sailboats are for sailing - AUGUST

[HECTOR LÉON]

- - - - - - - he got the money; man, he got the fold lines
- - - - - - - but he got the problems banging on his door

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so, I guess I accidentally modified this post instead of replying with a new one, because I lost the original post. Ffuuuuu.

WORDS;;[/b][/color]462
TAGGED;;[/b][/color]AUGUST
OUTFIT;;[/b][/color]CLOTHES
NOTES;;[/b][/color]NONE
DE;;[/b][/color]lake. pls do not take anything.

[HECTOR LÉON]

- - - - - - - he got the money; man, he got the fold lines
- - - - - - - but he got the problems banging on his door

[/font][/center]

Hector was almost too distracted by his throbbing foot to notice the eruption of laughter at his futile boating attempts, but as always, his pride got in the way of his ignorance and lured him away from his internal swearing to catch the excessive giggling arising from the dock. He didn’t look immediately—Hector had an incredible penchant for denial when faced with humiliation—instead choosing to pull out his phone and check his text messages aimlessly to give him the appearance that he knew exactly what he was doing because he was a Blackberry user and a businessman, and Blackberry users and businessmen were never wrong.

No, it wasn’t until the laughter stopped and he heard footsteps drifting away from the dock that Hector finally glanced up to catch a glimpse of the back of a young blonde girl strolling purposefully towards that dreaded old man and his dreaded old boat rental. He scowled at her back and silently willed her not to rent a boat, because the old man was dirty, and rude, and didn’t deserve to have her money, and all the others complaints Hector had made about him just because he had been right where Hector was wrong.

As soon as she turned back to the dock, old man in tow, however, Hector readjusted to his previous “I’m-busy-on-the-phone-leave-me-alone” stance: eyes turned down, leg propped up decisively, fingers shuffling quickly through his text menus. As hard as he tried, however, Hector just couldn’t keep from glancing at the two as they passed by, and he managed to catch a single patronizing sneer from the old man. “I’m waiting for someone,” Hector responded defensively to the man’s glare, gesturing sharply to his phone as though he were expecting a call at any minute. But for all his bravado, the renter only chuckled dismissively and stepped into the neighboring boat.

And like a miracle from the boating gods, the man suddenly proceeded with teaching all the basic knowledge and instructions of getting a boat off the dock and into the deep blue. Hector eyed his own boat’s rigging as the man explained, memorizing every step and part in order to set off himself when the man finally left. ”I don’t recommend going out alone on your first time,” he said, and Hector frowned because he felt almost certain the man was speaking more to him than the girl.

But when he left, Hector finally felt free to go about rocking and sailing in the ocean like he’d been aspiring to since the minute he left his stuffy old dorm room. He stood with a grand gesture, feeling at last like the pirate king he’d dreamed of. He grabbed the rope attached to the sail and was about to pull it loose when he realized there was a pretty girl behind him, all alone, with no desire to go out alone. And so Hector swung about the rigging and propped a leg up on the small bench before him.

Resting his weight on his elevated leg, Hector leaned forward and grinned at the would-be sailor. “All that learning and you’re not even going to take a boat out?” he said in an incredulous tone. And then, in a lower voice, “You’re not thinking of pirating one, are you? Hmm, and from such a sweet old man, too,” he added with a jokingly disapproving shake of the head.

WORDS;;[/b][/color]567
TAGGED;;[/b][/color]AUGUST
OUTFIT;;[/b][/color]CLOTHES
NOTES;;[/b][/color]NONE
DE;;[/b][/color]lake. pls do not take anything.

[HECTOR LÉON]

- - - - - - - he got the money; man, he got the fold lines
- - - - - - - but he got the problems banging on his door

[/font][/center]

“Ahh,” Hector said, winking with understanding. Then, cupping his hand around his mouth, Hector whispered in a voice only she could hear. “Oops. Didn’t mean to blow your cover,” he said, glancing over his shoulder at the rental shack. Throwing his weight back onto two feet, Hector stood straight and stretched his back, only stumbling for a second as the boat tipped and rocked with his sudden movement.

“Hector, by the way,” he introduced proudly. “Hector Léon.” And if he weren’t a boat’s length of murky shore water away, he would have offered her a hand to shake. Instead, he stood with his hands on his hips and his elbows splayed so that he was broad and straight and made the boat look entirely too fun-sized for his contrarily king-sized frame. “It’s a pleasure,” he added with a wink.

He then turned away from his neighbor boat and looked his own up and down, grabbing a few of the shrouds as he had seen the man do to set the boat to sail. Hector braced himself so as to secure the oscillating boat and rapidly began unwrapping the ropes like he’d been doing it all his life. It seemed easy now, so much easier than it had been prior to the old man’s explanation; Hector quietly resented him. Holding the ropes taut in his hand, Hector sighed decidedly and prepared to undock.

“Well,” he called back to the girl as he fumbled with the ropes and cords, “I have a sea to set sail to.” And he grabbed the ropes with a sure hand and swung around to face her again, the ropes being pulled along with him and dragging the sail so that it unfurled dramatically behind him. “Unless you wanted to join me?” he offered with a suggestive cocked eyebrow.

After all, no one should going sailing for the first time alone.

WORDS;;[/b][/color]314
TAGGED;;[/b][/color]AUGUST
OUTFIT;;[/b][/color]CLOTHES
NOTES;;[/b][/color]eh, just wanted to get one out. kinda sucks but OH WELL.
DE;;[/b][/color]lake. pls do not take anything.

[HECTOR LÉON]

- - - - - - - he got the money; man, he got the fold lines
- - - - - - - but he got the problems banging on his door

[/font][/center]

This August girl was fun. She didn’t shy away. She played along. And that was all it took, because just as quick as that, Hector decided he liked her well enough.

“Well, I’m sure if any of these fine citizens heard,” he said with a grand flourish to the pier as the children settled into the boat and the tourists began their own departure, “our damsel in distress over there” (here he gestured scornfully with a scowl to the boat rental man) “would have had the Royal Navy on you by now. Swordfighting. Pistol shots. Et cetera. You know.” Hector crossed his arms and looked at her with a crooked smile. “But don’t worry; I’ll protect you,” he added with a wink.

But then she laughed at his pose, and this was clearly not the thing to do because Hector turned away and grimaced. As much as it may have been girly laughter and tinkling laughter, he couldn’t help but feel like it was condescending laughter. Never mind laughing with him; Hector was sure she was laughing at him, and that just wouldn’t do it for Hector. Maybe that was the reason he had the sudden inspiration to invite this absolute stranger along: if he could show her just how impressive a sailor he was, then maybe she would see that his posing was not a joke, because he was quite certain it was entirely justified.

That, or maybe Hector thought, Hey! Cute girl, boat, ocean, why not?

Pleased by her ready willingness, Hector pushed over his small cooler of food in order to make room for her and proceeded with the undocking. He was about to help her into the shallow boat when she remembered the story that he’d forgotten, and all he could fumble out was, “What?”

After a moment of processing what she’d been referring to, Hector shook his head. “Oh,” he coughed. “That.” He looked around for a moment before pulling out his phone. “You know, I’m sure they wouldn’t mind if you—Oh!” he said, glancing at his phone as if he’d have some epiphany. “Look at that—they can’t make it. Well, that sucks,” he said quickly before tossing the phone in the bottom of the boat by his cooler and gazing up at her expectantly.

“What’ll it be then, Ms. Swift?” he said as he extended a hand in her direction. “Ship’s about to set sail, and I’m calling all hands on deck. So, you gonna stick around here and landlub all day, or you coming with me?” And with a cocked eyebrow and a weak accent, he added one final, “Arr?” just to make him feel a bit less ‘sailboat’ and a bit more ‘pirate king.’

WORDS;;[/b][/color]454
TAGGED;;[/b][/color]AUGUST
OUTFIT;;[/b][/color]CLOTHES
NOTES;;[/b][/color]none
DE;;[/b][/color]lake. pls do not take anything.

[HECTOR LÉON]

Jun 13, 2011 21:44:51 GMT -5 HECTOR LÉON said:

- - - - - - - he got the money; man, he got the fold lines
- - - - - - - but he got the problems banging on his door

[/font][/center]

Hector laughed, believing entirely that the archery thing was a joke, and August must have about as much experience with a bow and arrow as Hector did wielding a sword or pirating a ship, which was, of course, absolutely none. “Well, I don’t think we’re gonna be able to test those skills of yours,” he said, sounding almost disappointed. “I’m not so sure this stacks up to be a Black Pearl kind of boat,” he said, fondly patting the small sailboat’s mast. Then, with a devilish grin, he added: “But it can try.”

Silently pleased with himself for talking her into joining him, Hector helped August into the boat as though he were helping her into her royal carriage and turned to start undocking. It took him a moment to go through the rental man’s steps in his head again, but before long, the boat was untied and pushing off from the dock and crawling out to the horizon. The family with the screaming children set off about the same time as them, but Hector was proudly surprised to see his boat race ahead and pull out in front of their slower vessel. He looked cockily back at the shoreline and the still-docked boats they left behind as his worked his way between the rudder and the sail.

And in this way they began their gradual descent further into the sea. Hector was ambivalent about the condition of their craft because although he trusted the little boat to take them out of the dock with no trouble, as soon as they hit the more open sea, it creaked and rocked beneath their feet, reluctant to fight the steady tide and Hector’s unsteady footing. When he began to feel nauseous from his lack of balance, Hector finally resigned to drop the many ropes and drop into the small bench to enjoy his first boating experience. He cupped his hands around his knees and stretched his shoulders with a relieved sigh before turning back to August.

“Nice out here,” he commented casually, turning his face to the warm sun. It had been warm, verging on hot, at the shoreline with all the heat of the city and the many bodies heating the ground, but out there, even in the shallowest of the ocean, it was cool and fresh with the light breeze and the gentle buffeting of sea mist thrown up by the current hitting their faces. Inhaling a deep breath of the crisp sea air (and then coughing it back out because his nose was not very keen on smelling salt and fish and sea muck), Hector felt at one with the boat and the ocean waves—and totally and completely classy.

Hector fell silent for a time. Somehow, out here, with the wind at his back and the grainy wood running under his fingertips, Hector felt nothing really needed to be said at all. For the moment Hector instead resorted to thinking. Mostly, he thought of how he would take up sailing as a new hobby, because despite the old man’s less-than-desirous manner at the start of the day, and despite the clear fact that he needed the clandestine help of a young woman to even unfurl the sail, and despite the rotten sea air abusing his poor nostrils, Hector could not ignore the undoubtedly splendid feeling of being the captain of a vessel. There was something romantic in the way the ropes allowed the sailor to guide and control his own path through the sea, and how the horizontal rolling waves seemed to separate and distinguish a seaman from his land-bound toils and worries. The ocean was like its own entity—utterly divine and intangible, except for when man just grazes its surface on the wings of a wholesome and humble shamble of wood and sails.

But of course, Hector’s shallow mind couldn’t focus for a minute to think this profoundly, and so it stopped at ”Ooh, I’m a sea captain,” and then went straight to ”This captain’s hungry.”

“There’s food in there,” Hector finally said as broke from his reverie and turned back to August, gesturing at the small cooler that had slid beneath the bench. He reached down to the other bench, drew the cooler towards him, and began shuffling through the items, naming them off as he went. “Let’s see… I’ve got a ham and brie sandwich with Perrier in here; those are mine—so don’t touch,” he started, greedily placing the sandwich and water on the side of the bench furthest from her so that she’d have to go through him to reach them and—indeed—wouldn’t touch. With the rest he was less defensive, placing the cooler equally between them as he moved the small cache of snacks around. “Crackers, brie, Evian, strawberries… Ha, I threw a bottle of Pinot in there if you want some.” Unwrapping his sandwich, Hector shrugged and gestured towards the food. “You know, if you’re interested. Take whatever you’d like,” he said casually before a large bite into his sandwich.

With the food crisis averted and his stomach growling placidly at the food in his hand, Hector leaned against the side of the boat and stuck his head into the breeze. “So. August,” he said with another welcoming bite into the hoagie. “What brought you out to the docks, anyway?” he asked, trying to make polite conversation because, quite frankly, Hector didn’t exactly know what people usually talked about when they went out on a sailboat for the first time with a complete and utter stranger. “I can’t imagine you had meet a dashing young sailor and sail away with him into the sunset,” he added, all too modestly.

Because obviously, Hector was all about the modesty.

WORDS;;[/b][/color]NINE-FITTY-EIGHT
TAGGED;;[/b][/color]AUGUST
OUTFIT;;[/b][/color]CLOTHES
NOTES;;[/b][/color]NONE
DE;;[/b][/color]lake. pls do not take anything.[/quote]

[HECTOR LÉON]

- - - - - - - he got the money; man, he got the fold lines
- - - - - - - but he got the problems banging on his door

[/font][/center]

Poor unfortunate Hector that people—smart people, not his usual brand of shallow gold digging people—were evidently unable to stand him. All his life there’d been those good friendly people with good friendly friends who Hector would try so hard to impress, and no matter what he’d do they would scoff and roll their eyes and walk away because trying too hard to impress them was evidently the very thing that turned them off to him. It was just his luck that middle-class American society would rather try to rehabilitate a drug-abuser or a gangbanger than try to spend time with a boy who’s head was just a bit too big.

And it seemed August would be one of these people: someone who saw Hector’s (many, many) faults, and not his (very, very few) virtues. Not that Hector would notice, of course, or if he noticed would care, and even if he did care, would ever show it.

As she responded to Hector’s comment on the weather, Hector looked at August sideways. “Yeah, I guess…” he murmured; it was a bit more poetic than he’d cared for. As if to express some semblance of thought into the day’s calming serenity, Hector stumbled for a good word, but only found himself with, “…Sunny.”

At her apparent confusion by his food choices, Hector was a bit taken aback; coming from an upper-crust family, Hector was used to the ‘fancier’ snacks. “Yeah?” he responded, picking up the triangular hunk and waving it purposefully before her. “It’s cheese. French cheese. Really good French cheese, if you want some,” he explained as he pulled apart its excessive wrapping. When he saw that August seemed only interested in the strawberries, however, Hector shrugged. If she didn’t want his food, he wasn’t going to force it in her. On the other hand, Hector cut a piece of brie and ate it with a cracker, then cut a piece of brie and ate it with a strawberry, and then cut a piece of brie and ate it alone, because evidently it was his obligation as a man to eat everything and anything that his companion would not.

When August declined his invitation to have a swig of the Pinot, he only shrugged again. “Well, I’m not going to tell or anything,” he said, but left it at that. Hector had no inclination to refuse her alcohol simply because she was a few years behind the drinking age—after all, Hector himself had done some social drinking back in his high school years, and certainly more than a few times—but he could respect her decision not to. Despite the usual assumption that he was a typical alcoholic frat boy with a penchant for partying all day and all night, in reality, Hector didn’t actually drink all too much or too often because being drunk was too sloppy for his classy nature and often came accompanied with an unsightly beer belly—which was absolutely unacceptable for someone of Hector’s finely honed looks.

Leaning back against the rim of the boat, Hector lifted his ankle to rest on his knee and unscrewed the cap of his Perrier. “First days in New York, huh?” he said casually. Hector took a long swig of water before looking back to her, eyes squinting against the sun. “Did you just move here?” He took another bite of sandwich and after the pause where he chewed and swallowed, added, “What’d you come here for?”

WORDS;;[/b][/color]580
TAGGED;;[/b][/color]AUGUST
OUTFIT;;[/b][/color]CLOTHES
NOTES;;[/b][/color]NONE
DE;;[/b][/color]lake. pls do not take anything.

[HECTOR LÉON]

- - - - - - - he got the money; man, he got the fold lines
- - - - - - - but he got the problems banging on his door

[/font][/center]

Hector laughed. “It’s the French that got you, isn’t it?” he said as he cut a small sample of brie for her and handed it to her on a napkin. “Always the French.” Watching her crookedly, he suddenly wondered if he should warn her about its less-than-cheesy taste, but then considered that if she was adventurous enough to board a boat with a complete stranger, she was at least adventurous enough to try something a bit… different.

As she seemed to give in to the thought of alcohol, Hector laughed again. Adventurous she was indeed. Smirking, Hector took the bottle from the cooler. He set it on the bench, making sure the boat was steady enough that it wouldn’t fall, and reached over to the small duffel bag he’d tucked under the other bench, from which he retrieved a corkscrew after a moment of digging. “Allow me,” he said, figuring her feminine hands to be too weak to open it. After a few seconds’ work the top finally popped, and Hector threw the cork aside. Picking up a modest glass tucked carefully in the corner of the cooler, Hector asked, “How much do you want?” before proceeding to completely ignore however much she actually wanted and pour it halfway full as his mother had always said was traditionally appropriate.

Hector passed the glass to August and, finding himself to be at a loss for his own glass, took a small sip of the bottle, though it went against everything he had ever taught himself about drinking. Wiping his lips of any spare pinot, Hector recorked the bottle and placed it on the floor of the boat beside them before leaning back to listen. At the mention of ‘financial aid,’ a grimace flickered subconsciously across Hector’s face; coming from the money that he did, Hector was never at a need for ‘financial aid.’ Clearly, August wasn’t exactly the upper-echelon type of person he usually found himself with—still, at least that explained her distinct lack in knowledge of fine cheeses.

As August answered his question about why she’d come to New York, Hector immediately regretted asking. She mentioned something about being ‘called’, like some fate Hector didn’t believe in, and then continued on about her distaste for her stepmother. Hector’s eyes glazed as she spoke, drifting off just past her head at a seagull pecking futilely at a buoy. “Huh,” Hector grunted, and he could not have more clearly expressed any less interest in her complaints about her stepmother. Reaching down for another swill of the pinot, Hector turned his gaze back to her. “Yeah, I go to school here, too, though,” he said, bringing the topic back to something a bit more interesting to him just for the fact that it was at all relative to him. “Not NYU or Columbia or anything. J. Barrie—you know it?” Then, as if just to ensure its prestige, he added, “It’s a good school.”

Stretching his thick arms over the back of the boat, Hector yawned loudly and looked at August with a relaxed expression. “Where you thinking of going though?”

WORDS;;[/b][/color]519
TAGGED;;[/b][/color]AUGUST
OUTFIT;;[/b][/color]CLOTHES
NOTES;;[/b][/color]NONE
DE;;[/b][/color]lake. pls do not take anything.

[HECTOR LÉON]

Jun 15, 2011 19:01:25 GMT -5 HECTOR LÉON said:

- - - - - - - he got the money; man, he got the fold lines
- - - - - - - but he got the problems banging on his door

[/font][/center]

“Oh” was all Hector said when she told him that she’d been accepted into Barrie. Well, if she’d got accepted without money or even prestige to back up her application, then she must have had some outstanding quality to get in. Or, at least, that’s what Hector told himself when he began to doubt that J. Barrie was an esteemed university for only the most upper crust of people. It fell silent between them, only the sounds of the waves brushing against the boat and the distant bustle of people on the shore as noise, and Hector coughed into his shoulder in a futile attempt to fill the awkward silence. Noticing that August was running empty on wine, he took the glass from her hands and began to fill it again in order to give his hands something to do.

Placing the glass back down before her, Hector stood, steadied himself as the boat rocked precariously on the tide, and stepped beside the mast. Leaning casually against it, Hector looked out across the horizon as his fingers drummed idly on the bottle between his hands. They were nearing the buoy that was supposed to say “OH-MY-GOD-TURN-AROUND-AND-RUN-BEFORE-YOU-GO-TOO-DEEP-AND-GET-EATEN-BY-A-SHARK,” and, by some shot of luck, Hector managed to tug on the right rope so that the boat gradually turned and began to run parallel to the casual sailing borderline. Silently smug for his evidently innate ability to control boats, Hector looked back towards August, rolling around the mast so that he faced her. “Well,” he said before pausing to take a sip from the bottle, “’Least you know me—if you do go to Barrie.”

Again the boat rocked under Hector’s feet, this time a bit more forcefully than before. He noticed that the current seemed to be picking up a bit and looked up at the sail, wondering if he should perhaps take them closer to shore. He tried to remember what the man had said about steering the boat (his previous success had been pure luck on Hector’s part), but that section of the instructions seemed to be completely cut out of Hector’s memory. “What are you studying?” Hector continued, eyeing the sails suspiciously, as if they were somehow withholding the secrets of sailing from him. Waving them off in his mind (because Hector would never admit to himself that an inanimate object was currently holding him captive out in the middle of the ocean), Hector turned back to August, choosing rather to ignore the issue than admit defeat. “And where, I guess, if you’re not really from here?”

WORDS;;[/b][/color]428
TAGGED;;[/b][/color]AUGUST
OUTFIT;;[/b][/color]CLOTHES
NOTES;;[/b][/color]meh
DE;;[/b][/color]lake. pls do not take anything.[/quote]