Juliette Coulombe (clearyourmind) wrote in emillion, @ 2013-10-28 00:12:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, !log, drysteln yord, juliette coulombe |
Who: Juliette & Drys
What: Juliette is the worst wingwoman ever A run-in at a coffee shop
Where: Near Bahamut Hall
When: Monday afternoon
Rating: PG-ish
Status: Complete!
The days were becoming chilly, and outdoor training more challenging, in its way; one had to choose whether to be slowed and overburdened with an abundance of clothing, or to freeze. Juliette always chose the latter, knowing that her speed was her best advantage. After a while, once her heart rate had risen, she scarcely remembered the cold, and by the afternoon, the sun served to warm her and her classmates somewhat. Still, after a few hours in the training yards on a particularly cloudy day, she found herself shivering and wrapping her arms about herself as she hurried across the street. Training at Bahamut Hall had certain advantages — because it was centrally located, it had easy access to various areas and districts. She had packed plenty of food to get her through the day, but with her hands and cheeks cold, there was one particular thing she found herself craving, and it was not something she had brought along with her. She made her way to a small coffee shop a few blocks from the hall, pushing the door open into a pleasantly warm interior scented with beans, vanilla, and caramel. She had arrived just in time, it seemed — there was only one person in front of her. With a small smile, she placed herself in queue behind him, already dreaming of a large black tea with honey. Unfortunately, it seemed the young man in front of her was in no hurry to move. She recognized him once she looked at him, and barely held back a sigh. He didn’t see her, it seemed, being far too occupied with the girl behind the counter, who was twirling a lock of blonde hair around her fingers and giggling at something he’d said. With a displeased huff of breath, Juliette settled back to wait, trying not to listen to the flattery coming from him and the girl’s simpering responses. She had quite enough of this at balls. She waited five minutes, then ten. There were now three people in queue behind her, and still the pair flirting over the counter seemed oblivious to the presence of anyone else. Finally, steeling herself, Juliette cleared her throat, and trying to keep her tone even, said, “Drysteln. I’ve training in twenty minutes — and so do you. Might you perhaps be willing to pursue your… acquaintance some other time?” She just wanted her tea. “You made that yourself? Amazing,” Drys crooned at the girl behind the counter. In truth, her knotted wire and quartz necklace looked like a six year old had made it, but other aspects of her were quite a bit astonishing to him. Not to be deterred, he listened with rapt attention to her anecdote about being a burgeoning craftswoman. About to chime in with something else flirtatious, Drys paused — someone seemed to be speaking, though he didn’t catch their words. He glanced away from the cute barista and confronted the speaker with a firmly raised eyebrow. “Juliette,” he greeted her, grimacing a bit, as if being forced by his parents to welcome the aunt who always pinched his cheeks too hard. Drys looked back at the barista with a forlorn expression. Like a dish of strawberries and cream waiting to be gobbled up, she was. He’d had a particularly difficult morning in the yard, and could feel a nasty bruise blooming on his side and back. A beautiful blonde girl making his coffee was just about the only person he wanted to talk to today. Instead, he gathered whatever manners had been beaten into him as a child. “This is Naxine. We’ve just hit it off! In the coffee line, who would have thought.” Drys threw a wink over the counter, then turned back to Juliette. “What is so important?” he whispered to her, the words whipping through his teeth. He was not in the mood. “How nice.” Her reaction to him was not much different from his to her; she barely refrained from rolling her eyes at the (rather smarmy, in her opinion) smile he offered the girl behind the counter, though both of her eyebrows did come up in genuine shock when he actually had to ask just what was so important. She looked pointedly over her shoulder at the people in line behind her, none of whom looked too pleased. “Truly?” she hissed back. If he paid half as much attention to his training as he did to pretty girls, she had no doubt he would be at least thrice as tolerable. She did not say this, although with her temper stirring, she certainly wanted to. Instead, she turned her head to look at the girl — who was now watching her with suspicion (really, as though she were some sort of competition, which was laughable; as far as Juliette was concerned, she could have him for however long his attention lasted) and said, in her coolest and most polite voice, “A large cup of Earl Grey, with honey, please. I will cover Drysteln’s order, as well.” If she just paid for both of them, the girl would have to do her job, and what happened after that was really not her concern. If the other squire chose to remain at this very counter for a month subsequently, she would simply find another coffee shop going forward. Drys stared at Juliette with a hint of wonder — if anything could be said about the girl, it was that she did not mess around. But if anything could be said about Drys, it was that messing around was his specialty. The mischief glinted in his eye. She wanted to get out of here fast? She could try. “So kind of you, really,” he remarked, “I’ll be having one of those spicy coffees. But I must insist that I pay for my own and for the lady’s as well. Also, I’m very particular about my espressos.. do you think you have any of that special one you were talking about, sweetling? The one in the cellar?” he asked the barista in a soothing tone, and then grinned at his hurried classmate. The blonde gave Juliette one more dirty look before scurrying away, leaving them alone at the counter. The man behind Juliette made a very impolite comment about ‘youngsters these days,’ and it was all Juliette could do not to turn around and tell him that it wasn’t her fault. If anything, she had been attempting to move the line along. “You can buy my tea if you are so determined,” she told him quietly. He was not of a class where people would talk about them, and if he wanted to throw gil around to make a point, she would save her pocket money. “If we are late, I think the instructor will forgive me.” She said nothing of him; that would be his own problem. Morgayne was correct. Drysteln Yord was, if not the worst, certainly on par with Pyr Min. An older man came out of the back room then, looking like a thundercloud as he gazed around the room and noted the lack of barista, and Juliette saw her opportunity. It did not even come to mind that this, too, was fighting dirty; that line had blurred for her some time ago, and her annoyance was rapidly becoming anger. “Please, sir,” she said, in her best imitation of the silly, simpering noble girls she had known over the years, “I have not yet been served, and it has been at least a quarter hour.” As the man issued a terse apology and left to make her order, she crossed her arms and told her fellow squire, “I am certain she will like you very much when her employer reprimands her.” Drys’s eyes narrowed at Juliette, but inside he was desperately holding in a cackle. She was so satisfied with herself that he was impressed, and like little roots, crinkles formed at his eyes from stifling his laughter. He wondered what he’d truly done to offend Juliette’s sensibilities; surely, holding up the line was enough to cause mild annoyance, but not this well-mannered battle. Drys paid the man for Juliette’s tea, forgetting his own beverage entirely. The blonde could wait: this was more interesting, and she’d be here tomorrow, ready to accept a heartfelt apology from the depths of his brown eyes. Or so he expected. “Oh, I’m very handsome, she’ll get over it,” he replied as much. Maybe it was that. The arrogance did rub some people in just the wrong way, and he certainly knew how to play it up. He accented the comment by raising one hand and thrusting it into his thick hair, rubbing at the scalp with his fingertips, and then a contented sigh. “You’re definitely going to be late. Why not skip it and stay here with me? There’s more tea to be drunk.” “Are you? I had not noticed.” Temper made Juliette brave, and he really did think far too much of himself. She summoned up a smile for the man behind the counter as he brought her tea. “Thank you, sir.” As she stepped away from the queue at last, there was a comment from the same man who had disparaged the youth of today about how it was about time. On this, he and Juliette were agreed. The invitation had her giving her fellow squire a bewildered look. “Stay? Why on earth would I?” If she drank her tea quickly and ran, she thought she could just about make it. She blew on the liquid in her cup to cool it, and never mind propriety. Even so, the first sip was scalding, and she grimaced. What was it about the male squires aside from Storm, she wondered, that made them all so insufferable? She almost asked if he was looking for the pleasure of her company, but realized at the last moment that this could come off coy — the very last thing she wanted — and thus busied herself with finding a table at which to quickly drink her tea. Really, she ought to have just left it, but it was the principle of the thing. It was difficult to throw him, and some would say Drys was incorrigible. “I don’t believe that for a second,” he remarked, with a skeptical glance. Of course, he did not expect anything less — if he had particular expectations of anyone, he would walk around severely depressed for most of his life. It was easier to anticipate the worst and be pleasantly surprised. He followed her to her table coolly and didn’t dare ask for a seat; instead, he took it without hesitation, settling down into the chair and resting his chin on his propped-up palm. “This would be so much simpler if you were to just allow me to befriend you, Juliette,” he mused, his smile softening, but with no less wickedness. “Then, if you were to say, come across me in the line for coffee, I would happily grant you a position in front of me in the line.” “Believe what you like. I have no interest in… supposedly handsome faces.” She almost added that if she wanted a suitor, she was certain she could find half a dozen on short notice. Pretty faces so often concealed unpleasant personalities — the nobility taught its members that lesson early and well. “Befriend me?” she asked curiously between hurried sips of tea (it was very difficult to be elegant while drinking so fast; she tried — and failed — anyway). “Is that what you are attempting to do?” She was by no means an expert on social interaction outside of the sort one was forced to engage in at balls but… being difficult seemed a roundabout way of befriending someone. Did the same unfortunate someone give lessons to Drysteln and Pyr, she wondered? It almost seemed the only logical explanation. He eyed Juliette with a certain wariness, but his eyes showed nothing short of interest. She had been taking lessons from Morgayne for a long time. Or something. Not that it was hard for Dryst to make a — complicated — impression, by any means. He watched her sip the hot liquid, and wondered if she was burning her tongue in order to speed up the process. “What else would I be doing?” he wrinkled his eyes and scoffed a bit. “I’m clearly not trying to make an enemy of you. And, darling, beautiful, if I were trying to get you in my bed, you’d know it.” It was unfortunate for the boy that Juliette had just taken a mouthful of finally-cooling tea as he spoke; she was so shocked at his unbelievable forwardness that she very nearly choked, shortly before the tea spurted from her mouth and straight onto his smug, ridiculous face. “I —” she stuttered, “I — what —” The urge to dump the remaining contents of her cup on his head was almost irresistible, but she was too busy turning scarlet and trying to find something to do with her hands that wasn’t fluttering them in front of her like a helpless damsel (or punching him in the face — that appealed, too). With half the people in the coffee shop now staring at them, she all but jumped from her seat, shoving the table forward, her chair skittering back before it toppled with a loud thump. “I have training!” she announced, if only because she couldn’t think of literally anything else to say. Her tea forgotten, she made a beeline for the door, jogging until she reached it, then sprinting in the direction of Bahamut as though her life depended on reaching the training grounds in time, the cold wind now soothing on her burning face. The very — very — sudden wetness splattering him from crown to lap seemed at first to have appeared from midair, because Juliette was gone before he could process what had just occurred. Stunned as she had been (but for vastly different reasons), he blinked and gaped for a half a moment before he realized what she’d said. And then he began to laugh, slapping the table and muttering it repeatedly, I have training, I have training! The other customers glared or giggled, depending on their disposition, but all seemed bewildered by the scene. As if on cue, the blonde barista returned from the cellar and made a beeline straight for him. “Thank Faram that girl is gone, I thought she was your —” she stopped mid-sentence when she saw Drys’s dripping face, and immediately turned her back to him. He’d been defeated by a warm spittake. The mug of tea was still sitting across from him at the table, though, and still steaming. With a shrug, he picked it up and had a sip. Very soothing. There would be no training for him today. |