Blue Matter

[Rhys Armitage]

Rhys sat at his desk, his body nearly completely slumped down in his chair as he stared at a packet of notes propped up in front of him in preparation for that afternoon's meeting. He glanced up curiously every time an unfamiliar person walked through the department -- International witches and wizards looking to be Magically Cooperated with, presumably.

It was supposed to be an easy day for him, really. A simple French-to-English interpretation job. French was his most comfortable language by far, but it turned out that the vocabulary he might use to chat people up at the end of the night in a Parisian discothèque was in fact significantly different from the terminology of international diplomacy. Frankly, trying to get his head around what this meeting was supposed to be about was boring and exhausting and he'd go for pretty much any distraction, at this point.

He wished he had his laptop with him, really. What good was a desk in the corner with no one sitting behind him if he couldn't even do weird stuff on the computer?

(ooc: ANYONE!)

[Lydia Coulson]

Lydia Coulson tapped her foot impatiently as she watched the numbers in the lift. The little bell dinged to signify that it was her floor and the doors opened. She walked down the hall passed her desk, and into a larger open area with many desks.

“Rhys, did you order a black coffee or a latté?” she asked bringing the massive coffee holder up to her face and turning around the cups to figure out the names scrawled on the sides. Then properly glancing at him slumped over his desk her eyebrows pulled together into a confused expression, “What are you doing?” she asked. The position he was in couldn’t have been comfortable.

“Oh Lydia, there you are,” Alfred, one of the Heads of the Department said as he and everyone else seemed to congregate around her as usual when she did her daily coffee run. There was a frenzy as Lydia frantically handed everyone their coffees making quite sure that everyone had what they wanted. Left with the remaining coffee as they all dispersed once more she set the coffee on Rhys desk. “Here you are,” she said with a sigh of relief.

((ooc: Hope Lydia is okay?))

[Rhys Armitage]

(ooc: Of course!)

"Liddy. You're a lifesaaaaaver," Rhys groaned lazily, stretching his arm out vaguely towards the coffee and making absolutely zero effort to get up and attempt to push through the congregation of employees who had gathered around Lydia. As he finally got his cup, he quickly realized that it was a creamy sugary calorie-packed thing rather than the black coffee he wanted, but he didn't want to make Lydia feel bad for bungling the order. He took a few miniscule sips before casually pushing the cup to the side of his papers.

"You report to Michael, yes?" Rhys asked, leaning his head against his hand like he was about to fall asleep. "I'm avoiding him. I tried telling him he was a handsome man in his native German, but I must be missing some tonal subtleties of the language because I'm pretty sure he thought I was flirting?" Rhys squinted. To be fair, there was a good chance Rhys's words and tone would be interpreted as flirting no matter the language. Those lines were a little... fuzzy for him sometimes.

He held his hand out, offering up a chair for her to sit. "You are far too good to fetch coffee, mon chou. Want to learn some hardcore diplomacy?" He handed her a briefing packet for the meeting. "It's a learning experience! Or... something! Mostly I just wanna talk to you. I'm pretty sure one of those is in English," he grinned at her while pointing to the papers.

[Lydia Coulson]

Lydia glanced from Rhys to his coffee cup, “That wasn’t what you ordered was it?” she asked with an apologetic expression. “Sorry,” she said awkwardly. “Someone must have taken yours.”

“Yeah,” she nodded as he mentioned Michael’s name. Had he asked her to do something else while she was out? Michael had a habit of doing that, telling her to do something whilst she wasn’t actually there to do it. Then she laughed at Rhys’ comment about him being handsome.

“Thanks,” she shrugged with a little, almost shy, smile as she sat down beside him. “Sure,” she answered enthusiastically glancing at the briefing packet he had pushed over to her. “Oh, I can read French,” she said nonchalantly as if they had been talking about the weather. Then looking up at Rhys she clarified, “My mum taught me French and Spanish before she died,” and for a moment she got really quiet, “But I think I am much better at Spanish than French to be honest. But I can understand it better than I can speak it, probably,” she added. Lydia really liked Rhys, she thought he was well fit and a dreamy sex god, but she would never tell him that of course.

[Rhys Armitage]

Rhys closed his eyes and shrugged bashfully, holding his hands up. "Alright, you got me. I'm not actually... what name does this cup say? It looks like 'Penis'." He pulled a face and turned the cup around so she could see the indecipherable scribble that was meant to pass for someone's name. He drank it anyway, purely for her sake, making a mental note to up his jogging times and weight machine repetitions for the day.

"It's some kind of... trade agreement, I guess. Maybe we're exchanging fine cheeses," Rhys offered jokingly, still confused over what the meeting was about despite having attempted to skim the packet several times already. "Get out," he grinned after she explained about her knowledge of French and Spanish, slamming his hand down on the table. "I learned French from my mum! And my French is better than my Spanish. We ought to get together to practice sometime." His mind started working quickly (quickly for Rhys, anyway). Was this girl even eighteen? More importantly, did he care?

"I did my internship in Paris, and I've only been back in London for a little over half a year. I've backpacked through Spain, briefly! Beautiful beaches, beautiful women. I'm hardly surprised to find out you're Spanish, you know. Did you know I was French?"

[Michael Lehrer]

"Yes, you are French, amazing that with your mother's maiden name being Beaumont, no?" Michael spoke up suddenly in a typically sarcastic tone, having slowly wandered over to Rhys' desk upon spotting his intern/assistant reappear but linger by the boy's workplace. He smiled with a sort of good-natured charm then and continued, "Ms Coulson, I wonder if you could look over these briefing notes? I'm somewhat snowed under, I have a meeting I have to pop out to, and I really need to get abreast of these by 4. You speak Spanish rather well do you not?" he checked, barely pausing to clarify this before he dumped a rather thick file on the desk in front of them.

"That is... unless you'd rather stay here and flirt a bit? Of course, if Monsieur Armitage fancies helping you then by all means... collaborate," Michael hesitated over the word uncertainly but shrugged it off so to speak by turning away and taking a sip of coffee, shaking his head good naturedly as he walked away from the pair.

[Rhys Armitage]

"Guten Tag, Mr Lehrer! It's her name-name now, actually," Rhys piped up. It still felt odd to him, visiting his mother in her office and seeing the name 'Beaumont' etched on her nameplate rather than 'Armitage'. He frowned and searched Michael's face for a sign that the man liked him, odd German flirting aside. Rhys didn't even care about the fate of his job so much as he desperately wanted everyone to love him at all times.

"Monsieur Armitage would be delighted," he replied, barely waiting for Michael to finish talking. He pulled his chair around so he was sat next to Lydia and propped the file on his desk.

He waited for Michael to walk away, idly paging through the notes. "Well, I can hardly say no to the Boss Man, can I? Though I... may have slightly embellished my Spanish skills on my CV," he whispered, grinning sheepishly.