Flying blind [Vi]

[William Talbot]

Chewing his lower lip constantly, as he walked down the main hallway, and into the common room, Will paused for a moment as he scanned the room, and saw Violet, book in hand, leaning on the counter-top on the island in the kitchen area, her back to him as she... did what ever it was she was doing, it seemed she was looking out the window at something, or she was looking at another book, or... Well he wasn't sure, the angle was all wrong for him to see, but it didn't matter, he had a plan, a mission of sorts, something that had been bouncing about in his mind for a few weeks now, and had finally taken root and grown into a question that was clawing it's way from between his ears and down into his throat and then tap-danced along his tongue...

"Hey Violet!" He greeted her as he walked into the room proper, the double door sliding shut behind him with a soft hiss, his boots gently thumping along the bright red carpet that led to the couch and huge TV at the other end of the room, which was thankfully empty at the moment.

"What's goin' on?" he asked inquisitively as he moved just past her and then paused, a sudden vibration of nerves attacking his spine and fingertips, his nose suddenly feeling like it was going to bleed everywhere as his ears strangely popped so hard he was sure she could hear his inner ear freaking out from the sudden pressure equalization, which a part of Will's brain noted, was rather strange, if he discounted the fact that his body was suddenly running a good twenty degrees hotter than normal, which while much hotter than a normal guy his size anyways, was still pretty stinking hot...


Why did he suddenly feel so nervous? Violet normally had a calming effect on him, and even when she made him giddy (which was most common when she kissed him in that one place on his neck) or starry eyed, he felt good, and at ease, but now, she had him feeling like he would explode into a billion tiny bits of flaming dust and ash...

Weird...

Was he staring?


OH snap, she had said something!

[Violet Schultz]

Honestly, English was such an absurd language sometimes. So ambiguous, so many words and ways to arrange sentences to change the entire meaning. Normally, she didn't really mind it, since she had years of practice speaking it, but the books that these tactical people wrote were unfailingly difficult, probably even for a native English speaker, she imagined. Nevertheless, she read through it, realizing that a lot of what she had learned through experience and instinct was procedure for the military. Oh, how much trouble this book could've saved her... She stared out the glass wall, her mind many miles away, in a darker place in the past.

She looked over as she heard Will's voice, turning to him with distant eyes. She blinked back into the present as he asked her a question.

"Hey. Nothing, really," she replied. "I'm just reading."

She lifted an eyebrow and looked at him, and it occurred to her that his inner flame running a bit warmer than usual, and he looked really nervous, for some reason. It was odd, considering that usually he was pretty mellow, and when he wasn't, he didn't really make a lot of small talk, aside from his tendency to make jokes and that sort of thing. She was similarly to-the-point, as she didn't like it when there was a problem she was unaware of. His inner flame's pulse was racing, as if he was terrified, but she could tell from his face and from the link that fear wasn't what he was feeling.

"Are you okay?" she asked, more confusion than worry in her voice and eyes.

He merely stared, and she tilted her head a tick.

"Will, seriously. What's wrong?"

[William Talbot]

Blinking rapidly for all of two seconds, Will was sure he had somehow kicked up a breeze with his eyelids, as he glanced at the book cover and then to Violet, before almost blurting out; "Cool book, I read it once, kinda repetitive and droning, but there's some interesting and useful stuff in there for sure." he fibbed.

Okay, so he had read A book on classic combat tactics, within the last two weeks even, but it was either from a different author or it was an older edition, either way, the titles where close enough that they where likely the same silly book.


Placing his hands in the back pockets of his jeans he kicked a foot out in front of himself and swung it slightly before crossing his ankles and standing there, practically sideways, leaning on a nonexistent wall, trying to look as non-nervous, and cool as he could figure as his hearing caught up with the rest of himself, and he tilted his head slightly and opened his mouth for a moment...

"Uhh... Wha' do ya' mean?" He asked as his cheeks slowly started to tint and he tried to think of how he could steer the conversation towards the basic direction he wanted to go, but then once there, how to broach the subject?

"I'm fine, just... I don't know, excited I guess... Not too sure why."

'Because I'm going to ask you out to dinner and I've never asked a girl on a dinner date and I'm totally scared silly and nervous for no good reason, because you should say yes, there's not a single reason for you not too, but I'm still worried that you will say no, and yet even more worried that you'll say yes, because I have no clue what I'm doing and....'

He didn't say all that out loud did he?
No, he didn't, but did it bleed over the link?

He couldn't be sure...

[Violet Schultz]

"Uh-huh," she said flatly, clearly skeptical. "You know, the link works both ways. I can tell that's not it."

She could sense and undercurrent of rapid thought through the link, but she couldn't catch any of it, due to how withdrawn and quick it was. Her voice and eyes were soft, not wanting to add to how nervous he clearly already was. She still wasn't sure what the cause of his behavior was, or what had brought it on so suddenly, but if he wasn't coming right out with it, she doubted that it was anything too serious. He knew better than to withhold important information from the rest of the Titans, so she doubted that it was anything official, but otherwise, she really didn't know what would make him act this way.

She closed the book and leaned against the counter, her quizzical eyes searching his face in an attempt to make sense of his behavior. He usually came off as confident, almost overly so, and this was a radical change to that attitude. Why was he so nervous?

She didn't want to try to probe his mind with the link, as it had always struck her as too invasive, even though the link was invasive by nature. It seemed like a violation of trust, looking behind a curtain that didn't even exist for anyone else. Still, she picked up the jist of his emotions, which seemed somehow tentative, as if he was waiting for something to happen, or perhaps about to do something with a questionable outcome. She had to wonder what it meant...

[William Talbot]

“Ohh…. Right…” Will said as he stood up straighter, his hands fidgeting at his sides for a moment before he took a deep breath and rubbed his hand over his face to his neck, and then ran his fingers through his hair a few times before letting out all of the air he had been sucking in, all in one big whoosh…


Stuffing his hands into the pockets of his jeans he slowly shuffled over to the counter, and stood there, at the end opposite of her, his mouth and nose twitching every one and again, as if his nose or upper lip was itchy, but he was too distracted or scared to scratch. After a few moments of rather uncomfortable silence, Will pulled his hands out of his pockets, crossed his arms and leaned on the counter-top, cleared his throat, and the squeaked out; “Oud’d joo!” then his face went a somewhat bright tint of purple and pink, his blue tinted blood flooding his cheeks, and sending shimmering heat waves out at her.


He was nervous, didn’t know why, knew he shouldn’t be, and couldn’t even keep his voice level, much less enunciate properly to ask her the weather, much less if she would go to dinner with him. Which was strange, since they where already dating more or less, they spent plenty of free time together, they trained together, and they shared everything personal they could think of, and for crying out they had been inside each others minds! They where as close as they could be in pretty much every respect, only a few avenues yet unexplored by them, and they where in no tearing hurry to exhaust every new thing in their relationship, but at the moment, Will felt as if there was suddenly so MUCH yet to explore, and that he was the only one wanting to explore it, or was scared stiff by the prospect of exploring it.


Good lord this was SO much harder than they made it out to be on TV…

[Violet Schultz]

To call it a trip of the tongue would've been kind, but her intent stare lapsed into an amused smile and she had to fight not to laugh. She stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him gently, reassuring him with a heat wave of her own. It wasn't only his strength, his selflessness, or his noble heart that she loved about him. It was every part, even this nervousness and insecurity that he was showing. She could feel the rapidity of his heartbeat in his chest, and she breathed a sigh before pulling away and looking him in the eyes.

"Whatever it is," she said, her eyes still gentle, although amused, "Just say it."

She had always had a gift for saying what she meant, and for saying what needed to be said, but sometimes words weren't enough to portray the message that needed to be given. Her words were only half of it, her eyes saying the rest: that he didn't have to be so nervous when talking to her. Violet was still a little confused as to why exactly he was so nervous, but whatever the reason, she still was glad to have the privelage of being able to offer some small comfort to him, since he so often comforted her and she wasn't often able to return the favor.

With that being said, she would've been lying to say that she didn't find it a little funny... It was a testiment to her self-control that she was able to keep from laughing.

[William Talbot]

Eyes closed and nose flared, William took in yet another deep breath as she hugged him, and his arms returned the motion until she moved back and spoke to him, her eyes soft and understanding, her voice calm, and soothing to his fraying nerves.

Opening his eyes, Will gave his lips a quick lick, and cleared his throat once more, before he looked her in the eye and whispered out to her; "Um, Violet? Would you like to go out to dinner tomorrow night? With me?" There he said it, he asked her, and he hadn't exploded or turned to ash or anything horrid like that, and now that he had said it, he felt better, 0still nervous, but not like he had felt before, which in the back of his mind, he was thinking about how silly that was for him to feel like that, after all, she had been understanding and patient with him, and hadn't mocked him for choking a moment ago like he had.


Why on earth had he been so wound up? This was Violet for crying out loud! IF anyone understood him, it was her, through and through, in ways he likely didn't understand fully, at least not yet. But that was fine, he had at lasted asked her out to dinner, and it was now up to her...

[Violet Schultz]

Violet's eyebrows raised in surprise, and she couldn't help but let out a small, "Oh!"

Okay, so she wasn't sure what she had been expecting. In fact, she hadn't had a clue what to expect, but this was clearly out of left field somewhere, in her mind.

"Euhhh... Sure. I guess," she said, her small slip toward a French accent indicating that she was obviously taken by surprise. "What brought this on all of a sudden?"

Of all of the things she'd done in her life, this was clearly not one of them. In the past, she'd always had to fight to overcome her gender in a world where using gender to one's advantage was a horribly dangerous game, so even when she'd been in a relationship, it was the small things like this that always caught her off-guard, and she really didn't know how to act in the situation. Sure, she loved Will, more than she was willing to admit to her guarded heart, but dates? She was considering little details that she'd never had to consider before, and she suddenly felt her femininity like a piece of a puzzle that didn't quite fit yet, turned upside down from where it went.

And now she was the nervous one...

[William Talbot]

Will blinked for a few seconds before his face lit up like a Christmas tree on Christmas Eve, his eyes shimmering, his smile suddenly big and the pleasant surprise on his face was as clear as a pane of brand new glass...

SHE SAID YES!

He almost picked her up under her arms and swung her around, but it was her following question that stopped him, as well as the reappearance of most of his nervousness.

"Oh! Uhh... Well I mean, uhh... Ha, you know, I really don't know for sure it just kinda..." he shrugged and blushed again with a sheepish smile as he reached up and rubbed his neck some, his head lowering to try and hide the blush as he looked up from under his eyelids and his still growing out mop of hair; "It uh, well just kinda seemed like the thing to do I guess... I mean, like... I'm you're boyfriend right? And that makes you my girlfriend, so... Well, my dad used to take my mom out on dates some times, and since um, you know they loved each other, sometimes they went out away from the house and just... Did stuff I guess... Um... Yeah, I mean Destiny and I... uh... yeah, sometimes on Saturdays we'd... We'd go to the park, just us, and we'd get a hot-dog from the vendor and we'd sit by the pond and watch the ducks and talk and stuff, and... You know, have a date, like um, on TV, how the guy likes the girl, and then he asks her to be his girlfriend, and she says yes, and then he takes her to dinner or a movie and they talk and laugh and stuff and then go out and walk, and look at the moon, and the stars and the lights of the city and then go up on a hill and talk some more and hug and stuff and just..."

He was rambling on and he knew it, but somewhere in his head, the "shut up Will!" switch was missing, or broken or buried under the wave of masculinity that had now flooded his person, a heady strong and alive feeling coursing through his veins, chasing down his nerves and stomping them underfoot, while bonking his better reasoning and social skills over the head with a big wooden mallet...

And it all seemed to be fueled by the fact that she had said yes, and because he loved her.

So when his father had told him the stories of when he and his mother had dated, and always ended them with the warning "Love will make you do strange things." was this what he had meant?


"... So really I guess it was kinda just me wanting to get us out of the Tower without having like the burden of being superheroes or maybe just so that it feels more... Not here... And uhh... Uhh..."
There it was! "E'yah I uhh, I'm... Shutting up now."

He grinned nervously at her as his skin started to grow a slight nervous sheen to it, sweating wasn't exactly a forgen idea to him, it just wasn't something that happened often without the aid of beating up some massive monster or fighting hordes of bad guys or running around the Island a half million times (he'd done it once and counted already but got bored and lost his place) so it was a clear sign to him, and her that he was still rather twisted up and nervy about this all, just as was she it seemed...

[Violet Schultz]

She was only partially listening to his long, rambling answer, busy as she was trying to maintain a semblance of calm that would hide the inner turmoil she was experiencing. If she wasn't so thrown, she probably would've been annoyed at herself for being so at a loss, considering that the ordeal wasn't something uncommon in relationships, but she was having trouble keeping herself calm. It wasn't a feeling that she was used to, even considering that she really wasn't as confident as most people took her to be. Although she was incapable of sweating due to her unique physiology, she still showed the barest outward signs of her nervousness through her rapid heartbeat and barely drawn eyebrows.

Why was it always the little things that scared her to death? Sure, give her an army of demons, and she could still function and communicate coherantly, but confront her with the prospect of a dinner date, and she was all but frozen, even with the expression in her eyes as apparently calm as usual. She tried to think of a casual way to bring it up, but she really couldn't, as it seemed somewhat unlikely that he would bring it up himself and she knew that it was something she would need to know.

"Will I need a dress for this?" she asked, her voice remarkably steady, given her apprehension. "I, euh...Don't actually have one."

She flushed as she spoke, averting her eyes self-consciously. It was the only time in recent memory that she had ever blushed, and the pink of her cheeks seemed out of place in her naturally pale skin. She was really feeling the shame of her past, wishing that she'd had some semblance of normalcy which would've given her some ground to stand on. She had never had to think about this sort of thing before, and the very fact that she seemed so distinctly unfeminine was suddenly unnerving to her.

How she hated herself for being so ridiculously nervous about this!

[William Talbot]

Looking at Violet, Will blinked at her for a moment, his own cheeks tinting again as he tilted his head at her, and the realization that he really had not thought this out very well...


"OH! I uhh... Eyah, I didn't think about that honestly... We both kinda are lacking in the uhh... Whats-it-called, uh, formal clothes department huh?"

Now he felt foolish, utterly and totally for that, but then...

"Oh snap! Violet, remember a few weeks ago when Starfire and Raven and some of the others where here? Tim mentioned that two weeks before Christmas, they have a big to-do downtown, the Titans Ball?"

Will paused and wrinkled his eyebrows at the random tid-bit before shaking his head slightly and shrugging before he went on; "Uh anyway um... Well, hey that's an idea! What about lunch instead? We could go to lunch, and then find ourselves some nice things for the Titans Ball this year? Would you like that?" he asked tilting his head the other way and giving her his biggest and best blue eyed puppy dog face, without transforming of course.


He knew it might be a long shot, because they both where in fairly new territory, in almost all regards and it was almost frustrating in some respects, but mostly it was just... new, and unknown, and slightly awkward because of that.

Geez, toss him into the middle of a street full of killer robots and he laughed, but suddenly put him in, uhh... THIS situation, and he was stumbling and stuttering like a brain dead monkey...

[Violet Schultz]

Violet raised her eyebrows minutely at that reminder, having completely forgotten about that. At the time, it had been of very little importance in her mind, busy as she had been trying to understand the newcomers that she would be expected to trust with her life in the future. Now, though, she was struck by the oddness of the idea. Dances? It was an idea entirely alien to her, as unheard of as living in a Buddhist monastery in Tibet. She knew that they existed, and that people did go, but it seemed to belong to another world that had always been entirely out of thought and reach.

And nimble as she was, the idea struck her that she didn't have the slightest clue how to dance, any more than she knew how to go about picking out a dress.

But then again, the prospect of lunch was far less unnerving than a dinner date, so really it was the ideal option, even if it would be followed by an activity that would show exactly how little she knew about such things. Still, she did love spending time with him, and this was as good a time as any. He usually had a calming effect on her, as he was one of the only people that accepted her for who she was, instead of condemning her for it. With that being the case, shouldn't she at least be willing to give this a try?

Besides, though she would never admit it to him, she really had a hard time saying no to that look...

"Yeah, we can do that," she replied, her pause for thought very brief. "When?"

[William Talbot]

Will's face lit with a smile once more, and he stood up straighter and nodded; "Great! Uhh... Tomorrow? I'm going to the house in the morning to watch Ruby while Tim takes Olivia to the doctor, but they said they'd be back by noon, so do you want to meet up there or here?"

The relief that she had agreed was still there, as was the satisfaction that she was being so gamy about it all, given that they where both in such uncertain waters, any advantage he might have had, didn't really seem like one to him (he really didn't have one anyways, as the romantic aspect of his and Destiny's relationship did not arise until a few months before his parents murder) and it was soothing that Violet was as understanding as she was, her calmness was a comfort to him, and while he knew that he himself had a calming effect on her, the effect was two way, because there really where no pretenses with them, there was, for better or worse, understanding... That's why they just seemed to fit.

[Violet Schultz]

"I'll meet you there," she decided, showing no surprise at his words.

Tim wasn't especially open about his relationships, but while Violet had little experience in relationships, she was far from stupid or imperceptive. She knew that the young mother and the Titans' leader were in a serious relationship, so the fact that Tim was taking Olivia somewhere was hardly surprising, even if she was a little confused as to why he needed to go to the doctor with her. In any case, it wasn't any of her business. It just meant that she would be the only Titan in the Tower that morning, and she would be able to stress out in privacy.

Tearing herself from those thoughts, she focused on the more immediate future, knowing that dwelling on the coming embarrassment would do nothing to help her or the situation. Besides, he seemed so excited, and she didn't want to throw a damper on his enthusiasm with her nerves, which almost felt like something akin to fear.

"Well, I'm going to head downtown to get in some parkour training," she said. "You're welcome to come if you like."

Training for parkour was done partially in the gym, it was true, but nothing could substitute for real world experience, using the city as a gym. She'd been planning on doing that training later that day, but she was pushing it up because of the total concentration it required, which gave her little time to dwell on her other thoughts.

[William Talbot]

Will nodded quickly, his smile warm and happy, his mood was now, nervous, but glad, the anticipation in his heart was growing, but, manageable, and he knew that either way, this was going to be a learning experience, for both of them, but then as such, they could share in it, and learn so much from it.


Drifting between that train of thought, the person in front of him, and the room around him, he tilted his head in thought for a moment at her invitation and shrugged; "Oh, well... Hmm... Yeah I'd like that, just let me go and get my shoes and I'll meet you down stairs okay?"


Parkour was something that Violet and Tim where both very skilled at, and while Tim was more of a free runner (the things that defined both as separate disciplines where few, but pretty exact) Will was some strange mixed up practicer of both, his incredible athleticism lending to the more raw and blunt approach of Free running, which was all about speed, as well as then more direct and flowing style of Parkour, however unlike Tim or Violet, Will's robust nature allowed him to make mistakes that would at best mean a trip to the Med lab for band-aids and at worse could cripple or maybe kill the others, and even then Will was careful just because it paid to do it right, rather than to make mistakes that would slow him down.

That and watching Violet move through the city was rather enjoyable, her grace and poise in such situations was inspiring for sure, and for that split second in time, Will had to admit that while some might say that Violet was just about somewhere between average and very pretty as far as looks went, Will honestly thought she was stunning, not so much because of any one feature or part of her face, figure or personality, but as a form unto herself, as a whole person, her powers, her eyes, her face, her personality, her quarks, her weaknesses and strengths, all conspired to make him love her, because of who she was, and who he could see her becoming, as well as who she made him and encouraged him to become.

In a word, she was amazing.


Flutter flutter, fuzzy warm tingles and blushing cheeks, ahh yes, the thing was, TV and books did indeed fail to totally capture what it was like to love someone so much you had to look at them and just smile...



"I'm staring again aren't I?"