2020-10-14 - Something More

Astrid Miller-Eriksen is seated on the floor of the living room of the quiet 9 Oak Avenue. She is wearing shorts to show off her long, tawny legs and a off-the-shoulder sweater that welcomes in the fall. She has her tongue sticking out as she focuses on threading the thick needle with the thick, waxed thread. She's got a sprawl of leather spread out before her that will eventually become her next SCA costume. The little bluetooth speaker plays some familiar Scandinavian music as if Astrid is trying to get her head into this family tradition.

"Yes!" Marius roars cheerfully as he comes down the stairs to the beat of the music. "Yes! It's that time!" His own costume from the last year is slung over one shoulder, and his sewing kit in his hand. Moderating his tone, he gallumphs down the last two steps and into the living room, dumping his gambeson down and tossing down the sewing kit on it, "So," a broad grin paints across his features as he looks down at the curl of her long limbs, "I was thinking a fur bikini and a miniskirt this year. Is that what you're working on, Ast?"

"For you? I think that, that'll be a pretty bold statement," Astrid says without looking up from her tedious work. The handmade look is the best look, but she's always threatened to just get a heavy-duty sewing machine. "You know that those things are not culturally accurate." Now she looks up at him, and there's a little dance of amusement at the corner of her smile. "Half the fun is undoing the laces, anyway." Her gaze drops meaningfully down his frame until she looks back to her work as she starts to stitch together two pieces of light, softened leather that will become the bodice of patchwork leather. "I'm trying to not just wear the same thing I've worn the last two meets."

"No, no. That's way too much for me." Sinking down cross-legged in front of her, he brings his hands down below his belt to frame his crotch, "I'm thinking spiked banana hammock." Scoffing and grinning alike, he gathers the clothing into his lap so that he can start to run his hands over it, studying the seams for wear and tear, "And I care about cultural accuracy for Scanfest, not so much for the SCA." There's a pause, and then he adds, "But yes. a good part of the fun -- totally not half, but a good part -- is getting the laces open, or finding a way around them. I mean, not that I need it now, with you in that sweater and shorts. But if I do that, we're never getting our matching furkinis and miniskirts ready in time."

"You'll get kicked out of the mead tent." Astrid laughs through those words, distracted temporarily from her stitching. "You think I can't resist you, Sigurd?" The shield maiden -- at least pretend -- squints over at him across the short distance of their workspace. She looks up at him now with those rich, brown-green eyes. "You realize when we graduate this year, we're going to need to find jobs and all that, and that means we will probably miss Scanfest." Growing up is total bullshit. Astrid bounces her knees a bit while she continues her tireless work of stitching together the pieces of leather that have already been cut and tooled with familiar designs.

"I think you don't want to," states Marius with a grin. "I mean, not usually. But I also think there'd be a riot from the women if they tried to throw me and my spiked banana hammock out of the mead tent." Look, never let it be said that Marius Anderssen does not have a healthy ego. But then she brings the conversation down, and he sighs heavily, frowning down at his work and starting to pick apart some stitching with a little pair of scissors from the kit. "Yeah. It's right in the middle of the best building season too." Because Marius has also apparently decided that he's more likely to get work as a construction worker than an architect. "Hard to get time off a jobsite in the middle of summer. And the cool government job that you'll get making sure that we all don't break the ecology laws... you don't think you can get a long weekend off for ScanFest?"

Astrid looks up at Marius with an arch of her brow, and the corner of her smile lifts a bit higher. "Do not wear a spiked banana hammock." She points her needle at him. When she goes back to stitching, she does so without looking up. "Maybe," she says quietly. Her frown settles deeper. "I... was thinking about what this next year is going to mean for us, you know... like do we stay here? I'm not sure that there's going to be a need for an ecologist here in Gray Harbor." She stretches her legs a bit, widening her hips in her cross-legged seat. "I mean, guess I could."

"Yeah, that would be a lot harder than laces, wouldn't it?" But there's serious words to be had, and Marius settles back onto his rump a little, his scissors stilling. His eyes narrow in a grimace, "I mean, there are probably more jobs up in Seattle or Olympia, right?" Ducking his head, he pats the blades of the scissors against the heavy cloth of his gambeson, "I guess I've kinda been ignoring that you might have to move to find a job. I like having you out here." His brows lift, "I... I could probably find a job out there at least as easily." Which goes beyond the terms of their 'friends with benefits' that has been their agreement this long.

"A lot harder." Astrid's response is a vague addition because she's too busy worrying about this other topic. Her lips press together, she too stopping her work on the leather to instead focus on Marius. "Ree, look... you shouldn't go chasing me to Olympia or Seattle, or wherever else I end up. That's dumb. I know we've always kind of played around with the four of us always being together, but I don't even know what Ash is up to as she finishes up her own semester." She intakes a breath, drawing her shoulders back a bit. "So, let's just keep going through the fall, and summer, and then we can talk about this all again in the spring, right?"

"I mean, it's not chasing you..." it's totally chasing her. Marius looks down at his heavy hands, cradling the little sewing kit within them. "You're in a real buzzkill kinda mood, aren't you, Ast?" He rolls broad shoulders, "I mean, there isn't a whole lot to keep me here, anyhow." Besides his whole family and all the friends he ever made outside of ScanFest and the SCA, "And construction skills travel." He heaves in a breath and lets it out in a sigh, looking over to the little Bluetooth speaker now, "I guess I just like having a plan, unlike Sigurd de Okse." Finally, his eyes return to Astrid's features, and he offers up a smile that's only a little goofy, "But I can chill with the plan-wanting."

Being called a buzzkill has Astrid's mouth tightening into a little, but serious frown. "I'm not," she protests, but there's not much heat to it. She knows that she's had a certain level of gloom building up over the last few weeks, since the term started back up. "I just don't know what's going to happen either, and I'm kind of freaking out, too... and I guess didn't want us to start freaking out before there's actually something to freak out... about." Then her shoulders lift and fall with a kind of weariness before she's back to stitching away at her leather pieces with that thick needle.

"But you're already freaking out, right?" Marius reaches out to give her knee a nudge, and then starts pulling and shifting at the gambeson in his lap to find how he wants to make the change, "So take me and Ash and Jens outta it, right? What's it that you want to do, Ast?" Tilting his head to one side, he studies her, "I mean... are we talking working for the government? Some company somewhere? Workin' on your own to avenge all the ecological wrongs in the world? Or at least the State?"

"I'm freaking out." Astrid doesn't look up again while she continues to work, pulling the thread hard through the preprepared holes. When Marius suggests that she take Ash, Jens, and himself out of the equation, her eyes widen a bit as she looks up at him. "What?" She blinks, obviously confused by this whole premise. "Oh, I... don't know. I guess I wanted to do the last bit... you know, hold companies and governments accountable for ecological laws and policies. So, like... I didn't think I couldn't do that with you guys." Now she's worrying herself. She had just said that she wasn't sure where she was going, and that Marius shouldn't chase her, but at the same time... without Jens, Ash, and Marius? What is that.

"Simplify the equation." Sometimes it's easy to forget that Marius really likes math. "Take out all the fancy stuff, the shiny stuff that makes the problem fun, and you get right down to what matters, right?" Settling two layers of the cloth together and threading a needle after a couple of attempts, he starts to sew, "So you want to be a roving ecological avenger." There's a little amusement there, for all that the line of questioning is serious, "Make money off bounties for fines and stuff? So you'd want to be out moving from place to place."

Simplify the equation. Astrid frowns, rocking back on her tailbones. "Alright." The brunette drops into a thoughtful, serious silence while she looks down at the tooled leather in her hands. "So, if everything was simple, and all that, I would... yeah. I would go to where the problems are and put my whole heart into that." She looks up at him with a slight heaviness in her furrowed brow. "But it would be really lonely without... without you." Then hastily she adds. "And Ash, and Jens."

Marius nods slowly at the response, although the last bit draws a little smile to his lips, "And Ash and Jens, of course." He focuse halfway on his sewing, glancing up to her from time to time, "Yeah. I mean, I've got at least as much wanderlust as anyone with way too many Vikings in his family tree, but I don't think I really want to spend my whole life going from place to place." He pauses with his needle stuck through the two layers of cloth, studying her carefully, "I think I would always want somewhere to come home to." A few moments later, he adds, "So add a few more complications back in. Family? The moms."

"The Moms are fine with me being anywhere," Astrid points out. "Besides, they're living their best life without their kid hanging around. They're headed to Portland for the weekend." She presses her lips together. "So, what's the next complication?" She's forgotten her own sewing entirely.

"Okay, so they're living their best life, and if you're traveling around, you can visit them whenever you want." Marius is working the problem, even as he starts sewing up the gambeson again. "So the next complication? Where are you gonna keep your giant mastiff? I mean, I know you've been yearning for a giant dog." He knows no such thing. Shaking his head, he looks up at her again, thick, still-dexterous fingers stilling at the needle and thread, "I know you don't want to worry about this, Ast. I just don't want you to feel like you've gotta freak out."

Astrid angles an amused look at him that is quick, but genuine. Then she is looking down at her won work. "You're the giant mastiff in this question, aren't you?" Her breath huffs out short and quick, puffing out her cheeks as she does. She looks down at her sewing, up at Marius, and then down again. "Have you..." She hesitates, knotting her brows together. "Have you thought about us stopping what we're doing? You know, this whole... just being friends with benefits thing?" She should probably clarify that she means to talk about being more than that, but she's got a lot to learn still about these kind of conversations.

"I mean..." he blushes a little, "I actually didn't mean that." Marius shakes his head a little, "Come on, I'm not that clever, Ast. I was actually trying to make a joke about a big -- " And then she drops her big bomb, and he blinks, shifting in his seat, "I mean. If that's what you want." The disappointment is palpable in his voice and the slump of his shoulders. "The big cut-off before the end of the term?" Grimacing down at his work, he looks up from under his brows, "Figured we'd be able to stick through the summer at least, Ast. I think it's a bitta bullshit, but if that's what you want."

Astrid's brows tighten together with confusion, and she's shaking her head slight. "What?" Her lips press together with a frown, only to then realize what he's on about. Her eyes widen slightly. "No, Ree... I meant, like... being more than the whole F.W.B. thing." She continues trading glances with the leather and the big mastiff puppy across from her. "I thought, maybe... we could give it a try, unless you don't want to and then that's cool, too, because we can totally just stay the way we are now until summer and figure out all the complications later. Totally up to you." There should be more pauses in there, but there isn't.

Marius's eyes widen as she questions his reaction, and he lets out a breath, sinking back onto his butt a little more readily. "Damn, Ast... don't scare me like that." Shaking his head, he lets out a breath, "No. No, that's not what I want. I was afraid that's what you wanted." Licking his lips, he swallows once, "So why more now? I mean, not that we haven't sort of basically been doing that anyhow. You were just talking about how I shouldn't chase after you, and now you're talking about being something more." His own words are slow, careful, where hers come in a rush, and he pauses even longer before he adds, "And it's not up to me. It's up to us."

"Sorry! Sorry..." Astrid forgets her sewing, leather and heavy needle with waxed thread being shuffled aside so she can knee-walk up to him. Now she sits closer to him, not that she needed to really scoot all that far. "Sorry." She takes in a breath that lifts her shoulders, and then settles them back down. "I don't know." She glances up at him. "And dating is a lot different than what we've been doing now. I mean, it would be... so, don't go thinking that I'm just changing the label around." She fiddles with his shin, tugging lightly at his leg hair with her knuckles. Then she looks up at him.

She scoots forward, and Marius sets aside his own work, reaching his big, rawboned hands to her hips to try and draw her into his cross-legged lap. "So how do you think it'd be different, Ast?" Whether or not she climbs into his lap, his hands gather at the back of her hips, "Are we talkin' because of how we'd go out to places together and have food and drinks and do things? Like we already do. Or because you'd come into my room or I'd come into your room most of the nights? Like we already do. Or because I'd have to hold your purse when we're out shopping?" Like he doesn't do -- on the rare occasion she carries a purse.

Astrid is in his lap with her long legs draped around his hips, heels pressed lightly against the floor. She stares at him almost reproachfully at his list, frowning and turning her chin slightly away from him. "I don't have a purse." Then she glares at him with those dark brown-green eyes. "Haven't you wanted me to push us out of just the fuck buddies category and into something more serious? Why are you giving me such a hard time, Marius? Have you lost interest, happy enough with the way things are? Because I can take it all back, and we can pretend this whole conversation.--" What conversation? "--didn't happen."

"You've got one. You and Ash bought 'em... what... last year?" Marius looks more sure of himself now, more secure, even as she glares at him and offers to take everything back, "I wanted it," he confirms. "I still want it," this time it's intended as reassurance. "I'm just curious what changed for you?" His hands slowly rise up her back, but the broad paws are only a gently weight, no real pressure, "Especially since you were already getting what you wanted outta me." His brows waggle sharply, and then his grin spreads. "Yes, I like the idea of bein' more than friends with benefits."

"Because when," Astrid huffs those words, but then repeats them without the grumbling, "Because when I thought about leaving this place, I knew I wanted to take Ash with me, but then I knew I wanted to take you, too." The brunette looks at him that short distance. "So, maybe I haven't been getting everything that I want out of you. What do you think about that, huh, Ree?"

Marius draws one hand back down her spine, the other settling up at the nape of her neck. "Good. 'Cause I don't really want you running off without me either." The hand at her back slips down to caress the skin beneath the back of her shorts, "I think you took your sweet ass time with it, Ast." His eyes flutter nearly closed for a moment, and an invisible touch spreads up her back again, between his two hands caressing soft skin. "I'm curious what else you want to be getting from me though. Thought I was doing pretty well."

"Good. Glad we're on the same page." Astrid's lashes flutter slightly at the pressure of his touch, first at the back of her neck, then dipped along her skin at the waist of her shorts; the third touch sends a little shiver through her. Then she lifts her gaze to meet his, and her lips part with a slow, soft exhale. "You are, were... are." Then the brunette lifts her eyes back up to his again. "You are." It is a more reassuring murmur.

Marius's hand slips further down even as the invisible touch fades away, the big man shifting his weight so that his heavy fingers can cup her backside. "When you make up your mind, lemme know." Drawing her across his lap, where she can feel him rise beneath her thighs, he clasps his fingers at the back of her neck so that he can kiss her rather thoroughly, his lips roving over hers. Finally, he draws back from the kiss, "You can tell me what else you want some time later, Ast."