Room 227, Saturday Evening

[whenshewasnice]

Natalie had considered dropping by the party at Dite's earlier. Honestly, she had. For about as long as it had taken to walk right past the door, anyway. There were days where she was interested in dealing with crowds of people in small spaces, and this was not one of them. So she'd kept walking, all the way to her original destination: the Boards. She had the keys, and Jono's blessing to use them, and getting to play the piano didn't get much more private than that for her, on this island. It'd been nice. She'd even managed to work on a new song a bit. Something like that needed room to breathe. Which meant she'd needed room to breathe.

She felt better now.

And now her bedroom floor was strewn with books. She'd amassed a lot of paperbacks over her time in Fandom, enough to fill up a small box or two that she'd been keeping in her closet. She figured not all of them would be worth dragging back to Montreal. Some of them had been bought on a whim, or just for light trip reading. She figured she could take them to a second-hand shop, get some of her money back. But before that, she had to see what she actually had. So here she was, sitting on the floor and going through piles of books, examining back covers and leafing through pages, while Moxy jumped into one of the boxes, because he was a cat.

Another exciting Saturday evening in room 227.

[ooc: Open door, open post!]

Comments

[pursuedthestars]

"What an exciting Saturday night this looks like," Jim said, having come across the hall to lean in her door way. "Amazing."

[whenshewasnice]

"I don't know what you're trying to insinuate," Natalie drawled, looking up from leafing through a bad French romance novel. "Moxy is having the time of his life."

The cat was still in a box. Boxes were the best, okay.

[pursuedthestars]

"Moxy is also a vicious cat."

His back remembered Moxy very, very well.

"What are you even doing?"

[whenshewasnice]

"Moxy protects my virtue," Natalie retorted. She rested the book against one of her knees. "I'm taking inventory of the books I've bought while living here."

There were quite a few.

[pursuedthestars]

"How exciting," Jim said, raising an eyebrow and tilting his head to get a look at some of the titles. "Why?"

That was the big question in Jim's mind.

[whenshewasnice]

There was a little of everything. Classics, scifi, romance. A few titles in languages other than English, too. Not too surprising.

"Because I don't want to keep all of them when I move."

[pursuedthestars]

"Are you moving tomorrow?" Jim wondered curiously. "Or just that neurotic that you're getting that early of a start?"

[whenshewasnice]

Natalie rolled her eyes. "I don't think neuroses are necessary to do stuff early when you have the time."

[pursuedthestars]

Jim smirked at the eye rolling before coming into the room and sitting down across from her. He picked up a book at random.

"Could be doing things that are so much more fun," Jim said, thumbing through the book.

[whenshewasnice]

Natalie rolled her eyes again, putting her romance novel in the pile for books she was definitely going to give away.

"Name one." Wait, she should probably consider who she was talking to. "And it can't be sexual."

[pursuedthestars]

"That's unfair," Jim said, waving the book at her and laughing. "But, fine. Night out at a bar. Stealing a car. Joyriding. Getting into a bar fight. Skinny dipping."

[whenshewasnice]

Natalie wrinkled her nose.

"None of those sound appealing. Sorry."

Well, skinny dipping had potential, but not a lot of it.

[pursuedthestars]

"Okay, so besides this, what's a fun Saturday night for you?" Jim asked.

[whenshewasnice]

She shrugged, reaching for another book. "I like quiet nights in."

She liked doing stuff on her own at home, so sue her.

[pursuedthestars]

"See, that just doesn't sound appealing to me," Jim told her but to each his own. He took the book he'd picked up and lay down on his back, opening it up to some random page.

[whenshewasnice]

"So how come you're not out joyriding and fighting right now?" Natalie asked, watching him lay down for a few second before looking at the back cover of the book she'd picked up herself.

It felt like a logical question.

[pursuedthestars]

"Because you're a pretty good Saturday night thing too," Jim said honestly. He crossed his feet at the ankle and flipped through the pages.

[whenshewasnice]

"I can't decide whether to be flattered, or just mildly offended by your phrasing."

So she chose neither, and just weighed the book in her hand. Figuratively and literally.

[pursuedthestars]

"Why would you be offended?" Jim asked, looking over at her. "It was a compliment. I'm choosing to spend Saturday night with you."

[whenshewasnice]

"I'm a person, not a thing," she replied, but mildly. More of a semantic thing than any actual offence. "Also, do I get a say in whether you're spending Saturday night with me?"

Okay, she was maybe a little amused.

[pursuedthestars]

"Sure," he said, shrugging a shoulder. "If you want me to go, tell me so and I will."

[whenshewasnice]

"Well, you can stay. For now." Because she had to be mildly difficult, always. "As has been established, I don't have any big plans for my evening, anyway."

[pursuedthestars]

"For now?" Jim repeated, glancing over at her. "Doesn't sound very solid for me, you know. Might be a little too tentative."

[whenshewasnice]

Natalie snorted as she stretched out her legs. "I'm just not in the market for full-evening guarantees when you've barely been here ten minutes. Sorry."

[pursuedthestars]

"Eh, I can always find something else to do," Jim said, shrugging a shoulder and going back to the book he'd picked up. "Not a huge problem for me."