#rhodryn

[noonmutter]

I Want a New Duck

( Immediately following the events laid out here ... )

Inventory day was not Rhodryn’s favorite day, but neither was it her least favorite. Customers could be vile creatures in need of a few days with no tongue, but they could also be bundles of sweetness as capable of brightening one's day as any pastry in the shop, if you let them. But inventory day was quiet, and rewarding, and now that the shop's owner had returned, it was guaranteed to be an easy day in pleasant company, doing little more than looking for places missed in the regular cleanup.

Or it usually was. Today might not be so pleasant, to judge by the rambling voice of her employer drifting back from the storeroom.

"...still too bloody riled. I din't--Darlain said if, if I was fixatin'--this's def'nitely fixatin'--if I was fixatin' an' I'd already run outta mad an' there was nobody around an'--this's def'nitely fixatin'. So I'm fixatin'. That's wrong. Somethin's wrong. Cuz I got played? ... no. Not now, tha's not it. Why th'fuck're you still mad day after, bruv..?"

So the ren’dorei put on her gear with the ingrained stealth of decades of servitude, and listened. She was not particularly intent on spying, but what was there to drown him out in the empty shop when she was scrubbing the floor?

At least he wasn't just babbling in there, to judge by the sound of boxes and bags shuffling back and forth and his boots clicking across the floor. "...so she'n'er guy invite you up, an' that's fine, we're fine, s'great, an' then there's idle dumb chatter an' that's fine too, tell 'em th' dumb stories, good laughs, all's great...when’d we start talkin' about my arse? ...well they liked my arse anyway..."

Everyone likes your arse, idiot; it's a good arse. She worked intently at a particularly stubborn stain in a floorboard under the edge of a cabinet, though she was becoming suspicious that it was not chocolate, as she had always assumed, but something more like blood. What had been going on in this shop lately?

It could very well have been blood! ...up till it finally worked loose enough to peel back, and reveal itself as some form of fossilized berry sauce. At least, it had probably been berries... it was sauce, anyway. Blood didn't... stretch... like that.

"...good a time as any t'mention th' missuses, right, nat'ral part o' th'talkin', chattin' about ev'rythin'...she's gotta rule 'bout married men, fine, 'ear tha' plenty, so nah, ours is open, they like 'earin' stories later anyway, but she's got 'er rule so fine, Iggy's still comin' at me...least I think 'e is, gods only know now--no, no, that's uncharitable..."

Could be meatjuice, that could get a bit stretchy. Should be able to smell - Light's sake, did I really just sniff ancient--

”--still comin’ at me--” Her ears perked up in surprise, and then back down low as she scowled hard. Someone had threatened her boss? And just like that, he had her full attention, halfway through peeling mystery gunk off the floor.

"--'ave t'call it a hamhock? yeah 'e was tryin't'be flat'rin' but hamhock? ... gettin' off-track. 'E 'as a lovely 'amhock of 'is own anyway, tha' wasn't a problem, stop that... wierd word choices are not th' issue, Leon, stop. Stop."

For a little bit, he was quiet, apparently forcing himself to actually take a break from his odd little conversation and do work a bit more efficiently.  The mystery gunk briefly gave off a faint stench of scotch gone horribly awry, but that might've been her mind playing tricks.

Leon was messing with his adding machine by the time he started talking again, so he'd clearly made something resembling progress.

"She's still comin' at me right along with 'im, but she's got rules about married men... din't stop 'er any, did it? But I come at 'er back, I'll be th' prick, won't I... an' dammit Iggy's all about it, too... damn fine kisser fer a clown, tha' man..."

Oh. Not threats. How this man loved to abuse his language's idioms... She relaxed and resumed peeling. It couldn't be scotch, scotch wouldn't peel like this. Unless he'd made a sauce of it...

All this grumbling and anger over flirting? That can't truly be the whole of it…

"...got rules about married men, don't y', but yer fine teasin'em after th' fact...cruel thin', y'were speakin' plain an' I were speakin' plain an' then y'still go go go..."

She sighed silently and rubbed at her forehead with the back of her hand.

You're better than this, Mister Ambroce. Please be better than this.

A brief pause, and then a soft thump, most likely his fist on his desk. "All that an' Iggy too! Again th' guy's a wash! Augh!"

The void elf rose to her feet, took a deep breath, and said, "You are an idiot."

"F--!" There was an awfully loud bang and ruckus in that storeroom. A few seconds later, Leon's head peeked around the doorframe at floor level. Spooked horses looked less rattled than he did in that moment. "...Rhodryn?"

The effect of arching a single brow was magnified when that brow was about three times as long as a human’s and trailed shadows from the tip as it moved. She turned away from him, going to wash her hands. "That sounded painful. Do you need healing?"

"No...no." There was a resigned sigh in his voice. He had very quickly learned not to expect any sort of sympathy from her, not that he'd hoped for it anyway. "Mostly th' chair scuffed up th' wall."

No sympathy, but she did offer a hand up once her hands were no longer sticky. "Good. Did that knock some sense into you, or am I going to have to do it?"

Blinking owlishly up at her, he reached up to take the hand almost on autopilot. "What?... why're you even here?"

"It is inventory day, is it not?"

"I..." Grimacing, Leon got to his feet, and brushed off several large dust bunnies from his shirt. "...Sorry. I thought it was earlier." Because it was either that, or admit he'd forgotten he had a manager again. His memory had been unreliable ever since his brain took a vacation in Kul Tiras.

"I always come in early." She patted his shoulder and went to retrieve her cleaning rag. "However, it sounded like you had distracted yourself, so I will forgive you the oversight."

Around people, she nearly always had a pleasant little smile on an otherwise inexpressive face, which made her difficult to read. Now, though, he heard the grin in her voice as she teased him. Though he'd heard her no-customers-all-day voice before, it was rare. He was even less familiar with her being openly amused at him. A bit of a mental rewind as he rubbed the shoulder that'd been briefly pinned between his chair and the wall reminded him of what had started it. "...an' 'o's an idiot, exactly?"

"You and I are the only two people here, and I was not ranting to a sack of flour about flirting that didn't go my way."

So rare to get Leon to the point of fish-mouthing, and yet look at him go, jaw dropping and closing again with an audible clack. After his skin had already taken on a couple extra shades of red, he looked away and grumbled, "Wasn't rantin'. It's a de-escalation exercise. ...S'posed t'ave a duck."

"You do not have a duck. You have an elf, capable of asking questions, such as, 'What is so wrong with aimless flirting that you are so angry at these people?'"

He almost groaned, but stopped himself at the last moment. As a side note, expressions normally accompanied by the groan of someone who sincerely wished they could disappear through a floor that are not accompanied by a groan are very silly-looking. "Y'were list'nin'."

"It was difficult to not."

Desperate for something to do with his hands and, coincidentally, also wanting to hide his still-flaming face, Leon turned and headed for the pastry cases and the cabinets underneath them, pulling his notepad out of his back pocket. "Aimless flirtin's not a problem."

With a sigh, she returns to her hunt for dirt. "What made you think it was not aimless?"

He knelt in front of the cabinet just as she asked that, and there was a clunk as he accidentally cracked his knuckle on the edge of the door. Really? This was what she wanted to express interest in? "...some people think it's fun t'flirt with a guy t'make 'im look stupid."

"Some people just like to flirt."

"An' that's fine! Flirtin's fun if ev'rybody's clear onnit! But not after y'say it's not gonna 'appen!"

Rho stopped hunting under the tables and stood so she could look at him, head cocked to one side. "That is what I don't understand. She said it was not going to happen - that is what 'rules about married men' means, yes? Would that not make it aimless flirting, with a stated lack of intent to follow through?"

The cabinet door thunked shut. "I put it plain I woulda liked t'roll with 'er, she put it plain she wouldn't be rollin' with me. Keeps right on goin' after me an' not just with words, so does 'er buddy. Y'think that's okay?"

She stared, and then blinked slowly. "I do not flirt, and this conversation makes me more grateful for that choice by the second. Let me make certain I understand. You told her, plainly, that you would like to sleep with her, she told you plainly she would not sleep with you because you are married, yet she and her friend continued to flirt and... prevented you from leaving?"

"What?" Finally, he looked up at her. "No, o' course not."

Rho crossed her arms and drummed her fingers against her cheek, then held out her hand in a ‘stop’ gesture. "Wait. What rules?"

"Wha' d'you mean?"

"Her rules about married men. What are they? I assumed she meant 'no married men,' because that is my rule about married men."

He started to answer, but his face fell just slightly as the words "That's what I figured, yeah" came out of his mouth. Finally, the gears appeared to be turning. "She din't want wives comin' after 'er, she said."

"That is my reasoning, as well. That is not a problem in your situation. Your situation that you are very happy to talk about at length. As such, you would be an exception to that rule."

"Yeah, an' I said tha', an'--" He paused, and slowly looked up at the ceiling. The gears reached full speed, and ground through a particularly stubborn chunk of rust that dislodged with such force that he sighed. He’d gone and made assumptions and hadn’t caught himself and it’d bitten him and he’d totally failed to notice until it was too late. "...first of all, Rhodryn, yer now my duckie. Second of all, please slap me upside th'ead."

Rho blinked again, then crossed the room and slapped him upside the head. "Never call me your duckie again."

He asked her to do it, so while surprised that she did do it, he made no attempt to stop her, only rubbing gently at the spot once she'd done it. "Yes'm."

"Now. How will you set this right?"

"I'm...fuck." He pinched the bridge of his nose. "Fuck I'm so bloody stupid... Mngh. Apologize, obviously, but'm not sure 'ow."

"What apology would you have accepted if they had been wrong?"

"That's--well, yeah, that's a trick too, but tha's not what I meant, actually." Walking back into the storeroom for a moment, he brought her a flyer from the Ironforge Craft Fest, where he'd circled 'Sarah Hadley' on the list of entertainers. "Aside from askin' 'er sister, which is grossly inappropriate I'm sure I don't need t'tell you, I'm not sure 'ow t'get in touch."

She took the flyer and stared at the name for a moment, again drumming her fingers on her cheek. "Why is it grossly inappropriate to ask where you should deliver an apology?"

"It's-- Iunno, is it a social etiquette thin' fer elves at all, not goin' through a middleman fer pers'nal matters?"

She peered at him. "Are you speaking of having the sister deliver the apology, while I am speaking of asking the sister for... 'Sarah's' location?"

"No. Just th' latter." For all that Leon was a worldly man, he was frequently painfully Gilnean. Even Vember would’ve been hard-pressed not to laugh at him.

"I see no reason it should be inappropriate, as long as you only tell the sister that you need to deliver an apology, not what it is for." Rho handed the flyer back. "If speaking to her bothers you overmuch, what options do you see other than asking the sister for Sarah's contact information?"

Leaning against the counter, he stared at the flyer and bit his lip.  "...mmf. I spose there's tha'."

"You could wait and hope you see her again. I do not think you would like to let this gnaw at you for that long, though. You could hire someone to find her, but you would have to phrase your explanation very carefully if that is discovered. Or, you could ask the sister, perhaps provide her a token of appreciation for her help, and get this behind you."

"She's gonna punch me." Wry laugh. "Prolly deserve a couple more o' those."

"If you reacted harshly in public, yes, you do deserve a few punches."

"...less 'arshly an' more... um... well, I kin think o' plenty of other less charitable words than tha'.” Childishly, foolishly... was bitchily a word? Bitchily seemed like a good word. “But yeah." Brain finally settled into something resembling a course of action, Leon sighed. “Thank you.”

"Of course." Rhodryn bowed her head slightly, and went back to cleaning, taking the thank-you as a dismissal.

Hours later, as they checked each others’ final counts for accuracy, Leon burst out laughing when he got to the end of her overstock list. ‘One (1) too many romantic fools who have apologies to make.’

( @dwyndel @darbiebot @tirasiansails @tirasiantrouper )