Iron Station Savage Masks IC IV

[InTheMachine]

Welcome to Thread IV! You may read the third thread here!

November 1st
Sophia
Since both she and Yuki have the same first class, Genetics, the angel spots the couple walking not too far in front of her. Drake has his hands deep in his pockets, and the two aren’t talking.

He says goodbye to her at the door and heads down the hall. Yuki stares after him for a moment before she heads inside and takes her seat at the front corner of the room, right by the door. The seats around her are quickly filled.

Class passes uneventfully, and Yuki is up and out of her seat before Sophia can even start packing up her things. The shapeshifter disappears into the throng of people changing classes as she heads to the next building over.

Spoiler: Meanwhile…

Show

Yuki takes her seat in the front of Dr. Jefferson’s genetics class her head whirling with thoughts about what had just occurred.

‘Sophia likes girls,’ Terrence had said. Was she flirting the entire time? All of last night and the bus ride? And I was just too dense to see it? …I’ll have to apologize to her later.

When he’d walked her to class, Drake had been even more reticent and taciturn than normal. She’d quickly gotten used to the small touches on her elbow or at the small of her back that she and Drake had compromised with, but those had been absent too. Something was wrong.

The class passes all too quickly and the shapeshifter realizes that she hadn’t taken a single note. She didn’t even know what the lecture was about. Yuki sighs and slides her laptop back into her bag before heading to her and Drake’s shared Calculus class one building over.

As usual, she arrives earlier than he does and takes her seat near the back of the room. Five minutes later, class is about to begin and Drake still hasn’t arrived. Dread settles in the pit of her stomach. Something was very wrong.

Yuki gathers up her notebook and throws it back into her bag. Just as Dr. Herrera is about to start class, she makes her way to the door with a quick apology and a bow to the teacher. She swings her bag over a shoulder as she texts Drake– Where are you?

Three floors up, Drake paces in front of the wide window that overlooks the small pond in front of the admin building. The foreign feeling of doubt and insecurity twisting around in his chest rankled him. It was enough that his necklace was vibrating. Drake scowls as he pulls the trembling ring out from the inside of his shirt and closes his fist around it, willing himself to calm down before things got out of hand.

His phone buzzes on the conference table behind him, but he ignores it.

His thoughts are a whirlwind inside his head. Yuki hadn’t said yes just because she was afraid to say no, had she?

His necklace shakes harder. Had she?

No. Yuki wasn’t like that. She was honest to a fault. It was one of the things he lo…liked about her.

He was willing to admit the way he’d gone about their first kiss hadn’t been the most thought-out plan, and the fallout from that had literally scarred him.

Unbidden, his other hand touches the horizontal line across his left cheek as the fittings on the table behind him start to vibrate as well. That damn angel had gotten under his skin so easily. Team Lead of South Side, reduced to this by a mere suggestion that his girlfriend actually wasn’t interested in him, he thinks with a huff and a shake of his head.

It was a new feeling for him, wondering if a girl was interested. Sophia had been right, it was a slow week if only one girl slipped him her number– not that he cared about that. He hadn’t for the past two years, after Yuki had joined South Side. Even now, he was still surprised by the intensity of his feelings for her. He’d lost count of the girls he dated, but he’d never felt this way in any other relationship. He hadn’t been lying to John when he’d said that he would die for her.

But Yuki was so… distant. He longed with all his being to do more than just brush his fingers against her arm or back so that she knew he was there. Sure, they’d kissed a few times, but every time she’d backed off before either of them could really get into it. What if maybe she was just humoring him until he got too frustrated with her and broke it off? Was she just waiting for things to go back to normal? For him to go back to just being her teammate and not more? What if she didn’t have the courage to tell him no? She could barely look him in the eye most days. Or was all of this just… a cultural thing that they could work through?

Behind him, the door unlatches. Drake turns to see his shapeshifter girlfriend enter the room with a concerned look on her face.

He glances back over at his phone, betting that the text he’d gotten earlier was from her, before she closes the door and sets her backpack down on the table next to his bag. Sorry, Yuki.

“Hi Drake,” she says quietly. “I thought you might be here.”

He nods. It was a room they’d met in often for study sessions since it was almost never used, except for Saturdays. “I needed to think through a couple things,” he replies with a sigh. “It’s safer up here.”

Yuki tilts her head as she takes a few steps closer to him. “Did something upset you that much?” she asks as she takes one of his hands, tracing the rough calluses on his palm with her thumb. The metal in the room shivers once and stills. “What did Sophia say to you?”

Drake looks off to the side, internally cursing how easily she’d seen through him and how she affected him. Why was she okay with giving him the physical contact that he craved now? He quickly stops that train of thought however. It wasn’t fair to her. “It’s nothing, Yuki,” he says, pulling his hand away. “Don’t worry about it, okay?” He turns back toward the window, looking out to the pond. ‘Tough as nails’— that’s what he was supposed to be. Showing weakness to her wasn’t an option. It was bad enough that his powers sometimes gave him away.

Her eyes widen a little before her own hand retreats back to her side. Her gaze darts to the carpet as she attempts to work through her limited experience, which only amounted to the past week with Drake, and a few books she’d read and movies she’d seen. She swallows, unsure of what to do as she looks back up at Drake’s back.

At her silence, Drake closes his eyes for a moment before he turns and walks around the other side of the table to grab his messenger bag and phone. “I’m going to go out on patrol for the rest of the day. See you back at base.”

As he sweeps from the room, Yuki watches him go. The dread she’d felt in her stomach increases. What… just happened?

Sophia and Terrence
Terrence leads Sophia to Ashford’s, an upscale coffee bar about a five minute walk from Briarwood. He’d been there a few times with the team over the last few months. He spots the owner, Scott, a very large thickly built man working busily behind the counter. A blonde Latina with a full sleeve of rose tattoos is running the register, and a dark haired girl with glasses is running orders out to customers.

Jazz with smooth female vocals plays quietly over the low din.

Raphael and Louis
As Raphael, Stella, and Louis enter Ashford’s, they spot Scott, Izzy, and Quinn busy behind the bar and the register. Izzy waves her fingers at Louis with a soft smile.

Both Raphael and Louis spot Sophia and Terrence waiting at the end of the line for coffee.

John

“Tomorrow, you say?” John replied with a wry smile. “Thanks for that update. I’ll try to schedule my bout of insecurity for early in the day so as to not trouble you overmuch. Maybe at 7 AM. I don’t think I have anything scheduled for then. Do you think people would notice if I tried to schedule time with you the entire rest of the week?”

Emi smiles a little at his joke. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, John. He’s bought a condo at Pinnacle 67 downtown.”

John reached up and caressed her hair as he grew more serious. “It is a bit to take in, I have to admit. The Amulet helps, of course, and things are moving fast enough that I am keeping busy with some alchemical work, some cryptography, and thinking through how to defeat Valèdeir without harming anyone significantly. I’ll be picking up a couple of things on my way back to aid in that. Those activities are taking up what time I have that is not focused on thinking about you—whether it is overplanning a picnic lunch or trying not to overthink our trip to Providence.”

“‘Staying busy’, he says,” Emi repeats with a slightly raised eyebrow. “Figuring out how to defeat a dragon is ‘staying busy’? I suppose I need to figure out how to make my downtime more interesting.”

“What exactly are you picking up?” she asks, her voice draining of any playfulness.

“I’ll get us all out of this, Emi,” he pledged. “I promise. As the wonderful a woman who is the most important person in the world to me, I will make sure that I do not disappoint you in this.”

Emi reaches out to take John’s hand, intertwining their fingers as she rests them on an open portion of the picnic basket. She looks deep into his eyes, and John can see the adoration there. “I know you’ll figure it out. But don’t leave me out of it, okay? I can help you, just like everyone else.”

Keith

His smile softens a bit as he looks at the ground. "Honestly, I learn a lot whenever you talk about Thrax. Never really thought I'd get to hear about another world entirely. Especially with our space knowledge being so limited here."

Keith needed to figure out something nice to do for Aeryn. He didn't know what yet but something.

"Come to think of it, when does South Side celebrate your birthday? Wish I had the gift for language Stolas does so I could learn y'all's."

“I never thought that I would be talking with someone from Earth,” Aeryn admits. “I had Drake look it up one time and he said that Earth and the star Polaris are about 400 light years apart. Our spaceships only have the capability to travel within our own solar system, so I don’t even know how it held together for me to crash land here.”

“I joined South Side on April 8th,” the alien says. “So I guess then? Your calendar and Thrax’s don’t really have an equivalent.”