Along Came a Spider ...

[twelve_not_fourteen]

Were Han another kind of man, he might be concerned that "the plaza" is not all that specific of a meet up point. The thing is, he has all types of rendezvous with people where he comes from that are planned only in light details. Sometimes on even less than what he and Nat agreed upon yesterday. At least he got a time in this case.

One of the few instances where the Captain puts faith in something beyond himself ... when two people are meant to find each other, they do. And when they aren't meant to, they won't. A lot of bitter pills of all kinds were swallowed in learning that particular lesson, but it's one he knows to be true.

She said she would be there. With the strange qualifier that she might be busy needing to 'save the world'. Something he didn't really know how to interpret truth be told - a joke maybe? Hard to tell when nearly all the things she says comes in that difficult to discern tone. Even then, she said she would find him later.

That makes him generally more optimistic that he'll see her here, then not.

Han is trying to look casual, while leaning on the outside of one of the shops in the plaza. His eyes weaving though the crowd looking for that person he found drifting in and out of his thoughts ... like wisps of smoke since he met her.

Comments

[twelve_not_fourteen]

"Not that time, no." He admits. Perhaps he earned her tsk, but he trusted himself to go in there and play his ass off. He was pleased with the end result. There were times he did go in to games with the intention to cheat and the end result didn't turn out nearly as well.

Han, with food now in front of him, reaches immediately for bacon and takes a few bites. After chewing, he will do his best to explain sabacc.

"What makes the game so difficult to learn and master is the fact that the values of the cards change while you're playing. You're trying to get to a score of 23, positive or negative. If you go over, it's a loss. The unbeatable hand is called the idiot's array."

Han takes another slug from his coffee cup.

"72 cards in a deck. 4 suits. One to eleven with four cards of rank. Then there are 16 cards mixed in that don't belong to any suit."

Is she getting all of this?

"Two pots, a hand pot which is where most of the betting and exchanging of chips happens for each hand, but there's also a game pot, which you can only win with the positive 23 or the idiot's array."

[red_room]

It sounds like a more complicated marriage of Black Jack and Baccarat. Natasha's interest is piqued, gaze narrowing as she follows along with the explanation.

"How do the values change while the cards are in play? Is a card positive and negative at the same time?" Natasha spears a few pieces of her fruit cup and eats them carefully off of her fork while she listens.

Food is secondary to the card game being described.

[twelve_not_fourteen]

Han pokes at one of eggs with his fork so that the yolk starts to run all over those potatoes - his favorite part of earth chicken eggs. That yolk makes everything delicious.

"So, in a galaxy as big as mine, no territory plays their sabacc exactly the same way." Not that he knows earth well enough to make the comparison himself, but it's like the different variations of poker.

"A lot of the time, when the cards change, as well as how many you can place in the neutral field - which is the zone where the values of the cards don't change - depends upon what version of the game you're playing. Sometimes there's a shifting phase between calling and drawing. Sometimes you have no idea when it's coming."

Han takes a few more bites of his breakfast, noticing he's a little bit hungrier than he thought and goes on to add, "Many of those negative cards are in the mix with the unsuited ones."

[red_room]

This makes sense to Natasha. She nods along, scooping up some of her scrambled eggs onto her toast and taking a bite out of it. Regional rule differences makes a lot of sense, especially if one's taking an entire galaxy into account.

A galaxy.

A whole galaxy. Crazy.

"So cheating at a game like this means being able to know when the switch comes or forcing it at your whim." She'd assume. She has no idea how that would be accomplished. Other than the typical sleight of hand and swapping.

[twelve_not_fourteen]

"Do you want to learn my game and how to cheat at it?" He says with a sly smile. "I'll teach you sometime."

He hasn't really thought of the greater implications of the fact that she seems most alive around him, so far, when she was thinking about the ways to manipulate. He's kind of wired that way too though. He ought not to hold that against her.

Right now, he's just thinking of excuses to keep her close.

"Basic slight of hand. There's a device called a cheater that can be used to change things around in moments that are beneficial for you. Skifters are rigged cards that are inserted into the deck. And people with false eyes can have them rigged to see other people's cards."

Those are the basics of how people usually cheat at sabacc.

[red_room]

"I want to learn your game. And how to cheat at it." Natasha takes another bite of her food, eyes shining with delight at the prospect of learning a new game. "If not for myself then for how to avoid being the victim of it."

Just as important to her, being able to stop other people from pulling a fast one on her. Arguably more important, even. Being the sneakiest and best is important to her. Or at least faking it if she's not. She can't magically disappear and reappear like Loki does, and she doesn't have robot eyes. Girl's gotta work with what she's got.

"And if you're good?" She knows basics when she hears them.

[twelve_not_fourteen]

"How to not be the victim only matters if you're going to make a habit out of playing the game." Unless. Wait. Are they still talking about cards? He thought they were talking about sabacc, but now he's got this feeling like he's no longer sure.

Anyway, he's glad she's willing to take him up on the offer at least.

That overview he gave at the cheating, brief as it was, really covered most of it. Now he has to think, as he's picking at his breakfast to come up with more for her, lest he let her down. If so far the most impressive he's been is at talking cards, damn if he isn't going to try work that angle as hard as he can.

"If there's no professional dealer or droid to do the dealing, you can employ an overhand shuffle to watch the cards and float the ones you want in strategic places in the deck or reverse the order, but that only helps so much when the values of the cards change mid-game. Same goes for trying to mark the deck."

But ...

"When you can put two people at the table and they're two people who know each other well, you can signal things to each other as well as work multiple strategies at once."

[red_room]

Standard operating procedures then. Natasha nods, seemingly satisfied with that answer. There's a lull in conversation as she turns her attention to her food but it isn't a particularly heavy one. Her face is less intense than it usually is, almost thoughtful.

"It sounds like a lot of fun, with the right group of people." Natasha doesn't care quite so much about money--she doesn't have to-- so fleecing strangers isn't interesting to her. But being able to beat someone supposedly good at the game, especially if she can use it to leverage for information, could be all kinds of fun and useful.

Says the woman who lets herself get beat up to interrogate someone else. That was all kinds of fun.

Fun. Romanov, your sense of fun is quite different from other peoples'. She can't quite bring herself to care, either.

"Also sounds like something I'd be pretty good at with some practice." Says the world's best spy to the galaxy's best thief. "Imagine how much fun you'll have once I teach you about modern tech." Did she just wink at him? Yes, yes she did.

[twelve_not_fourteen]

The potential, after she learns how to play his game, for a game of truth stakes would be very interesting. Although, with out a polygraph or a droid specializing in lie detection, there's nothing that would keep them from lying to each other, but their own sense of integrity.

Strip stakes would be fun too. He wouldn't say no to that.

"It is fun." He murmurs and he's of the opinion, right or wrong, that when you master a game as complicated as sabacc you can play just about any card game in the multiverse. It's the metagaming - the bluffing and manipulating of the other players - that Han is really going to start to get good at over the next few years.

It's old Han Solo habit to let a wink bring out the more confident and cocky side of him, but he was warned to play it cool with Nat. When emotion touches her eyes he finds that she looks ... it not just good looking, she's always that, but maybe pretty. He's not sure how to describe it.

He holds that observation to himself for now, but he does let the smile spread across his lips. "I'll imagine for now, but look forward to the experience much more."

Oh. There's breakfast isn't there? He supposes he should take a break from talking and eat for a while.

[red_room]

Somewhere along the conversation while Han hasn't noticed, Natasha has managed to eat almsot all of her food. When you operate on a 'may have to get up at any moment', you learn to be really quick about personal needs like eating, sleeping, and hygiene.

"Better get done then. I'm going to go settle the check." Natasha slides out of her seat, leather slipping on leather booth seat, before she heads over to the counter where Nana is. They share a few words and the older woman gives a full bellied laugh before shaking her head. Han gets a very prying curious motherly glance or three while Natasha is walking back to the table.

The proprieties really does take in all of her customers and treat them like family, for better or for worse.

"She wants to know if you do deliveries." Natasha says when she sits back down. "So she can stop sending her husband off to the markets to get their supplies every day."

[twelve_not_fourteen]

Han's life can be like that sometimes, but not to the degree Nat's is. More of a stop and resume later sort of life then an 'oh shit, my whole day has just turned upside down' scenario.

He has an idea that her life make 180 degree turns on her, at any rate.

The Captain catches up on his eating. Which makes him miss the eyeful of the ladies who may or may not have been talking about him. He knows that if he doesn't put down most of that food, one if not both of them are going to be on him about it. It's about 80% finished and he's pounding the rest of his coffee when Nat gets back to the table.

"You're serious?" He murmurs, mulling it over. It sounds like relatively easy, if boring work. Right now his only source of income is playing cards which - even when you're as good as Han is - isn't exactly a reliable source.

"You didn't have to pick up the check, you know."

[red_room]

"I think she just wants you to do it because you're cute." Natasha replies, finishing off her coffee. "Hardly glamorous work, but it's a paycheck. I'll probably tell the kid I'm living with, if you're not interested."

Who would probably tell the psycho kid. Ugh. Nevermind. She really wishes Chris didn't like that kid. It would be so easy to get rid of him before he's trouble. And he is Trouble if Natasha has ever seen it. That guy's gonna go nuts hard one of these days. And someone's going to get hurt.

"Mm? The bill? It was my idea. As is the phone. Besides, now you owe me." Turn, sway of the hips, and out the door.

[twelve_not_fourteen]

He might be surprised if that was the first time that he got offered a job because someone didn't mind looking at him. This might be about six or seventh time that's happened. Han is okay with the fact that people generally think he's good looking. He's convinced it makes most things in life a little easier.

"I might take her up on that." He might not. The devil is the details when it comes to these things, Captain Solo has learned. He'll make a point to Nana later. Maybe she'll take pity upon him and feed him too.

Not that there's a lot of time to do that right now, though, with Nat ready to go. She seems to be aware that he doesn't mind the view from behind. Her waggling hips seem proof enough of that. He takes his time to enjoy the sight of it before gradually catching up.

"So is this place where we're getting the phone far from here?"

[red_room]

Nobody minds the view from behind and Natasha knows it. She doesn't want to waste all of Han's day dicking around in a cafe or wandering the Nexus, so she's out the door without too much more waiting around.

She hears him speed to catch up and raises an eyebrow, turning to face him slightly while she walks.

"You can get about ten different kinds of phones at just as many kiosks every ten feet in the Nexus, it feels like. They're a popular item." Natasha gestures to a small stand seemingly run by literal trash quibbling and waving about cheap flip phones with crude hand made signs.

It's definitely a booing business in the Nexus.

"I'm gonna take you to the place I got mine, if it's still there." Always a problem in the Nexus. "At least that place had phones I recognized." And knew what was on them. Trusting strange tech without taking proper care is a risky business.

[twelve_not_fourteen]

Going too fast might make him think want you get rid of him, Nat. He's not gotten to that point yet, but he'll wonder if it seems like she's racing through everything.

'Is it wrong that he trusts her' is a thought that he suddenly has. I mean, it's just a phone and he might as well trust her because he's got hardly any clue about how to work one. It's just ... a little strange.

"That seems reasonable to me." He says with a nod. "Does it take long to learn how they work?"

[red_room]

There's a distinct difference between rushing and efficiency, but Natasha is very much to the point in nearly everything she does. Nearly. She toys around with conversation more often than not, never saying what she means or meaning what she says. Except when she does.

It's a tricky thing. They should offer graduate level classes on deciphering it. So far only one person really comes close to getting it. But he isn't here. God willing, he's at home with his kids.

"To learn the basics? Not long at all." She turns to look at him over her shoulder, smile small but consistent. She might just be having a good time, Han. "It takes a while to get used to all of the added functions."

[twelve_not_fourteen]

Well, he's trying to figure Nat out. Stars above, he's trying. She just happens to be deceptive and mysterious at a level he's never encountered before. He's met the type before, in his galaxy there are all kinds, but there's only one Black Widow ...

On the plus side, as he continues trying to read and interpret her, he gets better at doing it to everyone else.

In terms of his behavior, it's been easy to tell that Han has been enjoying himself in the brief time they've spent together. Even in trying to be laid back about it, as he was advised, his lips have been set into their own similarly consistent smile.

"So you save the day, get breakfast with and then teach a smuggler how to use a cell phone, then what? What does Nat have going from there?"

[red_room]

If she is his practice partner, he's going to get all kinds of good at doing it to everyone else. Natasha plays her cards close to her chest, and even when she doesn't, you have to wonder if that's done calculated and on purpose too (the answer is yes).

The fact that he's been enjoying himself around her even after seeing her with her 'work' face on, rather than backing away or getting uncomfortable, has Natasha cautiously pleased. He still doesn't know her--not that she expects him to. But he's either very foolish or very brave, and Natasha hasn't quite figured out which it is yet.

She's not sure it has to be either or. Clint was always both, after all. And catching herself comparing Han to the legendary sharpshooter Hawkeye makes Natasha smile privately to herself, her chin tucked downward briefly to hide it from view.

It's definitely a point in his favor, whether he knows it or not.

"Oh, the usual. Check my algorithms to see if I've breached the database I'm cracking, clean my weapons, strip down a bit and go training." She could be kidding or serious about any or all of those. Judging by the cheeky smile, at least the last one was said purely to get a reaction.

[twelve_not_fourteen]

Oh, don't you worry Natasha. That line doesn't get worked in there just to get ignored. He won't let you down in that respect.

"Yeah, the skin tight black number would have you way over-dressed for whatever training you might be doing." He might be teasing, but there's a touch of something in his eyes that's easy to tell what it means ... even though the look only hangs around for a second.

He finds the idea of her stripping, even if it's only the mental image, an appealing one.

"What time is usually good for getting a hold of you?" The kind of question that only someone without cell phone experience would ask. The convenience of text messaging and voicemail versus radio communication he doesn't quite get yet.

[red_room]

"It tends to intimidate training partners when I go with full weaponry attached to my person. Two guns, several knives, and her shock batons are visible. The rest of her arsenal is a bit trickier to spot, even with the skintight suit.

His question makes her smile more fond. Is the sort of question Rogers would ask, before he acclamated to living in the future. She misses those days sometimes. Things felt simpler then. Even though the world was still ending.

"Anytime. The devices record audio and text messages and store them for whenever the listener hastime to check them. So I may not answer right away, but I'll get the message. "

[twelve_not_fourteen]

Han gives her a once-over with his eyes. Again. It's just been kind of a continuing series of once-overs. Perhaps some of these eye gropes she didn't even catch because he is trying to be subtle about it. He can't help it.

The outfit is awfully distracting, okay?

"Intimate them more, you mean. Looking across from you in a sparring match is probably intense either way." She'd be in his head for sure.

Listening to her answer, he nods. It sounds like a pretty convenient device. He's gotta wonder how often he'll remember to check it or carry it around when he's not used to having one, but ... at least it sounds like he'll be able to get back to people later.

[red_room]

It's supposed to be. The psychological factor isn't lost on Natasha. She uses every angle to her advantage, including her body. Though she uses her body as much as a weapon as any other thing she carries. When you can suffocate someone with a thigh lock and throw them across a room among other moves, you can call your body a lethal weapon.

"It's supposed to be." Natasha agrees with Han's sentiment. Her smile turns a bit sharp, only backing up his observation more. It's difficult to tell if she's trying to scare him or flirt. Maybe both? Neither?

The shop isn't much to look at from the outside. There's a clean and neat sign out front and inside are rows of the devices lined up on shelves along the wall. There seems to be a huge range of them, in varying stages of tech and ability. The spy makes her way immediately over to a corner to compare her own device with one of the ones on display.

Han doesn't need one that's crazy smart right yet. Basic cellphone package/camera/data plan should be good for him for now. At least until he learns how to use the damn thing. Any extra features would only be dangerous and/or confuse the man.

If he hasn't followed her over, Natasha will wave him down to where she is. The demo phone is placed into his hand.

"What do you think? Will it fit in your pocket? Your hand? DO you need one that's water proof? Bullet proof? They make all kinds of things here. Though to be honest, this thing is simple enough that you probably don't have to bother. It would be cheaper just to replace it unless we're talking you destroying the damn thing every other day."

[twelve_not_fourteen]

The thing that he appreciates most about Nat is that she's like no other person he's met before. Sure, he's seen shades of her in others, but she's dialed up to eleven most of the time. He has to wonder if she's always like this or if, maybe when he gets to know her, he'll see another side of her.

At any rate, he's far too fascinated by her to let a Cheshire smile scare him off. His look back at her cool and confident, with perhaps a slight raise in his eyebrows when that smile looks it's most dangerous.

Dangerous with a cell phone? How much trouble do you think this man can ... yeah, she's probably right to think that way. More likely to be confused though.

"I don't imagine I'll need anything that stands up to your earth bullets." He's had the pleasure of seeing one of those firearms in action and he finds them a tad ... savage. This coming from the guy whose world has vibrating bladed weapons. "And I don't see much water most of the time."

What he notices is that the phones seem to predominantly be divided by if they have a lot of analog things to trigger or if they've got those fancy touch screens the way Chris' phone is. Unsurprisingly Han tends to gravitate towards the former. Just as well. Those phones tend to be easier to learn on. Right now he's eyeing a Blackberry Bold 9700.

[red_room]

Natasha's been around fighters her entire life. Her coworkers are no exception. Well. Except for one. The man who'd avoid fighting because he knew he'd win. He's the one who taught her that there are other kinds of strong, even if he'd ripped her heart out to do so.

It's because of Banner that Natasha is housing Chris. Is protecting him. And it's because of him that she doesn't write off Han Solo just because she doesn't see a fighter in him. Rather, that she doesn't and he doesn't seem to be afraid of her despite that makes her want to tease him all the more.

There isn't enough history between them for her to think much more about it than that as of yet. But she is thinking about it, whether Han realizes it or not.

"My earth bullets?" Natasha quirks the corner of her mouth up. "Honey, you haven't seen my Earth bullets. Nothing stands in their way." He doesn't mean it like that, and she knows it. "You want to hit up the shooting range when we're done here? Have a friendly competition?" She may not be Hawkeye but she's trained with him for years.

What she doesn't tease him about is his choice of phones. She could--lord knows she could think of a million snarky comments about it. But she remembers seeing the design of the Falcon and its interior. Knows how his tech looks. Why wouldn't he want a phone that is somewhat familiar to the way he thinks?

"That one's good too." She sets the smooth touchscreen phone down that she was holding and moves over to inspect it. "Gotta be careful with it. More buttons means more things that can break. Still, it seems pretty...you. I can still teach you how to use that."

[twelve_not_fourteen]

"I'll shoot with you anytime, sweetheart." Han is pretty accurate with his shot, but where he really excels is in his draw time. For a human that is a non-force user, he's awfully fast. "Hell, it sounds like fun."

As for the phone choice, he likes to have things to push, okay? Have you seen how many triggers, levers and switches there are in his ship? And that's ignoring the way he pushes people. At least he didn't go for the Razar.

"They all seem alright as far as I can tell. I'm willing to put my cellular future in your hands though, Nat."