houseofcards_rp | [ota] sleeping under strange skies

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[ota] sleeping under strange skies

He's ready for this. Of course he's ready for this.

He wouldn't be here if he weren't ready. Holló wouldn't have sent him through without being prepared. This isn't, after all, the sort of place a person gets sent without it being purposeful. Even the people who wander here 'by chance' are the people who need to be here, he's been told.

So it's the right time for Aleksei Volkov to be stepping out into the cold sunlight barely warming the walls of the Castle Spades, newly minted and processed and told he'll have to start working his way up from Two now.

The few things he'd brought with him have been settled into the cramped quarters he'll be sharing with a few other recent arrivals. What's stuck from his grandmother means he'll be starting off under the apparently quite severe Spade kitchen staff.

Hopefully it isn't the end of the world that he needs to pause when he's sent out to Town to pick up a few extra bottles of truffle oil and vanilla extract. Hopefully being 'ready for this' doesn't mean he can't take a moment--take a deep breath--as he lets settle into his bones the fact that he's here.

{ooc; He can be bumped into at the castle or being lost in Town. Also tag plz?}

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He hadn't been raised to take every sound as a possible threat, the way many Deck-born children were, but a general awareness of the world had been instilled from a fairly young age. He does quite a good job hearing that the steps aren't swerving, feeling the close approach from behind. Turns just slightly to glance over his shoulder and shift out of her way.

In a second, clearly. Those are... very blue eyes.

Which shouldn't matter. He's here because it's time for him to be--and he's literally here because he's got somewhere else to be. Keep focus. "Yes?"

Zoe's lips curve. The phone gets dropped into her bag and she extends her hand. There are a lot of Spades who believe you need to scare the ever living daylights out of the new blood. She knows, because some of them were stupid enough to try it with her.

"I'm Zoe," she says. She glances at the kitchens and her grin deepens. "You must have been put in Mr. Chives' domain?"

There's the tiniest bit of a delay before he takes her hand with a sudden faltering speed. She's probably seen that in other teenage boys. He does, at least, have a strong sort of grip to his shake. She's probably seen that in the men boys this age inevitably turn into, one day.

"Zoë." And he hasn't yet been taught to shorten the name, Anglicize it for general consumption when meeting other English speakers. Thankfully, the Deck has a fairly diverse tradition of names. "Aleksei. It's-- very nice to meet you." Longer sentences bring out the edge of his accent, clearly tampered down by a very emphatic teacher at some point. "And I am... trying. He does not make it an easy task."

Zoe's own name, though pretty common in English countries now, is Greek in origin - and chosen by a Greek father. It's even worse if you were to spit out the entire mess of names her parents saddled her with. "He's not a very easy man." She's always cool to the elder Chives, having seen too much of Charlotte in him.

"What's he sending you out for?" A slender hand runs through a loose wave of dark brown hair, exposing a long, dangling earring. "Some rare and irreplaceable vegetable?"

It is, in a small way, a relief to know it isn't just him. No one else in the kitchen--reasonably--seemed inclined to have a genuine opinion about the man running things.

"Vanilla and truffle oil." There's something a bit helpless in the lift of his shoulders. "I am-- not qualified? To also get cinnamon."

He would understand when he got to the store, but for now? It seemed a bit... intense.

"I'm sure that you'd do just fine picking out cinnamon," Zoe says. There's a light bit of laughter in her voice, something that hasn't been there much lately. "But he's probably sending you to Raja's and I think they had...eight? Varieties the last time I went there." Less of vanilla, and she didn't do the kind of cooking that required a finishing touch of truffle oil.

Luckily, the first time Zoe had needed to stock her own spice rack, she'd had Iollan Chives' son to point out what she needed to buy.

"Eight?"

He can't help himself. The bubble of a laugh of incredulity escapes his lips, although a hand is quickly lifted to cover it as much as possible.

"You're-- making a joke?"

Had to be. Absolutely could not be the actual fact.

"They're used for different things, I think." Some were spicier than others, some better for savory, others better for the cinnamon rolls she'd been planning to make at the time.

She's behind on her holiday baking this year. Which is silly, since thanks to Iollan, she doesn't actually have to do any.

"You'll see when you get there," she promises, and raises her brows. "Are you going there now?" Holiday shopping is the other thing she's behind on, and she was heading out to try again, futilely, to come up with something to get people for Christmas.

What a world.

What a world in which he did actually have a job to be doing other than lacking the ability to stop studying how ridiculously blue this woman's eyes were. He was at least moderately certain that wasn't a job a person could actually have.

"--ah. Yes. It-- will not be good to keep Mister Chives waiting, I'm thinking."

Zoe would have more understanding than Aleksei realizes for the problem of getting lost in a pair of blue eyes. And probably more understanding than he'd want her to have.

"I'm headed that way too," she says, pushing her bag onto her shoulder. "If you'd like some company." There's a shop that makes homemade soaps and creams - and scrubs that they've been experimenting with using the new ocean's salt for - and more than one of her female relatives is probably getting a gift basket this year.

He'll be heartbroken. Thankfully, for all this is an age of intense emotion, it's also a time of being able to bounce back from multiple heartbreaks before the age of 20.

"Oh--?" And back comes the edge of gawkiness, like his centre of gravity's shifted somehow. "I'd hate to-- be a bother."

She was heartbroken twice when she was his age; once when Ceiro had married Judith - that had been a crush doomed from the start - and once with another man, equally unattainable. By the time she'd turned twenty, she'd met the one who everyone thought would break her heart.

She'd married him before she'd turned twenty-two.

"It's not a bother," she assures him with a quiet smile. "It's nice not to have to walk places alone, I think."

An inspirational story, surely, for all boys and girls just a few years younger than she is. Briefly heartbreaking, but ultimately inspirational.

"It would-- be nice."

Is he supposed to offer his arm? Is he supposed to follow a half-step behind? He's not sure. He's slightly less certain of himself with the eyes to contend with.

There's certainly no shortage of gentlemen who offer their arm in the Deck. It's one of those courtly traditions that persists, even in the men who grew up in the Outside world.

But there's no shortage of men who just walk beside her, too.

"So, how long have you been here?" She asked, looking back at him and pausing as if waiting for him to catch up.

Walking beside--with a slight, stumbling delay, the sort teenage boys somehow manage to get around girls who've turned into women--is something he can do. Mostly without looking entirely awkward about it.

Mostly.

"Since-- this morning."

In a few years, the difference between their ages will be insignificant, but right now there's still miles betweeen sixteen and twenty-two. Right now she has a hard-won poise that Aleksei hasn't figured out just yet.

But he will. Most Cards come up with their version.

"Oh," she says, blinking over at him. Even at his age and even in her heels, they're around the same height. "You must be really...disoriented. I've always thought coming here must be that way, like the first day of school times a hundred."

It's the sort of thing that comes with age. It comes a little more quickly in the Deck, some might say, but it comes one way or another to almost everyone.

"A little." And he's clearly not entirely certain how to explain himself. Part of that is a general lack of poise. Part of that is absolutely the fact she's looking at him again. "My-- uncle came from here, yes?"

He's blushing a little bit. She's noticed that, though she hasn't put two and two together here - she's not so vain, after all, to assume that every or even any sixteen year old boys are going to look at her and develop instant romantic feelings.

"Ah. And then went Outside? I have a few cousins who have done that." Most have, like Dillon, come back again, but there's a few more distant ones who got married and decided to stay Outside.

A little easier than trying to explain the Deck.

It is a problem of sixteen year old boys, alas. On the bright side, in a few hours he'll meet Katya and the process will begin all over again.

"It makes it-- a bit easier to come here."

To have had someone ease him in; groom him in, really, but that would involve getting into who's actually still here.

It's a problem of sixteen year old girls. And even nineteen year old girls, as Zoe knows all too well; though admittedly the crush she fell into on the eve of age twenty worked out better than most.

"I would guess. I grew up here," she tells him with a soft little smile. "And never really left for any longer than a couple of weeks at a time, so I can only imagine what it's like to come here knowing nothing of it."

"Never-- more than a few weeks?"

There's absolute incredulity in his voice. Absolutely a furrow to his brow and a certain disbelief to his frown.

"Well...no." She'd wanted to go to college, of course. She had her degree, even, though she'd earned it through distance learning. But actually leaving for four years had been frowned on. Those were four years she could have spent challenging her way up, after all.

In reality they'd been four years of a rollercoaster. She had challenged up, from Five to Six to Seven. Then she'd challenged down to Four, and back to Five and Six in another Suit. She'd gotten disowned, stabbed, engaged, and married.

"I'm afraid some of us are a little provincial here," she says with a slight shrug. "Not all of us, I don't think, but a lot." Which might be the reason behind the current troubles, honestly. Maybe they should leave the Deck for more than a few weeks at a time.

"It just-- seems so easy to move, here."

There weren't borders to cross here. There weren't ID cards to be checking and tracking and worrying after. There's a bit of disbelief in his expression.

"I would have thought... people would move more."

"It is." Because it is. How many times has she disappeared off to Paris to shop, to London, to Venice and Athens? And yet, at the same time, there's something other about the Outside. It's worse for others; she, at least, grew up with her papa. Georgios had often taken her when he'd had work.

"But, I don't know. I think people are afraid of it. It's bigger, and more complicated."

"More complicated?"

He gets the arched expression of disapproving disbelief from his father. He doesn't actually know it yet. Some things are apparently genetic.

There's going to have to be a bit more digging before his genetic love of firm structures like this one kicks in, apparently.

[ota] sleeping under strange skies

I might have to add more dork-faced icons. (There are a lot of options.)

I would imagine there are.

Don't hate him 'cause he's beautiful

We would not dare

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first time on the computer in three days oh yeah

first HoC tag of 2014 /o/ <3

I think mine was appropriately in the NYE partay. First non-HoC was Thalia harassing Loki.

Thaliaaaaaaa \o\ <3

Cynric should come visit her at her new playground. Also any immortal types you have. /not pimping

HE WOULD LIKE TO PLZ and I'm working on it. o/

FREKI IS THE MOST PRECIOUS EVER CAN THALIA KEEP HIM.

But will there be bellyrubs this is his one question and qualification it is important :|a

Naturally there will be bellyrubs and all manner of spoiling. Odin will be like WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU

FOREVER RUINED as a harbinger of slaughter. o9

HE'LL SURVIVE.

RUIN THE SAVAGE BEASTS IN YOUR OWN PANTHEON, WOMAN.

SHE DID THAT ALREADY. THEY'RE HER LAPDOGS. SHE BRINGS THE MINOTAUR TREATS.

BEST PUPPY-MOMMY EVAR. \o/

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