ezekiel jones (ezekieljones) wrote in valloic, @ 2021-05-24 18:41:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | !: action/thread/log, ₴ inactive: ezekiel jones, ₴ inactive: tina cohen-chang |
WHO: Tina Cohen-Chang & Ezekiel Jones
WHERE: Vallo City: The Library
WHEN: May 24th, 2021
WHAT: Tina comes over to feed Kailani and Zeke makes it awkward in less than five seconds of walking into the room.
WARNINGS: Implied Sex
When Tina pushed open the door to the library, she had no idea who she was going to be running into there. It was possible she’d see its residents, though she was here for one main reason. Kailani. She hadn’t exactly thought about the fact that she was going to be showing up at the Library often over the next few weeks when she’d met up with Ezekiel the other day. So she did her best to shove it out of her mind now, even if the whole situation was new to her. She didn’t arrive empty-handed. When Tina had said she fully intended to become Kailani’s second favorite (though she would go for first if she could ever manage), she had not been kidding. So, she’d done her research on Loch Ness, and the possible food sources those creatures would have there. This resulted in her arriving with a selection of fresh sea-weed, and a number of freshwater fish to find out which one Kailani would like the most. Tina made it to the tank without running into one and had zero intention of seeking anyone out, in case any of the librarians were neck-deep in whatever chaos they unleashed here during the day. “Hey, baby girl,” Tina said warmly as she stopped in front of the tank, watching as Kailani swam up to her, then away, then back again. “Soon you’ll be too big for that thing, I’ll have to figure out how to bypass dragons to come and visit.” Placing the cooler continuing the fish on a table close to the tank, Tina cracked open the lid and looked at the contents carefully. All the fish were freshly caught this morning, so hopefully, she liked them. “I brought you something.” When Ezekiel had hit up Tina's Tag! profile the other night, he had fully believed himself capable of separating sex and friendship from feelings. The three could stay separate easily, if he just let it. He and Jake were making it work, right? (Wrong.) But at least he could compartmentalize like the best of them and that was the only thing that mattered. So he thought he was in the clear of making things weird. He had even been able to comment on Tina's sexy calendar post without being awkward. He really should have known better though. The second he walked into the room that Kailani's tank was in, he nearly walked right back out. Because Tina was there. And it wasn't too surprising to see her there because she had been visiting the Loch Ness baby since she had been born, but this was the first time he was seeing her in person after they spent the night together. Immediately, everything felt weirder. So he was about to take his box of pizza and walk back out and visit Kailani later, but he messed up by walking into the frame and cursing. Had he been a little more graceful about his exit, Tina would have remained oblivious to the fact that she’d been spotted. Instead, she heard the collision, followed by cursing, and knew who it was before she looked up. Tina froze for a moment, mentally yelling at herself not to panic. Or be weird. The internet was one thing when you had time to carefully type your response and no one could see your initial reaction. But this was different. Tina didn’t do one-night stands, but it had been entirely too long since she’d been with someone, and the loneliness finally won out. But she made the choice to come here anyway. Instead of reaching into the cooler to take out a fish, she raised her head to look in the direction the noise had come from. “Did you just run into the wall?” "No?" Came the immediate response. And technically, he wasn't lying. He had run into the doorframe. But he grabbed the pizza box off the floor and stood, reluctantly, turning back around. "Sorry, didn't realize you were going to be around. I'll let you have Kailani time in peace. Just gonna…" here he walked in until he was near enough to put the pizza down next to her cooler of fresh fish. "...Leave that there. Enjoy, take your time." Ezekiel made a move to leave again, this time determined to avoid being an idiot. Tina was very still, almost guarded, as he walked the pizza toward the table and then turned back around to leave. A visit in peace? Peace was the last word she ever associated with Ezekiel and what he left behind. And pizza? He hadn’t known she was going to be here, which meant he was bringing the pizza out to Kailani. “Were you going to feed her pizza?” There was no way he was getting away that easily. “You’re being weird,” she added, closing the lid on the cooler for a moment. “What happened to amnesia?” In this situation, she had not imagined herself being the not awkward one. Maybe she would have been if Ezekiel hadn’t beat her to it. He has almost gotten away too, was almost at the door to leave, when he heard her accusation. Turning around, he spluttered and then put his hands on his hips. "Maybe the pizza is for me and I'm just leaving it here for you because I'm a good host, hm? Did you think of that?" No, he totally was going to try to feed Kailani pizza. But the bravado he was putting on faltered at the mention of the other night. Flashes of them together sweaty and naked came back to him in a flash and, despite claiming he wasn't going to be affected by this, he still flushed red in the face. Ugh, he used to be so cool about all of this. What happened to him? This is Kirk's fault, somehow. "I don't know what you're talking about. I'm cool. You're cool, right?" “No.” she responded automatically because that made exactly zero sense. “If being a host was a concern, you wouldn’t just drop it off and run.” she could give an entire breakdown on being a host, and Ezekiel was clearly reaching. There was only room for one of them to be awkward in whatever this was, and Tina couldn’t do it if Zeke was going to step into that role first. Dammit. “If you’re so cool, then come over here and help me feed her.” she challenged, opening up the cooler again. “I brought freshwater fish and seaweed. These should all be naturally occurring in Loch Ness.” Ezekiel was about to argue about the host thing for a little more, but realized there was no winning that one. So he sighed and trudged over like he was about to go to his doom. Dramatic? Ezekiel Jones? Never. He peered into the cooler when it was opened and dryly commented, “Kailani eats better than I do. Is this all fresh too? Ridiculous.” Tina really was trying to take his spot as number one, he could see that now. “I can’t believe you’re trying to be her favorite.” He looked away from the fish to look at Kailani’s tank. She came up to the glass, headbutting the spot where Zeke put his hand up against the glass, gently. He smiled at her. He really was a proud parent. “Kailani is a growing not-so-mythical creature. You’re a full-grown adult with a job that can pay for his food.” She was absolutely aiming for a favorite person with Kailani, and she didn’t play when a challenge was issued. Especially since Kailani was adorable. Tina didn’t miss the smile on Ezekiel’s face when Kailani attempted to head-butt his hands. “Adorable.” Because it was adorable. And he’d probably hate being associated with adorable acts. Selecting some trout from the cooler, she brought it over to the tank and reached up to drop in the water, hoping she liked it. “She loves you, it’s sweet.” How dare Tina come into his house and call him an adorable adult? That was just…rude. He frowned and pulled his hand away as Kailani went for the trout and nibbled at it, in curiosity. It seemed like she liked it though and started ripping into it with blunt little teeth just seconds later. “Gonna raise her to eat your car,” Ezekiel promised, as he stepped away from the tank and sat on the table next to the pizza box. He opened it and started to dig in, shoving the box slightly in Tina’s direction as well. As much as he claimed about getting a gut, he still hadn’t given up his pizza obsession. It probably had a lot to do with the fact that he couldn’t cook and growing up, his adoptive mother had never bothered cooking for him or his sisters. They would always end up getting the cheapest takeout and that tended to be pizza or fake Chinese. “Jake and I have been feeding her fish food and random fish. Some are hits, some are misses.” “Oh, I don’t know. I think she’ll prefer the fish when she’s older too.” Plus she just wasn’t getting anywhere near Tina’s new car. “And I love that car, so nothing is happening to it.” When Kailani was nearly done with the first fish, she dropped another one into the tank, and then closed the lid on the cooler. She probably brought way more fish than Kailani needed, she could always leave the rest here. Tina pushed herself up onto the table on the other side of the pizza box and picked up a slice. “Fish food?” that couldn’t be a good diet for a future lake monster. “Well, I definitely brought way more than what she’s going to eat now...probably.” because she was not an expert in lake serpents. “I’ll leave it here for you guys. Keep it somewhere cool and it should last a few days.” “Don’t understand people’s obsessions with cars.” Like don’t get him wrong, he thought the Fast & Furious movies were amazing watches. He enjoyed watching them, but as something to own? Eh. Probably had to do with the fact that he never bothered to learn to drive. It was why he had regifted the Stingray to Tina without hesitation. “We’ll add it to the stash we have going,” Zeke promised, kicking his legs back and forth as he moved onto his second slice of pizza with no indication of slowing down. He nodded at the larger commercial cooler that was sitting in the corner opposite of them to show her where he kept their food. “Anyway, how’d it go with your brother? I see you’re still alive.” “I wouldn’t call it an obsession, it’s not like I didn’t spend an hour or so googling that car. But it’s fun. Driving down along the shoreline at night, blasting music? Always a good time. It’s like an escape. The whole world kind of just falls away and you can get lost in the music.” It was an escape, and everyone needed an escape from time to time. “I could do that with any car, but it’s like, really fun to drive.” Tina shrugged, still working on her first piece of pizza, and taking her time with it. “I think he knows I had a good reason to do it. So he was less mad, and more just upset I didn’t include him.” She knew Bucky would always worry about her, and she’d always worry about him. Tina hadn’t told him because he was down at arm and wanted to keep him out of bad situations where he might need it. Next time, she’d approach it differently. “So I promised if I ever organized another jailbreak, I’d let him know. He also asked if we were dating,” she said with a smirk. That question was a little more hilarious now. “I wouldn’t know,” Ezekiel said, offhandedly. “Driving it. Or driving, really.” But he guessed that sounded like a good time. He knew he did enjoy the road trips he and Raven had taken back in Tumbleweed when they wanted to get away from Texas for a few days. But she had always driven or they’d make Jake take time off and go with them, but it had been more about the company than the experience of a car itself. Then he wrinkled his nose. “Why would he ask that? Did he find out about the other night too?” Then his eyes widened. “Wait, is he going to kill me? Is there a super soldier assassin hiding in my air vents right now?” He looked up, in paranoia, wondering if death from above was about to become a real thing. “You don’t drive?” It was asked out of curiosity, not judgement or disbelief. It wasn’t often she met someone who didn’t know how to drive. It led to a certain sense of freedom for teenagers. But she also knew that Ezekiel’s upbringing was a hell of a lot different than hers. “Definitely not.” she shook her head, “He asked that before the other night anyway, so relax, he doesn’t know anything.” and it was going to stay that way. There were things that Bucky wanted her to tell him, who she hooked up with was not one of them. “Because you gave me the car. That’s a huge gift, even if you don’t see it that way. His first thought was probably that I had some kind of sugar daddy.” “It’s not that weird, a lot of people don’t drive,” Ezekiel explained, somewhat defensively. He had fought ghosts, dragons, stolen some of the world’s rarest jewels, worked for MI6 and Starfleet. He was worldly and shit! So what if he couldn’t drive? The sad truth was that he never really had anyone growing up looking out for him, teaching him the things he needed to know. It’s why he let laundry pile up and then sent it to the dry cleaners when he was nearly out of clothes. Didn’t know how to wash his own clothes, could only make basic foods, and couldn’t drive. By the time he realized that it was weird he didn’t know these things, it was too late to actually ask someone to teach him. Just made it work and kept up the facade that he was a capable adult. He didn’t want anyone looking at him in pity. He flushed again, this time in embarrassment. He realized he was a disaster of a person, but he was usually better about not being obvious about it. A car didn’t seem like a big deal to him, as a gift. Especially since it was a regift. So he laughed awkwardly and said, “Well, definitely not your sugar daddy. Just appreciative of the fact my hands weren’t chopped off in the past.” “I didn’t say it was weird.’ she said gently. “I was just surprised. I guess it doesn’t really matter either way in a place like this. With the Waypoints no one really needs to drive anyway.” She only did it because she wanted to. Tina picked up a napkin and wiped her hands of any excess pizza grease, “I’m well aware,” and hopefully she’d made that very clear to Bucky as well. “I am also very happy your hands are fine.” He could take that to mean whatever he wanted. Hopping down from the table, she picked out one more piece of fish to hand over to Kailani just for good measure. She had no idea how much she really needed to eat, Jake and Ezekiel probably had that figured out more. “Plus, I kind of owed you. You didn’t have to take the fall for me like that when you did.” “I can fly a helicopter. That should translate well, right? Doesn’t matter, Uber works too,” Zeke said, trying to push the weird feeling of inadequacy away. God, he hated it. It’s why he tried to be good at so many other things, to make up for what he did lack in. He completely missed the possible innuendo about his hands because, despite him claiming otherwise, he really wasn’t that great of a flirt. Too direct, not interested enough in the build up. But he raised them and looked at his hands now. They were covered in pen marks and cuts, a little rougher like someone who worked a lot with his hands. Just that morning, he had been elbows deep in Jake’s badly named Jaeger. “Yeah, they’re pretty useful. Can’t create shit if I don’t have them.” Dropping them, he rolled his eyes. “Let’s not get into that again. Any good teacher would have taken the fall. Sins of the student are the teacher’s responsibility,” he explained, something he had learned from his mother by watching her follow the exact opposite of that mantra. She had been all too okay with letting her children take the fall for her. “I would have done that for any of my friends.” And was that him admitting they were friends? Maybe. “You can fly a helicopter?” she knew there was a lot about him she didn’t know, but that was just cool. “That’s awesome. Where did you learn that?” If there was one thing she’d learned over the last ten years, it was that she couldn’t use her idea of a normal life as the standard in this place. Some of the backgrounds of people here seemed insane to her. But that was their normal. There was nothing wrong with that. She rolled her eyes when he started talking about students and teachers again. Tina raised her hands in surrender. She wouldn’t bring it up again. Friends caught her attention though, and grin broke across her face. “You just said, friends,” she said, the grin breaking into a smile. She took a step toward him and pointed right at him because she was not letting this go easily. “You just admitted we’re friends.” It only took several years, but here they were. “Yeah?” Ezekiel answered cautiously. Was that going to make him weird too? He really needed to work on being more normal, he let his guard down way too much, these days. “Back when I was working with MI6, I had to learn it on the fly for a mission because our actual pilot, uh, got shot.” Though now that he thought about it, he wasn’t sure if he had ever mentioned that part of his life to her either. There was a lot most people didn’t know about him. Jake had probably come the closest though. He jumped off the table when she got too close and narrowed his eyes at her, getting in her personal space. “You’re hearing things. I definitely meant ‘student.’ I don’t have friends,” he explained, loftily. Definitely insane. There was an entire story there that she was going to have to work on getting from him at some point. “MI6, sure, just casually drop that along with flying a helicopter. No big deal. I hope you know I now have a million more questions.” Part of her didn’t want to know if the pilot was okay, if she didn’t ask, she would just assume that he was in the end. Either way, it sounded both exciting and absolutely terrifying. She took half a step back but otherwise stood her ground, smile staying in place as she tilted her head back to look up at him. “Nope. I have excellent hearing. It’s all part of my training. You said friend. It’s out in the world now. Never letting that one go.” “You have stories that are crazy,” Zeke accused, knowing that she had a whole life in Blackpoint that had been insane. He had only been there for a short time, in comparison to her anyway. “I’m not the only one living a strange, strange life.” He almost took another step forward because maybe he did like being close to people? Whatever, no big deal, but he stood rooted to the spot he was in. “Anyway, whatever you heard, you didn’t. You’re getting old, Cohen-Chang. I’m a lone wolf.” Shrugging, Tina mostly brushed off his statement with a wave of her hand. “Crazy things happened around me while I mostly tried not to die. I definitely could not learn to fly a helicopter if my pilot got shot.” At least she was pretty sure she couldn’t. With any luck, she would never have to find out. “And that was only after Blackpoint. You were basically James Bond in your own reality.” Now that he was in close proximity it was a lot more difficult to not let her mind wander back to the other night when they had been together. Those memories made her very aware of just how close he was now, and she could feel herself turn slightly red. Focus. “Whatever you say, lone wolf.” She did move forward, reclaiming the half-step she had given up before. “Still never letting it go.” “If it helps, I played a lot of video games? And there was a flight simulator that I had been in a couple of times, so I ended up figuring it out. Far from James Bond mode, trust me,” Zeke said, though hey, there was Tina, up close and personal again. And that made his eyes widen slightly, wondering what the right move was now. It was supposed to be a few hours together and then they were supposed to forget it. Neither one of them had mentioned a repeat. And yet, here he was, watching her flushing pretty and deciding, yeah, he wanted a round two. “So…” Zeke started slowly, trying to find a non-awkward way to ask this. It was easier from behind a computer screen and when it was dark out. “What are you doing for the next couple of hours?” “Yeah, well, closer to it than I plan to ever get.” Though in a world like this god only knew what trouble would find her next. Hopefully, it didn’t involve helicopters potentially crash landing. Even with all the training she had under her belt now, she still never knew if she was going to be prepared for the next round of crazy. You couldn’t train for things like demon mammoths. Did she want a round two? Yeah, she did. And it sounded like that was what he was hinting at. It had been too long since she’d felt that close to someone, and with Ezekiel, she knew who he was, and knew she could trust him on some level. Was this a mistake? Maybe, but there was obviously something there between them, and she was happy to go with it. “Mmm…” if she was going to go with this, she might as well go all the way. She moved just a little bit closer until they were nearly touching. “You, maybe?” So. Same page it was. The afternoon of working on some rich guy’s private computer network was forgotten. Ezekiel could do that later tonight, he had a more interesting prospect on the books now. “Yeah? I should probably check my calendar, see if I’m free…” He trailed off and reached for the phone in his pocket, pretending he was actually going to check on his calendar. He would decide to take that moment to pretend to be an ass. If she rolled her eyes any harder, they’d likely pop out of her head. Tina grabbed the wrist of his hand going for his pocket, holding it in place from going any further without a struggle. “I’m pretty sure it says you’re free.” She leaned in to capture his lips with her own, firmly demanding his attention be on her instead of anything on his phone. “This is your cue to lead the way to someplace more private.” Tina didn’t need to tell him that twice. Zeke turned his hand in her grip and tugged her out of the room pretty quickly after that. |