Nate Danger (provenate) wrote in remains_rpg, @ 2015-09-17 23:01:00 |
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Entry tags: | # 2018 [09] september, bode coldiron, hazel dolan, maizie wolfe, marina scherbatskaya, nadia costa, nathaniel quinn |
SURPRISE PARTY
Who: Nadia, Nate and all the guests.
Why: Birthday things
When: September 6th, Friday 3:30 to
Where:
He hadn’t given Nadia much notice - a few hours. He’d sent the message in the morning -
>I’ll pick you up at 3.
>It’s time for your 3 word birthday challenge.
>If you have something else planned, Macgyver your way out of it.
>Outside LBJ.
Nate figured she’d know what she meant and if she didn’t, then she’d text back and ask or tell him to fuck off. Either one of those were acceptable. He was prone to these grand sweeping gestures and there was no way he’d break a promise or balk at a challenge.
He’d been thinking about it off and on since he proposed celebrating her birthday weeks ago - when he’d just arrived in Austin.
Then he’d found Bode and Bunny and interviews were coming and he’d been busier and happier than he’d ever thought possible. He needed to share in that. With a friend. To a friend he’d promised Saudade, Cafune AND Desenrascanço to.
He hoped his preparation would live up to her expectations. His truck rolls up the drive towards the library as it had before, and Nadia is standing waiting outside the library just as when they’d first met, squinting in the afternoon light, one hand cradled against her forehead to block the sun.
Whenever she saw a figure in the wasteland, part of her always lurched in a jolt of trepidation, her heart hammering behind her ribcage. But his truck is a reassuring sight. Once it pulls close enough, then she can also recognise the disheveled brown hair and near perpetual smirk—and then something else thuds hollowly, but she presses it aside and goes up to his window instead, leaning her forearms against it to say hello. She doesn’t need a chaperone like Marina did at the park; her ankle is healed by now, her steps light and fast like a fawn sprinting out onto the street.
“I rearranged my very busy social calendar for you,” Nadia says mock-solemnly. She has reluctantly pried herself away from Anton’s side for the first time in a day, but she knows Nate has been mulling over this challenge for weeks, almost months now—and she’s had to remind herself that Anton will still be there when she returns, that it’s safe to leave.
“So you finally solved the problem?”
“Solved? Nae. I Macgyvered t’ fuck out of it.” he told her with that big, dimpled smile of his, and her own smile grows at his choice of words. Then he turns to the small mess of remnants that he’d tossed in before leaving to retrieve her and cleared them out of her way so she could get in. There wasn’t much that could be considered a clue. Some ribbon, confetti…. various birthday things.
Nothing earth shattering.
“Were ye surprised?” he asks her, an eyebrow shooting up in question as she opens the passenger side and climbs in. Nadia has to hop up a bit in order to reach the running board and vault herself the rest of the way.
“Frankly, I had almost forgotten. I did not expect you to—”
That’s when he reaches forward and turns on the radio. There’s a CD in and the first song that comes on is Águas de Março *.
Nadia finds herself instinctively leaning forward without thinking about it, craning her head towards the radio so she can hear even better. It isn’t just the song itself—one of Brazil’s most famous ones, and it twinges her heart with familiarity and from hearing Portuguese in a voice that isn’t her own—but just hearing music at all again is so fresh and new and delightful. She doesn’t have an iPod and earphones like some others.
It is the bottom of the well, it is the end of the way, a woe in the face, it is a bit of loneliness.
“Where did you find this?” she asks, astonished, turning a bright expression onto the driver beside her.
The smile he flashes at her is all teeth and grateful happy relief that she is enjoying his find. “T’ LBJ,” he tells her, taking Maizie’s suggestion when he’d asked her if there was anything in the library he could use, “Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies is part of the collection over there…” he trails off. Luckily the collections were transported out of the way of the shelter, so he’d been able to pour hours in the finding guides and folders out of the way of where Nadia might have spotted him.
“I had a stir in me for this song. Ye know it?” he glances from the road to her as he steers his truck toward the stadium.
“Of course I do. It is one of our best-known!” She’s still hunched forward, enjoying the playful lilting bossa nova, and not even realising where he’s driving them. Nadia only notices it when the stadium looms right in the front of her vision, and she glances up in surprise.
When he parks the truck he lets the song play out and then he’s nudging her on the arm. “There’s more.”
“Lead away,” Nadia says, and she’s curious now, hankering to find out what comes next. Pleasant surprises have been so few and far between these days, or purely practical ones: an unopened bottle of water, an untouched tin of stale crackers, a non-mouldy mattress. The building anticipation and excitement of unwrapping an unknown present is a dusty memory by now, atrophied.
Without people or traffic, Nate is able to drive his truck up to the entrance. There are no ticket lines, no noise but there is the scent of something aromatic wafting on the breeze as they near the set-up he’s constructed just for her. Nadia lopes through the stadium archways, the gutted remains of the concession stands, the long rows with dessicated popcorn still littering the aisles.
She walks out into the open air beside him, squinting in the afternoon light, one hand cradled against her forehead to block the sun as shes take a look at his construction in the middle of the field.
It’s not masterfully crafted but it is lovingly put together. What it lacks in resources and construction know-how, it makes up for in C.O.L.O.R
Boards are splashed in vibrant colors - bright reds and yellows and blues and every color in between. There are lights, and tables…
There is even a rough approximation of the Christ the Redeemer Statue. It’s made of paper and flour glue… paper mache. It sits up high, gazing down at the celebration that is about to kick off.
In one side there is a seat with a sign next to it that says ‘Sculp Massages’
But the piece de resistance is the large pot of feijoada (is she brave enough to ask what the ingredients might be?), cooking on a fire and on a table close by is the makings for make-shift caipirinhas. Of course all of this has been Nate’s attempt to pull off one of the words: desenrascanco.
Her hand has crept up to cover her mouth, fingers splayed against her lips. It’s what Nadia does when she’s caught off-guard: as if she can press her words and her shock back, prevent the little strangled noise that slips loose. Her emotions have been running high lately. She can already feel something hot prickling behind her eyes, and she blinks.
“Oh, Nathaniel,” she breathes, her head tipping backwards to look at the statue watching down on them. Her hand drops instinctively, thoughtlessly, to the rosary she still wears draped around her neck. She’d forgotten what it was like, to have a face watching over you like that.
Even if it is a mottled mess of papier mache.
Nadia finally turns to look at him, and yes, her dark eyes are glinting with faint moisture now. “Very well MacGuyvered, Laird Quinn,” she manages to say, through a smile and a laugh. “It’s…” But then the words fail her.
The laughter he spits up and out is loud and deep. The expression he wears is washed in a bright and shiny toothed smile. He runs a hand through his hair and looks at her sheepishly.
“There’s more…”
He takes the ladle by the pot of food he’d prepared. A pot that’s far too big for the two of them. Then he dings the side of it, inviting the other bodies to come out and meet them.
[To be continued...]