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 Posted: Wed Jan 29, 2014 5:45 pm
He'd spent ten minutes slowly making his way through half of an incredibly sub-par ham sandwich. He couldn't remember when it had gotten this way: when he'd lost the ability he'd once had to ignore what he was eating and force it down because he needed to. Maybe it had been easy then because he'd had no guarantee of a further meal, whereas here he knew that when the pains turned to delirium--when Fionnghal stepped in and pleaded--he was within arm's reach of necessary calories. She pleaded a lot more now. She'd spent most of the night pleading and apologizing, and she sounded younger than he'd ever heard her: please sleep, please eat, please listen to me. Please don't do this to yourself. Please don't do this to us. He hadn't known how to react so he'd just let her have full access to every miserable shred of guilt and shame he was feeling in an attempt to temper her need to take the blame. It hadn't worked. The accusation of failure had weighed heavier on her than it had on him. The door was open. It was open with increasing rarity these days, but he'd made a promise, and he could turn this visit to his ends if he needed to. He'd only eaten half of his food so that he could eat the other half in front of someone--someone inclined to run her mouth, someone social, someone who noticed everything he did and liked to talk about him. Distractedly, he ran his fingers along the glass of the cats' tank, their little paws chasing after.
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Posted: Wed Jan 29, 2014 6:05 pm
They hadn't set up a specific time with which to meet up, but since Taym had said night Peyton waited until seven before grabbing two of her three boxes of Pocky off her desk and leaving her room. She hadn't bothered to slip into her boots, so she moved across the hall in silence on stocking hugged feet. Galaxy themed and dark, they complimented the shorts and yellow tank top to perfection. Long curls had been pulled up and twisted into a messy sort of bun. Not really dressing up, but appearance had been considered with obvious care. Appearing in his doorway, Peyton gave the wall beside the open door a little rap before wandering in, with a smile. "Hey." Taym held her attention for all of two seconds before the carrier and it's precious cargo caught her eye and she was hurrying over to lean against the table. "Holy s**t, they really do look just like a pair of ******** adorable kittens." Where the ******** could she get one of those nifty carriers and a her own adorable kitten look-a-like? Unopened boxes of Pockey were blindly handed off to the other hunter, attention all but glued on the two little balls of cute in the carrier.
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Posted: Wed Jan 29, 2014 6:38 pm
Her effort was wasted on him--Peyton always looked roughly the same to him; she was not one of the women on the Island for whom he had attention for more than whether they were barefoot or not--but to be fair, apparently his effort was wasted on her too, as her eyes skipped right over his food and straight to the carrier. He took the boxes without comment, already feeling suddenly and inexplicably exhausted. "They're kind of unwieldy to hold," he said by way of greeting, "given the whole tail issue, but you get used to it. I still don't ******** know whether it's a them or an it, by the way," he added drily as he freed the latch and lifted them out. He hesitated. He had not anticipated it, but passing them over to Peyton felt wrong. He wanted to take them back as soon as he held them out, and he was afraid more than anything that they would like her. Of course they would. Temperament: sweet. They didn't reserve their affection (or their convincing facsimile thereof, he stubbornly thought) for one person, not least for him.
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Posted: Wed Jan 29, 2014 6:49 pm
Sorry Taym, but kittens. You understand. As they were lifted out and held out to her she took them carefully into her arms, hooping up to perch on the edge of the table/desk beside the sandwich she had totally noticed but had not yet commented on. Immediately she understood what he'd meant about the tail, shuffling the tiny bodies about into she had them cradled in her lap with her arms looped around their middles and backs rested against her stomach. "You said they act independently? Seems like a 'They' thing to do, rather then an 'It'." Arms full of fear condensed kittens, she looked up, ankles crossed, feet swinging. "Did I interrupt your dinner? I was trying not to do that. Figured 7 was a safe time." She'd have nudged his plate closer to him if she'd had a free hand to do so. Instead she looked down at the half eaten sandwich in a meaningful sort of way before flicking pale eyes back up to him. "Don't let my presence keep you from finishing." It was actually sort of a relief to see him eating, but she wasn't about to say that out loud. Attention dropped back to the cuties in her arms, and she scratched under one of their tiny chins, grinning. "Do they have names?"
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Posted: Wed Jan 29, 2014 7:11 pm
He hated her more in that moment of looking at his food than he had ever hated her, more even than he'd hated the Peyton-that-wasn't at New Year, more even than he'd hated her whenever she touched him: an incandescent moment of unadulterated loathing gone nearly as soon as it appeared. "They have an ID number," he answered, mechanically picking up his dinner and resuming it. He hated the idea of being watched while he ate--this, too was new; he'd first realized it on the bluffs with Bashmet--but managed to keep his face from betraying his distaste for either the situation or the quality of what he was putting away. "But I've been calling them Quint and Jessel, just between you and me. Jessel's the cute one," he added with a forced grin, reaching out to shake one tiny paw and getting a swat for his troubles. "They aren't real," he added, as much a reminder to himself as to her.
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Posted: Wed Jan 29, 2014 7:39 pm
Peyton would have been startled by the level of hate suddenly directed her way had she any indication of it. Not just startled, but possibly heartbroken. It was good she wasn't aware of it. That Taym was able to keep it hidden away; She wouldn't have understood it, and had no reason to return it. At least she wasn't actively watching him eat. She recalled a conversation over twitter that had revolved around eating, and with every other helpful or notable tidbit of information he shared about himself, she'd filed it away. Actively trying to make herself into someone he'd want to spend time with. As always, she had no idea if she was actively succeeding. Despite how long they'd known each other, all the conversations, everything they'd been through, Taym was every bit as confusing now as he ever was. Every time Peyton thought she understood him a little better he did something to throw her off completely. It was frustrating. So she kept her eyes on the critters in her lap, grinning as the 'cute one' gave a small swipe at his fingers. "I'm going to go out on a limb and assume those names are from a book." Casual glance up for confirmation, eye contact brief. "And they are real, they just aren't real cats." She frowned thoughtfully, drawing her legs up to cross indian style and setting both kittens in her lap. "Not being physical doesn't make our partners any less real. They're just a different kind of real." Thin shoulders rolled in a shrug. She wasn't trying to lecture, so her tone had been soft, thoughtful rather then pushy in anyway. As if she were thinking the idea through aloud.
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Posted: Wed Jan 29, 2014 8:00 pm
They hadn't even bothered to toast the ******** bread. It was turning into a sort of thick slurry where the mustard soaked through it. I'm sorry. Real enough. He ignored her apologies. "Bashmet said they're made of--how'd he put it? A little bite of FEAR. Not like a weapon, or whatever they were. Just a little bit." It wasn't an argument, so much as it was an empty observation for the purpose of filling up silence. "They melt," he added. He'd already said that, but he repeated it. "They melt, if you keep them out too long." This was horrific. Every time he thought about it his skin crawled. It was the closest he could come to overcoming his natural weakness for feline eyes and whiskered ears and tiny paws.
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Posted: Wed Jan 29, 2014 8:30 pm
Delicate features went thoughtful, lips twisting to one side as her head rose and eyes landed on the far wall. "So of the same 'world', but not the same..." She waffled, searching for a word. Race didn't fit, nor species. There were just too many sentient things in Halloween for them to all be easily lumped into one category. "Denizen," she finally settled on, still not entirely happy, but at least satisfied enough not to keep searching. Mention of melting had her looking for a clock, then pulling her phone out of her pocket to check the time. She'd probably been holding them for no more then ten minutes, so they were safe for at least half an hour. The phone was slipped away again. "They're just little versions of the bigger ones, like our weapons. There isn't enough fear here to sustain them." She might not have spent much time in the labs where the creatures were kept, but she'd been around long enough to have learned a thing or two about their enemy. One of the kits, Peyton wasn't sure which, crawled out of her lap and across the desk towards Taym, tiny par raising to bat at a bit of escaping ham from his sandwich. Pey gave it's back a little scratch, smiling wistfully. "Not enough fear to sustain these guys, and too much for any real animal."
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Posted: Wed Jan 29, 2014 9:09 pm
There was rain pattering outside; he gently scooped up the escapee to deposit it back into Peyton's arms--not that it would have gone far tethered to its other half anyway--and to go to open the window after polishing off the last few bites in one go and not looking at all as sick as he felt. "How's the book?" he asked after a second of toying with the string of the blinds in his fingers, staring idly across the grounds, beyond the arches spanning the building into the grey drizzle and wondering how it would have looked if the fog were in force. A couple of hunters were half-jogging back in with their coats over their heads. It was almost serene.
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Posted: Thu Jan 30, 2014 7:08 am
As escapee was placed back in her lap she looped an arm around the both of them, holding them without really holding them. Just a barrier to keep them contained. She blinked as Taym got to his feet and moved towards the window, only really registering the sound of rain as it was more or less brought to her attention, and she leaned enough to see it splattering against the glass. "Oh wow, when was the last time it rained?" She remembered the big storm that hit at the end of the tournament, and struggled to recall if it had really rained since then. Mention of the book brought an easy smile, lips splitting in a grin. "Really good. I'm reading it faster then I want to be, but I figure it'll be alright now since I have the next one, and the portals are up again. Won't have to draw it out." Fuzzy bodies rolled around in her lap, and she smoothed her hand over tiny ears, along the oddly connected tail. She glanced at the window, then at the hunter beside it. She wondered if she could get him to have his next cigarette outside under the awning, just so they could smell the rain. "So how've you been?" Since the fiasco that was Sensitivity training, or whatever the ******** it had been. She'd talked to him on twitter, relatively short exchanges, and she hadn't really seen him in a week or so. Thinking about it made the smile wilt a little around the edges. Maybe he'd been spending his time with America.
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Posted: Thu Jan 30, 2014 4:02 pm
"Busy," he said briefly. This was always his answer. What exactly he stayed busy with was hard to say, but he invented tasks to fill up his time, he volunteered for duty rosters, he took extra time at the outposts and scrubbing cafeteria dishes when more division-specific pursuits were barred to him. He thought of the long-abandoned task Caelius had given him, the one he felt so unsuited to do, and tried to turn his thoughts elsewhere. Another couple of days and it would be time to instead find another warehouse, pray again to avoid hurting anyone, do what had to be done. He leaned against the windowframe, a convenient reason not to look at her, and retrieved his cigarettes from an inner pocket. "How've you been? Glad to see you've recovered from--whatever it was," he added sardonically, as if he too hadn't been full of wide-eyed, sincere apology and boundless optimism at the same time she had.
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Posted: Thu Jan 30, 2014 5:20 pm
Busy. He was always busy. That vaguely filled her in on what he was up to, but did little to clarify how he was doing. She gave him a look that was more then likely missed as he wasn't looking at her. "I'm fine. A little more anti-social then usually, but I blame that on having good books." She shrugged, pulled her phone out to check on the time again, then glanced at his cigarettes. "If you're gunna have a smoke, can we put Quint and Jessel back in their carrier and go outside?" She was rubbing a little velvet ear as she asked him, gaze flicking back and forth between hunter and kittens.
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Posted: Thu Jan 30, 2014 5:53 pm
"It's asocial," he said absently. "Common misconception. Like atheist, or asexual. Rep's antisocial. You're feeling asocial." If the day before America had not succeeded in making him visit the infirmary--if he was not feeling raw and wounded and self-conscious and disgusting--he would have told her to come stand by the window instead and he would have considered threading an arm around her waist, and possibly resting his chin against her hair. He let his thoughts wander down that road a little bit, for a couple of silent seconds: things he might have considered but probably wouldn't have done and all the falling dominoes of physical affection he might have initiated but likely wouldn't. He didn't even consider it now. He just thought about it in the terms of a forever-lost opportunity and he thought about the scales he hadn't stood on. "Yeah," he said, after too long a pause. "Let's go outside."
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Posted: Thu Jan 30, 2014 6:16 pm
"Ah, asocial than." Another new word to add to her every growing vocabulary. If he'd had her come to stand by the window she'd have let him loop an arm around her waist, and she'd have been all too happy if he'd rested his chin in her hair. But he didn't ask, instead taking her up on her offer to head outside. She smiled at him, unfolding her legs as she lifted the cats into her arms. A little coaxing got them back inside their carrier, and she stuck her fingers through a gap to touch the tip of a dark little nose. "Be right back, babies." Maybe they weren't real cats, but they were real. < Real ******** cute.> Damn right.And since they were heading outside, and the pavement might be wet, she took a couple of moments to slid long stockings down her legs, ready to face the rain in bare feet. Thigh-highs were folded into themselves, she'd toss them into her room when they went past. She also grabbed the box of custard Pocky off the desk before moving to wait for him next to the door.
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Posted: Thu Jan 30, 2014 6:31 pm
He closed the window and went behind her to check the latch on the carrier, paranoid, fussy; he picked up the box of black sesame pocky off the desk and stuffed it into his pocket without looking at it. He didn't say anything to her at all while they walked; while he waited at the door to her room to let her deposit her socks. He tried to make himself appreciate the line of her legs and her bare feet and found nothing, too tired and overloaded to feel anything much stronger than apathy aside from the occasional flash of resentment. He held the door for her as he always did, and stayed propping it open while he lit his cigarette in the shelter of the doorway. The wind was already picking up, but there was no sign yet of the torrential downpour they were soon to face. "It rained while I was on leave," he commented absently as the door fell to behind him and he leaned back against the wall on one foot, his free arm wrapped around his stomach, yet another of his habitual postures that seemed designed to make him as small as possible. "The whole time."
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