Matt Lawrence (matt_lawrence) wrote in astor_ridge, @ 2011-01-03 03:19:00 |
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Entry tags: | matt, matt and nell, nell |
Who Penelope ‘Nell’ James and Matt Lawrence
What Running into each other, quite literally
Where Ninth floor corridor, Astor Ridge building
When Sunday afternoon
Rating G
|Matt| The day after New Years Day was usually a very dull, regular kind of day. Half the world’s population was still hungover and the other half didn’t do much in general, nothing out of the ordinary. Matt was part of the second group and had spent all day indoors, mostly on the livingroom couch, alternatively watching TV and the heavy snowfall outside. The rain of yesterday had turned into snow that somehow seemed more harmless, but for Matt it didn’t matter if it snowed or rained - he had as hellish of a time getting anywhere outside of the apartment complex either way. Snow and sleet wasn’t ideal when you were stuck in a wheelchair.
Thankfully, he had his assistant Mandy to help him out with the things he couldn’t do himself and for that, he was silently grateful. Sure, he told her thanks ever so often, but it was easy to take the woman for granted as well. Mandy had left for the day, or rather Matt had made her leave early to get home and be with her family. Looking at the watch around his wrist, Matt realised he had yet to have lunch, even though it was a few hours overdue. He wasn’t very hungry however, probably still full from the New Years Eve dinner at his parents’, he thought with a small smile. Still, he should eat something and his mind wandered to the café downstairs. Why not?
Matt pushed himself up from his reclined position on the couch and transferred himself over to the wheelchair parked next to it with a routine set of moves. Five years of training did make life easier than it had been right after the accident that had left him paralyzed from the waist down. Navigating through the apartment, he grabbed a long-sleeve in the hall and pulled it on, before wheeling himself out through the door, stopping to lock it behind him before he moved on towards the elevator.
|Nell| This had been a bad idea: of course, Nell wasn’t exactly known for her life’s track record of good ideas, and moving into a new apartment on New Years Day wasn’t exactly her worst to date... but it sure as hell was regrettable.
Perhaps in San Diego or Bangalore, the weather might be a bit forgiving on this particular day, but just about everywhere else in the world she could think of, January the first was associated with cold, wet, and general discomfort. The storm building strength outside Astor Ridge’s mammoth windows reminded the slender woman of that, every time she traversed the tile lobby between doors and elevator--an elevator that was now mostly occupied by the dolly balanced in her hands. Stacked with nondescript boxes and one stainless steel microwave.
The tell-tale jerk of an elevator stopped cued the tattooist in that it was tie to brace. One inked hand curled around the lip of the top box, holding it in place as she grimaced, and hoisted the load back on it’s wheels. The doors opened, and Nell started the gravitational move.
Completely unaware that there was someone about to become a cartoon pancake in front of her.
|Matt| By the time Matt reached the elevator and pushed the button to call it, he noticed one of them was already on the way up. He made a little grimace as the idea of having to perhaps ride a bunch of floors up before going down again, but figured it wouldn’t really do him any harm to ride the elevator for a little longer. He’d still get to the lobby in the end.
Unless, of course, he wasn’t flattened by a stack of boxes. As the elevator doors slid open, Matt was at first surprised to find a seemingly ownerless tower of cardboard boxes and what seemed to be a microwave. Then it took a few brief moments for him to realise that these boxes were moving towards him and than he had to get out of the way. Grabbing the wheels of his chair, he backed up as quick as he could as he shouted a warning to whoever was responsible for seemingly trying to run him over. “Hey, watch it!”
He wasn’t quite fast enough in moving away and he screwed his face up as the dolly bumped against the wheelchair, getting it stuck between the low cart and the wall opposite the elevator. Matt instinctively raised his hands over his head, in case something would decide to fall on him, and called out again, decidedly more annoyed this time around even though he wasn’t shouting.
“Would you watch where you’re going with that thing? Back up, please.”
|Nell| Her first thought was the wheels of the dolly had hit the tiny crevasse between elevator and floor, and refused to move, even when the body behind it bumped into the handle with her ongoing momentum. Nell’s initial thoughts were aborted into fragments of surprise and frustration... but that all melted away when the roadblock in front of her spoke.
“Oh shit! Sorry! ...sorry.” Already making friends. Fantastic job, Nell. A pair of black-coffee eyes beneath a rather...chaotic hair cut peeked around the stack of boxes after it was immediately pulled back a few inches (and nearly dropped on the steel toes of her Western style boots. One long, tattooed arm emphatically draped across the top of the cardboard mountain--just in case. There was snow melting in her hair, and a few thick flakes caught in her eyelashes.
It went well with her genuinely apologetic (read: embarrassed) smile: teeth and dimples that notched up the beauty mark on the side of one eye. Christ, the guy was in a wheelchair. Nell could feel the universe staring at her... or maybe laughing it’s ass off.
“I-uh...” Didn’t see you? That much was fucking obvious: Nell stumbled on her thought, but was knocked back into it when the elevator door tried to shut, insistently banging at her hip. She bit her lip, and couldn’t help but laugh at herself. “I’m just...really sorry.”
|Matt| Once he was free to back up some more, Matt did so as his eyes went to the woman behind the stack of boxes and he couldn’t quite keep the disapproving look off his face. He shook his head as she apologised, giving a sigh. “No, that’s fine, nothing bad happened,” he offered, raising a hand to rub at his neck and try to shake the negative disposition he’d been so swiftly thrown into. At least the woman had apologised. “You’d be surprised at how many times people have bumped into me with carts of all kinds,” he said with a snort. “You just aren’t that visible when you’re below the regular line of sight.”
Looking up at her again, he glanced at the boxes with a light frown. “Since I don’t recognize your face, I assume you’re moving in rather than out,” he said matter-of-factly, before pushing himself forward a little to offer his hand to the woman. “I’m Matt, I live in 969.”
|Nell| Nell fancied herself as one who didn’t needlessly bump into people under her own line of sight (and being tall for her gender, that happened often), so inadvertently being lumped into said category rubbed against her grain... even more so than the discomfort of that particular group’s overall existence.
She winced as the elevator door clipped her again, reminding Nell that it was best she get out of the way. Through no small amount of her own effort and body weight, she tilted the dolly back and managed to finagle it around Matt: 969, and ease it back down to the hallway carpet with a grunt.
“Yes. Moving in--and it’s going so well,” this said with subtle exasperation, and a not-so-subtle smirk. She did shake his hand though: subconsciously mindful of the rawhide and bone bangle that threatened to slip off her hand with the movement. She really had to resize that thing. “Nell. 971.” She let go of his hand, drawing back to put it on the bell of her hip. A sliver of skin seen there, between jeans and raw cotton shirt, totally inappropriate for the weather. It too, like her arms, was heavily tattooed.
The other hand lifted from it’s rest on the top box, dusting back a choppy, lengthier piece of her hair. “Guess we’re neighbors?”
|Matt| “I guess we are,” Matt confirmed with a cocked eyebrow. Now that he could see all of Nell and he wasn’t being squashed by boxes, the tattoos caught his eyes. He’d never wanted any on himself, but he thought they could look good on others. “Nice artwork you got there,” he said with a nod in Nell’s general direction.
His original intention of going to the café prodded the back of his mind, but the elevator doors were currently blocked by the woman and her dolly, so he gave up on his plans for a little while more. Not like he was in a great big hurry, anyway. “I’d offer to help you get your stuff in, but I wouldn’t do much good,” he said with a small gesture to his wheelchair.
|Nell| “Why thank you!” Nell genuinely offered appreciation for his noticing. Her tone wasn’t bubbly or over-enthusiastic, but definitely held a reposed sort of pride for the permanent decorations on her skin. It was a good little break in the monotony of moving on the worst day of the year for it, and the woman’s brightened smile reflected that, even as she continued to struggle with the wheeled stack of boxes.
She was just barely pulling it back to the proper angle for movement when he alluded to his inability to help. Nell chuckled quietly in the back of her throat, and put her shoulder into budging the heavy load. Not like she was going to ask anyone for help, let alone a complete stranger... but the light-hearted exchange coupled with his gesture to the wheelchair simply demanded a delicately humored response.
“Well that’s not true... you’re your own little dolly, aren’tcha.” The wide, sweet-natured grin she gave him showed Nell’s little tease was nothing but friendly. Then both brows arched up. “But if you’re hard-pressed for entertainment, you’re welcome to watch me stumble around blindly.”
|Matt| Matt couldn’t help but give a smile at her comment, nodding. “True, true... At least you can load heavy stuff on me, I wouldn’t feel it much.” He was in a pretty good mood, as hinted by the fact that he joked about his condition instead of being offended by Nell’s words. “Well, I was going to get a coffee or something downstairs, but now I can’t decide if I’d rather do that or stay here and watch you..” he said with a mock look of contemplation. “Then again, I’d rather not get run over, so perhaps the café is the safer place to be until you’re done,” he concluded with a small chuckle.
“Have you got a lot of stuff to move in, or are you one of those people who bring five boxes and a mattress to your new place?”
|Nell| Oh god, she could really go for coffee right about then. A small bit of wistful gleam came to Nell’s dark eyes, and they drifted to the hallway ceiling for a moment of reflection on how perfect a dark chocolate latte would be. Her teeth scraped her bottom lip in the process of a small, friendly laugh--commiserative and agreeing at the same time. “I truly would not blame you. Either way.”
This fellow was a pleasant bonus to her hard day of work: nice to know the person she’d be sharing at least one wall with was a pleasant conversationalist with at least a hinted sense of humor. It definitely helped that he didn’t jump into the ever-common fake vibrato of flirting, or building himself up to impress or sway her first impression of him (regardless of the fact that his impression of her started with her nearly squashing him). These were things Nell subconsciously combed through--always.
And he was also right on the money--if that last bit was a guess. Maybe it was a stab in the dark at his new neighbor’s eclectic possession personality, but that didn’t matter. Nell pushed her brows high and smiled, holding tight to the dolly handle. “Yes, actually... I just returned from traveling for a while, and I don’t really have a lot to fill the place yet.” Nell patted the microwave affectionately. “Just the essentials, til I can go shopping.”
|Matt| “Well, you know what they say - material possessions aren’t important. There’s this guy upstairs, I’ve run into him a few times,” Matt said, reaching up to run a hand through his already messy hair, “he’s into this whole zen thing... I think he’s some kinda self-help celebrity type of person, but he can’t point out enough how little material things matter in life.” He gave a shrug, not quite sure why he’d shared that bit of information. “He’d probably say you’re on the right track.”
“But travelling, hm? Sounds fun enough; I haven’t really been anywhere since I ended up in this chair, but it’s good to know the rest of the world is still out there.” He wheeled himself around Nell and the dolly, reaching to press the elevator call button again. “Well, it’s nice to meet you, but I’ll get out of the way now,” he said with a wind smile. “I’m sure we’ll run into each other again, only I’d appreciate it if the dolly wasn’t involved next time.”
|Nell| Nell’s interest perked a bit. A self-help celebrity? She couldn’t deny how amusing the thought of her sharing the same apartment building as Tony Robbins was: she had always wanted to meet him. Not for his affinity for changing people’s lives, but because he was in Shallow Hal. And the fact that he’s supposed to be like, eight feet tall.
She didn’t get that feeling though, but did express her interest by way of a soft hum, and a half-shrug of one thin, inked shoulder. “Sounds interesting... I’ll have to look for him.” Nell’s smile leaned a bit to the right. Moving here was definitely looking like a smart move.
Of course, she couldn’t expect anyone to continue a conversation in a hallway, especially with one laden with boxes and the other craving coffee. Well, they were both craving coffee at this point, but she’d get down there eventually.
The tattooist smiled warm and genuine, following her new neighbor with a shortened wave, then braced again for the dolly. “You too... and I promise nothing. These things are so much fun, you know.”
|Matt| “He’s kinda hard to miss, if you have an idea of what you’re looking for. He’s a big man, actually quite imposing to a guy like me.” Matt glanced up at the display above the elevator, counting up from a few floors down, before he looked at Nell again. “Cuppa Joe downstairs is a popular place and tends to be kinda crowded, but I promise you they have coffee worth queuing for, if you do make it down there.”
With a ding, the elevator doors slid open once more, and Matt turned the wheelchair so that he could back into the car. “Good luck with moving in,” he added with a smile before pressing the button for the lobby, causing the doors to close again.