2020-03-13: Relationships Are Hard...

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  • Log: Relationships Are Hard...
  • Cast: Lunata Croze, Loren Voss
  • Where: Meria City - Castle Square
  • Date: March 13, 2020
  • Summary: Lunata and Loren end up venting about their respective relationship woes.

<Pose Tracker> Lunata Croze has posed.

    Lunata went on another Dig when she wanted to Date.

    It keeps happening. How does it keep happening!? What does this mean?! And in a sense, does this mean that all of those Digs she's done prior to them getting together were suggestions she was too dense to pick up on?! (No, Lunata, you're definitely thinking too much about this.)

    But it does mean that she's at an open-air cafe terrace in Meria Boule with her face down right now, having, ironically, a cup of coffee.

    "Capel Coffa..." she grumbles.

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    In the abstract, Loren knows how dating works. He's done the research -- even Etrenank (especially Etrenank) has advice columns and how-to guides on the more subtle arts and even people who will help you meet your perfect genetic match -- and he's been as thorough as he could reasonably be about it, all considering.

    But...

    In the concrete it's a whole different matter. Yes, he's been fine with just talking -- being around them. But isn't a real date supposed to be...

    ...more than just that? But what? The examples he's read about just won't work even in a million years!
    Not with someone like Anaitis.
    ...Just what is he supposed to do now?!

    He's on leave today, which has led him to go further afield in search of some kind of answer, because the clock is ticking.

    And this is when he just so happens to spot Lunata.
    When he remembers what she'd said the last time they'd crossed paths.

    "..."

    Maybe. Maybe.
    Maybe she has some kind of idea of how to make this dating business make sense!

    "Croze!" he calls out, a haunted look in his eyes as he approaches where she's slumped over at a table at the cafe. "Listen, I need to talk to you--"

    ...He hopes that's Lunata, anyway, or this is going to outright kill him from shame.
    It's already pretty embarassing. But he's desperate.

<Pose Tracker> Lunata Croze has posed.

    Lunata lifts her head up with wide eyes as she's actually called out, and as Loren blurts out that he needs to talk to her--

    --she takes initiative and exclaims, "Do you want to go to Capel Coffa with me??" while pointing to it.

    ...

    ...

    ...

    what??

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    He stops dead at that question for a good ten seconds, the silent interrogation of what it means evident from his expression.

    Then that same expression turns by degrees into something far more baffled. Slowly, Loren lifts a finger, his lips parting in some silent question.

    Then, finally:

    "...What? What's that supposed to mean?"

    Why is she talking about some Elw ruin? ...How does she know about some Elw ruin?
� Logging to file "C:\Electra\Logs\2020\loren_awkward_is_as_awkward_does.txt" started

<Pose Tracker> Lunata Croze has posed.

    Lunata scowls as she exclaims, "Right?" as the rhetorical nature of the question makes itself known. She takes a kind of stressed-out sip from her cup and puts it down on the saucer again.

    "I asked her if she'd like to go for a cup of coffee, and we wound up sailing to an Elw ruin!"

    Her head thunks to the table again.

    "How does something like that happen!"

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    Loren considers this for a moment.

    Then:

    "Capel Coffa. Cup of coffee. ...Are you kidding me," he gripes aloud, eyeing her still. "That's the dumbest -- look, she probably misheard you."

    There's a long pause.

    A very very long pause.

    "So... does asking someone to have a cup of coffee together work?"

<Pose Tracker> Lunata Croze has posed.

    "NO! It didn't!" Lunata whines, looking on with despair where her forehead has miraculously acquired a band-aid since she thunked it down on the table.

    A pause.

    "Unless you want to go explore an Elw ruin together-- look, Thomas, I got a question for you."

    A scowl, then:

    "Is it the norm for dating people to go on digs?? Because almost every couple I know does that!"

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    His reaction is immediate:

    "How should I know? I haven't been on a--"

    And this is where he stops for a long, long moment. Looks at her.

    Then pulls out the other chair and collapses into it heavily, burying his face in his hands. Aaaaaauggh.

    "I don't even know what I'm doing anymore," he confesses.

    Well, technically speaking, he never did.

<Pose Tracker> Lunata Croze has posed.

    And Lunata winds up staring at him for a long time, before she suddenly catches a bit of recognition and--

    --reaches out and pats him on the shoulder.

    "... got someone on your mind? I've, uh-- I mean, I've been at that place all my life, basically," Lunata murmurs.

    A pause.

    "Coffee?" Second pause. "The real kind, not the Elw Ruin kind."

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    This time around, Loren accepts that commiserating pat on the shoulder instead of shrinking away from it.

    "Yeah," he admits, placing his hands palms-down on the table. "A real piece of work." He pauses. "I mean, they're... amazing, really. But also really, really..." He gestures, vaguely.

    Then decides, apparently, to just out and say it: "...really dense."

    Which is a kinder way of phrasing 'I can't tell if they were raised weird or what'.

    Who knows what Second Class citizens do these days. Not him!

    'Coffee?' Lunata asks.

    "Yeah. ...Please."

    Because sometimes you're just at the point where being halfway decent is the only appropriate step.

<Pose Tracker> Lunata Croze has posed.

    Lunata, on some congenial level, can sense that a situation is dire when Loren isn't rejecting a pat on the shoulder. Normally he would recoil like a cat or something!

    He explains that he's attracted to someone really, really dense.

    "... ... I uh--"

    Lunata glances aside. "I kinda get you. I mean... the same thing happened to me."

    A pause. "I got through to her, though."

    She pours him a coffee, from a second cup.

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    He's not too keen on letting most of his own people touch him unless necessary, to say nothing of someone like Lunata. But needs must, as they say--

    Hence the situation here and now, as he sits before Lunata and admits that he has a bit of a problem on the relationship front.

    "I asked them out," he says, his gaze a bit distant.

    "...I think."

    He's... pretty sure that Anaitis understood what that meant.

    "But now I don't really..."

    He trails off once she pours the coffee, picking it up to down a mouthful (to his slight but not total regret due to the heat).

    "...But yeah. Yeah, they're dense. And weird. I don't even know if they really get what I want."

    Or maybe they do, and this is their way of letting him down easy? Or-- because of the difference in their class...

    He picks up the coffee cup and takes another drink, not even caring right now if it is hot.

<Pose Tracker> Lunata Croze has posed.

    "It's--" Lunata pauses, swallowing a lump in her throat, glancing down towards her cup of coffee. "Look, I was exactly there at that point like two weeks ago. I was like 'do you want to go out', and I paused and had to double back and go, like, 'romantically, as in, dating, being a couple' because I knew I had to completely explain what I mean or she would totally miss it."

    She twiddles her thumbs.

    "... and now we're going out Digging everywhere!!"

    A slump, as she remarks, "If you get past this hurdle, make sure you specify what kind of Dates you want."

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    Loren reflects back a moment on what Anat had said, then.

    'When two people hold hands...', if not in so many words, of course.

    "I... think they understand. I explained it."

    A very long pause follows. He considers Anaitis.

    "...Maybe, anyway," he amends.

    "...Possibly," he adds, thinking again about Anaitis, very specifically.

    ...He should check. And then--

    Ask... Anaitis out for a cup of coffee?
    Ideally, not for a Capel Coffa.

    "Y-yeah," he sighs.

    Though truth be told, what kind of dates does he want? ...Maybe, if they went somewhere with a decent view of the sky. And, maybe if he didn't have some kind of fit again this time. --Of course that means they'd be somewhere alone together in the dark and...

    Well. Okay. Maybe he does have some idea about what he wants. But it's the finding out if that's what Anaitis wants that might be the trickier part. What was it that Lan had said? Thinking about what someone else wants...

    "...Is this the sugar," he asks, reaching out for something that looks suspiciously like the salt shaker instead.

<Pose Tracker> Lunata Croze has posed.

    "That--'s salt," Lunata kind of stretch-hitches her syllable for a moment as she holds up the other jar instead. A raised eyebrow. "You never had salt and sugar on the same table before? Sugar's hard to shake, so they have these jars you can open instead..."

    A pause, as Loren says they probably understand.

    "So... what's the issue? I mean, you shouldn't assume they didn't get you, if you explained things and were clear about it, right...?"

    A longer pause.

    "Which... actually is advice I should be taking too. I should tell her I want to go on dates that don't involve fighting for my life."

    A loud exhale. "That ruin sucked. It was kinda gorgeous for a date spot, but it was just the same Elw gibberish in the end."

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    "No?" he voices, hesitantly. Though, come to think of it, there had been that time when he'd ended up with that weirdly sweet fish in Adelhyde, despite salting it--
    Oh, a part of him realizes, an ancient mystery solved.

    "I don't cook," he adds, as if to explain it away easily enough.
    Sure, it's true, but.

    (Back home in Etrenank if it wasn't ready-to-eat in some form or another it was made by the housekeeper.)

    "Well... I kind of..."

    He was clear about the 'I like you' part, but not really clear about what he wanted to do, it occurs to him, as he layers what may be an inappropriate amount of sugar into the coffee.

    "...I don't think they understand dating," he finishes, taking a sip of something that is perhaps a minor blasphemy against God, in coffee form.

    Though his attention on her grows that much keener when she complains aloud about the ruin she'd been in. "Elw gibberish? What, did you find some..." He pauses here, trying to think of an example that is not hideously specific (e.g. a defiled painting). "Some... thing?"

<Pose Tracker> Lunata Croze has posed.

    Lunata doesn't seem to look on with aghast as Loren heaps the sugar and drinks from it. Maybe she's just open and casual about what kind of coffee people like. Or maybe she's Silently Judging-- okay no, Lunie isn't really capable of something like that.

    "Not even a something, it was just a recording that was like 'we screwed up! bye! do whatever you want with this dead world we screwed up.' Real helpful," Lunata gripes. "Honestly! The Elw were so much cooler and mysterious when they were just peeps in dime store novels. The more I find out, the more... well."

    She scratches her head. "I guess the more like anyone else they seem, which's closer to the truth."

    A waggle of her finger. "Which applies to you too. If they don't get dating, isn't that an opportunity to learn slowly, together?"

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    "Just a recording, huh..."

    He thinks back to the painting he'd seen, the one with the message scrawled across it in red ink. Paint?
    The lab might be able to work out how old it was. Might. Assuming there hadn't been contamination.

    They weren't the first ones in there in the last few however-many, and who knows who's been through since. The site wasn't pristine, even if this was the first they had heard of it, and that... bugs him more than he'd like to admit.

    But more pressingly, there is his romantic life.

    The message on people being people wherever and whenever they were is a lesson that, sadly, goes right over Loren's head now.

    But perhaps it's a good thing that the other lesson from Lunata--

    "Uh?"

    --is not so easily passed on by.

    He sets down the coffee cup. "Yeah... yeah, I guess that's true." He doesn't know what he's doing -- and, and, maybe Anaitis is going through something similar?
    (probably not)

    "I'll have to think about it," he hedges, stalling a little, just for now.

    Even if this will turn out poorly -- in the end, it will, because of the nature of social hierarchy in their society -- he still doesn't want to let it slip from him that easily.

<Pose Tracker> Lunata Croze has posed.

    "Y'know..."

    Lunata is stirring her coffee a little, not to mix sugar in but to stir up residue that's fallen to the bottom, it seems. "There was a me that was worried about things like how slow we were taking it. We're childhood friends and we didn't really figure it out enough to start dating until after, y'know, I died and even then it took a while."

    She scratches her cheek.

    "But I think it's kind of useless to compare how your relationship's going to others. Even if you take forever and misunderstand everything along the way..."

    She sips.

    "So long as you get there and you're both having a good time together... I dunno. I think that fits where I am, at least. Even if there's a lot of Digs."

    She's really sore on that Dig point, huh.

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    She says she had been worried about the speed of her relationship. About how slow was too slow-- about her realization.

    That it's okay if it's a journey that takes forever, as long as you do it together.

    But I don't have forever. I don't have much time left before I have to--

    He stops, actually hesitating there for a moment, coffee cup in hand. He can remember that much, but...
    He can't remember what it was that was why he didn't have time.
    Or what he was going to do.

    He sets down the cup and shakes his head, more to rouse himself from that state of realizing the gaps than disagreement with Lunata's statement. "...Yeah. Yeah. Maybe?" he hazards, more in a move to get away from that 'gap' moment than really agree completely with Lunata's sentiment.

    He's silent a moment.

    "They're really... dense, though."

    It seems he has his own hangups, too...

<Pose Tracker> Lunata Croze has posed.

    "As... as long as you do something. Even if it's just a little. Pushing it forward a little," Lunata starts nattering on just a little bit.

    She looks towards Loren again. "I mean, I spent months freaking out about how I'm never going to change or get older while Lunie and Jay are... y'know. And that got me freaking out even more. Imagine if I sat on it so long Jay's like a 40-year old woman and I'm still a teen! Super weird!"

    She has no idea where she's going now.

    "And okay, but it doesn't sound like that's a deal breaker for you?"

<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.

    "Yeah..." Something, huh. He's... going to have to think about that. Something, but something that isn't 'too much'...

    Frankly, he thinks, taking a sip of his coffee, at least all he has to deal with is falling for a complete weirdo. It would be... weird, if someone who was about 40 were dating someone who was still effectively a teen.
    "Definitely weird," he remarks, because tact is a thing for other people.

    But then she remarks that despite his complaining, Loren certainly doesn't seem to be put off by his person's... unique skills.

    He actually cracks a smile at that. "Nobody's perfect," is his comment on the matter.
    It's something that... he's increasingly found himself okay with. And maybe that's what matters in love.