Sadie Thompson, Geokinetic (likepetrichor) wrote in invol_rpg, @ 2013-01-15 12:03:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! log, sadie thompson, seth wasserman |
WHO: Sadie Thompson and Seth Wasserman
WHAT: Sadie and Seth explore a tunnel.
WHEN: Early afternoon, January 15.
WHERE: Campus grounds.
WARNINGS: Being 17 (oh, sorry, 18, Seth) is the actual worst.
STATUS: Complete!
Sadie was frustrated. Frustrated because without classes or training, she was losing her mind with boredom; frustrated because she didn't want to go to classes or training; frustrated because even without something to actively rebel against, the question remained - would she give up her privileges to make a statement? Left alone with only herself for company, she only found herself increasingly agitated and helpless to do anything about it. When it got to be too much to contain, she found ways to distract herself - hanging out Juli, modifying Odd Bjarne's tunnels, planning mischief with Rashida. To relieve her present frustrations, she elected for her current favorite distraction: Seth Wasserman. "Hey," she grinned when the aforementioned opened his door. "Walk time?" Seth, on the other hand, was not that frustrated. If there was one thing he was good at, it was whiling away idle hours doing nothing but thinking and biding his time. When he wasn't trying to connect with his laptop's electromagnetic field on a deeper level, he was reading - not his usual dystopian novels or modern French philosophy or Cold War history books, but - something else entirely. He was halfway through Undercover Sex Signals: A Guide for Guys - a book that was informative, but perhaps a little too advanced for him at this stage - when there came a knock at the door. He hastily shoved the book under his pillow, glanced around the room to make sure there was no other incriminating evidence, and opened the door to find Sadie. Of course. "Uh, yeah. Sure. Let me just -- " He looked for his shoes, remembering the last time he had trekked through the halls in his shower sandals. "Okay! Let's go." One more glance back at his room and then he was out the door. "I keep trying to think of what I'd be doing if we weren't here," Sadie said as they made for the stairwell, casting a distasteful look at the dorm walls. "It's driving me nuts, all this... nothing." Pushing through the emergency exit, her voice echoed against the concrete walls. "How do you even deal?" It was a mostly rhetorical question, but she looked to Seth anyway, eager for whatever conversational distraction he could provide. At least until they were elsewhere; it hadn't been so long ago that they'd run into Sam on these very steps, after all. "Uh...I do a lot of...thinking..." Seth trailed off. Yes, it sounded exactly as lame out loud as he thought it would. "I don't know. I'm not very...active. I lead a rich inner life." At least, that is what his father had always told his teachers when they'd written has potential, but lacks motivation on his report cards. As soon as they went outside, the sweltering hit him in the face and made it hard to breathe. He only then remembered that he'd forgotten to put on sunscreen. "I'm going to need to remember this as the day that I get skin cancer." The fact that Seth did a lot of thinking - that he was, to her mind, a Smart Guy - was part of his appeal. Sadie liked that he enjoyed her company, even though she didn’t consider herself particularly smart. “When I do that much thinking I just drive myself insane,” she sighed, following him out into the light and heat. “Oh my god, why did they put us here,” she groaned. Perhaps a walk was not the best idea. Sadie hesitated, digging her toes into the earth. She didn’t have any caves close by, but she knew Odd Bjarne dug not too far away from the dorms, and it wasn’t much further to where she’d modified the tunnels with Rashida. “We could go back inside, or... it’s cooler in O.B.’s tunnels?” It was presented as a choice, but really, Sadie was already grinning and walking backwards towards a tunnel entrance, watching to make sure Seth followed. So clearly he had no choice in this matter. As he followed her to - wherever they were going - he suddenly began to realize that he had a deep-rooted, previously unrecognized claustrophobia that welled up inside him and got stuck in his throat, mingling with the oppressively hot air. But he couldn't admit his fear, because girls didn't like guys that were afraid of things. Everyone knew that. "As long as you're not dragging me underground just to murder me," he finally managed to get out, the look on his face suggesting that maybe he did think that this tunnel exploration would end in someone's certain death. Sadie cast him a bemused look and reached out to take his hand, heat be damned. “Yeah, that’s totally been my plan all along. Happy birthday, here’s your custom-made grave!” The area she led him to didn’t look like much; in fact it looked like the opposite of ‘much’, all barren desert land, no trap doors or even conspicuous holes in the ground. Still, she stepped with confidence, chatting to distract them both from the heat until she came to a spot (like all the other spots around them) and stopped. Pivoting into Seth, Sadie wrapped her arms loosely about his waist and grinned. “Ready? Close your eyes.” Seth was skeptical, but after a moment's hesitation closed his eyes. He could feel the ground moving, and then he felt them being lowered slowly into the ground; the heat lessened, and he could sense that it was darker. They stopped and he cracked open an eye. Light came from the opening above them, but from nowhere else. How big was this tunnel, anyway? He reached out a hand, hoping the tunnel was wider than - nope, there was the wall. The knowledge that Sadie was touching him (!!!) was somewhere in the back of his mind, but at the moment he was more concerned with the tunnel, and whether or not it was going to collapse on them. "This is...cozy." Sadie laughed. A flick of her wrist later roughly ten feet of the the wall Seth was touching receded by about five feet, creating a little room off the main tunnel path. “I can fix that.” Obviously. She really liked showing off her geokinesis to him. It was a subconscious balance, maybe - he had the brains, she had the Vol-given brawn. Still, Seth wasn’t Rashida; he didn’t gain anything from being underground in the dark, maybe he hated tunnels, she didn’t know. And when it came down to it, she’d rather he take notice of her proximity rather than her earth-moving skills. “Better than being up there in the sun, anyway,” she said after a pause, stepping back from Seth and running her hand along the wall. It was sturdy, and would hold. Seth let out a sigh of relief when the room was widened, even if only just a little bit. He felt a brief surge of envy at the ease with which Sadie used her powers. He was still working on his, and even at this point didn't think he would be able to show off so easily. And yes, he did hate tunnels, which is why he was just going to stand there, as close to the light as possible. "So how much time do you spend down here, exactly?" "Not a ton, not unless I'm widening O.B.'s crawl spaces or hanging out with Rashida," Sadie shrugged, leaning against the closer wall. It was that perpetual problem: alone with just her thoughts, she went dark places. Ironically, it wasn't so bad when she was in the dark of the underground, surrounded by soil, but it was still there, haunting her. "Plus, I want to avoid running into him, being, I dunno, weird," she added blithely. "Yeah, he is pretty weird." Seth shoved his hands in his pockets and leaned against the wall. The realization that they were underground, and very much alone, dawned on him but he wasn't sure exactly where he was supposed to take this realization. He felt like this whole time he had been doing a pretty good job of not letting on just how woefully inexperienced he was - except for his one drunken fiasco, at least - but now he just felt trapped. It wasn't like he was in his room, where he could fiddle with a pen or hit a key on his typewriter or say oh, Nolan might be coming back soon. "Soooo what's the plan now that you've trapped me in your underground lair?" He'd been asking lots of questions lately. Note to self: ask less, do more. It was all Sadie could do not to revert to her nervous habits; her hair at least was too short to twirl around a finger, but she had to conciously stay her hands at her sides to not start biting at her thumbnail. If there was a time she would appreciate Seth abiding by that note to himself, it was definitely now. But the Sadie she'd decided to become wouldn't second-guess herself, so she had to press forward and answer his question, even if that meant closing the space he'd opened up between them by retreating to the opposite wall. "Well," she said, drawing out the syllable for as long as it took to cross over and lean up next to him. "I do still owe you a birthday present." She was so focused on calming her own heartbeat and watching his reaction that she didn't notice when her fingers betrayed her and starting toying with a lock of hair just behind her ear. "If you want." Birthday present. Right. He tried to keep a straight face but inside his mind was racing - there was obviously some innuendo here, but his mind was blanking on anything he'd read, and he was thinking about how much easier this would be if he were just a little bit drunk, or maybe at least if he wasn't the type of person who just thought so damn much about things, and it wasn't like they hadn't kissed before but there had been more lights and more space and - okay, stop thinking. "I am overthinking this," he admitted, reaching out and putting his hands on her shoulders, which later he would reflect on as being a stupid move. "I am just going to kiss you. I apologize if it sucks, but I have been reading up on the subject." Why was he still talking?! This was stupid. He leaned forward and pressed his lips to hers, hoping that this wasn't too take-charge of a move. Oh thank God. Somewhere in the back of her mind, Sadie made a note to leave all the first moves up to her own damn self. Not that his overthinking wasn't endearing (what did he mean, 'been reading up on the subject'?!), but there were times for talking, and there were times for kissing, and they needed to establish that. She gently shrugged his hands off her shoulders, guiding them down to her waist before she wrapped her own arms around his neck. Sadie was blessed where Seth was not; once their lips touched, her own thoughts quieted, driven largely by desire, only vaguely wondering what maybe he wanted or not. Which is how, not too long after Seth made his executive decision, her hands started wandering, and the wall behind her started to veeeery slooooowly incline backwards... The wall was moving. Wait, no it wasn't. That was definitely just in his head, his own thoughts were swimming because he was not used to just not thinking about things, so he was wondering if his hands were in the right place or if he was doing the right thing with his mouth and should he have taken his glasses off? Maybe he should consider getting contacts, note to self: contacts, but glasses were kind of a part of his whole Thing so maybe he didn't want them, okay back to the matter at hand, which was currently his hands around Sadie's waist and - The wall was definitely moving. "Uh." He broke the kiss and glanced around wildly - he wasn't going anywhere, but this was just...strange. Resting on an incline in an underground tunnel. "Where are we going?" "Uh," Sadie echoed, breathless. She craned her neck to see what, exactly, Seth was referring to; the incline had been completely unconscious on her part. If she were the thoughtful sort, she might see this as some kind of breakthrough - a psychic connection that didn't require a physical gesture on her part - but instead she was just bemused. "...down?" she ventured, looking sheepish, though they were so much in shadow now that it was hard to tell. Her fingers paused in their idle trajectory along his waistband as Sadie considered Seth’s expression. "Sorry," she added in a whisper. So much for not letting those second guesses and self-doubts get to her. He supposed that he should have responded, but instead was too focused on her hands and where exactly they were going. Almost instantly his evil, evil mind completely and totally betrayed him and flashed to Kody telling him that stupid story about receiving hand jobs in the parking lot of a Dairy Queen and well, there went the wind in those sails. He started to laugh then, because who else but Seth Wasserman would be making out in an underground tunnel only to start thinking of Kody Cruz? It was hilarious in its awfulness. I'm not ready, or This is gross, making out in the dirt were responses that Sadie had steeled herself for. Running away, sure, though where Seth would go she wasn't entirely sure. Bursting into laughter? Not so much. Her first instinct, actually, was to knee him directly in the crotch she'd been feeling very differently towards only about 30 seconds earlier. Luckily for Seth, she reined in that impulsive anger and downgraded it to an indignant "What!", accompanied by a half-hearted shove to his shoulder. "Oh my god, Seth, what is so funny?!" "What, you don't think this is funny?" He paused, an incredulous look on his face. If you really, really, really thought about it, the whole thing was hilarious. "Because it's pretty...ridiculous, this whole thing. Just tell me you're not going to make out with any other guys down here." "Maybe I will if they aren't going to laugh at me!" She couldn't stay indignant long, though. Even as she hurled those words at him a smile threatened her attempt at an intimidating demeanor. When a giggle burst through she clapped a hand over her mouth and tried to glare. "I like my caves, okay, they're..." Whatever they were, she couldn't finish because she was overcome with a horrible case of the giggles. Hiding her face in her hands, she turned away from Seth, directing her laughter into the earthen wall. This... did not go as planned. Not that she had a plan, really, but it definitely wasn't this. Seth smiled. This was good - she was laughing with him, not at him. He would say that this was a successful step in the right direction. He then made the mistake of glancing at the far wall, and then remembered that they were in a tunnel under the earth. A tunnel! A tiny, tiny tunnel. "Maybe we should go to a non-earth location," he said, trying to sound like what he imagined a smooth, non-claustrophobic, cool young man would sound like. Once her laughter quelled, Sadie tried to put on a pouty, hurt mug, but it didn't last. So Seth wasn't into tunnels. That was okay; it wasn't like she was looking for a soul mate here. "Yeah, sure," she laughed, pushing off of the wall and composing herself. "...and maybe take a shower." There were, admittedly, downsides to making out in a roughly-hewn tunnel underground. Stepping over to the small platform of earth she'd lowered them down on, Sadie considered trying to lift them back up through the hole they came down from, and then decided against it. Finesse was not exactly her strong suit. Instead, she concentrated hard and made a few motions with her hands. The earth rumbled, and then there were stairs leading up and out, back into the heat and sunshine. "I guess," she started, begrudgingly, "It isn't that much cooler down here anyway." She threw a grin at Seth, and started up the stairs. "Let's go make out in air conditioning." Yes! This was everything that Seth had ever wanted. Well, maybe that was a little bit dramatic but at the moment he would do anything to escape the confines of the tunnels. He eyed the stairs skeptically for a moment before putting a foot on the bottom stair to test it out. Okay, he clearly wasn't going to die in these tunnels today. "That is the best thing I have heard all day," he said before climbing the stairs and back out into the oppressive heat. |