fandomtownies | 4 Apolcalypse Avenue (formerly The Fourth Sin, soon-to-be the York Gallery); Tuesday Afternoon.

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4 Apolcalypse Avenue (formerly The Fourth Sin, soon-to-be the York Gallery); Tuesday Afternoon.

Up until yesterday, when the work on remodeling had ~~oh so handwavily~~ started, the building seemed to have remained relatively dormant since it's previous owners, but, now, it was getting some traffic again, in both the way of construction and the way of a really super cute pair of heels. Charlotte, kicking things into super-high gear out of guilt for not really doing much yesterday besides a bit more settling in, was moving in and out of the building, up and down to the different floor, clutching a clipboard and a folder with a bunch of other Important Papers in it, going over them to make sure everything matched up, and then making sure those matched up with other things, and then double, triple, quadruple checking it all. Of course, everything was matching up, but that didn't mean she should just rest on her loins here.

She also went and opened all the door and windows while she was here to air out the stuffy building, wondering if it was just her or what that it smell like a lot of sex in there. And it was so dark! She couldn't wait until the big front windows she had planned for the front to be installed, get some light and that nice view of the water set up and...

Occasionally, if you caught her at the right moment, you might catch Charlotte bouncing a little, before falling into another sharp strike of neurosis that she was missing some little detail.

[[ the place won't be open for business for a while now, buuuuuut there's construction and open doors if anyone wants to poke their nose in :) ]]

[[ *is squeeful* ]]

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There was, in fact, a guy with a tape measure and a level, marking off what looked to be the right spot for big front windows to materialize. Possibly with the help of a saw and a sledgehammer...

Charlotte was being mostly careful to stay out of Xander's way, but, at certain points, really, she couldn't help a great deal of looming over his shoulder on occasion and, eventually, at one point, just asking, "Everything going well?" without trying to sound, well, worried.

"I'm tempted to tell you all the measurements are wrong and there's a faultline under the building that's gonna send the whole place crashing into the ocean if I drive a nail in the wrong spot, but I can't bring myself to be that mean," Xander answered, leaning on one arm and tapping his nose with the level.

Charlotte was pretty sure her heart just stopped there.

"Oh my God!" she gasped. "There isn't, is there?"

"Nope. Place is perfect." Xander shrugged. "Structurally, anyway. You probably wouldn't want to start a church in it or anything, but it'll do for an art gallery."

Why wouldn't a church be acceptable?

Still, the mention of church brought up a more important question for Charlotte, tilting her head as she looked over the marks Xander was making. "Speaking of which," she said, "I assume there's already a church in the village, right? I haven't gotten a chance to explore the place as much as I'd like..."

"Church yeah, priest, not so much," Xander answered, grabbing a notepad to jot down his revised measurements. "Well, there is a priest, up at the school, but he's not really attached to the church."

Charlotte opened her mouth to respond to that, but then realized that she was mostly just confused. She shook her head. "I think you lost me there, Xander," she admitted.

"One of the high school kids is a priest," Xander clarified. "Of... something. But the guy who actually lives in the church is just...a guy. Kind of a weird guy, and that's saying something for this place, but not a priest."

Nathan had gone out for a jog. Noticing the construction, he slowed down to take a look.

Nose wrinkled distastefully, Charlotte was in the process of shaking her head at something she'd jotted down on her clipboard, erasing it furiously. She frowned at the rubber shavings that had wiped out the error, brushed some of them off with the back of her hand, and then went to complete the clearing of them by holding it up to blow the rest off. It was then that she noticed someone jogging by and felt a little leap of excitement to start making nice with some of her new neighbors, so to speak.

It helped that this particular neighbor was really cute.

"Hello!" she called out from where she'd been looking over the front of the building, with a wave and a friendly smile. "Hi!"

"Hi," Nathan said. He came over so they wouldn't have to shout. "I don't think we've met. Nathan Petrelli. I teach law at the school."

Oooh. Law. Charlott'e smile went up a bit in wattage.

"Charlotte," she said, offering out a hand, "Charlotte York. I just...bought this place," she gave an idle wave of her hand toward the building like it was nothing, shrugging a shoulder and smirking. "So, you know, entirely new. But it's such a nice island, and so beautiful, and it's not even fully spring yet! I can't wait to see this place in a month or so, I'll be it's just...really...nice."

It was an entirely lame ending, but she kept smiling through it.

"Pleasure to meet you," Nathan said, shaking hands. "I haven't seen the island in spring yet either. It'll be the first for the both of us. So you're behind all this chaos?"

"Oh, I don't know if I'd call it chaos," Charlotte mused with a light grin, "but I'd have to admit to being at least the creative force behind it. You're looking at the future site of my new art gallery."

That got Nathan's attention. "Oh? What kind?"

"Well, that really depends on what sort of exhibits I can get in," Charlotte explained with a shrug, shifting her clipboard so that she held it low, in front of her, with both hands, "but I hope to get a good string of different, intriguing...thought provoking shows, rotate them every so often so that there's always something new. That sort of thing. I'm not an artist myself, not really, but I was a director at a gallery in New York for a while, and I just love it."

"No kidding," Nathan said. "I'm from New York. Upper East Side."

"No kidding?" Charlotte commented with enthusiasm. "Me, too! Well, I mean, I'm not native, or anything, but, really, past a certain point, you may as well be, you know? Are...you?" Her head tilted with the utmost interest. A hand abandoned the clipboard to brush her hair behind her ear. "Born and raised there and everything?"

"Born and raised there and everything," Nathan said. "I've done some travel for school and the Navy, but the city's home. You know how it is."

Navy?

Charlotte might as well have been Pavlov's purebred Yorkshire Terrier and someone was ringing a bell.

"Oh, definitely." Charlotte's head bobbed in a nod, smile plastered on her face, in complete negation of the fact that she couldn't help realize that, well, both of them were standing here. And she didn't see herself returning to the city again without an even bigger block of failure on her shoulders than the one there when she left.

"So! Law, huh?"

Subject change!

"Family business," Nathan said since, unlike certain Petrellis, he wasn't ashamed of his father. "I worked for the DA back home. My kid brother goes here, so I'm mainly here to keep an eye on him."

"One of my best friends back home is a lawyer," Charlotte said. "Miranda Hobbs? Oh, well, anyway," she waved her hand dismissively; there were so many people in New York that it wouldn't surprising if they'd worked the same courtroom and never even realized it. "She's a real spitfire. Is that the main reason you came all the way out here, then? Just to keep an eye on your brother?"

"Pretty much," Nathan said. He said this easily, because making a party line sound natural was one of his talents. "Our dad passed away and Pete took it pretty hard. Teenage years are hard enough. He shouldn't have to worry about going through them away from his family."

Charlotte winced; that reason was a bit...off from the images of delinquency that she'd jumped to first, and now she was feeling rather embarrassed about it. "Oh, I'm sorry," she said, frowning now, mostly with her forehead. "For the loss, I mean..."

"Thank you," Nathan said. "What about you? Do you have family?"

"Oh, well," Charlotte shrugged. "My parents in Connecticut; I have a younger brother, too. Wesley. He's..." Wont to sleep with my friends. Charlotte shook her head. "Well, you have a little brother, too, like you said..."

Although she certainly hoped Nathan had never run into that particular problem. And besides, it was a hard time for Wesley! Recently divorced, and she could certainly sympathize with that now.

"Kind of a pain in the neck?" Nathan suggested, but with an affectionate grin.

"That's one way of saying it," Charlotte said with a light laugh. "But, you know, family is very important. Well," she shook her head, rolling her eyes at herself, "of course you know, that's why you're here, right?"

"Absolutely," Nathan said. "They couldn't drive us up a wall if they didn't mean so much."

"I...couldn't agree more." Charlotte's head bobbed again, her cheeks starting to feel a little strained from all the smiling, but she really couldn't help the stars in her eyes right now. Or the ensuing gushing that followed. "And I must say, that is...really, really admirable, being there for your brother like that. I mean, these days, the ideal of family is just going further and further down the drain, and it is so nice to see someone," a cute someone, a D.A., Navy someone, "really stand for it, you know?"

"At my job back home I could really see what it was like when kids didn't have a good, strong family connection," Nathan said. "It helped me appreciate how Peter and I were raised."

Nathan glanced around at all the work being done. "This must be keeping you very busy."

"Oh, this?" Charlotte gave an idle, blind glance toward the building and wrinkled her nose in a disregarding fashion with the shake of her head. "Naw, not too busy. It might next week when it starts to get to be crunch time in getting everything going, but, right now, there's so much remodeling and construction to be done, and that's all in the hands of Xander. Have you met Xander? I've contracted him and his little business for all of the remodeling work."

"I'm renting my apartment from him," Nathan said. He gave her a friendly smile. "So you might be free for dinner this week?"

"Dinner?" Well, now, that was certainly a...pleasant little surprise shift in the conversation! Charlotte knew she was probably grinning like an idiot, but she couldn't help it. This was just about enough to make up for her depressing conversation with Mary last weekend. And it was just about soon enough after that conversation to start unwittingly laying little neurotic, paranoid eggs in the back of Charlotte's brain about the whole thing seeming too perfect, to be hatched later. "S..sure! I mean, yes, I think...I think I might be able to pencil that into my schedule, sure."

"How about tomorrow?" Nathan asked.

"Tomorrow?" Cue the immediate internal flailing around in Charlotte's head over not having anything to wear, soon to be followed by a night of no sleeping to the tune of wondering if it would be salacious to start dating again so soon, hidden behind Charlotte's wide eyes that couldn't quite see past the fact that a total, perfect dreamboat just asked her to dinner presently. "Yeah. Tomorrow...tomorrow's good. Perfect, in fact. Absolutely no plans whatsoever for tomorrow."

She'd barely been in town long enough to make plans, for crying out loud.

"Great," Nathan said. "Chinese okay?"

"Yeah, Chinese sounds...great," Charlotte said, head bobbing along.

"I'll ~~set up a post~~ meet you at Ching Tai? 7?" Nathan suggested.

"Sure!"

Charlotte would have to find out where Ching Tai was. First order of business once Nathan continued jogging on his merry little way.

"That sounds great!"

"I look forward to it." Nathan stepped back so he could resume jogging ~~on his merry little way~~. "Pleasure meeting you, Charlotte."

Charlotte fell back a bit with a happy sort of sigh before she picked up on the fact that he was offering a farewell. "Oh! Nice meeting you, too, Nathan!" She waved. "I guess...I guess I'll see you tomorrow!"

"See you tomorrow," Nathan promised, and off he went.

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4 Apolcalypse Avenue (formerly The Fourth Sin, soon-to-be the York Gallery); Tuesday Afternoon.

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