notfaking_it | (no subject)

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delta

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The beach, he'd said, so she'd prepared for the beach.

Some of the plans she'd left to him. The food, in particular, she'd instructed him to bring, telling him it didn't matter what it was, that she'd eat anything. There was a red and blue striped blanket shoved in the back of her hall closet, not something she'd put on the bed, but she grabbed it for the two of them to sit on, stowing it inside a bag. This time of year, the water was probably still too cold to swim, especially in the evening, so she hadn't bothered with a bathing suit, instead choosing a light sweater over a dark grey dress, one of the first she'd picked up upon her arrival.

She remembered him telling her that he'd been drunk once, that he hadn't enjoyed it, so she'd taken care when choosing a wine, finding something she hoped he might like, especially since she had no intention of getting him drunk on it. She had a corkscrew, two plastic goblets, an extra sweater in case the wind was cold.

She couldn't remember the last time she'd put so much care into preparing for a date.

Pausing by the mirror near her front door, Lily ran her fingers through her hair before she lifted the bag with the blanket and the wine. A cab was waiting for her downstairs and she took it to Delta's, paying the driver before she got out and headed into the building to buzz his apartment.

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This time he wasn't nearly as nervous, wasn't nearly as in the dark about what to expect, and not just because he'd suggested the place. He had spent maybe a little longer than he needed to at the grocery store, in the end selecting some fresh-baked bread, three different kinds of cheese, and some fruit - which a small amount of research had informed him was good food to bring on something like this.

He'd even bought a basket. He'd been given to understand that baskets were appropriate.

And so what if he'd been lingering a little by the intercom.

"I'll come down," he said into it as soon as she buzzed, grabbed the basket and went.

He smiled as soon as he saw her. "Hello." And after a second's hesitation, he leaned in and kissed her cheek.

"Hi," she said, smiling, resting her hand on his arm as she leaned into the kiss. It was good to see him, though it hadn't been that long since she'd last run into him, and yet she'd still found herself looking forward to it for most of the day.

"Got a whole basket, I see," she said, looking down at it, still smiling. The weather was warm, but she didn't think it was so warm they'd be fighting anyone for a prime location on the beach, so she slipped her hand into the crook of his arm and asked, "Shall we?"

"I did research," he admitted. It seemed like at once an entirely practical and entirely silly thing to do. "I've never been to the beach like this before. Yes," he added, amused by the phrasing. "We shall."

She smiled again, wider this time, struck by how sweet it was that he'd done research on how to go to the beach. "I brought it this time, but if you go alone or take Eleanor, make sure you bring a blanket to sit on," she said, hefting her bag a little. "Otherwise you end up with sand in unfortunate places."

And it usually happened, anyway, blanket or not.

"I also brought some wine," she added. "But I promise not to get you drunk."

"I've gone before. But I've mostly walked." And soon it would be fully summer, and he remembered what people did then - taking their families, picnicking, swimming in the ocean.

It would be good to do those things with Eleanor, if she wanted to.

"Thank you for bringing wine." He smiled a little. "I'm not... opposed to it."

"You just don't want to get drunk," she said, grinning. "Oh, I remember. It was very unpleasant, you said." She knew she had a tendency to act dismissive, to move through life easily, never staying in one place for long, but she always listened. And she remembered. It wasn't a trait born of kindness all the time, remembering details about a person tended to uncover things she could use, but that hadn't been the reason she'd remembered what Delta said to her

Places like Darrow took away the ability to move along, so she tried a little harder here.

"An experience you don't care to repeat, I think, was the rest of it," she continued. "So we won't. Unless you change your mind."

"No good came out of it. Except that I met some people who were kind to me." Sympathetic, when now - looking back on it - he felt that he had been very foolish. Then again, how was he supposed to know how much the rules had changed?

"I've already met you. So I don't need any help there."

"No, you don't," she agreed. And while alcohol tended to help people find a little courage when it came to dates, he didn't seem to be lacking in that area, which was more important to her than whether or not he always knew what to do. Lily appreciated a person willing to go out on a limb and try something.

The wind picked up a little as they reached the beach, pulling her hair across her face and she reached up to hook it behind her ear before she looked up at Delta. "Where would you like to sit? It looks like we can go wherever we want." There were a few other couples, people walking here and there, but it wasn't as busy as it would be in a few weeks.

He scanned the stretch of sand, the line of the boardwalk, and gestured a little way down the beach, away from where people appeared to be sticking to. It wasn't that he imagined that they'd need privacy for anything... But for some reason he liked the idea of them being mostly alone.

He stopped, glancing back at her. "Is here all right?"

"Here is perfect," Lily answered, letting go of his arm so she could set the bag down and dig the blanket out from under the bottle of wine. The wind worked for her a little and the blanket flapped out, unfolding as she set it down on the sand. The ends would flip up, but she figured it wouldn't matter much once they were sitting down.

She sat on the edge, then kicked off her sandals, leaving them beside the blanket before she curled her legs under her. She left the wine in the bag for now, instead waiting for Delta to join her as she looked out toward the ocean. "I think I'd like to take you surfing sometime," she decided, her gaze shifting from the waves back toward him.

He set the basket down on the blanket and, after looking at her a moment, followed her lead and took off his own shoes, sitting down beside her. "I've never been surfing," he said, meeting her gaze and then looking out at the breaking surf. "It... honestly never occurred to me to try it."

"I don't know why, but I think you'd like it. It's an amazing feeling," she said, leaning back on her elbows a little, listening to the waves crash against the shore. "I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm terrible at it. You'd think with all my balance and training I might be good at it, but I have a hell of a time getting myself up."

She grinned and tipped her head back to look at him. "But it's amazing all the same."

"I'd like to try," he said, deciding in that moment - and it wasn't even that difficult. The sea still made him very slightly uneasy, if he was honest, but he was beginning to suspect that the only way to get over that was simply to be around it.

He smiled at her. "If you come with me."

"Oh, I'd definitely be coming with you," Lily said, laughing, giving him a teasing grin. "I'm not going to miss out on something like that. If nothing else, it involves a handsome man whose company I enjoy getting at least partially undressed."

She was teasing him, mostly, but gauging his response, too. Maybe seeing how far she could go before she had to back off a little, how slow she might have to take things with him.

He got it, knew the angle she was coming from, and he wasn't even all that surprised, but he did feel a flush rising in his cheeks.

And not just because of the content of what she'd said.

"If it comes to that," he said, reaching for the wine, and sounding - in his own ears - refreshingly casual, "maybe I wouldn't mind seeing you either."

She laughed again, pleased by both his response and the flush in his cheeks. "I think that could probably be arranged," she said, reaching over him to take the plastic wine glasses from the bag. She didn't necessarily need to wait until they went surfing for such a thing, but Delta's circumstances were different than anyone she'd been out with and she was willing to move at a slower pace for him if he wanted.

Besides, as she'd learned with Sawyer, sometimes taking the longer route could be more interesting.

"You just let me know when is good for you," she said, offering him one of the glasses, and she could have meant surfing, but she didn't.

He took the glass, gaze lingering on her a little longer than was strictly necessary. This was heading in a specific direction, he knew that much. Inexorably, if he was reading signals right and if nothing happened to turn it all around.

Well. Maybe he didn't want to. At any rate they would see when they got there.

"It's getting warm enough, I think." He nodded at her bag. "Do you have a corkscrew?"

Smiling, she nodded, sitting up a little straighter to reach for the bag and tug it toward her. She could leave the other conversation for now, having said what she needed, knowing most things, if they were meant to, came naturally when they would and she was satisfied with that. "Somewhere in there, yeah," she said, rifling through the bag, past her wallet, the sweater, and other things she had in the various pockets, before she finally found the corkscrew near the bottom. Tucking her knees under her, she perched up higher, offering the corkscrew to Delta.

"I hope you like this," she said with a soft laugh. "I'd hate to have brought something you can't stand, but if you do hate it, don't drink it just for me." She imagined he might and she didn't want him to spend the evening doing something he didn't want to.

He took the corkscrew and dug it into the cork, turning and removing it with a soft pop. "I don't know anything about wine," he said, reaching for her glass. "I don't even know what's supposed to be good and what isn't. It does seem like there can be an awful lot to know."

"I'll tell you a secret," Lily said, holding her glass out for him and keeping his steady while he poured. "I've been to countless parties, some thrown by the richest people I've ever met and I've never been able to tell the difference between a twenty dollar bottle of wine and a six hundred dollar bottle." Most of the time, she was happy if it got her drunk, though that wasn't always the intention.

"No?" He raised his eyebrows; this surprised him slightly, but it also seemed to confirm something that he had, without being aware of it, suspected. He finished filling her glass and began filling his own.

He shot her another smile. "Then I won't try to pretend I know anything at all."

"I figure if you like something, that's all that matters," she said, lifting one thin shoulder in a shrug, still smiling faintly. "So we can both not know anything about the wine except whether or not we're enjoying it." She'd stopped being surprised a long time ago by the number of people who did things because of how they might look, but she still tried to avoid doing it herself. It was easier not to worry much about what someone thought of her.

He took a sip of the wine and paused a minute, holding it in his mouth and letting the tastes come to him. There was a sharpness to it, but also something smoother, a taste that was somewhere between sweet and bitter.

"It's interesting," he said, swallowing. "I think... I like it."

Lily nodded, taking a sip of her own before she reached for the bottle and turned it around to look at the label again. She'd read it while in the store, but couldn't remember whether or not she'd ever had it before. Though she didn't drink most nights, there was often wine in her kitchen, just in case anyone decided to come over.

"I don't think I've had this one before," she said, then smiled at him. "But I quite like it and I'm glad you do, too."

"I like all of this so far." He took another sip of wine, then set the glass down in the blanket and reached into the basket, pulling out a couple of small plates and the fruit and cheese. Fresh strawberries, and a container of blueberries that he'd selected carefully - just ripe enough to be sweet but not mushy.

"I think this is supposed to go well with wine." He paused. "I'm not sure how I know that, though."

"Just one of those things that's creeping in," she said, reaching up to brush the fingertips of her free hand over his temple before they drifted along his jaw. Then she smiled again and looked at everything he had brought.

"This is amazing," she said. "Really, this looks fantastic." It helped that Lily loved food, but he'd picked the perfect beach food and he was right, it all went well with the wine.

He froze when she touched him, but it wasn't out of any displeasure. His eyes drifted shut and he just... drank in the touch, letting it linger long after she pulled her hand away.

"Good." He opened his eyes, shook himself very slightly, picked out a strawberry and bit the end off it. "You know," he went on, leaning back a little on his hand and looking at her, "I still don't know very much about you. Tell me some things."

"Things about me, huh?" she asked, grinning a little as she popped a blueberry into her mouth. "Well, I'm a dancer, you know that. I grew up in San Francisco, you know that, too." There were things she kept to herself for good reason, parts of her life she didn't need to share with the new people who'd come into it, but she could tell him some things.

"I moved out with a couple other girls I danced with when I was only sixteen," she told him. "There wasn't anything wrong at home, I just really wanted to be out on my own and my parents were the type of people to encourage that rather than try and keep me back." She laughed and said, "Honestly, I think they just wanted to have their alone time back."

"Sixteen," he echoed softly. Somehow it fit what he knew of her - her obvious independent streak, the sense he got that she went after what she wanted.

If Eleanor wanted to leave, he couldn't imagine trying to stop her. But time alone... No, he didn't want that.

Maybe not ever again.

He took another sip of wine. "What parts of the world have you been to? I can't remember ever seeing anywhere but Rapture." But he had known somehow, even there - as bits of himself began to awaken - that the world was so much larger than Rapture could ever be. No matter what Andrew Ryan wanted his people to believe.

"Not nearly enough of it," she said, then laughed. "I've toured most of the United States and into Canada a few times. They have some amazing companies up there and I danced with one briefly, which was an incredible dream come true. I was in Europe once, but it was for work, too. There isn't a lot of free time for sight seeing when you're there with a company."

Not that she had any regrets. Being able to travel and being able to dance, she was lucky she'd been able to do the two of them together for such a long time.

He knew the place names by now, if he hadn't been at all familiar with them at first, but they still felt like incredibly remote places, alien and somehow unimaginable.

He shifted a little closer, watching her carefully. "What was your favorite?"

"That's a hard question," she answered with a smile, the tip of her fingers touching her lower lip briefly as she thought about it. "Greece was beautiful, but so was Russia, which my parents loved hearing. They immigrated to California before I was born, but they missed Russia."

She turned toward him a little and said, "Romania was amazing. We had a bit of time to ourselves when we were there and they have all these incredible forests, completely untouched, and these old castles towering over them. It's beautiful."

He listened, and if he tried he could almost imagine those places. But not really as if they were real. Not like anything he had ever actually seen or might ever see. They were like stories in a book. Nothing more.

"It sounds beautiful." He paused a moment, thinking. "I don't remember anything like that. It's like I was never anywhere but Rapture. And I know how lucky I am to be here at all. Where I came from, I was dying. But sometimes..."

He sighed. "Sometimes I wish I was back in that world. On the surface. Free to go to all those places."

It was the price they all had to pay for being here, but Lily thought it might be worse for Delta. To not remember, to have it taken from him once and then to never be afforded the opportunity was something entirely different than what had happened to her. And she could tell him everything she remembered, describe it all in great detail, but it would never be the same as being there himself.

But there was the PASIV.

"There might be a way," she said slowly. "It wouldn't be the same, it would be sharing it in my head, but... it's possible."

"Really?" He frowned slightly - not in doubt but in pure confusion. Sharing it in her head... He had seen a lot of strange things since he had opened his eyes on the train, but this didn't even seem to make sense.

"What do you mean?"

Had Eames still been in Darrow, she never would have shared any of this without his permission, but he was gone now and she trusted Delta. If she asked him not to say anything, she knew he wouldn't. More than that, she trusted him to go inside her head, which was a strange thought in itself.

"I had a friend whose job was to go into peoples' dreams, usually to extract information," she explained. "He had a machine they used to construct their realities inside their minds and he left it behind when he disappeared. We could use that, we could construct one of those places inside my head."

It still didn't make any sense. But in truth, he guessed it wasn't really all that much stranger than anything that had been his reality in Rapture. Fire and ice and lightning in his hands, teleportation, his daughter calling to him from a city away.

So he would just trust her. Which wasn't difficult at all.

"What would that... involve? Would it be dangerous?"

"No," she said, then thought better of that answer based on things Eames had said to her. "I think it can be dangerous, depending on what your intentions are, but we wouldn't be going in with the hopes of carrying out any kind of espionage, so I think we'd be safe." It would be simple, conjuring up those memories, creating one of the many places she'd been for him to see.

"No danger, just..." She trailed off, smiling. "Just sharing one of those places with you."

That threw him into even more confusion, but now it was a feeling he was getting more comfortable with. He didn't have to understand it, he supposed. Not if he wasn't the one doing it.

"I think... I'd like that." He smiled. "All the new things I thought you'd show me, I didn't think this would be one of them."

"No," Lily answered with a laugh, "Neither did I." And yet now that she'd thought of it, she couldn't stop. She'd had plenty of chances to introduce people to new things, but never to show someone a place like that, built the way she remembered. This was something entirely new for her as well.

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