| Breakfast and Confusion |
| Summary: | They go together well, maybe? Lark and Veris confuse the hell out of each other. Then he asks her out! |
| Date: | 25 June 2012 |
| Related Logs: | To See You Smile |
| Players: |
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| Very's Tent |
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| Tiny squire tent with a tiny squire cot. |
| Mon 25 Jun 289 |
It's an odd day when Veris is up and awake early in the morning without someone else prompting him to be, but here he is, bright and early the morning after the Squire's Melee. And he's not even hung over, either, since he couldn't go out drinking - he was taken from the healer's tent back to his own cot and given something for a good night's sleep. It leaves him a little groggy, but that's nothing compared to the hangovers he's had before.
"Oh, my goodness!" says Lark, inviting herself into the tent with every expectation of finding him asleep. She has herself a basket, and that basket has itself some divine breakfast smells. "Good morning! Are you hurting?" Really, why else would he be awake? "Should I go get the healer?"
Veris jumps when Lark pops into his tent, scaring the friggin bajesus out of him. "I wasn't until that," he mutters, calming back down with a wince from the pain at his sudden movement. "I thought you knew better than to sneak up on me by now, little birdie," he says. Since when does coming in through the front door count as sneaking? "Ohhh," he murmurs once the smell hits him, peeering at the basket. "Whassat?"
"Well, I didn't think you'd be awake!" Lark defends, trying not to laugh — both mirthful and truly sympathetic for his pain. She comes over and sits on the cot, setting the basket down. "Food to break your fast. Sweet rolls and griddle cakes, bread, cheese, eggs — and some sausage," she adds, wrinkling her nose. "I didn't make that, but my aunt sent it along."
Very sits on the cot across from her, balancing it out, and peeks into the basket. "Is it my nameday or something?" he asks jokingly, then suddenly straightens up with an alarmed look. "Is it my nameday?" he asks, for serious this time. What day is it? He calculates. Using his fingers. "No, still a couple weeks off. Jeez, scared me again there, little birdie."
"I didn't know your nameday was so soon!" Lark says, delighted. "I'll have to bake you a cake. How old will you be?"
"Uhhh… nineteen, I think," Veris says, scratching his head. He doesn't know how old he is? "Yeah, it's, uh… next month. Two… three weeks. And you don't hafta do that," he says, grinning and shaking his head. "I think you baked me more things than I ever been baked before in my life." He looks at her and gestures to the basket. "Didja eat already?"
She blinks a few times. "How can you not know how old you are?" she asks, curiously. As for the cake, "But I want to! It's not as though I can really buy you a proper gift. The ingredients for a cake — well, they don't cost much." She shakes her head a little. She hasn't eaten yet. "I thought I might eat with you. I'll have a sweet roll, if you don't mind."
Veris shrugs his good shoulder sheepishly - his right arm is still in a sling, though his head's no longer bandaged. "I just don't see as it's important to keep track," he answers. "Who cares how long I've been alive? That won't tell me how many I've got left ahead." He pokes through the basket, trying to decide what to munch on first. "You'll have more'n that - you brought a feast, is what you done, and we'll share it."
"But I don't have a very large appetite," protests Lark, nevertheless smiling with pleasure that he considers the contents of her basket so fine. "I'm small. And you need your strength so you can heal." She does take a sweetroll, though. At least to start. Negotiations may very well be ongoing. "How did you sleep?"
Hey, he's a growing boy, and the food smells good, and he usually just has a crusty piece of bread for breakfast - and even that's in short supply these days at the Roost! So Very is very happy for Lark's basket and company. "Like a baby," he says, finally snagging a griddlecake. "A drunk, sex-drowsy baby."
Lark blinks. And stares a moment. Then shifts her attention quickly to her sweetroll. "Oh," she says. She crams food in her mouth. She takes a moment to say anything more — talking with your mouth full is rude, after all. At length, she swallows. "I guess I wasn't the only girl impressed with your — uhm — stamina. On the field. Yesterday."
"Mmmph?" Veris asks, mouth full of griddlecake. At least he doesn't open it to speak, but he's still trying to communicate while he eats. "Why, did someone say somethin' about me?" he asks, interested. "It weren't your cousin, was it?" he probes further. Who could she be talking about? Oblivious Very is very oblivious.
Her eyes widen. If she were indeed a bird, her feathers would be all ruffled and puffed out in indignation. "You don't even know who she was?" she asks, incredulous.
"Don't even know a who what?" Very asks in confusion before cramming the rest of that griddlecake into his mouth. "Mmf mm hmm mm gmm pmmkmm bmmm mm, mmmm?" He looks around for something to drink and settles on a flask of water that he can't quite reach from the cot.
Ever the nurturing thing, even when she wants to kick someone repeatedly, Lark stands and grabs the flask, shoving it into Very's hand. "You don't, do you? You don't know — or remember, or care — who it was." She gasps, looking stricken right to the heart. "Were you wearing my favor when you did it?"
"When I did what!" Veris bursts out after rinsing down the first part of his meal with a drink of water. "I just wanna know who you heard talkin' 'bout my fighting yesterday, and you're asking me all these damn questions that don't even make any sense!" He pulls down his shirt by the collar to show that he's still wearing her favor. "I'm still wearin' it 'cause you left it on me when you left." But now he seems confused. She doesn't want him to be wearing it?
Lark bites her lips, pretty face all crumpled like a wounded puppy. "You had sex," she says, tears welling up and making her eyes sparkle, "with some — person — while wearing my favor."
WHAT. Veris looks around, like, me? "Uh," he says. "I think I would remember that if it happened." And he's pretty sure he doesn't remember anything like that. Pretty sure. "I got brought here when I woke up in the healer's tent at night," he says, frowning as he recalls. "Then they gave me something to get me back to sleep and I'd just woken up, like, fifteen minutes when you popped in just now."
She frowns. "You said you were sex-drowsy!" she accuses, unwilling to be taken in so easily.
"I did not!" Veris immediately yells back. Then thinks. Did he say that? "Oh, are you - Gods, little birdie," he sigh-laughs. "I was bein' metaphorical, like."
Lark… could not possibly look any more baffled. Or skeptical. Or hurt. That's the weird thing about blows to the heart — they're slow to realize there's no real wound, and so keep aching a while. "'Drunk, sex-drowsy baby' is a metaphor?"
"You asked me how I slept," Very points out. "I was just sayin'. I slept better than good. An' I always sleep my best after drinkin', an'… well." He grins and shrugs his shoulder again. "I didn't do nothin' but sleep, little birdie. But now I see how you'd feel if I hadn't."
Deeply embarassed, Lark blushes to the roots of her hair. She's still — completely irrationally — upset with him. She the throws the remainder of her sweet roll at his head. "It's none of my business," she says, still all pink. "I just thought — " nevermind what she thought. "I'm sure you have plenty of girls in Terrick's Roost to set sex-drowsy with."
Veris just grins and grins as she blushes. He's still grinning when the roll bounces off his head and lands in his lap. "Maybe it is and maybe it ain't," he says. "An' there's plenty of girls all over the Riverlands to get sex-drowsy with." Well, that's reassuring. "Or you could get all sex-drowsy with a man from the Roost."
Lark shoots him a look, flouncing down to sit on the cot again. "You can have sex with whoever you like," she says to her knees. "I don't care."
"You don't?" Veris asks, skeptical. That's not how it seemed a second ago. "Not even if I wear your favor?"
Her eyes snap to him, all stabbed to the heart. She holds out her hand. "Maybe you should give me that back," she whispers, thickly. "We did say it was just a loan."
Very blinks in surprise at the look in her eyes and the hand stretched out toward him. Wordlessly, he pulls it up over his head and puts it in her hand, though he lingers over it before pulling his hand back. He watches her with pained eyes, unsure of what, really, he can say right now.
She closes her fingers around it and holds it against her heart, unable to look at him. "I should go," she whispers, standing. "I'm sorry to have bothered you."
"But I - " Veris stammers when she stands, almost standing himself before the pain stops him. "I didn't do anything," he pleads.
"But you will," says Lark, glancing at him — his plea tugs at her heart, visibly. "You're not — you're not the kind of boy who wants just one girl, are you? And I'm not going to just — hop into your bed so maybe I can maybe keep you." She closes her eyes and turns her face away. "I'm sorry. You're right. You haven't done anything. I just — I thought…"
Veris doesn't know how to respond to that at all. She's angry not because of what he did or didn't do but because of what he… might do? "I don't get you, little birdie," he murmurs for the third day in a row. At least that much is constant. "What? What did you think?"
She swallows audibly, like there's a lump in her throat. "I thought… there was something… going on. Between us. Something special. Esp-especially after last night."
"Well… wasn't there?" Veris asks, scanning her face. "You said - you said, the dance, tonight - " He sighs and shakes his head. "Well I guess that just makes me a fool," he says, looking down at the basket. "Not the first time, won't be the last."
Lark swallows hard again. She takes a careful step back toward him. "What makes you a fool?"
Veris frowns at the basket, trying to find the words. There's just so much that makes him a fool. "For agreeing with you," he says. "That I thought there was something. I guess we were both wrong, since we can't be both right."
Her breath catches on a little hitch. She sniffles. "I'm really confused now," she says.
"You're confused," Veris says, looking at her oddly. "Well if you're really confused and I don't even understand anything that's happening right now, then what… are we doing?"
"I really just wanted to eat breakfast with you," he adds.
Lark breathes out a sigh, nodding. "Me, too," she says, softly. She bites her lips, pensively. "Can we try again?"
Veris looks at her carefully. "Well here," he says, "let me." He stands up off his cot with a wince, his chest and shoulder obviously giving him some pain with that movement. "See, 'cause I was gonna ask you to the dance an' all, and - " he holds up his hand to still any argument, "I even thought out about Alona, she can go with Jessem. He owes me a favor for ditchin' on me at the tourney."
She blinks. "Oh," she says. Another swallow, and a glimmer of a smile — all cautious and fragile. "I did say I'd go with you, if you had the sense to ask," she acknowledges, her smile growing a little more.
There's that smile. Very lights up to see it, that much is plain. "I thought you did," he says with that goofy grin slowly appearing. "That was the first thing I thought of when I woke up today, but I couldn't remember if you really said it or maybe it was you in my dream."
"You dreamed of me?" Lark asks, biting her bottom lip shyly. She's all aglow. And blushing. And kind of lovely.
Now it's Very's turn to blush. His face goes red up to the tips of his ears. "N - that's not wh - I didn't say that," he mumbles, glancing away. "Anyway it's nicer outside and sunny now let's eat out there okay." That's all said in one monotone breath with no real punctuation as he grabs the basket and pushes out of the tent. It is a nice morning outside, and Lark was nice enough to pack a convenient basket.
Lark blinks a few more times, then laughs and follows him out into the sunshine.
