|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Posted: Tue Apr 22, 2014 10:31 pm
“Holy high ceilings, Batman,” said Tallulah, whistling lowly as she followed Nick into the apartment. Usually when people combined apartments, the combined two on the same floor of the building - or at least that was the impression she was under. Combining them top to bottom like this was genius. Sure, it needed some work - it needed a lot of work - but Kaatje sounded like she had a plan for that, and they could only keep Nick in a hotel room for so long.
“So, how are you feeling about this?” Tallulah asked, glancing out the front windows. They fronted directly onto the street, and while there were security bars installed, her first instinct was to think that they needed some kind of curtains or blinds, just for the sake of privacy. Nick might not be recognizable as Paul anymore, but she was certainly still clearly identifiable - and she didn’t want anyone drawing that line.
“Kaatje, um,” she said, going to check out the fridge. It looked fairly recent, and the stove was a stove, and the kitchenette had a stone counter and a decent sink, so really, it was better than most student apartments. “Kaatje’s strongly hinting that I should move in here with you - how would you feel about that?”
She wasn’t sure how she felt. They were still regaining their equilibrium as a couple, and it would mean coming up with some kind of explanation for her parents about why she was moving in with a guy she’d just met, and what had happened to Paul- she hated lying to them. It made her feel sick. Maybe it was as good a time as any to come clean to them about everything. After all, her father already knew most of it…
Which reminded her that she needed to check if Jaimie had ever gotten his beer, and make sure he knew he could stop watching her house now, everyone was out of the woods.
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Apr 22, 2014 10:43 pm
Nick… wasn’t sure how he felt about this. Tallulah had filled him in on the broad strokes--he’d fallen in with a bad crowd and the great big gaps in his memory were from whatever they’d done to him. His family couldn’t be told where he was or what he was doing because if they knew, someone would hurt them. (When he had asked, full of good-natured puzzlement, if he’d been on crack or a gang member or something, Finn and Kaatje had shared an awkward look. Now he only felt… to put it mildly... concerned.) He wasn’t sure he wanted to be off on his own, but of course everyone had their own s**t to do, and he had to do this sometime. Graduation was in less than a month and he had a lot of paperwork to do.
“I’m a little worried,” he said, which was downplaying I’m terrified by at least five degrees from Kevin Bacon. “But I’m sure it’ll be fine. Kaatje’s upstairs and I’m fairly sure she could arm-wrestle one of Ms. Meyer’s vampires to the ground.” He hadn’t seen all that much of her, but she seemed… to put it mildly… terrifying. Why was he putting so many things mildly? Whatever. It didn’t matter. Nick went to brush his hair behind his ears and found nothing there to brush at, then lowered his hands, feeling both awkward and a little useless.
He took a deep breath. “My concern would be how we’d explain it to your parents,” he said, “I’m not exactly recognizable as Paul anymore.” Up the wooden spiral staircase was a lofted space, and Nick took it two at a time, almost hitting his head on the ceiling as he went. He called down to Tallulah: “I don’t know enough about this senshi thing to really try to explain it, either.”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Apr 22, 2014 10:44 pm
One of these days, thought Tallulah, she was going to have to sit Nick down and explain to him that the quote-unquote bad crowd he’d fallen in with was the Negaverse - but that was going to have to wait, because for now she had a lot of things on her plate to deal with and getting him to henshin up again and go out on patrol and re-educating him about the war was honestly the very last of her worries. “That’s okay,” she said, following him up the stairs. “I know enough about the senshi stuff to explain it for the both of us.”
She would just, like, omit the part where her boyfriend had previously tried to kill her on two distinct occasions, because the important thing was that he hadn’t.
“I mean,” Tallulah added, pausing at the top of the stairs. “If you want me to explain it to them.” It seemed like life would be easier that way but - she was done outing her friends as senshi. What her parents would and would not know was Nick’s decision and Nick’s alone. “I think my dad would understand. He already knows, well,” she sighed. “He knows way more than he should.”
The little upstairs loft had a second full bathroom and a sleeping area open to the room below. It was - well, she could see how it was a desirable setup. Hip. Kaatje was probably giving Nick the best apartment in the building (or at least the largest one), and Tallulah couldn’t help but wonder what she was playing at. “My mom would get over it,” she said, running her hand along the railing. “Eventually. And to be completely honest, there is only so long I can really look forward to being able to stand living with my parents.”
She was twenty-one, for crying out loud! She’d been independent before her illness and her doctor and therapist were both encouraging her to ease back into normal life, now that her recovery was mostly complete - sooner or later, she was going to move out again, whether or not that meant moving in with her boyfriend or not. “I’m trying to let you be your own boss here,” she said, but she was thinking: this loft was totally big enough for a king size bed if you were really determined to have one.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Apr 22, 2014 10:45 pm
“I still don’t understand the senshi stuff,” he said, sitting on the edge of the single bed Kaatje--or Finn?--had put in the lofted area ‘until he could find a roommate’. “Is there some kind of seminar I could take?” He was only half-joking. He was used to consuming information in small blocks, easily digestable chunks, and then reviewing them repeatedly in larger forms. If he could just… get a crash course in it, he was sure he’d be fine. But it always seemed like Tallulah was uncomfortable with the topic, so he… didn’t really want to mention it.
He sighed. “Yeah, it’s fine,” he said, “it’s not like they’re not putting a lot of trust in me as far as letting me date their daughter.” Nick flopped experimentally backwards on the bed, propping his feet up on the footboard.
It was easier to think about things like fathers making death threats than it was to imagine what might happen if Finn’s friend failed at the whole making-Nick’s-new-identity-match-his-old-one; he wasn’t sure he was that good at being who he was. Not sure he could handle another six years of college, especially without his family’s upper-middle-class college fund at his back. Even if he did, how would he pay for it?
He didn’t say any of that. Instead, he spread his hands out above him. “I’d like it if you lived with me,” he said. “You’re very nice to cuddle with, and you seem to have this delusion that I can cook. I’m not likely to find that in another roommate.”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Apr 22, 2014 10:48 pm
There wasn’t really a seminar, Tallulah thought, but she was confident in her abilities to get Nick up to speed with enough time and patience. You used to be evil was just a conversation she wasn’t looking forward to having and she kind of wanted to work her way up to it. “We’ll go over it. I’ll get you all caught up.”
She flopped down onto the bed beside him, and rolled just enough to splay her upper body across his torso, so her head was resting on his chest. “Hey,” she said, “My last boyfriend was a juvenile delinquent and we were in high school, so you’re a total step up.” Her mother and father, from every indication, had liked Paul. They’d like Nick, too, she was sure - just as soon as she figured out how to explain that they were the same person.
“Why thank you,” she said, reaching up, taking one of his hands, and placing it over her heart. “You’re very nice to cuddle with, too, and I persist in insisting that you can cook because it’s true. You make very good salads.” And, truth be told, she liked to be told that he was interested in cohabitation. It made her feel very grown up! Like this was a real adult relationship. Between real adults. Which it should have felt like, because it was.
“So, we’ll, um, we’ll have that talk with my parents, yeah?” she asked. “I just need a few days. To plan.” Tallulah was in no condition to go into something so important without a solid course of action.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Apr 22, 2014 10:48 pm
Nick smiled at her and twisted his fingers into her hair, unclipping the dumb star clip with the easy familiarity of a motion repeated a hundred hundred times. “I trust you,” he told her, letting his head flop back against the single dormitory-quality pillow and lacing his fingers together through her dark hair. “Although I’m not sure I trust your taste in men.”
It was a joke, sort of. Halfways. He chose not to comment on the salads comment, because that was simply a matter of sizing and proportion. “Yeah, we’ll plan that talk with your parents,” he told her, “we’ll consider it from all angles. Whatever you think will work best for them, Tallulah.” And--he could only remember telling her this once, sort of hazily, through a letter: “I love you,” he said.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Apr 22, 2014 10:49 pm
“Yeah,” snorted Tallulah, watching him set her hairclip aside. He was always doing that, and she wasn’t quite sure why - was it because it got in the way of him messing with her hair, or was he subtly commenting on the accessory that linked her civilian and senshi sides? Admittedly, it was a bit of an odd affectation - most people she knew had not consistently worn their hair more or less the same way since sophomore year of high school. “I sure do know how to pick them.”
All things considered, though, Jaimie Leontyne had turned out okay - not to say he hadn’t already been okay when she’d been dating him, everything wrong with that relationship had, retrospect showed, been the youth of the people involved in it. And Nick was, well - from what she understood, he’d been pondering purification for a while before she started dating him, so, like, her taste wasn’t awful. She’d caught him on the upswing!
“I think the truth might be best for them,” she said, rubbing her thumb against the hem of his shirt. “I mean, as much as it’s safe to tell them.” She was pretty sure her father would take Spider-man stuff as an acceptable explanation for anything at this point, but he deserved a bit more respect than that. And her mother, who’d been in the dark all this time, needed to be brought into the swing of things entirely.
“I trust them to be able to keep quiet, I mean,” she said, and trailed off, because he was speaking again. Her heart fluttered inside her chest - she’d never tire of hearing him say that. “I love you, too.”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Apr 22, 2014 10:49 pm
Nick shifted on the bed to give her a little more room, and when that just pinched his arm uncomfortably between his wall and his ribs, he hauled her more on top of him. He liked having her this close, and he hoped she liked being that close; she was a comforting weight and--and maybe it made him a little nervous for reasons he didn’t know to think of--of--
He took an uneasy breath, and he kissed the top of her head. “Your parents seem like deeply sensible people,” he said, “who have raised a deeply sensible daughter. So I think we can both trust them to know to, you know, not spread it around that their daughter is a… whatever we are.” He still wasn’t completely clear on that. Like, there were buttwings involved if you were a girl, he’d gathered, from seeing Gunn, Europa, and Iris. And if you were a guy, you… somehow… went from what he wore as Oenone to what Finn wore as Babylon?... Yeah, he didn’t really get how any of this worked yet.
“Are you all done deliberating on when I get that seminar,” he asked, “because I think I need to know that before we tell your parents anything?”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Apr 22, 2014 10:50 pm
“Senshi,” Tallulah interjected lightly, leaning forward to kiss him on the jaw. “You and Gunn and I are Senshi, and Babylon’s a knight. We’re - basically, we’re superheroes.” She drummed her fingers against his arm, considering - she’d basically prepared everything she needed to in order to feel comfortable telling him about being Spinel, but right now didn’t seem like the right day to have that conversation. Hey, you used to be evil and tried to kill me twice was not a topic of discussion you could just launch into without preamble.
“I know you want to know what’s going on,” she said, “But it’s kind of a really long story, and I want to have enough time set aside to get through it all, okay?” Hopefully putting it off again wouldn’t frustrate him too much - but she really did think that she needed to pick her time and place carefully, and it wasn’t just something to discuss while checking out an apartment.
“But I’ll definitely fill you in before we go talk to them,” she assured him, resting her head against his chest. “Seriously, Nick, I promise, I’m not gonna keep you in the dark indefinitely.”
Changing the subject, she asked, “Why do you always take out my hair clip?”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Apr 22, 2014 10:50 pm
Huh. Uh… so… no, Nick still didn’t quite get why he was grouped in with a bunch of girls. He’d consider it later. Maybe he was part of the master race, or something. Like the one male Amazon. Either way… “I can wait,” he said, even though he didn’t really want to. It was like picking at a scab, or worrying a loose tooth. He felt compelled to prod the edges of his memories, but at the same time, who he’d been--even the thought of who he’d been--repulsed him. It gave him an unfamiliar ache in his chest.
“Dunno,” he said, combing his fingers through Tallulah’s hair. “I like it loose. And, uh, you know. It’s the same damn hairclip as when you’re Europa.”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Apr 22, 2014 10:51 pm
Tallulah snorted. “You know,” she said, reaching for the hairclip and looking at it. It looked utterly ordinary, the same one she’d bought in a little beachside market with her parents, the summer after freshman year, on a vacation that was a reward for good grades. “I’m actually never sure if it is or not.”
“Because when I’m not wearing the clip and I power up, Europa still wears the clip?” she said. “But when I am wearing it and I power up, I don’t know if it actually changes, if it ever becomes a different clip, or if it stays the same…” She shrugged. “Shroedinger’s hair-clip, I guess,” she joked.
“But you did that before you knew I was her,” Tallulah added, dragging a finger in circles along his collarbone. “So were you just, like, subconsciously making the connection? Or did it not bother you for that reason until recently?”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Apr 22, 2014 10:51 pm
“I don’t know,” he said, catching her hand in his and gently tugging the clip out of it. “Like I said, I like your hair loose. I don’t remember if there was anything else to it.” He shifted up on his elbows, the clip in his hand so she couldn’t get to it. “You’re beautiful either way,” he told her, because it was true, and he wanted her to know that. “So I mean, go on and keep wearing it, unless you mind me taking it out, I’m probably just going to keep… doing that.”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Reply
