|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Posted: Wed Dec 30, 2009 1:46 am
Do you understand?
She now whipped her head around to stare at him as though he were suddenly talking pure crazy b***h, and not going red and gripping the steering wheel as though he had vengeance against it. The cat just sat in his lap, purring. I can't make you this cat. Well, she hoped not. He could not make her into a cat. He was speaking pure crazy b***h. She could not be like the cat with him -- what did that even mean.
She wanted to say: "What does that even MEAN," but it was a mystery she had to work out by herself, a challenge to her cleverness, working out what was getting him so agitated --
It dawned on Hero Barrett only slowly, what he meant, and silence filled the pineapple truck as she rolled this over inside her brain. Whether she had hit on what he meant. Had she? It was -- but he was only eighteen -- had she? For what purpose? For what reason?
(Little did she know that she also would never be like the cat, for the same source of the problem.)
"Are you sure?" He was red-faced. He was never red-faced. "It's no -- you don't have to -- I don't mind."
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Dec 30, 2009 1:53 am
Oh, ******** you too, God.
"Yes," Jude hissed. She knew he wasn't angry with her. He was angry, yes, but with himself. Anything that rendered Jude Lawson less of a man was cause for outrage and the deepest levels of shame. Had any cars been around them, someone might have died. He was going faster than was legal, and stopped so quickly in the parking lot the truck skid on one side in a spiral.
Did he just need air? This was not the drug store lot. This was the lot of nothing more than a run down gas station. After nudging the cat carefully but anxiously to the side, Jude swung the door open like he'd found the way out of Hell.
Of all the stupid wastes of money, this had to be the worst.
That scent of cigarette smoke was from him. The evidence was there before her in his own hand, then lit up and between his lips.
It was a known fact Jude Lawson had not smoked at any point within the Zodiac.
It was not a known fact he had smoked at all before that.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Dec 30, 2009 1:57 am
The pregnant calico was left in the cab as she slid out the other side, slammed the door shut. He was coming out of the gas station with a packet of smokes, the jaded attendant not even bothering to ask him for ID -- she strode up to him even as he was trying to shove the packet away and went for it. He snapped it out of reach. His captain reached back and punched him in the stomach.
He went down -- she was on top of him, and in her shapeless hoodie it looked like two boys having a piss-fight now. The attendant peered out, but there were no other cars, so who gave a s**t as to two guys fighting in a parking lot? He refused to hit her, he always refused to hit her -- "You are not screwing yourself up," she snarled, pinning him down by both shoulders. Reached back. Punched him again. "You are under my command. Your body is mine. Your life is for the Princess."
Bottom line: no nicotine.
He was still secreting the pack away -- she scrabbled for his hand. "I expected Andeon to do this," she snapped, "not you. You idiot. You stupid -- you son of a b***h." Went for it again. (She was swearing. That meant something.)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Dec 30, 2009 2:09 am
Not screwing himself up? What the ********? She just nailed him in the stomach then proceeded to punch him across the face and had the nerve to go on about screwing himself up? He'd been hit more that day than a trailer trash trophy wife with another strike on the way.
"It's a damn cigarette, Hero, calm the Hell down!" he barked back. She hit him again and his head snapped to the side. No damn wonder he was "going to have bruises". This had to qualify under some form of domestic abuse; the cops in this city sucked at their job. "Andeon, unless I'm mistaken, is a borderline alcoholic, and unless I've missed it--" Very possible. "--I haven't seen you try and beat the Hell out of him for it."
He must have really been working on appreciating them more like he'd promised to throw "borderline" in there. Grayson was also a "borderline" woman, for example.
"Damn it, Hero, stop it! You're over-reacting!"
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Dec 30, 2009 2:16 am
It did seem more than a little mixed-up: being told that his body was some kind of temple that Hero Barrett did her best to knock down. Her punches hurt. She was definitely giving him some domestic abuse right about there, in the dark, in the openway of a petrol station. He was also completely right about Andeon and his... Andeon problems not being something Hero was taking care of, though all this made her do was put her mouth in a grim line that said Andeon will be next. (Thanks, Jude.)
Both of her hands slammed down on his shoulders, into the concrete. She was breathing hard, over him. Staring into his face. Breathing hard with anger, not with the effort; Hero Barrett had a really, really impressive cardio record. "You think I'm overreacting?" she said, voice low, dangerous. "Do you think." Her fingers tightened. "That I am going to deal." Tightened more. "With your lung cancer."
She leaned in. "Your body." At least now her fingers were starting to loosen. "Is. Important to me."
Except for all the times she punched it.
Her voice was very quiet. "I don't mind that we can't have children, Lawson. Don't lose it. Don't lose it on me. Stay with me."
They were both young.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Dec 30, 2009 2:44 am
The way in which he was "losing it" was not the same kind of "losing it" Hero was urging him to avoid. They were both young, but they were also both insane--and masochists. It was her fault he was "losing it", not his, and the second her hands were loose enough he knocked her over and scrambled out from under her.
"Hero, get in the truck." She wasn't moving fast enough. The other Zodiac would have gawked had they seen it. Jude picked her up, bruises and aches be damned, and barely resisted the urge to just throw her in the cab and shut the door. (It was lucky he even remembered to close the door with how fast he was moving.) Then, the other Zodiac would have gagged or looked clueless or been pissed or cheered them on depending on which one they were.
"Hush," he demanded, and it was with his entire hand--not two gentlemanly, romantically placed fingers--that he covered her mouth when he said it. The door slammed shut and he went around the other side.
This was not legal. The way he was driving was not legal, but they needed to go.
Somewhere empty. Somewhere solitary.
The poor truck was smoking--no pun regarding the source of this situation intended--by time they stopped again in some nowhere part of the city with only run down houses and silence. Had she said anything, he'd ignored it. The henshin pen looked like a piece of bread being snatched by a starving man, and he was outside again. Around to the passengers' side, door open, grabbing Hero's wrist and tugging her out, away from the cat and his means of transportation.
"Sagittarius Zodiac Power, Make-up!" The light show, then the summoning. Sluggish to oblige, but obliging none the less, the jungle appeared out of no where as it always did.
Only this time it was the jungle again.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Reply
