time flies [dinah!]

[NATHANIEL ALEXANDER DUNNE]

I SAW THE CLOUDS ROLL IN AND RUN ACROSS THE SKY AND I HOPE THAT I REALLY HOPE THAT
WHEN THE SUN BURNS THROUGH AND I AM LEFT TO TRY I KNOW

Nate wasn't one to do anything major when it came to lunch. Usually, he cooked for himself. He wasn't a master chef, but he could cook things out of boxes pretty well, and sandwiches had never been an issue. His father wasn't the type to cook. Really, the man had done the bare minimum as a parent in Nate's life, more acting as a guardian and provider than doing anything really fatherly towards him, and he understood. He wasn't his real son, and he had an important job - that meant that Nate took the back seat, as his father had once told him. Nate wondered if his real father had ever cooked dinner. He wondered if he'd ever sat at the dining room table with his family and ate a home cooked meal as his parents talked about work and their day and then asked him little questions about what he did that day and if he'd had fun in kindergarten. He wasn't the type to think back, but he got a little bit sad when it came to meals in the cafeteria. He'd been in the building for training, and he was going to be here all day.

That meant that he got to eat whatever the CIA was serving that day. He didn't exactly think the best of their food, but he knew that it was cheaper than anything he'd get around here, and that it was all that he had time for. So for the day, he'd make do. He knew that this was what his father ate everyday. The man had a desk job in the CIA. He did ops, but mostly, he was a paperwork man. He was a debriefing agent, he was the one that handed out ops to agents. He didn't have anything big or dangerous to do, but Nate had thought it was important because it was his dad, and anything his dad did was important. Maybe that was a bit childlike, but he was nineteen, he was allowed his moments. The cafeteria was like a mix between a classy upscale work environment and a lunch room you'd find at a public high school. The odd mix not only catered to the adult agents, but the teenage ones as well. He wondered what the room looked like before the teen division had been put into place, and how much it had to change to fit both parties. He knew that it had definitely been smaller, since it probably didn't have to host so many people. The adults probably hadn't been happy about that, but then again, the adult agents didn't really like the teen agents in any capacity. Trust him, it was a mutual feeling.

It was spaghetti that day, along with salads and other things that he didn't really like. Some of the options were a little bit too gourmet for his tastes. Really, Nate was a simple person, even when it came to food. So he took pasta, got salad, and paid for his meal. The cashier - a girl about his age with her hair tied back and an apron on - smiled at him when he told her to keep the change. He was sure that many of the workers that weren't actually agents here didn't get treated too well. He didn't want to know how much it sucked to get credit cards thrown at you or monotonous voices telling you to hurry up whatever you were doing for them, because they had important jobs to do, unlike the simple cashiers. He'd gotten a lot of attitude from a lot of agents over the years, but that didn't make it any easier to handle. He wondered why some of them kept working here, as it didn't look remotely enjoyable. Then again, the economy was doing badly, and people needed work. He guessed that if they had to, they would do anything to pay their rent and keep food on their tables. He turned around, and then spotted a familiar dark head of hair at a nearby table. She was by herself - which wasn't too surprising, and instead of ignoring her, he walked towards it. Plopping his tray down onto the table, he pulled out the chair, and gave a crooked smile. "Dinah," he said in greeting. "What're you doing in here on a lovely day like today?"

T A G G E D ? ! dinah!
W O R D C O U N T ? ! seven fifty three
M U S E ? ! on the moon
N O T E S ? ! wooo first post of the day
C R E D I T ? ! graphic credit goes to v-va-vanessa of caution two point oh. lyric credit goes to timeflies with the song turn it up.

[DINAH EVELYN DONALD]

Could Dinah cook? She supposed the application of heat to food wasn't all that hard. But then there came things like pinches and dashes, seasoning and sauces, and all that chopping, stirring and sautéing, and there were so many better things to be doing -- and so many other things to be distracted by partway. She could microwave, she could heat things up on the stove or in the oven, but the cafeteria was easier than both those options, and she'd really never been picky enough about food to care. So long as it wasn't seafood. For some reason, she'd never been able to abide most seafood.

So to her it made perfect sense to make use of the cafeteria while on site for some training. It was easy to get caught up in the technical side of things and let her physical fitness go to waste, but she made an effort to stay on top of it. Today she'd put in a hard session and now she was hungry. Ergo, cafeteria.

Largely unaware of the political tensions between the adults and teen spies, she'd filled her tray with some of the various options and then chosen the first empty table she'd spotted, not paying attention to where in the cafeteria it was located or who was nearby. It wasn't often anyone was bothered to sit with her anyway, and by and large, she remained oblivious to everyone else, so in a way, it made cafeteria seating that much easier.

She'd brought a book of logic puzzles to keep herself company instead. They weren't as easy for her as math puzzles, but that was why she liked them, really. The fun lay in the challenge. And she figured it was good for honing her critical thinking skills, useful both when on the computer and when in the field. "The person to Sally's right is not Jimmy or Tommy..." she murmured to herself as she marked some notes down on the little grid she'd created to keep track of which of these people supposedly sat where. The irony of figuring out fictional seating arrangements while she herself sat alone was lost on the girl.

But not alone for long. Dinah looked up from her puzzle with some surprise at the sound of a tray being placed onto the table. Her expression initially a bit wary, it soon relaxed the moment she spotted Nate as the tray's owner. Well, that was all right then -- good even -- he wouldn't be here to hassle her for reasons she couldn't understand.

She did pause at his question however, wondering if it were a trick one. Since Nate was a spy and she knew his powers of observation were good enough to figure out that answer without even needing to ask. But after a brief moment of testing the question to see if it might have a different answer, she ended up going with the obvious one anyway: "Eating?"

She wasn't being facetious or sarcastic. That was what she was in here doing, and she even gestured down towards her half-eaten food as though to back up her response. "Just like you," she added, now nodding towards his tray. "Or, I assume you're going to eat that and haven't just bought it to throw it away," she amended, since he hadn't yet actually started consuming the food. "Either way, you're also here."

[NATHANIEL ALEXANDER DUNNE]

I SAW THE CLOUDS ROLL IN AND RUN ACROSS THE SKY AND I HOPE THAT I REALLY HOPE THAT
WHEN THE SUN BURNS THROUGH AND I AM LEFT TO TRY I KNOW

He wished he could turn off his brain for a minute, and view the cafeteria like a normal person would. He was too observant for his own good, really. He was someone that picked up on a lot of the little things. It was something he had in his list of assets, along with being a good listener. He was able to pick up on things - perceptive, that was the word. He knew that there was a lot of tension in the cafeteria because he could practically feel it in his bones, on top of seeing it. He wondered how other people could just see a room full of people, eating their food, maybe even enjoying it. It sounded nice, to just have something complicated appear so simple. Then again, he was an analytic person, and he was sure he'd be bored with that soon enough. Even though he was simple, and appreciated simple things, he needed a bit of complicated to spice things up. He would usually rather that it didn't affect him, but things couldn't be perfect all the time, right? Things like happy ever after at the end of stories had always crossed him as boring.

He chuckled at Dinah, and shook his head. "Not what I meant, though I am going to eat, and didn't buy it just to throw it away." He said. He shrugged. "Not that I want to be here?" He cracked a smile. "I meant, what are you doing in the building on a day like today? It's beautiful outside. I figured you had some sort of business to take care of, and got curious. That's the only reason why you'd be in here instead of outside. It's why I'm here, at least, and I'd rather be out there."

It was a beautiful day outside, and he didn't really want to be indoors at all. He imagined that he could've gone to Zaria's, surprised her, and they could've gone to Central Park together. He knew that watching the kids play was always amusing, and the air was fresh even if it was polluted - but living in New York for as long as he remembered made it so that he didn't know what fresh air felt like if it wasn't polluted, other air smelled and even tasted weird - and it just sounded like a fantastic day. But, then again, this was the CIA. They loved to take him on the days where he was thinking of having plans and throwing him into taking care of business or doing some official training 0r even doing health check up and psych evals. They never did enough planning for anything, never gave enough notice. You'd think with all the protocols they had in existence, it would keep them more organized than they actually were. However, that was like grasping at straws, and even though Nate was rather optimistic for a nineteen year old spy, he didn't think he was that naive. He took a bite of his food, chewing and swallowing quickly. "What are you working on?" He asked curiously. He didn't know why he was so quick to question Dinah today, but he hoped she didn't mind.

T A G G E D ? ! dinah!
W O R D C O U N T ? ! five fifty two
M U S E ? ! biting into snow white's poison apple
N O T E S ? ! this is like my thousandth post of the day omg
C R E D I T ? ! graphic credit goes to v-va-vanessa of caution two point oh. lyric credit goes to timeflies with the song turn it up.

[DINAH EVELYN DONALD]

The funny thing was, Dinah wasn't unobservant, not really. She could have, at any moment, given an exact count of the people in the cafeteria and even recounted how many were seated at how many tables and the order they'd come and gone in. She noticed everyone, noticed the patterns in the way they seated themselves... But it never really occurred to her to make a sort of sense about it. People simply sat like that, grouped here and there with spaces in the middle. It wasn't even that she was incapable of understand, it was just that it had never even occurred to her that there was something here to understand.

"Well good," Dinah replied when Nate assured her he hadn't just bought his food to throw it away. "That would be wasteful. And confusing. I can't think of any reason someone would do that, so I'm glad you're not." People often did things she didn't entirely understand, but at least this didn't seem to be some new nonsensical trend, where you bought food and threw it right out.

Then Dinah realized Nate had clarified his question while she'd been thinking about how wasteful it would be to throw food away, and she had to pause a moment to think back on the conversation and keep up. "Oh, uh, yes. I... Work, yes. Is it nice out? I guess it is. I didn't pay much attention to the weather, but I guess it must not be raining or I definitely would have noticed that on my way here this morning." She frowned and thought back, recalling now that the weather had been rather pleasant on her way in now that she thought about it. "Nice, yes. But I... didn't really think about that when deciding to come to work today. I just- Well, what else was I going to do?" she said with a little shrug. She liked work and rarely had better plans to worry about, so she ended up here quite often, or else working on non-confidential things at home.

She frowned again thoughtfully as he asked about what she was working on. "I've got a few projects on the go, but one's compiling and I'm a bit stuck on the other, so I thought I'd get some lunch... Although I guess that doesn't actually answer the question as to what I'm working on, only it's a bit complicated and I'm not sure if you really want me to explain or are just asking to be polite..." She then realized she still had her book of logic puzzles open in front of her. "Unless you mean this," she amended as she set her pencil inside the book to mark her place and flipped it shut so he could see the cover, just your usual puzzle book that they sold on magazine stands for a few dollars. "It isn't really work though, but I guess it's not exactly play either. But I'm just doing them for fun. Logic puzzles," she added abruptly, realizing she hadn't actually said what they were in all her rambling, pointing at the title in case he'd somehow missed that.

[NATHANIEL ALEXANDER DUNNE]

I SAW THE CLOUDS ROLL IN AND RUN ACROSS THE SKY AND I HOPE THAT I REALLY HOPE THAT
WHEN THE SUN BURNS THROUGH AND I AM LEFT TO TRY I KNOW

He couldn't help but quirk a lopsided smile when she said that it would be confusing and wasteful if he did that. Dinah was a very straightforward thinker. Nate had always thought that he was pretty simple, just in comparison to the people that he was around on a daily basis, but he was beat when it came to Dinah. She was extremely logical, and extremely intelligent. She could probably do things Nate couldn't, run circles around him. So could a lot of the people in the CIA. Nate was nothing special, just one of the masses really, and sometimes he didn't know how he'd gotten himself a position here. Sometimes, he thought it was because he had a father that was in the CIA, and other times, he didn't really know, second guessing even that thought process.

Nate wasn't one of those people that was in love with his work. Really, that was something that gave him the money to eat, live, etc. He didn't really think about it as enjoyable. Sure, he did have friends that were co-workers, and yes, some ops were interesting. But it wasn't something that could be enjoyable. The ops where he had partners were better than others, because he was more of a team player than someone that could do solo ops, but that didn't mean that they were fun. Work was work, and if he enjoyed someone's company enough, then they would end up doing something outside of work. Nate didn't let the CIA run his life. He didn't like it there enough, really, to manage to doing that. Then again, he could be quite picky sometimes, and maybe that wasn't the CIA's fault. After all, he didn't get injured often enough, and things weren't exactly boring most of the time, so he guessed he had it okay.

"It was perfect outside. Sun shining, but not too hot. There was a breeze, no rain, no clouds really. It was one of those perfect days to spend outside, maybe go to the beach, hang out with friends, do something exciting." He said, and sighed. Instead, he was in the CIA offices. Sometimes, he wished he was a normal teenager. Spending the day doing nothing sounded so exciting, especially when he could've even taken his girlfriend to the beach, and he could've bummed around with her friends who would've ultimately come around. He was someone that loved beach volleyball, and a few of her friends did too. It would've been a good day. "If it's complicated, I probably wouldn't get it." Nate said, chuckling and running a hand through his hair. "Sounds like you have your work cut out for you, though." When she showed him the puzzles she was working on, he nodded in understanding. "Everyone's allowed to do something mindless, it's cool. Well, that's not exactly mindless, but, you know what I mean." He said, realizing he was stumbling a bit. He'd never been good at them, but he found Sudoku to be something that could hold his attention for quite a bit. He wasn't too good with crosswords and other logic puzzles, however.

T A G G E D ? ! dinah!
W O R D C O U N T ? ! five fifty
M U S E ? ! as dead as my phone battery. is there such a thing as a muse charger?
N O T E S ? ! his name should really be nate "i stuff my foot in my mouth way too often" dunne
C R E D I T ? ! graphic credit goes to v-va-vanessa of caution two point oh. lyric credit goes to timeflies with the song turn it up.

[DINAH EVELYN DONALD]

Dinah smiled back as Nate smiled, although she herself didn't really see the humour in not wasting food. But making people smile was generally a good thing, so she figured she'd just roll right along with it. Especially since Nate had been kind enough to give her some company at lunch, instead of leaving her to eat alone as she often did. But she was probably over-thinking things again. She knew she had a tendency to do that, but it really couldn't be helped; or if it could, she hadn't yet figured out the trick to it. Maybe she would have been better at being normal if she didn't worry about it so much, didn't try so hard, but things were the way they were. At least here she had those few precious people who at least tried to understand her.

Unlike Nate, her whole life was the CIA. She tried to get out sometimes, but the idea of it usually scared her and she always had to work up the nerve first. It was only really here at HQ that she felt truly safe, and not just from external threats, but from herself as well. She liked the cleanliness, the order, the purpose. When she didn't have work to do, she often found it hard to figure out what to do with herself. Too much television hurt her head. She liked reading, but it didn't grip her in the same was as her work did. So more often than not, she found some excuse to be here, to be busy.

The idea of taking a lovely day off and going out to do something else hadn't even occurred to her until Nate had mentioned it, and it showed in the puzzled expression she gave him. "Oh. Yeah," she replied, trying to sound like this didn't sound like an abstract notion to her. She didn't really like the beach; it was crowded and she got sunburnt easily, not to mention the sand that ended up everywhere. And the only people she could really count as friends were all part of the CIA too. "Um, like what? The, uh, exciting something you'd rather be doing, I mean. Unless you mean going to the beach is exciting, which I suppose it could be, although that's not really the word I'd choose for it. Hanging out with friends would maybe also be exciting, depending on the type of friends you have. But I'm... not really looking for excitement, so I'm all right with being here," she concluded.

She blinked as he joked about not being able to get it. "Oh no, I didn't mean it like that," she was quick to assure him. He was laughing so he probably wasn't insulted, but she still worried that maybe she'd insinuated he couldn't understand it. "It's just that it would take some time to explain and I didn't want to waste your time if you were only asking to be polite. And then you'd expect a short answer and I'd go into this whole long thing and you'd get impatient, and well, it would be bad," she concluded with a sigh and a faint smile. It had happened to her more than once, clearly. Usually when someone passingly asked how she was, only to get a far more detailed answer than they wanted.

She looked down at the logic puzzles and nodded. She found these tended to hold more of a challenge than numeric puzzles for her, since they didn't tend to just fall into place. She enjoyed having to hold so many different ideas in her mind at once, and liked the satisfying feeling of order that came from figuring out who wore which colour shoes and came in which place in the race, or who sat next to whom and ordered what for dinner. They were silly, but as Nate said, everyone was allowed a bit of fun now and then. "I know what you mean," she replied, nodding, before reconsidering. "Well, um, I think I do, anyway. We might both think you mean different things, but I'm... pretty sure we mean the same." She paused just long enough to take a breath, but at least it marked the sudden change in subject. "I haven't asked what you're working on. I, uh, I assume it's something important, if you're here despite preferring to be outside?"

[NATHANIEL ALEXANDER DUNNE]

I SAW THE CLOUDS ROLL IN AND RUN ACROSS THE SKY AND I HOPE THAT I REALLY HOPE THAT
WHEN THE SUN BURNS THROUGH AND I AM LEFT TO TRY I KNOW

Nate was an under-thinker. There were a lot of people in the CIA that had to use their brain all the time to get their work done. He wasn't one of those people. He was one of those people that relied on their instincts. Being able to have that as his one main skill set meant that he was a good field agent, which was exactly what he was. He could never work with computers, or fill out paper work all day. He had his high school diploma, and going to college was an amazing thought in the abstract, but he didn't it was for him. He was smart - he'd heard that from a number of people, really - but he didn't apply himself in the usual student way. He learned oddly, and he was more of a self-teacher than anything. He didn't know why, but he wasn't like half of the other ordinary students that could sit in a classroom all day, look at a teacher, listen to them speak and watch them write things down on the board, take notes, and learn. He didn't know how they worked, really, didn't understand it enough to emulate it. So he did things his way, and he'd gotten amazingly good grades. He knew that college was more of an independent thing, but he didn't know if the CIA and college together would've gone along swimmingly. More like one would get abandoned in favor of the other. So it was more like a pipe dream, than anything. He then accepted that, and went the under-thinker route - relying on the things that his body told him, rather than doing everything with his mind. It had kept him alive so far, so he didn't think he was doing too badly.

"Well," he paused for a minute. "My girlfriend has exciting friends, so wherever we would've went would've been interesting. The beach could've been exiting, or we could've done something like walk around the city, go to the movies - oh, well that would be indoors. Hmm." He thought on it for a minute, and then shrugged. "I don't know, anything else seems more exciting than working." He nodded when she said that she wasn't looking for excitement. "To each, his or her own." He got that everyone wasn't the same, and her acceptance in working on a day like today didn't come as a surprise to him. When working in the CIA, he had met all sorts of people. Quiet people, loud people, unnaturally smart people, unnaturally stupid people, and everything in between. Now, he just sort-of accepted their quirks, and rolled with the punches. He wasn't exactly quirk-less himself, and so he didn't think he really had any room to be judging anyone else. Besides, he wasn't the type.

When she went into an explanation of what she'd meant, he was quick to soothe her. "Dinah, it's perfectly fine. I understood what you meant. I'm used to shots at my intelligence however, what with the blonde stereotype that the world likes to believe in," he said easily. "At some point, it started to become a joke I made myself. Now, I think I make them more than others. It's nothing to do with you." He said calmly. "But for the record, I don't ask anything to be polite. If I asked, I really do want to know." He winked, and took a bite of his lunch. He shrugged slightly. "Routine training, brushing up for field agents. They're trying to make sure that we're fit enough not to get killed in the field, something to that effect." He said. "Fitness tests, new drills they want us to do, that sort of thing. It's all mindless grunt work." He was sick of the CIA and their useless drills. He was sure how he worked out, and what he did, were perfectly fine for him. He was still alive, right? That had to mean something. "Simple, yet time consuming. And also, muscle ache inducing." He knew he'd be sore when he got home tonight, but at least they let them break for lunch. He was thankful for small mercies.

T A G G E D ? ! dinah!
W O R D C O U N T ? ! seven twenty eight
M U S E ? ! i don't know really
N O T E S ? ! is it me or does nate get more and more awkward every time he opens his mouth
C R E D I T ? ! graphic credit goes to v-va-vanessa of caution two point oh. lyric credit goes to timeflies with the song turn it up.

[DINAH EVELYN DONALD]

The last thing Dinah wanted to rely on were her instincts, since they were haphazard and frequently wrong. It was one of the reasons she over-thought everything, since analysis and logic were necessary just to figure out what she should do from one moment to the next. That was what had first drawn her to working with computers as a kid. There was something so comforting about an if-then-else statement. Right there, in black and white (or, really, any colour of font), she could see it all laid out: what would follow if something either happened or didn't. There was no real ambiguity, unless you counted the ghost in the machine. But life was all ghosts and no certainty. She wished she could draw up a statement for each condition she encountered in a day, and lay out exactly what would happen if she went down one path or another. Some might find that boring, but that was really all she wanted from life.

She listened as he explained his own desire for excitement, trying to understand why anyone would want things to be less certain in their lives. It didn't make sense to her, but then, these things seldom did. "If you're looking for excitement, then I can see how it would help to be with more exciting people," she concurred, looking at it logically once again. "Movies can be exciting, even indoors. And there's much less risk of sunburn or... sand in unpleasant places," she pointed out, before smiling a little: "Although I think many people would say working for the CIA is exciting." She wasn't trying to get him to look on the bright side, but rather just wanted to point out that irony.

Her eyebrows went up and she sat back slightly in her seat as she listened to him explain what he'd meant after she'd just rambled on about what she'd meant. "Then I ruined the joke, didn't I," she realized with an equal mix of humour and self-deprecation. "Still, I don't think you should let people get away with making fun of your intelligence. Not that I'm telling you what to do," she was quick to clarify. "I just don't think it's right that they do that." Having been given a hard time for most of her life over her own weirdness, she really couldn't see the humour that came at another's expense.

But she left that aside, figuring in the end, it was his business whether or not he wanted to roll with the punches or fight back. Unless, of course, someone did it within her hearing, in which case she'd probably spaz all over their asses until they thoroughly regretted their mistake.

She grinned at his wink and nodded. "I'll make a mental note of that," she promised, when he clarified about never asking things just to be polite. Still, she didn't now jump into the details of what she'd been working on, not least of all because she'd become distracted by the rest of their conversation in the meantime. "And... yes, I can see how that would be, uh, less than exciting. The, um, routine... grunt stuff," she admitted. She loved life in the CIA, but even she had to grant that sounded less than glamourous. "But I'm sure it's important. I wouldn't want to see you get hurt when you're out there on a mission," she went on, quite sincerely.