clement beckenbauer knows what comes (zukunftsvision) wrote in invol_rpg, @ 2013-02-13 13:03:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! log, clement beckenbauer, lucy lancaster |
WHO: clement and lucy
WHAT: a coffee date and a proposal (of sorts).
WHEN: february 9, 2013
WHERE: IVI cafe
WARNINGS: nauseating.
STATUS: complete!
Clem was very appreciative of the merits of a good cup of coffee. He had spent many a morning in Germany standing over the coffee machine, waiting for that much-needed cup of black gold to jumpstart his day. Funny how these small things did not change - he spent his morning at IVI doing the same thing, and now he was sitting in IVI’s poor excuse of a makeshift cafe, a half-eaten pain au chocolat and one other pastry sitting on a plate in front of him while he sipped at his coffee. Across from him was Lucy Lancaster. That was the important, unanticipated development: company. Not to say he did not enjoy it. He did. He especially enjoyed Lucy’s company. He was enjoying the fact that it was late morning and they were having a late breakfast with one another and that she looked like sunlight. Or he thought as much. Saying it out loud sounded stupid and he hadn’t had those kinds of thoughts since, well - since leaving Germany and a certain someone else behind. Besides the pastries, Clem had also brought a well-worn book of crosswords. “Tragic Shakespearean character, five letters.” It was Lucy's favorite sort of request. One she could smile at and chew over, quite literally, as she took a nimble bite of her almond croissant. One she didn't mind answering with a prelude of thoughtful silence, because that was the category of comfort she'd found herself falling into with Clem, before she replied. It was her favorite sort of Saturday morning, lethargic from the way she'd thrown on a white cotton sundress after rolling out of bed, to the way motes of dust were suspended in the light around them now, to the way she gently stirred her coffee (black, one sugar). Folding one leg under the other she perched in her seat, blonde hair tumbling over both shoulders, mussed where head had pressed against pillow the night previous. She'd lazed through dozens of similar Saturday mornings back in Sydney this time of year -- brunch with an old friend, sitting at a table in the sun, ambling through the Rozelle Markets afterwards, picking up and putting down trinkets until dusk chased at their ankles. Funnily enough, Clem seemed like an old friend by now; she'd come to learn the lines at the corners of his eyes, how his fingers crooked as he tugged out a pen from behind his ear and poised it above paper. This wasn't Sydney, and that was a manufactured breeze cycling overhead, trailing goosebumps down her forearms, but the light, the sunlight was the same she’d have at home. Lucy swallowed, chuckled. "Let's see here. Romeo." She tapped out one, two, three, four, five on the rim of her mug. After a pause: "Too obvious? Titus, then." “I think it’s Titus,” he hummed. There was a moment of brief silence where he scritched in the words on the paper, carefully considering the next move. This was nice. Easy. He appreciated these moments of calm when they came in IVI, especially when the entire experience was such a disruption of life as he knew it. He needed this normalcy in order to keep going. If things were normal, there were less thoughts of the life he had left behind back in Germany: the band; Theodor; the old man; and Sabine. For a moment, he imagined Sabine in the seat across from him. German sat on his tongue. But he only had to blink for his mind to focus and clear. “Vocal solo, at the Met. Four letters, last one being ‘A’.” He tapped his pen on the table. “‘Aria’?” It felt right, so he filled it in, turning to look at Lucy with his eyebrows raised, asking for her approval. “Do you have any plans today, besides this?” She shook her head. "Lazy Sundays are the best sort, aren't they?" Sunday, when languor was not only tolerated but expected. Meant for folding laundry, catching up on readings due for Monday, while reminiscing over whatever events had transpired at Saturday's pub night, the good, the bad and the ugly. Funny that, a three-drink maximum and still the young denizens of IVI managed to get up to all sorts of trouble. She thought of last night, recalled sharing a glass of wine with Elise, exchanging hellos with the Barn Swallows in attendance. And there Clem had been, surrounded by IVI's loveliest as always -- never all at once, no, but Rianne would be the first to his side, then Val, nattering away in their native tongue. Neve, in some impossibly chic outfit. Jodi with her easy smile. Even Laurel would sidle up to him when Jonas lost her attention for a fleeting moment and sling an arm round his neck to whisper something highly, highly inappropriate, no doubt. Lucy still imagined they'd be good for one another, perhaps in another universe. And almost as an afterthought, as if she hadn't been quietly observing a cluster of letters scrawled along the curve of his inner wrist all that time, she reached across the table, tapped the page. "Ah, but if that's the case -- twelve down, father of impressionism? Must be Degas, not Monet." Something tugged at the corners of her mouth, and she gave in: "I told you so." Clem took the pen and corrected the mistake in deference to Lucy and the fact she had, as she insinuated now with that small smile, been correct. “Just this once,” he said calmly but there was a bite of amusement hiding behind his words. There, fixed. And yes, these were the best kind of days. Lazy Sundays spent whiling away the time drinking coffee and doing crosswords with - was he allowed to say? Clem’s gaze on Lucy loosened as if the camera lens of his mind had adjusted itself to blur her and sharpen the surroundings. Out of focus. Still there was something so mysterious about her - not the kind of mystery that warranted sleuthing and hounds sniffing at heels. But maybe an enigma, like hieroglyphics on a wall. In contrast, her sister wore her feelings plain-as-day on her face. Perhaps she thought she hid them. Clem knew otherwise. And yet the softer Lancaster twin - painted in gentle pastels in contrast to the vivid richness of Laurel - kept everything behind a Mona Lisa smile that had him both stuped... and smitten. If Clem were the poetic type - and he was, sometimes - he might imagine her as a sunrise. “You did,” he conceded. He waited a moment. “Laurel told me you’re thinking of going to the dance.” The pen drifted down the page. “Cleopatra’s least favorite pet? Starts with an A.” "Asp," she responded confidently as her cup came down from her lips and plinked back onto its saucer. The tale of Cleopatra was an old favorite of hers. "And I am -- going to the dance, that is." Not a trace of embarrassment or hesitation laced her voice. A Valentine's Day-themed affair was more than a bit cornball, particularly for someone who preferred not to recognize the fourteenth of February and all its commercialized trappings, but Lucy was still quick to embrace the idea when Claudia announced it. Any reason to not dwell on how everyone was still a little bruised and broken from the kidnappings. From the deaths. From aching, sleepless nights that melted into day, an emptiness that was just beginning to feel whole again, or at least partway. (Had it been weeks already?) Dates and dancing and pretty clothes, it all brought a flutter of excitement to some of the younger ones, and Lucy couldn't deny them that. "It might be good for the team, too," she added, already envisioning the scene in watercolor patches. Lanterns strung up along the warehouse rafters, brimming champagne flutes, a sea of reds and pinks. She imagined Donovan's frame tucked into a sharply tailored jacket, Doria in bright sequins, and she prayed that they wouldn't put Monty in anything too ill-fitting. "Something to do, something lighthearted -- for once." The last two words couldn't help themselves, and she leaned forward, let her hair fall into her eyes for it. “It might be,” Clem agreed, though he had a difficult time imagining Barn Swallow out there - not because they did not seem like people who would enjoy a party, but because the idea of a party hosted by IVI, without ulterior motive, seemed preposterous. Maybe he was not as outspoken a critic as some others, but Clem was still quietly watching all the same. Watching. He didn’t think they were cruel, certainly not madmen, but he couldn’t shake away the notion that there was a reason why they had all been called here. Maybe he had been talking to the Canadians too much. Maybe there was something else to it. Still, he remained wary of the dance. Not that he wouldn’t attend, but... well, there had to be a reason why they were trying to butter them up, right? Suspicious. He was suspicious. Not outrightly critical but even with all his Cheshire smiles and casual conversation, Clem is sharper than people might imagine a gluttonous former punk-rocker to be. Especially one that naps under trees with books on his face. “Do you have a date?” He began to casually fill in the appropriate boxes for ‘asp,’ surveying the crossword puzzle. “I think we’re done here.” No empty boxes left. A whole morning spent productively, but in such a way that would make Laurel tear her hair out with frustration. But what would drive her older sister mad came through as a demure curl at one end of Lucy's mouth, something shy of a grin but the sincerity was still there, in the way she slid her cup towards his and clinked. It was her celebration of their small victory (it was the small things, after all, that kept her going these days, kept her just barely stitched together, like a rag doll). "Oh, I'm hardly concerned about that." It was a touch juvenile, how quickly everyone assumed that it'd be a couples-only sort of function, but moments like that reminded her that some of them were still children in this place. Not so long ago her mum was zipping her into a gown for year 12 formal, and she remembered the feel of silk-chiffon pooling at her ankles before Laurel helped her into heels that pinched her toes, and the itch of an oversized corsage on her wrist. Pressing palm to chin and elbow to table, Lucy smiled, half at the memory, half at the horrifying thought of having to relive such an experience. "I'll leave the 17 year old girls to fret over such matters." Clement had no equivalent experience he could draw upon - no formals and the only time he had ever been in a neatly-pressed suit had been for a family friend’s wedding, where he and Theodor stood as if they themselves had been starched and exchanged looks while blonde girls stared at them across the way. But there was something exciting about the dance that he understood, despite not being 17 years old nor a girl - there was a breath of hope about it and some unpredictability that made it a question in the air. A night of possibility, were he more romantic. Instead Clem felt his mouth twitch into a small smile. “Well, I was wondering - thinking - that maybe we could go together. If you would like, of course.” She hadn’t expected that. Well, she had, somewhere in the southern recesses of her imagination, him looking at her with a casual expectancy as a weightlessness rose up from her middle. For all her sensibilities, Lucy still indulged in the odd daydream. How could she not, yet consider herself an artist? Never mind that he was one of her closest friends here, or that he seemed better suited for half a dozen other girls here, all eager-eyed pretty young things -- Clem remained the subject of her thoughts in the smallest of hours, no matter her reluctance to admit so. He reminded her of someone from the shallow past (his name still ghosted her tongue now and then, Ben), in the best way possible. Wordlessly, she trailed her fingers across the span of the tabletop, settling them on the grip of his pen. From her vantage point, the puzzle was reversed, the letters wrong-side-up and backward, but she squinted to make sense of them anyway, and with slow deliberation, she trailed down to eighteen-across, where she double-tapped with the penprick, circled three letters. Eighteen-across, Versailles agreement: O-U-I. And if that wasn’t gesture enough: “I’d like that,” she murmured, smiling for what seemed like the umpteenth time this morning. Clem had that effect on her sometimes. The stress of the moment over, Clem was surprised to find that he had been digging his nails into his palm, the hand hidden under the table and curled on his knee. And it was strange to imagine that here, in IVI, he might be able to find something that was so reminiscent of home and yet so utterly foreign. He had never been to Australia before being shuttled onto that plane to IVI - and yet here he was, having a coffee date not unlike the ones he often had with Sabine, though pen and paper for half-hearted song lyrics had been exchanged for crossword puzzles. He wondered what kind of songs Lucy would make him write. If he were more of an innocent, he might have blushed at the thought. With nothing else to say - sometimes English words were so cumbersome for him, even if he had been speaking it for years - Clem let the pen fall gently out of his hand. It rolled gently to the side as he reached across the small table, elbow denting the crossword puzzle book. He hesitated but then let his fingers drift over to Lucy’s, patting the topside of her own hand. His own face aglow with a smile, pleased with himself for taking the long-needed first move. “I’m glad to hear that,” he said. |