InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Deceased arachnids with beans."

Ray Palmer is the (_atom) wrote in paradisolog,
@ 2016-04-01 11:46:00

Entry tags:

~maria hill (by_the_book), ~ray palmer (_atom)

WHO: Ray Palmer & Maria Hill
WHERE: Outside the camp, but not far from it.
WHEN: After this.
WHAT: Teaching Maria to build a shelter
WARNINGS: TBD
STATUS: Closed, Complete

welcome to my house.

Ray had spent much of his first day in the camp wandering around outside of it. He'd known immediately that he was going to need a shelter and he assumed they didn't have run of the mill rope. So, Ray had gone out into the jungle and started collecting palm fibers to make cords, something he'd learned back in scouts that he'd actually really excelled in making. He'd fashioned a little post out of a branch with a thick twig sticking up from it that he broke off to be a shorter length and, by morning, Ray had damn near a mile of cord to work with, thin but strong. Good enough to hold together a teepee. So he'd asked a fellow volunteer to borrow their hatchet and he'd moved onto the next step, heading into the jungle again to cut down branches he could use for posts as well as thickly-leaved palm branches that he could use for the cover since Ray didn't have a canvas drop cloth, which would've been ideal.

By mid-afternoon, all he'd had left to do was to finish actually hanging the palm branches for cover. So he'd taken a break and gotten on the network, which was where he first spoke with Dr. Jemma Simmons — whom he'd then joined for tea; quite a nice luxury to unexpectedly have, actually. Ray was more of a coffee guy, but beggars couldn't be choosers — and Maria Hill. He'd offered to help Maria with her own shelter tomorrow in exchange for her help with his own. Ray had already done the hardest part of making a shelter in this place, as far as he was concerned, because he'd made so much cord. He'd need to make more, and probably some four-ply, but all the same, that was the tough part, in his opinion. The rest would be easy.

Once he'd gotten back from tea and escorting Jemma to camp, Ray started to scan the faces of the people in the camp at the moment, looking for Maria. He grinned when he spotted her and approached. "Maria? Ray, nice to actually meet you, so sorry about the hiccup," he said, holding a hand out to shake. He'd meant to meet her before heading out to meet Jemma, but at the last minute when he hadn't immediately seen her milling about, he'd headed out to follow the smoke to find the other woman, worried that he would take too long or that she'd be too far out and they would lose the light on their way back. "I try not to be that guy, but extenuating circumstances and all. Should we get started?"

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by_the_book
2016-04-02 02:34 am UTC (link)

Maria chuckled. "Right. No arguing." She followed Ray with long strides, immediately on guard. Sure, they hadn't run into anything to threaten them, but she wouldn't feel right now being prepared. Each pass of her leg put that makeshift knife near her hand. Just in case.

"So what am I looking for?" It hadn't been meant as a loaded question, but with the perpetual undertones with everyone here Ray could be forgiven for taking that wrong.

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_atom
2016-04-02 02:57 am UTC (link)

Ray, ever the oblivious to innuendo that wasn't coming from him, looked back over at her as they walked. "We're looking for six to eight branches that we can cut down, thick enough to be sturdy. They'll be the base of the thing," he explained.

"Ah," he said finding a tree that looked promising. "Here, hold this for me?" he asked, handing her his hatchet and moving to the tree to climb it.

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by_the_book
2016-04-02 03:14 am UTC (link)

She took the hatchet automatically then her brows went up when she realized what he was about to do. "Wow. You're just going to...right up there. Huh?" Maria looked up into the tree as her lips pulled to one side. She thought they'd be looking for dead fall, not harvesting. "You got this whole Mowgli thing going. Your best friend wouldn't happen to be a dancing bear, would it?"

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_atom
2016-04-02 01:47 pm UTC (link)

Climbing trees had always been one of Ray's favorite things to do when he'd been a kid. He supposed some part of him had never really grown out of it, which was just as well, since he thought it was better to use fresh wood than fallen timber. That was just his personal opinion.

Ray jumped to grab the lowest hanging branch and pulled himself up with a little bit of effort, hanging onto said branch and using the trunk of the tree to sort of walk up the part of the way his upper body couldn't quite manage to bring him. Then he swung one leg over the base of the branch to steady himself. He could reach the ones he meant to cut down from here, anyway.

Leaning forward rather than to one side or the other, Ray let his arm dangle down with an open hand. "I think my life would be a lot more pleasant and whimsical if my best friend was a dancing bear, but no," he laughed. Truthfully, when he thought about it, Ray wasn't sure he had a best friend at all anymore, actually...at least, not since the break up with Felicity. It was more awkward than he would sometimes like to admit.

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