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 Posted: Mon Jul 11, 2011 2:48 am
As they broke away from the crowd, Kaia was relieved - both for herself and him. She didn't find it particularly comfortable but she hadn't been sure just how long she was going to be able to keep him crowded with people closing in on all sides. Thankfully she didn't quite have to figure it out.
Her eyes swept up instantly to the building that they were walking towards, picking out every little detail she could see. The problem with buildings was that they regularly gave away what they were unless they were something so awfully stylized that it was obvious. She had just brought up one pale hand to shield her eyes against the sun and attempt to find any sign that the building sported when he was shifting away from her. She dropped her gaze just in time to see a pair of crinkled tickets shoved her way and she took them, without question.
Her thumb stroked across the crinkled paper until she could smooth the tickets out and read the fine print. Then she was strangely still as she stared down at them, running her fingers over the star patterns. When he spoke she finally looked up at him and her face was visible for the first time. A smile spread across her lips despite how much she was trying to not look like a fool and the expression in her eyes said she might actually cry at any moment.
"I didn't think.." she started, then drew a shaky breath and forced her smile even wider to hide the strange swirl of emotions. She swallowed and laughed, nervously, glancing from his face, to the tickets, and then off to the side where a small line of people had formed to file inside. Her hands were still gripping the two slips of paper tightly and from the way she stared at the distant doors, it was clear she had never been. She might not have even known the place existed until now.
No one had ever planned something for her, especially not something that the someone would have despised on any other occasion. She knew Khal, she knew his sights were on the ground and out of the clouds. That was part of what made her tortured heart flip over and over on end. This was something completely for her.
"Thank you," she said finally, forcing her bright eyes to look back up at his. Her smile was still plastered, unwavering, on her face and she reached out to take his hand and tug him towards the line. Beneath the awe at his surprise, she was excited. Even if he second guessed himself he still seemed to know her better than anyone had ever bothered to. Once they had their place in line and were slowly filing forward toward the door, she leaned slightly in to whisper very softly up to him. "Really, thank you. I know you don't get it," one hand waved at the building, "but you get me better than I expect sometimes."
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Posted: Mon Jul 11, 2011 10:18 pm
There was one long moment he practically held his breath, when he was sure she would finally look up and give him a sorry smile laced with a grimace. It was the one she always gave him when he used to be too stupid to realize he'd made a mistake, and she had just kept the habit ever since, long past the point when it went from concealing to revealing. Even Kaia, in her infinite patience, was no stranger to disappointment. So when she smiled instead, really and genuinely, he couldn't help but smile back in relief.
"It's a space museum. They have a lot of space stuff here." Not terribly eloquent. What had Kam's girlfriend called the thing here, a planetarium? Whatever the hell it was, it sure sounded space-ish.
He followed her to the line, taking in every excited glance she gave him, the tickets, the door, everything. Whenever she smiled at him his smile grew wider too. This small act was filling him with a larger sense of accomplishment than he'd felt in a long time. He could probably never convey to her in words how important her happiness had become to him, though. But after all Kaia had done for him, this was a drop in the bucket as far as repaying her kindness went. At least with all the tension relieved and claustrophobia banished, his pride could go back to work building itself up, and he gradually unwound.
"Hey, you always let me pick the movies and you don't get those, so who am I to judge?" he joked. When he wasn't stressing out he found it a lot easier to flirt. "I just thought you might like... I mean, whenever we're out at night, you always look up, at the stars. Though if you ask me, I think sunlight looks even better on you."
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Posted: Mon Jul 11, 2011 10:53 pm
Flirting was one of those new developments in their relationship that she had to get used to, especially because he was just better at it than she was. She didn't want to think about why flirting was easier than any other form of socialization he attempted normally.
The comment was unexpected and even as she opened her mouth to retort, her words failed and her face flushed bright scarlet. It wasn't that it upset her, just that strange compliments like that baffled her. "The sun is just a star," her smile turned shy and she had to fight the urge to laugh at herself as she glanced away, trying to hide her ridiculous physical reactions from him. "Some of them are just brighter than others, that's all." Her words had a certain inflection to them that suggested a double meaning, but that was all she could manage.
As the man at the door checked the tickets, she presented theirs to him while avoiding eye contact for the most part, then used the small distraction to take a deep breath and steady herself. By the time they were in doors, the scarlet blush of her cheeks had faded to a soft pink tinge and although she would have appreciated it going away entirely, she was relieved.
"Where to first?" She had stayed close to him as they walked through and into the main lobby, gravitating towards his side. Then her eyes swept over to the two hallways and the signs hanging over them. She laughed, very slightly and pointed her fingers at both of them. "Earth or Space, Khal?"
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Posted: Wed Jul 13, 2011 3:07 am
"No way," he started to laugh, but she said it too casually to be making it up. Admittedly he didn't know what stars were in the first place, just that it was plain to see the sun was bigger and only came out during the day. His expression slowly transformed from amused to incredulous the longer he tried to puzzle it out. "That can't be true... hey, are you trying to change the subject?"
The color of her face didn't go unnoticed by Khal, nor did her smile. Even after they'd made it inside, she was still a little flushed. It was a good sign, he thought. Girls who were offended by the way he came on to them had angrier ways of getting their point across. One even broke his finger. Blushing and looking away shyly just meant Kaia was totally into it.
"Let's go to Space," he answered knowingly. Admittedly both were educational traps, but he wouldn't have come all this way if he didn't think he could handle suffering through it. Tentatively he reached out and wrapped one arm around her, resting his hand on her opposite shoulder and guiding them toward the right-hand hallway. The only thing in the museum that interested him was right beside him. Though... "You were kidding about the sun, right?"
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Posted: Wed Jul 13, 2011 3:36 am
She leaned into him when his arm reached out and wrapped so casually across her shoulders, fighting the soft flare of blush once more. She tried to hide it by leaning her head slightly against his chest and shifting until she could hook the arm against him around his back, holding him close to her as they walked towards the space exhibit.
Her eyes swept up and over posters and cases as they entered, trying to decide what might be the most impressive thing at first glance. It was only his continued probing that made her swing her bright eyes up awkwardly to his face from her position.
"It's our star, Khal. It has a different name because it's the whole reason we exist at all." She shrugged a little and leaned into him more, squeezing her arm around his skinny torso. The fingers of that hand curled a little into his simple t-shirt, holding onto him even as they stepped into the hallway. Space might have been her calling, but he kept her rooted on Earth where she belonged now.
"They're all just giant balls of gas anyway. Or, well, that's all they're supposed to be according to this lovely research here." She stopped their forward motion and pulled him over to look at a display case of meteorites in every imaginable size. Her hand hesitated above the glass as she read off the names, the sizes, the unimportant little blips of information. "Humans don't know half of what they think they do about all of this." Her hand withdrew without ever touching the case and she leaned back into him instead.
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Posted: Wed Jul 13, 2011 10:30 pm
"That's kind of a weird thing for stars to be made out of," he commented with what sounded like a hint of disappointment. When you fought space aliens for several years on end and what felt like your entire life, romanticizing their weird star homes couldn't be avoided. Maybe where they lived just really sucked a lot, being a bunch of gas, and Earth was just the only awesome place left in the universe. No excuse for them showing up and invading like a bunch of pod people, though, the assholes. "I never thought about it but I guess I was expecting them to be a little more... I don't know..."
He made a vague hand gesture while he searched for the word he associated with stars. "Dangerous?"
He welcomed her closeness, but he caught the hinting in her words. But any question he asked, even the idea of questioning her, meant he first had to recognize Kaia for what she really was - a senshi. It was an uncomfortable mental contortion for him that most times he happily avoided. It was true, he owed his life to a senshi. But she had proven herself to the General-Queen; no one could question her loyalty. It certainly wasn't hypocritical to trust her, to care about her, if Tanzanite did too.
"What don't we know?" he asked tentatively, failing to catch the dividing nature of his wording. It had been drilled into him so much for so long that the enemy was nothing more than humanoid monsters that he didn't know any more about them than what he'd been told by his commanders or what Alkaid had volunteered to tell him herself. He'd never sought to find out more about them; he thought he knew everything worth knowing to destroy them. If he was going to devote himself to her, he would have to learn the rest of the story too. Maybe after all this time he should have known more.
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Posted: Thu Jul 14, 2011 4:48 am
If they weren't in a space museum with a planetarium show just around the corner, Kaia probably would have sighed and sat down to explain the magical wonders of space to him. As it was, her eyes saw the advertisements for show times, and she decided that this might all go over better if she let the experts tell him in the closest from to TV show she was likely to find any time soon. Not that Khal and educational television usually got along, but maybe if she could keep him awake for part of it..
"They are dangerous." It was all she managed to say, though she pursed her lips a couple of times as she considered what wouldn't come off as boring, dry lecturing on her part. In the end, she really couldn't think of anything she expected to hold his attention for more than a few seconds, and she was more than happy to move on to the part of space she felt more comfortable with.
"A lot. I'm not sure if there's some kind of magic hiding everything or what." Her voice was low on the word, magic, as if she were suddenly aware they were very much in a public place. The arm around his torso squeezed lightly and she moved forward, taking him with him, until they were standing in front of an enormous replica of the moon.
"Look at it. It's just dust and rocks and nothing." She waved her hand at the replica, letting her eyes wander over it for the tiniest sign of anything that wasn't absolutely boring. "It's called the Moon Kingdom for a reason," her voice was quiet again, if not also carrying a little bit of distaste at her own words, "she had a whole kingdom somewhere on that old rock." Her eyes rose and looked at every replica of the planet in the room, every asteroid, every diagram and satellite image that hid the truth.
"There were whole civilizations in these places and none of these astronomers have found so much as the tiniest shred of evidence." She leaned her head into his chest and brought her other arm up, so she was hugging herself to his torso instead of simply looping an arm behind him. Her words had come out in a quiet awe that spoke volumes of her curiosity, though just being in the hallway surrounded by everything seemed to have mellowed her out a bit. That, or his constant presence at her side, either one.
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