Collecting Cats [Closed] - Printable Version

Collecting Cats [Closed] - Printable Version

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Collecting Cats [Closed] - megs - 08-01-2017

RE: Collecting Cats [Closed] - megs - 08-01-2017

Andi Byrne was a lot of things. They were smart, stylish, and witty when the situation called for it. They were creative and talented. They had an amazing job as a graphic designer for a cute, local boutique. They had a nice apartment downtown, only a few blocks from their favorite fair trade coffee shop. A cool cat. Fluffy and all white, affectionately named Eggs. Despite these merits there were a lot of things that Andi Byrne wasn’t, including timely and organized, which is how they ended up in many of the situations they found themselves in.

Currently, they were ten minutes late to work. Which was, admittedly, a record. When getting dressed that morning they couldn’t find their favorite pair of combat boots in the war zone that was their apartment, and for some reason that had been more important than leaving on time. Realistically, it was very important, because these particular maroon leather boots matched perfectly to their maroon skinny jeans, which looked absolutely killer with their vintage Ramones t-shirt. Light brown hair was styled perfectly in an effortless looking wave that defied all gravity, and striking blue eyes were enlarged by over-sized eyeglasses. All in all they were feeling pretty good about their appearance, and that would coast them through more of the day. Even if they got scolded for being - they checked their watch- fifteen minutes late for work.

Only two blocks left. They should have been running, but they were employing an urgent looking power walk. Coffee was balanced in one hand as they tried to type out a quick ‘sorry im runnin late’ text. With eyes glued to their phone, and at barely 5’4, they still walked with the confidence that everyone else would simply get out of their way.

RE: Collecting Cats [Closed] - saronym - 08-03-2017

Nicholas Hart, the esteemed prince, was barreling down the sidewalk in downtown Macrilan. Long legs carried him fast over the pavement. Dark but stylish sunglasses hid his eyes. One might conclude that a quick walking man in dark glasses seemed to be in a rush to escape to somewhere or escape from someone. However, he wasn’t necessarily trying to be inconspicuous. Not when he advertised himself in a slim fitting, slick looking forest green three piece suit.

Nic was in a hurry though. He was quickly leaving a deal he shouldn’t have been involved in. A deal that involved a black market sale of certain manuscripts discussing topics of dark magic that he probably shouldn't possess. The procured manuscripts were tucked safely away in his leather cross-body briefcase.

His attention was mostly gathered in reading through a draft of a paper he planned to present at the magical college in connection with a thesis he was working on.

He would later be glad for that leather protection over the precious manuscripts in his brief case as he was presently barreling right into someone carrying coffee. The impact of their bodies hitting one another caused the coffee’s top to pop off and hot dark liquid to spill all down the front of his grey tie, crisp undershirt, and of course, that expensive suit.

“Oh shit!” He cried out shaking his hands of coffee splatters before wiping uselessly at his ruined outfit. “Are you serious?!” This question wasn’t necessarily for the person he had collided with that he was absolutely ignoring. Failing to even check if they were okay.

“Do you even have eyes?” He demanded of them, rather unreasonably given that he had also been a party in the accident. “Now I’m going to have to miss my presentation!”

“I think this is a lesson in don’t text and walk.” He chided as he quickly took a knee to gather up the papers that went flying. Indiscriminately, he gathered together everything that had fallen not realizing that some of the papers didn’t actually belong to him.

RE: Collecting Cats [Closed] - megs - 08-03-2017

Andi was vaguely aware of something moving closer to them from the top of their vision. They were however, so close to finding the perfect emoji to compliment their apology text that they didn’t bother to look up.

A breathless ‘oh’ of surprise escaped them as they collided with said foreign body, that hadn’t moved out of their way as expected. And since said foreign body was wildly larger than they were Andi found themselves knocked to the ground, which prompted another surprised noise from them as their bottom met pavement. The flouncy curl of their hair bounced with the motion Ruined coffee and papers rained down in the space between them. They heard their phone clatter somewhere on the sidewalk.

Andi’s first reaction was to apologize. They had just opened their mouth to do so, but the man they had collided with beat them to it. To speaking first, anyway, because that certainly was not an apology. “Wait,” Andi demanded, pushing their glasses back up their nose. They looked down at their now coffee-stained t-shirt. A big dark splotch stained their jeans. “You’re trying to blame me?” The more they spoke the more difficult their unmistakably Irish brogue was discernible. They pushed themselves up onto their knees to snatch at papers they could immediately identify as their own. “What about reading and walking. Do you have eyes,” they finished, lamely.

RE: Collecting Cats [Closed] - saronym - 08-03-2017

It was odd how they were both at eye level with one another crouching on the pavement to retrieve papers and yet both asking each other whether they had eyes. Nic stopped gathering and lowered his sunglasses with a sassy flourish to show the other victim of their accident that he indeed had eyes. Green ones. Like olives.

Satisfied that they got the point, Nic shoved his glasses back up to hide his eyes again and then rose to a standing level. He pursed his lips and held his hand out as an offering of help.

When they were both standing Nic made a flat plane of his hand and set it at his eye level and then extended outwards. “My level of vision.” Then he did the same with the shorter one he’d knocked over. “Versus yours.” He brought his hand back from their line of vision until it bumped into his chest. Head cocked and eyebrows raised over the rims of his sunglasses as if he had made the most irrefutable point of the century. A curl to his lip suggested he wasn’t trying to be over mean so much as trying to tease while emphasizing he was right.

“ I mean your voluminous hair does add some height to you, but still.” His hand made a gesture around his own head, making a dome shape as if to signify their wild hair.

“Maybe use those pretty eyes of yours. Uh...what’s your name?” He noticed that their cellphone had clattered away onto the pavement and risked being stepped on by someone, so he pushed past to pick it up. The case was coming undone at the seam from the fall so he pressed it together securely enjoying the satisfying snapping sounds before offering it back. “There you go.”

RE: Collecting Cats [Closed] - megs - 08-04-2017

Andi looked up to watch the reveal of pretty green eyes which he was using to prove his point. For a moment, they found themselves staring at him, just now noticing how attractive he was. Dark sunglasses were returned to his face, and the spell was broken and Andi gathered up the last of the papers.

They considered snubbing his offer to help them off the ground, but instead the gripped the papers in one hand and used the other to hold his and lift themselves up. Breaking the contact they began brushing dirt and debris off the back of their pants. Andi scoffed when he pointed out their dramatic height difference, blue eyes rolled nearly into the back of their head. “I think as a giant it’s your responsibility to be more aware of the normal sized people around you.” They snapped. His smirk prompted a childishly petulant look from them in response.

Wait. Had he just complimented their eyes? The eyes in question tracked him as he went and retrieved their cell phone for them. No, they must have misheard him. Andi reached down and picked up the emptied coffee cup and deposited it in the trash. “Oh, uh, it’s Andi,” they explained, still trying to decide if he was suddenly being pleasant with them when not a moment ago he had been teasing. The mumbled thanks as they took their phone, shoving it into their back pocket. They looked him over, obvious coffee stains on his expensive looking suit.

“Sorry, uh, about this,” they said, gesturing to the whole of him.

RE: Collecting Cats [Closed] - saronym - 08-04-2017

Nicholas could have gone on listening to that fetching Irish accent, but he was quickly losing material in terms to keeping a perfect stranger talking to him. They apologized, which was nice. But now the interaction was coming to a close.

He shrugged dramatically, arms flailing outwards before slapping down against his thighs. “Life is a goddamn tragedy. What can ya’ do.” Half sarcasm. Half just plain realism.

“Well I would say it’s been a pleasure, Andi, but, well, you ruined my suit.” A quick playful reminder. “I sure do hope you learn to look where you’re going. One of these days you might have an even worse encounter with an even gianter asshole than me. So, I guess, I’ll just leave you to it. Whatever it is you were doing there.”

He felt a bit awkward as he sidled around doing that creeping away from a conversation thing since he no longer knew what to say. Though he’d asked for a name, he forgot to give his own. He was feeling increasingly flustered and didn’t want to really admit that he found this person who he’d knocked over kind of adorable.

RE: Collecting Cats [Closed] - megs - 08-04-2017

Andi made a face as he quickly wrapped the interaction. Whatever hurry he'd been in before had apparently caught up to them. That, or he was desperate to get away from the one who'd made him late and spilled coffee over his nice suit. They were left mostly staring at him, an expression of obvious puzzlement on their features. Lips pressed together, brow furrowed, head slightly cocked at an angle.

“Sorry,” they said again, when he mentioned his suit, not quite interrupting. It seemed impossible to interrupt him however, since he was kind of on a roll when it came to scolding them. Apparently, they were going to shoulder the blame.

He walked off and took their name with him and offered nothing in return. Andi watched him walk off for a few heartbeats before throwing their hands up in the air. When he disappeared into other pedestrians on the sidewalk Andi whipped out their phone again to dial work, and beg to finish their project from home.

RE: Collecting Cats [Closed] - saronym - 08-18-2017

Nic left the encounter feeling more confused and agitated than he honestly should have. It was the suit, he told himself. The coffee stained suit. He went straight home after knocking that poor tiny person to the ground and then chastising them for it. He went home and changed his suit and started studying the materials he had been transporting which were the reason he had been on that sidewalk at that particular time.

Later that evening, Nicholas set himself up at his desk for an all night study session. The scene like something straight from an overly posed instagram photo. The weird thing was Nicholas wasn’t particularly famous on social media...that’s just how he lived.

He set a steaming cup of homemade espresso with a biscotti cookie poised on the saucer on his desk. Even the crumbs seemed to conspire to set the scene by falling in a way that seemed entirely accidental in the most attractive way. Nicholas clicked on the desk lamp. He pushed the typewriter he had refurbished himself off to the side to make room for his manuscripts.

When he began shuffling through the papers to set them in order, he found that several did not belong to him. There were pages with images, logos it seemed in various stages of design. They were printed on letterhead belonging to a boutique graphic design company.

His heart sank when he realized that a couple of those pages had scribbles and doodles and notes scrawled everywhere as if the artist had met with clients to revise the images. “Oh fuck.” He said aloud to himself when he realized he may have walked away with some important papers. Taken from a tiny person he had knocked over and then scolded.

Perhaps it was how the interaction went that bothered him the most. Had he been too harsh? Had they picked up on his subtle humor? Was it too subtle? Maybe they had recognized him and were completely appalled to have ruined the suit of the prince. And now he had their work-in-progress and oh how he would have hated to have lost some pages of an essay he was working on.

Clearly, he needed to return the papers. He would go first thing in the morning. A show of good faith.

And he did. Nicholas searched for the company online to find their location and operating hours and showed up in the morning shortly after business opened. When he walked through the front door to the shop-studio looking place, he accosted the first person who looked like an employee.

“Hi, um, I’m looking for Andi? She’s not expecting me but I have some papers for her.”

Though this was the only place he had to be that day, Nic dressed sharply in a navy blue blazer over a grey and black horizontal striped sweater and slim fitted low waist jeans. Arguably the focal point of his outfit were the vintage bowling shoes with red laces.

RE: Collecting Cats [Closed] - megs - 09-07-2017

Andi’s night was less, in a word, picturesque. They had not gotten out of going to work like they had tried to bargain for and instead, ended up having to go home, shower, change and finally get to work (with a new coffee of course) two and a half hours after they were supposed to be there. They wriggled out of any true repercussions thanks to their story and their overly sympathetic boss, who was willing to look past their time-management related shortcomings in favor of the work they produced.

They were oblivious to their missing papers. Having had no need for them during their work day and being chronically too disorganized to even realize they didn’t have something.

They finished out their evening with a loud and rowdy punk concert with some friends, where they narrowly avoided getting into a fist fight with an overly aggressive fuckboy that had taken their friends seat at the bar. While it could be argued later that it was a drunk Andi who had been overly aggressive, the conflict was avoided by tiny Andi having been thrown over a shoulder and pulled out of the bar.

In the morning, they were hungover. They would have rather died than gone to work, but somehow they managed. Needless to say they were definitely not on time, but at least they were there now, sitting at their desk and doing what they were supposed to be doing for once. The placement of their desk gave them the benefit of noticing him before he noticed them. Movement in front of the boutique windows caught their attention and they recognized the well-dressed stranger from the coffee incident the day before. The put together outfit he wore made them look down at themselves. Once again, wildly under-dressed comparatively. An old metal band t-shirt that had been cut to fall off one shoulder, and a red and black plaid mini skirt. Over the knee socks decorated in sugar skulls and red high top Converse weren’t exactly the height of fashion. Andi mostly expected to be able to watch him walk by, but no he came inside the shop. What the fuck. Why did he do that? Andi immediately hunkered down, pressing their face to the desk and trying to hide behind their dual monitors. He stopped a passing assistant and they could overhear the conversation. Why was he looking for them? Andi was freaking out.

“Their desk is over there,” Andi heard the assistant say. They could almost hear the disapproving wrinkle to her nose when she corrected him on Andi’s preferred pronoun. Andi peaked over their screens just in time to witness...wait... they didn't know his name... and the assistant turn to look at them. Which caused them to oh so subtly duck back down.

RE: Collecting Cats [Closed] - saronym - 09-08-2017

Nic was well enough in tune with subtle social cues and with progressive parlance to understand exactly what was meant with that pointed use of ‘their’ in that particular tone of voice. He blinked at the receptionist patiently as he endured that uncomfortable feeling of being corrected. Briefly, he replayed his brief interaction with Andi in his mind and it all came together nicely.

“Right.” Nic smiled as his gaze tracked to where the receptionist pointed. "Thank you for that information." He said robotically with a fake smile.

Just then, he saw a person peak over the computer monitors and duck back down. It was so undoubtedly Andi if the fluff of hair on top were any sign. Plus, there was something about that sneaky peak and hide move that seemed to fit them perfectly even though Nic knew next to nothing about them.

He pursed his lips and shook his head to himself as he walked over to those dual monitors that hid his coffee assailant.

“Hi Andi.” He said loudly whilst looming over the desk. He proceeded to act as if he didn’t know Andi was trying hide from him. “What’s going on under there? Did you drop something? Spill some coffee maybe? Got your daily ritual going on? Mind this computer, looks real fancy. Wouldn’t wanna mess up fancy and expensive things, huh? That. That would be super unfortunate.” He segued right into hardcore teasing which was really his very poor cover for flirtation.

"I like your socks." He gestured with his hand and smiled more sincerely. "Pretty rad."

RE: Collecting Cats [Closed] - megs - 09-10-2017

Andi darted upright when he approached. As if summoned by the volume at which he said their name. They shushed him fiercely, lifting their hands towards their head like they were being arrested and not merely teased. Their hair bounced with the movement as if it had a mind of its own. “Oh my god shut up,” they complained with a lopsided grin. Usually it looked charming, but in front of Nic it always looked sheepish. As if the universe intended to prove him right, they bumped the desk with their knees when they stood, which caused the half-finished coffee to wobble precariously. They reached down to steady it, finally breaking eye contact with their teasing company.

The lopsided grin faded and they frowned at him before very pointedly moving the cup away from the keyboard. Apparently he was very salty about his suit. Which they recalled apologizing for, even though they maintained that the accident was entirely their fault.

“Did you just say rad?” They teased in turn. Glancing down at the socks because they didn't remember which ones they had put on. In a way, Andi looked like they had gotten dressed in the dark and been very lucky on color coordination. But they had very deliberately chosen every piece they currently wore. “I didn't know you talked the same way you dressed.” They leaned further over the desk to gaze down at his bowling shoes (even though they secretly thought the shoes were rad). Straightening, they pushed a hand through their hair. “So, uhm…” they began, their accent warping the vowels as they considered what to say. “What are you doing here?”

RE: Collecting Cats [Closed] - saronym - 09-13-2017

Nic reached for the wobbling coffee cup at the same time as Andi, but he was second to the item and stopped short of grabbing their hands. “Jeeze, I wasn’t being literal when I invited you to spill.” He chastised jokingly. His own hands shot back to his side and he straightened looking satisfied that Andi had the coffee under control. Green eyes tracked the cup to where it was moved. A safer distance from the keyboard but not necessarily from all things - like important looking wires. He reached and pushed it another half inch towards safety just to be sure.

Nic’s mouth feel open wide as he made an effort to look shocked and horrified as his word choice was gently mocked. “I’m a classy guy, alright? I say rad and I wear vintage shoes. It’s a whole legitimate aesthetic, you know.”

He seemed to jump a bit, or start at the mention of his purpose in their place of employment. “Oh right.” Nic had a leather bound folio tucked under his arm that he whipped out. He pulled the elastic binding aside and thumbed through until he found the papers that he had accidentally picked up after their run-in the prior morning. He completely failed to realize how this action might advertise himself as the kind of guy who carried such folios around with enough papers to actually have to organize and sift through.

“I think these are yours.” He said proudly as he thrust the papers in question Andi’s direction. His chest seemed to puff up bit as if he had saved the day or some important project.

RE: Collecting Cats [Closed] - megs - 09-14-2017

“Classy, eh? Is that what you thought I meant?” They grinned at him as they picked up the coffee they'd both just worked on securing near the edge of their desk and took a sip. They frowned at the cold beverage before setting it back in its designated safe space. Swallowing down the less than appealing drink they waited while he sorted through the fancy looking folio.

Of course, he had a fancy looking folio. As if his dress and demeanor wasn't enough to be intimidating he had to appear brilliantly organized and put together.

They cocked their head curiously as held the papers towards them. Taking the small stack, they flipped through them quickly, scanning the contents therein. After a few seconds they finally realized what they were. “Oh! Okay, thanks.” Blue eyes skirted upwards to look at him again, there was something sheepish about the crooked curve of their mouth. “I didn't know I'd lost those. Thanks a bunch for bringing them back.” Their gratitude, though genuine was mixed with something else. An embarrassment perhaps, because the papers he'd returned were very old. Old enough that Andi didn't need them anymore and possibly shouldn't have been toting them around in the first place.

They were, in a word, trash. They didn't want to admit this, given how proud he looked of himself. They set the papers over their keyboard. “Thanks for coming all the way out here…” they let the words trail with an obvious inflection that he'd never given them his name.

RE: Collecting Cats [Closed] - saronym - 09-15-2017

Nic could tell that Andi was less than pleased with that sip of coffee he could guess why too: it had been sitting for too long neglected and was beyond the hope of tasting good. Nic was the kind of coffee drinker who was against microwaving the beverage. It had a window of time in which you had to finish it or it was wasted. Clearly, Andi didn’t know what the hell they were doing when it came to the precious beverage.

Shocker.

But Nic was judicious enough to attempt to keep the judgment from his face and his commentary to himself.

That wasn’t the case when it came to the way they deposited the papers on the keyboard. Not to mention the relevant that the papers hadn’t even been missed. Despite his best efforts, Nic could feel his one eyebrow creeping higher in that way it did. It was involuntary. He noticed his father did it too but the older man seemed more in control of his brow movements. Nic’s had a mind of its own, advertising his inner feeling of displeasure.

“...Nicholas. I just go by Nic usually though.” He added to the tail end of Andi’s final sentence, knowing what they had been fishing for there when trailing off. He folded his arms over his chest and stood with his hip popped. “That’s it? That’s how you thank me?” He challenged sounding like the spoiled brat he could be. He was a prince, afterall.

He laid this foundation to extort free coffee from them hoping they could pick up on what he wanted. However, Nic didn’t let the comment settle before he came forth with what he wanted directly. That was easier.

“Looks like you let your coffee get stale. Which is good for me. Because when you get yourself a new one, you can buy me one as thanks.” A brief smirk of victory advertised that he thought he had them in a bind. Though, clearly, they could decline. He hoped they wouldn’t because he was curious about that adorable accent and how an Irish person had ended up in the Isles.