[ prp ] they love dirty laundry (america, jan)

[Baneful]

"Perhaps a horror movie." he said playfully. "And Sun doesn't sound too bad, dangerous perhaps but you look like a gal who isn't afraid of a bit of danger."

The amused smile changed its nature as her voice softened, an edge of deviousness creeping in, accompanied by a keen intensity in his oddly light eyes. "That's a hobby I'm rather fond of myself." And he sounded truly earnest as he said it, his own voice slightly colder, the accent slightly pared back. "And I'm pretty good at syncing with others in surprising little ways."

He eyed the hiking bag fleetingly before looking back to her. "I might even still have the key for a trainee room I didn't give back to the quartermaster when I left the premises."

lizbot

 

[lizbot]

The girl preened slightly at the compliment, nothing too obvious, just the barest shift in posture, a light of the chin. But then something changed in him and it was nothing she could truly pinpoint in the man himself, but in rather in her own reaction to it. That sudden, subtle tightness of caution and thrill.

It had her guard up even as it also had her leaning forward to admire the key with a sly, pleased smile, "Well," she murmured, "...there ain't nothing better in this world than a resourceful survivor, now is there?"

baneful

 

[Baneful]

It was hard to reach Lawrence, the real Lawrence, the creature that lurked being the plethora of personas and worked the levers, but if there was one direct line, it was via the ego. He tucked the key away in his pockets with a single wave of his hand and it was as if he had never held the keyring at all, demonstrating all the precision of a man who had hand eye co-ordination fine tuned to an art. "I suppose that I could argue the same as your laundry materials. It's not technically my stash, but as far as I'm concerned with the only key that it is now."

He eyed the washer. "Those will be a while, yeah?"

He let the rest of the question hang in the air on its own.

lizbot

 

[lizbot]

Eyes hooded, she answered, "Yeah," and the word was pulled and thick, a piece of taffy on the tongue. "A good hour, at least. So what was that," her brow crinkled a little in faux confusion, "about old coyotes and new tricks?"

baneful

 

[Baneful]

"Yeah. I think a smart girl like you could teach this old dog new tricks. And maybe - just maybe I can surprise you with the ones I've learned along the way. Sometimes, when you are as sharp as you are, - and you are indeed smart - it can be pleasant to be surprised." the smile didn't fade, nor the keenness of the focus he had levelled upon her.

It was always the honest, steadfast, smart ones that he wanted to get close to, get inside. Because he could never understand how a person could be intelligent and yet completely unlike him. He wanted to pin them out like a dissection to see if the components made sense when the whole did not. This was the next best thing.

"Room 110, if you want to focus on something other than destruction, for a little while."

lizbot

 

[lizbot]

Hew smile slipped wide and pleased at the offer. He was playing her, in that way men had. For all the nice words, when he said she was smart, he meant he was smarter. Sharper. And every pleasant surprise he had in store was no doubt some proof of a greater experience she couldn't hope to match, simply appreciate and pay homage to. Be a good girl, honey, have a treat. Because that's the game men like him played, and it was a game she liked to win.

"Mmmmm," she hummed, standing up to move for the door. "Yeah, I could do with something fun."

baneful

 

[Baneful]

He picked up the hiking bag, the bag that contained another skin, another side of him, a facet of him that made his head ache when he tried to think about it in the context of Jan. Jan would never dress up as a woman, Jan would never do the things Chantelle so readily did. The personas didn't mesh, they contradicted and repelled one another like oil on water. And the cracks between the masks, that no man's land where one denied the other was where he lived.



Butch was rambling again, just another voice to fill the void and he was getting used to it.

he went on, schizophrenic in his confusion, an amusing contrast, he felt, to the still dark numbness of his own mind.

Slinging the bag on his back, he followed her out before falling exactly into step with her.

Jan thanked the spirits, the charms and gems he carried around with him that she'd decided to keep him company.He was thrilled and looking forward to a bit of human contact.

The concourse of fractures that was Lawrence thanked the arrogance of human beings for more complex thing- but ultimately felt nothing at all.

"Here's to fun." he said.

lizbot