2021-04-06 - Blue Is a Good Colour for a Vagabond

To say that summer has come to Gray Harbor would be a dramatic exaggeration; it is but April and while spring is here, spring still tends to wear a wind breaker and wellies a lot. Today is one of those clear days where it does not need either, though -- and the boat people are out. This means yacht and boat owners on the marina, preparing their vessels in various ways for the season to come. The larger yachts have spent the winter in the water; smaller boats are dry docked lest the winter storms smash them against the piers.

Ravn Abildgaard's Vagabond is in the latter category. A Scandinavian sail boat from the 1970s -- a King's Cruiser 33 out of Finland, to be precise -- she is just seaworthy enough to cross the Atlantic on if you don't mind roughing it, but small enough that she has no heating system. She can room six people -- if those six are very good friends. Three if they want to sleep comfortably. Two in reality, because Kitty Pryde owns this boat, and Kitty Pryde is not about to give up her bunk.

The Dane turns up next to his dry docked boat with a couple of tins of cobalt blue paint and an assortment of paintbrushes, accompanied by a small black cat who obviously intends to watch him work while imperiously watching from the boat's prow. He's put on his oldest jeans and a black shirt with no print that also looks like it may have been washed enough times to have become a kind of sad, dark grey -- and quite likely, he intends to toss both when he is done working, rather than try to prevent splashes and drips of paint from happening.

Arriving not long after Ravn, Perdita is dressed to work. Or... dressed how a rich girl who isn't used to actually working thinks one would be dressed to work, at least. It's not like she owns a lot of old clothes after all. A pair of denim shorts that have been cut short enough to show off a good expanse of thigh but long enough to still maintain SOME degree of modesty, a white camisole with lace trim above her modest bust, and a pale blue men's dress shirt, oversized and tied around her slim waist in a way that emphasizes it and also offers a degree of protection from any paint splatters that might occur, with sneakers being the only actually beat up looking item she owns. Her long hair is up in a high ponytail, swinging as she walks.

She's here to help... but she's also here because there are plenty of boat owning men, and that frequently means money, and, well... Dita always has at least three different reasons to do what she does.

"I'm here... put me to work." she looks over the boat, head tilting slightly, thoughtfully examining the vessel she's going to spend the next several hours helping make pretty once more.

The Vagabond honestly does not quite make the cut as far as 'luxury yacht worth considering for a summer of easy living as somebody's arm candy' is concerned. She's seaworthy, and probably not entirely inexpensive, but she definitely does not have room for neither deck chairs nor a minibar. She's the kind of boat a well-to-do middle class accountant might own in order to go sailing on the weekends -- or if he's very enthusiastic, even pack up his family and head for a longer trek down the coast. She presumably got here from Europe in exactly that way at some point -- but a millionaire's luxury status symbol she is not. There are a few of those around the Gray Harbor marina -- but they do not lie at berth here. Some of them probably berth at the floating casino, to save on walking.

"Hello," Ravn greets his self-appointed assistant with a smile. "What we need to do is basically -- wash the hull down, and then give it a fresh coat of paint."

He shoots a second glance at Perdita and her elegant little work outfit and then grins, one grifter to another. "And if you want to do the hosing while strategically splashing yourself in a playful fashion when some rich looking bloke walks past, be my guest."

There's a genuine laugh from the young woman as she moves to step, ever so carefully, to pick her way over to the boat. "I have no idea what you mean, Mister Abildgaard." The pronunciation is almost perfect, almost like a native might say it. Either she's been practicing, or she's been listening carefully to how HE said it. Either way, a good skill for a grifter to have. "I'm simply here to help a friend wash and paint his boat and enjoy the warm sunshine and fog free day... and be observed by a very proud and excellent manager, of course." She gestures to Kitty, amused.

"Might be a little early in the season to see a lot of rich tourists yet -- but with the casino out there, let's never say never." Ravn grins back. "I worked at the Two if By Sea last fall -- this place does get a surprising amount of rich people coming down from Seattle and up from Olympia. I guess they wouldn't have put the casino here otherwise. Me, though? Can't stand that crowd but I'll wingman you if you need, just for old times' sake."

You can take the grifter out of Europe, but apparently, you cannot make him stop being a grifter.

Ravn holds up a couple of good solid brushes the sort you use to scrub down a wall or boat hull, stripping off any old paint that's flaked as well as any barnacles that somehow survived the winter. "Let's do this. I'll do the actual scrubbing, you hold the hose and keep an eye out for marks. If you manage to convince some millionaire boy to paint my boat for me, I'll buy you dinner."

"I'll keep that in mind. Can't say the idea of knocking over a casino full of rich idiots isn't tempting, but... I'm trying to be a reformed, proper young lady now." Perdita smiles in a way that says she intends no such thing, merely that she's biding her time. Definitely can't take the grift out of the grifter.

Another laugh, "It's been a minute since a man has asked me to hold his hose." she does move to do so, despite the innuendo, lifting the hose and giving it a few test sprays in a safe direction, so neither Kitty nor Ravn get spritz'd.

The green-eyed look Perdita gets from up there on the boat's prow clearly says, Get water on my luxurious black fur and I will turn you into tiny ribbon-sized pieces of grifter. The little black cat sits with the airs of an empress, watching her minions prepare her summer home. Some cats have an evil expression; some have cute and floofy natures -- and this one, it seems, fancies herself the Queen of Gray Harbor.

Ravn's smile remains lopsided as he hands the hose over. "I suppose I could always tell you it's not the size but the sound it makes when it hits the floor," he observes with a casual air, "but do try to not drop it -- we're only in April, and we'll surely catch all the colds if we get ourselves soaked. Much as a wet t-shirt contest is a way to garner the attention of potential wealthy and oh so lonely gentlemen, we might want to hold off on that one for a few weeks yet."

"Well, someone sounds cocky." A quirk of her brow, but Perdita makes no move to drench anyone, especially herself. With as little clothing as she currently has on, it wouldn't go well for her. "A lady need not advertise in such a manner to attract a gentleman caller... but if you want, I could spritz you a little and you could pose, your muscles gleaming in the afternoon sun as you wring out your shirt while some sugar daddy walks by." She begins spraying down a section of the boat where neither Kitty nor Ravn are.

"So... why a house boat, anyway? Aside from the obvious 'sneak away in the middle of the night while the Feds are looking for you' appeal."

"Well, I grew up in an archipelago," Ravn says, and rolls up his sleeves to start scrubbing at a patch of flaking paint. "There's nowhere in my native country you can go where you are more than an hour away from water -- it's simply not physically possible. In most places? Less than half an hour. If there's not the actual coast, then at the very least there's a fjord, and the entire Jutland peninsula is cut through by rivers, too. So when I came into town and needed somewhere to sleep that wasn't Aidan Kinney's couch -- renting a boat seemed like a good idea. I wasn't expecting to stay here for long. Finding a house or apartment to rent on a bartender's budget seemed like too much effort at the time."

He chuckles. "And now I'm not a bartender, and I am kind of looking on the nice and quiet for a place to rent that has room for me and Aidan Kinney both. We can be bachelors sharing a place -- except that Kinney's not a bachelor as such, it's just that his girlfriend lives in England."

"Wait, he's straight?" Dita asks, clearly incredulous. "My gaydar needs a tune up, I just... I mean... look at him." 'Error, does not compute' might as well be flashing on Perdita's forehead right now, everything else forgotten. "I know I only met him briefly, but I seriously thought that boy was gay... and a rentboy. And I should know!"

Anything you'd like to share with the class, Dita? "Anyway, you should let me know when you find a place, I'm trying to decide where I want to get my apartment before the Murder Motel blows through my savings."

"Well, I assume so," Ravn replies with a grin, scrubbing away. "I've only met his girl in passing but she's not the Canadian girlfriend whom no one's ever actually met. I used his shower last fall -- my boat doesn't have one. I never really sat down for a long chat with her, but she seems nice enough. Long distance relationships suck, of course -- but it's part of what'd make us a good fit for roomies. When she does visit, odds are I'll be out here anyway most of the year, so they can have the place to themselves. All I really need is somewhere to sleep in the coldest winter months, and to stash books."

He thinks a little. "I'm told there are lots of vacant properties in the Elm Street area if you're looking to buy. And some day, I might -- but right now at least, buying a house seems a little more permanent than I'm ready for. On one level I do expect I'll stay here until the Veil eats me, but... It's still very permanent for somebody who got used to living in a backpack."

"Oh, no, I meant... renting. Not buying. I like it here, but buying a house is a lot of paperwork I don't want to deal with... plus then I have to hire a pool boy and then I have to seduce him into mowing the lawn and it just sounds like too much work. Renting an apartment and letting someone else handle everything sounds much better." Perdita laughs and shrugs ever so slightly. "I didn't think she was the girlfriend who didn't go to a different school, I'm just... boggling slightly. I'm usually pretty good at clocking a gay man and for some reason he really pinged. I need a night at a gay bar to recalibrate."

"Yeah? What do I clock as then?" Ravn can't help asking; maybe he's just idly curious. "I usually get read as gay by women and ace by men," he adds, not sounding particularly bothered by either option.

"Hear you on the house issue, though." He applies more chemical detergent to the stiff brush and gets to scrubbing hard at the flaky patch of paint; whatever needs to go needs to do so before a fresh coat of paint gets applied. "There's the Bayside Apartments of course -- very posh, very high class. Visited Vydal in his a couple of times. Not my kind of place, though -- I don't want to feel like I need to wear a tie to cross the parking lot." Money might be an issue too, obviously.

"You clock as disinterested." Perdita admits with a shrug. "You've mentioned a former girlfriend, and also some horrible shit that happened with her, so... traumatized straight but borderline demisexual?" she tilts her head to one side slightly, "No judgement here, I just... men usually notice me, unless they're gay... and even then, once or twice. Even if they're happily with someone else, I at least get a lingering look or two. But you... have ignored any flirting, so... straight but clueless." she laughs and shrugs slightly. "Either that or you're really into thick girls."

Ravn contemplates that a moment, and then nods. "Probably not all wrong. You're good looking. You don't need me to tell you, either. I do tend to be pretty oblivious when it comes to women, not going to pretend otherwise. The fact that my one actual relationship was a disaster is a poorly kept secret too, given that her ghost literally turned up in town trying to kill people. That sort of thing is hard to sweep under the rug, even here."

"I wouldn't say I never need to hear it, though. Genuine compliments mean a lot more than some jackass screaming 'hey baby, shake that ass' from his car as he drives by." Dita admits. "I've told you a bit about my formative relationship with my ex. Yours definitely has Eddie beat, though." she pauses, glancing vaguely skyward and sideways, "That wasn't a challenge. He doesn't need to show up trying to kill people."

Ravn can't help chuckle at that. It's Gray Harbor; saying something like that feels necessary sometimes. Like, no, we absolutely do not need to hear a disembodied voice go challenge accepted, no thank you, we're good. He shakes his head. "True enough. I'm not great at compliments either -- it wasn't really a thing where I am from. Unless you count that kind of thing -- like the guys cat calling but the other way around. I come from a pretty privileged background -- and I think I got used to people wanting to hang around me not for my sake but because I was the guy who could get weed or a ride."

He shrugs a little. "Maybe that's why I just think it's funny when you joke about catching some rich sucker? I've heard it all before, it's more fun this way."

A laugh, and Dita shrugs, "It's mostly joking. If I'm... entirely honest I could live off my ill gotten gain for quite some time, modestly. I bought my car with cash, after all." And it's not the sort of car a rich person would find fancy, but it's fancier than a lot of cars around here. "I'm just... trying to blend in a bit better than I typically do. Though... I probably should have hit Texas if I wanted to do that properly. I still stand out around here." She pulls another slight face. "I'm not hanging around you because I think your family is monied or I'm trying to get in your pants, to be clear. I'm hanging around you because I enjoy your company and it's nice having someone who isn't going to look at me sideways if I happen to find someone's wallet in my hands."

"I know," Ravn says with another little laugh and continues to scrub. "We're a lot alike in some respects. Birds of a feather, recognising each other and all that. I think maybe that's why I get along fine with someone like Seth Monaghan, too -- and Aidan Kinney. The street recognises its own -- even if some of us weren't born on it. It was a pretty big deal to me at first -- keeping quiet. Baba Yaga gave me a severe dressing-down about it, though -- and while I'm still pretty damn convinced she's not the real thing, she has enough of the real thing's mindset and power that she's probably right. I can't run from myself for the rest of my life."

He glances at Perdita and then adds, "I never made it to Texas. But I am thinking that this area is very anglocentric, yes. Still, Gray Harbor kind of transcends most of that, or so I like to think. We're all human here, whatever else we might be on the side."

"Don't think I've met Seth yet. Didn't really get more than a moment with Aidan, which is a shame because he seemed like my kind of people. I still have dreams about that coat." She laughs, spraying when directed but otherwise mostly standing there and looking pretty, soaking up the early spring sunshine.

"Texas... I wouldn't fit in there, either." she laughs, "I don't know how my cousin manages it, they're even more visibly Queer than I am, and... yeah." she shrugs slightly, "I mostly just mean there aren't many folks with my complexion around here, so asking 'have you seen a pretty Brown girl?' around here will bring anyone looking to me pretty fast."

"Yeah, it's a very white region, not going to argue otherwise." Ravn nods. "Same for me for accents -- ask for the tall guy with the cheekbones and the European not-quite-English accent, everyone's going to point at me. Small town like this? Not a place to stay in a business like ours. I didn't even bother trying. I go to Seattle sometimes, just toss up a three cups and a nut game, or just chat up somebody in a café to make sure I can still do it. Here, town like Gray Harbor, everyone knows your name a week after you turned up."

He smiles and adds more detergent. "On the up side? They don't call it Gay Harbor for nothing. I love how people here don't give a damn. Sure, the chief of police keeps it quiet because Americans have hangups about openly queer people in official positions that I for one don't quite get, but apart from that? No one cares. And that is absolutely fantastic. My best friend is town calls himself a pansexual lighthouse and he's not wrong either -- for the longest time, people assumed we were screwing simply because there's half a saying around here, that you haven't made it in the Harbor until you've screwed either Rosencrantz or de la Vega, or both."

"Next time you go, bring me along. Cup game is easier with someone to hype the crowd, after all." she's not wrong, and a pretty face doing the hyping makes it even better.

After an oh so casual glance around, making sure it's just them and Kitty Pryde, Perdita shrugs a little. "A lot of people are fine with gay folk, but not so comfortable with a trans woman. Most of the guys I've dated haven't had a bit of a problem, one or two even thought it was a bonus, but..." she shrugs again. "You tell most people, they look at you different. You're not a woman to them anymore. If you're lucky, you're some third gender that maybe they're okay with, but more often than not, they suddenly start 'accidentally' misgendering you and out you to everyone they know."

"I can't say I've ever honestly even given thought to that," Ravn admits and looks a little thoughtful. "I want to think I wouldn't care? But I guess that's one of those things you won't really know about yourself until you do find yourself contemplating how to trip up somebody who's outside your usual configuration. Considering that usual configuration for me includes pretty much all of humanity... It's not something I devote a lot of energy to thinking about, straight or queer."

He pauses in scrubbing and chuckles, a little sheepishly. "There was -- last year, there was a couple of incidents. Happened twice in a month, a woman came out to my boat with a bottle of wine, wanting to watch the stars. Rosencrantz concluded that I'm about as quick on the uptake as your average wet brick but it honestly didn't occur to me either time that they might have been trying to start something. I tend to assume that if people turn up and say they want to watch the stars, then they want to watch the stars. If they wanted to get laid, it'd save everyone a lot of time if they'd just say that."

"It's... for me it's just part of my every day. I forget I was ever NOT Perdita, sometimes." there's a little shrug, "If I'm not careful I forget that it's an issue for other people, and one that can Be Bad. I highly suspect around here it'd be more akin to 'so what, at least you don't have tentacles!' but..." she laughs, "A lot of people get weird. Thanks for not getting weird."

"You're not wrong, though. This place really reminds you that we're all human," Ravn reiterates his earlier statement. "Besides, tell people you've been in one relationship in your life at the age of thirty, and they assume something is wrong with you too. So -- thanks for not getting weird, either. That's -- honestly what I love about this town, horrible as it is. All of that, it doesn't really matter. No one cares who you were before you came here."

Beat. "Well, a few might care. A couple of people in the town's upper crust still fancy themselves a cut above the rest of the plebeians, but ordinary folks here? Nah. If you've punched a tentacle monster with them some night in a dream, you're cool as far as they're concerned."

"There's nothing wrong with being more interested in platonic connections than romantic or sexual ones. Treating someone like they're broken over that makes no sense. One of my closest friends is non-binary and asexual. They've got a girlfriend and enjoy their time with her, but if their girlfriend suddenly decided she never wanted sex again, they'd be just as happy to spend that time doing other things she enjoys, like basketball or pigging out on halal food and watching bad TV." Dita shrugs slightly, "Just because I've had more partners than the population of my home town doesn't mean everyone should."

"That would require me to trip up about -- a hundred and fourteen thousand people. Might take more stamina than my asthmatic self can muster. I suppose it would depend on how much time I had." Ravn smirks slightly and moves a little down the hull, towards the next spot where last year's paint flakes and peels. He uses a small knife to scrape off a few very stubborn barnacle shells, their little inhabitants probably not having survived the winter's dry docking, before resuming his work with the brush.

He shakes his head a little and chuckles as he works. "It is -- not something I think about a lot on the whole. I look at couples sometimes and envy their closeness a little -- must be nice to have somebody you trust that much. Then I look at what happens when couples fall out, and I'm honestly not all that sorry after all. Humans are complicated beings, and as a species, we're anything but rational. You can't really mix relationships and living in a backpack anyhow, and now I'm here. Love this town, crazy as it is, but its dating scene consists of -- drinks on Saturday at the Twofer, I think."

"During a good year, we're talking like... a thousand, maybe twelve hundred people?" Perdita looks thoughtful, then pauses and busts out laughing, "The population, not the number of body's I've caught in a year. I wouldn't have time to do anything except have sex!" she smiles and shakes her head, then sobers.

"The closeness is nice. The trust... I haven't had that since Eddie, really, and I don't know if it was trust so much as it was desperation and naïveté. But it was nice, while I had it. And dear gods, I need to get over the idea of being somebody's assistant and just open a club for singles, it sounds like. Because I don't know what the Twofer is, but I don't think I want to."

"The Twofer -- Two if By Sea. It's the other bar in town -- the slightly fancier one, on the beach. Very popular with tourists in summer. I worked there as a barback for a spell when I came to town. But, well, this is Gray Harbor. If you leave the tourists out of the calculation, the dating scene here is not exactly a meat market. Small town, small singles pool, and all that. I've made friends here -- people who I am a lot closer to, honestly, than I ever was to my fiancee." Ravn shakes his head a little, perhaps realising how shallow that sounds where that particular, dead woman is concerned. "Bloke like Rosencrantz? I may not be sleeping with him but he knows me better than she ever did. And for what it's worth, so do you in some respects -- I never told her I made a side career as a grifter. She would not have understood, or approved. Why do something like that if you don't need to?"

He shakes his head a little and scrubs at a stubborn spot. "I did need to, obviously. Just, not for financial reasons. But that can be very difficult to explain, too."

"Do we ever really need to grift? There are always other ways to get by, after all. Sex work, which I know isn't so much an option for you. A day job. Not that working as a grocery store cashier sounds like a glamorous life, but... it was always an option." Dita shrugs slightly, spritzing down another spot as she does. "Emotionally... it felt good. Proving I was the best at what I did, getting people to do what I wanted..."

Ravn pauses in scrubbing and looks at Perdita with blue grey eyes that can be surprisingly direct; as Perdita no doubt recognises from herself, half of the grifter's talent is observation.

At length, he nods. "Yes. It feels good. Not -- quite that way for me. Getting people to do what I wanted was not the issue as much as -- proving that I am capable of doing things on my own. That I have my own talents, my own life, rather than being just my father's son. It's a different background but I suspect that the bottom line is much the same. It's about independence, about proving your self-worth, about getting a say in who you are. Who you want to be."

Then the Dane grins slightly. "I do have a day job, though. I'm part of a Danish government program for veterans with PTSD. I just work online because a number of those people can't deal with classrooms, crowds, and schedules anyhow -- and neither can I."