2019-08-23 - Cooking Lessons

Towards the end of August, the weather is hot. Actual hot, New York hot, not just PNW hot, and it's utterly miserable. Most houses, even newer ones, don't have air conditioning, and number 15 Elm can in no way be counted as a newer house. The only thing Itzhak has going for him is that he's in a partial basement, better insulated by earth than by cheap fiberglass. Today is maybe not the greatest day on the books to have Isolde over to teach her to cook something, but it's late afternoon and all the windows in his apartment face south. Itzhak's asked Isolde over, anyway. It'll cool off soon. He hopes.

Isolde was happy to come over for a cooking lesson today, despite the heat. It worked out because she had to invite him to the picnic with Alexander and Isabella and also maybe talk to him about the Emory situation. If it came up. She wanted it to come up naturally. If there was a natural way to bring up such a thing. Anyhow! She is knocking on the door soon enough. Wearing a pair of denim shorts and a white tank top. Long red hair pulled up into a ponytail. Trying to stay as cool as possible. She also has a little gift for him this time around too! A bright yellow origami figure in a snake like shape. Yellow like...a Lemondrop!

Itzhak opens the door, this time, and grins tiredly at Isolde. "Hiya. C'mon in." He's wearing one of his usual tanktops (somewhat stuck to his chest and back with sweat) and...well, he's never worn shorts before that she's seen. Now he is, the heat having driven him to it. His legs are really REALLY pale. "Sorry it's hotter than a goddamn oven in here. ...Oh hey, is that a snake?!"

Isolde flashes Itzhak a grin in return, briefly glancing over his tattoos. She liked looking at them, though hadn't really asked about them yet. Then he mentions the snake. "Ah ha! It is! Lemondrop! To hang out with Origami Iris." Isolde held the figure out to him. "It's okay that it's hot. It's always hot." Slipping inside the house and sliding off her sandals. "But cold showers are good cures for hot too. When there's no air conditioner." One day. ONE. DAY. 13 Elm Street would have A/C. Even just a window unit. That day was not today though.

"I love it," Itzhak says, with the same genuine pleasure he showed when Isolde gave him origami-Iris. "Paper Iris is lonely, she needs company." He turns the snake over and over in his hands, exploring it. "This is so cool, Izzy. Thanks." Promptly he goes to set origami-Lemondrop in her new home, next to origami-Iris. "Cold showers, hah, God knows I need one." Then he's looking at her, eyebrows up, a curious and interested expression on that long face. "How are you?"

Isolde seems delighted that he loves it. Watching him place Lemondrop next to Iris. Clapping her hands together and giggling."I'm glad you like it." There's another giggle at his mention of needing a cold shower. "Me too." Walking closer to him and the kitchen area, she leaned against the counter. "Me? I'm okay." Tilting her head, those clear blue eyes settling him. "I might be getting another job soon. I need to talk to Dr. Glass." There's a moment of pause, like she's considering something and then hesitates and chickens out. Instead opting for, "Do you want to go on a picnic soon? With me and Alexander and Isabella?"

Itzhak smiles, open and bright, to see Isolde's joy. The rarest kind of smile from him. "...A picnic? Sure. I haven't met Isabella. Kinda been meaning to." For no reasons to do with his unrequited crush on Alexander, of course. "August wants to take you and me on a double date with him and Ellie, too. He wants to get to know you better. He'll love ya, so I want him to get to know you better too." Then, shaking his head in mock rue, he swipes damp curls back from his forehead. "All this socializin', it's so wholesome, how's my reputation ever gonna recover?"

He leans a hip against the counter, too, right next to Isolde, heels of his hands absently propping him up. He's studying her again, in her shorts and ponytail. "You're adorable, you know that?" he says, smiling lopsided this time.

"I thought it would be good. A good way to meet her. I know you're disappointed about it. But I think you'll like her. And maybe that will make things feel a little better." Isolde explained softly, turning so she could face him as he settled in beside her. She reached up to push some of his curls back, giving him that grin again. "Your reputation will survive somehow. I'm sure."

"A double date with August and Elli will be fun! I'd like to know him better too. He's a nice man. We're still working through his vegetables." Isolde chuckled. Her hand fell back to her side, slipping into her pocket. A tinge of pink crawling up her cheeks. "Yeah?" When he called her adorable. "I'm glad you think so." Shifting just a touch closer, gaze sliding down over to his tattoos again to study them at this closer proximity. Then finding his eyes again, "You're pretty handsome yourself." Brushing a few flyaway strands of hair back behind her ear

Itzhak's tattooed sleeve of pomegranates has a new addition: olive branches, with their slim silvery leaves, bearing both flowers and fruit like the pomegranates. They wend in harmony together around his arm. Silvers, blacks, vivid orange, delicate white, deep reds. Itzhak watches Izzy come closer, enjoying that. As driven as he can be, with her, he's all patience.

Mostly patience.

He shrugs. "Eh, it's my problem to deal with, yannow? I get stupid crushes on people kind of a lot. I'm usually disappointed." He really, really is disappointed...but he's with Isolde right now. "Anyway, good, we'll make a date with him. I haven't met Ellie either. We wanted to get to know each other's girls."

Oh yeah, he blushes too when she calls him handsome, but his little smile reappears. He shifts closer to her, too, eyes on her face, eyebrows interested. "Lotta people don't think I'm handsome, with the," he taps his large, crooked nose. "So...yeah. Thanks."

"Crushes aren't stupid." Isolde shrugged a little, her hand lifting from her pocket to trace over his newer tattoo curiously, nodding. "Then it's a date! And everyone will get to know each other." Isolde gave him another little grin as he taps his nose. "I like your nose." Leaning up to kiss the tip of his nose and then tilted her head so she could give him a proper kiss, gentle and brief. "So no need to thank me." Isolde murmured, settling back on her feet.

"You're great, Itzhak. I like you. And spending time with you." Speaking of. Weren't they supposed to be cooking something? That was the whole reason she came over right? Though, she didn't vocalize those thoughts when she took a quick glance around the kitchen. It was so hot. And the proximity to him was a little distracting.

Ostensibly that's the whole reason, and yet, Itzhak isn't in too much of a hurry to get to it. Especially when Izzy kisses him. He lets it stay gentle and brief...but it's an effort. "Glad you like it," he murmurs. "Glad you like me. I like you too. A whole lot."

He wants nothing more right now than to kiss her properly, kiss her breathless. They're both so close, not wearing much; the sense of her physicality is getting him quite distracted. Scolding himself internally for it, though. Don't fucking do that, Itzil, not until you get this shit worked out, you schmendrick.

So he girds his overeager loins. "Hey, so, lemme talk to you about a couple things, okay?"

Sure, he has to wait till this very second to do this.

Isolde can feel her heart rate increase a tick. Perhaps some kind of hopeful anticipation. She wants more of the way they kissed on the beach. More in general. She wants him to grab her and-Oh dear. Her cheeks flare scarlet for seemingly no reason at all. But then he's saying they need to talk. She draws a soft breath in and exhales out as if trying to get a handle on herself and her spiraling thoughts.

Talk. Talk about what? She's feeling the way Alexander felt earlier when she told him they needed to talk. "Okay." She takes a slight step back from him so she can clear her head and listen to what he has to say. "What's up?"

Relieved, and also tortured a little bit, when Isolde moves away, Itzhak folds his arms. It's unconscious; he's worried and prepared to be defensive. "You kinda already know this about me, because of Alexander, but I oughta say it with words and stuff. I can be interested in more'n one person at a time. A buddy a mine asked me if I'd be friends with benefits with her, and I wanna say yes, but I wanna run it by you first. 'Cause, honestly, you're important to me and I'm real interested in you.

"She don't wanna date or nothin'. So that, I wouldn't be doing with her. Just, uh. Benefits." Itzhak's now bright red, predictably, shifting his weight uncomfortably.

Those clear blue eyes studied him closely as he spoke, listening, rolling it over in her mind. Noting the way he was blushing and his semi-defensive posture. "Oh." She says finally. After a small silence. Maybe her brain was still working on processing everything. Clearing her throat a bit. "I mean, uhm." Wow. She didn't want to be awkward, but she found herself struggling for words. She stops and closes her eyes, taking another breath and he may even barely catch her mumbles of counting frogs as she organized. One frog...two frogs...three... Okay. Alright. She's totally got this.

Opening her eyes and looking up at Itzhak again. "If you want to. Then do it." Her brow furrowed. Oh great, that sounded bitchy probably. "I mean uhm." Oh fuck it.

Her thoughts to speech don't want to work so she justs decides to go thought to thought. She reaches her mind out to his, trying not to be too abrupt about it.

<<I like you Itzhak. And I want you to be happy. And if this will make you happy, then do it. If things get serious, I'd like to meet her. Otherwise, I don't want to know the details. Aside maybe her name, so I don't run into her by happenstance and look like an idiot. But, I mean, I was in a sex cult in college. Basically. So it's not like it's a foreign idea to me. And I know I'm a mess. And that one person very rarely can be all that another person needs.>> She pushes a hand through her hair, looking a touch sheepish and maybe apologetic at the intrusion into his headspace to talk to him. But she keeps the line open. Those strings of yarn twisting and turning, some sections seeming to be trying to unravel themselves, though it was a rather slow process.

Startled by the mind touch, Itzhak flinches, blinking--but he steadies out, lets Izzy tell him via the kythe. Then, wincing, feeling like an asshole, he says, "No, hey, no, you're not--"

Screw it. He breathes out, closing his eyes, sinking into the touch.

<<It's just the way I am, because I can't do anything right.>> A hot surge of self-loathing comes through. <<...Sex cult?>> That, he's surprised by. <<Okay, but that was in college. Doesn't everybody do weird sex stuff in college?>> He's only heard about going to college, so his opinion of what happens in colleges is a little skewed.

<<I like you. I like you a LOT. I wanna keep...doing what we're doing. If you want. Because this is your choice too. I'm just as much a mess.>> He shows her: the struggles he has with his temper and his trauma and his autism, the constant fight to manage all those things at once, and now there's the glimmer in him too, yet another huge and complicated thing he has to fight with. <<Hell, Izzy, I like you BECAUSE you're a mess.>> He sends that helplessly, needing her to know and also keenly aware that it's a dick thing to say. <<I can...be messy with you. Maybe you're a mess, but you're a gorgeous mess. Like...>>

An image shows up of a junkyard. Itzhak....thinks of her somewhat like a junkyard. But other people look at a junkyard and see a bunch of broken things. He looks at one and sees a vast 3-D puzzle, intriguing, alluring; something with hidden treasure, a treasure in itself. So a lot of stuff in a junkyard doesn't work. So what? It's still a grand adventure to him.

Isolde keeps her eyes closed. She's much more attune to base emotions, especially like this. And she can feel a well of tears threatening to spill over as he shares it all. Her jaw tightens, like she's trying to swallow it all back. There's an odd sort of laugh that escapes her at the image of the junkyard puzzle. It's short and could almost be mistaken for a sob because she's still trying to choke down all those emotions. Try to shelve them so she can talk.

<<Don't say that. Don't do that.>> She finally manages to think back, rubbing at her eyes. <<Just because you like that. It doesn't mean you're a screw up. As for the cult thing - I dunno. Maybe. I wasn't actually a student. Alexander was. That's where I met him.>> She pauses, realizing that might have a lot of connotation to it. Not that she didn't hook up with Alexander in their his college years but - <<It was supposed to be a magic cult. Thing. ANYWAY. Not the point.>>

She opens her eyes and closes that distance between them again, laying her hand on his chest. <<You have such a big heart Itzhak. It would be so entirely selfish of me to try and keep it all to myself. I want to keep doing what we're doing. Because...it's special. You're special.>> He shared with her so she lets him in a little more too. Years of struggling with feeling like she was going insane, addictions, hazy memories, homelessnees. Trying to accept and remember that she wasn't alone anymore. That she didn't have to do it all alone.

<<Maybe we're both messes. Puzzles that need put back together. But. I want to be messy together.>>

The emotions Isolde's struggling to swallow hit Itzhak under the sternum, and now he's fighting welling tears too. Ugh. He's making everything worse (his thoughts say). A drop escapes from his black eyelashes when she sets her hand on his chest.

Within the kythe, he reacts with anger to the things Izzy went through, a flush of protective urges. She shouldn't have had to live like that. That she had was a failure of the world--somehow, almost of him, although that's irrational as anything. Like he could have known?

He wants to stand between her and the failures and hurts of the world. Nobody will ever again walk past her on a street while she needs help. Not if he's got anything to say about it. He'll fight anybody who tries to do otherwise. (Sensation of his knuckles splitting on teeth.)

Plucking Isolde's hand from his chest, Itzhak nuzzles into her palm. Another drop hits her skin. <<You're special. Anybody who don't know that is an idiot.>>

Isolde tries to soothe the anger he's feeling. Trying to keep calm in the midsts of the swirl of emotions twisting and churing through them both. Shit happened. And it was horrible, but it was something she'd just come to accept. Do what you have to do, to survive. There's a wince when she feels that sensation of knuckles splitting. A shudder running through her body and her head falls forward so her forehead and rest on his shoulder.

Things were okay now. That's what mattered. The past couldn't be fixed but the present could be. She feels that tear hit her skin and a few of her own tears are escaping. <<I've never met anyone like you before.>> The thought is faint, she's starting to pull away from him. Not because she wants to, but simply because it's so draining for her right now. Even though her glimmer glows just a brightly as Itzhak and Alexander, she's nowhere near as powerful as either of them. Her free arm wraps around him though, hugging him tightly and shifting to bury her face against his neck.

"I'm sorry." It's muffled against his skin. She feels bad for making him upset, because she's felt how deep his sadness runs. How hot his emotions can run in general and she doesn't like the idea of him feeling even more sad, or angry, or anything else negative. The fingers of her other hand run against his scruff as he nuzzles against it.

Itzhak's not skilled with the mental aspect of things; too much, too fast floods in from and to him, even though it's upsetting them both. He's grateful when Isolde pulls back. The harmonics of the kythe were strong, overwhelming.

He wraps her up in long arms. Now he's only there physically, warm and strong and male, the mental link dissolved. Rocking her back and forth a little, he murmurs, "Hey, hey, sshhh-shh-shh. Shhh, it's okay." Delicately he kisses her forehead. "I'm sorry I upset you. I didn't mean to." He rubs her back, trying to soothe her.

Isolde relaxes into him as he wraps her up in that hug. Clinging to him as she gets herself back under control. "Don't be sorry." She shakes her head a little. Drawing in a few more breaths. "You didn't...it was just...a lot." So many emotions, so strongly felt. She lifts her head to look up at him, pulling a smile. She looks a little fatigued from their exchange, but with her being able to so easily flip from one emotion to the next, she seems on her way to being back in good spirits. "The point. Is. I want to be with you. However that means. Whatever we have." She cups his face with her hands, looking up into his eyes. "You can be with other people too. It won't make me mad. Or change anything." Her tone somewhat reassuring, though it contrasted with the few tears still lingering in her eyes. But she seemed to mean it, regardless.

"God, you're amazing, you know that?" Itzhak says, on a heartfelt and awestruck sigh. He cups his hands around hers, his green-gray-brown hazel eyes meeting her gaze. Just for a minute, he can't do it long, but this is important, so he does. "I hate hurting you. I'd hurt you worse if I didn't tell you. Learned that a long time ago. The way I am...it's just nothin' but problems." His mouth twists, but he leans in to kiss her cheek. "You don't deserve to get hurt, Izzy. This goes for you too, you know? All of this."

"Honestly is important. The most important." Isolde agreed. "Always tell me. Even if you think. I'll get. Mad." She accepts the kiss on his cheek with a pleased little noise. "Neither do you Itzhak." Giving him another little smile. Happy to hear his words. "I know now." Those blue eyes lingering on him for a long moment. She adored him and it was written all over her face. Even with the discussion and the intensity of their little mental link up. "I'm going to kiss you again." She says then, as if he needs a warning for it. But he doesn't really get a chance to respond before he would find her lips on his again, holding him in the kiss this time.

Itzhak tries to say something but it only comes out as 'mmph!' as Isolde kisses him. He cups the back of her head in one big, warm hand, and kisses her somewhat less gently than earlier, somewhat longer.

"Izeleh," he murmurs, against her lips. His breathing has picked up, his eyes drifted closed. "Won't ever lie to you. Promise. Always be honest with you. ...So that in mind, I gotta warn you, I'm in danger of not holdin' back."

Another pleased little sound escapes into the kiss as her arms wrap loosely around his neck. Pressing her body closer to his as her heartbeat picks up a touch. There's a giggle against his lips at his words. "Then don't hold back." Is murmured in returne as she presses him into another kiss, heated and wanting, backing him up into the counter in the process. Isolde has been thinking about this moment for a while now and while she didn't want to seem overly eager, she couldn't deny that she wanted it. Wanted him.

Sorry Stephanie and children. Hope the basement is sound proofed!