Re: Near the ring of fire, later...: Cat C & Reece E
If there was going to be wood, it should be mahogany. Or cherry, maybe, but that was a design gamble, since it was harder to pair and match. It shouldn't be... whatever this place was built with. Plywood? No—well, yes, but Reece didn't actually mind. Not that she was--uh, wrong. He would have loved to have been in a VIP lounge, glossy blacks, fogged glass, minimalism gone (ironically) wild. But, what Reece would have loved and what Reece lived were two very distinct things—one was a dream, the other was reality. Plus, like I said, he didn't actually mind it here. He wasn't big on the tacky fire that burned near his shoulder, but it was kind of growing on him, the whole... rustic... small-town thing. It was almost like he was a foreign exchange student or something, and this was about two degrees above a third-world country. Which wasn't an insult. Just--you know what? Forget it. All that mattered was, he was there, and he was—not creepily—watching Cat, waiting for her to, you know, notice he was there. Not creepily watching.
Which he knew she did (see him), the moment she didn't look over deliberately. Her eyes in their mossy green roved the small bar, catching everything, like a hawk in horrible boots, and Reece was fully aware of the fact that this fashion disaster bird of prey apparently had a blindspot in the exact place he was standing.—Still, she didn't register him, so he didn't register her. It was only fair. He pretended he was just very coolly standing there. And, by the time Cat decided she would bless the man with her gracious presence, he actually wasn't expecting her to be so close, so caught up was he in placing sounds and appearing casual all at once.
She wasn't wrong, about the casual thing. His fingertips pressed to the photograph, him standing there, head ducked a bit to avoid getting smacked, and she wasn't wrong. He had failed. Miserably. It turned out cool disinterest didn't mesh too well with zipping your eyes all over the place. He waved a hand at her. Whatever. "I was so casual, shut up."
He pretended to admire Cat's impressively... uh, d-denim boots, but his smile was sincere, for all the amusement he gleaned from the turn of ankle. He looked up when tapered fingers directed him to the chair he was allowed to occupy, and Reece watched that smile bloom on the woman's lips, knowing full well it was the same she'd been giving her patrons moments before.
"Tease," he lobbed at her unthinkingly—not even about her offer, but about that smile—and he made his way to his appointed seat by skirting around her. And exactly like the last time he was here, though the circumstances were much different, he forced his long-legged form into the stool, knees bending out far and habit curving his shoulders on toward elbows on the bar, like he could really make himself smaller. He slid his warming beer onto the bartop and cupped it with both hands.
He was aware—not creepily aware, just aware—that this was the first time he was seeing Cat after that definitely weird night in that abandoned house and he was interested, scientifically, to see if she pretended like it never happened. Which was what he was expecting.
Leaning his ear against crouched shoulder, head tipped and hair finally falling loose, the man watched Cat do... uh, whatever... people did to close up a bar, and if Sasha had been there, he hadn't seen her. "Michael," Reece said after a swallow of heady froth. He pinched fingers on his lips as he thought about how to word it. "Fell out a window, disappeared for a month, returned today. His wife is alive, despite a body being put into the ground. And he does science... stuff for Tethys."