aside for the moment and digging under his chair for a notebook so he could review the contents. Notes. He'd actually taken notes. His entire family would have died of shock.
"Sorry to invade, but I needed to finish some studying, didn't want to head back to a dorm and they don't like people hiding in the library all night. The Librarians have this strange thing about wanting to sleep and eat dinner." He gestured sheepishly at the pastry's adding. "....Which I kind of missed."
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Posted: Sun May 01, 2011 10:23 am
"I suddenly feel a desire to drink a lot less water," she mused. Or maybe she'd only drink imported bottled water - DC water supply would have no effect on that, right?
She licked at more of the foam and chocolate, and leaned over the table slightly as he took out his notes. Real, normal, everyday interaction? Sova failed. But studying - studying she had down pat. She could probably out study the best of them. Books and notes were always so interesting. "They really should institute a twenty-four-hour library. It's so crowded here at night... you'd think they'd make the connection and at least stay open later. What are you studying?"
She realized she had been nosily leaning closer to his notes, and by default, closer to him, and sudden discomfort bushed her back against her seat. The long line was steadily lilting closer to their table, and she fingered at her mug, trying to ignore that she was beginning to feel clustered in the shop. Normally she escaped before it got this bad.
Deciding it better to concentrate on one stranger, rather than the flux of a lot of strangers, she finally lifted her eyes to her company. She'd been right to assume he was younger than her. But somehow he seemed to have a bit of weight on his shoulders - or maybe it was just the tiredness in his eyes from being up so late. She probably looked just as weighted with her insomnia written all over her face.
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Posted: Sun May 01, 2011 10:35 am
"I'm trying to bring up my biology grade. I've got English and History down, but the Bio teacher is duller than ditch water." he confessed. "So it's my lowest grade at the moment and I want to bring it up as much as I can before finals."
He'd originally planned on just letting it slide, but suddenly a lot more was resting on weather or not his grade's looked not just good but great.
His handwriting in the notebooks was a confident bold scrawl, spaced with extra lines in between to make sure they stayed legible with his slightly dramatic hand, and were brief for the most part, with notations like "Look up excerpt in The Darwin Book that teacher keeps quoting." with a small ":p" smiley.
"How about you? What's got you burning the midnight oil?" He asked. She hadn't looked like she'd been studying, just there to unwind, but you never knew. Maybe she had a sociology class or something and had been using the book as cover to observe the human interaction.
"If it gets too crowded in here there's a couple diners that aren't half bad if you like regular coffee." He added, in suggestion. "They're usually a bit quieter, minus your odd trucker. Best conversation I heard all week was this guy who was three hundred pounds of tattoos and beard if he was an ounce, arguing with the line order chief that he could make a better bacon-cheddar quiche."
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Posted: Sun May 01, 2011 10:50 am
"Biology is really interesting." All the sciences were, really. She enjoyed learning the laws of life. "I got pretty good scores in biology during high school. I like astronomy a lot more though. Stars and planets - the unknown."
She nibbled her lip slightly at his question and shrugged. "I'm an insomniac. The midnight oil tends to burn me - not the other way around." It used to annoy her, but now it was just a fact of her life. Not that it didn't add some irritability on her plate sometimes. Luckily she was running on a lot more sleep than usual, and was in a fairly decent mood tonight. It was late enough that she'd finished all of her homework, and had no means of really studying with the library closed.
"I'm okay for now, but if people start touching me, I'm out," she said honestly. She could handle only so much, and when her personal space started to be beyond invaded, she'd start to get really upset. She pulled her hoodie up around her neck to help with her comfort level, and rested her elbows on the table. She could act normal. Or at least try to for a time.
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Posted: Mon May 02, 2011 6:07 am
"It would probably be more interesting if I didn't have to listen to it in an monotone." Jaimie admitted. "I'd be surprised if half the class wasn't drawing pupils on their eyelids to cover that he puts them to sleep." he joked. "...I've only had one real round with Insomnia, and that was enough for me. I've got enough on my plate without being able to sleep when I actually have time to go to bed."
He glanced at the busy throng with a slight, apologetic shrug adding "I think the worst you have to worry about is an jostle or two, but hopefully people are paying a little more attention than that."
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Posted: Thu May 05, 2011 4:30 pm
"Maybe reading books would be a better option for the class." She offered. She shrugged at his comment about insomnia. "I don't remember not having insomnia. It's not pleasant, but there's nothing I can do about it." She fingered the edge of the table and took a long drink of her cappuccino, concentrating on the warmth that she felt trail down to her belly. She didn't like talking about herself. The more she did it, the more she felt like there was something abnormal about her.
"People always surprise me with how little they actually are paying attention."
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Posted: Sat May 07, 2011 8:34 am
"People are comfortable in their own little bubbles. It's not that they don't always notice, they've just conditioned themselves to believe that it's clearly not their fault if they slam into someone in line, it's someone else's. It's a coping thing I guess, saves them from having to shoulder any more blame than is absolutely necessary."
Humans did it, the Negaverse did it, he was sure senshi did it. He couldn't imagine the BMC functioning without that level of denial. It's not our fault, they MADE us starve, torture and kill them.
Thinking about that discussion made him cringe mentally, but he tried to keep it off his face. He'd even done it himself. He'd beaten Painite far more than he probably needed to before knocking her out, because he'd been angry, he'd certainly done his best to justify that. It wasn't Blood Moon level violence, but it had been an unnecessary level, and he wasn't sure that was better.
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