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Post by Nina Fortner on Feb 23, 2018 18:14:57 GMT -5
Nina was too innocent to understand the innuendo. "Raoul, do you never just... get burgers?"
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Post by Silva on Feb 23, 2018 19:25:26 GMT -5
He shrugged, charmed, fixing his sunglasses. "Oh, so American! Would that bring you satisfaction?"
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Post by Nina Fortner on Feb 23, 2018 19:26:21 GMT -5
"Raoul," she said, exasperated.
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Post by Silva on Feb 23, 2018 19:31:38 GMT -5
"Well, would it?" He raised his eyebrows.
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Post by Nina Fortner on Feb 23, 2018 19:37:32 GMT -5
"Let's get burgers sometime and find out," she said, following up with a playful lift of her eyebrow. "Or I guess you could buy a grill."
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Post by Silva on Feb 23, 2018 20:24:21 GMT -5
He gave her a squeeze as the two of them proceeded along.
"How do you like your meat? Well-done?"
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Post by Nina Fortner on Feb 23, 2018 20:27:36 GMT -5
Nina took his hands and squeezed them affectionately in hers before leaning away from him. "Give me some meat and I'll tell you how I like it," she said, before releasing him with a smile and walking away from him.
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Post by Silva on Feb 23, 2018 21:10:09 GMT -5
~~~transitional fade~~~~
Shockingly, she managed to get him in the water anyway, and shockingly it was as if he'd prepared for this all along. He made some remark to Nina along the way about swimming in the nude, and she'd pretended to be scandalized. The water was almost painfully blue, but the sky above it remained pale gray, as if something strange were afoot in the climate.
They really would have to get oysters some time after this. He'd always had a taste for them, broiled oysters being all well and good, but it was difficult to top the sudden wash of clean brine in one's mouth. Galician oysters. And now with Nina -- it would be another point of kinship between the two of them.
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Post by Nina Fortner on Feb 23, 2018 21:24:56 GMT -5
It had been a very long time since Nina had done something this conventionally and ecstatically fun, and try though he did to reinstate them, the sexual undertones and seedy glamour of Silva's company had dissipated like beads of water under a hot sun - there was a wholesome, fragile element to Nina's happiness that tipped the atmosphere in favor of her interpretation.
He was talking with a probably intentional vagueness about a certain beach from his distant memory and Nina was listening intently in case he wasn't teasing her, feeling something curl around her ankle and kicking it off by swimming towards him uncomfortably - she couldn't tell what it had been, and it had felt like nothing. But then he mentioned his grandmother, and then....
"Wait! Where did you say this was?"
Where! She should have asked when.
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Post by Silva on Feb 23, 2018 21:29:47 GMT -5
"Oh, just some little place. It probably didn't even have a name. She was Spanish -- like I'm Spanish, of course. You know where Spain is."
Cheekily pretend-patronizing. His hair was plastered back from his face with moisture and it had never looked whiter or more bedraggled.
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Post by Nina Fortner on Feb 23, 2018 21:31:56 GMT -5
"I don't mean where it is on a map," she insisted. "Where was it to you?" Some golden land of childhood - well, perhaps Silva had not had a golden childhood; Nina assumed everybody did because for so long she had pretended she remembered hers that way.
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Post by Silva on Feb 23, 2018 21:39:43 GMT -5
What on earth did that mean?
"It was paradise. I was happy there, of course. I did all the things boys do." It had made a wonderful metaphor for espionage, that was for sure -- one big playground full of dangers and excitement. Loose floorboards and rusty nails and, of course, vermin. He grinned. "I broke my arm on that island."
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Post by Nina Fortner on Feb 23, 2018 21:43:08 GMT -5
"How...... fitting."
But she wasn't talking about the broken arm. His childhood with this solid memory of paradise - bright, sunny, startlingly perfect - and her childhood, with strange recollections of nearly dying in the cold and being in a room with no light, together made one balanced whole, the dark and the light together.
She was smiling faintly, but forgetting to look at him.
"You know, i'm not sure what things boys do. I don't remember knowing any."
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Post by Silva on Feb 23, 2018 21:48:34 GMT -5
"They take things apart. And they fight. You really knew no boys at all?"
The past was like a prickle in his mind. How strange. What was that song Marilyn Monroe sang? Something about not being allowed to play...
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Post by Nina Fortner on Feb 23, 2018 21:49:07 GMT -5
"I knew one boy. But I don't remember him anymore."
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