(no subject)

[sunbaked_baker]

It had been cloudy and grey a few hours ago. Now, it is incongruously sunny and bright, and yet there is an under-the-weather baker leaning on the railing of the outside staircase, soaking in the light.

Rae knows it's probably chilly enough that it's not wise of her to be outside when she's not feeling well, but exposure to sunlight is more important. She leans back against the rail, eyes partially shut against the brightness. Sunlight is her go-to cure whenever she's feeling a little run-down. She's just tired, she asserts to herself. Never mind that she aches all over and is obviously feverish. She doesn't get sick. She. Doesn't. Get. Sick. Therefore, she isn't sick. Simple at that.

Though she knows perfectly well that it's a lie, she wills herself to believe it.

Believe it, and it becomes true.

Comments

[cook_the_rude]

"Hello, Sunshine. Thanks for helping me the other day. I really feel better even though I'm still sick. It's manageable, though."

That is Jacob, coming out from the back door and seeing her.

[sunbaked_baker]

Rae opens her watery eyes and offers a faint, achy smile, leaning her weight on her hands upon the railing. "Glad you're feeling better," she says. "I'm a little under the weather, myself."

Lies. She feels wretched.

[cook_the_rude]

"Oh, now I get to get you tea and chicken soup?" Jacob says, smiling at her.

He rubs her shoulder.

"Hey, it gets better. You look awful, though."

[sunbaked_baker]

"That sounds divine," she says with a return smile, tilting her head in a way that makes her long, loose, red hair cascade over her far shoulder, her hands still resting on the railing alongside her.

"Though I'm not sure how I feel about being told I look awful, however true it might be," she teases, chuckling.

[cook_the_rude]

"You already look better," he says. "Follow me inside for tea and soup, then?"

[sunbaked_baker]

"The power of positive thinking," she chuckles, the R-sound much softer and more open than it might usually be.

"Lead the way. We'll just have to be careful not to breathe on anyone. There was a poster up about the flu going around."

[cook_the_rude]

"And we both have it," Jacob says, bowing to her and extending his hand. "We are the flu going round!"

[sunbaked_baker]

"Then everyone had better beware, hadn't they?" says Edith with a laugh and an arched eyebrow, accepting his hand.

[cook_the_rude]

He leads her back into the bar, where he came from, and opens the door, holding it for her.

[sunbaked_baker]

She passes through and continues on, as a man holding the door for her is well and good and right. Though her clothing feels quite odd to her. Even on the rare occasion she does wear pants, they aren't as rough and oddly tight as these jeans she has on. She'll have to fix that, later.

"What sort of soup are you thinking?" she asks, looping her hand through the crook of his elbow as they pass through the bar room. "Though I'm sure, whatever kind it is, it will be delicious."

[cook_the_rude]

"I was just thinking of chicken soup," Jacob admits. "We could have spic Chinese chicken soup?"

There was something about Chinese chicken soup that has slipped his mind at the moment, but was important at some stage?

[sunbaked_baker]

"Chinese?" she says, with hefty doubt. "Chinese chicken soup?"

The normal kind isn't good enough?

"Oh but..." she pauses, confused. "But I'm vegetarian." Rae thought he knew that, but she may have been mistaken. With the way she's feeling, it's not out of the realm of possibility.

[cook_the_rude]

"Oh, I'm terribly sorry," Jacob says. "I did't know that. Vegetable soup, then? Minestrone?"

[runningred]

Well hello, gorgeous. Jay, convinced he's a certain demon hunter, watches the pretty red-head as she comes in.

[sunbaked_baker]

Though she feels wretched - she's fine. Fine. Believe it enough and it'll be true - the woman wanders through the bar and over to the jukebox as though merely unhurried. The jukebox is considerably fancier than she is used to, but she eventually finds her choice. The woman rests her hands on the jukebox and sways unconsciously to the slow swing of the beat as the audacious opening of the song plays.

[runningred]

Dean watches her swing, leering pretty openly as he licks the last of his pie off the spoon. Screw it. Sammy's late, there's no reason not to made use of the time. He saunters over, making sure not to walk up directly behind her. "Beautiful song."

[sunbaked_baker]

The woman looks over her right shoulder at him, letting her hair fall in front of her left in long, loose waves of red.

"Do you know it?" she asks in a posh English accent, aiming a faint smile and a slightly arched eyebrow in his direction. It's totally coincidence that her body shield the artist and song-name on the jukebox from the man's view, at this angle.

Keep telling yourself that.

[runningred]

He shrugs with a smile, "Can't say I do but then, don't need to know the name to enjoy it."

[sunbaked_baker]

The turn of her smile is amused, but in an aristocratic, almost dismissive way. A die-hard fan of something meeting someone who doesn't care to connect in the same way.

"It's Duke Ellington," she says, giving the name weight when she says it. "'Jeep's Blues.' This song has saved my life many times over."

[runningred]

"Then I'm very grateful to this Duke Ellington then." Jay grins playfully. "If wasn't for him, you won't be here. And I won't be able to buy you a drink." Always worth a try.

[sunbaked_baker]

"Clearly that's the supreme point of my continued existence up until now, you buying me a drink," she says archly, with a sweetness of tone to her accented words, that fails - by design - to belie her words. "Think a lot of yourself, do you?"

This is a woman who is consciously exuding aristocratic out-of-your-league-boy vibes at him. She may be currently wearing a t-shirt and distractingly tight (to her) jeans, but she moves like a woman wearing furs and heels and clothes with dangerous necklines. A woman without the flu making her ache all over.

[runningred]

"How will you know it isn't unless you have a drink with me?" He challenges, and shrugs, not put off in the slightest. "Someone's got to think highly of me. Might as well do it myself."

[sunbaked_baker]

"Well, if you have to depend on yourself to think highly of you, then all those other times you've bought girls drinks must not've turned out well, either," she grins at him, passing deliberately close by him as she sashays towards the bar. "I can learn from their mistakes."

[runningred]

"Never left a lady wanting where it matters." He shrugs cockily. "But it's your loss."

[sunbaked_baker]

"And I suppose you reserve the right to determine where it matters, too," she remarks with an arched eyebrow and an unimpressed look as she continues towards the bar and away from him. "'S not my loss - you're the one trying too hard."

Edith reflects that there is a difference between the confidence of not caring what anyone thinks, and arrogance. One is a definite turn-on. The other... not at all.