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 Posted: Sun Nov 13, 2016 8:41 am
Once again she was at Quentons. The man was probably sick of seeing her face, but she had brought him a peace offering of Tasykake since the man loved cats (how could he not with faust and a cat cafe). She’d also brought the feline in hopes of lifting Isaiah’s spirits since the feline was attached to him.
She nodded to one of the workers as she passed into the cafe and slipped through the door that led to the apartment. It was a well worn path for the young woman. Something about as familiar as her own apartment at this point, but it was what it was. As much as she loathed it, he was best off staying at Quenton’s place as he healed. She didn’t have the means or knowledge to tend to him like Quenton did. So, she made it a point to visit often. Probably too often if anyone asked Quenton, but it was what it was. She worried about Isaiah.
What he had gone through...she couldn’t even fathom. Now, now he had to deal with the repercussions.
They both did.
Stepping onto the landing that led to the room that Isaiah was occupying, she rapped softly on the wooden door before carefully opening it to peek inside the room. “Isaiah?” She called as her head poked around the door.”I brought you something.” From around the door she produced a vase with a collection of brightly colored flowers. She had arranged herself at the shop. Sure, it may not be something most men wanted, but Gwen hoped that it would brighten up the room a bit and shed some color in the place. “Thought you could do with something new to look at.” She smiled and gave him a wink.How Quenton recognized his opiate dependence, he knew not - but he hated the other man for it. Quenton proved terribly, painfully strict on analgesic use and left him edging against agony for most of his days. When Isaiah slept, it was a thin, waking dew that settled on his mind; seldom did he encounter any form of REM. He lay now, against the sheets, with his lone arm tossed over his eyes. Sun blared through the curtains when it could, and he knew from experience that opiates left him more sensitive to it. His third day of migraine confirmed that anything less than a pitch-black room proved too much for him.
A voice sounded his name, and he winced - not out of recognition, but in recoil from the decibel. Even whispers grated hard on his hearing.
Peeking from beneath his arm, Isaiah spotted Gwen. In her other hand, she carried a familiar sight; Isaiah remembered the soft-wall cat carrier from when he first bought Tastykake from Quenton. He would've smiled if he had teeth, and just a little less pain. Flowers came with her, though he knew not what to do with those.
Why leave someone a pretty thing that will wither and die? Is it supposed to be a consolation? 'At least it wasn't you'?
Isaiah felt about for the notepad oft discarded at his side and found it quickly. In childlike, faltering letters, he scribed a short phrase: good morning. In truth, he wanted to say nothing at all. His next request spoke to his pounding headache. Shut curtains?Isaiah was looking better with each passing day. It was heartwarming to see him begin to recooperate physically. She had no idea how much longer it would be until he was able to speak without being in pain, but she was patient with his way of communication. Sometimes the handwriting took painfully long or was near illegible, but so far she’d managed to decipher what he wanted. So with his ‘good morning’ and silent request, she eased herself into the room the rest of the way before shutting the door behind her.
Carefully she put Tastykake down and the flower on a nearby table before moving to the window. It took only a few good tugs and the curtains were obstructing a large portion of the light that had been filtering into the room. Only the smallest sliver of sunlight slipped through a small gap between the drapes. “I hope you don’t mind I brought Tastykake.” She smiled at him and walked back over to the carrier. Kneeling in front of it, she opened up the transport vessel and carefully reached inside for the feline whom she deposited on the bed next to Isaiah. “I figured it might be nice to not have a feline around who doesn’t gives you sass all the time.” She winked at him.
“So, is there anything you want to do today? Perhaps get up and move around a tiny bit?” She wasn’t sure how much he wanted to do anything but it was at the point that he really needed to get out of the room for a bit. “We can get Tasty some exercise. I brought a toy or two with me. Hell, we could even go down and see some of the other cats. I am sure Tastykake would like some time with some other felines.” Gwen didn’t want to push too much, but Isaiah couldn’t stay in bed all day.When the curtains drew shut, Isaiah laid his arm over his eyes once more. The pressure hurt - any pressure hurt - but what ached far more was Gwen gibbering on about inanities like he wasn't lying in a bed permanently crippled. Like she wanted to drill into his head that the sun still ******** rose just to spite him, that the rest of the world didn't give a single s**t that he would never look the same again. I brought Tastykake, she said, and set the damn cat next to his leg. She set the cat where he would've been able to touch her fur had he still possessed that arm.
Shut the ******** up. Gauze in his mouth still prevented him from any manner of speech. Quenton reminded him that a dentist's visit was necessary before he lost bone growth in his jaw. Photos of the elderly who lost their teeth long ago to meth abuse flashed through his mind, and he thought to himself I must look like that now.
So when she asked what he wanted to do today (he hated that phrase, he hated being expected to take the lead in any relationship and all the gender inequality it implied), he simply ignored her. He made no effort to raise his arm, or grunt acknowledgement, or even pet the cat that immediately bounded down off the bed and darted beneath it. Tasty disliked change - he knew this. He did too, in this respect, and wished that he could simply hide under the bed from the churning cesspit that was reality.
Gwen could take her chipper, fake normalcy and lay in the street with it. It felt like a caricature, a mockery of what he dealt with now. She wasn't thinking. That was the problem, he decided, because that was almost always the problem with her. She tried to be thoughtful, but she never saw enough of the goddamn world to really understand what thoughtfulness meant. She only ever operated under the assumptions of white suburbia, like there wasn't any other variation to life. She was the middle-class breeder trash that he and Travis mocked so long ago, from his father's porch.
Travis was dead, and that fate didn't seem so bad now.And there he went. In one fell swoop he turned himself off to her and the world. It wasn’t unexpected. Hell, she couldn’t blame him. He just had his life turned upside down, but she wasn’t going to say it wasn’t frustrating either on her part. He needed to learn to deal with it because she was not going to just let him lay around and fester like some old bed-ridden man who had nothing left to do but wait for the grim reaper to pay him a visit.
Determined to make him at least look at her, she walked over and sat where she had placed Tastykake before the feline bolted for the safety of the darkness beneath them. She sat there and stared at him, making it a point to tap the bed with a finger as she waited to see if he would at least peak out at her. “You know hiding isn’t going to make all of this just disappear.” She finally remarked. “You can be as pissy as you want with me but I am not going to just walk away and let you waste away to nothing here. I highly doubt Quenton would much appreciate that and I surely wouldn’t.”
She sighed. “Though I suppose what we want doesn’t particularly matter at the moment.” She sighed again and ran a hand through her hair.
“I have no intentions of abandoning you so you damn well better get use to me being a thorn in your side right now. I am not leaving anytime soon.”Isaiah felt the weight, and anger welled. Excuse you, Gwen, did I say you could sit on the bed with me? Congratulations, you just took your first steps toward stripping away my autonomy because I'm crippled and can't retaliate.
How could he explain any of this to her? Even when he remained whole, their arguments involved reams of discourse just to get his point across. He could no longer speak. He wasn't left-handed. He couldn't type well with just three fingers. Body language was all he had. As she barked at him and protested his lack of reciprocation, Isaiah turned over on his side, faced away from her, and pulled the sheets higher from beneath her butt. She mocked Faust earlier, but now he wanted the feline to run her off again. Or Quenton. Or anyone.
It's not a choice of wasting away, he thought bitterly as tongue rings scraped across gauze packs, but a decision that I'm not ready to leave this space yet. You wouldn't understand. You can't ******** understand because white suburbia taught you that the only attitude that matters is the can-do attitude. They taught you that I choose to lay in bed because I'm defeated and lazy. That laying in bed is synonymous to stagnation, or some other kind of decay. It couldn't possibly be recuperative to lay here with my thoughts and try to ******** sleep.
I bet the most empathy you could possibly manage is putting yourself in my shoes - like that's even empathetic. Like it doesn't simply erase who I am and still only substitute your own thoughts and opinions into my predicament. Wake up, Gwen. Go see the ******** world. Go take a look around where I grew up and get a grip on what it means to be privileged and narrow-minded.
Just stay the ******** out of here.When Isaiah turned his back to her, practically tearing the blankets from under her, Gwen got the hint. With her patience running thin she rose up from the bed and walked back over to the curtains she had closed upon request and flung them wide open. “If you want them closed again, you can get up and close them yourself since I know you’re damn well capable of it.”
What she wanted to do was to be able to just pull him from the bed and get his a** into motion. Dammit, why couldn’t he see that she wanted to help? Making the decision to sit here and stew in his thoughts was not a productive way to rehabilitate himself and she was damned if she was going to let him push her away. If anything, her tendency to be stubborn and headstrong only grew worse in situations like this.
So, instead of storming form the room, Gwen instead went to the cat carrier and pulled out a stick that had an elastic string attached to it leading to a feathered ball that rattled ever so quietly. In an attempt to keep herself amused while she waited out Isaiah’s need to ruminate, she sat on the floor in front of the bed and began dangingling the toy around in an attempt to get Tastykake intrigued. The little rattle served as enticement for the cat, and broke what would have been complete silence.Being as much of an insensitive a*****e as you can doesn't make you helpful. Isaiah sighed through his nose and into the blankets. Again he pulled them about himself and buried his face into their darkness. They carried no smell, really, save for what came off of him.
When she continued to jingle Tasty's toy, Isaiah made the mistake of gritting his teeth. He grunted, brows knitting together to try and bear away some of the pain, but neither of these actions eased the sudden recoil in his jaw. His hand froze over his face, wanting to massage the pain away, and yet stalled in fear of more damage. There he waited for several seconds as the hurt slowly descended to throbbing. When it faded, Isaiah reached for his pen once more.
Stop being insensitive, he scrawled out on the pad. Mentally he congratulated the rest of the world on not having her for any kind of makeshift nurse, and that she never bothered pursuing the medical field. Quenton, at least, let him make his own decisions instead of passive-aggressively bossing him around for some reaction that would only breed resentment. If Gwen wanted him to hate her, she did a damn good job of it; at this rate, their relationship would dissolve by the time his birthday rolled around (if his birthday hadn't already passed).
Go home Gwen, before Faust comes in here and kicks you out.
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Posted: Sun Nov 13, 2016 11:54 am
The teasing of the toy alongside Isaiah's bed, got the attention of the feline underneath but it wasn't enough to coax Tasty out. Instead she opted to stay within the safety of the darkness and watch the toy with interest. Nothing more. Just like her owner. She mused to herself. Hiding away from the world. She shouldn't have been surprised that her efforts were in vain.
Her attention was pulled to the movement atop the bed, and she lifted her face to see what Isaiah was doing when she say the notpad being held up for her to read. "Insensitive?" She was stunned for a moment before anger bubbled up. "If coming here to try and cheer you up on your birthday is insensitive then you definitely don't want to see me when I am -trying- to piss you off." She growled out as she rose to her feet. "The moment I came in this door and appeased your need to for darkness you shut me out. I wanted to help you! Do something to help make your day just a bit better, but instead you opted to push me away completely and dive back into your world of self pity." She threw her arms up, obviously now frustrated and exasperated at herself as she turned away from him to pace back towards the window which she looked out of.
"Look, I get it. This whole situation isn't easy for you. Hell, I wasn't expecting it to be. I can't imagine what sort of thoughts are going through your head about all of this or the pain you're dealing with." She ran a hand through her hair and took a deep breath to try and clam down. "None of it changes the way I think about you." She turned to look at him. "Call it mushy or over reactive, whatever, but I do still love you no matter what sort of s**t you go through or are dealing with. I am not just going to turn my back on you."
She reached for the flowers she had brought in and pulled from them a small card which she pulled from the envelope and held out to Isaiah to take. On one side it said 'Happy Birthday, Love.' on the other was 'Consider this an IOU to -whatever- you want.'
When he would look up from the note, he'd find Gwen holding out a box to him, the lid removed and slid onto the bottom. Inside was a black leather necklace with a black onyx amulet with a silver celtic knot dangling from it. "The amulet is a celtic shield. It's said to protect the wearer from evil and danger. I had the jeweler make it for me specifically. The clasp is magnetic too, so it should be a bit easier for you to put on." She watched his reaction, not sure how it would go over. The thing was, she had the amulet made before this whole situation had occurred and had been patiently waiting to give it to him. "And the note..." She looked at him seriously. "I really do mean, anything."
"Happy Birthday, Love."
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Posted: Sun Nov 13, 2016 6:11 pm
Migraine, he wrote on the page, and drew emphatic circles around it.
You’re not living the situation. You’re not even empathizing. Even thinking about it felt monumentally pointless. Gwen wanted to be a massive b***h until he capitulated to her desires, and she could do this easily because of his condition. Plainly, she bullied him passive aggressively into doing what she expected was best for him. Because, plainly, she spent more than enough time as him in his own life that she could make these deductions without his express input. Clearly, he should be overridden in discussions like these, because he obviously lacked his senses. Invalids don’t have brains.
Isaiah rose slowly, but even closing his eyes let in far too much light. The brilliant orange of the room seared to the very back of his skull and only reinforced the throbbing in his mouth. Moaning softly, Isaiah tried to shield his eyes with his arm. The pressure only replicated the same situation.
He found little interest in the card she gave him, or the well-wishes for his birthday. Such normalcies sounded like mockeries now, like caricatures propped up to ostracize him further from the rest of the world. The thought left him feeling increasingly disgusted by her, as it contrasted starkly against her bullying behavior. He wondered what she even wanted from him, besides her way. Did she expect smiles for his birthday? A pat on the back for remembering? Did she want him to get down and service her for a job well-done? Instead of taking the card, he slid from the covers unsteadily. He approached the window. He yanked it shut hard enough to nearly rip the curtains from their rings.
When she drew his attention to the amulet, his first thought regarded her horribly ironic timing. He could’ve used any protective stones over a week ago when the Negaverse was busy cutting him into pieces. Even so, he placed no spiritual significance into such baubles - especially not now.
Thanks for the birthday present, but I’d rather break up. Isaiah pulled on his years of careful customer service to clear his face of any evidence of such thoughts. After sitting on the edge of the bed, he pulled notepad into lap, then looked at her expectantly. She was the one who arrived with preconceived notions of dragging him out of bed, so she would be the one to name what she expected to do that day.
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Posted: Sun Nov 13, 2016 6:57 pm
"I am sorry, I didn't realize..." She bit her lower lip, realizing that she had been, well, not paying close enough attention to him. To his wants. Sure, she had come here with the intention of trying to bolster him, pick up his mood and just attempt to be a rock for him but it hadn't worked. None of it.
It was painfully obvious by his actions and lack of interest in what she was presenting to him that he was uninterested. In fact, she deflated quite a bit as she watched him shuffle to the window to close the curtains to return to the bed and sit, looking at her.
She obviously just managed to be nothing more than a nuisance to him and...that hurt.
With the card still grasped in her hands and the amulet still sitting in the box in the other she glanced down at both, before placing the lid on the box and laying it and the card on the bedside table. Somewhere he could easily reach them if he desired. "There's um...there's a card inside that box that gives a bit more explanation on the amulet. If you're ever interested." By this point she couldn't look him fully in the eyes, realizing that she had made a grave mistake.
Maybe she shouldn't have come at all?
No. If anything she had managed one thing. He'd gotten out of bed. Though, she felt horrible for how it had occurred.
Rubbing a hand over her face, she finally looked at him again. God, how she wished she could just fix it all for him. Everything. He hadn't deserved any of this and it broke her heart to see him in such a horrible state.
"Look. I...I am sorry. For everything." She wasn't even sure what the everything was, but she felt inclined to express it. Like she had done so many wrongs that there was nothing else she could do but try to encompass them all in one fell swoop. "I wanted to come up here and try to cheer you up. Try to be the stabilizer for you like you've been for me in tough times and..." She shrugged. "Apparently I did a piss poor job of it."
"It's your birthday, whether you care to celebrate it in any fashion is up to you. If you want to do anything, we can. I won't lie and say that I'd like to do something even if it's just enjoying each other's company and playing card games or going for a short walk. Otherwise, if what you want is to just sleep and rest, then I'll just sit here and read or something." She paused. "Or go, if that's what you prefer." She laid it out without sounding sorry for herself. She meant what she was saying. Sure, if he sent her away she'd feel horrible but, well, she wasn't going to force herself into being his company if he really just wanted sleep's embrace.
"I'll leave tastykake here with you, too." At least that way he wouldn't be completely alone.
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Posted: Mon Nov 14, 2016 2:47 pm
Of course you didn’t realize. You didn’t ask. You didn’t think. Isaiah continued to watch her, gaze carefully clear. Already she jumped into defensive mode without any clear communications from him, and continued to operate on some insight into his behavior that he wasn’t fully aware of. He paid little attention to the trinket she offered, but he doubted that explained the sudden 180 in her behavior.
Isaiah continued to watch her as she apologized. He kept his opinions carefully to himself. She wanted to cheer him up, and apparently the one way to do so was by bossing him around until he did precisely as she asked, even if it involved indirect aggressions. Being a stabilizer meant being unconscionably loud and oppressive and stripping away all autonomy he had in his recovery process. But, he couldn’t allow himself to be surprised - this was coming from the woman who thought relationships could only ever succeed if they were monogamous. Hell, if this were thirty years ago, he bet she would think that gay is a disease.
Mentally tearing her down did little good, however. Doing so ignored that she had good points. She was thoughtful to a point, as evidenced by remembering the birthday that he forgot. She was very traditional, which means she succeeds well in this society and appeals to the broadest range of people. She has a traditional moral compass, too, which meant those who deserved justice by dictation of that moral compass would find her a powerful ally.
But here, sitting next to her, he felt further from her than ever.
Isaiah retrieved his notebook once again, and with some difficulty, turned to a new page. Please return the necklace, he wrote while trying to keep the page stable. Writing left-handed was an eternal punishment, and he was reminded of it every time he touched pencil to paper. I’m going out.
Which, he hoped, communicated that leaving Tastykake with him was a bad idea. Really, he figured that critical thinking would confer that on its own - she was introducing a cat into another cat’s space, and had no food or litterbox so Tasty had nowhere to s**t, and would have to eat food she was unaccustomed to if Faust even allowed her to share. Did Quenton know she brought Tasty in? He could not stifle the sigh.
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Posted: Sat Nov 19, 2016 8:53 pm
This. This whole meeting, was going horribly. Gwen knew it. How could she not see that what with the state that Isaiah was in and how shitty she now felt for putting him in more pain? I am such an idiot. She thought to herself as she watched the man perched on the edge of the bed. Gwen wanted to shelter Isaiah, protect him, help him, but all she was doing was bungling things up and making it all that much worse.
She watched as he reached for his notebook and fumbled with turning the page. She itched to help him, but wasn't sure if her help was wanted now. Probably not since I just completely disregarded his own needs.
His scribbled words, barley legible at points, caused her heart to constrain. "No." She said. "I'll...I'll just leave it there. Do what you want with it, but I can't take it back even if I wanted to." and it was true. A custom piece like that wasn't something she could just return. She had it made knowing that there would have been no way to return it, but it hadn't been a worry then.
And then he mentioned he was going out. Very obviously not at all inclined to ask her to join him. "Right." She said. "Right, um...OK." She walked over to gather her things up. In the process she knocked over her purse, cursed and shoved the dumped contents back in without thinking about it.
Eyes shifted to the cat carrier. Right. Tastykake.
She didn't say anything to Isaiah, as she walked back over to him as he sat on the bed. Kneeling down, she did her best to manuver herself under the furniture to reach the feline underneath all the while trying to sooth Tasty with little non-sense sounds. After a bang of her head on the bed, and a sharp intake of breath, she eventually reemerged with the cat in her hand.
With care she placed Tasty into the cat carrier and zipped it shut. She didn't even think to grab the cat toy that lay discarded alongside the bed. Her mind was very obviously elsewhere as she collected her things. "Right, well...I guess...I guess I'll go then. If you....If you need anything just..." What? Text? Call? While texting would be slightly easier than calling she doubted his dexterity was there. What else was there though? "I guess text."
She slung her purse over her shoulder and grabbed the cat carrier and reached for the door handle. She paused a moment, finger wrapped around the knob. "I really am sorry, Isaiah. I..." She paused. "Never mind."
She opened the door and slipped out, closing it behind her as quietly as she could.
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Posted: Fri Nov 25, 2016 1:01 pm
Isaiah only watched her as she gathered up the cat. He wondered to himself if he should feel bad about this, if that's what she expected of him now, but he simply couldn't conjure that emotional bandwidth. He felt desolate, exhausted, unmotivated. Interacting with Gwen demanded emotional energy, especially since he had to be her support through various points in their time together. Gwen, however, lacked the practice to be an effective emotional support. Even if it wasn't her fault, he found no energy with which to teach her. He just wanted her to pack her attitude and leave.
She was obviously hurt, he knew this, and the that prospect left him more frustrated. Here, he could hardly stand for longer than an hour without exhausting himself, he couldn't speak, and he was missing parts of his body - yet he had to worry about Gwen and her feelings. The relationship felt toxic beneath the surface, and their interactions today proved as much. Now, there wasn't room for the pleasantries and daily nuances that composed a carefully integrated exterior. Now, he could not behave as he usually did to defend his defeated state. Now, she was challenged with the role of keeping peace and failed it due to her own lack of experience with acting as a caretaking party.
What the hell is wrong with me, he asked himself.
As he watched Gwen leave, he wondered why he focused so dearly on resentment. He learned through the course of burned-out relationships that resentmetn is a sign to communicate or call it quits. Without teeth, without any way to make himself heard, he needed to rely on a listening ear - and Gwen declared nonverbally that she possessed none of those. The other option left to him was to call it quits, move on, move out, take a break and reexamine the prospects of a relationship in some months when he recovered. If he recovered.
Isaiah began to choke on these thoughts when the door closed behind her. He felt nothing of his other hand, now gone from him, and buried himself in the pillows. Fingers squeezed into the sheets, knotting them into fists, and he worked out what grief he could in the time allowed.
Isaiah was going out today, he knew this. He had to, or moments like these would define his reality.
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