fandomtownies | The Arms Hotel Lobby, Friday

She's staring at you.

Michael, not unexpectedly, was lured in by that specials board. It sounded right up his alley, in a bizarre way.

River's eyes followed Michael as he entered the lobby. She tilted her head, then smiled a little.

He wandered in her direction, offering a slight smile in return.

"Hey."

River gave a nod in greeting. "Want food?" She tried to hide her enthusiasm.

"Sounds good." He grinned at the faintly eager look on her face. "Never tried apple soup before."

"Had never tried it either before I invented the recipe," River replied cheerfully. "The tabasco is a good contrast."

"Tabasco goes good with anything sweet", Michael maintained. "You tried it now?"

"Only while cooking. Will have it for lunch." She raised an eyebrow. "You want to try it?"

"Sure", he said with a grin. "Bring it on."

River disappeared and returned with a bowl of apple soup. In case it was needed she had also brought a bottle of tabasco. She placed this on a table and smiled at Michael.

[Sorry for SP! Busy Day!]

Michael tilted his head at it.

"Is there already tabasco in there or do I add my own?"

Or, you know, both.

"Already in it, but the amount is a matter of taste," River explained. Somehow she had suspected that Michael would prefer to add more.

Of course, Adah knew she wasn't anyone to talk regarding the awkwardness that just watching people as they came in could cause, because, hey, that was a page right out of her own book, but she had to admit, given the way things currently were between herself and River and the fact that it took her twice as long to reach the front desk as it would anyone else, it was a slight bit unsettling. But, being careful to not jostle the messenger bag hanging against her hip as she moved, she tried to turn her attention into an almost spectral extension of herself, a version of herself in her mind that could reach the front desk sooner, could even surpass its physical barrier to lean in lightly, lift her hand (the right one, for the sake of the freedom of such projections), and rap lightly against River's head. Knock, knock, kconk, kconk, are we listening today?

Edited 2008-02-08 15:45 (UTC)

There was a certain amount of listening today. Not as wide open as usual, but a tiny window. River was still unsure about that, but solved the dilemma but not immediately acknowledging tha fact that she did. The imaginary knocking Adah did make her smile just a little though, for a second, before turning serious again.

"Roles reversed." She was the one who used to visit Adah at work. She couldn't help feeling a hint of satisfaction at this change, but hoped it didn't show.

Adah gave a light nod; to a certain degree, yes, and she'd allow that it was a little overdue as, in the grand scheme of things, it had been rather unbalanced, hadn't it? If River was hoping for a complete reversal, though, Adah would be obliged to inform her that she was out of luck, as it was unlikely that Adah would be crawling over the front desk or reading River's mind any time soon. She did, however, have a little something that she imagined would continue to tilt the scales toward a higher semblance of justice. She leaned her hip, heavily, against the front desk for support while her attention shifted to the bag at her hip, unsnapping the flap and pulling it back, and then, with slight awkwardness, managed to pull out a small plastic container, containing four J,GoB muffins with (and Adah was still feeling like she was overdoing it with the next detail, but she hardly imagined that River would hold it against her) a small, single black-colored rose affixed onto the top of it. Struggling to, literally, single-handedly pass the peace offering over, Adah said, quietly, "Pomegranate ginger. A good treatment for tapeworm."

Along with other supposed properties of pomegranate, but the tapeworm thing was the only scientifically proven one.

River's gaze shifted from Adah to the container with the rose on it and back again. "I don't have tapeworm," she said. At the same time she pulled the container to her chest, holding it close as if it contained a precious treasure. Her head tilted forward to smell the black rose.

Her mind started pulling in two different directions. One would most certainly lead to her crawling over the desk, closer to Adah, offering kisses in return. The other lead further away, to somewhere safe and where things were less likely to hurt.

"Best we keep it that way, too," Adah commented with a nod, and considered a potential listing of exactly all the havoc a potential tapeworm could wreck on a person's internal workings, but passed, in favor of quietly watching River for her response.

"Those do come," she added after a moment, "with a request, though..."

At the mentioning of a request River immediately looked up, resisting the urge to open her mind up fully to Adah's. Still, she could hear the thoughts but anyway asked the question, silently, with the tilt of her head.

Adah drew in a breath, to straighten out her left shoulder before releasing her terms. "Judge me by my actions, River," she said, "not my thoughts. Please?" She turned her eyes steadily toward the other girl, with a small, light smile; a careful one, as she didn't want River to feel like she was taking it flippantly. She'd said please, after all, a word that rarely crossed her vocabulary, even in thought. "Excepting, perhaps, when the thoughts are compensating for what the actions can't do." Thoughts were everywhere, disobedient little bastards that shifted and swayed with even the slightest hint of a shift in the breeze. But her actions...Adah, since the day she decided that she wasn't going to listen to what the medical doctors said and was going to go ahead and walk anyway, always acted with the clear and confident knowledge that she was doing what she had chosen to do.

River could do nothing but nod. It was only fair after all, and Adah did have a strength of will to make a choice and force it into being. But River knew how minds worked, how the unknown and unwanted could force its way to the surface too, and the awareness of the pain that could caude frightened her. She didn't ask Adah to love her. She didn't ask her to be the only one in her heart. But River didn't want to once again be the second or third or fourth, the safe one that isn't human enough to love.

Nothing of this was spoken aloud, however, and River put the rose behind her ear and opened the box, then nudged an apple sculpture closer to Adah. It was carved into the likeness of a chopped off head with an eye torn out.

Assuming that...well, knowing that...River was even remotely like herself, Adah took the silent response as probably the same response she would have given to something like this. Reluctant and wary, but an agreement all the same, finding a wrestling of an argument most likely doomed to fail. It made her sigh, slightly, before her attention drifted to the nudging of the work her way for attention. Adah looked at the sculpture, and, brow arched, glanced toward River expectantly. There had to be a story there, really. And she wondered if the eye was removed before or after the head apparently was.

If Adah wanted to hear a story it wasn't nice to let her stand there by the desk, leaning against it. River slipped out of the chair and on to the desk, folding her legs beneath her. She took a large bite out of one of the muffins that Adah had brought and nodded her head at the now empty chair.

It took a moment for Adah to catch up with exactly what River was doing but, once it connected, she smirked, slightly, wryly, crookedly, and moved, limping slowly, carefully around the desk. As she sunk into the chair in a similarly delicate fashion, she had to admit, she was feeling pretty grateful to be sitting, instantly seeming to relax. The problem with a busy day of doing things she normally wouldn't. Those decisive actions took a toll on her. She took a moment, to just be thankful to be sitting, before she looked back at River with another smirk and a warning look. Just because she was sitting here, she sure hoped that River didn't expect Adah to start doing her job for her, should anyone surface in need of the desk jockey's service.

River shook her head, a tiny smile appearing. "Not busy today," she said. It wasn't busy at all, and River felt her cheeks blush as she thought how just a few weeks ago, had Adah come to visit she would have offered to show her one of the suites at the hotel. Not today, though.

River's toes curled as she held back the instinct to let her foot reach out and run against Adah's leg. To distract herself she nodded at the fruit bowl. "Used up all the apples. Fruit for emergencies of naked people."

That wasn't part of the story though. "Eye was lost before the rest of the body. Reavers to that to themselves." She took another bite of the pomegranate ginger muffin.