intheblanks | ➹BEEPER

[She continues staring down at the plate, tilting her head at the food like it's changed form and she doesn't really recognize what it is anymore.]

Maybe.

[She can agree to all of that, it's not really untrue. She begins to poke lethargically at a pile of noodles with her fingertips.]

I'd call it convenience.

[It had all spared her feeling vulnerable, at the time, but that feeling always returns to her. She never really addresses it, just slathers it over with something else until her head is unbearable again.]

[He just raises his eyebrows. Look at the state of her.]

On my part, maybe. When have you ever been convenient?

[His fingers steeple and twist, any attempt to occupy them.]

I'm sorry if I let you think for a moment that you were.

[It's a compliment, in a strange way.]

[At the far end of the large table, there's a ceramic bowl filed with miscellaneous junk. A place to throw keys, rubber bands, toothpicks, receipts, whatever else. She leans forward to pull it towards herself, sorting through for a pair of kitchen shears which are summarily taken to that piece of steak to hack it down into approximately (large) bite-sized pieces.]

Of course I'm not.

[She was Barbet's unwanted burden, his regret, his responsibility to be suffered until the end. An end he'd insisted had to be on his terms and not her own. She puts the scissors down irritably. She was the undead wretch with no claim to anything in life, let alone one of her own. She had been convenient to Blonde, a place to live and a place to lay low, company in bed and a confidant with more secrets than he had. She misses him. She's tired of it. That was why she had left Chase and his prying to black it all out instead; the latter was far more convenient to her. Cheap and easy, and ultimately unsatisfying. She picks up one of the pieces she's cubed, presses into her mouth without any particular relish.]

[There's nothing like a self-destructive mind to take a meaning and warp it until it suits, until it reaffirms the worthlessness that's already become pattern to it. Chase can follow the process as if it's visible in synaptic flashes across her face.]

You go out and make yourself convenient to half the city. [He's not blind.] It's remarkably obliging. And you get them to confirm exactly what you're good for. Which is exactly why I had no intention of having sex with you.

[It's why he'd resisted the dubious charms of her younger self, and why this odd back and forth between them had come to blows and kisses more than once, but no further.]

There's nothing wrong with you except not being somebody else. And the only one in this place who knows that, is you.

[She rolls her eyes, hard.]

I don't predicate my self-worth on sex, don't be fucking ridiculous.

[Except when Barbet is involved, when he won't let her touch him at all and it's just one more way he chained her up and isolated from her own humanity and then somehow expected her to keep it.]

No, your own opinions have nothing to do with how you like people to treat you.

[It's not just the sex. The two casts she's locked into make their own point, and after making his Chase rests his elbow on the table, heels of his hands pushed against his eyes it some attempt to feel less weary of all of this.]

And how is that?

[Because when it comes to most people, she couldn't really care less what they respond to her with.]

Sarcasm.

[The people aren't important, it's how they act.

He even sounds tired. But he pushes his hands up enough to look at her, fingers carding through thick blond.]

Remember asking me why I became a doctor?

[She is far beyond tired, staring back at him. She went in knowing she'd regret calling him, it hadn't gotten all the way to stopping her.]

No. But I remember you telling me it was for the women, once.

[Yes, that's one of the stock responses, he keeps it easily at hand.]

I spent five years trying to save someone hellbent on destroying herself. [For the women: it's not so far off.] Eventually, I figured it might be a relief to treat people who wanted the help.

[She snorts. God, she can't even pretend to be surprised.]

I'm sure it was.

I thought I had nothing left, for a long time. [It had made the priesthood a terrible calling, but still, for a time, preferable to trying on his father's shoes.]

I was wrong, but there's a limit. So, if you want to kill yourself, kill yourself. I'm not stopping you. I'm not going to help you, either. That way you don't get to blame me if you go through with it and realise how badly you've screwed yourself getting another wish granted with a lifetime of never quite being dead enough.

[He stands as he speaks, clearing away the emptied bags, the take-out carton. Such a domestic scene.]

Edited 2012-06-01 02:21 (UTC)

[Several variations of answers run through her mind, various ways to correct the idiocy of those statements, but she just gives up. It doesn't matter. She's already been through grieving over never getting her end game here, it had been a quieter affair than losing Blonde.]

Fine.

[Isn't that what she's been telling him to do for months, anyway.]

[It is, and he'd never agree but for his own, quieter attempt to pull himself apart. But, for the moment, for pretences sake, fine.

He leans across the table from the opposite end and steals one small, bloody chunk, tentatively testing it between blunt teeth.]

Could use some capers.

[She stares up at him, so thoroughly confused. She has been, in increasing degrees, since he showed up.]

You'd get used to it.

[He's come to tell her he can't care about her if she's going to do this. (Come to tell her, by insinuation, that it's too late for him already). Now he's eating her food and not even wincing. There's ample space for confusion here.]

Get used to, or prefer it? I brought it over on a guess.

[She's just as bad. If she really wanted him gone, she wouldn't have called. If she weren't just as infatuated as she is resentfully fearful, she wouldn't want his attention at all.]

...sometimes both.

[Zombie comfort food? On a better day it might have even gotten her to say thank you. Today, she's just forced to recognize him as her provisioner of food yet again and to watch his mouth with fascination.]

We can set you up an account with the butchers.

[Or he can visit. Sometimes both. Fresh, raw steak isn't exactly exotic food to him, Carla. Chew and swallow.]

I should eat more, you're saying.

[She presses one of the cubes to her own lips thoughtfully. Or maybe it's just to hide the half-smile that's fitted there.]

I know it's fashionable to pick at a plate of salad.

[That much he can play along with. And he'll keep stealing from her plate, a few stray noodles this time.]

I'm never going to order a salad.

[Aka 'you still promised me dinner.']

We'll have to pick somewhere with steak tartare.

[I know.

He leans back, looking through into the invalid's resting area that is the next room.]

Reckon there's a game on?

If you like boys' high school baseball.

[She'd be playing video games if she had full use of both hands, god damn it.]

I'd prefer girls high school baseball. Come on.

[He will lead her by the plate if he has to, one elbow out for her to use as a crutch.]

[Well. She wants the plate to come with them anyway, so he might as well. They aren't going far, so she accepts the small amount of assistance, moving back around to the other side of the couch. Rex follows, and generally has a bad habit of trying to climb into people's laps when they sit on the couch. She is working on breaking him of that. It doesn't go all that well when there are mixed messages about what furniture and at what times he's allowed to jump on. He fills up the empty space in the bed now too.]

It's all equally tedious.

☏ courtesies that i disguise in me

☏ courtesies that i disguise in me

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☏ courtesies that i disguise in me

☏ courtesies that i disguise in me

☏ courtesies that i disguise in me

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☏ courtesies that i disguise in me

☏ courtesies that i disguise in me

☏ courtesies that i disguise in me

☏ courtesies that i disguise in me

☏ courtesies that i disguise in me

☏ courtesies that i disguise in me

☏ courtesies that i disguise in me

☏ courtesies that i disguise in me

☏ courtesies that i disguise in me

☏ courtesies that i disguise in me