2007-09-22: Take Two

Starring:

Taine_icon.gif Cass_icon.gif

Summary:

Cass meets her neighbor. One heartthrob by the name of Taine Whitaker.

September 22nd, 2007:

Take Two


33 Prospect Park West

The door to an apartment opens, and out steps a handsome blond man, vaguely rugged in appearance. Taine's been allowing some facial hair to grow the last few weeks, due to changes in his character's role, but he's still recognizable— especially for someone who watches the show. Leaving this late from his apartment doesn't happen often. Certain changes in his character have required him to show up at the studio a few hours before this, but today he's got the day off. No scenes filmed with his character. Today, he'll actually get to wear a shirt the whole time. The shirt is a rarity on set, ever since he returned from his mysterious disappearance. The shirt of the moment has block letters that say in bold: TRUST ME. I'M A DOCTOR

A few seconds - maybe even moments - after Taine opens his door, Cass opens hers. Laptop stashed in a messenger bag, arms filled with files, she's making her way to Enlightenment Books in order to do some intense reordering and general business things. She hasn't really had the time to do this in the past week or so, so it's just been piling up. Making her way down the hallway, she catches sight of Taine leaving his apartment. As she approaches, she doesn't recognize him at first, what with the scruff and the actually wearing a shirt. However, as she gets close enough to offer a welcoming smile, it suddenly clicks. "Hi—" Oh my God! That's Doctor Pryce! And he's coming out of an apartment in her building! And wearing an ironic t-shirt! And wait, isn't she supposed to turn here? Distracted, she turns the wrong way and runs right into the wall at full speed with a dull thud. "/Ow/." Her files go tumbling to the ground. "Crap."

"Hello," Taine responds with a charming smile at the young woman walking down the hallway. Yes. That's Doctor Pryce. The accent is unmistakable, even with just one word used. But when she fails to turn and slams into the wall, and drops her files, he moves forward like any proper gentleman would do and bends down to start gathering some of them. "I'm assuming you recognize me?" he asks, still smiling as he stays knelt down to help gather. "Sorry for causing you to crash." Though he seems rather… amused by it somehow.

Cue extreme blushing and a scramble to pick up some of her files. "Umm…yes. I mean…no. Er, well. I just do this sometimes." Run into walls. Make a complete fool of herself. Holy moley. This is totally Doctor Pryce. Where is Nathan? They would totally be able to geek out over this together. "Thanks." That's for helping her pick up her files. "Sorry. I, uh, hi." Okay, pull it together, Cass! Rubbing her cheek a little where it got rammed into the wall, she tries to stack everything up neatly again. "Can we, uh, rewind this whole thing a couple of minutes? Do a…what's it called? Second take?"

"Well, there's second takes, sure— or we could just fix it in post," Taine says with a smile, helping with the stack before he straightens and sticks his hands into his pockets. He doesn't seem in any hurry to leave, by the looks of things. Has his keys and cellphone, but nothing else, really. Probably planning to just go for a walk, or something. "Taine Whitaker," he finally says, not offering her a hand, for fear she might go and spill the paperwork they just all picked up. "I've not had a chance to meet any of my neighbors— much less one that watches the show."

"Post?" The only post that Cass can think of are the posts that she runs into if she's not watching. Maybe the store owner was in a hurry to get somewhere before, but that was before she started to have a conversation with one of the stars of the soap opera she's a little addicted to. "Cass Aldric." She starts to stick out her hand for him to shake, but that leads to another almost topple of her stack of papers. Quickly swerving and balancing, she manages to divert disaster. "Ahem. Oh, well, I work odd hours," is her reply to why she both watches the show and hasn't seen him around the hallways. "So you live here?"

"Yeah— post production," Taine explains, grinning a little. He's learned a lot more about post production since the new plot started, mostly because they add in special effects (which are really cheesy) in post more often then not. "Been working pretty odd hours myself," he says, removing his hands from his pockets to take her hand very briefly once she has her papers stabalized. "Yes— lived here since I got the job," he even gestures toward his apartment. She doesn't look like a scary stalker, just a clumsy one. "It's nice to meet you, Miss Aldric." He does give a token glance towards her hand. Ring? How much is he allowed to flirt with this one?

"Ah." Right. Post production. Cass has heard something along those lines. Not that she's really all that savvy on how soap operas work. "More night hours, I guess?" she gives a bit of a wolfish grin at that - something she's picked up from Lachlan. "Or does it matter? I saw that one French film called Day for Night where they apparently try and make the daytime look like night. Crazy." Glancing over at the door where he exited, she smiles and can't believe it. "Wow. I can't believe we've lived this long almost next to each other and never seen each other!" Because Cass would certainly remember seeing Taine entering her building. "Nice to meet you, too. Sorry about the whole running into a wall thing. And dropping everything I own. I wish I could say I did that just because I ran into a handsome actor." Unfortunately, it's not the case. Ring? Well, there's no way Cass would actually cheat, but this is Doctor Pryce.

So many soap opera fans are housewives, who daydream about things like Australian doctors— mothers with babies— but then there's the occassional college student, or good looking bookstore owner. Luckily she's the latter group there. Moving a little closer, he holds out his arms, "We've been doing a lot of filming indoors, even if it doesn't look like we're indoors— so we can do night that way." They're a soap opera, low budget, even with the new show coming up, and the crazy storylines. "But I've had a lot of early mornings, too." Make up. All that. "It's nice to know it wasn't entirely my dashing good looks that were at fault," he teases with a smile, teeth showing, before he lets that drop. "Why don't I help you get that outside— to a car I hope? Or are you one of these city people who uses those cabs all the time." His bike couldn't carry all of this.

Not a housewife, nor a mother at home with the babies - not yet at least - Cass is one of those people who accidentally got hooked on the storyline. She'll blame being stuck in bed for a few weeks on it. "Ah. That would make sense. No windows is just as good as being night." The storylines have, admittedly, gotten a lot crazier since she started watching. "I guess it has something to do with containing those fierce werewolves?" Allowing Taine to take some of her files she smiles and shifts the remaining ones to her other arm. Less likely to slip and scatter everywhere. "Oh, well, they helped a little, that's for sure. I must say the scruff is good for you - for most guys, even. My fiancee was getting a little too hairy, but luckily he finally trimmed his beard. "Thanks. No, actually, the subway or my bike. It's a little too far to take a cab to and justify the expense."

There's a pause, as if Taine's trying to figure out what episodes have aired this week, before he nods in agreement, "Yeah, pesky werewolves— or wolf, technically." It always looks as if there's a billion of them, but he knows the truth. He's the one who has to have fur glued onto his skin for hours— and worse… they're starting to make him wear actual costumes now. BUT… those episodes haven't aired yet. They've changed their make up five or six times. With her belongings balanced on one arm, he scratches his chin for a moment, then glances down at them when she clarifies. Subway or bike. "I hope you have a basket on your bike, else this'll be a long trip for you." If she's as clumsy as she's implying— he can't help her all the way to her work! Well— he could have. Until she mentioned fiancee. That changes things. "I hope you keep watching the show— after Afterlife when it starts to air. We're actually going to start filming that in a couple weeks." As soon as they wrap up the storyline of One Life.

"Oh?" Pesky /wolf/. Interesting. Something to discuss with her soap opera buddy later. After she properly geeks out with him about living right near Taine. "Well, I'm going for just the subway today. Mostly the bike is for when I don't have this much stuff to deal with. Or if my errands are in Brooklyn." Otherwise, she has no idea how in the world she'd manage to take all this stuff with her. She'd most likely run up on the curb and break her leg or something. "Oh, well, I probably will. I get addicted to storylines. I always have to know how something ends, you know? Even if I'm pretty sure I know how it's going to go, I like to know for sure." Twist endings and the like. "I've got to say I'm curious about the new spin off."

"Mmm. You should have brought another bag for these, then," Taine says, noting her bag for the laptop already, but— he can help her at least out the door before he needs to give these back. There is that much. But if she weren't obviously engaged, he probably would have offered to go with her quite a bit further— alas. "I'm sure you're smart enough that you can figure out what's going on," he says, starting to move toward the exit. "But I can say that the scripts have been surprising me lately— especially for Afterlife. They just handed us the first script last night. I can say it's a definite change from daytime."

"I should have. But it's already kind of awkward with the laptop bag." So plus another bag for all these files, she's not sure how that would work. Happy to just have gotten some help so far, Cass takes the files back and at least makes it out the door. "Well, thank you, I like to think I am." Raising an eyebrow, she brushes some of her hair out of her face and smiles. She certainly has no idea he's helping her only to the door because she's engaged. If she were single she may have gotten help all the way to Manhattan. Alas. "I'll look forward to it. Thank you for the help. It was nice to meet you, Mr. Whitaker."

Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License