I'm Not The Moon (Open)

[youwonscience]

WHO: Cosima, Avery AND YOU
WHAT: Open log of goodbye to all that Skyhold; in which Avery may or may not try to help get Cosima a quality one-night stand and in which there will definitely be drinking
WHEN: Backdated to before the move (forgive my hiatus)
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: No warnings to start, but Cosima is fresh off TTT, so if you want a less shiny happy thread, those are also on the table.

Behind closed doors, Cosima had said very evenly that she needed to hug Avery once, and to please just let it happen. She was, in some ways, less shaken up than she'd been after getting captured by the Venatori; the things that had happened to her, specifically, hadn't been as bad by pretty much any measure. But seeing a future-that-might-be ... it had been enough to shake her up.

But that had been in private, and before they left Skyhold behind, Cosima was determined to enjoy herself a little. ("What would Ruby do?" she'd enthusiastically pointed out to her roommate when attempting to sell the idea of a night out.) Cosima had officially thrown her lot in with the Inquisition, was committed to making sure the future she saw didn't come to pass. But the world wasn't going to go to shit in one night -- probably -- and she wanted to dance and drink and flirt with someone.

(She wanted to look over and see Avery, right there and fine and looking mildly annoyed but not leaving her either.)

So a trip to the tavern seems well in order. Cosima's going to be enthusiastically greeting her friends from the start. She might be enthusiastically greeting glancing acquaintances later too, depending on how the drinking goes.

Comments

[thecookery]

Oh, Avery does not plan to disappoint!

At least on the looking mildly surly front. As for how useful she'll be for anything else tonight, well... that's up for debate. Wingman is not a position she has a great deal of experience with, but she assumes the first step is to get at least one drink down in a hurry, so she'll be working on that as she glances around to see if they'll have much of a crowd in this officially unofficial good-bye party to the Herald's Rest.

"So," she mutters to Cosima, wiping at her mouth, once she realizes she's basically just been glaring at people and drinking in silence for the last few minutes (and some people might not appreciate this behavior for some reason?), "any bets on who's the first drunk enough to make a fare-thee-well speech?"

[youwonscience]

"Hmmmm." Cosima takes a sip of her wine and looks around carefully. (At least she's not glaring?) "Definitely that big guy in the corner with the mustache. He looks like a weeper, too. Something sentimental and stirring. We few, we happy few. Man, I used to know the whole Band of Brothers speech, I could have totally adapted it."

(Sidenote.)

"Either that or no one is sad enough to be leaving, and it turns out to be a celebratory speech, in which case I'm betting on the redheaded elf a few tables over."

[thecookery]

By this point, ignoring incomprehensible foreign cultural references has become so second-nature, Avery only looks confused for a moment or two before she shakes it off. Focusing instead on the elf in question, she comments, "Getting off this massive frozen rock and into a proper city I get. But what's she to be excited about in Kirkwall of all places?"

The judgment is made somewhat in jest, but the way Avery says the word "Kirkwall" makes clear a less than positive opinion on the city they will soon be occupying.

[youwonscience]

Cosima gives her a sidelong look. "Okay, confession time, literally the only things I know about Kirkwall comes from Tethras' The Tale of the Champion." And that one time Herian talked about it a little, but she definitely doesn't want to bring up Herian if she wants to preserve her aggressively good mood. "How screwed am I if that's my only source of context? I mean, relatively."

She'd still fallen into Thedas from another world, so Avery probably shouldn't set the "not being screwed" bar too high.

[thecookery]

It takes Avery a second longer than it should to respond, eyes lingering on the same woman in a way that is suspiciously calculating, but she finally focuses on Cosima again with a raised brow. Reading for fun? Really?? That sounds terrible to her.

"Aye, well," she sighs, "I've never been there either, only heard rumor. But little of it good."

[youwonscience]

"Fair enough, I guess. It doesn't seem like I've heard anyone who's super thrilled about the announcement." A few people who aren't sorry to leave Skyhold behind, maybe, but not a lot of yay Kirkwall going around in her hearing.

"All the more reason to make sure everyone enjoys themselves tonight, then."

Yes, Avery, this means you.

[thecookery]

It does not, and she can't make her, so there!

Avery shakes her head briefly, before giving Cosima a small, sarcastic raise of her mug. "Oh? That a line from your drunken speech later?"

[youwonscience]

"I don't do speeches," Cosima says, immediately and firmly. "Dancing, maybe, singing if I drink a lot, but no speeches." It's not her department.

[thecookery]

"Well, it sounds like you're near halfway there already, but if you say so," is the shrugging answer she receives.

[youwonscience]

She gives Avery's shoulder a small, good-natured shove. "You know I hold my wine better than that. Why, did you have your heart set on drunken speeches?"

[thecookery]

"Not really," she explains, with a sidelong glance at her poor, abused shoulder. "I just figure someone's bound to, sooner or later. Don't you?"

[youwonscience]

"I don't know, maybe. Is that common? Back home, most of the parties I went to didn't end in drunken speeches, it was generally like - ill-advised discussions of people's feelings or badly planned hook-ups."

Maybe that's just the parties Cosima went to.

"Maybe I've been doing Thedas parties wrong this whole time."

[thecookery]

Avery snorts.

"Well, we've those as well, that's sure. Otherwise I'd never get to bed with anyone, would I? I just think, see, since it's like as not all our last nights in this tavern, someone's bound to get loud about it."

[bloodredcrow]

Natasha watches for a while. She watches most people for a while before she approaches them, if she approaches them at all. There's been a lot of commotion lately, a lot of planning and running around, some considerable upheaval. This woman doesn't seem particularly impacted by any of it. Natasha supposes she could be staying, could just be not at all concerned about the big shake up taking place. Can't be sure, though.

So, after a while, she times a trip to the bar to match up with one of Cosima's. "Celebrating something?" she asks after she's ordered her drink.

[thecookery]

Natasha is being watched.

Not in a super obvious way, mind you, so maybe most people would miss it, but well, Natasha isn't most people. So if she picks up on it and shoots a glance back the way Cosima came, she'll notice the young woman she's been sitting with all night keeping an eye on the two of them, not quite suspicious but bordering on it (or maybe that's just this girl's default face?). Mostly though, she just looks curious and... possibly even slightly approving.

Because, well, Natasha also isn't most people in the looks department, and if she's approaching to flirt with Avery's roommate? Hell yeah. You go, Cosima.

[youwonscience]

"Oh, um, yeah. Sort of?" Cosima's smile is frank, though she's embarrassed to find her face slightly flushed. (It's totally the wine, she will claim in the fictional scenario where she's asked about it.) "I thought I should say goodbye to Herald's Rest before getting shipped out to Kirkwall. You know, one more for the road, that kind of thing."

Cosima hasn't tried to conceal the shard in her palm, which identifies her as a rifter in conjunction with the glasses and the very non-Thedas-made Doc Martens. She doesn't have a choice about Kirkwall, then, though her mood seems light enough.

"Want to join me?" It's a little wry, but warm - a genuine enough invitation.

[bloodredcrow]

Natasha shrugs." Why not? It's nice to see someone so happy about the move. Not many people are." She doesn't care much one way or another. There's more opportunity for side work in a city, and one like Kirkwall is just up her alley. Dark, dangerous, corrupt, chock full of people looking to hire someone with no moral compunctions.

[youwonscience]

"I mean, I can't really say happy, unhappy. I don't know much about Kirkwall, but it's not like I'm going farther or nearer to home regardless." And, in fairness, she's just come back from seeing a heavily dystopian future that makes pretty much anything seem fine by comparison, but that seems a heavy topic to introduce right off. "Maybe it'll be warmer, at least."

Even before Thedas, she's moving a series of increasingly cold places, and it seems a little bit insult to injury that the pattern should continue across worlds.

"Have you been before? To Kirkwall."

[bloodredcrow]

"Definitely warmer. It's a port city. Sea level. Not enjoying the year round snow up here?" Natasha's drink arrives, and she takes it but, doesn't pay for it. Not yet. Cosima asked her to join, and she wants to see if she plans on paying for Natasha, as well. "I've been a few times, on business. It's a very lively place. So if you've been bored here at all, well, you won't be bored there. I don't think anyone could be bored in Kirkwall." Miserable, sure, but never bored.

[youwonscience]

"Nice. I mean, 'not bored' can definitely be a careful-what-you-wish-for situation, but it's not nothing." Cosima does, in fact, cover Natasha's drink; it seems polite, considering.

"The place I'm from is more temperate than hot, really, but it never gets this cold. I mean, I'd seen snow before I came, but definitely not used to it being around all the time."

Yes, Cosima, talk to the gorgeous woman about the weather. Her inner voice sounds suspiciously like a certain painter from home, she notes with a pang.

[bloodredcrow]

"Well, that's... the weather, I suppose. Predictable in most places, even if you don't necessarily like it. I don't think you'll be too warm." Because what else is she supposed to respond to, really? She takes a sip of her wine, hiding an amused smile with her cup. "What usually keeps you from being bored? Apart from a temperate climate and... I'm guessing more opportunities to do things outdoors?"

[youwonscience]

"God, sorry, I'm usually not so hopelessly ... I study life, back where I come from. Animals and people, and how they work. So here I'm trying to sort of adapt that to the resources available to me. It's actually really fascinating. Like, we have dogs, though not exactly mabaris, but we don't have anything quite like nugs. Horses yes, dragons definitely not."

Cosima relaxes a bit, more animated on a subject that interests her.

[bloodredcrow]

Better than the weather, at any rate. Natasha can work with that. "That's true of a lot of your worlds, isn't it? Some things the same, so many things not at all?" Natasha doesn't mention that her job is also a kind of study of life, mostly because she knows for a fact that it's nothing like what this animated and very upbeat woman is talking about. Babbling about, actually. "Do you like your work, back home?"

[youwonscience]

"I do, yeah. It's pushing right at the edge of what we know, I like the thought I might expand human knowledge one day. And my work has the potential to help people too, depending on how it's applied." A different woman might have possibly listed those two factors in a different order.

"What about you? You said your business took you to Kirkwall before, but you didn't say what you do."

[bloodredcrow]

A different woman might have cared more about the order they were presented to her in. Natasha is not a big fan of helping people just for the sake of helping. She doesn't see the profit in it. "It sounds very important." No one wants to hear that she doesn't care about what they do. "More important than what I do. People have problems, and I fix them. It's boring. Unlike the city, which I still think you might enjoy."

She takes a sip of her wine, licks her upper lip. "What about hobbies?"