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Two Bits

"But Taym, everybody else is doing it. How else will I get to be all cool and edgy?" She sniffed, "Not gonna let Leslie outcool me, that'd be terrible."

And After

The light filtering through the blinds is still grey-blue and dim so of course he's already awake--of course he is--and he's momentarily distracted from the clinging scraps of nightmares by examining dispassionately the white curve of America's shoulderblade and the warm-colored tumbling fall of her hair across it. He wants to get up, go running, not because he likes running--he doesn't--or because he thinks it makes him a better Hunter--he doesn't--but because he is a creature of ritual and routine and he went running every morning long before Deus came into the picture, because he finds it impossible to think while he is running and because it feels good to be exhausted. Instead he laces a strand of her hair through his fingers.

She is, he thinks, not the most beautiful woman he has ever been with, because Taym has strange and capricious standards, but she is definitely far, far more beautiful than he has ever deserved let alone than he deserves now, to say nothing of everything else that she is, and the idea of trying to catalog this latter list leaves him feeling helpless and stupid and unbearably mediocre.

He hates this. It is inevitable, part of a long-established cycle, and he has always pretended to sail above it but he knows himself to be weak and pliant and greedy. He runs over in his head all the things that he will say to her when he wakes her up, which is really just one thing said many ways: I don't think we should do this any more and I've always been really bad at the friends with benefits thing and I don't want to be constantly reminded what I can't have and you make it too easy for me to ignore what little common sense I have.

(He suspects she might be thinking of initiating the same conversation but for different reasons; he suspects he was lucky to get even this; he suspects she will shrug and smile and say "OK" and that will be the end of it, and this will destroy him.)

He combs through the list, he phrases and rephrases in his head, and when she stirs he leans to wake her through the expedient of kissing her shoulder (his jaw rough-stubbled already, and true to his promise he hasn't shaved) and what he says in a murmur in her ear is: let's go for a run.

Two Bits

He gives her a look and he goes back to his metamorphosis.

"I will never make you an omelet again," he says, "and I will call you Aldrina constantly. I think you can let Leslie win just once."

The Waxwing Slain

"--and it doesn't matter whether Nabokov was a fan of symbolism or not. Readings of authorial intent are the bluntest instruments a literary fan has, so I don't feel like I'm reaching to say it was an interesting choice of image for opening the centerpiece of a book whose entire purpose is to have you constantly unsure about what's true and what isn't, which is why I picked it, by the way, so ******** you, thanks."

He'd been unusually chatty, desperately relieved when the taunt gave him something familiar to talk about, something non-dangerous. He transferred the braid to one hand to take the joint out of her hand and take a hit, handing it back across and resuming his work, which was a complicated fishtail and considerably neater and more practiced than Kostya's efforts.

"Also," he continued through a forced cough, "people argue that it's almost meant to be the last line too, but I think the whole thing's cyclical. If you read straight through the last canto and loop back around to the beginning there's a perfectly cohesive--I'm boring the ******** out of you," he finished drily, absently working back through the braid to artistically loose a strand here and there.

Quote:

Text from Leona Tavish:
Section G Row 4 Space 17

Quote:

Text from Redacted:
Alive and well. There was a small adjustment period for your daughter, but that's apparently passed. There was a play. Would you like a copy of the video?