Speechless (Renee)

[Cee Cohen]

Cee did not get out much. He knew this for a fact. He knew less than half the staff members—no surprise, he really hadn’t been there that long and was still considered the new kid on the block—and his reclusive habits and odd tendencies meant that Cee, although an incredibly friendly person, knew very few people, and very few people knew Cee (except by reputation). Trainers in particular were foreign to Cee, as he was not powered, and the only trainer he knew had trained his siblings, and he never quite felt comfortable talking to him. Trainers and Cee lived in completely different circles, and he’d never really thought about their existence.

So it shouldn’t have really surprised him that he didn’t know the woman who entered the room. Actually, the fact that he was wearing his contacts alone could assure that—when Cee could really see what was going on around him, he didn’t recognize half the people he claimed as friends. It was a marvel he noticed her at all—he was reading one of his zombie manuals (the ones that aren’t really meant to be taken seriously) while mindlessly eating French fries. This normally absorbed so much of Cee’s attention that he rarely noticed the world around him until the bell rang, telling him to get to his class. However, in this case, Cee had just ran out of ketchup, and had gone to get it and another cup of decaf when she’d walked in. And therefore he could give her his full attention.

She was…beautiful. Not in the tanned kind of bathing suit beauty, but in a classy, old-fashioned way. And Cee only realized he was staring when the cup of coffee he was pouring spilled out of the cup, onto the counter and down onto his shoes.

And it was hot.

He managed to keep the squeak to himself and hastily put the pot down to lurch for the paper towels. Better not to try speaking to her. In fact, he was going to ignore her. He’d never been that good with talking to beautiful women even when he hadn’t been paranoid and obsessed with zombies.

[Deleted]

The particular cadence of her heels upon the tiled halls of Hammel was more than enough for one to recognize the approach of a one Ms. Renee Hendricks. It was always a fast paced rhythm, as if she were heading towards someplace important, never wavering, never slowing, until she arrived at her final destination, whether it be to the chairman's office, to the classroom, or in this case, to the staff lounge, a place to which Renee frequented periodically throughout the day for only a singular reason. A cup of tea.

Not for coffee. Not for soda. And certainly not for facilitating the use of this room for it's namesake.

And today was not any different. Renee slowed upon reading the sign labeled "staff lounge" and opened the door into this place which was sanctuary for many teachers and trainers. Her red heels ceased their clicking once she stepped upon the shallow carpet. One or two other head turned to inspect the woman in her white polka-dot sundress. Large and wide ringlets of auburn hung forward over her shoulders and down on her back between her shoulder-blades which bounced gently as Renee headed straight for the styrofoam cups and pulled a bag of chamomile from the drawer of tea-bags. Her eyes panned over the counter space to the pot of hot water that was usually "brewing" on the second coffee maker. Not the one that was typically used for coffee and which was currently being negotiated with by an over-excited gentleman.

Renee chuckled silently, femininely covering her ruby lips with a clasped hand as the unfortunate gentleman dribbled the brew onto his shoes. Without a thought, Renee tore off a few paper towels from a nearby roll and knelt down to help him. "I wonder where you're head is this morning. Dancing in the clouds, ?" She spoke with a twinge of amusement in her honey-sweet voice. She flicked her hazel eyes up at him with a tiny smile on her plump lips. "I hope you didn't burn yourself."

[Cee Cohen]

This was definitely not fair. Now, Cee hadn’t always been bad with women. He was an engineer, which meant that some of the stereotypes definitely held—he could be just a little clueless, and often liked a woman but was unable to approach her. However, Cee had also possessed a light-hearted, social nature that made it difficult for him not to talk, even when he knew she was so totally out of his league. This was one of those cases. And here she was kneeling next to him and talking to him. He had no idea what he was going to do.

Except maybe swallow and try not to squeak and make sure not to talk about zombies. Yup. Should be a piece of cake.

“Hi,” he said. He’d already failed the first thing not to do—the squeaking part was definitely what he was doing. He swallowed again and managed a weak smile. “Sorry. Ah, pouring things has never been the best thing for me. I, uh, don’t have the best vision. But, uh, I admit that I wasn’t focusing on what I was doing.”

Look, he’d actually gotten through a part of the conversation! With a pretty girl! What was he, five? He hadn’t always been good at this but he’d at least managed to make it through without stammering like a five-year-old confronted with his crush. He could and would handle this and he refused to think otherwise.

“And I didn’t burn myself,” he added. “Um, thank you for asking. And thank you for helping me…clean up. This is going badly. I’m Cornelius. Cee! I’m Cee! Um. So, what’s your name?”

[Deleted]

Oh, this is a cute one, Renee thought to herself batting her eyes up at the flustered, speechless man then back down at the spill. Kurt, is it considered cheating if I don't intend to take it anywhere? It's just teasing. It would probably be fine, there was no crime in letting others look so long and that's all there was. Renee leaned forward just a slight more. Her neckline was anything but low, so there wasn't much to see, but the subtle arch and movement caused more of her hair to fall and hang forward, swaying with the slight movements of the woman as she dabbed up the last remnants of coffee from the floor. "It happens to the best of us," Renee said with a coy smile. "You shouldn't beat yourself up over it."

She could have burst into giggles over how fumbly he was being, she kind of wanted to hear his voice go up like a teenage boy's again. But that would be too much. "You're welcome."

"Cornelius. "Well, that's a funny name,"" Renee teased with a line from the old cartoon movie, Thumbelina. With a giggle, she shook her head and slowly stood with damp towels in hand. "Dont' worry, Cee, I'm not making fun of you, I just loved that movie. I'm Renee." Casually she reached out and took the sodden towels from Cee and added them to her own collection before taking the few steps towards the trash bin. She stepped on the floor lever with the red point of her toe and placed them all in at once, leaning slightly forward again to make sure they did not fall out on their descent into rubbish. Raising herself up again, Renee classically brushed her hands together to indicate a job well done. "Well, that wasn't so bad, now was it?" She sent him another smile as she placed both hands on her hips.

[Cee Cohen]

This was not fair. Cee was a polite man. His mother had raised him to be a gentleman (when she could tear him away from a computer or car long enough to remind him that such a thing as girls existed) and not make the same mistakes her and his father had made. He was polite, he was friendly, and he never gaped at a woman.

Mind, it helped that most of the time he couldn’t see well enough to even know what part of the woman to look at.

But he could see now, and he stared a little too long at the line of her collarbone and the sway of her hair, and then he managed to jerk his head away. “Um. Thank you. Really, I do need to be careful, though. Had there been someone near me I could have seriously damaged someone.”

Later, he’d be grateful for the interference that stopped his voice from squeaking like a girl’s. It hadn’t cracked like that in a long time, and he wasn’t particularly thrilled about the fact.

“Cee, please, not Cornelius.” He was hasty to jump on that. Why in God’s name had he said Cornelius first. He hadn’t been called Cornelius since he was, what, four years old? And even then he’d known the name had fit him just as well as a name like “Pontificus” would fit his hamster (which had actually been named Pontificus. Cee couldn’t remember why). “What movie…?” Cee’s siblings had been too young to watch Thumbelina when it had first come out. “But it’s nice to meet you, Renee.” He watched her move, made a soft little sigh, without noticing it, then hastily climbed to his feet. “Ah.” He glanced down at his sneakers, which were stained brown with coffee, then offered her a sheepish smile. “Nope! Not too tragic, I think. Thank you for your assistance.”

[Deleted]

Renee really had to struggle to keep herself from bursting into an uncontrollable stream of giggles. It was as if this guy had never seen a woman before. Then again, maybe not one like Renee. The trainer looked at students and even adults nowadays and realized that there were so few women out there who didn't know how to catch a man's attention without taking their shirts off, wearing shirts and jeans far too small for their figure, booty-dancing on a stage, or, basically, throwing everything sex at the opposing gender like a bunch of bonobos.

"You're welcome. Though, I'm sure it would have been fine even then, too," she assured him with a smile. "After all, it's just a little water. Well, coffee, but that's still mostly water." A short giggle managed to leak out before she reeled it back in.

She was actually pleased that he didn't go by Cornelius, because that would have been just too much ammunition for her to poke and prod fun at him with. "Oh, it's alright. It's just a children's movie I watched as a kid." Renee had actually been a little too old for Thumbelina when it came out on VHS(she was 15), but the girl was such a sucker for musical cartoons, she didn't care. After having disposed of the towels, Renee only shook her head with an amused smile. "You're welcome!" The pitch in her voice raised up with that polite exclamation.

Without missing a beat the classic lady reclaimed her steeping cup of tea, holding it closely in both hands while she sent him one final smirk. "I gotta run." She still had some training meetings to get to, her trip to the lounge was only meant to last a few minutes. But it had been an enjoyable few minutes. "Take care, Cee." Renee walked away at a reasonable pace, putting just enough hop in her step to create a moderate sway in her skirt, giving the little boy somehthing nice to look at as she departed through the door of the staff lounge.

[Cee Cohen]

The answer was not that Cee had never seen a woman before. He saw a lot of them, usually on the other end of his counter—especially when he’d been working in IT. He’d seen pretty ones, gorgeous ones, normal ones, every kind of woman—including those who were willing to flirt with him to get their computers fixed for a bit cheaper or a bit quicker. There was a time when he’d been pretty immune to the whole thing. But as of late he hadn’t had much experience with women over eighteen, and, well, the experiences that he did have didn’t involve him wearing his glasses.

So basically, it had been a while.

“Hot water,” he said. “Don’t forget the hot part. And the brown.”

“Oh.” Cee blinked. “I see. And the leading male was named…Cornelius?” Maybe that was where his mother had—no, probably not. It wasn’t very encouraging. He was smiling at her again, he realized, rather dumbly, and he quickly cleared his throat and looked away.

He was still watching her as she stood up, and he hastily climbed to his feet as well and brushed imaginary lint from his pants and his shoulders. “Nice to meet you, Renee!” And she was definitely doing that on purpose. Even with relatively little experience with women these days, he could tell that much. But he couldn’t help a slightly wistful sigh and, as a fellow coworker offered him a sympathetic smile, he turned sheepish instead and headed out.

Without coffee.