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 Posted: Sun Oct 13, 2013 3:06 pm
Sleep hadn't come easy for Jett, and it wasn't until shortly before sunrise that he even managed to drift into something that could almost be considered sleep. He stayed half awake through all of it and got little rest. When the sun shined in his eyes, he gave up trying to sleep and carefully pulled himself out of bed so as not to rouse Raven.
He chanced a brief glance at her while she slept, though he didn't want to risk being caught. At least that wouldn’t have required much explaining, it would have just been weird.
Today was already going to be an important day. He didn't want to start if off weirdly.
He wanted to start it off right.
A good night's sleep would have been best, but since he didn't have that, he figured he'd move on to the next best thing: breakfast.
He kept quiet, not because he didn't want to share but because he was nervous about whatever was going to happen when Raven woke up. So he made everything.
Pancakes and French toast and sausage and bacon and hash browns and scrambled eggs and omelettes. It was more than he could eat—probably more than they could both eat, but he couldn’t stop. He made coffee and poured orange juice chocolate milk. He set out plates. He overfed the dog.
He moved the vase of roses he'd bought her a few days ago out of the way, and while he didn't set up the table or anything fancy, he had everything out and ready to make a plate.
The house smelled great, and though his mouth was watering he didn't have much of an appetite. If he hadn't made enough noise cooking, then that combined with the sounds of a kitchen being cleaned should have been enough to wake anyone up.
For better or worse.
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Posted: Sun Oct 13, 2013 3:29 pm
Raven had slept. Exhaustion and the emotional toll that last night had brought just proved to be too much for her and she slept like a rock. In fact, if it wasn’t for the mixed smell of everything assaulting her nose, she most likely would not have woken up until noon. Or one. Or maybe never.
Regardless, when the smells finally did manage to rouse her, Raven sat up slowly, yawning. Mmm…
She gave a little smile, then went to rub at her eyes. A jolt of pain brought her to her senses and she looked down at her hand, still covered in little bits of broken glass. The weight of what had happened last night hit her like a ton of bricks and she swallowed, half tempted just to go back to sleep again.
It hadn’t been a dream after all. Now what could she do? What should she do?
Slowly the blonde got up, crossing to her side of the dresser and pulling out a pair of tweezers, spending a good ten minutes picking out the rest of the bits of glass from her hand before wrapping it in some more band-aids.
There. One issue solved…now just came the issue of…well. Of Jett.
Raven slipped her feet into a pair of slippers and made her way downstairs, watching Jett in the kitchen for a moment, before sitting at the table and grabbing a piece of bacon, taking a bite. She didn’t know what to say, so filling her mouth provided a great excuse.
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Posted: Sun Oct 13, 2013 3:38 pm
Jett saw her moving, though pretended to stay busy for an extra few seconds, tidying up in the kitchen before picking up his coffee and moving to the table. "Morning," he greeted, wondering if pretending like there wasn't a problem meant there wouldn't be one. He sat across from her, in his spot, and moved a pancake onto his plate.
He chanced a brief glance at her hand before reaching for the butter. "I haven't had a chance to clean up the bathroom yet. You sleep all right?" he asked, figuring it might not be the wisest idea to just jump into asking how her hand was.
For all intents and purposes, he was treating today like any other day.
He just wondered how long the illusion would last.
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Posted: Sun Oct 13, 2013 3:43 pm
She didn’t know what to stay still, so shoved another piece of bacon in her mouth, chewing. She chanced a glance at him, and gave what she thought was a smile, though it could very easily have been a terrible grimace.
They were from the same part of the face, after all.
When the bacon was gone from her mouth, Raven reached over, picking up a piece of French toast with her fingers and putting it on her plate. She watched it for a moment before drowning it in syrup.
She would have to say something soon, she knew that. She really did know that. There was just that issue of not really remembering how to make sounds come out of her mouth.
The blonde poured herself some juice and began chugging it, hoping it would be yet another acceptable excuse as to why she was not talking. When the cup was drained though, she was again cornered. Okay. It was time to try.
She opened her mouth, fully intent on saying that she slept fine, but all that came out was a rather large belch.
Well. Oops.
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Posted: Sun Oct 13, 2013 3:46 pm
Jett and Raven seemed to have similar mechanism for avoiding conversation. He finished his first pancake in a matter of seconds and was already starting on another piece of food when Raven's belch set his attention directly back to her.
He looked up, mouth full of food, and blinked.
It was most unladylike of her. But at least it was something. Something human—something not a yell or a sob.
And he could work with it.
He watched her, slowly chewing his food for a few more seconds before he swallowed. "You…okay there?"
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Posted: Sun Oct 13, 2013 4:13 pm
She felt her cheeks burning just slightly and cleared her throat, nodding. “Must have eaten too quickly or something. Unless you got carbonated orange juice.”
Raven shrugged, going to dive into the piece of French toast that was still on her plate, finishing it quickly.
Finally she looked up and sighed. “It’s delicious, thank you, Jett.” There was a million things more that she wanted to say, but she really just didn’t know…how to start.
What, was she just supposed to come out and say that… “You know…I really wanted it to be a dream. A nightmare…Last night was really real.”
Well. That fixed things. That made it real. Crap. At least the conversation had been started. What could she do now?
The blonde reached over and shoved another piece of bacon into her mouth, eyes falling back to her plate.
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Posted: Sun Oct 13, 2013 4:27 pm
Jett nodded; his mouth was full of a very syruped waffle. He should have cut it into smaller pieces, but Raven had started talking and he rushed into it.
He should have chewed it better, or swallowed a smaller chunk; he forced the mass down his throat and it hurt. Thankfully he had some too-hot coffee to wash it down with.
Clearing his throat; he nodded. "That's true."
But he didn't know what else to say. They had gone to sleep shortly afterwards; what if she hadn't had time enough to think? To talk herself out of everything?
"So what do we want to take out of it? Where do you stand on this?"
Because he couldn't figure this out on his own.
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Posted: Sun Oct 13, 2013 4:40 pm
She drew in a deep breath, then shrugged. Her stomach suddenly felt like it was in knots and the threat of losing all that she had shoved into it was a very real thing right now. “I have no idea. I’m still hurt. I still…I just want it to go away, but I know it won’t. None of it will, and it just makes me feel…numb. Everything feels numb. Everything but my hand, which is throbbing a lot. But that’s besides the point.”
Her stomach was defiantly not happy, and Raven gave a little groan, leaning back in her seat. “Part of me just wants to stay and try, but most of me knows that I should just go into the bedroom and pack up my things…”
She closed her eyes, drawing in another deep, even breath. Suddenly the room felt both too warm and too cold.
Why had she bothered to get out of bed?
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Posted: Sun Oct 13, 2013 4:52 pm
Part of her. There was a part of her that wanted to stay. But he couldn’t even enjoy that because most of her wanted to leave.
He poked at his food. There was a pancake on his plate, but he wasn't hungry. He didn't need to buy time. Things had stopped feeling so rushed and now they were back to molasses. "This is something that's been bothering you for a while," he shrugged. "…Either you stick around to try and fix it or you're tired of trying to piece things back together. I don't know where you're at. All I know." He was quiet for a short moment. "All I know is that if this isn't making you happy, I'm done. I'm not going to build our future on a relationship based on lies. On deceit. On your unhappiness. So you can spend the rest of your life despising me?"
He shook his head and leaned back. "Enough of that's run in my family already, Raven. I watched my mother tear herself apart. I'm not going to watch you do the same thing."
So that she could find someone else a few years down the line. Fall in love. Have an affair. Divorce him.
Wasn't that what always happened?
Tapping his finger on the table, he reached over to grip the bottle of aspirin hidden behind the bowl of eggs. He slid it in her direction.
"I just want to know if there's anything to save."
Could you save things? Or just sever ties completely?
If they couldn’t fix things—what was next?
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Posted: Sun Oct 13, 2013 5:38 pm
“I want to leave…” It was the truest thing she could have said. And it entitled everything. She wanted to get out of here, with or without him. She wanted to leave everything, but she would leave the city with him…or she would leave here without him and maybe she would stay in the city, she wasn’t quite sure.
“I’m not happy here, Jett…I was trying, I really was…but I don’t think it’s possible for me to be really happy here. Not with everything that’s going on…and I know you don’t want to leave the city…we’ve been through this…so I don’t really know…how to fix what we have…I don’t know what to do. And I hate that.”
She was resentful. And it wasn’t fair. She wasn’t being fair, but she didn’t quite know how to be fair. She felt as though she was dangling from a cliff, and she wasn’t sure how to save herself…because if she stayed with Jett…it would be as bad as falling off. She wouldn’t be happy, they both knew that.
But the thought of leaving him…that just brought her to the verge of tears.
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Posted: Sun Oct 13, 2013 6:02 pm
Jett had a number of thoughts floating through his head in that moment. Some of them made sense. Some of them seemed out of place.
None of them seemed appropriate or beneficial to this conversation.
But she wasn't happy.
He couldn't understand a lot of what she was saying, but she understood when she said she wasn't happy.
Maybe he didn't quite understand why, or why they weren't trying to fix things. They were at crossroads.
He loved Raven, but there were things he couldn't give up. Even on little things they couldn't compromise—what was it going to be like to try and live together, or build a future or raise a family when they kept getting caught up on the little things?
But he was stubborn. He had always wanted it to work out. He was always going to try and make it work out.
Unless he was hurting Raven. He could stomach a lot of things, but not hurting her.
And he didn't want to lose her. But how do you have a relationship with someone who despised you? What kind of relationship was that? What type of future did they have with that at the forefront?
He didn't want her to leave. She had to know that. He'd made it as clear as he could. He wanted to magically fix things, just like that.
They could walk through mirrors, breathe in space, use strange magic.
But they couldn’t fix the day to day things.
Jett continued to poke at his food and nodded once more. "So either we sit down and talk about everything, find some middle ground. Try to talk it out again. Or."
He was quiet for a moment. He wasn't thinking rationally. Things just weren't adding up; he couldn't make the pieces fit in his mind. "Or I'll pull out the boxes and help you load things into your car and we can talk about where we go from there, instead."
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Posted: Sun Oct 13, 2013 6:37 pm
Raven kept her eyes averted from Jett as he sat in silence. It was maddening, and uncomfortable and she was just inches from breaking down again. When he mentioned talking it through she wanted to retort that she thought that’s what they were doing right now, but whatever flash of her old snarkiness that had flared up died away as he spoke of helping her pack. Oh.
Oh. She felt her heart again, as it decided to return from whatever void that it had escaped to, returned just quick enough to shatter into a hundred million pieces.
Her lower lip trembled for a moment, but then Raven just nodded, swallowing hard. “Yeah…I…I guess we should pull out the boxes. I mean…us talking right now isn’t getting much resolved so…so I…” She closed her eyes, trying desperately to just keep her lunch down.
Right now it was getting harder and harder to do so.
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Posted: Sun Oct 13, 2013 7:57 pm
That was not the answer Jett wanted. He shouldn't have offered it as an option. It had been a mistake. He bit his tongue and then nodded.
Talking wasn't working. When did talking not work? Usually if talking didn't work he resorted to fists, but that seemed exceptionally inappropriate and this wasn't the kind of fight he was usually fighting anyway.
"You don't look so good. If you're going to throw up, use the sink. Bathroom's still…you know." The words came with the detached feeling. Like it wasn't really him talking. Not him getting up from the seat. Not him going to the closet and pulling out the boxes.
He didn't know if he should offer to help or burn the boxes in front of her or something. So he forced himself to pick up a piece of bacon and down the rest of his coffee instead of making any effort to do either.
Swallowing made him feel like he'd just taken a punch to the gut.
"I'm going to clean up the kitchen," he finally said, scrutinously eyeing the bottom of the empty mug. "If you need me, I'll be there."
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Posted: Sun Oct 13, 2013 9:11 pm
Raven wanted to say something, but then the boxes were out before she could and she found herself back in the bedroom, staring around it with a completely lost expression. She should start packing. He was going to clean the kitchen…and she was going to pack. And vomit. Maybe just vomit and forget the packing.
She sat on the edge of the bed, his words replaying in her head. If you need me, I’ll be there.
Well, she needed him, but she just didn’t know how to convey that. How to just come out and say Jett, I need you.
Swallowing hard, the blonde stood and went to the closet, pulling out her clothes again, putting some of them into one of the boxes.
She filled the box up halfway and stopped again. She had to go. She had to get out of here and just clear her head. Or something. Anything.
She needed him. She really did. But…but it was too late to need him. Wasn’t it? It was all just too late.
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Posted: Sun Oct 13, 2013 9:22 pm
When Jett retired to the kitchen, he stood there in the quiet of the room for a long while. He listened to Raven packing as he poured himself another cup of coffee. It was still steaming when he brought it to his lips.
He felt it burn, but he didn't care. He drank the whole cup, slowly. And then he refilled it.
She was still packing.
But he didn't want to hear it. He had the option of loading up the dirtied dishes into the dishwasher, but instead he turned on the water to the sink.
Water. Soap. Sponge. Scrub.
A monotonous effort, but it was all he could manage to focus on.
With the water on, he couldn't hear her backing.
The eggs stuck to the pan, so he turned the water on as hot as he could and scrubbed.
Some things were easy to take care of. He liked when there was a specific course of actions to take to make things right.
Like dishes. Water. Soap. Sponge. Scrub.
The same old thing, always guaranteed to work.
Why couldn't relationships be more like dishes? This was easy. This, he could work with.
This wasn't going to eat him up for the rest of his life.
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