Blackstone Foundry and Forge; Tuesday [01/02].

[special_rabbit]

Well, the last week and change had definitely been an interesting one, what with that whole trip to London with Irene that left Amaya teetering on the edge of actually thinking about what all that really might mean. Thinking about things like that wasn't really something she was ever too keen on actually doing, but with this? She couldn't really help herself. And usually, she could lean comfortably back on the claim that she didn't know what to make of it, but, with this? She actually knew exactly what she was thinking....and that was the problem.

But in the effort to not be thinking exactly what she was thinking too much, she was looking forward to spending some time in the shop that day to just sort of get things a little cleaned up and organized for the new year, before she really started diving into lesson plans or new projects or great additions to the Crumbler. 'Twas that time of year, after all, and a good way to sort of get things back into focus again.

The Forge is open!

Comments

[begmetwice]

Late morning brought Irene, who was prepared and planning to act as though that whole trip to London had been little more than a sightseeing tour, and not -- you know, a bit of soul-baring. Just a little.

It helped, of course, that Amaya hadn't thrown that bit of bared soul in a bin or anything, and this metaphor could use some work, but anyway -- Irene was fine. Totally fine! More solidly sunk in her feelings for this woman than ever, and twinging with nostalgia every second, sure, but fine.

"Morning, 'Maya," she called, as though purposely trying to inject routine into it. (Because she was.) She swanned in, maybe a touch performatively, with a pair of drinks and a little packet containing at least one cookie. "Right back to it, hm?"

Obviously. It was more just something to say.

[special_rabbit]

"Well," said Amaya, as she set down a clunking, clattering box of little pieces of metal collected over the past year heavily onto a worktable and took a moment to wipe a little sweat from her brow with the back of her forearm, "time is money, and you know I hate to waste either of them."

She took a moment, to look over some of the progress she'd made around the shop, both to mark where to pick up later, and, maybe, just a little, to delay when her gaze landed on Irene.

"Irene," she said, with the usual staunch nod. Nevermind the small blink that preceded it this time.

[begmetwice]

"Hi," Irene replied softly, a little disarmed in spite of herself, and offered out a smile gentler than she might have intended.

Goddamn it.

"Need any help?" she continued, maybe a little fumbly in the name of finding that blink distracting and interesting and different. "I'm due for a manicure tomorrow anyway, might as well mess up my hands a bit."

It would remain a mystery whether Irene already had that appointment booked, or whether she just would reverse-engineer that statement into truth.

[special_rabbit]

Now a smile like that was hardly fair, and since it threatened to undo almost everything that blink had been trying to accomplished, and so there might have been a small bit of staring as if to make up for it.

"Erm," Amaya finally said, eloquently, and blinked again and sent her attention immediately skittering toward the box she'd lugged up and nudged it forward, "well, I was just about to go through these scraps and see what might be salvagable for other things or what needs to just be melted down for other uses, but if we're on the cusp of a fresh manicure,I feel I ought to come up with something a bit more involved to really make it worth it."

Funny thing was, she couldn't really think of anything, at the moment. Thinking about work felt like a challenge all of a sudden.

[begmetwice]

"It's worth it anyway," Irene replied, and oh no, sincerity had decided to attend this party? Who the fuck invited sincerity? The staring might have had something to do with it. And the fact that Irene was fairly transparently referring to the act of spending time in here, with Amaya, rather than any particular task at hand -- though she did move over a bit to look at the box in question, reaching out to idly start poking through it.

But then, it was always a bit hard to come back from a holiday to normal life, right? That was all Irene was going to attribute this to, of course! Just -- post-Christmas shake-offs, that's all.

"You're not terribly backed up with orders after being stolen off for a week?" she added, attention fixed on the box save for a quick glance and smile shot Amaya's way.

[special_rabbit]

Difficult to get back from any trip, really, holiday and little personal revelations and new perspectives and foreign, previously unheard of thoughts and things to google notwithstanding!

Lightly, Amaya shook her head, which then tilted a little with a curiosity to see if any of the scraps in particular might garner any interest or attention from Irene, mostly watching that poking hand at first before chancing a glance up to meet hers. "Squared them all away before we left," she said, "and nothing really trickling in from the online orders post-Christmas, but I'm hoping, now that the new year's started and we're going into a new semester...Always hoping we get a few new sword users trickling in, but the pickings always seem a little slimmer each year. Can't really complain too much, though, I really had a banner holiday this year."

Almost entirely thanks to Liliana, really, so, zards, was Amaya feeling particularly proud of herself for her choice in Halloween costume this year!

[begmetwice]

You know who could probably provide even clearer answers than Google?

And like, examples to go with?

"Me too," Irene commented, glancing up as she sifted through the scraps and lightly played with a bit of something that might have been part of a hinge, once? And if you thought she wasn't referring to her sales, actually -- good work, there. She was not, and her little smile spoke, rather unsubtly, to that bit of syntactic trickery. "And you know, in the absence of sword users, you might find a slew of new kiddies who've never seen a sword up close, and they're likely good for business and class both, right? I usually end up with the opposite case -- people need a few weeks to settle in before they're savvy enough on squirrels and brave enough to cross my threshold, even if they're curious."

[special_rabbit]

Look, Amaya just didn't want to go in completely unresearched! She liked when she managed to sound smartto Irene, she wanted her questions to be smart!

She was, perhaps, not quite smart enough, in some ways, to have assumed Irene meant anything but sales, though, even as she gave a nod of approval, there was a slight little tickle at the back of her brain that maybe, just maybe, there was something a bit more to it, especially with that wonderful little smile that just sent Amaya spiraling back through all those things she'd been trying not to think about too much.

And, clearly, because of those things, she would think there'd been more to what Irene meant. Because of those things, there was a part of her that would have wanted there to have been, and an uncertain smile of her own answered back.

(Ridiculous, really, all these things getting all stirred up because of...what? Some holiday trip to London? Big whoop....)

"Plus," she threw in, "you've always got pollen week, that probably provides a nice little bump, right?"

Probably even more, too, Amaya, if someone didn't go and claim up so much of her time...

[begmetwice]

What was the point of being fabulously wealthy if you couldn't flat-out ignore your small business during your busiest week of the year in favor of spending all your time having as much sex as you possibly could with your actual favorite human being? Honestly, now.

And for all that Amaya might like sounding smart, Irene absolutely treasured how curious she was, naturally. She'd had more than enough smart-sounding people in her life who had been ultimately full of little more than hot air; Amaya's questions were always so well thought-out. They had intent and intelligence and a desire to learn behind them.

So, you know. Research away.

"If the calendar plays nice this year, I might get Valentine's without overlap, too," Irene noted, that same little smile still playing about her lips. Sales, yes, of course -- but what a novel idea, indulging herself both with the thought of spending a week of pollen-induced frenzy with Amaya (and...you know, maybe a friend or two, depending, as that had been so nice last year) and the tempting allure of a holiday devoted to celebrating...well. An occasion to give evocative plants, at least, and maybe attempt to monopolize a few hours of precious potential-smithing time. "People also just tend to cozy up more in the winter. Beds are colder, you know. I know I like to, anyway."

And that look she was giving Amaya, now, coupled with her little smile -- there was little room to mistake that for anything but an invitation for future cuddling, even if Irene knew better than to vocalize it as such.

[special_rabbit]

"Sounds to me," said Amaya, "that those people could also just invest in more firewood or a more efficient central heating system..."

Though Amaya herself was seemingly having no problem with the keeping warm issue at the moment, the way her cheeks were red in a way that, contrary to what she might claim, had nothing to do with the heat of the forge itself. Was it really any surprise that someone like Irene could manage to convince even someone like Amaya that maybe a touch of cuddling every so often wasn't really so bad.

It helped, too, that she could always just justify it as a means to an end, really.

"But to each their own, I suppose."

[begmetwice]

"I would actually argue that's far less efficient than just body heat," Irene countered lightly, flicking a brow up as she warmed (ha) to the argument. "Now you're going through wood or electricity or kerosene, when all you really needed was...a friend."

And now she looked up, deliberately, from the bit of metal she'd been idly fiddling with (this one looked like it might have started life Allen-wrench-adjacent?)

"I mean, look at you. You look warm now," Irene noted with a slight widening of that same, almost private smile, and that piece of L-shaped metal was being set aside in favor of reaching that hand out to -- boldly, one might note, here in the forge, unafraid of being rebuked -- gently touch Amaya's flushing cheek with her fingertips.

[special_rabbit]

"Well, it's the forge," Amaya countered, although for the very indisputable nature of that fact, she sounded almost a little uncertain about it. Her brows under those bangs were slightly furrowed over the fact that she didn't really want to pull away from that reaching hand, even as she knew those cheeks were only getting more and more heated by the second, as she found her head going through a couple flip-flops in putting together a good excuse to maybe close up shop early today...

The best she seemed to manage was a shrug.

"It's always warm in here."

A pause.

"Good, efficient fire'll do that."

[begmetwice]

"I don't think it's got much to do with the fire," Irene commented quietly, her thumb tracing a soft path along Amaya's jaw. "You were fine when I came in, love."

Irene might have called everyone that, but sometimes she meant it more than others.

"And I don't think you're sick," she teased, shifting closer -- oh no -- to gently brush Amaya's bangs aside so she could make a cute little show of feeling her forehead, too.

Mostly she was just kind of reveling in touching. That was still sort of...new, feeling like she could casually touch without making a production of it -- even if old habits also still found her pathways to the flimsiest excuses she could muster, like the play-acting about a potential fever.

[special_rabbit]

Not even a year ago, this would have been a perfect opportunity for Amaya to have suddenly claimed to have been coming down with a cold, actually. It was flu season, after all, and, oh, look, there she was, doing her best to muster up a terribly worrisome cough...

But there she was now, with nary even a tickle in the back of her throat. Just a lump, and one that she barely noticed, what for the way she was mostly just watching Irene's face as she moved closer, and for that flutter in her chest that just seemed to have been getting strong and stronger of these past few months in particular.

Her tongue moved a little confirm that her mouth seemed to have gone dry enough to probably make a good claim for illness, but what she said, instead, was simply, "Must be something else, then, I guess."

[begmetwice]

"I know it is."

And wrapped up in just those four words was a whole lot that wasn't being said. That the blushing was okay, and that while Irene loved it, she also knew that it might be a bit annoying to have a tell splashed all over her face.

But Irene, who prided herself on not having tells, had purposely gone ahead and shown her whole hand to this woman instead, and that had been okay, too. (Maybe not her whole hand. There were still some things for the next truth day to shake out of her, of course.)

In any case, you know what was even better than admiring Amaya's sweet blush, or pretending it was just due to the fire? Giving her even more to blush about, and thus Irene was leaning in for a kiss, that hand of hers drifting back down with the lightest touch along Amaya's jaw.

[special_rabbit]

If it seemed like Amaya was incredibly quick with meeting Irene in that kiss, well, it was because she, herself, had been teetering there at the edge of one, with her last words, but she'd held herself back. Not out of cowardice, of course (okay, maybe a little out of cowardice), but only just to see...to find out, if, in all the jumble of all the new and unfamiliar territory her mind had been trying to hammer some sort of sense out of, that a kiss, after words like those and after looking at Irene like that, would be the next logical conclusion.

And if her line of thinking with that had been correct, then, maybe, just maybe, everything else that had been going on in there actually wasn't...too far off, either.

So when Irene did kiss her, Amaya was already prepared, was already thinking, of kissing her back, and it felt like a circuit being complete, and just as electric, and she moved in to wrap an arm around Irene to pull her in and close whatever distance might be left between them.

And, ugh, this mushy stuff really was terrible, wasn't it? But, somehow, Amaya really found herself not minding it too much at all.

[begmetwice]

The thing about the mushy stuff was that with the right person, it maybe didn't feel all that mushy. It felt like finding new ways to say the things your mind screamed but you weren't sure about saying out loud, and like every touch and kiss and moment felt loaded with the weight of those feelings. And while Irene knew she could absolutely drown in that, that she was downright prone to obsession and allowing herself to suffocate -- none of that seemed like the case with Amaya. It didn't feel dangerous, or scary.

It just kind of felt right, these days.

Her arms slid up around Amaya's neck as Irene hummed, pleased at how quickly they'd come together, and she pressed closer against her.

Perfect time for someone to come in and need a horseshoe put on or something, right?

[special_rabbit]

Did anyone even have a horse around here, these days? As far as Amaya knew, the only noble steed on the island didn't even need shoes!

It was a good thing this was all in the narrative, lest Amaya start getting distracted with little tiny giant capybara horse shoes...But she was very clearly not distracted at that moment, all of her focus poured into Irene and that kiss and the feelings that came with it, of release, of relief, of a weight off her chest and the woman in her arms.

She still wasn't entirely sure what to do with all of that, yet, but...she felt she was....maybe starting to get there. And it helped that she at least knew, without a doubt, what to do with some of it.

"Are..." she started, as she pulled away a little, arm still holding Irene flush against her as she blinked a little at her, "are you...busy? Right now? Errand to run, or...or anything like that?"

[begmetwice]

Well, there was the weekend when everyone turned into horses -- ponies, technically -- but they hadn't had one of those in a long while.

"Nuh uh." Irene might have managed something a little more eloquent, was her lipstick not so thoroughly mussed and her own cheeks, now, so very flushed. She was, perhaps, a bit preoccupied. "All yours."

Preoccupied enough to not even worry about saying something so casually and flippantly true.