Gabriel's knees are always (skinned) wrote in repose,
Re: On the shore: Marta / Ronan
The smile on the girl’s face came as a relief, because Ronan had so not been looking forward to getting shit for letting the boys roam on the beach. They usually didn’t get hassle about it in Repose, but still. He could tell that the quiet laughter that curled her mouth up at the corners was genuine and not nervous, even in the dark - well, he could have known that in pitch blackness, because he could feel the warmth spreading like an exhalation from the middle of her unfamiliar mind. But, still.
There’d been something else first, a flash of a puppy’s face that was some other breed that Ronan thought looked sort of like a Staffordshire, although he couldn’t be positive. The only dogs that he’d grown up around at home were rat terriers and collies, working dogs that his neighbours had owned. (Their father had staunchly refused the idea of a dog when Ronan was young, although he knew that Connor and Murphy hadn’t been held to the same rule.) Regardless, as soon as he could feel that she wasn’t afraid, Ronan gave up the show of holding Freki back and let him go into full-on heartbreaker mode with the pretty girl on the blanket.
“Hardly,” he said with a snort, his accent softly cutting out the middle consonants. “He’s being a right flirt.” Demonstrated summarily by the dog’s swift roll onto his back as Ronan had predicted, feet kicking in the air as he wormed close enough to shove his snout under the girl’s hand. “This is Freki, by the way.” Ronan smiled and lifted his hand in a wave, feeling a little awkward standing over her as he was, and shifting his weight onto his back foot because he’d heard her considering his height above her and he wasn’t looking to be intimidating. Not that Ronan thought he could be intimidating if he tried, but he knew well enough that intention wasn’t exactly always what mattered.
“That one over there eating sand, that’s Geri. Oh, and I’m Ronan,” he finished, a bit lamely but smiling all the same, almost shyly.