alex+rei; this log is autumn colors yay

[amberhearted]

Who: Alexander & Reilanin
When: The first week of October.
Where: A coffee shop.
What: Getting-to-know-yous.
Warnings: --


It had been difficult to realize the immensity of the probable situation, even reading through and listening to all of the responses aimed at Alexander and his group while they hid in the Dead District. She'd spent much of it fidgeting and pretending to be busy at work, using the phone only briefly, using the excuse of her family for her shifting mood.

That, and her conversation with Ravindra, and Anthony's condition, all had her thinking about her own situation. She'd been rather foolish, giving in to it as she had been. Regardless of what she changed into, she was still herself, and hadn't she always prized that higher than anything? So it was no good to let herself succumb to what would be so easily, and she could not let herself mire others in her thoughts likewise. It was no fair to Anthony to consider him anything less than who he had always been, or anyone else they happened to come across.

Did it frighten her still? Of course. She had been telling the truth to Ravindra- she was, in short, a time bomb. But she had time until the next full moon, and she had felt nothing yet- and might not at all. She may have months yet before she had something to be concerned about, and all she could do was keep going until then.

And perhaps make an appointment at the clinic.

That could also wait.

She phoned Alexander, through the network. Was he well? Had everything settled? She asked after what had happened and fell silent a few moments before launching into her question. Would he like to go out for coffee? Later, of course. Because of work. Belatedly she realized that would be of benefit to him as well and neglected to mention either point and left it at "later". If he was free, of course.

Which he seemed to be, because it left her sitting at a table at a coffee shop nearby the library- surprisingly, not a Starbucks- and sat waiting with a tall cup of apple cider. She didn't even know if she liked it. She'd ordered it on a whim.

Her invitation came as a surprise to him, but pleased to have been invited at all, he accepted with tentative curiosity. After all, she had closed that ledger on the grounds of wishing to avoid another Echo, though she had declined his offer to keep their interaction to a minimum for the same purpose. Apparently the acceptance she had spoken of then was true.

Not that he had thought she might be lying, nor would he have held it against her if she'd changed her mind.

It wasn't the coffee shop he looked for, but the Library, already familiar with it -- rather familiar with a great deal of the city's landmarks given his occupation. From there, he found the shop courtesy Google Maps and stepped inside, the bell upside jingling with his entrance.

The sparse customers coupled with his height made spotting Reilanin a piece of cake. Alex waved to catch her attention, then, regardless of whether he had or not, made his way across the shop to her.

"Hey," he said, nodding towards her drink. "What'd you get?"

Hearing heralded someone entering. Smell picked up what she identified as his apartment more than him, though in a less crowded area she felt she could better find something in the air that was his. She looked up without alarm and was already watching him by the time his hand raised to greet her.

She returned the gesture, a brief, almost funny lift and droop of her fingers.

His voice sounded different now. Different? Fuller, perhaps. She'd noticed that once everything had settled down. A day or two with earplugs and some aspirin had helped the adjustment period. Surely her coworkers must think her either mad or frail.

"Cider," she said abruptly, having forgotten to reply. "Hot apple cider." She looked back down to it. "I don't know how it tastes yet, but it smells good." She assumed it might be too sweet for her tastes, but she was happy to have it under her nose. Something else distracted her. The absence of smell had been odd enough, but there was something now about sound... "Do you want anything? I'll treat."

Could he? Yes, she remembered he'd been eating some of the things the boys had brought over at the movie night. Maybe just not a lot?...

"Yeah, it does," he agreed, his voice a little lower in volume than normal. The effect was that he sounded a little breathless. "I think I'll get one of those, too."

Waving her offer off with his hand, he went to the counter to order. When his hands weren't busy, he kept them in the pockets of his jacket, and when it came time for him to order, he put the cash down on the surface to avoid making contact with the barista's hands. The weather simply wasn't cold enough to excuse the coldness of his skin. Perhaps he would come to cut winter some slack when it would work to his advantage.

He picked up his order and returned to Reilanin's table, hands sucking up the warmth of the cider through the paper cup. "How're you?" he asked in that same almost hushed voice, settling into the seat across from her.

Her head tilted, not so much to what he said but to how he sounded. An anomoly in the presence of people who spoke and settled and breathed normally, but she had not yet pinned the cause. She blinked and nodded, twisting her cup in her hands, and lifted it to take a sip as he walked away. It was sharp and sweet, as she'd surmised, but she made herself swallow it. She considered it a moment. It was too sweet, but the aftertaste was nice, cinnamon-y and maybe a bit of cloves...

She looked back up as he sat down, again looking bemused at the tone of his voice. Was he actually-?

"I'm well," she said, a little slowly as she tried to process that thought. She remembered also, briefly, her own ledger, and pushed it aside as well after a moment's deliberation. "...are you trying to whisper?"

"Ahhhh," he said, a drawn out sound confirming her suspicion. "Not whispeering, not exactly..."

He propped his elbow on the table and cupped his face, ring finger nudging his earlobe in some furtive attempt to indicate her own hearing. "This well, too?"

"Not exactly," she said, more visibly amused this time. She smiled slightly and shut her eyes a moment before opening them again and shaking her head. "It's all right. A little overwhelming sometimes, but it's pretty quiet in here."

She could hear parts of the conversation from the baristas in the back, drowned out from time to time by this or that thing getting moved, items into the dishwasher, a phone ringing, chairs scraping back as people got up and left, the bells as another came in. The rustle of newspaper, the swipe of someone using their phone a whisper underneath it all. She took another sip from her drink. And beneath all of that, the steady, almost inaudible rumble of hearts and blood housed by creaking, shifting houses of flesh.

Her smile turned a little helpless and she shrugged. "It doesn't turn my stomach like my nose did, so there's that. It's... it's a little funny. The things people think no one else can hear." She paused. "Well. I suppose most can't. It's made my job more interesting, though. How is yours going?"

His brow slowly lifted when she said 'the things people think no one else could hear.' He could think of many 'things' that applied to, and wondered how unflappable a person she was.

At the question, he glanced away with a shrug and a stretch of his neck. "It's going. We're already taking bets on how many pumpkin carving accidents we'll see. People falling off ladders, too."

"I had to remind some of our pages about our policy about relationships in the workplace," she supplied to the arched brow.

Another small smile appeared. "We have ladder accidents year round. I imagine Christmas is a terrible time, too, for ladders." Had she meant for the conversation to go this way? She considered and conceded. Yes, this was fine. "I simply avoid the ladders altogether. I don't particularly like being up on them.

"Firecrackers are this time of year too, i just remembered. I'll have to look into a good set of earplugs, I think. They make custom ones, don't they?"

He rolled the cup between his palms absently. "Probably. At this stage of technological advancement, the question's more what can't you customize?"

"It's true," she mused, looking at him a little too directly, voice distracted. Wrong, something wrong... all the sounds she was picking up and there was something obvious missing from right in front of her.

"Do you have any family in the city?"

A heartbeat.

His hands stilled. "Oh, god," he said, a huff of breath accompanying his response. "No."

Though he hadn't outright said it, it was obvious from his tone and body language that not having family in the city was a relief. He felt for the Numbers that did have family in Locke, he truly did. Alex knew he wouldn't handle the stress of his family being easy targets well.

Lifting the cup to his lips, he took a moment to inhale the spicy scent of the cider and hummed in approval. "I love 'em, but, you know."

"Yeah," she replied, a softness in her voice. "Me either," she added, taking another sip. "An hour and a half or so out, but... it seems far enough away."

Was it? She didn't want that to just be wishful thinking speaking for her.

"When did you move into Locke City?"

An hour and a half didn't sound far away enough to him and it showed in the flicker of dubiety across his face. The water reservoir already was an hour out.

"Five years ago?" He took a sip of his cider and made a low noise of contentment. It was a little sweet, but the spices were good enough for him. Plus, Alex was a sucker for apples.

"Six, almost," he added, after another sip. The drink was already on its way to being lukewarm. "Yeah, it's been a while already..."

She saw his expression easily and she looked away as though she hadn't, taking a larger swallow than she meant to of her cider. It burned.

"We moved to America when I was a child, but I moved out on my own after high school." She put the cup down and tried not to twist it on the tabletop. "...my father and my brother are still there, but Kyle's about to graduate." There was some concern on her face, the way her brows drew in. "He and Anthony are about the same age."

She looked up again, cup to her lips again.

"Your family?"

Starting with Varista senior, Alex described his immediate family with surprising enthusiasm. The ranch had begun two generations ago. A little herd of goats was the most recent addition, courtesy his mother who wanted livestock a little less of a hassle to manage -- in size, at least. He was the second oldest of several siblings, but leaning towards the elder of them did bestow onto him the reputation that the older children were the better behaved; he'd been a little shit in middle school and had zero ambition to inherit the ranching business.

At least he went into something useful, his father had said, and said nothing of the pay, which was dismal for EMTs. Their relationship had been rocky, both too much alike in stubbornness and temper to get along, but distance and age seemed to have smoothed it out some that they can enjoy each other's company during the holidays with the knowledge that it was temporary.

The questions that followed were answered and asked in kind with casual curiosity, but when Reilanin asked about past girlfriends Alex paused and set his now cold, still heavy cup down on the table and asked, at length, "Is this some kind of interview?"

She listened in a patient, almost intent way, filing each bit of information into her head, trying to create a better picture of him that had nothing to do with echoes or pulses. In the silence, as he hesitated to answer, there was no voice, no sound to cover up his stillness.

....ah.

The question seemed to catch her off guard as she tried to process his discovery along with the query. "Mm?..." And she stopped a moment to consider. "..yes, yes I suppose it is an interview."

With a vampire.

"I wanted to know more about you."

The corners of his lips lifted in a mild, almost shy smile. "Plain old curiosity or nothing better to do?"

She was quiet again a moment to contemplate her answer, never one for a hasty explanation, and with her own almost-smile told him, "I want to know more about you... about who you are now. I hardly think it fair I know more of you from some past age than I do as of present."

She shrugged slightly, perhaps a little ashamed to admit it. "I think it important to know. To not forget about."

Caught off-guard, all Alex did, as his immediate response, was regard her with the same, quiet look. It hadn't been a dramatic surprise, her answer-- more of a gentle sweep, a faint gust of wind just strong enough to pause and acknowledge its existence in your own personal world.

She understood his distress about their past selves, understood it on a viscerally personal level. She had been a creature of it to -- Belief -- a product of the whims of rumor and superstition.

This was how she chose to address it. To resist it.

To flip it the bird.

His smile relaxed. "I like your honesty," he said warmly. He propped his cheek in his palm again. "Does it get you into trouble a lot?"

She met the look for a long moment before she looked back down to her drink, up again as she picked it up, away to take in the sounds and smells around them. She'd been good at multitasking before, but now, this-! This was beyond anything she ever thought she'd have to do.

Belief. She remembered the gist of it. Could feel the understanding of it as sure as she did any other abstract idea, though it seemed to weigh more, much more. And she had given in to it. She'd sought to use it. Not in the way others would have wanted.

This wasn't the same, but she wouldn't fall prey to that thinking again. She would maintain her self if it was the last thing she did. She had not spent nearly thirty years asserting her indepence to become someone else. Even if that someone else was still, in a sense, her.

"Oh?" she asked, looking back to him. No heartbeat. The warmth in his voice meant more. She could almost feel it, could pick up on it in a way she hadn't been able to before.

She was not who she had been. Though small, her smile was easy and genuine. "Yes. Often enough to be remarked upon, at least. I'm sorry I wasn't more up front with you at the beginning, but I don't think even I was sure what I wanted when I asked you out."

Chuckling, he said, "Oh, it's all right. What's life but improv?"

It seemed like he had something more to say, but a soundclip of the Grinch laughing interrupted him. With a little "oop", he dug into his jeans pocket for his phone. "My sister," he said, swiping the screen with his thumb to read the text. It was a reminder not to forget next month.

His brows furrowed. A few thumbtaps into his reply, he realized what she was referring to and stilled, losing the already faint color in his cheeks.

All this time, he'd been afraid of leaving Locke City and forgetting. He'd been willing to do it during Julien's flu scare, but that had been a (perceived) extreme situation.

It'd been decided months ago that he'd have to leave anyway.

"Alex?"

Her head tilted again as she watched him. She'd been startled by the ringtone, but waited patiently as he set to answering it. Without much else of interest to look at- she could hear everything else, so looking didn't really matter as much- she saw his face shift from confused to what she could only assume to be horrified.

"Is everything all right?"

Closing his eyes, he held his breath for a few seconds, then released it. His shoulders slumped. He pocketed the phone, eyes open and on the edge of the table.

"I have to leave for a month."

"Have to-"

She said nothing more, the meaning of those words sinking in even then. A month. And by the sounds of it, his family was far out enough that he would be out of range of the echoes.

He would forget.

She stared at him a moment, not realizing she was doing so- looked away when she did, aside at first, then also down at the table.

"Have to?"

He leaned forward, elbows on the table. "We made arrangements-- planned this way in advance because," he rubbed his face, fingers dragging down the sides of his nose, "because of our- my- schedule." He sighed, ran his fingers back up his nose to rub his eyes.

He was getting anxious just thinking about it, but of course, there was no responsive heart to relay that. Gone for most of November. Now he remembered looking forward to it; it meant he'd get to spend Thanksgiving with his folks. That cheerful anticipation had since been replaced with dread. How could a person just forget?

He wouldn't even know he's forgotten.

And then there was leaving the network behind. Alex wasn't self-important enough to think his absence would be significant. Still, the notion didn't sit well with him.

Her eyes came back up from the table while he rubbed at his face, and her brows drew in slightly, concerned but having no real way to express it, except uncomfortably. More uncomfortable was the distress on his face and in his voice, absent from the rest of him. She'd felt a multitude of things through hearing alone since the echo had occurred- she was even starting to get used to it.

And it was hard to relate, because he was leaving. They'd talked about this, but it was her in his position. It wasn't so much jealousy now but a sort of panic of her own, the idea of being left to deal with it all on her own. The solace in having those memories, those powers, came in knowing that someone else knew about them as well- she didn't need to explain herself and all of her fears. It was easy for the both of them to understand what that fear was.

She swallowed. Ah, how selfish of her. He clearly wasn't happy about this- it wasn't as though he was going willingly. And she would do the same, she was sure, if something arose with her own family. She wouldn't go on a whim- she didn't care to test the limits of the city's influence to satisfy her own curiousity- but a promise made was a promise to be kept.

She reached out, hand on his forearm. He was cold, even though his jacket. Her own skin was warm, too warm, almost feverish. "If it can't be helped, it can't be helped." A reassurance, though reluctant. "They're family."

The touch was appreciated. He dropped his hands to the table and released a slow, controlled breath.

"Okay. Okay, okay." He couldn't back out of this commitment; his father had arranged the plans with the assurance that Alexander would come in to help in his absence, and Alexander had arranged his vacation time and shifts around said plans. This was nearly a year in the making.

Palms pressed up against the edge of the table, he pushed back, the front legs of his chair lifting from the floor. "No sense worrying about it," he said. (He would certainly worry about it.) "It is what it is."

He relaxed his arms. The chair dropped to all fours again. "There goes the atmosphere, huh?" The corner of his lips quirked up. "Sorry."

She took her hand back and settled both in her lap rather than return them to the table. She didn't know him well enough to say if he was lying or not, but she nodded to him all the same, encouragingly.

She started at the chair dropping, shaking her head a little. Then she smiled a little, shrugging.

"It's okay. That happens, too."

She looked down at the table a moment, before leaning back in her own chair.

"It'll be like a test run. You can keep in contact with... with Ravindra... that's not unusual. Not that, ah- not that it would be... Well." She rubbed her thumb into her wrist. Her smile turned wry. "Well, not much else will be your concern, I suppose." She paused. "...if you think of anything I can do in the interim, let me know."

"I think..." His index finger tapped on the table. "I think we should still keep in touch. Or you-- you keep in touch with someone else. Whoever you're most comfortable with."

In case she Echoed back something particularly distressing or nasty.

She smiled slightly, maybe a little sadly. "I don't think you'd care much to have a call from a woman claiming to be a werewolf. I'll... I'll keep in touch with someone else."

There was no one else. She glanced aside again briefly, her mind running through the list of people on the network. Lyall perhaps. He would understand. Anthony came to mind briefly, but she was still averse to including him. Alexander's own roommate, Ravindra.

Ah, she hadn't intended to get close to anyone, with or without a curse.

"Perhaps you could ask your roommate if he would let me know how you're doing?"

"Well, you don't have to say that..." he said with a weak laugh. But what would she say, then? Not even of werewolf business, but anything bizarre at all would sound bizarre to him-- the him that would be on the wrong side of the 'boundary.'

'The him.'

'Wrong' side.

He shrugged halfheartedly. "Yeah, I guess not. I'll be fine, though. Helping while my dad's out of commission-- that's all."

The smile lingered even as he laughed, knowing as well as he that there really wasn't much that she could say. They barely knew one another before this had all happened- unless she were to phone him about overdue library books, well... she'd already learned he wasn't much of a reader.

"Mm," she said, hands around her cup again, empty except for that last quarter of an inch at the bottom, all sweetness that she wasn't about to try and choke down. "Yes, you will. I'm sure we'll be fine as well."

An unknown echo... and she remembered again the first time she had heard the beating of Ravindra's heart, that night they'd bumped inot each other in the park, with the pink lights.

She'd know by the eighteenth.

"Try not to worry about it. I'm sure you'll appreciate the reprieve in the meantime. Get to eat as much food as you like." The smile seemed to have been bolstered by the idea, recalling also his statement about the contents of his fridge.

He was mildly surprised to realize that she was right -- he would be able to eat solid food again without feeling ill.

Well, not him. The other him.

It wasn't as positive a revelation to him as her smile suggested. He returned it with one of his own anyway, knowing that his concerns about 'losing' himself across the border were not shared so acutely among others. Not, at least, with Ravindra. Since he had been the one Alex had spoken to in depth regarding the possibility, it was his opinion that left the heaviest impression.

"You're right," he said, superficially pleasant. His own cup, still more than half full, tilted this way and that in his hand. "But anyway, since you've got me here, are there any errands I can help you with?"

He didn't want to continue this conversation, but he didn't want to return to the apartment yet.

His voice sounded different. She had spent almost a half of an hour speaking pleasantly with him, and she could tell already something had changed. What it was, she didn't know. Her smile faded, but only because she did not hold smiles well, and her expression settled again into something still but still light, wondering what had changed.

The question had her head tilting and she seemed confused. "Errands... I was going to go to the store after this, but I didn't call you to help me with groceries."

She didn't know him well enough to pick up on his habits, on how he played things off. A small glimpse into what he was like when upset, how he handled himself on the job, his friendliness with others. She couldn't pick up on anything beyond what she heard, and it wasn't her place to hear any further.

"Actually... actually, I was thinking about getting a cellphone. The mall's open until nine, and I have no idea where to start. If you wouldn't mind walking me through a few options. I don't want to ask someone who's looking for a commission."

His brows rose. A cellphone, huh? He wondered if his reaction to her not owning one had anything to do with her decision. No, probably not; that had been weeks and weeks ago.

Belatedly, he said, "Sure." Then, pushing himself back against his chair, he flashed her an easy smile. "Ready when you are."