The city centerpiece, Grant Park is a 319-acre home to some of Chicago's most iconic landmarks and attractions, including Museum Campus and the Art Institute of Chicago, sites of world-class galleries. Grant Park is also home to Maggie Daley Park, baseball diamonds, tennis courts, breathtaking gardens and various beloved Chicago festivals. Grant Park's centerpiece is the Clarence Buckingham Memorial Fountain, built in 1927 to provide a monumental focal point while protecting the park's breathtaking lakefront views.
Buckingham Fountain was modeled after one of the extravagant fountains at Versailles, is twice the size, making it one of the largest fountains in the world. The waters flow from May through October, including a stunning light and water display each hour complete with music and a center jet that shoots up 150 feet in the air.
Maggie Daley Park is a children's paradise full of fanciful play spaces like an enchanted forest and a full-size ship. It also features active play zones for rock climbing, mini golf, tennis, and skating of all kinds, based on the season.
Sphere: Neutral Zone
It's evening and the park is still pumping with life and activities, especially because it's summer. Families with their kids playing around, couples dating in the grass and elderly grouped together for a gossip and what not. Very few are really on their own and just a dozen are looking miserable about it. One of them is standing close to a tree, with a tight gray sweatpant, running shoes and a half wet simple monochromatic t-shirt.
The man is on his 40's or more, looks tired and catching his breath back after a jog.
You gotta get your workout in when you can and how you can. At least the park is well lit and bright, which makes it a nice location for an evening jog, and the pale don't need to worry about sunscreen. Wolfe is moving a long at a leisurely pace, sneakers pounding the pavement, the rest of his attire is as would be expected, a pair of black mesh shorts and a grey tank already slightly drenched, his red hair is slicked back, and a water bottle bobs at his side. He slows enough to unclip the bottle and drains the last few drops. With a grumble of annoyance he makes a detour towards one of the water fountains, this one nearby where Ben is catching his breath. A polite nod and smile is given as he starts to refill his bottle, not after he at least takes a testing sip of the water first.
Ben turns around as someone else gets close by and offers a smile back to the red-haired stranger. "Good night to a jog, hm?" He says loud enough so the other man can hear him clearly. "Come here often?"
With a full waterbottle, Wolfe takes a good chug, not caring if a little spills over his chin. It just helps cool him off. "Still a little warm for my tastes, can't wait for fall." He answers after lowering his bottle, though not capping it quite yet. Maybe a slight smile curls on his lips at the second question, a slight arching of one eyebrow. "Occasionally, when I need a change of pace from the campus. Doesn't hurt to see some new sights." He shifts from leg to leg, moving them so they don't cramp up from the sudden switch from jogging to standing.
Ben grins upon seeing the other man dropping some water over his chin and quickly lifts a hand to gently dry it if he's allowed. "New sights, hm?" He asks looking around. "This is my first time joggling here. What sights would you recommend me to look at?" That last part said while Ben's eyes are focused on the red-haired's.
There's a moment where Wolfe seems a little surprised at the other's man's action, then a little amused. That ever so slight upturning of the corners of his mouth back in action. "I have a drinking problem." He jokes with a wiggle of his water bottle.
"As for sights." He turns a little in place, nodding off to the east. "Running along the lake is always nice. Fountain's not bad, but it gets crowded. Down by the museum and the aquarium are pretty good too." He shrugs as he looks back to Ben. "I just let my feet carry me, though I avoid the kid sections of the park." He says with a small chuckle.
It's been a shift, getting used to the movement of people, their clustering in groups, relatively unafraid of what might await them beyond the comfort of their social bubble. To Andreia, they're not scared enough; and they cluster too much, like rabbits in twilight but... stupider. As /she/ jogs, she's wearing an expression of annoyance that's deeper-wrought than Wolfe's, is based on a surfeit of available nourishment - and not the forbidding absence of it. A hungry woman surrounded by food, she pounds the tarmac with a powerful, aggressive rhythm, until she's struck by the same irritatingly basic need.
Drips fall from the man nearby, and her senses prickle. Water! Perhaps that will cool the flame of summer. Her thudding steps slide to near-silence as she closes in on the men gathered beside the fountain, casting them a cursory glare as she pushes past, her loose black sweats shifting like a ninja's garb - her jutting shoulder, slamming carelessly into Wolfe's flank as as he finishes up his reply to Ben, more elephantine. Not clumsy. She's just big, and she has somewhere to be.
"'scuse me," she mutters, in after-thought, bending to drink thirstily, her tongue slurping, water sloshing over the edges of the fountain. Not graceless, just... animal.
"Drinking problem? I'm a doctor. I fix people's problems. Let me know if you need a hand with that." He says and grins of his own unintentional joke. "I mean, another hand." Then he flushes just a tiny bit but that doesn't last long because a woman comes close and, upon looking at her, Ben swallows nervously and instinctively takes a pace away from her. "Sorry for being in the way, ma'am". He offers to her and gently pulls Wolfie a bit far away from the water fountain and, most importantly, from the woman. To the red-haired, the doctor just grins again, but is obviously shaken by the presence of a random, normal looking woman (right?).
"Doctor, huh? That's half the reason for my drinking pro.." Wolfe cuts off as the woman barrels into him. There's a flat stare and an even flatter. "You're excused." He does let Ben pull him away, though he's still giving Andreia that flat-eyed green stare of annoyance for a few more moments. "Oh well." He finally mutters under his breath, not like he got knocked over or anything. Though Ben gets a bit of an arched eyebrow at the sudden deference to the stranger, or possible stranger. "Know her?"
Her actions cast her as feckless, but Andreia is far from ignorant, her mortal ears invisibly prickling as she catches the discourse from beside her. Dark eyes flash askance, and she pauses in her thirsty lapping to wipe a rough hand across the back of her mouth, straightening up halfway from the fountain, her other arm resting upon it none-too-lightly. There's the distinct impression that she's heavier than she looks, that she could put her hand through the metal if she wanted to. To Wolfe, and his annoyed glance, that impression dies as soon as she pulls her arm back to tousle her black, tangled locks.
"What a gentleman," she comments, as callously, sarcastically blunt as he is flat. There's just the ghost of a smirk, flicking up one side of her mouth, before her eyes wander to Ben and her nostrils /flare/. Wolfe's question hangs in the air, as she folds her arms loosely beneath her breasts, hands hanging loose against her hips. "No, he doesn't."
Her brow arches, challenging, and to Ben, she's baring her teeth.
"Andi. That's how we do this, right? I tell you my name, and we all get along nicely."
Ben couldn't even think about answering and Andi was already giving them it. He grins a little bit nervously to the two and takes a whole second of consideration before offering a hand to the woman. But not before cleaning his forehead of sweat. "Yeah. Hi. I'm Benedict Pearson. Nice meeting you, ma'am. And this is..." He then looks at Wolfe as he too needs a proper name.
Wolfe meets that stare, and while he may not radiate menace, set like he is there's just a certain implacability. Like if a hand were to be shoved through his chest he'd just be irritated by it and move on. Instead of frightened or worried, there's just a vague air of.. apathy. "Do we?" He asks, a little bit of dry humor entering his tone.
After a moment he lets out a sigh and just sort of relaxes. "Sheridan Wolfe, though most just go with Wolfe." It's directed a little more towards Ben and Andreia, but he's not so rude as to shut her out when she might be making an effort. He lifts his water bottle for another sip.
"That's what they tell me," comes the quick reply to Wolfe's counter, relatively smooth and free from the swaggering air she otherwise exudes. Her own sense of humor shining through the black, brash countenance. For all the stomping and shoving, her every fiber is relaxed, the beading of sweat on her brow and bared forearms the only sign that she was all but sprinting a few moments ago. Those dark eyes flicker back onto Ben, as if they'd never left, and then down to his hand.
She considers it a moment, then bends lithely forward and sniffs at his extended digits, fresh from cleaning his own perspiration. A scowl slides across her mouth, and then with the rapidity of an apex predator she darts forward, licking a smear of salty sweat from his fingers. She straightens with a toss of her head, smacking her lips, and smiling.
She's pretty enough, in her way, but it's not a nice smile.
"'Benedict'," she echoes, "Posh." That stare flicks to the other man, and his name derives a hard snort of amusement on which she most certainly does not elaborate. "So we're what, fixing problems? Does everyone get a turn?"
Ben watches as the woman sniffs and them licks his hand. His mind can't decide on what emotion to settle, neither on what reaction to take. Run, Hide, Laugh. A very long second goes and then he makes his move. He turns to look at Wolfe and blinks, looking for some clue on what to do with that. "Wolfe said he...has problems with...drinking, right?"
Wolfe just kind of stares as the hand licking occurs, and then takes a sip of water. His expression is unamused but there's also a certain level of unsurprised by the whole thing that probably comes off as odd in its own right. "It was a joke from an 80s movie. Once of the characters had a 'drinking problem'. He just kept spilling it on himself. Good movie. Airplane."
"As for me, I'm off shift. So unless it's an emergency I'm not fixing anyone's problems right now. Unless I find it interesting enough." He smiles just a little, but when he meets Ben's eyes he just sort of shrugs in a, 'What are you going to do?' manner.
Andreia watches the reaction with a peripheral curiosity, the smile slowly sliding as if she simply grows bored of maintaining it, until she's staring at Ben with a distant half-life of the smile that was. A slow blink of dark eyes shifts them from man to man, brow flicking back into an arch at the discourse between them. She shifts slightly, her hips twitching to-and-fro with an air of impatience that may just be unreleased energy, and then she mutters,
"You two are bad at flirting."
Ben was about to give a proper answer to Wolfe when Andi drops another bomb and the older man just gets his cheeks slightly pinky. He cleans his throat noisily and then grins. Or tries to."So. Andi. Never seen you before around. Are you a newcomer to our community?" He asks. The question carrying some nuances that are hard to understand.
"Are we?" Wolfe asks with feigned surprise. "And here I thought it was going well until there was an audience. I guess I do need to get out more, then again I do my best work under pressure so maybe I'm just rusty." Oh there's a full smile from Wolfe when Ben gets a little flustered, just for a moment where he's even showing teeth and then it's gone again in a flash. He catches the nuance, if not the meaning of the question posed to Andreia, making one red brow arch slightly.
Too easy. There's a mirthful flicker in near-black eyes as Ben gets all hot around the collar, Andreia's posture shifting again as she sinuously arches her back and looks up at the sky, gaze lingering on the horizon for a moment. "You're better than he is," she murmurs aside to Wolfe, ping-ponging her gaze from him back to the older doctor as she stops stretching with an easing shuffle of her shoulders. She really isn't good at standing completely still.
"Yes." The delayed answer is spoken carefully, heavily, with weight on the words that's distinctly proper given the undertone of the query. "A few months. It's hard to keep track out here, in all the heat." She twitches her head toward the setting sun, rolls her eyes in a way that's far, far more than simply 'long'-suffering. "Settling in fine. Doing my best to..." Her own throat clears with a guttural rumble that's at once quiet and a little louder than it should be, from a Human Woman (tm). "Help out. Lot of people aren't fine, are they? Lot of them need a helping hand or four."
She shifts her stare to each of the mens' hands, in rapid turn. Flick, flick, flick, flick.
"Should leave you two to it. See if you can do anything about that."
Ben tries his best to ignore the messages Andi is passing in plain sight. About the flirting, of course. Nothing else to worry about, after all. Then he decides to ignore it and retrieves a pair of greeting cards that are offered to the two other in the small gathering. "It's my professional number. In case you need it. I mean, I'm a doctor and all." The look he gives Wolfe, though, says the number is not just for emergency, though.
Wolfe takes the card scanning it before he tucks it into his pocket. "Well, if I need a doctor." He sounds genuinely amused for a moment though, his smile just barely restrained. He does examine Andreia once more, seemingly trying to fix the woman's appearance in his mind should he run across her again. "Commendable, trying to help people. There's a few community centers and shelters around the city always looking for a few extra hands, I'm sure many of them would be glad for some extra help."
Andi /stares/ at the card as it's presented, though moreso at the fingers wrapped around it. She starts to bend forward again, those eyes gleaming animal mischief anew until she simply snatches the card and brings it up to her eyeline, squinting as she reads. Her mouth moves faintly, like a child who's only recently learned to sound out the words, and then she slides the card under her zip-up hoodie, into the hem of the sports bra peeking out from beneath.
"Yeah, you never know," she acknowledges with a loose shrug, "Maybe I can send some business your way." There's a threatening resonance to that, a flaring of her latent aura that's all heat and fury, her mask announcing it only as a shudder that might be blamed on a lick of perspiration running down her spine. Runners know. It's normal.
Her eyes slide onto Wolfe, and narrow, a thoughtful crease to her brow quickly overriding the aggression of this gesture.
"Don't know that they'd want me, but I'll look into it. At least got money I don't need. They like money, right?"
Ben nods to Andi's words. "Everyone should have the same rights regarding medical care no matter what the politicians and the healthcare plans say about it." He states pretty serious before turning his eyes to Wolfe. "Are you into charity too?" The question comes with a smiles.
"You'd be surprised." Wolfe replies to Andreia. "They can always find something for someone to do, even if it's just stirring a pot of mashed potatoes and throwing bread in a toaster. Help freely given is rarely turned away." He folds his arms over his chest and lifts his shoulders in a shrug. "Money of course, too."
There's a nod from him towards Ben. "When my schedule allows. Hopefully in a few months that will ease up a little and then I can help a little more freely."
Andreia's face wrinkles up in something just shy of disgust as Ben waxes lyrical about the rights of man, though the nuance of emotion in her strong features is... complicated. Pained. And somewhere, there's a thread of empathy and the suggestion that she agrees, but can't bring herself to actually express it. "Yeah, maybe," she mutters, with a cavalier twitch of her neck and head, as if throwing out whatever thoughts the doctor has summoned.
To Wolfe, there's a few, relaxed nods, that fall into a bobbing rhythm. "Stick to money, for now. Don't like potatoes. Or--" Bread. He gets it. She doesn't need to say it, and if she needs to explain it she's not going to. "Look after yourselves, and other people, and..." She waves a hand, and starts to step away, "Stuff."
It's an odd way of saying goodbye, and then she's gone, pace quickening from a jog to a sprint as her brain nopes out of all this being sociable and nice and normal. Her footfalls retreat thunderously into the calm of evening.
"That's...nice." Ben says with pure surprise. "I do some charity myself. Or used to. Work is getting me hard these past few weeks and I barely have time for myself." He says. Then he turns to Andi and ties to offer the woman a sincere smile. No nervousness this time, mostly. "Have a good night. See you soon...I hope." He says and then turns back to Wolfe. "She's...intense." He comments.
Wolfe watches the woman depart, his arms still across his chest. "I've met worse." And he sounds sincere in that statement, too. "I'm used to prickly tempers, and I wouldn't get far in my field if I got easily flustered." He does reach into his pocket though and pulls out his own card to hand over to Ben with a smile. "I'm a little more cautious in giving mine out lately."
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