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pinkgothic:
They had no particular schedule. Leila came to visit Mateo when she felt like it and had healed up enough from her previous spell-casting to try again and he imposed no particular cadence on her. Sometimes it was Mateo who visited Leila, sharing some papers he thought might help her better understand the craft. She was still a way's away from being able to visualise a rune from the descriptions in the papers, but she could by now work them out piece by piece, cross-referencing her notes on the nomenclature.
Today, Leila was visiting Mateo, ringing his doorbell.
It took half a minute for it to actually open. “Leila,” he greeted.
Past his shoulder, she could see Nyarai Pretorius sitting on the second stool Mateo owned, almost clipped to the computer's table, glancing up as the door opened, locking the screen with what looked like a well-honed reflex. Her eyes opened a little wider and some kind of curious smile tugged at the corner of her lips, but unlike the last time they'd crossed paths, there was no immediate commentary.
Still, it was easy to imagine those eyes held the question 'so it was a date?'.
Nymphetamine:
It had been nearly two months of meetings between them, usually once a week, or whenever she healed up. Leila devoured the materials that he offered her, taking notes in a personal tablet of hers (rather than one supplied by work), locked behind biometrics that she hoped would be enough. Their efforts to keep this between them had seemed to work, and no one commented on the botanist who had begun to refuse to roll up her sleeves too much while she worked. (She had since taken care to carve runs higher up on her arm, just so that her forearms were able to be uncovered.) It was slow progress, but there was noticeable forward momentum. The runes were becoming easier to recognize, and she practiced as much as she could before she actually applied the strange stylus to her arm. Mateo was the one taking all the burden of risk upon himself, what with procurring the nerve-blockers, the other tools and papers that he shared with her.
When she arrived at his door that day, she was dressed in the usual sort of clothing that Martians wore. Something entirely more functional than fashionable. Her hands and arms were freshly washed after the workday, and her hair pulled back in a braid. She was not expecting him to already have company, so the sight of Nyarai Pretorius was a bit of a surprise for her. “Mateo. Hi… Am I… Am I interrupting something?” She gave a little smile to Nyarai before her attention swiveled back to Mateo himself.
pinkgothic:
“Not any more than in the most tautological definition of 'interrupt',” Nyarai said, before Mateo could align enough polite words for an answer. “In that we were doing something. But it's quite interruptable. We can easily shelve it and continue some other day.”
Mateo frowned mildly. “That's not necessary,” he said.
“You want to send your lady friend back home?” Nyarai feigned indignation.
Mateo grimaced. “She's not–”
“Not your girlfriend, yeah, yeah. You're meeting a lot for people who aren't dating,” Nyarai protested in amusement.
“Men and woman can be friends,” Mateo hissed.
“In your wildest dreams,” Nyarai grinned.
“Are you my girlfriend?” Mateo retorted, glowering at Nyarai.
“Oh-ho-ho,” the sorceress lit up like a Christmas tree, as though Mateo had handed her a gift. “Maybe I am,” she joked and smiled light-heartedly at Leila. “Leila, watch out, competition.”
Nymphetamine:
Standing in silence while their exchange played out, she tried her best not to look impatient. Not the sort of young woman to blush at the hint of romantic entanglements, especially when there were none, she let Mateo defend their friendship. Protesting too much on her part might have fed Nyarai more fuel for her insinuations. Her attention turned to the well pleased sorceress, calling herself Mateo's girlfriend. A huff of indignant laughter burbled up to the fore. “No competition here, girl,” she said as she raised her hands in a defensive manner, palms out and fingers pointing towards the ceiling. She managed a thin smile for Nyarai, though it was more perfunctory and polite than friendly.
pinkgothic:
“Don't you 'girl' me,” Nyarai said, but she did it while still grinning, revealing just how seriously she was taking the conversation. “I think I'm older than you,” she finger-gunned. In a sinuous motion, she peeled herself from the seat and into a stand. “I can come back later,” she said, lightly.
“Or you can stay,” Mateo said. “And we finish up the sim.”
Nyarai was strikingly silent for a moment, as though something Mateo had said was deeply puzzling. She slowly tiled her head. “But not while Leila is here?” she suggested.
Mateo closed his eyes and sighed deeply, disliking the choice - especially since it wasn't really necessary. Nyarai didn't know that, though, and maybe it was best not to let her know. So, instead, he said: “Okay, fair, but it's not going to make a lick of sense to a botanist, anyway.”
Nymphetamine:
Not wanting to start trouble, or cause a problem for Mateo, she stood silent for a moment or two longer. Glancing between them, she considered what they might have been talking about prior to her arrival, and now guessing that it was none of her business. “It's alright. I'll just play with Haffy while you guys finish up, if it's all the same to you.” She had taken a little bit of a shine to the feline after having taken care of Mateo. It was a cover, because she was certainly curious about what they were doing that had Nyarai's desire for privacy with this simulation they were apparently running.
pinkgothic:
“Heh,” Nyarai said, the sound dull. “I dunno, should it be all the same to me?” There was an edge to that question - it wasn't quite aggressively intoned, but a wariness was floating to the surface.
Mateo shrugged a shoulder. “We-e-e-e can also do this some other day,” he suggested, his tone one of mediation. “I was just going to prioritise the research, but I can save state and we can continue where we left off next time.”
“Yeah,” Nyarai said, the tension ratcheting down a fraction, still more present than not, but no longer feeling like the brink of detection. “Remember, it's the sorcerer's responsibility to maintain the rules,” she said, looking at Leila with tired apology swirling in her eyes as she spoke to Mateo. “Please try not to trip into trouble.”
Nymphetamine:
She did not respond, as their conversation continued towards a pause until another time. Which was just fine with Leila, though she was infinitely curious about what they had been squirreled away doing that couldn't be in front of 'just a botanist'. But she wasn't going to protest or make anything more difficult for Mateo. Still standing awkwardly in the door way, she side stepped to allow Nyarai to pass, saying nothing as any parting words would've seemed sarcastic after her intrusion.
pinkgothic:
Nyarai eyed Leila in passing - not quite suspiciously as much as with a trace of worry or concern - and slipped out of the room with a deep but soft sigh.
Mateo tugged gently on Leila's sleeve, closing the door behind her. As it clicked shut, Mateo ran his hands through his hair. “That could have gone better,” he muttered, directing it at no one in particular.
Nymphetamine:
Not wanting to stare, she tried not to watch Nyarai go, but failed at that. Managing a thin smile even if it felt sarcastic, she waited for the other woman to go before addressing Mateo himself. “Could've gone worse, I guess, too?” There was a pause as she considered her next words, needing just a moment to collect her thoughts. “Maybe we ought to have more of a schedule… I feel like I've misstepped coming over unannounced.”
pinkgothic:
Mateo shook his head with the energy of residual annoyance. “No, you should come over when you like, I'm not going to pretend we're doing anything nefarious, just because it happens to be illegal on a technicality,” he exhaled. His fingers drew down his face around the outlines of his mouth. “Nyarai means well,” he assured. “She's just a bit protective. If I were less of a coward I would have clued her in already, but here we are.”
Nymphetamine:
She wasn't about to cast aspersions on Nyarai's intentions, so she just managed a warmer smile for him as she watched him visibly try to deal with the situation. “Maybe we.. Well, I say 'we', but it'll probably fall more on you, unfortunately, maybe we tell her? She seems awfully astute, and perceptive…” Leila was trying to ease him into it, but she was as subtle as a freight train. “If you think she can be trusted..” She sighed, though, and shook her head. “Obviously, I will trust your best judgement on the subject…”
pinkgothic:
“To be fair, you don't really get through sorcery education without being astute and perceptive.” Mateo pinched his nose, then let his arms drop, before settling on the anxious middle ground of crossing his arms to keep them still. “If you're cool with it, I'll work myself up to it eventually,” he said, lips askew in a slightly pained expression. Maybe he was vividly imagining her giving him misguided, maternal career advice to drop the apprenticeship. No doubt that's exactly what she would do, if she was really 'protective', as he put it. He took a deep breath in a conscious attempt to dismiss the subject. “How're the studies?” By which he meant her reviews of the carefully encrypted copies of academic sorcery papers he'd shared with her - the dense material that she was still in the process of learning to as much as read fluently, let alone understand downstream ramifications of.
Nymphetamine:
“Yeah, I suppose, if you trust her.” Which, she was sure that the reasonable thing in the world would be for Nyarai to try to talk him out of continuing before too much damage had been done. It wasn't as though Leila had access to the nerve-blocker, or the stylus itself, so he could box her out pretty easily if he wanted to. She managed a smile, which quickly faded into a grimace as he asked about her studies. “Oh, you know, just reading esoteric documents about a niche study, having to master seemingly a whole other language, even if it's not…” A self deprecating laugh followed. “I don't think I'm even a quarter of the way through…”
pinkgothic:
He smiled back, the tension not quite fully gone yet, but the expression sincere nonetheless. “We're not in any rush. But come, sit down, let's talk about how little we know,” he prompted, himself finally untangling his arms from each other and ambling over to one of the seats by the computer. The screen was still locked and he didn't turn to face it - evidently he was just sitting there because the chair happened to be there.
Nymphetamine:
Leila followed him towards the desk, sinking into an available seat nearby. “We really don't know much about sorcery, do we?” she asked with an amused cast to her voice. That fact was both incredible and humbling at the same time, almost awesome in the strictest definition of that word. “Or rather, there just might be so much to learn, or discover, I suppose.”