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]

"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."

[whenshewasnice]

"It was potentially two tentative just seconds ago." She put her book in the 'maybe' pile. "You're so fickle, Kirk."

[pursuedthestars]

"Your plans were too tentative," Jim clarified without looking at her. "And if you turned out to want me gone, I meant I could find something else to do. Pay attention, Adams."

[whenshewasnice]

"I am." She picked up another book. "Sometimes speech is ambiguous."

[pursuedthestars]

"Mmm." Jim let that serve as his answer and was otherwise quiet for the moment. The book wasn't interesting or anything but he didn't have anything to say immediately.

[whenshewasnice]

Natalie watched him for a moment, interrupted only by Moxy knocking over the box that he was in... only to climn into the other one. Silly cat.

"At the roller rink, you told me you like the sex and the conversations, and other things," she said without preamble after another stretch of silence. "Are you ever going to tell me what the other things are?"

[pursuedthestars]

"Probably not," Jim said, still reading the book though he wasn't processing anything. "I prefer to let some things remain mysterious."

And he risked letting himself be a little too open if he did go into other things.

[whenshewasnice]

"Well, that's your right," Natalie replied, shrugging. She picked up a couple of books. Wasn't something she felt like pushing. "It's not like we're friends."

[pursuedthestars]

"We're not?" Well, he'd been thinking they were...something close to friends, at least. "What are we, then?"

[whenshewasnice]

Natalie shrugged again.

"I don't know, I don't like labels."

[pursuedthestars]

"Uh huh."

Jim was maybe wondering if she just didn't know how to label him and was using that excuse as a cop out. But, he didn't say that.

"Well, whatever." He could do casual nonchalance just like her.

[whenshewasnice]

Part of her dislike of labels was due to how hard it was to find ones that fit, anyway. So had he said that... She would've just shrugged and said maybe.

But the point was moot.

"Did you think we were friends?"

She was fully expecting something about how it didn't matter.

[pursuedthestars]

"I thought we'd maybe gotten close enough for that, yeah," Jim replied breezily. "Not best friends or anything but there's different types of friends anyway. But, you don't think so and that's fine. Got plenty of other friends."

[whenshewasnice]

"I just don't feel our... thing is emotionally straightforward enough for that."

Because she thought they'd gotten pretty close, yeah. Lots of trust and all that. They just didn't share a whole lot, or they did it selectively, and she knew that was mostly by choice but still.

She didn't like slapping a label on it.

"Maybe my concept of a friends is narrow. But a name doesn't change what we are, anyway."

[pursuedthestars]

"Didn't need to explain it to me, Natalie," Jim told her, shaking his head. "I'm not dumb and I get how you are."

He fully expected her to come at him with 'you don't know me' claims but he was just as observant as she was.

"It's fine. I'm not bothered."

[whenshewasnice]

He did get how she was, though. Otherwise there would have been a lot of things she wouldn't have bothered with anymore when it came to him. He still didn't know her, but that was irrelevant for now.

"I was just making a point about semantic preference not meaning I don't think we're close."

Which was like admitting they were.

[pursuedthestars]

"And you didn't really have to," Jim told her, glancing over at her. "It's just a word. Doesn't take away from anything."

[whenshewasnice]

Natalie returned his glance with a ghost of a lopsided smile. "Exactly what I said."

[pursuedthestars]

"Indeed you did," Jim said, going back to his book and tucking an arm under his head. The book wasn't that interesting but it was keeping his attention well enough, he supposed.

[whenshewasnice]

Natalie made a quiet amused sound. Then she bent her legs so she could move to kneel, and gather up some of the books from the floor.

Some of them were obvious keepers.

[pursuedthestars]

"All done with you exciting book organization?" Jim asked her, eyes still on the book. "What's next, sifting through your clothes?"

[whenshewasnice]

Natalie didn't look up from her task at hand, either. "Already did that three weeks ago."

So there.

[pursuedthestars]

"You are so disappointing."

He didn't really mean that.

"Think I'm gonna have to go soon so I don't fall asleep."