2022-05-06 - Look, I Have Some Questions

Doesn't matter if winter is making the air crisp around the edges despite it officially being spring. The beach, strewn with rock, is still inviting. Ariadne stands on a boulder upraised from the sand as a way to better look out across the bay. What's she looking for?

Orcas, if asked.

Movement, however, makes the barista glance over and down the beach. She's in a warm coral-colored windbreaker with her hair up in a messy bun. Tendrils sweep free from the breeze. She frowns, squinting, before she raises her voice: "Itzhak?" Hopefully, the pitch carries far enough -- she's pretty sure that him, height and all.

Itzhak picks his way around the low tide line, sometimes dropping to a crouch to investigate something with an Investigation Stick. He's always wearing tight jeans beat to a suede texture and today is no exception. His t shirt says 'I Only Care About Violin (and like, three people)'.

His name makes him glance up sharply, right at Ariadne. No hunting around to see who called. The wind rakes his slightly overlong curls into vertical motion.

"Oh, hey, it is you!" Hopefully the wind carries this too. Lightly, the barista dismounts her viewing-boulder and meanders over to the violinist in question. No wading boots today, just sneakers, so she's more mindful about how she picks her way around the larger rocks and across captured tidal puddles.

Her shadow crosses his investigation space only briefly; she steps to one side and crouches down too, head tilted, curious as to what he's found. "It's good to see you," she tells the man, looking up with a smile both on her lips and in her golden-hazel eyes, these lined with black kohl. "How've you been? How's Hunter? I owe him hot chocolate, I know." Baristas gonna enable.

Itzhak upnods tough guy style, still crouched, long legs practically hiked to his unshaven throat. "How you doing, Ariadne." He pronounces the name with a certain relish, rolling it around in his mouth. "Can't forget that name, just like that cute girl in Inception, except she's a cute boy now. He. Still cute. Anyway, sea cucumber."

He taps the stick next to the critter in question, a tube of greeny squish. It's looking a little the worse for wear. (The sea cucumber, not the stick.) "Is it okay if I put him back?"

It's certainly a pronunciation by somebody from New York and it makes Ariadne grin -- the compliment attached to the name makes her gaze twinkle.

"I'm good, thanks for asking. Just enjoying the air and doing some wildlife watching." Her attention flicks to the creature in question, indeed a sea cucumber stuck on the beach. "Well, lookit that." No stick for her. Boldly, the marine biologist pokes it. Squishy. "Mmm...looks like he still has his innards, so yeah, you'd be doing him a favor if you put him back. He'll get too dry or the gulls will bother him otherwise. Once you're done, could...could I pick your brain?" she then asks, brows knitting. The ocean breeze plays through her hair again, setting a few loose tendrils to whipping about. Celestial-blue faded through to iris-violet is still bright in its underpanel of her otherwise deeply-auburn hair.

Perhaps emboldened by Ariadne touching the little squish, Itzhak carefully, very carefully, closes his fingers around it. "There ya go, buddy, gonna put you back."

He rises to go to where low tide is lapping the beach a few yards away. "Sure," he says absently, focused on his task of lowering the sea cucumber into the wave washing up the beach. "Hunter's doing okay, he always gets in trouble for being rambunctious during school. I was like that too. Is it about Abildgaard? It's about him, ain't it."

Surely there's a tiny if silent sea cucumber cheer. We live to squish another day! Ariadne rises along with him, though she doesn't follow. She stands on the beach still and watches, hands in her windbreaker's pockets now. There's a grin to hear how Hunter's doing; it's not too much of a surprise to hear about him, she observed his enthusiasm.

The question, however, makes her at first blink and then...lightly blush. "Ah. Well...not yet," she says, sounding as if she's deciding this in the moment and it hadn't been an option until it was brought up. "Though Ravn did recommend asking you about...the shine and stuff." Her golden-hazel eyes track him. "I learned recently that I could do this...mind talking thing. Una helped me figure it out, Una Irving. It's new and weird and I guess...shit, I was hoping you had some wisdom about it. It startles Ravn. I haven't really practiced since."

The sea cucumber rolls off into deeper water. "Vaya con dios," Itzhak salutes it with the stick.

He shoots one of those sly sideways glances at Ariadne. A smirk tugs his mouth when he observes her discomfort, but it's good natured. "Don't mind me. Just wanna wingman for my best buddy some. You wanna talk about the Song? Sure, whaddya wanna know?" He starts to crunch his way back up the beach.

Ariadne gives the New Yorker a squint for his sly look, but rapidly, her own face morphs into plain surprise.

"Oh my god. What did Ravn tell you? Wingman? Wingman? You picked that word deliberately!" Her sneakered steps catch up to Itzhak quickly enough. "But okay, business before pleasure. I meant to ask about the...the Song? -- first. Uh. I guess...is there a volume control for it. I'm apparently really loud. Kind of like a toddler. Well...I mean, I'm new at it so I must be a toddler, in a way. But also, is there some...answering message you can set up? So nobody just wakes you up at 3am suddenly. Or is that just how it is and I'm screwed?"

Itzhak laughs, completely unrepentant. "Never heard," hoid in that raucous accent, "of no answering service, but that don't mean it can't be done. Volume control?" He shrugs, tipping a hand back and forth. "I dunno, never had a problem with it, but I hear it, you know?" A tap of a finger against his ear. "People call it the shine or whatever, I hear it as a song. The Song. So maybe I just got an advantage in the whole volume category."

Ariadne seems to contemplate the answers as they walk along. Her gaze falls to her feet. She side-steps what appears to be an intact sand dollar out of habit; sneaky little discus-things half-buried in the sand, those ones.

"Alright," she eventually says, looking down the beach again. It's not hard to keep up with Itzhak, not at a stroll. "I'll...try to do the answering message, I guess, and see what happens. Same with volume. Ravn said to try imagining whispering instead. That shouldn't be too hard, right?" The redhead sounds...mostly optimistic. "That sounds like a way cooler way to hear things though. More beautiful. A song," she repeats softly, smiling to herself as she glances up at Itzhak. "Way more pretty. Makes sense, with how you play the violin. I wonder if that's how Ravn hears it...since he plays too."

"I'd say, play it triple P." Itzhak is barefoot, long feet perfectly at home in the cool sand, unconcerned about shattered glass or broken shell or anything that might daunt the average beachcomber. He flips over a rock with his Stick and little things go running. "Ooh, hey, a brittle star." Weird little alien maneuvering its arms around. He puts the rock back.

He glances down at her, not meeting her eyes but hitting around her shoulder. "Yeah? Most people see it as colors, glitter, all kinds of stuff. I know a guy who feels it like he felt danger. It's just always been a song to me. A song you couldn't play, with sounds you couldn't hear. But I hear it in here, all right." A tap with the flat of the stick to his head.

A quiet grin. "Aw, yeah...pianississimo. That makes sense." She must have had some musical tutoring at some point in life. Ariadne watches the revelation of the tiny crabs, glistening with damp, and pauses in surprise to see the -- "Brittle star, holy crap." Just as pleased as a biologist to see the rock go back into place, she continues along beside Itzhak. His weight in gaze is almost palpable in the end; it brings her glance over at him as he speaks once more.

Her eyes track the stick before returning to his face. "I...think I see it all as the sparkling people talk about. Kind of like...the bioluminescent sea foam? When the little dinoflagellates glow in the waves. But all around a person," she reveals almost shyly. "Makes sense with my fascination with the ocean, I guess. I used to think it was just migraine aura, but..." Tendrils of her hair swing as she shakes her head. "Nope. It's actually a thing." Heavily, the barista sighs. "Lots of things are things now..."

"That sounds pretty." Itzhak's eyes flick up to Ari's face, checking for input, before he's looking down at the beach again. "Dated a girl who saw sparkles, too. I think hers was more like glitter than bioluminescence but that's actually kinda nice. Do you see it, like, people have spots, or is it more on its own?"

He really is curious about this, as he continues his meander. "So many things are things," he agrees with a kind of fatalistic amusement, "that's the story of my life, right there."

"Only around people. I haven't noticed if it's spots. Like I said, I've thought it was migraine aura for so long that I just counted it as this alone." She toes at a rock in passing to see if any crabs go scuttling. One or two small ones skitter and hide under the next larger rock. Another glance over at Itzahk and Ariadne laughs, but not unkindly. "A great way to put it. So many things are things," she echoes of the man. "I kind of wish there was a guide book...or maybe guidelines...but the saying from that one pirate movie applies: something about the rules being more like guidelines anyways." In and out threads a more European accent to her words, as natural as breathing. It's gone by the time she speaks again.

"So..." Look at her drawl out the word. Perhaps she's gathering courage. "I...was curious about something about...Ravn since you're his friend. Wingman," she notes with a semi-shy smirk in Itzhak's direction. Her eyes slide away just as quickly to down the beach. "Warn me now if you're not going to answer questions though. It still feels...nosy to me to even be asking in the first place."

"Aww hell yeah, now we're getting to the good stuff," Itzhak says with a flash of a smile, there and gone again. "Not answer questions, fuck that, I been dying to answer somebody's questions about him. Because, seriously? He ain't appreciated near enough by people. So shoot! Gimme the hardballs, I can take it." He swishes his Stick demonstratively.

By the way Ariadne over at first in plain surprise and then in plain amusement, she'd been half-expecting rebuff. This is anything but rebuff.

"Oh! Well. Um. Geez, put me on the spot," she mock-complains at first, unable to help laughing a few times. When had the sun come out? She reaches up and fusses with her windbreaker's collar to let in more air. Not thinking. Because that?

-- is a hickie.

"What's Ravn's middle name?" she asks first, looking expectantly over at Itzhak. "And how did you two meet?"

"Shit, I dunno, he's got like twenty names. Can't help you with that one." Itzhak shrugs. "But he said you know he's some kinda royalty or something. Gonna be honest, I didn't figure that one out. I thought he was some down on his luck loser like me. I maybe yelled at him a whole bunch. I think that makes me the stereotypical best friend of the superhero who yells when he finds out his buddy's a superhero."

The question of how they met is greeted with another smile, this one more lasting, a little. "We kinda saw each other around town a couple times, but the first time we really met, we were on the beach and I was practicing, and I knew he played violin so I told him to go get it. And then, well, you know how he talks about, he's a lousy player and whatever, well, don't believe his lies. He's a fantastic player." Itzhak really does light up, talking about this, but then pauses. "I yelled at him for that, too. Okay, look, it's not a surprise that I'm an asshole, right?"

Dimples slowly show up as Ariadne listens. She arches a brow -- not know the man's middle name? -- and twenty names? Poor Ravn. Due for a questioning about that one. On they walk and she continues grinning more and more as Itzhak expounds upon past meetings.

"That is just cute as well. And I don't know, are you an asshole? Ravn seems to keep you around for a reason. You probably don't yell at him all the time, right? Maybe only when it's necessary -- and I bet it's not too loud. But...if you think you're yelling too much, you can always take it down a notch. But Ravn is a Count, yes, from Denmark. I cheated a little bit." Holding up thumb and forefinger, she pinches a bit of space between them. "There was a Dream in which we were at a casino with others, Una and Dita, and he just happened to be addressed as a Count in it. Odd hours for teaching, a couple of anecdotal stories involving a house which sounded more like a manor or, hell, a castle...? And a Google search." She giggles. "Ravn's online if you do a dedicated search. I'm still waiting to hear him play his violin. I can be patient for that one; good things aren't rushed." The way she says that has a bit of a dreamy cast to it, but just as quickly she clears her throat.

"Um. What do you guys play when you get together?"

"Yeah, I googled him when I realized he ain't what he's been trying to be, but it ain't like I just go around googling everybody I meet," Itzhak grumbles. "And I had to ask him if he actually lives in a castle first. I mighta put my fist through my laptop if he did. But it's not a castle it's just a big ass fancy house. They call it a castle but they're wrong."

What can he say, they're wrong.

He's about to go on, talking about violin is one of his favorite things, but he stops in his tracks. Oh no. He's staring at Ari's neck.

"Dude is that a hickey?" Itzhak taps his neck where Ari has it.

"Yeah, it's not a castle, I agree with you -- but don't tell Ravn that, he'll give me that 'kicked puppy dog' look he does."

But Itzhak stops walking. Ariadne comes to a surprised stop with her eyebrows nearly vanished into her hairline. "Wh -- "

Oh. That's what.

Cue hand clap over the affected area of neck. Cue pastel-pink blush furiously across her cheeks. Deny it? Why, it's hopeless, he's already seen it. "It's a hickie," she then tells her boyfriend's best friend with a crooked, sheepish smile and a great understanding of hindsight being a royal pain in the ass -- make-up. She has foundation. BUT NOPE.

Itzhak's entire weathered, hard-worn face transforms when he breaks out this smile. And then he whips around to face the ocean and hollers, "FUCK YES!!" flinging his arms up like his favorite team just scored a touchdown. Or, just scored, anyway.

Then, beaming like the sun that's hiding in the clouds, he offers his palm flat in the air to Ari. High fives are called for.

That particular smile heralds some sort of more grand reaction. Tittering helplessly and lifting up both hands towards him like some beseeching saint, she starts with, "Okay, now, look -- "

Never mind. The seagulls certainly know about it. Maybe the sturgeon way down deep. An octopus or two. Some starfish is going to start gossiping NOW.

Ariadne can't help laughing at this point because... "Well, shit," she grumbles before pinching the bridge of her nose in passing. Her shoulders jounce with silent amusement. When she glances up? Oh, it's a high five offered. "Oh my GOD, Itzhak! Okay, you know what? Fine, high fives, yes, fine." -- and a very, very pink barista high-fives the far-taller man. "You can only give him so much shit about it, okay?"

Her laughter spikes to a hilarious pitch for a second. "...who am I fucking kidding, you're going to give him all of the shit and yeah, yeah, just do it."

That is one crisp high five! Itzhak laughs along with Ari, and he also starts blushing along with her. "Dammit, you made me sympathy blush, stupid capillaries." He scrubs his cheek selfconsciously. "Okay, seriously though? He's always telling me he's terrible in bed and I never believed a word of it. You don't even know how much he needs someone like you. Who's just...into him. So if maybe I'm a little excited, that's why." He's still grinning like a little kid, crooked but so very sincere.

On the topic of capillaries? "Yeah, well, you and your capillaries." It's a great comeback, look at her go. Ariadne barely stops herself from rubbing her own cheek in turn. She can feel the heat. Consoling herself by zipping up her windbreaker's collars again, she ends up with a true case of burning cheeks when Itzhak continues on.

"I am not talking to you about his...bed skills!" retorts the barista with an amused dignity before blurt-laughing. "But am I into him? God." There her eyes roll at herself and she ends up all but kicking a rock away from them. Instead of displacing stones, she giggles a few more times against her fisted knuckles while holding across her body with her other arm. Her face emerges from its scrunch and how eloquent her look is at Itzhak now. "When somebody greets you with 'Good morning, starshine?' Like. I'm screwed." What a one-handed shrug while she smiles with helpless fondness in turn.

"That's cool, he wouldn't like it if you did. He's a real private guy." Itzhak clearly approves. "I'm just sayin', I always knew he'd be dynamite in bed. I love being right."

He watches Ari giggle, approving of this too, and then just gets a stupid look on his face that's almost a mirror of Ari's. "The earth says hello," he sings, soft, just over the sound of the surf. Then he's looking down, gone awkward, poking at something in the rocky sand with his stick.

"I love him. I don't have a lotta the right words to say how, you know? We're sure not gonna sleep together. But I just do."

Itzhak sings and Ariadne finishes the stanza softly, her dimples almost in full view again. "You twinkle above us, we twinkle below." Her voice is sweet if not incredibly of note. At least she's on pitch? Musical training indeed. She tracks the movements of the stick in the sand while he speaks. There, a dimple, a little more on the left than on the right.

"Nah, I getcha," she reassures the man gently. In the ambient light, her hazel eyes take on a more green hue; they rest on Itzhak's face. "You need Ravn and he needs you. The last thing I want to do is come between that because I got news for you: you're good for one another. We were talking and we're on the same page. There's got to be room to grow, so I'm glad he has you to spend time with when it's not me, y'know? I know you two are brosephs. Brotato chips. Brotastic bropanions. Bro-han Sebastian Bach and Brozart." Fingers circle in a gesture off to one side. She could go on, of course. What a grin.

"Broseidons, Kings of the Brocean," Itzhak murmurs. He's smiling down at the sand. Scuff. "Well, it's about damn time you got here, because I need help managing that guy. Doesn't eat enough, lives in about thirty two square feet, it's the worst."

He pauses, grey eyes ticking up to Ari. "I can't hug him a lot. Can I hug you?"

"I like that one, well done." Ariadne's grin can definitely be heard in her words. She chuckles again, the sound bright like light catches off ripples. The New Yorker's grousings bring her to gently shake her head; they're familiar if still somewhat new worries of her own. Fingernails help comb loose hair back over an ear again. It's easy to catch his eyes when he glances up, these grey as mist. "Oh, gosh."

She doesn't hesitate. "Why not. C'mere, I'm from a hugging kind of family." Itzhak might be much taller, but Ariadne still opens her arms wide and invitingly. "You might be a beanpole, but I bet you hug well too. I'll let you know if you need to eat more goulash, how's about that?" Yes, a brief tease at his own accent in turn. "Also, Broseidons, Kings of the Brocean? I might call you two that, you never know." Thus, Itzhak is forewarned.

No hesitation from Itzhak either: he scoops Ariadne in and wraps long wiry arms around her and yeah it must be said he's a pretty good hugger, despite all the bony angles. "Ehhh you got yaself a deal," he mumbles against her hair. Squeeze.

Then he lets her go, and damn if he doesn't look ten years younger. Okay, maybe five. "Tide's coming in, you want I should give you a ride?"

Counter-squeeze. "Yeah, deal about the goulash too, dude, lord. You tall gents," she teases in return. One last squeeze of those bony ribs -- lord, like, two crockpots of goulash for this man -- and Ariadne then steps back, looking up into his face.

Oh, the tide? A lean to look past him and she nods. "Yeah, I'll take you up on that ride. My place is over on Sycamore, it's not too far. Mind if we swap numbers? Just in case? I'm good for just-in-case reasons." She gives the New Yorker a bright grin before walking along beside him back up the sandy beach towards the distant parking lot.

Just know Itzhak's going into her phone as 'Broseidon, King of the Brocean', whether he likes it or not.