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Bare Necessities


"If I wanted space," she shouted right back, voice echoing over the water, "I wouldn't have even come here, let alone stayed!" As if walking home in a rain storm was any sort of hardship to her.

She was in the tub, still filling, arms crossed mulishly over her chest. "I never said that! I as much admitted that when I turned 'round I was just trying to make s**t difficult for you. What the ******** did you think I was gonna do? Bow my head all meek and eager to please, all Yes Taym," her voice went soft and breathy, accent going honey thick, "I'm so sorry for being such a shameful woman, forcing you to berate me in front of all an' sundry. Just who do you think I am?!"

Bare ******** that. I am referring," he said acidly, "to the decision to strut around the hallway naked in the first place."

lizbot

"In what ********' universe is stripping down with a couple of girls in the middle of nowhere even remotely equivalent to parading around naked in front of dozens of our ********' coworkers?" he demanded, balling up the towel and throwing it at the floor after briefly considering throwing it at her instead.

(He didn't, even though it was just a towel, because he'd thrown things at April, and that had been different because she hadn't been yelling back, just huddled on the floor crying, crying, crying and he never knew why, but he'd hurt her, on purpose, and America would never have let him and he felt sick that he desperately wanted to, just once, and had never wanted anything less. And maybe it was partly this, the cresting dread, the way he recoiled from himself disgusted, that fueled his abrupt change in tone.)

He stopped yelling. He closed his eyes, leaned on the sink heavily, and tried to measure out his tone, tried to sound rational even though his voice still shook.

"Everyone already thinks I'm a ********' joke and sometimes it's hard not to give a ********, OK? Even if you can do it, sometimes I can't. They don't know you. They don't know that you're the kind of person who asks. So, I don't know, maybe to them it's not you not giving a s**t about what they think, maybe to them it's you not giving a s**t what I think." And then, drained: "I care about it. I try not to, but I do."

Where Do You Go

"If that's a hint," he said after a pause, "consider it taken. But just this once."

Bare Necessities

"Obadiah This a*****e Here Thompson let me tell you a thing," she was up and storming out of the tub, dropping everywhere as she stalked toward him. "You are just the stupidest stupid stupid auuuugh!" She gazed up at the ceiling, all god grant me patience with this fool man while getting his nice clean shirt wet again.

"You think I've had anything approaching this with anybody before? Ever? In my ******** life?" Her voice had gone low and furious that he latched on to something so unimportant and simply wrong. There were things she used to do that she'd enjoyed, yeah. But missing out? Those were things she could have anywhere, anytime, and even if she liked them they were dime a dozen.

"You know what I miss everyday? What I ******** dream of sometimes cause I just can't have it anymore?" She hissed, venomous. "Bacon, when I miss a ******** thing it's bacon, all crispy and dripping fresh from the pan."

Bare Necessities

For a moment he simply stared at her, the abrupt shift in topic rendering him silent, derailing his feelings.

And then, to no one's shock more pronounced than his own, tears rose up.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I wish I could fix it."

Bare Necessities

"I didn't mean to be," he said, plaintive as he caught her hand. "Sometimes, I don't know. I just wish--"

That it wasn't futile. That there wasn't a timer on it. That the strangest things didn't remind him of the fact.

And he did something strange, then. Taym almost never picked his pettier fights for the sake of resolving them. He wanted the apologies and the making up, but actual resolution was irrelevant. If anything shelving the issue just meant that he could pull it out later when he needed an easy trigger. But he didn't let it go.

In a better state he would have gone out of his way to hide his upset, put a masculine shield of rage up in front of all the tender turmoil underneath. But she'd thrown him off his keel with another reminder of how vulnerable she could be, how much she struggled, and he was, besides, still stung by the thought, paranoid maybe but no less painful, of a hallway full of strangers thinking what he already knew: that whatever it was between them, no matter how much he wanted to hang onto it, it was damned from the start. So he didn't bother to hide the fact that he was still tearful, didn't even try to keep it out of his voice.

"I just--I can't help it. I worry about--about wasting your time, still. And I saw you out there and I trust you, that isn't it, but I get so ********' jealous. I trust you. I do. I just--worry about you getting some stupid ********' reminder of--" he couldn't get the words out. "I'm sorry I was an a*****e about it. I am. I'm happy too," he added, in defiance of the fact that he was fairly hiccuping in an effort not to burst into tears. "I just wanna stay that way and I'm bad at it."