intheblanks | ➹BEEPER

[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.

Big difference between tedious in short skirts and short pants.

[The plate is taking up space in Chase's lap, for now, but there's room for a lighter load than the dog, who seems to be scouting for the best available space.]

Never played sport?

I'm not a team player.

[She was the girl who'd smash your face in with a kickball, outrun you on the track, and never sign up for a team but would gladly convince real players to miss their games to fuck under the bleachers.]

I sold drugs and fake IDs in high school instead.

Sold them but didn't take them? That's the sign of someone building a career.

[He makes room for her legs, if she wants it. If not, the dog might just get lucky.]

Not all sports involve teams. Junior high?

[She watches her dog crawl into his lap distractedly for a moment.]

Cigarettes instead of IDs. The IDs were mine, the drugs were just to meet people. When I was younger than that it was... tennis, swimming, horseback riding.

[Nothing surprising for a rich girl.]

☏ 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

☏ 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