Mr. Gold is Happy to be of Service (mister_gold) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2013-04-29 17:59:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | !complete, mr. gold (rumplestiltskin), samantha carter |
Who: Mr. Gold + Samantha Carter
What: Late birthday celebrations
When: 4/16
Where: Sam's place
Rating: Low because they fail at dates.
Status: Complete
Robert Gold worked too much. Much too much, maybe. Most of the time he didn't mind it -- being in politics was what he'd always wanted to do, and owning his antique shop was what he liked doing. Putting on top of that the fact that he owned and rented quite a few properties in Orange County, it meant he was really just a busy man.
It didn't occur to him as often as it probably should have that he missed out on things like being social in a purely fun, friendly or flirtatious capacity. He wasn't silly enough to not realize it on his own birthday though -- well. The day after, anyway. Tax season was a bitch like that.
Still, he was glad for the invite from Samantha and showed up on time to her place. And didn't he just look different in jeans and a button up shirt instead of a suit?
Sam had been working a lot too lately, not just her usual degree and Phd classes but she had also been asked to work on another physicists research paper. Which, while being fascinating and fun to work on, had also left her tired and prone to headaches. She had almost been glad that Elizabeth had gone to DC for a few days, if only so they weren’t griping at each other, which tended to happen when they were both so busy.
And discovering it had been Robert’s birthday it had been a great reason to invite him over and take a break from her work. When the door went she hurried to answer it, “Robert” she greeted smiling happily, “Please come in” He looked so much more relaxed out of his suit, younger too, Samantha noticed. Glad he hadn’t dressed up as she was also in her jeans (albeit her good ones) and a nice top.
He’d take younger looking. Robert Gold wasn’t a vain man, but when you were just a few years shy of fifty, anyone started getting a bit concerned. “Samantha,” he greeted with a lopsided smile, even as he entered her home. He’d only been here once before in a very short capacity. Still, he remembered liking it.
“Thanks for having me over.”
“Thank you for coming” Samantha said, “Couldn’t have your birthday passing completely without doing something, it wouldn’t be right” she told him, leading him into the living room. “Can I get you a drink? Tea? Coffee? Wine?” she offered.
“Wine would be a complete pleasure,” Gold said, looking about the living room -- he had a habit of touching things -- thin fingers dancing over the back of the couch before both hands went back to the top of his cane. “And I suppose you’re right. Although I’ve had enough birthdays where it doesn’t seem to make much of a difference these days.”
Gesturing to him to sit, Sam went to retrieve the wine from the fridge, “It should make a difference” she told him as she pulled two glasses from the cupboard, “It’s nice to celebrate and it’s a good excuse to catch up with friends or do something fun”
“Point there,” Gold agreed, sitting on the couch. It was pretty comfortable, but not the kind that you just sank straight into, which was good.
Those were the worst kind of couches. He twisted in his spot, leaning nearly casually back so that he could watch her work in the kitchen. “Good a reason as any, anyhow.”
She smiled at him as she brought the wine into the living room along with a few different takeaway menus, “It also works as a nice little break from taxes and work” she said as she sat on the couch with him.
Chuckling at that, Robert could only agree with a vague nod. “That works, too.” They spread the take out menus over the coffee table, and he inspected each thoughtfully even as he sipped at his wine. “What’s your poison?”
“Honestly, Lizzie and I have tried all of these more than once” Sam admitted, neither of them were great cooks, “If its not breakfast foods we’re both hopeless in the kitchen. This chinese is nice” she said pointing out a menu, “And this pizza place has great calzone”
That was the thing about having a fairly busy life and career -- stuff like cooking wasn’t something that everyone had the time or luxury of learning. Gold himself could handle a kitchen decently, but even he’d admit he could be better at it. If he had more time to spend practicing, maybe.
“Chinese seems good,” he said, raising his eyebrows as if looking for her approval on the matter as well.
“Great” Sam agreed, “I could go for sweet and sour pork” she grinned, “And they do a great egg fried rice”
“A woman after my own heart,” Gold agreed, half teasing and half flirting. He wasn’t the best at flirting, not really -- he was out of practice and a little past his prime in that regard, but it didn’t stop him trying. Even if he did waver in and out of it depending how busy he was. He liked Samantha though. She was smart, funny, dedicated to her work. He’d enjoyed their last outing, too.
Sam laughed, “We both have excellent taste obviously” she replied, attempting a flirt of her own. He wasn’t the only one out of practice - Sam had been too busy with work for a long time to worry about dating and the like. But she did like Robert and very much enjoyed his company.
Well, so long as they were both aware that each of them was casually flirting with the other? That was something, anyway.
“Obviously,” he agreed, giving a lopsided nearly boyish grin before sipping at his wine again. “But if that weren’t the case we wouldn’t both be here.”
“You have a very good point” Sam conceded with a smile, “Okay I’ll place the order” she said, standing to fetch the phone and place their order. Before returning to sit, picking up her wine and taking a sip.
Robert took the time she was on the phone to look around the room a bit more, before finally letting his gaze fall to the ceiling when he settled his head on the back of the couch. As far as ceilings went, it was really very nice, he supposed. Small talk was difficult, and he was already prepping a bit to find a bit more of it for when the moment arose.
“Oh” Sam said jumping up to retrieve something from the dresser drawer before returning to sit, “I got you a little something” she smiled as she handed it over. She hadn’t had time to get much but she had found a nice interesting book on antiques and also, as a joke, a little slang to english dictionary that she thought he’d find amusing.
“Did you?” Gold seemed a bit shocked by that, but turned the package over in his hands before opening it up to reveal the books. He gave an honest to god laugh over the slang dictionary. “Oh, dearie,” he said, affectionately, “soon I’ll be as hip as all the kids. You won’t know what my texts are saying at all.”
“I did consider that. But I simply couldn’t resist” she grinned, “You’ll soon be signing up to twitter and all the other ‘cool’ social networking sites” she added teasingly.
“Never,” Gold said, crossing his heart with a finger. “I’ll probably never understand those things. It was a step enough to sign up for Valarnet.” And really, it had been. And now it was hard to log on and read other people’s posts and pretend to care enough to comment. Or even write his own posts, honestly. Everyone on it seemed young, and boringly opinionated about little to nothing that interested him. The internet was a useful tool, but when it came to actually networking on it, Gold found himself hopelessly lacking.
Sam herself wasn’t really one for posting much. She occasionally shared a new science discovery if it was very interesting to her but hardly ever posted comments - again unless it was poignant to her area of interest. “I don’t think we’re the generation of the social networks” she said, “It doesn’t hold the interest to me that an actual conversation does” she grinned.
“Probably not,” he agreed -- especially since it was the day past his birthday and it was more than clear to him that a good portion of the people who used those things were old enough to be his children. And wasn’t that a bit of a downer?
He shook his head, smiled and settled the books down on the menus in front of them. “Thank you,” he said, and pressed forward to kiss her cheek before he overthought the matter.
It could be a downer but Sam was happier without the reliance that there seemed to be on the internet now. She couldn’t imagine not talking to her friends just because they weren’t on facebook, there was nothing wrong with a phone call or an actual meeting.
She flushed as he kissed her cheek, “You’re welcome” she replied smiling.
To which he only gave a half shrug and a little smile of his own. Sometimes, despite being forty-eight, he just wasn’t sure how to deal with well. Whatever this was. Gold, apparently, was not the smoothest of operators.
Sam wasn’t either if they were being honest, instead of doing what most people did at university - namely getting drunk and sleeping around - she’d been researching, studying and actually doing her work. And then her masters and PhD followed by an immediate research job left her with an incredible brain but limited knowledge of dating or whatever it was they were doing.
He’d had nearly the same track record there -- except instead of PhD’s, he’d gone into politics. Politics, everyone knew, took up entirely too much time and had little to no pay off until you reached a level high enough for others to care about.
“So.” He said, because this wasn’t awkward at all.
“Tell me what’s happening in the world of politics and antiques” Sam said with a smile, “Apart from taxes of course”
“That’s all there is around this time of year,” Gold admitted with a tell-tale sigh. “It’s all terribly tedious. But I suppose someone has to do it.”
“It’s true” Sam nodded, “You haven’t had an amazing antique discovery to make up for the tediousness then?”
“Not lately,” Gold scrunched his nose up a bit at that. “Truth is, the best stuff is the kind you have to go searching for, not wait for someone to bring in, usually. Tax season sort of ruins the hunt.”
"The fun part" Sam grinned, "I've seen it on tv where they go looking for that incredible find. Does seem exciting, though I imagine you need to know what to look for"
“You should come sometime,” Gold said, in vague offer. Thankfully, before things could go from awkward, to more awkward, the doorbell rang and he could only imagine there would now be Chinese food to smooth things over.
Sam smiled about to say she would love to when the bell went, hopping from the couch she went to answer the door and returned triumphantly with dinner.
Dinner helped with awkward pauses. It was easy to pretend that they were just chewing or whatever while they tried to think of something new to say. Gold had to admit that while he didn’t do it often, using cheap wooden chopsticks from the restaurant was kind of fun.
It was true, dinner definitely helped. And the food really was quite good. It was terrible really but she and Lizzie - as the true nerds they were - had started a database of the take-away places in town with points for timeliness, tastiness, etc. They really needed to learn how to cook or get out more. She told Robert this as they came towards the end of their meal. Vaguely embarrassing herself in the process but he already knew she was a bit of a geeky girl.
“That’s actually very entrepreneurial of you both,” Gold pointed out. “It’s the sort of thing people set up websites for and then make money over.” He was no stranger to looking up reviews of restaurants to see what their validity was, after all. “It’s quite clever.”
Sam smiled, “It’s not really something we’d ever try to make money out of” she admitted, “But I’d never thought about putting it on the internet, I didn’t consider that others might find it useful”
“Why wouldn’t they?” Robert countered, because let’s be honest here, the man was a politician; he could argue and make a point for nearly anything and have it sound competent. It helped that this actually did make sense. “Everyone eats out. Chinese take out tends to be tremendously hit or miss.”
“It does but there’s also a certain amount of personal taste involved” Sam countered, “What I might find too sweet or sour others might find just right. There’s always that chance of error”
“Variables,” he responded, not unfondly. Really, she was kind of cute about it. “You really are a scientist.”
Sam blushed slightly but laughed, “I’m afraid so” she replied, “You should see my reaction when anybody asks me to ‘estimate’ something”
The blush suited her, Gold thought. He’d have to devise more ways to get that to happen. “Do tell,” he prompted, eyebrows raising.
“It’s not pretty, I go all panicky” Sam grinned, “If there’s a way to work out the exact measurements of something then I don’t see why people don’t take the time to do it, rather than guessing”
“Laziness, probably.” He could only imagine Sam reacting to someone using the “hands estimate” version of measuring. Probably aneurysms would be on the horizon.
“Oh no doubt” she agreed with a sigh. Sam just didn’t understand people who refused to use the simple maths to help them get an exact answer. Robert knew her well already, ‘hands estimate’ was definitely aneurysm worthy for Sam.
“Alas,” he said, “we can’t save everyone with schooling. We’ll just have to do our best to ignore all the stupid.” And there was an awful lot of stupid to go around; Robert should know, he worked in politics, after all.
“My classes help somewhat” Sam nodded, “It’s pretty hard to teach physics to stupid people so it reassures me that there is still intelligent life in the younger generations”
“It’s not always the younger generation that I worry about,” came Robert’s glib response. “You should meet half the people I work with. Idiots.”
“Oh yes, no doubt but at least with the younger ones we have a chance to educate them before they become stupid adults” she gave a wry smile.
“Only time will tell, I expect.” Apparently, one of Sam and Robert’s favorite past times was making fun of people that were unfortunately limited in brain cells. Hey, everyone needed a hobby.
"Sadly so" she agreed. It was true but then they were both highly intelligent people with little to no patience for morons so maybe it wasn't so surprising.