fandomtownies | Covent Garden Flowers; Tuesday [04/09].

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Covent Garden Flowers; Tuesday [04/09].

Astrid was sort of hoping the mood she'd found herself in yesterday would have passed by now, but, if anything, from a critical perspective, it only seemed to have gotten worse. She didn't think a whole lt about it, though: she was fifteen, it was spring, she was probably going to start her period soon, and the body did strange things when elements like that so perfectly aligned. She didn't like how it seemed to invade her every thought this time around, though, filling her sketchbook with unbidden body studies and anatomical practice.

At least it was the week before prom, so she had plenty of excuse to just throw herself into making little corsages and boutonnières, fussy work that required the attention of her hands to keep busy, while her mind tried not to point out that most of the things that drew us to flowers...color, scent, the way their petals lay...were actually designed to attract pollinators, thus a version of their own mating dance, because everything was about sex, sex, sex...

And at least she had dress shopping with Sabine later to look forward to, which in itself seemed like a sort of bizarre statement, but it would be kind of fun to just do this stupid high school thing with her.

Even if that, too, at its core, just seemed more pageantry for mating rituals, the females of the species improving upon their plummage to make themselves more appealing for pursuit...

...if she started to get irritated with her own hormones at any point, all she had to do was picture Sabine's face if she told her that, and she felt a little better.

Covent Garden is open!

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Mae liked to deal with things by running and hiding even when she wasn't feeling extra -- well. Let's just call it extra extra. So today, she wasn't just running around town, she was trying out new routes up and down buildings, leaping across previously daunting gaps. And, more often then not, missing the landing.

Which would be how she ended up trying to jump onto Covent Garden's sign, misjudging her arc, and plunging past the front window to land on her face in front of the door.

"Ow."

Astrid had been too focused on her work to have noticed the cat-faced girl flying past the front window, but it was a little harder to miss the following thunk against the front door. She looked up, blinked, pausing for a moment to listen for any more sounds like it, then frowned. She supposed she could have imagined it, but now she was kind of curious.

So she got up and moved around the counter to approach the door. Cautiously.

The last thing she needed was some gremlin-bit version of herself picking out her prom dress.

But out of all the things she was thinking could have caused that thunk, this was not one of them.

"Mae? Are you okay?"

"I'm good," Mae said, not moving to get up yet. "I do that a lot."

It was a pretty standard hazard of running around jumping on and off of buildings. And trees. And fences. And electrical wires. . . .

"Do what? Crash into doors?"

Yeah, usually, when people didn't move after saying that they were fine, it made it a little harder to believe it was true.

"Do you need help?" Astrid asked, practically already kneeling down to do just that. "What happened?"

Mae shrugged and flopped over onto her back. "Miss," she said, pointing up at the sign, then hopped to her feet, possibly narrowly missing accidentally whacking Astrid in the head. "I didn't time my hops right."

Because everyone could jump extra far if they hopped twice first, right?

And, looking up to follow Mae's point, Astrid almost missed just how close they'd actually gotten to whacking each other on the head, because she lowered her again just as Mae's was coming up and, honestly, if she'd have been an inch closer, she'd be accessorizing around a goose egg, probably.

She had to laugh a little, breathed out, finding herself vaguely attached on the concept of the closeness just then before getting back up herself, brushing off her jeans as if she'd been down there for longer than just a few seconds.

"You were trying to hop at the sign?"

Yeah, still didn't make a lot of sense, Mae, but she supposed if you were alright...

Mae nodded, unaware of the effect her proximity may or may not have had. "I was going to go from there onto those window sills," she explained, still pointing. "And then maybe that street lamp."

She wasn't trying to go anywhere in particular. She was just trying to go.

And Astrid was still following the pointing with a bit of fascination.

"Can you really do that?" she asked. Paused. Added: "Usually?"

Mae nodded and shrugged. "I've got good balance," she said.

That was a serious understatement.

"Back home I run around on the power lines and stuff all the time. It drive the local cops nuts."

And since "the local cops" basically amounted to Mae's aunt, it was all upside.

Astrid had to grin faintly at the image that put into her head, of Mae hopping around while cops chased after her, shaking their fists with one hand while the other clutched a donut.

"Can I see?"

Watching Mae jumping (hopefully) from a windowsill to a lamppost or something like that sounded much better than just going back to making flowers for everybody that would just wind up falling off their wrists or jackets and being crushed after a hour of being put on.

"Sure." Mae looked around, mentally mapping out her path -- clearly trying from the building across the street hadn't gone well, and she couldn't show off if she was just kind of flinging herself into the ground repeatedly until she got the rhythm right -- then set off.

First thing first, she hopped up onto the nearby stair railing. From there, she got a small running start -- because why not run on what amounted to a narrow, wobbly balance beam? -- and jumped onto the cooler outside the Kwik Stop. She hopped her way across that, and with a small grunt of effort, cleared more than her own height to get up onto the Covent Garden sign. She paused, waved to Astrid, then easy as pie popped up onto the window sill and to the lamp post.

"Tada!" she said, standing on top of the lamp as easily as she might stand on the street beneath it. She lifted her arms in an olympic V. "I AM THE GREATEST JUMPER IN THE WORLD!"

Well, Astrid didn't know about that, but the whole thing was pretty impressive, especially since there was no way she could do any of that herself. So the successful venture got a pleased round of applause from the audience and a laugh. "That's amazing, Mae!"

It was literally impossible for her right now to not appreciate that good balance on display and the nimbleness of Mae's body as she moved between the obstacles. But the real question was in how she got down.

...Astrid was pretty sure there was a terrible cat-stuck-in-a-tree joke there that she had enough sense ot not even go close to touching.

There absolutely would be! If Mae hadn't already demonstrated her willingness to just kind of fall flat on her ass. Or face, for that matter.

Fortunately for both of them, this time she simply . . . dropped off the lamppost, hardly seeming to have done more than just ~~hit the down button while jumping~~ twitch her feet. She landed perfectly lightly on her feet and offered Astrid a smile. "You make a very good audience."

Also, she was very nice to look at. In a way that Mae was refusing to examine too closely.

Astrid snorted a little at that, rolling her eyes a little, epsecially as she felt a blush creep over her face. And then wondered why that was making her blush. She knew she'd been in a bit of a weird mood since yesterday and she never was very good at receiving compliments, but come on. That was more conversation than compliment.

Thinking about it only seemed to make it worse.

"I try," she said. "It was pretty hard, too, standing here and watching."

By that criteria, the potted fern in the store window was a good audience, too, Mae.

Nuh-uh! Potted ferns didn't smile or clap!

Or blush. Uggghhhh, why'd you have to blush, Astrid?

Mae bounced on her toes and swung her arms back and forth and just generally moved around in an attempt to distract her body and mind from the things they kept wanting to think about and do. "It is, though," she said. "You've gotta, like. Stand. And pay attention."

Paying attention was hard, yo. Especially the last couple of days.

Unless it was paying attention to cute people blushing. Mae was suddenly very good at that.

It wasn't like she'd meant to blush! It just sort of happened!

And that potted plant probably could smile and clap, you just had to be there during a different week.

Astrid bit her lower lip a little, though, because she's always been good at paying attention, and it was a little difficult to not notice that Mae was fidgeting. Had she said or done something to make her feel awkward? Or maybe it was just Astrid being the awkward one, she was just as good at that as she was standing and watching, really.

And now she was shifting a little where she stood, looking back at the store and wondering if she should just get back to work. But she didn't exactly relish the idea of getting back to corsages when she could be talking to Mae.

Which was unexpected. Astrid almost always chose the slink away and be by yourself option.

"Sooo," she ventured, "did it take you a long time to get good at that? Like, did you have to train a lot or anything?"

"Train?" Mae looked up at the lamppost. It was a nice lamppost. It didn't make her feel things at all. "A little practice, maybe. I've always liked to run around and jump. And when I get up high . . . back home at least, not too many people could get up there and bother me. It could be, like . . . a secret club roof."

"That's kind of how I feel about down at the pool," Astrid noted and, for a moment, something else was able to push through all the haze of her hormones and give her chest a little tug of longing for something else entirely. God, she'd be back in California soon. So soon. And, God, she hoped the Richardses had a pool. "It's nice to have a place where you can just be all on your own."

Mae smiled at that. "I go up, and you go down," she said. Then: "I'd say we should totally skip class again, but I guess we don't really have many left, huh."

And, thank you so much, weird mood right now, for reigniting that blush to an uncomfortable level despite the completely innocent context of Astrid 'going down' anywhere, and she shifted a little, trying to move well past that unbidden thought.

"Just the one, really," she managed to sort of cough out. "The final. Do you know what you're doing? I was thinking maybe a comic."

Or...possibly nothing. She'd definitely considered doing nothing, because it wasn't going to matter any more anyway.

"No," Mae groaned. "I barely even know what we're supposed to be doing." There were a lot of pretty people in that class, dammit! "I'll probably just throw something terrible together at the last minute."

She'd done it before. It even worked, sometimes.

"I think Jack said we could pair up if we wanted," Astrid said, trying to think back and figure out if she remembered that right, but she'd had a hard time really focusing in class, too. "Maybe between the two of us, we can throw together something halfway decent."

"Really?" Mae brightened up. The idea of hanging out with Astrid, even if it was to work on school work, was too nice to pass up. "That'd be great! I can . . . bring snacks."

And, you know, stuff to use for the final project, too.

"Yeah?" Astrid felt a strange, unexpected rush of relief at that response, like she hadn't even realized she'd been worried that Mae might just say no, that she wasn't interested, but now that it came together and she even seemed enthusiastic about it? That just felt...good. Really good, actually, and she beamed a little, with a small laugh. "And sure, snacks are good. When do you think we should work on it? I'm stuck working the prom tickets table tomorrow for Student Council," she wrinkled her nose a little at that; it was still weird thinking she was on the Student Council, "and I work Friday, but, I mean, we're never really that busy. You could probably stop in and we can work on it there and have endless supplies and glitter at our disposal.

"There's also the zero hour right before class where we just slap something together and do our best to make it work." Which would be an event in itself, she felt, and a pretty good way to just toss a middle finger at that class in particular before she left.

"I am the queen of that hour," Mae boasted. "But I'm also totally the queen of visiting friends at work." None of her friends at home were old enough to have jobs yet. "So . . . either one. Maybe I can come keep you entertained at the prom table."

It was likely as close to going to prom as Mae was ever going to get.

"Well," said Astrid, "I'm also stuck doing it with Sidon...."

Again.

She didn't understand how that kept happening.

And she didn't know if that meant that she'd be plenty entertained already, or if she'd be grateful for the distraction, or if that just wouldn't end up meaning they'd have a project done by Mae and Astrid and Sidon.

Mae would be okay with that. She was, in fact, now picturing the three of them hanging out.

Doing . . . things.

Right, new thought process, please!

"At work, then?" she asked. "Is that here, or. . . ?"

Everyone else on this island seemed to only work one day a week, after all.

"Oh!" Astrid, who had that rare privledge of an island inhabitant with two jobs and two workdays, shook her head. "No, Friday's my Turtle & Canary day. So I guess you wouldn't even really need to bring snacks, either. I can probably swing free Squishies for us, too."

Assuming the flavors would be anything they'd even want to drink, anyway.

This was a terrible plan. Mae would totally try to steal things.

Not that she wouldn't try to steal the snacks she promised to bring otherwise.

"Good idea," Mae said. "We can get ideas from the snack food aisles!"

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Covent Garden Flowers; Tuesday [04/09].

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