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 Posted: Thu Oct 15, 2015 6:30 pm
Harvard looked at Caroline's last message and slipped his phone into his pocket without responding. He knew she would wait for him even if he did not reply, and that kind of certainty felt strange, but it did not make Harvard any less sure. He slipped on a light coat because ********, it was drizzling again (it rained so much more here than in Delta, which made absolutely no sense), and headed out to find her. The rain dampened the smell of mildew slightly; Harvard never thought he might miss those run-down dorms, but he did, in a way. He did not, however, miss the infected wandering about as though they owned the place. So, he walked, and was grateful for the woods and their lack of shambling infected. He came to her cabin first, because he rather thought he'd find her there. If he did not, Harvard would keep searching. He knew that the amount of time searching did not matter as much as the eventual finding. It was persistence and winning. And Harvard did not like to lose. He opened Caroline's door, without knocking, as if he owned her cabin. "Caroline."
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Posted: Thu Oct 15, 2015 6:58 pm
The Caroline that he found today was much different from the one he'd last found. There was no oversaturated confidence, nothing visibly inviting - she looked much the opposite, in fact, as she fought against slipping into more lost time, focusing with great determination to keep her hold on the last few strings that tied her to coherent awareness. The sight of her withdrawn and unstable wasn't all that uncommon, but she preferred to hide away and make believe that no one ever saw it. Allowing something different was uncomfortable in its own right, so she kept the importance of this at the forefront of her thoughts, a pattern repeating to herself alone. She'd been sitting and staring at the images on her phone, one hand clutching her hair as she flipped back and forth through them. When she heard the door open, she made a hasty attempt to release her hair, well aware of just how crazy she probably looked; it didn't help much to do so, leaving her instead with a mess of tangled red over part of her face. "Thought I was supposed to be the one telling you what I want," she teased. Or tried to, at least, with only half a smile and a skittish air all about her.
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Posted: Thu Oct 15, 2015 8:11 pm
"Was I so easy to see through?" Harvard took in the disarray of self, the messy hair, the effort in her half-smile. He appreciated that expression, the attempt to tease - because the attempt was made for him. He met it with a half-smile of his own and moved through the small cabin. He paused at a table, at a dresser, in his odd circuit of her room. But shortly, he stopped, looking down at her. Sliding down, Harvard sat next to, and a little behind, Caroline. Gently, he moved her hair out of the way, exposing her face, and pressed a kiss to her ear. "Found you." Her lips were far too distracting when he wanted to ask things, after all. Resting his chin on her shoulder, he tried to peer down at her phone, but soon gave up, instead turning his attention to her hair. His fingers combs through it, gently unknotting tangles. In his pocket was a brush, pilfered from his short journey around the inside of her cabin. "What are you looking at, Caroline?" He knew the answer, but he wanted to hear her say it.
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Posted: Fri Oct 16, 2015 10:40 am
Though she would have preferred to continue playing, the effort she was capable of putting into it only lasted so long, and none of the half-formed replies made their way out of her. That energy was put towards dividing herself between him and the images on her phone, eyes flickering back and forth between them, timid and uncertain and feeling much more like prey than Caroline would have liked. In the moments that he was not touching or kissing her, she didn't look much like she wanted anyone near her. It was difficult to tell exactly why her pulse was racing; the conflict of safety permeated all of her, going beyond just her eyes, and neither escaping nor staying seemed to be the right option. But staying felt better, truly, so she did. "Missing pieces." She couldn't quite hold it steady, and the trembling of her fingers on the screen caused the images to open and close and switch on their own. "Don't know if--do you think they still fit the spaces between us?"
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Posted: Fri Oct 16, 2015 10:42 am
She was nervous, skittish as a newborn foal. Oddly enough, it made him want to protect her. Harvard was not normally the protective type, beyond feeling responsible for his students, but he wanted to press his fingers into hers and still their trembling, to wrap all of himself around her. Like human bubble wrap. He almost chuckled at the thought, but did not, too worried the sound might be misconstrued.
"Caroline," he said, and inched closer to her so that he could wrap his arms around her from behind. It wasn't a cage to imprison her, but he hoped something like the comfort of wrapping up in a blanket or a scarf. Harvard was not afraid of her running away; he would find her. "If these are pieces we don't remember - isn't it alright to think we are starting over? Here, give me your phone."
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Posted: Fri Oct 16, 2015 10:47 am
Comfort did come from having his arms around her, but she didn't consciously show it. Her shaking and fidgeting calmed, leaving only her purposeful tapping on the screen. "Starting over isn't the--it happens all over again, if you let it." She traced just the circle of a 9, over and over again. "I'm just...say we start again. If I leave out something important that I forgot, something--I could put a 9 where there doesn't need to be a 9, and then it starts all over again. With someone other--" What the hell was she saying. What was she thinking? She stared down at the phone, wondering why this mattered so much. Missing time had never bothered her before, but there was something about the way these notes were written, something in them that made her feel like this should. They might as well have been written by a stranger, because this was not any her that she recognized. She didn't think she liked it. These were empty meanings that neither of them had earned. As she idly picked at the edge of her collar, she hesitated for only a moment longer before handing the phone over to him.
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Posted: Fri Oct 16, 2015 10:49 am
"It happens all again," he repeated, sliding his fingers briefly through hers as he took her phone. "That's enough - that it happens. One nine is just a number. Two nines make two points - a line. Three make a pattern." Harvard recited this as though he'd heard it before, as though it was the only thing that made sense. One hand held her phone, flicking deliberately between the pictures, the smile that crossed his face hidden behind her. These were foreign images, foreign people, and while there was a certain sort of longing it invoked, he knew he could not try to emulate something natural. It would be the very antithesis of natural progression. Still, he kind of enjoyed what he could understand of the notes. As he flicked through the pictures, his other hand traced patterns on her arm, simply enjoying the feel of her skin. He moved his hand and brushed her hair off her neck, giving her nape a teeth-scraping kiss. "You can't let yourself be afraid of a blueprint of half-formed nines, and you can't follow half a blueprint. Burn it, Caroline. Forget these people that aren't us, but maybe were us. Be with me, here, now." He tapped her phone again her thigh lightly. "Do you trust me?"
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Posted: Fri Oct 16, 2015 10:51 am
She had barely been able to move beyond thinking about the feeling of his fingers against her skin, but hearing him talk of patterns and nines and the points that connected them was enough to pull her away from it. The way he'd put it so perfectly made Caroline curious, and she stared straight ahead with a look of patient bemusement, waiting to know what came next. This was beginning to make sense. All that broke through her silence as she listened to him was a sharp, short breath at the feeling of his teeth against her skin. There was a dangerous light in her eyes as he spoke of destroying that incomplete blueprint, and she slowly smiled at the idea of burning it to forget. She wished she'd thought of that, but delighted in the fact that he had instead - and even more so that he was giving this thought to her. "Yes." Her eyes were on the phone, which she was already tiring of amid more tempting options. "For as long as you want me to."
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Posted: Fri Oct 16, 2015 10:53 am
There was a pause in which Harvard simply took the time to think about the phrase 'as long as you want me to'. The 'long' part was surprisingly (especially for Harvard's usual modus operandi) of little concern to him. Usually he held a close expiration date to those he hung around, not a pre-planned thing of course, but a natural and eventual occurrence. That is, Harvard got bored quickly. He tossed people out of his bed, out of his life when they no longer amused him. But Caroline, well, he didn't think about expirations or boredom around her. It was a strange feeling. "Good," was all he said in response to her. He turned her phone so she could watch clearly as, one by one, he deleted every picture of her notes. Once deleted, he placed her phone in between her legs, fingers taking the time to ghost along the inside of her thigh before disappearing behind her back. After a moment, his hand would reappear, preferring up his own phone. It was open to the pictures of her notes. "Do mine." His free hand slipped inside her top, just a bit (enough), because she was distracting even when things were important. Harvard sighed and reluctantly moved his hand away. "And, finally, here," he said, and there was a rustle of papers behind her back. "Want to actually burn them?" Harvard had printed the notes out, for lack of the original medium, and now set them and a lighter next to Caroline.
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Posted: Fri Oct 16, 2015 10:57 am
Seeing the notes slowly disappear wasn't distressing in the slightest. Somehow, their existence evoked more anxiety than the lack of them did. Caroline supposed it might have had something to do with the lack of clarity she felt while looking at them; all of it being technically correct, while simultaneously causing so much confusion, was making her question much more than she ever wanted to question. Watching them go away was nice, but the opportunity to remove them herself was even more satisfying. She hesitated between each press of the little trashcan icon, not to keep them as long as possible, but to revel in the nonexistence of it at her hand (and to enjoy the feeling of his hand for as long as she could). So when given a sanctioned chance to be really, really destructive, she snatched it up. Almost literally, had she not stopped herself to take the pages in a more casual way. "Were you--" Lighter in hand, she stopped herself from asking if he'd planned on keeping them. It certainly seemed like it, for copies like this to exist, but it didn't matter now. "Never mind. Yes-- yes, I want to. I'm going to. Now." With a flick and a spark and no regard for personal safety, she held the lighter under the pages, letting the flame lick the edges as they smoked and darkened. Still keeping it distant enough to prevent all of it from igniting, she glanced back at him with a devious look as she tried to gauge any reactions.
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Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2015 11:24 am
With a quick kiss to the side of her neck (that almost lingered, almost turning into a sucking, teeth-scraping thing), he moved, quickly grabbing a short, metal waste bin. Harvard shoved it under the burning papers and settling back behind her. Caroline did not burn wantonly, but deliberately, slowly. She gave things the weight they deserved. Harvard smiled at her. "Faster," he whispered. His hands snaked around her body again, pulling her back and his chest flush together. "Don't drop them, Caroline." Harvard slid his hands down over her thighs.
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