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 Posted: Thu May 26, 2016 8:53 pm
He's quiet again--perhaps understandably, with so much to process. He fills his time and occupies his hands gently working water through what of her hair needs it, avoiding wetting her bandages as best as he can, his thumb swiping through the watery rust colored streaks forming against her neck. If it weren't for the bird, right there, he isn't sure he'd believe her, but it's hard to avoid it. The thought that comforts him, finally--and cold comfort it is--is that he's used to this, after all. To finding that he's no longer part of the world as it's lived by other people. It feels like there's a gulf between them, but then again there already had been: now this, but before the one between people like him and people who understood the intricacies of conducting a purchase or sleeping in a bed or being looked at or smelling human. And before that, a treacherous part of his brain suggests, between people like her and people who were ruled by their perpetual fear of everything and nothing and of their overriding need to hide that same fear, the only thing like self-discipline he's ever really known. It's not much of a step further, he tells himself. He almost believes it. He gently combs a tangle out with his fingers. It's ridiculous to think that she, who doesn't think that it's bad or scary, could ever need anyone to take care of her, and that's really the only thing he's ever wanted to be good at. "It's hard to know what to say," he says finally. He doesn't tell her that it's bad and scary to him. He probably doesn't need to. "It doesn't--what do you do now?" He makes an idle gesture at her bandages, the blood, his bathtub. "Just hope this is a one-off? What about all the--the... news, and s**t, is that a coincidence?"
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Posted: Thu May 26, 2016 9:04 pm
She just breathes for a while, immersing herself in the quiet, of this rare moment of someone taking care of her. It's been awhile...it's been nearly a year and in some ways longer even. Her silence lasts a bit longer after his question, and instead of some attempt at comforting reassurance, mentions something that hadn't left her all night. "There were two cops there with us, Taym. But they weren't...they couldn't take care of it themselves. And when the building opened up and more came in, it was...we had to get it taken care of, before they came in." She tries to find the words for it, this crack that is steadily dismantling the structure of the world she's grown up in, but she leaves it at that. "I'm gonna try to figure out this.... warg thing. I want to get good at it, in case I can make difference. In case someone in trouble needs what I can do."
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Posted: Fri May 27, 2016 6:15 am
Warg. From the Old Norse, from-- He contemplates what wolves have to do with anything, some long-forgotten fantasy novel tugging at the corner of his head, and lets it go. The rest of it, after all, makes perfect sense. His eyes flick up to the bird on the curtain rod, and he wonders what a bluejay could do to stop whatever it is that left her like this, but he doesn't say it. There's that gulf again, after a few scant seconds of it being closed up again by making a difference. If he knew her better he'd argue with her. He'd get scared, try to convince her to leave. Instead he tucks her now-damp hair behind her ear and leans back on his heels, withdrawing his hands back to the safety of his lap. "I bet you could be good at that," he says, with the absolute certainty that she could probably be good at everything she wanted to be.
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Posted: Fri May 27, 2016 9:06 pm
He helps with her hair and, as promised, is treated to her leering, Come wash my back, young man. Cleaning up is a matter of both careful attentiveness and determination. She hadn't thought there was that much blood and hadn't given mind at all to the rest of the dirt and grim collected from scuffles. The bruises have begun to bloom, but nothing so bad as the car accident at least. She doesn't talk more about what happened. But she does tell him a story, about when she was small and everything was real enough, even magic. Her Aunt Prudie had started scolding her, about missing pastries and sweets. About shiny trinkets disappearing with a frequency. Prudie hadn't known her so well then, it hadn't even been a year yet in her house, and the woman had held suspicions about the girl in heart right from the beginning. America, of course, was pressed to find the culprit. But they lived alone together, and the nearest neighbor was a good two miles away. Which meant, obviously, small folk. It's taken weeks of trying to find out their tiny tracks and she'd called Malby more than once for his seasoned advice. Junior was still fresh out of Academy, Malby and her had solemnly agreed that he probably wasn't gonna be good for much for a couple years. There was flour dusted along the floor, waiting to catch tiny prints and inevitably cleaned up once Prudie had noticed and scolded. America had tied pieces of string to cabinet doors and came back to find them tossed in the garbage. She set out milk and honey in a bowl. And was made to it because wasting food is a sin, America Theodorina Aldrina Georgia Jones. In the end, her gentle curiosity turning to weathered spite at all the injustices thrown her way, America had brought a mouse trap from the barn and placed it near a plate full of fresh baked cookies. Sure enough, later that night there was a terrible yowl. (Thankfully not Prudie's because dang, even years later America thinks back on that and her life just flashes before her eyes at the thought of Prudie getting her hand caught.) America had a tiny bug net right by her bed and she'd swept it up as she raced out of her room to catch the culprits. But this preparedness had not accounted for a large, adult-sized thief. She still tried to hit them with it, and when that failed, tackled them down. Only she was all of seven years old so instead of tackle, she just sorta clung on like a howling little barnacle as the intruder screamed and thrashed around the kitchen. Eventually the lights turned on and there was Prudie giving them both the most dire ********' look. It'd been her Uncle Sampson, of course, evicted by his girlfriend and too hangdog over it all to show his face. Sneakin' food to the little room above the barn and sneaking Prudie's jewelry to try and woo back his lady love. In borrowed clothes and bed that would've felt achingly lonely if not for Ivy, America shakes her head at the memory. "He started crying and trying to feelings talk and tell us all about her. Malby picked him up that night to take him to the hospital to see to that hand. Before he left, he slipped me a twenty, for catchin' the perp. He's never admitted it since, but I'm pretty sure he knew all along who it'd been." Curled up next to Ivy, she asks, "You sure about the chair? I'm not...I don't think it's catching or anything."
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Posted: Fri May 27, 2016 9:26 pm
Ivy is, at least, an attentive bedwarmer, despite her occasionally suspicious glares birdwards. The hesitation is just a beat too long before he answers. "I don't mind," he says, and then, with more forwardness than he's wont: "I've done a lot worse than a chair." And just like that, the ball is neatly placed back into her court. He'd been obliging for the story--almost laughed, once; complimented her investigative techniques and politely suppressing the kneejerk reaction he'd felt for the thought of Sampson stealing Prudie's jewelry so that not even a flicker was perceptible--and by the end of it his hands aren't shaking quite so violently: just the normal vague tremor. He thinks later he'll tell her about how when he was a toddler he'd been caught leaving food outside a mouse hole "for the little kittens," but he doesn't right now. Instead he goes to finally smoke a long-overdue cigarette in the cracked-open doorway, one eye on the bird as if he's afraid it might suddenly revert to banality and bolt. "You're so good," he adds wistfully, "at telling stories." He can't remember whether he'd said it before or just thought it and held it back, so he says it now.
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Posted: Fri May 27, 2016 9:38 pm
This is where she blushes, hearing the sort of compliment she almost never gets or expects. The sort of thing that makes her go really? in her head and warmly awkward everywhere else. Burying her face into the pillow she answers, "I'm...well okay. I mean, yeah...'course. I guess." She doesn't know how to take it, but laying face down on the bed, there's a restless a** wiggle that suggests she'd get up and do something about changing the subject it she wasn't currently a pile of tired and painkillers. Eventually, voice growing soft with sleep, she asks, "M'not worse than a chair, though, right?" There's a weak pat on empty space that is not at all as generous as she'd like to think, shameless bedhog that she is.
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Posted: Fri May 27, 2016 9:54 pm
Another long pause, until he's afraid maybe he's let it go on too long and maybe she's asleep now, but he does get up, finally. He always moves very quietly, and his weight is altogether too slight as he sinks hesitantly into the little room she leaves for him, still fully clothed, jeans and all, and maybe he doesn't take up that much space, anyway. Ivy heaves a little sigh, and it's the only sound in the room. When he shifts to face her it's not out of intimacy or closeness. It's so that he doesn't have to just turn his head to see the orange bottle out of the corner of his eye, the label turned just far enough away that he can't read it while he's lying awake and watching her ribs rise and fall, thinking about mousetraps and magic and the strangeness of closeness and of a cocky hedge-witch of a girl who still finds a way to blush for a compliment; of blood and fear and things he doesn't understand. The last thought he has comes when the sky's already grey, and it's that he'll wake up and none of it will be real. And what a relief, he thinks, that will be.
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