The Drop-In [Tock]

[Victor Lark]

Victor took the trowel from her hand with as much blithe enthusiasm as ever. His noble born fingers held the thing more like a paintbrush than a tool, reminiscent of amusing but ultimately pointless art lessons about which he remembered very little. His memory was filled instead with the faces of those who had hoped to teach him, men and women that came and went as they tired of his capers. He was secretly happy to observe that she did not recoil like so many others did, but even so he would not relent.

He bent to the bucket to scoop up some mortar and, displaced from her shoulder, his other hand dropped on the small of her back. He spread the stuff crudely beside the last laid brick, fingers edging just beneath the leather ties of her apron. Then he realized that he was without a brick to lay, and with both hands retrieved one, set it, and pushed it in. With a good hard tap from the butt of the trowel, it looked almost like the one beside it.

“Ha,” Victor huffed, smiling. He propped an elbow up against her nearest shoulder. “Perfect.”

After spending a long moment to admire his work, Victor flipped his tool in his hand and began again. He insisted on their proximity if only out of habit, releasing his latest mentor only when he was forced to set the brick. He moved systematically through the rest of the row, inevitably bumping her every time he returned the the bucket, and was going perhaps too quickly by the end. There Victor rediscovered his boredom. Looking up, he ran his fingers over his sweating scalp. “When can we do the roof? The kid can do the rest of the wall; the roof seems like it’s more important.”

Parting from her, he returned the pile of beams and wood sheets in the one corner. He grabbed one and dragged it across the room until he stood beneath the hole in the ceiling. The clouds were a respectable shade of grey, not a promise but a threat. “Looks like rain.”

[Minerva Agatha Zipporah]

Tock's spine stiffened at the unexpected contact, face reddening slightly. Had he been fresh, had he tried to touch her in a too familiar way, she'd have wholloped him upside the head with the mortar bucket, or maybe kneed him in the groin. But the more... subtle touch of his fingers at the small of her back, while it gave her pause, didn't prompt a negative reaction from her. It just left her flustered, and ever so slightly confused. Was he flirting with her? She couldn't tell, so used to obvious lewd stares and crude pick up lines from the working class joes down at the bars. So she kept focused on the work, adjusting his brick setting as needed, and smoothing out the mortar here and there if it didn't look even enough to her. Close quarters and bumping elbows was nothing new to her on the job site, though she found herself rather... aware of his presence in a way that made her feel a bit awkward. James shot him a glare at being called 'the kid,' but kept his mouth shut. Tock glanced up at the roof, considering it. Finally she said, "Awright. Ya needs fer ta learn 'er, anywho..." If she thought he was just trying to get out of work, she'd have insisted he continue laying bricks for now. But she was viewing him as a 'student,' and giving him a more diverse lesson seemed fitting. She unhooked the pulley from earlier, then moved under one of the roof beams and aimed carefully. With a twirl and a toss, she looped the rope over it, then took Victor's hands and placed the rope in it. "Ties 'er good, else yer gonna 'as a load o' lumber on yer 'ead..." Eyes on her work, she started showing him how to tie the sturdy knot they used for this task, then she pulled on the rope firmly. The knot slipped upwards, sliding along itself to raise the pulleys up to the beam. Then she tied it off around a support, keeping it firmly in place. The first rope just held the pulley where it needed to be, but a second set of ropes was threaded through the block and tackle to be used to lift the lumber into place. She laid these ropes across the ground in an alternating pattern, telling the stranger, "Pay attention, aye?" The criss-crossing loops would give stability and balance as they raised the wood. Once the ropes were laid out, she had him help her stack the boards across it. "Long'uns on the bottom, aye?" Once the boards were stacked overtop the ropes, she bunched together the rope on one side and directed him to hold it atop the stack. She then gathered the loops from the other side and raised them to meet him, hooking them all together on the iron hook that hung from the main rope. She gave it a few tugs to make sure it was secure, then gave an approving nod. Standing back up, she brushed off her knees and said, "Oy, now ya see where I roped 'er?" she pointed up to the pulley set. "Put 'er atta 'igh point, aye? What so we can raise the wood ta the low point..." She pointed to the side, where the roof was slightly lower due to the way it was angled. "So's as we 'oist 'er up," she gestured upwards with both hands, "'en pulls 'er onta the lower spot so we can git at 'er..." She grabbed the lead rope, and handed the end to him, standing in front of him with her back to him. "Ready?" she asked. "An'... pull!" Working together, they'd be able to raise the wood to the roof, though Tock's wound meant Victor would have to bear the majority of the weight.

[Victor Lark]

“Aye,” he agreed with a laugh, watching her dance through the half-raw room with ropes and planks for scarves and bells. At first he had tried to pay attention, really tried to make the lesson worth something to him. But for every knot and strategy he she showed him, the one before it left his mind. He stacked when she stacked and held what she told him to, better entertained by the heat in his bones and the sweat on his brow than the details of some lesson he never hoped to use again.

And so he pulled. Hands that knew more about awnings and window ledges wrapped around the thick twists of work-frayed twine; muscles softened by a lifetime of frivolity flexed and contracted against it. Seconds stretched on through the whine of weighted ropes, and then the load came up through the ‘igh point and swung toward the lower spot.

He almost let go of the line then, but he had the wherewithal to remember that it needed to be secured, even though he had forgotten how. With a small smile, he turned to his teacher. “Help me with this one?”

As the rope was fastened, Victor kept his attention up on the roof. It was warm down where he was, trapped in a film of sweat without much of a breeze to catch on it. Sometime between the pulley-stringing and the board-stacking, he had unbuttoned his sleeves and pulled them up above his elbows, but even now that seemed less than comfortable. So he stripped himself of his suffocating shirt and threw it in a corner. A once-hidden pendant glinted on his neck as he turned toward the taut rope: a silver bird perched on the arc of scars that marred his pale chest, carved by some terrible beast in the well-forgotten past.

Victor did not bother to test the strength of the line before he mounted it, hanging by his hands and ankles as he climbed to the top. Once there, he gave himself a moment to feel the rain-kissed cool on his shoulders. “Come on up!” He called down finally, detaching the ropes from their hook.

[Minerva Agatha Zipporah]

Once the tail end of the rope was tied firmly in place, Tock tugged on it to check that it was secure, then got ready to climb up. Though she was momentarily distracted when the stranger's shirt suddenly came off. Normally, she didn't give such things a second glance, but... But this stranger was fine. Her face turned pink, and she cleared her throat, returning her attention to the job. She watched the man climb up with far more agility than she herself had, then followed more slowly, pulling herself up a few inches at a time. Climbing with her injury was a strain, and she slipped a few times, her leather gloves the only thing that stopped her hands from getting serious rope burn. When she finally pulled herself up high enough, she reached a hand out to the stranger for help getting the rest of the way up. Once they were on the angled roof, she guided the stack of boards until it was laying on its side against the beams. "Keep 'er like 'is fer now," she said, "an' take 'em off one at a time from the top. 'At way 'ey don't spill down over the side and 'urt nobody down below..." With the bundle of boards resting firmly against the beams, she slid one out from the top of the stack and laid it in place, nailing it down. "Start at the bottom an' work yer way up, aye?" With the two of them working together, it wouldn't take long to lay all the boards in place and secure them.

[Victor Lark]

Below she said, and Victor was drawn to it. He stepped to the sheer side of the rooftop and saw the cobblestone streets two stories away; for a few short seconds, he watched the strolling peoples’ scalps, minds which knew no fear or prospect of being crushed by a stray pile of wooden planks. Where the height might have tied another man’s stomach in knots, looking into empty air thrilled Victor. It made him feel almost like he was flying when he hovered over the edge, swaying between balance and imbalance and so many degrees of certainty.

But she pulled him from those musings as easily as she had pushed him there, and his wandering attention tried to be glad for the new task. Setting boards and hitting nails was as mildly entertaining as pulling them out, but after having moved his legs in the stacking and tested his strength in the raising, he itched for something bigger to do. His head rose often, toward the ceramic slope of the city skyline, much of which he had left to explore. The mysterious distance called to his invigorated muscles, begging to be breathed.

A pile of bent and ruined nails later, he heaved a sigh and dropped his hammer. Though most of his work was done over again by the person who actually knew what she was doing, Victor stepped back to admire it all the same. He grabbed her hand as if to share it with her, and his fingertips rolled on the invisible flesh beneath her bulky leather gloves.

The roof was raw: uninsulated, unshingled, unfinished. But he was beginning to think that this tryst into the world of a laborer had neared its end. The place had been much improved since he had arrived, if only for the passage of time. He squeezed her hand and stepped toward the adjacent building.

“What do you say we go find another roof with a hole that needs patching?” He suggested with a grin. “It’s evening anyway. Your work’s done, and I need to stretch my legs.”

[Minerva Agatha Zipporah]

Tock continued to work, mostly in silence. Unlike the stranger, she had no musings of the people down below, or of explorations to be made. She had a job to do, and she was focused on it. Most times, once she set her mind to a task, it was near-impossible to pull her attention away from it before it was complete. So she was surprised when the man suddenly took her hand and tried to pull her away, speaking of other places, other things to do. She frowned at him in confusion. She was about to protest that this roof wasn't done yet, when she heard James's voice calling to her from down below. "Tock! It's quitting time!" She leaned over the edge of the roof to see him peering out a window at her. He had that frown on his face, and she followed his line of sight to the point were the stranger's hand held hers. Realization sank in, and she scowled at James, finally becoming aware of his apparent jealousy. Which she found stupid, considering there was nothing to be jealous of! The fool man couldn't handle her spending a little perfectly innocent time with a stranger! It angered her, reminding her of his previous behavior. James seemed to think he could somehow stake a claim on her... "Fine," she called down to him. "See ya tomorrow..." He glanced at the stranger, then asked her, "Umm, are you coming to--" "Nah," she cut him off. "Later, mate..." She stepped back out of his sight before he could repeat the invitation. She didn't much care to go out drinking with James tonight. He might finally try to take advantage, and while part of her didn't mind the idea, she was too peeved at his pointless jealousy to want to deal with him today. She kept being torn, from one day to another, between being pissed off at the boy's behavior, versus wanting to bed him just to shut him up. Today she settled on being pissed. She turned her attention back to the stranger, vaguely aware that he was still holding her hand. Her face reddened slightly, and she asked him, "Ya got some fixation on roofs, mate? Most folks what go out fer drinks, o' sommat, after a day's work been done..."