( OPEN ) they say you grow,

[peasant]

CHARACTERS: alina starkov ( peasant )
LOCATION: common room, sunlight room, training room.
DATE: a week or so, post-mission.
CONTENT: catch-all vibes
WARNINGS: none that i can think of atm! will update if/when they occur.

[ all starters will be in comments below, both open and closed! lmk if you want a closed starter via PM or nereids. ]

Comments

[peasant]

The best? [ she flips the vinyl over to study the image splashed across. if the sight of it can instill the calm serenity that it does, she has little doubt that the sound of it can perform the same magic. with a shy smile, she hops up, bare feet padding eagerly across the floor. ] That's a bold claim.

[ there's too much beyond her scope of understanding to avoid the rising sting of self-consciousness over her own awed, child-like curiosity. she's hardly well-traveled and never well-loved, with a middling education that speaks to ravka's lack of care for its forgotten children. her unfamiliarity with technology only feels like another awkward fumbling to judge her for when the rest of their team handles it with such ease.

for the sake of keeping her pride in tact, she doesn't deliberately draw attention to her confusion over the turntable's bits and baubles. but it's visibly there, bemusement knit between her brows, as she gently sets the record into the platter. only halfway through debating how to get it to play does she think to ask, a thread of hope lacing through it: ]

Do you want to listen to it together?

[unclesam]

Bold and true. Whatever Bucky's gotta say about this, disregard it. That man's taste in anything but men is garbage.

[ Sam watches Alina for a moment, lets her be curious without immediately cutting in, but then follows along with her invitation. Curls one arm around her slight shoulders and fixes the vinyl on the platter with the other, making sure she's watching so she can learn how to do it. Softly, voice just a comfortable rumble: ]

Here. Like this, see?

[ Gives her a little squeeze too, encouraging - and signalling that yes, he's staying and listening to it with her. She's not Bucky - he won't relentlessly mock her and give her shit for not knowing something. Not when he can see the way insecurity is laced into her movements. Not when he's happy to show her, to help her learn. New experiences are fun unless you get shamed for never having had the chance to have them before. ]

I'll make us dinner after, how 'bout it?

[peasant]

Mm.

[ she teeters in place, on a seesaw of indecision — whether to lean into the touch or draw away. once bitten, twice shy. it's a perfect recipe for turning the most courageous spirits into woodland animals ready to dart away. in the end, she settles back into his arm, faux-contemplative hum vibrating through her throat. ]

I don't know. He seems to have good taste in fashionable arms.

[ curiously, she gives the vinyl one last spin before dropping the needle down, waiting for the record scratch to transition to sound. she hasn't made it a point to entertain gossip aboard the ximilia, too close to clucking from grisha in the halls of the little palace, but — bucky and sam's closeness is no great-kept secret.

as inquisitive as she wants to be, she withholds the questions that nag at her tongue and turns, tilting her head to eye him with a growing grin. all else fades in the face of alina starkov's stomach, after all. ]

Dinner and a movie was the promise, if I'm recalling it right.

just gonna pick an icon where he looks at Karli for REASONS

[unclesam]

[ Look at that. The two people on board with the prettiest smiles. Sam can't help but mirror that growing grin. This moment right her soothes some aches in him - and he can only hope it does the same for her, in whatever small measure Sam can provide. He'd be blind, after all, not to see the ways in which she carries herself. ]

Dinner and a movie. [ Anything, honestly, to keep that smile where it is. What can he say - his heart bleeds easily for people like her. And it's okay if she needs the additional reassurance right now that for Sam at least, nothing's changed in how he sees her. ] Been looking forward to it, to be honest.

[ And as Marvin Gaye croons an emotional appeal to 1970s America to change the perspective on mystified war and tense racial relations, Sam holds Alina's eyes. Is earnest and genuine when he says: ]

You know you can ask, right? I ain't ever gonna ask you to dim yourself for me.

[ After all, he can simply decline an answer, or give her part of one. He'd just rather not see her swallow back her inquisitive nature. Not over this. And never with him. ]

lays down and cries

[peasant]

[ oh. called out. alina's smile transitions to something rueful, just before she severs the connection between their eyes. for a lack of a better diversion, she brushes a speck of dust from the vinyl record's base. ]

Our headmistress at the orphanage used to say, "a fool's tongue runs before his feet."

[ not that ana kuya's proverbs applied much to alina, quiet and cloistered as she'd been. silence had been one of her few friends in a world that preferred her silent, a ghost gone unnoticed in keramzin's dusty halls. if anything at all, it was her feet that outran the rest of her — perhaps knowing, even then, the temptation of wanting to escape a tired existence.

perhaps that's why words fail her now. her tongue has scarcely learned to walk, let alone run, with the words buried at the bottom of her throat. ]

I'm guessing you're among his good taste in men?

[ she lifts a curious gaze toward sam, though there's a noticeable shine to it — light-hearted, poking harmlessly at his ego and its fluffed-up feathers. ]