Summary:Dinner for two, Magical foo Log Info:Storyteller: None |
Related LogsTheme SongNone |
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It has been a few weeks since their last meeting, both of Cain and Rhiannon work some long hours and really bizarre schedules that just sometimes will not mesh. Tonight is the first real chance they had to get together, so Cain made sure they COULD get together and was happily surprised with that being doable.
It is just after 6PM when he arrives at Rhiannon's place. He's dressed in a short sleeved white shirt with blue and green vertical stripes worn tucked into black jeans. In hand he has really good bottle of wine. A moment to make sure he's not a mess, and then he buzzes for entry into Rhi's building.
Sometimes her schedule is a mess, and then when she's not working, there's always stuff to catch up on - including sleep. But when Cain had texted her with a time she could actually swing, she'd responded with an affirmative happily. She's managed to clean the place up to her standards for company. There's even a candle lit in the living room, a spicy and sweet sort of scent - cinnamon and vanilla.
Her hair is loose, a wild tumble of loose curls over the shoulders of her wine red v-neck top. There's a couple chains close around the base of her throat in a choker style.The jeans are dark, and her feet are bare, toenails a deep red. She smiles as she opens the door. "Hey there, you. Come on in."
Well, unfortunately, that's the job. Fire and Medical people both work ridiculously long hours and brutal shifts. That complicates the hell out of anything so mundane as recreation, or meeting new people. Eyes of green take in Rhiannon's attire and then he smiles brightly and offers the bottle of wine, it is /old/. The label hand written, someone's family label, not his. "Well, thank you, Mack. And allow me to say - you look lovely."
Invited in, he steps over the threshold, and breathes the candle scent as he looks about. "Man it is nice to finally be able to get our schedules in synch." And then he turns to face Rhiannon. "I thought we'd order from wherever and then I could run out and get it." A wry grin. "Best delivery service ever." He says with laughter in voice and eye.
She reaches out to take the bottle. "Oh, that's sweet." She looks at the label, squinting a bit. "What kind of wine is it?" It might affect what they order for dinner, after all. She will close the door behind him, before she turns to step into the kitchen and set the bottle on the counter.
She opens a drawer, pulling out a small stack of menus. She will give him a grin, tipping her head before she steps through the doorway to the living room, tucking a foot up underneath as she sits down.
"A burgundy, actually. Rich and earthy, but dry. My late and unlamented ex foster dad had a really good wine cellar, it is about all that I kept when I sold the house." Can replies with a nod. "And about all that was good about him." A grin then. "So, no, not sweet…dry. Complex. Earthy. It actually is a really good wine, though."
He laughs at the grin and follows, taking a gander, pausing to look at a picture of her and her fire crew at what looks to be graduation. "Looks like a solid group." And then he sets the picture back exactly where it was, and then finds a seat near, but not crowding Rhi. "So…what will we be having fear dinner, Rhiannon?"
Rhi will snort, a roll of her eyes. "I meant you, not the wine. I prefer dry over sweet, except the occasional ice wine. Some of those are a great dessert."
She says nothing when he looks at the picture, one of the few that have people in it, let alone her. There are pictures along the walls, street scenes, nature, all sorts of things. She shuffles the menus to lay them out. "Asian, Thai, Mexican, Ethiopian, what do you like?"
Cain laughs softly at the snort and eye roll. "Oh! Very kind, obviously I entirely misunderstood." He teases. "I really like sweet wines too, yes. And mead, that's probably my favorite, I have some aging now, should be ready in a few days." And he has hobs to tend it, so you can bet that the Mead will turn out /at least/ good, probably way better.
"The company, of course." He says without missing a beat. And then he looks over the menus. "Well…they all look really good, which is your favorite? We'll order from that. I have never had Ethiopian, but I'm not afraid to try new things."
"I think sometimes you misunderstand on purpose." Rhiannon says, with a sly side-eye at him. "Mead, hmm? You'd like my gran. She loves that sort of stuff." She shuffles through the menus.
"Very smooth, Spice boy." She says with a touch of an edge to it. "I like all of them, or I wouldn't have kept the menus. Let's see… I've had Ethiopian and Indian most recently, so pretty much anything else."
"You wound me, Rhiannon. Cut me to the quick with your altogether far too acute observations." Cain says with a huge smile and a bit of a laugh. "Well, next visit I'll bring her some of the latest batch." A nod. "Assuming there /is/ a next visit, of course. Alternatively you could both come by my place for a nice meal, I make a /killer/ shepherd's pie."
A smirk answers the edge, and then he looks at the remaining menus. "Of the remaining I'd say the Mexican sounds best to me, though I can always do Thai." He nods. "Mexican?"
"I work with men, almost exclusively. I am more privy to your tricks than you likely would expect." She sorts through the menus, coming up with a couple. "I think I'd prefer Thai over Mexican, but you are the guest. Or we could order both. It's not like either of us don't eat."
There's a smile as she reaches for her phone. "My grandmother isn't stateside. She's in Scotland. She hasn't come over in years. But I'm sure she'd be charmed."
"And that's where most of our tricks belong." The privy. "Thai's fine." A laugh. "I'm hungry, don't want to make two stops." He says with a grin. He digs out a credit card from his wallet, and hands it over. "Chicken Pad Thai, please, extra peanut sauce. Satay chicken, and some Tom Yum soup for me."
"Ah, well, I could run us over there, maybe. Never tried crossing an ocean, might be tricky." A smile. "Might also be fun."
Once the order is placed he grins, winks, and then in a flare of purple sparks and psuedo-lightning dashes off — literally THROUGH one of the walls, and off to the restaurant. He gets there a few minutes early, spends that time getting flowers and candy, because why not, and STILL has a couple minutes wait. It might be a tad unnerving when he returns in the same fashion and Rhi finds herself with a bouquet of assorted flowers he picked all around a tri-state area, a boxed truffle assortment, and the dinner all laid out in a flare of purple and breeze. "There. Sorry for the delay, Mack."
There's a slow blink, then a snort, as he vanishes out through her wall. "Apparently the door is too ordinary." She mutters to herself, before she gets up. She'll straighten a couple thing, hit the bathroom quick to run a brush through her hair again.
There's candles lit through the apartment when he comes back - but none near the wall where he'd vanished, just in case. She will blink at the flowers and candy, looking at him with her eyebrows lifting in a skeptical glance. "Flowers and candy? That's a little much, isn't it?" Then there's that chuff of laughter. "Faster than door dash."
Cain definitely approves of candles. "Oh, that's very nice." He says this as he patently notices the brushed hair as well. A grin then. "Anything worth doing is worth OVERdoing. If you didn't know I was a speedster the handpicked flowers might have gotten some more props though." He chuckles at that. "Doordash? I'm /through the darn wall DASH/." It was well thought not to have anything flammable in the section she left bare, he did indeed return that way.
"Just so long as you know I have a door and all. You needn't always be flashy. And purple." She will grin, even as she gets up to handle the flowers properly and place them in a vase. The candy will be left on the counter, because there is Thai food to be had!
"I was bored, so I lit them." Which took her less than a second of time, not even a heartbeat. "So…"
"Oh, by all means, the door normally." Cain laughs softly. "Actually, if I use my superspeed, I /do/ have to be purple and flashy." He takes his seat next to, but not too close to Mack, and definitely is quite happy to eat the Thai food. "Lights things on fire when bored, good to know, good to know."
A smile then. "So." He agrees, and then laughs again, a throaty sort of laugh, not loud or obtrusive, but real. Very real. "So…what sort of music do you like?" He queries in a rush.
"Are you sure you're not Prince in disguise?" Rhiannon will ask, one brow quirked up in teasing as she picks up her own pad thai to sit cross legged on the couch. "You're not from Minneapolis, right?"
She will look at him, a tip of her head. "I thought you wanted to discuss magic, Spice Boy."
"Definitely not Prince, though I /can/ sing." Cain pauses at the question about Minneapolis, and thinks about it. "I honestly don't know. I'm an orphan, raised in a New York 'home for disadvantaged' until I was put in the foster system. I /could/ be from anywhere, so Minneapolis is a possibility."
He grins, unrepentantly. "Well, that too, but we're eating, so I thought something lighter." A pause. "Actually…Magic /would/ be nice, though. Not like I have had a lot of magical folks to discuss it with, though I have met some recently. Really odd."
She flinches. "Sorry." She hadn't meant to hit any possible sore spots. A hand will reach up to touch a simple clear crystal at the base of her throat, before she's twisting up noodles.
"It's not like Magic is a heavy subject for me. It just… is. I always knew I'd have it, though my gran warded me to keep my powers at bay until I was able to handle it. No one wants a toddler with fire powers, right?"
"Don't worry about it, it just is."
Cain is actually pretty comfortable with his origins as an orphan. "The bad part was when my last dad started out cool, then tried to kill me."
Again though, he seems pretty okay with things, they clearly didn't go as his awful dad wanted. He eats with a very neat economy of motion, though Mack /might/ see him deliberately playing a game to see if he can get the food to his mouth before it falls, without using superspeed. Of course, if it WOULD fall, he cheats.
"See, my exposure to magic was not until I was almost an adult before I encountered." He looks honestly curious. "So…what was that like? And fire in a child…probably scary, I imagine."
"What was what like? Growing up around magic, and knowing I would have my own someday?" She shrugs. "I don't know. I mean, some kids I knew went to church, and all of that. We didn't, because our church was everywhere. When you grow up and it is your every day, it's just part of who you are. It's not a big revelation. I knew early on not everyone had it, but.. not everyone has red hair, either. Things like that."
She eats another bite of her dinner, pondering. She will take a sip of her drink, before she looks him over. "It had to be hard, not knowing, coming to it late. I always had support, and years of education, first."
"Yes. Like that, I never had that. It was pretty sudden." Cain continues to eat with what seems almost a reckless lack of care, but never quite ends up spilling a dram of his food. "Sounds like your upbringing we pretty nice." He says with a half-grin. "In truth I didn't know a /thing/ about magic until mine was awakened and I got a crash course in survival, a crucibile really."
Yes, he chose a fire related term in consideration of his audience. "So…is there like a 'Magic for Dummies' out there? Or readings you can suggest to get a basis to foundation my understanding, or is it something that requires a lot of explanation? Sometimes my powers do…unexpected things."
"I'm sorry. That had to be really rough, especially without anyone to talk to." Rhiannon means it, sincere without being showing pity. "My upbringing was… unorthodox. Moved around a lot. I was born in a hippy commune in California, then we moved to Mississippi, and so on. Mom's magic is with plants and growing things. She makes teas that will cure almost anything, tinctures, soaps, lotions.. all sorts of stuff. Dad's an empath, and should have been a therapist, but.. hippies." She smiles. "I was homeschooled until high school, when I stayed with Gran."
There's a thoughtful pause, eyes narrowing. "Not that I know of, but I'll call Gran and ask. We talk a couple times a week, when I'm not working insane overtime."
Cain just sort of shrugs. "Par for the course, really." He's not self-pitying at all, he has long since accepted that his life is weird, that nothing will ever come easy, and that's fine. It is what it is, and damned if he's going to let it get him down. That determination and drive serve him well as an EMT also.
He listens with a faint smile and avid interest to his eyes as she describes a whole new world, it is…fascinating. And really, the delivery system for the story is also.
He reins his wilder impulses in, and nods his understanding about the homeschooling. "Our childhoods could really not have been much different, so both your parents have magic as well." He shakes his head in wonder. "AND your gran. That's something."
The OT mention gets a soft laugh. "Oh, right, so you never get to talk all that often."
"It shouldn't be. I wish there was a more comprehensive…network? I don't know. A sort of way we could keep track of people with magic, you know? There's got to be more in the city than just us, right? It would be nice to have like a community." Rhi is thinking pie in the sky stuff now.
"Well, there's magic on the women's line of my family. We don't know if Dad is magic or mutant. Doesn't really matter much, does it? We all need to learn to control it, right? And I know there are mutants who can manipulate fire. Well, I've heard of them."
"I like the idea of a community, and I met a couple folks not too long ago who might know of one, but they work for SHIELD, so…yeah, not sure I should. They did figure out I was magic though, pretty quickly." Cain laughs softly. "We should make a Mystic Artist's Community Center! Just have to find more mystics."
Cain looks thoughtful. "I have hear of mutants, sure, there's Mutant Town, and there's the Avengers and stuff, but I'm not part of any of those things, my powers are magic. I'm part Fey based on what I've found out, like…how much cold iron sucks."
"I've heard whispers of things like that, but.. " There's a laugh. " A Mystic Artist's community center? Wouldn't we need mystics and artists?" She'll tease.
"I don't know how much difference there is, between magic and mutant. I don't think we can afford to be… unwelcoming to another minority of the population, when we've much in common." She sips at her drink, setting mer mostly empty dinner dish down. "Cold iron can suck, but not being full Fey means we can live in a city full of it."
The pair spoke long into the night about magic and their pasts, shared good food, and good company. All in all it was pretty convivial. Eventually however things came to an end and ever the gentleman, Cain departed with a -daring- kiss to the back of Rhiannon's hand. And yes, he took the door, her wall is safe!