fandomhigh | Library [Sunday, December 2]

Adah's eyes shifted back at the very light sounds of tapping, following the Eel's fingers toward the books, and then, departing from the fingers and starting to study the wall. Her eyes tilted slightly as she inspected it for faults for, perhaps, a single volume that might be placed in such a way that it could be the wall's Achilles heel.

"This is what I do when I'm bored," he repeated, tapping the books with his palm before letting his hand settle on top of one of the columns. "Pretty steady. I used big books with lots of pages."

After inspection and the light testing of a possible heel or two, Adah came to discover that the construction was pretty sound and toppling it would be more trouble than cleaning it up afterwards would be worth, and her eyes drifted again, lightly, to the Eel as he continued on in the rambling of his nonsensical words. She had expected that; if she was remembering things properly, he was almost always talking, and she didn't seem to mind, too much. It didn't bother her that she couldn't understand him, but she found herself worried that it might start to bother him that she couldn't. Her eyes followed the books again the where his hand settled on top, and there they stayed for a moment, as if trying to make a decision.

More ways to talk that just words, after all, and if she had remembered r ight, they had actually been pretty damn good at that. But, then again, reconstruction was a tricky process; sometimes things didn't go together right.

When he notice what she was looking at, he, very slowly, turned his hand over, palm up and left it like that.

"If I'd had too much more time, I'd have built this fort on the floor, covering the whole desk and just hiding out for the day."

Watching the hand as it slowly turned over, Adah waited a moment. She moved her gaze back to the Eel for a moment, as he talked more, movement of lips forming words that at least sounded nice, if not entirely useful. Then back to the hand, which she did understand. The path of her own hand diverted for just a moment to try one more more potential heel of a book before her fingers lightly graced his open palm, paying more attention to how his hand reacted than how he himself did.

When he felt her fingers against his palm, his fingers wiggled just a little, just a small movement to let her know he felt it and then he stilled them again.

"There are lots of books here," he said, really just saying anything now. "Probably because it's a library, you know."

The fact that the Eel had continued to talk made Adah wonder if he was saying anything important. For his sake, she certainly hoped not, because he was certainly wasting a lot of breath for something so useless. But, really, she could figure that the same could be said for most talking, when something as simple as what she was doing now, eyes concentrating heavily on her fingers moving intertwine with his, said more than enough.

"I missed you," Lee said before quieting down and moving his own eyes on their intertwined fingers. It hadn't been that long though it felt like it had been. He squeezed lightly, smiled softly and just watched.

He didn't say nearly as much that time. Good. He seemed to be learning. Giving a slight squeeze back in response, Adah slid her eyes his way again and offered him a lopsided grin of approval to the shorter statement. If he had had chosen to continue babbling endlessly, she would have to make fun of him, and to make fun of him, she would have to move her hand, and she didn't think she quite wanted to do that yet.

He offered her a grin of his own back, keeping quiet for the moment since he'd seemingly run out of words that would make any sort of logical sense.

Instead, he brushed his fingers along hers as much as he could and kept smiling.

Tilting her head slight in thought as she watched the moment of her fingers with her smile fading slightly into something softer, still present but just not first and foremost in her attention, Adah mused to herself that it was good that the part of her brain that handled memory still continued to prove effective. It helped narrow it down that the function that was giving her problem was probably more...tangible than memory, something more specific and technical having to do with words and language rather than movements and thoughts.

She gave his hand another light squeeze before lifting her eyes toward him again, questioningly. She didn't know what the question was. It was vague, open-ended, would work with whatever it was he said in response to it, which she plenned to late onto, consider. He talked a lot, so maybe there was something she could use in this, and felt the urge to at least try, as much as she liked just doing this. And, if she still found herself unable to do anything with the information given to her, well, then, she'll just have to go back to just holding his hand for now. Damn. Such a terrible fate.

"This is nice," he said quietly, still smiling. "This is one of those days that I like to end the week with, you know. Just a nice, quiet afternoon like this, holding your hand. I talk a lot, I know. But, something like this is always enough to make me just be quiet because it's just that nice and enough. It's enough."

He shrugged one shoulder slowly. "And even if you don't talk again, I can keep talking enough for the both of us, I think."

Listening very carefully, Adah picked out a few sounds, a few words, she could assumed, that sounded as though they had been repeated, or sounded the same, which was a good start. She nodded her head slowly, slightly, encouraging him to say more. If anything, even if she was wrong in thinking this would help anything, she realized that she still just like watching him, the way his eyes moved when he talked, little things he threw in like that shrug.

"I used to read to you," Lee said quietly, nodding at the books. "Sometimes poetry, sometimes other things and you should still have a few books from my home. Keep those for as long as you like. Save them for a lazy day. Well, the one written by my grandfather would be really good for a lazy day as it might put you to sleep. I think you liked the poetry the best, though. Stories contained in just a few lines and all."

Listening carefully, intently, Adah frowned, just slightly. He did say a lot; there was a rambling quality to the words, rolling on by carelessly which wasn't helpful for what she was trying to do. She realized though, light grin coming back, that at least she was able to recognize it as such. Lower lip tucking under her teeth for a moment of consideration, she decided to try something that she was reluctant to do, because she felt it made her look like an idiot for not knowing. She slowly unraveled her fingers from the Eel's, dragging them away with a bit of reluctance. She hesitated, again, and the decided, well, hell, if she did just end up making an idiot of herself, she could probably avoid seeing him again if she had to. She held up a finger and then pointedly directed it toward him, eyes steadily on him and waiting for the response.

He wasn't quite sure what she was asking with the gesture other than she did want to know something. He could either just start saying anything that might be the response she was looking for or he could just be quiet and smile. The latter seemed like it would only frustrate so he tried the former.

"Me. I'm Lee," he said, going for an automatic response. "And sometimes you called me the Eel because it was my name backwards. Lee Adama. I told you once that my middle name was Fool. Lee Fool Adam."

He laughed and said, "Has a nice ring to it, doesn't it? Suits me well. We met...maybe two months ago? Three months ago? It's been awhile or it's seemed like it has."

Again, Adah watched and listened with the sharpest attention, trying to latch onto and process every little thing. It wasn't the clear, percise answer she was hoping for, but that just meant that she'd have to work for it, which she didn't mind. It was like weeding through a garden, carefully shifting through what was there to determine what might be useful and what might not. Several sounds repeated, and so she worked to remember them. Like i, you, lee, it. She pressed her lips together, repeated them again in her head for later consideration.

She watched him for a moment longer before pointing now at herself.

"Adah," he said, grinning. "Um. Hmm. You're probably the person I'm closest to you here. You know a lot about me. You work in the library because you like books and you're very, very intelligent. You once told me you wanted to study medicine. That was right before...that was a few weeks ago."

Adah wrinkled her nose at him, although the fact that he grinned while he said whatever it was he was saying left her grinning a little as well, making the gesture seem to be almost teasing for how much he talked. There was more repetition in it, too, of that you sound and, after the first few times, she watched for a hawk for it again, eyes on how his mouth moved whenever he formed it.

And then he stopped talking and she realized that's all of the sound she'd have for the moment. She still didn't know what it meant, but she was slowly building up towards it. She blinked before her head ducked slightly in concentration, eyes peeking out from her hair at him for reactions to judge how she was doing as she thought carefully about how he moved his mouth and slowly worked toward repeating them, slow, careful sounds finally slipping out, which took more more than she thought it would and it sounded shaky, barely there. "Y...you?"

Ha! She said it. She said a word. Or at least a sound. For all she knew, it could have been the most offensive sound or word in the human language, but she didn't care.

Lee hadn't been expecting a sound, let alone a word so when he got one, he stared for a moment before he broke into a slow grin and, for some inexplicable reason, he blushed.

"You," he repeated, slowly again, making sure to be looking at her while he said it. "You."

And he grinned again.

Well, that was an....interesting response. Adah blinked a few times as she worked to interpret what it meant. Surprise, obviously, which meant that she'd acted contrary to what he expected. There was a smile, though, which seemed like either a good sign of encouragement or a good sign of him making fun of her. But what really got Adah was the blush. How did that work in there? Was he embarrassed for having to go through something like this, a primitive, simplistic approach to learning...relearning...the most basic foundations of human function? Half a brain, but here she felt like a mongoloid, and reducing him to one so that she can understand.

But, ultimately, she decided, she didn't care. If it's what she needed to do to learn words again, it's what she would do. Just like she learned how to walk from watching and then just throwing herself out there. Throw her in a lake, she'll find a way to swim, dammit. And, well, if he was making fun of her with those grins, then...she'll just get him back for it later, when she overcame all this.

But he was looking at her pretty pointedly when he said it, so, as if to confirm, she pointed again to herself and repeated the word. As far as names went, it was pretty unimpressive, but, at the same time, from what she remembered, she would leave it past her parents to be so unimpressive.

"I still love hearing you speak," Lee said, still grinning and still talking. "To me, you are strong. To me, you are intelligent."

His smiled softened, gentled and he put his hand back up on the books, palm up. Very slowly, he wrote the word 'you' with his fingertip in the palm of his hand.

It was repeated a few times, this you word, as well as a few others, but Adah decided that it was probably best to take things one word at a time, especially as he started to do something different. She carefully watched how his finger moved, and then shifted her eyes toward him, with a coolly expectant expression, waiting for go-ahead to do the same.

Lee removed the hand that was writing on his palm and then nodded down at his open hand.

"Go for it," he said, smiling again.

Adah returned the nod before her attention went back to his hand, finger poised above it with her fingers lightly brushing up against her thumb. She felt nervous, which she felt was inexplicable, because what did she have to be nervous about? Fingers against palms were nothing for them, she knew that, she remembered that, at least, something they did all the time and much tamer than other things. But still...she wondered what sort of things he might think as she dragged her finger along her palm, if they would be good things, or judging things if she wasn't doing it right, or, again, making fun of her for having to do this and feeling so excited to do something as simple as writing a word. So she hesitated, and then, finally, drew in a breath and slowly started to mimic the movements he had done. Just as she was curling out the tail of the 'y,' Adah glanced over toward the Eel, waiting for a response before continuing on to the 'O', to the 'u,' signs of encouragement, signs that she was on the right track, signs of amusement, of jeering, of something else entirely, and found herself a little surprised at the fact that she seemed suddenly more concerned about what he thought than the fact that she was picking up on something she'd been spending all week trying to pick up on.

Lee leaned in a little closer until he was close to her, not touching, but close and she could see his eyes, see his expression.

And he smiled gently again, smiled at her and then smiled down at what she was doing. He tried to make it as warm as possible, something that could ease any concern she was having and encourage at the same time.

And, really, if she was getting distracted from the point at hand as they were, the Eel moving in closer certainly wasn't helping. Adah had to concentrate very hard on the smooth, slow circle of an 'o' against his palm to keep her thoughts from drifting, instead, toward the closeness, on her eyes on him, and the fact that she was feeling a bit like her breaths were getting caught it fluttered against her chest. His smile was distracting, too, pulling her attention down away from his eyes as the 'o' concluded. She lifted her hand just slightly as she tried to get past that smile to remember the scooping lines of the 'u,' and she took her time, slowly, carefully.

"That was nice," he said quietly, looking down at her hand and his hand and nodding. He wiggled his fingers a bit, brushing against hers lightly. "You can do that anytime," he said and meant it.

Grinning softly at the brush of his fingers, Adah moved her own fingers in kind. She didn't know what it was he said, with the exception of that one word, you, indicating her, but there was something in the way the Eel said it that just made a little tremble run down her good side. She glanced over toward him, drew in a brief breath at the observation and calculation of distance before, lightly closing her eyes, she leaned in a little, tilting her head to close the distance with a light kiss.

Call it gratitude, if a reason was needed, but Adah didn't feel it was.

Lee returned her kiss, just as light and just as gentle, smiling a little so she could feel it and brushing his lips lightly against hers.

Feeling the Eel smile made Adah smile lightly back, before another small kiss. She pulled back only enough to catch her breath with a bit of marveling over the fact that it would need to be caught, and to slowly drag her eyes open to look into his. Almost immediately, her smile broadened, happily, into almost a silent laugh. Definitely didn't need words for that, but it was rather nicer than she remembered it would be.

"Missed that smile," he said quietly, reaching up to lightly touch a finger to her cheek. "A lot. It's good to see you again. A lot."

Ah, Adah thought with a soft, crooked grin, closing her eyes again as she leaned into the light brush of his fingers. She saw how it was now. There was a certain repetition to the way he talked that made her feel like, given enough time spent with him, she might pick back up on the gaps of words lickity-split, but the catch was that she was going to left terribly distracted by other things, like this. Still. She had at least one word now. Excellent progress, really. She'd earned such a nice distraction.

He swept his fingers across her cheek, tucked some hair behind her ear and smiled again. Pretty hard not to smile right now.

"The end of weekends is my favorite time," he said quietly. "Sundays are good."

He really did talk a lot, but that was okay. He could talk all he wanted as long as he brushed back her hair like that and everything. She opened her eyes again so she could see him as she smiled at him.

"There's the smile again," he said, still quiet. "I've gotten used to it seeing it and I never get tired of it. It's good to see you again."

Library [Sunday, December 2]

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