Apprenticeship

Raine smiled softly as she looked down at the necklace between her fingers. She had lost her old one in an accident, and Leo had seen how heartbroken she had been over it. Three weeks later, he had shown up during her lunch shift, covered in sweat and ash, a crushed up paper towel in his hand that he pushed into her hands with the biggest grin on his face she had ever seen him give. Inside was an exact duplicate of her necklace that Leo had forged for her. She had kissed him right then and there, completely disregarding the mess that he was, or the fact that she was still at work. It had taken ten minutes to clean up afterwards, and the customers and her co-workers had teased her about it for the rest of the day, leaving her face beet red until the end of her shift.

She had gone straight to the smithery afterwards to wait for Leo to get off work, a large nalgene full of ice water tucked into her bag for him. He smiled when he saw her, but she handed over the water before he could say a word, and he gratefully drank heavily from it.

"So I take it you like it, then?" he asked teasingly. Raine looked up at him and smiled. They were walking together now, and she was letting him lead her, and and she had gotten distracted thinking about the effort Leo had gone through for her. She had let him examine her old necklace before she had lost it, and he had faithfully recreated it to precise measurements. He had told her that that was why it had taken so long - he wanted to get it just right.

"I love it," she said happily.

Leo chuckled. "Yeah, it sure seemed that way, the way you kissed me."

Raine blushed and shoved on Leo's arm fruitlessly, but couldn't hide the shy smile on her face. It had felt good kissing him, even if she didn't want to admit it. She wondered if her had felt the same.

They walked in comfortable silence for some time longer before Raine spoke up again. "I know you told me why you got into blacksmithing," she said, "but you never really told me how."

Leo hummed to himself as he sometimes did before speaking. Raine had learned that that meant he was choosing his words. "Funny story, that one," he finally said. "My dad took me to a Renaissance Faire. It wasn't the first one we had been to - we both had full outfits at that point - but it was the first time we both kind of had ideas of what we wanted to do, and they didn't really match up. So we agreed to go our separate ways. I must have watched the blacksmith there working for a couple hours straight. Eventually he asked me if I wanted to feel what it was like to swing the hammer. I accepted, of course. Then after a while it was to feel the heat of the forge. By the time my dad came to find me so we could leave, I was working on my first piece. I kept in touch with that smith. And when I started looking for work, he hired me."

Raine giggled and smiled brightly. "I'd like to see that outfit of yours one of these days."

Leo smiled. "Why don't you come on up and I'll show you."

Raine's eyes widened as she very abruptly realized they were standing in front of the door to an apartment building. He had lead her back to his home. She tried to stutter out a response, but the words weren't coming to her.

Leo chuckled and hummed as he turned away and went inside, leaving the door open behind him for her to follow. She hesitated until he was almost out of sight up the stairs before she rushed in after him.