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Trainspotting

There's a pause before he answers, running his thumb over a sleek dark forehead.

"Maybe part of it. Just hard to fall asleep." And this was true: almost never was Taym capable of simply lying down and waiting for sleep to come; inevitably this ended in restless fidgeting and getting out of bed for another cigarette, to engage in some stupid or menial chore, or to coax her into helping things along. He'd work himself to fainting exhaustion first, or he'd read until he nodded off over the pages or the screen, or he'd wait til the post-coital drowsiness had caught up and he'd make an inventory of her flesh and her hair and her face with his hands, falling asleep with his fingers still grazing her ribs or curled behind her ear.

"But it doesn't help that sometimes that's what's waiting when I get there. Why don't you sleep more?" he countered, and maybe he didn't mean now, after Russia; maybe he meant before, running in the grey light before the sun was up.

Goals

The please made her feel tense and strange. A feeling that only grew when she saw him, outside in the sun, outside the spaces that flattered, that he slipped into and simply fit. Here all the physical effects of worry and nerves and the lessening of sleep he already got too little of became more than obvious, they were framed and highlighted by a thin figure hunched under the sun.

And then she noticed the soccer ball, entirely incongruous to the man but not so much the place, and the moment's worry gave way to curiosity, and then, at his demand, pleased surprise. About ten feet away she crouched into a ready position, hands on knees, grinning at him while offering a nice view. "Didn't know you played."

Bela Lugosi's Dead

"it was one of those poofy shirts and leather pants," she corrected with a sniff. "And maybe bees are scary, but this one had a bouncy stinger thing at my butt, the sort that looks like it should have a sound effect as it moves, all boing boing!"

She looked read to laugh herself, but kept it in as she continued, focusing on taping rings of paper together. "He was halfway to offended by the costume, but he was a teenage boy, and you know how they are. He couldn't ******** help constantly reaching over fuss at that stinger, making it bounce all silly. Now I may not have matched the place all too well, but I made a sexy as ******** bee, so it's not like we weren't gonna make use of the fancy mattress. We got going, slow like so he could poetry at me from time to time, god help him he'd hidden index cards under the mattress. But things heated up soon enough, and he was a teenage boy, so of course, at some point when he should have been grabbing on tight, he reached past my a** and right for that ******** stinger."

The girl rolled her eyes, but her smile grew dimples at the memory, "Well the thing did its boing boing right into one of the fancy ******** candle stand things. In a dusty old house. Draped all dramatically with sheets and other s**t."

Goals

He hesitates, her grin going unreturned, and with a flick of his ankle delivers the ball into his hands (and isn't it appropriate, doesn't it make sense, that the sport he's gravitating to is the one where the instability of his hands is wholly irrelevant). He still hasn't stood up, still hasn't made a move to do what he'd just demanded of her.

"I played it in England," he says, "on my mission. Badly. With a bunch of teenage boys who were Very Serious about it." A pause. "Do you?"

Trainspotting

"I love sleep," he says, in the same quiet and fierce defiant way he'd once told her that he loved food. "I love it and I'm terrible at it. I got my hands on some Ambien once, snorted it--almost better than--it was good, anyway," he finishes lamely. "Two minutes of euphoria and then out like a ******** light."

He pauses, his hands falling still, the silence undercut with quiet purring. He hesitates because what he's saying is less than flattering on the heels of what he's just said, and because there's no way to say it without lacing it with accusation and guilt, even if it's not what he means by it. He says it anyway.

"It's easier if I'm not alone," he says, as one of the cats leans into his palm, and by way of removing the sting, he says: "Worst part of being in the street for so long. Absolute worst."

Bela Lugosi's Dead

"That's what you get," he says, "for being so bumbling."

Scary Stories

In the silence that follows she leans and presses and holds until she's half in, half out of his lap, and what she asks of him, quietly in the silvered dark is not any sort of teasing come on. "If I die first, would you go see him for me?"

Mysteries

Preening a bit, she leaned against a locker and began to read, her voices dropping low in her impression of a high school dude.

Hey baby,
You look way hot in that skirt today. And the way your hair is doing that thing makes me crazy. Do you have the notes from Mr. Innis's lecture? You smelled so nice I forgot to listen. Let's skip gym today, I found a good place.

Love you more than ice cream,
Your Poohbear

PS: I wasn't looking at J, I was reading the poster behind her!

"Awww...." she crooned, laughter edging her voice.