2019-10-07 - How Awkward?

Look, it's been a while since their awkward texts, but Marius isn't feeling like crap anymore. He even went back to work over the weekend, and to class today. But those texts are still burning on his phone, and so after checking at her room, Marius comes clumping downstairs looking for Astrid, catching his hands on the wall above the stairs and leaning into the kitchen then the living room, "Ast? You in?"

He finds her in the living room. Astrid is spread out across the coffee table with books and her computer and various handwritten notes. "Here," she calls without looking up. She's finishing up some quick highlighting from some photocopied pages from one of her textbooks, and only looks up when he steps into the living room. She looks up at him with an easy smile. "Hey. How was class?"

And this is where Marius proves that he's more than a proto-Viking meathead, because he smiles in response to the question and puts in, "Loved it. Professor Karris is gonna be great." He clumps the last couple of steps down the staircase, letting his hands drop down to his sides. He hesitates a moment there, then comes around the stairs to hover on the other side of the coffee table, "You? Looks like you're digging straight into it." His be-socked feet shuffle a little, and he glances this way and that, ensuring that no one's going to come walking in from the bathroom or the kitchen, "I... yeah, sorry. I meant to get back to you about the texts. While we were watching the movie? Just..." got busy, avoided it, procrastinated...

"Good," Astrid offers with a quick smile before she's back to taking some notes. "Professor Karris... what do they teach?" The question is offered up conversationally, but then the conversation is shifting well outside of academia, and so Astrid looks up with an owlish blink toward Marius. "Texts?" He clarifies, and she opens her expression slightly. "Oh. Those." She offers him a slightly sheepish smile. "Um, yeah... I didn't think they needed a follow-up, but... well." She sets down her pencil and closes the lid of her laptop. "What did you want to talk about?"

"She," Marius grins a moment, "teaches CAD Design." He reaches up to run his hand back through his hair, the long strip down the center of his scalp twining blonde strands around his fingers before he shakes them out. "Um." He glances around, and then settles down into one of the chairs that mostly-faces the couch, "I just wanted to check in, I guess?" He keeps his voice low, glancing up at the stairs again, then focusing on her familiar features, "About how fast I went all 'No, not everyone's paired off.'" His shoulders rise and fall a little crookedly, "It felt weird, and I know you said it didn't feel weird to you, I just wanted to let you know that I'm not like, searching out there."

Astrid smiles lightly at the grin that corrects her on who this professor type is. "CAD, huh?" She has no idea exactly what that is, but she moves on from the question easily enough. She instead takes a breath as she watches him cross into the chair and settle in. Her smile lifts slightly as she settles her arms lightly on her folded legs. "Ree -- I think that it's pretty obvious to most everyone that we're paired off even if we're not, like paired up. Does that makes sense? Like -- we're exclusive. We already decided that, right? And part of that means that you're going to let me know and I'm going to let you know if something changes that."

"Yeah," his grin is crooked, boyish, and bashful, but he doesn't blush. "Pretty sure we've been pegged pretty easily by the people here in the house." Marius leans forward himself, resting his forearms on his thighs and shrugging a little helplessly, "And yeah. I'd totally tell you if that was going to change, or had changed, or anything. I guess I just didn't want you think that I was looking for it to change." His nose wrinkles up as he grimaces, and then he shrugs again, chuckling, "I don't know why I'm being weird about this, and I know I'm being weird about it." His brows lift a little as he studies her closely, "You think it's obvious to everyone? Not just Ash and Jens and Roo?"

"Yeah." Astrid's own smile takes on an easy edge before she draws up her knees, curling her arms around her spotted PJ pants. "I know you're not looking. I would have probably ducked out if you were. I really don't want to get the Dear John letter after an amazing first date or something. I know I don't have time to commit to anyone, so I figured you were the same." The committed non-committed, these two. She takes in a breath, and then adds a smile to it. "I don't know why you're being weird about it either." Then the studied question has her hesitating a moment before she offers, thoughtfully, "Maybe. I don't really know." Beat. "Does it matter?"

Marius's grin spreads at the suggestion of a Dear John letter, "It'd make sharing a bathroom totally awkward." The mention of not having time draws his brows up thoughtfully, but he nods slowly, then blinks and shakes his head, "No, I mean, I don't think it does. Matter, that is." His fingers lace together, loosen, then twist up again, and he looks down at them, then back up at her, "If it's obvious to everyone, then I guess I don't see any reason to worry about hiding it. Like, we were sort of trying to do that before, right?" A grin flashes back onto his lips for a moment, "I mean, Ash is cute and all, but I'd much rather be flirting hard with you than her, Ast."

"I think Ash likes that you flirt with her, and it doesn't honestly bother me." Astrid flashes him a quick grin. "As long as it doesn't bother you that it doesn't bother me." Oh, the complexities. Then she's rubbing slightly at her legs, head tilting thoughtfully. "You can flirt with both of us. That'll send Jens into a frenzy." Her smile lifts higher at the corners for a moment before she settles into an easier grin. Then she reaches for her highlighter so she has something to fiddle with. "So, we don't have to hide it anymore. Would that be okay with you?"

"Don't get me wrong, I like flirting with her. She's good at it." Marius has to consider the complexities of her second statement, his brows drawing together for a moment, "I don't know why it would bother me? That it doesn't bother you? I mean, you know I'm not trying to get anywhere." Shaking that off, he smiles again, glancing toward the kitchen again as if he suspects someone might be coming in from there -- even though there's no suggestion of that at all. Looking back to her, he chuckles, "I just kind of... didn't want to draw attention to," he gestures between them, "in case people could see the sparks. When there are sparks. So I might have overcompensated a little." The question, however, causes him to chuckle, "No, no. I'm good with that, Ast. You're fun to flirt with, I like it. Besides, it'd be nice to be able to dance with you at a party without worrying about whether we were doing it too much and people might think we were something more..." He tosses his hands up just a little in front of him, chuckling, "I don't know. The easy things got hard. Overthought them."

"I like flirting with her, too." Astrid's smile turns mischievous now. She's teasing him -- though perhaps not 100%. Ash and Astrid might be lifemates, with or without boyfriends or girlfriends. What she does now is to haul herself up to her feet, crossing the short distance to Marius as he fights through the logic of their confusing relationship. She sinks down across his lap, curling an arm around his shoulders. "Marius, you're my friend -- not my best, because that will always be Ash, but a real close second. And I really have tons of fun with you. I'm okay having fun with you were others can see it, too. We can be complicated. I don't even care if we tell people we're friends and fucking. So... stop overthinking it. Let's just be who we are and be cool with it, right?"

Marius laughs at her teasing, and it breaks some of his tension, “I think Ash likes it that you flirt with her, and it doesn’t bother me,” He fires back, teasing her with a return volley of her own words. As Astrid plops down on his lap, he wraps an arm around her back, “Stop overthinking it? That sounds complicated.” He chuckles easily at that, shaking his head, “Be who we are and be cool with it. That sounds really smart, Ast.” A gentle, teasing light flickers in his pale eyes, “When did you get so smart?” There’s a moment’s pause, and then he asks, “So what are you working on? I mean, it’s gotta be something horrible or awesome to spread all over the living room.”

"Oh, since always." The boasting is easy, warm, and includes a bit of a head tilt. "But seriously, let's just let it happen the way it happens and if we want to rewrite those rules, we can." Her own arm hooks around his shoulders, and she settles in comfortably. Her dark eyes flick toward her work, and then she answers easily, "Organic chemistry with an emphasis on introduction to manmade bio-shaping. Professor Lipschwein has us analyzing various soil samples from greenspaces all over Gray Harbor."

"Professor Piglips?" And even though that's a horrible mistranslation, that is how poor Lipschwein will always be in Marius's mind. He leans back a little in the chair, drawing Astrid with him, and his brows lift up, "Huh. So looking at how we change the environment even when we're trying to keep it green and pretty?" The fingers of his free hand tap lightly at her knee, a thoughtful frown building over his head, "We should totally work together on one of these projects. I've been working on some house designs that incorporate a green roof. There's probably some totally cool things that having a house under a man-made green space does to the plants in it."

Astrid punches Marius's shoulder. "Don't call him that." Then she leans back with him, curling her legs just so it's easier to relax together, her feet pressed up against the arm of the chair. "There's a lot of actual ecological disruption that happens when you create artificial green spaces. It's why, even in the Pacific Northwest with their crazy green space laws, you're still having major impacts on the ecology because you're still interrupting the interactions between the different systems." It is then that Astrid realizes she's rambling, so she bites her lip with a sheepish smile. "That sounds like fun -- working on something together."

Marius 'ouches' dramatically, taking his hand off her knee to work his arm out. He listens silently to her rambling, a little grin building at one corner of his lips just before she bites off the words, "Yuuuuup, you were rambling. But I don't mind." The quick agreement draws up his brows, "I mean, I don't know if it'd work, since all of my stuff is like, theoretical, and you're doing real studies." Now it's his turn to be a little bashful, "I was just thinking about what you were talking about, and how I'm designing houses with grass roofs, built into the landscape, and thought about how that might work with the greenspaces you're talking about." He shrugs a little bit, even as the weight of the young woman settles against him and warms him, "I'd love to show you some of the pictures or CAD designs..." he pauses, "I mean, when you're not working on homework." And then he blinks and laughs softly, "That wasn't a come-on. Promise."

"Hey -- an architect and ecologist working on something together might be a very interesting idea." Astrid tilts her head back with a wide and content smile, and when he turns bashful, she brightens even more. "You're listening to what I say and trying to do something with that, Ree. I love that about you." She presses her lips to his cheek in a warm, gentle kiss. "You should show me." She flashes a grin toward her homework. "When I'm not working on my homework." Laughter follows suit. "It can be a come-on. We can go mess around and then you can show me your CAD designs while we laze around naked."

"Even trainee ones," Marius laughs easily, looking over to soak in the content smile. "Yeah, 'cause I'm not a douche," he defends his listening skills with another laugh, his own smile brightening at the kiss on his cheek. At her offer, he shifts beneath her, then shakes his head in amusement, "Stupid homework. Well, at least you've got a reason to finish your homework now." Despite that, he doesn't seem too hurried to get her out of his lap. "I'm pretty sure that's the dream, by the way. To poke around at CAD designs with a naked hottie of your preferred gender. I mean, unless you're going for two, but I still think that's just greedy." That despite his claim so many weeks ago about the dream that he had. "So you've been going around town collecting samples, Ast? What's the gnarliest place you had to go for a sample?"

Astrid rolls her eyes a bit, smirking as she does. "Yeah, alright... trainees." Then she's hooking her arm against his shoulder, resting her head in her hand. "I'll go back to work here in a few minutes." Her laughter returns and she nods slightly. "Yeah, I thought you'd get behind that." Her eyes dance with mischief. Then she clears her throat and speaks more honestly with a nod, "Yeah. I'm always going around taking samples." Then she thinks about it. "I don't know. Gray Pond keeps giving me the willies despite the fact that it's totally normal."

"Behind it, on top of it, underneath it, I'm flexible." Marius's pale eyes twinkle with mischief as he grins, only a hint of pink at his cheeks. "I'm not hurrying you along." His hand drops back down to her knee, squeezing lightly, "Don't tell the other guys, but I kind of like the snuggling part of the benefits as much as the sexy part." He considers her answer, nodding as he does, "Yeah. Huh. I used to practice down there. I don't even know when I stopped." Brightening a little, he gives Astrid's shoulder a nudge, "Ash wants some self defense lessons. I'm mostly trained in like wrestling and stuff, I figured you could probably help as much as I could, if not more?"