Kitiara Uth Matar (dark_lady) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2016-09-03 12:42:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | !complete, kitiara uth matar, presto |
Who: Presto and Kitiara
When: recently
Where: Presto’s favorite coffee shop
What: Random encounter
Rating/Warnings: Low/None
Status: Complete when posted
Presto did love to study, and he did love coffee, so he was at the coffee shop drinking down caffeine like it had gone out of style, examining his books, the ones from his coming classes. He liked to read, and get ahead in classes. Yeah, he was one of those nerds who did that. He mumbled formulas as he memorized them, running slowly through the pages.
Today, he was also letting his hands shuffle cards back and forth as he read at a table near the order line, cards being shot up, and snatched out of the air, then slapped down, then vanishing, as his hands moved. He also loved stage magic, a thing he had started doing as a kid after seeing a stage performance. Somehow, the mechanics of it came to him as easy as did the mechanics of engineering, and so he worked, played, and studied, all at the same time..
***
The first thing that had drawn Kitiara’s eye was the movement of the cards. Up, down, gone, and she wasn’t the only person who had noticed. But it was something in the kid’s face that held her attention while she waited for her coffee to be made. He looked familiar, though it took until she was handed her coffee before she placed him as the kid who’d just come into a large inheritance that he had no idea what to do with. Smothering a smile, she sauntered to her table and plucked a card out of the air before Presto had a chance, glanced at the card being sure to keep the face of it from the boy, and then leaned against the table, coffee in one hand and the Queen of Spades in the other. “You’re good at that,” she said. “You do this often?”
***
“Hey! That's my-” Presto started to stand and to object, and mid -stand, his eyes slid up her body, stuttering over her impressive attributes, and found her face. Mid-stand, he realized two things. First,she was familiar from somewhere. Second, she was bloody gorgeous.
Which was how he tripped, and face-planted in front of her. On the floor, Presto sighed, rolled over, and looked up at her. “Yes. I'm good. And yes, I do it a lot.”
A pause. “Ow.”
***
Kitiara hadn’t been about to ask if she he was okay, but if he still wanted to tell her then that was up to him. After a moment she pushed off from the table, and offered him a hand to help pull him to his feet. “You’re that Presto fellow, aren’t you? From the Network?”
***
He rose with her help, then let go of her hand and grinned. Shaking his head to dispel the daze, and wow, she really was that hot in real life. Wow.
“I am, and you’re… Kitiara?”
He was fine. A little embarrassed, but fine.
“How are you today?”
***
“Got it in one, kid,” Kit said. He was younger than what she’d original thought on the Network, she noticed now. “I’m fine. Doing better than you from the looks of it.” She offered his card back to him, and flashed him a lopsided smile.
***
“Cool. And it’s not kid. It’s Presto.” He raised an eyebrow at her, annoyed.
“I’m fine. I bounce back from things quickly.” Parental death, bullies, falling on his face, he had a tendency to bounce back fast. “Thanks,” he said as he took the card, and spun it, and offered her the card back, which was now the Queen of Hearts.
“Why don’t you keep it?”
***
“My apologies, Presto,” Kitiara said, trying to quell her amusement. “It’s too bad you don’t bounce higher,” she said, winking teasingly. She took the card, nearly bored, but when she got a better look at it she raised her eyebrows, surprised. “That’s a good trick. You play with cards often?”
***
Presto smirked. “You’d be surprised just how high I can bounce.” His cheeks were bright red, though, and he smiled, looking down.
Her response about the card made him grin proudly, and look back at her, smirking again. “I do. I love stage magic, and it’s been a hobby of mine since I saw a show when I was a kid. It uses logic and patterns, just like computer code and engineering specs do, and it is fun to use. And play with.”
He chuckled. “And I like seeing the look on people’s faces.”
***
Look at that, the kid was blushing. How droll. She looked at the man with a fond look in her eyes, somewhat charmed at how easy he was to read. “My younger brother dabbled in sleight of hand stuff,” Kit said. She had always thought it a rather pointless skill, but he’d been such a serious boy that it had been nice to see him practicing his magic. Now that he had real magic, Kit assumed that he had no more use for the childish tricks he had once played. “You work a lot with computers as well, I take it?”
***
“Yeah. That’s my job. I work at the university in the server farm, making sure everyone has access to the resources, and wifi, they need.” He chuckled.
“Hopefully, someday, I’ll work somewhere I can get my own designs and engineering structures built, and really contribute to computers and society.” He was sure he could do it, since he already had one prototype built. Now if he could just get it seen, someday.
He smiled at her. “What do you do?”
***
“A very important job, I’m sure,” Kit said. Frankly, she didn’t have much interest in computers, or any of that kind of thing.
“I’m a tattoo artist,” Kit said, which was really only one of her jobs and the one she took less seriously. It was also the only one that she had that was on the right side of the law. “If you ever want a tattoo, I could be convinced to give you a discount.”
***
“Everyone has their own thing, I’m sure.” He grinned. “Yeah? Cool. Me? I wouldn’t know where to start. Though maybe something like a dragon…” His hand was drawn to his chest, and he slowed in thought, then nodded. “Yeah. Maybe on my chest.” To cover the scars he had there, because of the crash that killed his parents. They were quite ugly and numerous. Thinking on it, he spoke up.
“Will they go over scars okay? Tattoos, I mean?”
Now that intent gaze was on her, the kind he generally only turned to computers, and his embarrassment and his loss of cool was forgotten as his mind went to work.
***
“Dragon’s are a good choice,” Kitiara said. She’d never been one to pay much attention to fantasy or Harry Potter or any of that garbage, but she’d always felt drawn to the majestic creatures that were dragons. “I have a dragon tattoo of my own.” The only one she had, which was unusual given the fact that she was a tattoo artist.
“It depends on the quality of the scar. Sometimes you might need a touch-up, but yes, tattoos are a popular method of covering scars. You have many of them?”
***
“You do? Excellent!” He smiled, and wondered how it looked.
At her question, he nodded, remembering. “From the airplane accident. I survived, and the face was fine enough to fix, and the arms and lower legs are mostly free of them, but… the rest of me is a network of scars. Some big, some small.”
He tapped his chest. “The worst here. Almost like a ridge of mountains, there.“ Not that he found them ugly… but they reminded him of the day his old life ended.
***
“The airplane accident?” Kitiara asked, her eyebrows furrowing together. “When was this?” Honestly, Kitiara had met a few people who had survived some fairly bad accidents, but she hadn’t heard of anyone who had survived an airplane crash. She was honestly impressed that Presto had managed to escape with just a few scars. “We might be able to incorporate the scars into the design itself, too.”
***
“A little over a year ago now. I was lucky in that I was thrown the farthest away. The plane broke up as it hit, and literally threw me out of it as it went farther down. I was hit bad, but I survived, thanks to a few people who saw the accident and arrived quickly, and didn’t hesitate to try to stabilize me.” He nodded, eyes distant.
“Yeah?” He perked up. “I like that idea. Something to hide them, but also give them a purpose other than just re---” He shook his head, shutting his lips and taking a breath. “I like that.”
He found himself shifting cards again, hands moving restlessly. Old patterns, old habits, helping to make him calm again.
***
“Means you’re a survivor,” Kit said. “Tough. If you can survive a plane crash, you can probably survive anything.” Maybe he got lucky, but luck was just as important as anything else in this world. But it seemed like things were about to get a little uncomfortable around here, and once emotions started cropping up, Kitiara tended to check out.
“Here’s my card,” Kit said, pulling her wallet out of her pocket and removing one of her business cards from it. “I should get going.”
***
“Maybe so. Thanks.”
Presto took her card, burying the emotions as easily as he did every day, then forced a smile. “Thanks. I’ll definitely be in touch. Have a good day.”
He had a lot to think about, and a tattoo to plan. And he hoped life would be uncomplicated for a while. He needed the rest, he thought, after this last month of meeting people.
***