fandomtownies | The Arms Hotel Lobby, Friday

She might talk back.

There are free cookies.

I'm taking tango classes today! I'll be around but not all the time.

Finding the hotel and coming in, Charlotte gave the lobby a brief but thorough, appraising but approving look on her way towards the reception desk. She gave the girl behind it a warm but nervous sort of smile. "Hello. Reservation for Charlotte McD--"

She cut herself off with a firm swallow, face paling in embarrassment. "Um. York. Charlotte York."

The smile got bigger.

Adah was up earlier than necessary on a Friday and limping her way into town. It, of course, wasn't her preferred method of doing this, but with the layout of her day, she realized that the morning would be the only convenient time for this. At some point, probably after his library shift, or perhaps during, she could maybe stop by on her way back, Karal would be switching Edgar over to her for custody for whatever he had occupying his time this evening, and then, well, she'd have a robotic child to take care and she'd be damned if her and that droid were going on any little outings beyond the clinic the next morning for Mama's Very Important Job.

Adah paused a moment at the door to the hotel, just enough to groan. After this assignment and after Bob had her litter, Adah was thinking she'd be quite content to never see a baby ever again. She paused for another reason, as well, though. It had been almost too clear that River had been avoiding her for...how long now? Weeks, at the very least, and her shoulders sagged a bit. In a way, perhaps it was for the best, but there were two ways that an untended fire could go. It could eventually start to lose itself, shrinking like age into nothing but ash, deprived of proper tending and oxygen and burning materials. Or it could catch on, build bigger, until it spread and demolished everything. She'd rather not take the risk at this point.

Besides, there was the whole Bob matter, so Adah went ahead and opened the door, limped across the lobby and then looked at River with an expectantly demanding question in her eyes as to whether or not she was aware of Bob's condition when she handed her over to Adah's care. Right straight to the point; they can mince on catching up after business if either of them were feeling like they wanted to bother.

River looked up, then smiled and picked up a key and offered it to the woman without a word. Then she said: "Hungry?" and gestured at the menu.

As soon as she sensed Adah approaching, River's eyes widened. She threw a glance at the approaching figure and quickly slipped under the desk.

Increasing the smile, Charlotte took the key from the girl with a nod and started to thank her immediately before the question and the gesture came out, and she blinked, head shifting in a subtle tilt. Hungry? Well, she was feeling a bit peckish from the trip and she followed the girl's wave of her head, spotting the special's board.

And blinked again. The congenial smile remained on her face, although her forehead creased with a frown, making for quite a conflicted expression. She was never one to turn down foods if they were appropriately artistic, of course, but the first sounded not only odd, but also not terribly filling or palatable, and the second...well, did they normal have it with live fish? She supposed it was comforting to know for certain that they'd be dead.

"Uh, no," Charlotte finally concluding, turning toward the girl with a nod and another smile. "Thank you. Not currently. But perhaps a bit later, when lunch rolls around..."

Take-out. For the next few weeks, she was just going to have to hope the island had a good take-out place.

Oh, come on. Adah sucked in an open-mouthed breath to try to restrain any sort of annoyance over the thought that River honestly would expect something like that to pull the wool over her eyes. Her jaw then closed; she let the breath out slowly through her nose and set her good hand on her good hip. She leaned the bad hip on the desk, staring at the space where River would have been sitting if she hadn't been trying to hide. She could wait, after all. She had all morning...

She didn't mind the childish reaction, for the most part. She'd come to expect things like that from River. What bothered her the most was that she couldn't determine whether she'd done it because she knew why Adah was here (and therefor she did know about Bob's condition) or if she'd done it because she was really trying to attempt to hide from Adah even more than she already had been.

River just smiled. "Call room service if you need anything." She pointed at the fruit bowl. "Have a fruit. Just not all of them." She lowered her voice. "There might be naked people and they upset Jeff."

River had known, of course, but the main reason why she was now under the desk was that she didn't want to talk to Adah. Well, perhaps that wasn't entirely true, but she had made a decision that she wouldn't, so hiding seemed like a goof way to make herself stick to that decision.

"Go away."

At the receptionist's suggestion, Charlotte's eyes fell to the fruitbowl with a little bit of relief. The fruit looked safe, and would be a good snack, anyway. She was on the verge of another kind thank-you to the girl, her hand reaching for a nicely yellow banana, but then the girl spoke again, and Charlotte found her hand moving almost immediately toward an apple instead with a widening of her eyes.

The appraisal she'd garnered from her first impression of the place was quickly diminishing, and she was thinking that she hoped the company she was hiring out to renovate her place on Apocalypse Avenue would do so with alacrity. She considered her apple as she weighed out whether it was polite to ask but, in the long run, she figured that it was the sort of thing she'd have to know, staying here.

"Are...naked people a....frequent occurrence here?" she tentatively asked, in a tight way that suggested that naked could be synonymous with the plague. "And who's Jeff?"

Adah quirked an eyebrow. How well did River know her, again? Did she honestly think she'd just turn around and leave by request after limping her crooked ass down here? All morning. She had all day, too, really. If Karal needed to dump Edgar on her bad enough later, well, then, he could track her down here.

"No, but Jeff isn't always logical." River was still smiling. "He's my colleague."

No, River hadn't expected it to work, but she could be stubborn too. Hence she remained under the desk in silence.

Charlotte relaxed visibly at the confirmation that she wouldn't have to deal with an occasional streaker on any given day. "I see," she answered, nodding a bit. A very interesting colleague, by the sounds of it. "Colleague for here? At the hotel?"

Biting her lower lip a little, Adah started to drum her fingers against her hip in an impatient manner, despite that she wasn't feeling impatient in the slightest. In fact, she was nearly languid as she thought, taking her time as if to fill up the time, trying to think of what would be the most annoying song she could think of to start thinking about and playing over and over and over again in her head to maybe annoy River out of her hiding to talk with her. Of course, she realized that River could probably block her out easily enough; it even crossed her mind that River might already but blocking her out, but she figured it was worth a try.

Considering the situation, Adah settled on that kindergarten classic that she could never participate in not because she wouldn't sing it, but she didn't have enough control over both hands to perform the moves that went along with it. Little bunny frou-frou, hopping through the for-rest~

She started out slowly, and started building up to Ruth May levels of driven, attention demanding insistence.

"Yes." River said, smiling. "He's from another continent and has a peculiar accent. We have a union together."

"And, which days does he work?"

Because, really, that was the important question in all of this.

River was indeed blocking Adah, but not completely. There was a small window in her mind open, just a tiny one, and through it trickled the song. "Had to argue to get to take the bunny back to you," she muttered, trying to shut that little window close.

Adah's eyes shifted toward the surface of the desk, where the voice had drifted up, muted by the surface and muffled by River herself. She kept a vague humming strain of music in her head as she asked, "And did you know about all the little baby bunnies gestating inside of her when you made those arguments?"

"Growing gift. Pregnant rabbits are more expensive." River curled up under the desk.

An eyebrow quirked; Adah was going to take that as a yes.

"Were you intending on telling me so that I could have a hand in the market of pregnant rabbits, or were you just planning on it being a surprise, like Christmas presents, and maybe I'd discover a passion for breeding?"

"A doctor would find out by herself," River muttered.

"Tuesdays," River replied. "Don't mention breasts to him."

Adah snorted. Well, she certainly had done that, hadn't she, and she wasn't even a doctor yet, just an overly ambitious clinic volunteer too eager to get her feet wet. "Sunday," Adah informed River. Or the desk. She felt the desk would probably listen more, "we find out exactly how far along she is."

She left the rest to her consciousness, as if a side note, there in her head if River was there or if she wanted it. What the hell was she going to do with a litter of baby rabbits when she could barely handle one?

"...No breasts," Charlotte intoned. "Duly noted."

She was thinking that, if she could help it, she'll be able to avoid mentioning anything, let alone breasts, to this Jeff that she spoke of. She clutched her keys in one hand, her apple in the other, and let out the breath she'd been holding. She'd best be on to her room, most likely, although there was just one thing.

"And, your name was...?"

"They will talk to you," River whispered. "Offer baby bunnies to your friends." She didn't move under the desk.

River responded to that, so Adah went ahead with imagining herself talking more to the desk now than to River, as if to prove a point, as if to make a statement against, fine, if River wanted to continue hiding, then the meeting never happened. Adah just limped down to the Arms to have a conversation with a damned receptionists desk about her suddenly blossoming family.

"Did you want one?"

"River Tam." She beamed at Charlotte. "Hope you enjoy your stay. Let me know if you want more towel animals. I have a zoo."

Charlotte returned the beam with a light smile. Towel animals was a bit more of an easing topic than naked people and breasts. In fact, they sounded downright adorable and now she was interesting to see exactly what towel animals awaited her in her bathroom. She was hoping for cute puppies. Or, ooh! Horses!

Charlotte nodded. "I'll do that. It was very nice to meet you, River."

"Berthold doesn't like rabbits." Bob's short stay in her room had proved that.

Adah sighed; she shifted her hip off from the desk, as it had started digging into it painfully and her body started dully asking her to shift her weight now or regret it for the rest of the weekend. "That sort of narrows down my options of who to give them to, then," she muttered to the desk. Bring up Berthold wasn't exactly a good move. It sent her brain to giving the rabbits to him, and then to ideas that he'd just eat them, which lead her to the octopus thing's strange diet of ice cream, and ice cream definitely lead toward something she shouldn't thinking about right now.

Her weight shifted, Adah just went quiet, with the sort of pause that made it clear that she didn't have anything else she was particularly keen on saying to the desk. A pause to see if River was going to bother at least coming out for a little bit, or, if she wished to stay hidden, leaving her there to her own devices and being on her merry, annoyed, limping way. She was irritated with this. Angry, even. She'd limped, she'd talked, what was the next step? Dancing? For someone who couldn't have even bothered to tell her that she'd be gone for a week, even if just to spare her concerned climbs up stairs. Well, at least she was here today, right? Optimism, Adah. Optimism.

It really didn't suit her in the slightest.

"Bob bit Berthold," River informed her in reply to the imaginative scenes. "Rabbits are fierce." Then she fell silent, sensing Adah's annoyance all to clearly, and struggling with her own emotions as if they were an uncontrollable heap of tentacles.

"Can't see you."

Bob bit everything; Adah figured that there's a good chance that Berthold had touched her near the hind quarters, which made her particularly touchy, for obvious reasons. Adah's probably be cranky and bitey if she were stealthily carrying around up to nine offspring, too. That was neither here nor there, though, as the there was another issue here, a bigger on, a more important one, and it left her a little conflicted. River might be right about the avoidance thing; at the same time, River was being difficult, and in realizing that, Adah realized that she was difficult of that sometimes too. Not the best comparison to think right now, but when she was difficult, the Eel persisted unless she made it specifically clear that she wanted nothing to do with him. She felt like she owed River that same sort of patience. So she stood a moment longer, eyes on the desk as if looking through it with those plastic glasses stuck on the back of adventure comic books that claimed to do what an X-Ray machine could, see through things, but only select things, like desks or clothing or walls. She left it open for River to decide if she really just wanted to leave, then she'd leave.

River's feelings were equally conflicted, but the decision had been made based on reason, based on an evaluation of long term emotional effects. "Can't see you," she whispered again.

Adah drew in a breath. Okay, then. If that was the case, then River wouldn't have to. Adah could be exceptionally good at being invisible; she'd spent her entire life doing it, and she could do it for River if that's what River wanted right now. Just so long as River knew that Adah was just as good as making herself visible again, should River change her mind. She shifted her weight again, to start her limp toward the door.

But the problem was Adah was never invisible to River. From the first time they had met, Adah had been more visible, and certainly more audible than anyone else. And that was the root of it all, of course.

River waited until Adah was out of the door until she slowly emerged from under the desk, looking miserable.

The Arms Hotel Lobby, Friday

Talk to River

Do something else

OOC

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