juststopped | for Krem

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krem

for Krem

It isn't the first time she's ended up somewhere she didn't necessarily intend. In private, she's done her fair share of crying over Flemming - she misses her daughter like a part of her, even after so many years - but in public, she's decided to put a brave face on it. After he'd delivered her to her apartment, Krem had told her that he'd be happy to take her for dinner, once she felt more settled. Adaline's done a little bit to make the apartment her own. She's gone back to the place that Sam bought her and put together a capsule wardrobe that's a sad shadow of her guest room back in San Francisco. She is, in short, trying. And that has to count for something.

It's the middle of the afternoon when she texts Krem.

Dinner would be nice - Adaline.

They arrange to meet at a place that Adaline's walked past a few times. It's not a particularly showy place, but she does make an effort, putting on a dress with a full skirt that reminds her of something she might have bought new in the fifties. She does her hair and make-up. She considers heels for a long time and then decides to wear them anyway. Krem strikes her as someone who doesn't lack for confidence, quiet though it seems to be.

She's a little late when she steps into the restaurant, shrugging out of her coat to let the hostess check it for her.

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Krem snorted and smirked a little, flipping casually to the wine menu and looking over the choices. The varieties had expanded exponentially from red and white back home, but he had a good eye for things, and at least things were still marked fair well under those two categories.

"How do you feel about appetizers?"

"Oh, I am absolutely in favour of appetisers," says Adaline, flipping to the appropriate page in the menu, glancing up at him through her eyelashes "Provided we're splitting the bill, of course."

"I'm getting the wine, then," Krem said, half sternly but mostly playful. "And you can get the appetizer. And we'll swap paying each other's entrees."

It was pointedly more convoluted than it needed to be, but Krem was feeling cheeky about it. Not that he thought either one of them needed to pay for the other, but he also knew the momentary strain of being new to the city and not yet employed, and he was willing to take a bit more of the bill, if they were going to split it.

"A lady never bickers," says Adaline, conceding the point gracefully and setting down her menu, having chosen what she's going to have. "But I reserve the right to decide I want a dessert at the last minute."

"Of course," Krem said, finishing his wine selection and then looking over the entrees quickly to find something that looked good and wasn't outrageously priced--more for his own piece of mind than some misguided chivalry of the moment.

When the waiter came over to take their order, Krem smiled and put in for their wine--a decent, middle of the road blush that was labeled to be bright and floral, but a bit tart--as well as his entree, pork with potatos.

Krem mentioned appetisers but didn't order any so Addie orders for both of them, pasta with shellfish for her entree. She orders a soda, too, which is terrible manners but, right then, she feels like indulging herself. She's having dinner with someone birth handsome and polite and she feels like drinking soda.

"I've been shopping," she says, by way of starting conversation. "And I found the museum. There might be a position going in the archive. I need to call back in tomorrow."

Krem was more than happy to let Adaline decide their appetizers, more than happy to just listen to the way that she spoke. There was no ill will at her ordering an additional drink, either, though he did hope she had plans to help with the bottle of wine he'd ordered.

"Did you work at a museum back home?" he asked, genuinely curious. "I have a friend who works in the library here, down in the archives there."

"On and off," she says, nodding, idly toying with silverware because she honestly finds herself in danger of blushing if she looks at him too directly for too long. She blames Ellis for this - for reminding her that she has a heart again. "I'm best with photographs and film. Older things. What's your friend's name?"

"I don't think I've ever been to one, actually," Krem said, sort of contemplatively. There were statues and monuments and old ruins all over Thedas, and he had seen a great many in all his traveling. But the concept of a museum still struck him as a little odd.

"Dorian," he said. He hummed a little. "He's from home. Home home, not just where I was brought from, either. We're countrymen--different parts of the country, but." He waved a hand a little bit, almost dismissively at his rambling, and cleared his throat. "Anyway, you'd know if you'd have run across him. Very sharply dressed, often accessorizes with an unnecessary amount of jewelry. Far too well groomed mustache."

"You paint a very vivid picture," she says, and she can't help but laugh, nodding thanks as the waiter delivers their drinks. "I'll definitely keep him in mind.I love museums though; a lot of people don't value the past nearly enough."

He let the waiter pour the wine, and even managed to not make a face that it was only a little bit of wine in his glass. When the waiter had gone, he poured himself a little bit more. If he'd paid for the bottle, he was drinking his share of wine. He tilted the bottle toward Adaline inquisitively.

"We didn't have museums back home. There were libraries, but most of them were private, or the Circles controlled them. History was a thing taught by the Chantry--ah, the churches."

"Oh!" says Addie, eyes wide, interested to hear about where he's from. She nudges her wine glasses towards him and takes a sip of her soda while he pours.

"I originally trained as a secretary but I've mostly been doing archival work for years now," she says.

He smiled a little pouring her an equal measure of wine to his own--it only seemed fair, and she seemed the sort of lady that would definitely call him out if he short changed her on the service when he'd already doled himself out.

"So it's something you definitely enjoy doing," he said with surety. He set the bottle aside, much more content to focus on her than try to find ways to explain where he'd come from. "The archival work."

"I just like history," says Adaline, reaching for her wine glass, cradling it between long fingers as she studies him for a moment. "Too many people are too wrapped in the present to even notice the value in things that have already happened."

Krem let himself admire her fingers a moment, the length of them and how she spread them against the glass, as he listened to the way she spoke. It was a lovely idea, certainly; about how Dorian looked at his archival work as well, and as much as Krem enjoyed debating him about it, he knew there was merits to it.

"There are benefits to both, I think," he said, and nodded a bit as he sipped his wine. "My home could have benefit from making history more accessible. There was too much repetition of it, too much thought, well, we can do it better because we know best now. Being wrapped up in the present. But I don't think it does well to dwell too much in the past. You'll forget where you live, what's ahead of you."

Adaline makes a thoughtful noise as she takes a sip of her wine. How often has she left parts of herself behind over the years? She's shrunk herself down to her most useful size.

"Agreed," she says. "It's worth holding on to the valuable and the beautiful but sometimes you've got to let things go."

The appetizers came, along with small plates so that they could separate out what they wanted evenly--though Krem thought that an awful waste of resources, really; he wasn't the one setting the table, though, or doing the dishes. He waited to see which one she'd pick first.

"Besides archival work," he asked, "what do you fill your time with? You said you like photographs and film?"

Adaline makes a beeline for a fish with mushrooms and garlic. A thought that, maybe, she might regret having garlic later fleets through her mind and she dismisses it, glad that she doesn't blush easily.

"I read a lot. I go to the movies. I love music. Languages? I used to like to travel." She sighs a little, laughing. "I make myself sound terribly dull, don't I?"

"No," Krem assured, shaking his head a bit and smiling, trying some of the bruschetta himself while she tried the fish. "No, not at all. Honestly, though, I think it's hard to make most people sound particularly dull."

He hummed a little, eating for a moment, before he shrugged a shoulder. "I've made you talk about yourself an awful lot, I feel like, I'm sorry. You can ask about me as well, if you'd like too."

Shielding her mouth for a moment while she finishes chewing, Adaline takes another sip of her wine and then smiles.

"Your accent," she says, tilting her head a little, earring making a musical sound as it shifts. "Where are you from?"

Krem smiled and tilted his wine glass a little. "You haven't heard of it. That isn't a slight on your travels, either, Adaline--I mean, except for myself and the three other people from my world, no one in Darrow has heard of where I'm from."

He took a bit of the fish next, to try it as well. The garlic was sharp and flavorful and he hummed softly. "I'm from a land called Tevinter, in a place called Thedas."

"Tevinter," echoes Adaline, sounding out the unfamiliar words, taking care to copy his inflections. "And I thought I was terribly cosmopolitan because I lived in England for a summer." She laughs at herself, at how ridiculous she sounds. "What's it like there? Do you miss it?"

"From reading about Earth," Krem said, laughing softly, "It is a bit Ancient Rome and late British Empire. Clinging to the vestiges of our once glorious past, constantly in mired conflict with a long-time Barbarian foe to the north. Seat of all the great culture of Thedas."

Krem made a bit of a face, rolled his eyes powerfully. "I do. I really--sometimes, more than others. Dorian helps with that. I left nearly ten years ago, but he left much more recently. We didn't know each other back in Tevinter, but we were expatriates in the south. Hm. That's putting it nicely. We were exiles."

"Goodness," says Adaline, taking another bite of her food. The look on his face is amusing and she laughs a little, not cruelly, though. When he says the word exile, Adaline sobers, a little. It's not like she doesn't understand that, a little. Even though she'd been able to go back to San Francisco eventually.

"That must have been a hard life," she says, taking another sip of her wine. "I'm so sorry that you had to go throught that."

Already, she likes him enough that the thought of that hurts, a little.

"It was...life," Krem said, and shrugged, not precisely resigned but settled to it at least. "It was better to have left Tevinter when I did. I didn't have another option. Things were good in the south for a while. And, now, I'm here."

It was such a painfully abridged version of things, but the rest of it seemed terrible dinner conversation. He smiled gently.

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