2019-04-04 - She's really not crazy, though. That was true.

Good night. And Alex plugs in his phone, because he's not allowed to just turn it off, and takes some Tylenol, and goes to bed early. Sleep is a long way off, though none of his dreams try to bite him tonight, so that's an improvement. The next day leaves him still out-of-sorts, and he knows he should call her, not text, hear her voice and let her hear his, but it's just, Tomorrow, okay?

Now tomorrow is today, and Sophia is on a plane to Jersey, and Alex is muddling through the business of work and setting up house, hiring someone to buy furniture for him and make sure it goes where it's supposed to. So this appointment - this date? - is pushed back to late in the afternoon. He'll meet her at the carousel in the park around five, okay? And that's where he is, standing beneath his blue-and-white paneled umbrella at twenty-till, watching the lights on the nearly empty carousel, strolling around it aimlessly with an eye toward the entrance of the park he most expects Violet to use.

There was no expectation of another meeting. The things unspoken had said enough. So the vibration of her phone on her piano that next day took her by surprise; she made him wait an hour or so until she was finished with her playing before she types out her reply. Yes. Singular. No invitation for further conversation. That's just how it would be.

Now tomorrow is today, and she walks through the ever-drizzling rain underneath her own umbrella. She comes from the lake-side, having taken the walking bridge, which means she sees him before he sees her. There's a solid moment while she watches him underneath the lights of the empty carousel where she thinks to turn back around, to text him and tell him that today wasn't a good day. That no day would be a good day. But she carries herself forward, her heart already heavy. "Hello Alex," her voice is soft, just above the carousel music. She's dressed nice today, but not the same kind of nice that she dressed the day she showed up at the hospital - a snugly fit charcoal gray sweater above a Peter Pan collared shirt, a cream skirt with lace and beading. Stockings. Flat-soled black boots. This was layers and nice fabric. This was not an outfit that was easy to get out of.

Do we need to deal with what Alex is wearing? It's a shirt and a tie and slacks. None of his clothes are ever easy to get out of; it's a problem for another day.

Today, right now, he watches Violet's approach with a small smile, one might even call it wan, though he tugs it up brighter by the time she gets all the way over. There's an awkward moment when he leans forward for a second, like he might peck a kiss there, but then rocks back onto his heels instead, and turns to offer an elbow to her rather than his hand. "Hello, Violet. You said there was somewhere quiet?" Like, somewhere not right next to this carousel with the music. He shifts the umbrella, tilting it so there's room enough for two people beneath it - which would require her to fold her own, so that's on her to decide or not.

It was a very awkward moment, because when he leans forward? There's this momentary spark of hope in her blue eyes. Like maybe she really shouldn't be worried, like maybe that whole text conversation had just been a bump in the road. That happens in normal relationships, right? So she tips herself up onto her toes, and then he rocks back onto his heels, and she's left there with expectations and quiet anticipation and the brightness in her eyes swiftly dimming. She eases back onto the flats of her feet, and she just nods her head. "Down by the pond," she replies, the offer of his elbow rather than his hand acknowledged with a glance but not accepted. She turns on her heel instead, she'll walk herself under her own umbrella, and she starts forward in silence, with an expectation that he'll follow.

At least along the way, she can try and steel herself for what's to come. She doesn't fill the silence with awkward conversation - she just walks along the path that leads down past the carousel, cuts through the brush and trees, and leads to the edge of the pond. There were picnic benches here, sagging with age, but at least the trees give some protection from the rain. The carousel's music is a distant memory here. "I guess we should have picked some place inside to talk," she comments as she folds her umbrella, trusting the trees to keep them mostly dry.

Alex's steps lag a moment, and - though she's not expected to know why - it's one of those seconds when he replays the past few moments in his mind and contemplates how to course-correct in the future. So he watches her umbrella from the back for a few steps, and then he follows, leaving the carousel and the park proper behind. The scenery is new and intriguing, to him, so it at least takes the edge off the discomfort of walking along in silence with someone.

By the time they're Here, Alex has dragged up that same smile again, looking up through the trees as if he's weighing exactly how much trust to give those branches. His shirt will just have to take its chances, as he folds his own umbrella, shaking water off of it and away from Violet. "No, this is nice," he disagrees pleasantly. And just cuts right to the chase: "I'm sorry for that whole conversation, Violet. I should have called you, or waited to see you. Texting is," he drops the smile and pulls a face, "awful. An awful way to talk about anything except when-and-where."

There's no smile that Violet wears; her lips are thin, and she flicks a gaze out across the pond where the rain falls and ripples the surface. "It's not as quiet in the summer. There's always someone here swimming, and someone is always.." she trails, tucking an errant strand of frizzy pale gold behind her ear. He doesn't need to know about the people that try to jump off the bridge and die. Even if there's always at least one every summer. The corners of her eyes wrinkle as she swallows back that conversation. "Picnicking," she decides, is a safer topic of conversation. Very neutral.

But then he jumps right into the thick of things, and she shifts awkwardly on one flat-soled boot to the other. She should have brought a coat, to lay on the bench. Instead, she swipes her palm across the surface of it to wipe away the rain droplets. If all she ends up doing is walking away from this with a damp bottom, she can suffer through it. Down she goes, perching on the edge and crossing one leg over the other, tipping her chin to look up at him after. "We don't do very good with texting," she agrees. "But I don't know what you're apologizing for. You didn't say anything. You said you wanted to wait until we were in person to do that. So.." she folds out her hand, gesturing. "What is it that you wanted to say?"

"No." Not about summer or whatever. Alex is in no position to argue about that. Though it would be pretty weird if he tried, no? Anyway, he gives the pond a glance, with no clue about the people that jump off bridges and drown, then returns his attention to Violet wholly and entirely. So the no at the top of all this: "You should go first." With talking, he means. Not running away. He drops down onto the bench next to her, shifting his umbrella off to one side and pretending not to be bothered by the water felt through his pants.

"You said there was something I didn't need to know. Or perhaps I did. You should clarify that first." Beat. "Please."

There's a blink when he tells her no, a rapid fluttering of her lashes. But when he clarifies, her response at first is only to laugh. A dull, dry huff of a laugh that leaves her shaking her head, her hand falling to her knee and her eyes along with it. "Of course," she murmurs, idly picking at one of the small glass beads that decorate the lacing of her skirt. She isn't going to look at him, and when he comes to sit down beside her? She noticeably stiffens. She doesn't even have to be psychic for her emotions to be evident. She's tense.

"Do you remember when you first realized you were different?" she asks quietly, watching the little glass ball on her skirt that she fidgets with. "And do you remember the first time you saw somebody like you? Your daughter, I imagine. Did you see how she.. how she shined? But I bet you never saw many people like that. At least not all in one place." She drags her teeth across her bottom lip, taking a thoughtful nibble. "There are some people here that sparkle a little. Like you. And there are people here that shine a lot. And there are people here that glow, Alex. Lucy was one of them, Logan's wife." A pause. "Alice is another. She's like a .. like a beacon. But most of them are here. For one reason or another. They either live here, or something happens that brings them here. But here is where they are."

There's no particular tell to Alex's expression while she talks, maybe the tiniest dip of a nod there at the first couple of questions, the 'does he remember' ones, but his thoughts on the matter are entirely his own at the moment. He just continues to look at Violet quietly, those dark eyes like one-way glass: he can see out, but there's no seeing in right now. What he will do, and carefully, is reach to catch her hand where it fidgets, to fold his own around it loosely, settling them both lightly on her bead-skirted knee. She pauses, and he nods once more, a nod of the 'go on' variety.

It didn't matter to Violet if his eyes were a one-way mirror or a mirror into another universe; she wasn't looking at him. But she sees the shadow of his hand as it moves to catch her own - there's a twitch of her fingers, a suggestion that she might pull away at the last moment, but she doesn't. Her breath comes out in a steady, heavy sigh as his hand comes to settle around her own, and still the fidget of her fingers. On, she goes.

"I was fourteen, my first time. But maybe it was before that, because Alice and I could always talk and feel each other. But I was fourteen when I realized I could feel other people, and make them feel something, too," she licks her lips, her voice trembling, but on she goes. "And after that first time, I had a dream. Except I wasn't asleep. It was the middle of the day, I was in the library one second and the next... somewhere else. And I don't remember everything, Alex, but I remember the shadows. And everywhere I went they were there, in the edges, trying to take.. take bites of me." She winces. "And when I.. woke up, or got out, or whatever you you want to call it, I was covered in marks. I still have a scar." And this is when she slips her hand out from his own, so that she can roll up the sleeve of her left sweater, up to the middle of her bicep. She turns her arm out to show him, on the fleshy part, a silvery mark that looks like needle-point teeth had taken a bite out of her long ago.

Alex... maintains through all this. On the other side of Violet, the hand not holding hers fiddles briefly - index finger pushing at the edge of the band-aid around his thumb - and he breathes in audibly when she shifts, watching her drawing up her sleeve. Since his hand's free now, he carefully shifts the lay of her arm a little, angling her elbow up (it's awkward, but he at least knows how far he can bend somebody's arm-bits without damaging them), ducking his head to look at this scar, then back to her eyes again. "You said 'the first time,'" with another of those 'go on' nods. He's assuming this story isn't over, and only lets the the edge of his thumb trace along the shape of that scar, touching carefully.

She lets him touch her, at least for a moment, but when he gives her another one of those 'go on' nods, she jerks her arm back away from him. Not violently, but certainly with some effort, tugging at her sleeve to hide the mark. "After that dream, I tried to shut off what I can do. I wouldn't talk to Alice like that anymore. I tried to forget. I thought maybe it would help. Alice never stopped though. She liked making people happy. She was so good at it," a deep breath in, a slow exhale out, and she's back to picking at the beads on her skirt. "There'd be times when we were sleeping in our bedroom and I'd wake up at night and she was gone. I thought maybe she just slipped outside, went to go visit a boy or something. She was always back in the morning, but.. different. Scared. Upset. And that's when she started to talk about them. Them," emphasis added.

"She said she felt like something was hunting her. And God, I know how crazy that sounds, because I told her how crazy it sounds. But she told me about the shadows. That they were trying to take bites of her, little nibbles. Not all the time physically, either. But that things would happen, or people would say things, things that she was afraid of or things that she hated about herself. Picking at her, trying to open her up."

She takes her arm back, and Alex makes no effort to stop her, just retrieves his now unused hand back from her and folds it loosely with the other one, letting them drop between his knees for now. He seems to be accepting this all at face value, even when she gets to talking about how crazy she knows this sounds. His eyes stay on her all the while, quiet, attentive. Quietly, at a lull in her story, he asks, "Do they... bite you, too?" The term gives him pause - hell, the 'they' gives him pause, but he's able to press over that one a little easier than the verb, while he fusses with his band-aid.

She makes no effort to retake his hand, she just fiddles and fidgets with the beading on her skirt and keeps plowing through. His question doesn't get a direct answer, but she does very briefly lift her eyes to his own, her blue ones swimming in tears. "People will tell you my sister just snapped. They'll tell you she was like everybody else in my family. The Whitehouses have a long history here," she is quiet now, her voice barely above the sound of the rain. "But I was the one who found her in the bathtub, and I know what I saw before that."

Her eyes drop back to the skirt, and she continues to pick at the beads. "The doctor my parents made me see after Alice was committed, he told me it was a.. shared psychosis. That it was expected, but that Alice being gone should help me. Presumably, because in his professional opinion he was positive I'd go crazy anyway, but it didn't matter because I didn't matter to anybody. Especially not to Alice, who would've rather died than stay here with me."

The tears slip down her cheeks. She exhales slowly. "So yes, Alex. They do bite. They just don't usually leave marks that anybody can see."

Excuse Alex, just briefly, while he drops his eyes away from Violet's - even if she's not looking, he generally makes damn sure that he is - and off into the middle distance. Shared psychosis, and the shape of his mouth changes while he chews his lip on the inside, but not the outside. His attention returns in time to see the tears slip, and his brows draw together unhappily in response to it, and his fingers twitch between his knees. But he did almost call her crazy, like, the day-before-yesterday, so maybe he shouldn't be taking it upon himself to wipe those tears away.

Fuck it.

He does anyway, turning on the bench and lifting his hands so his thumbs, the whole one and the bandaged one, can swipe the lines they make off her face. Gently, "Thank you for telling me."

She doesn't go into those hands easily. In fact, she leans away when he tries to touch her face, and the tears spill all the more freely. "Please," she lifts her hand up to stop him, to stall him, and her shoulders were trembling. "When I saw my father, he told me he knew about you. That I was... was..." she couldn't bring herself to say it. "That you didn't want me. That I didn't deserve you. A doctor. Who was I fooling?"

She stays tilted back, but at least she's looking at him now, through tear-filled eyes so her vision was blurry. "Tell me what you were going to say. The things you couldn't say in text. Tell me... tell.." The words feel heavy on her tongue, and they come out a little louder than she expects them to. "Tell me that you're not a trick, too."

With nothing fulfilling to do with his hands, Alex leaves them hovering there for a moment, fingers slowly curling back, and they drop reluctantly back into his own keeping. Fine, be that way, he'll just hold his own hands, then, clasped loosely together - as if to make them keep an eye on each other. This while she talks of her father, and there's a flash in those one-way eyes of his - something like malice, the way they narrow beneath a draw of his brows. He doesn't argue, since the guy's not here to hear it, but the dispute is clear in that stubborn set of his jaw: fuck her dad in his neck.

But she wants to know what he didn't type out on his phone, and he breathes in through his nose, holding that breath in his lungs for a long few seconds. She gets louder, he stays quiet. "You know already, and I'm sorry, because I was wrong. I believe you." Now, face-to-face, so maybe he deserves a little credit for having the presence of mind to not call her a nutter over text? "And I'm not a trick. I'm just a person, and this is all," insane, "a lot. New and strange and difficult. But you're," he takes a breath, earnestly, "lovely and warm and bright. So please forgive me. I am so sorry."

She did already know, but that didn't make it hurt any less. So forgive her for staying back, over here where it didn't feel very safe but no where feels very safe in the moment, her brows twitching as she tries to keep her focus on him. She wants to look away, she wants to look anywhere else. She has to force herself to keep her eyes on him, through his backpedaling and his apology, while the tears run warm down her cheeks. "Why?" She lifts her hand to rub at her neck, as though that might help the words come out. "Why do you believe me now? What changed? The story doesn't sound any less insane in person, Alex. I'm well aware of that."

Alex shakes his head in a silent denial of that - that it doesn't sound any less insane in person. "On its face? Objectively? What you just told me is nonsense. But that's why I wasn't going to say those things to you in a text message, Violet." Where 'those things' = folie a deux. "Yes, most people tell that story, and I quietly request a psych consultation. But," her words, "you're not most people. I understand that, and I'm sorry that - for a moment. I was too angry and confused to remember that."

He never stops looking at her, never so much as flicks his eyes anywhere but at hers, except perhaps to watch tears slip from behind her glasses to glaze her cheeks. His lips purse to a troubled, hurting frown and stay that way unprettily. It's not quite a whisper, but his voice is low, soft with apology and fear. "You don't deserve to be treated objectively, and I shouldn't have, even for a moment. And it will never. Happen again."

It takes a long moment before Violet moves. Before she even speaks again. It is a lingering silence, while she digests his words and his apologies, his promises for the future. It would have been easy to reach out and scrape a little off the top of him, to feel his emotion in the moment and see if he was being honest. But she didn't want to do that - perhaps a little too scared of what she'd find, while acknowledging she probably shouldn't be trying to read his feels. "Okay," the word comes quiet, it's a flimsy word.

But at least the actions that follow it weren't quite as paper thin. She breathes out and straightens, then slowly tilts in the opposite direction, until her shoulder settles on his own. Though her hand still trembles, she lays it over his own, and brushes a touch across the knuckle of his thumb, following up to the edge of the band-aid. "I wish I knew more," she admits in a quiet voice. "Alice tells me some things but she won't tell me everything. I don't think she trusts even me anymore, not completely. And I know they aren't all bad, the dreams. Sometimes I slip into the most wondrous worlds, and there aren't any shadows or any people with monster eyes and it's just good." She winces, lowering her gaze to her hand over his own. "But I told you this town was weird. That it had a history. And I think.. I think whatever went after Alice. Whatever might've gone after Lucy. I think it looks for people like us. I think .. I think it has, for years and years."

Normally, Alex is all about one-step-further, not just holding hands but an arm around her - but not right now. Maybe he knows how close he came to the whole thing slipping away, close enough that he's skittish about that edge right now, so he just lets his shoulder lean against hers, lets his hand stay in hers, fingers moving but faintly beneath hers. There's a moment of quiet after she speaks, a moment when his smile comes back, touched with wryness, and he breathes out a laugh through his nose. "I had this thought," he shares, picking his words carefully, "on the day my ex-wife decided I needed to know she was pregnant. This feeling like I was a small fish in a big pond." The laugh is repeated, softened. "Which, to be fair, is not exactly an unfamiliar feeling." Cuz he's short. 🙁 "But now it has context. If that dream was so awful for me," small-fish, dimly special him, "I can't imagine."

And maybe suddenly starts to rethink the whole idea of bringing his child to this town every Sunday. Hmm.

The faint flutter of his fingers against her skin was enough for Violet, at least for a moment. It sent a subtle warmth through the palm of her hand, stepping up the rhythm of her pulse but not fast enough to make her feel faint. No, this was good, she likes this, and her fingers tighten around his own as he breathes out his laugh and says the things that he does. What he says though brings a faint furrow to her brow, and she's quick to turn into him, her frown stern.

"You are not a small fish," she decides that is a sticking point, and takes her hand from his own.. so that she can cup his cheek with it, thumb along his chin. She tilts his head so that he can look at her. "You just don't .. glow as much. Maybe that's a good thing. Maybe they won't.." she snags her bottom lip with her teeth, and doesn't say the words she's thinking. Instead, she just brushes her fingertips against his cheek, following down along the line of his jaw.

"Does... does your daughter dream?" she says finally, swallowing. "When I was at UW, there weren't many. But there were some."

Alex's eyes narrow - not in the hard, hateful way they had about her father, but in a lightly disputing way. He's not a small fish; "It's okay, Violet, I assure you, my ego and I have long since come to terms with this." Aside from the shoes with the soles and the lie on his driver's license. <.< His cheek leans into her palm, his chin lifts a little at the trail of her fingers across his jaw, her touch easing two long and unhappy nights; he'd take the kind of hard-to-sleep those touches bring over monster-bites any day of the week. "Next to Logan and Emily," he learned her name, good for him, "and you?" Just the tiniest shake of his head for his own relative 'size,' not enough to brush her hand away. And the amount he wants to kiss her stern frown is ridiculous, shown in the slow blink when he looks at it, the lower of his head toward her -

And then the rapid blink when she mentions his daughter, that thought having rattled around in the back of his brain briefly. He doesn't ask, but there's a 'something you want to share???' lift of his brow. Even when he says, "I don't know. I don't think so. I think she would tell me." Breath. "When she gets back, I'll ask." If monsters try to eat his baby. That will be fun for him.

"You haven't been looking very hard, if it's only me, Logan, and Emily you see glowing," Violet replies in a soft voice, a touch of dry laughter on her lips. "There's a lot more here," she admits, stroking down the square of his jaw with the pad of her thumb. She feels him lowering his head, anticipates the moment, and tips towards him .. only for him to blink and pull back again. Stern frown turns into a confused crinkle of her nose, and she drops her hand from his cheek.

"I just thought.." All right, think this one through. She'll just try a different avenue. She picks up his hand, the one with the bandage on his thumb, lifting it enough so that she doesn't have to bend very far to do what she intends to do next - a soft kiss, a breath of warm air, enough to knit the torn skin from that nip back together again. "It's just a worry. If they came for you.. But maybe they came to you, because of me?" And that terrifies her.

Mostly, it's just the shape of the words, the sound of them sort of lost beneath the thoughts that keep his voice almost inaudibly low; "I wonder why." There's a lot more here, he means. Alex might have had more to say about that wonder, because even he can't have been entirely oblivious... but it's not like he has cause to run around town, meeting all the glittery folks, what with working and walking around with Violet and taking the world's longest showers. And having his thumb mended for him, the whole series of gestures leaving his breath visibly quickened, the swallow that sticks in his throat moving his neck behind his perfect tie.

The kiss that got waylaid before is going to land this time, dammit, with his now repaired hand catching her chin and turning her face up. And it's a kiss that says a lot, starts out soft with the remnants of apology and gratitude (she fixed him!), deepens - affection and want and relief. It's a lot for one kiss, but he works it all in there.

There was probably a lot more to say. But he catches her by the chin and lifts her face up from his thumb, and she didn't want to anticipate this kiss and get disappointed again but she turns her head up anyway. At least her expectation is rewarded this time, the return press of her mouth light at first. There was a hint of trepidation, of lingering fear, but it fades as more is silently spoken and she sinks into the kiss. Her arm comes up to wind around his neck, fingers in the hair on the back of his neck, and she shifts on the bench to slide closer to him. And to his lips, she spoke eagerness and desire, quiet desperation, and near overwhelming affection.

It was the sort of kiss that got them in trouble last time. Indeed, at some point, her fingers slide to rest on the knot of his tie. But this was not a doctor's office with a door. This was a park bench in the open. And she was wearing entirely too many layers. So with a shallow breath out, she parts, scraping her teeth along his bottom lip in passing. It takes a moment for her eyes to reopen, and another moment for reality to set in.

"I'm very wet," she whispers, words every man wants to hear perhaps. But this was Violet, so the follow up was: "I mean, the back of my skirt. I don't think I wiped the bench off very well.."

Hold on. Alex needs to blink.

Before that blink - while that kiss was ongoing - there were wandering hands. Not dangerously wandering, they're not going anywhere that will get him in trouble, but the one drops off her chin, lays across her collarbones, thumb at the hollow of her throat. The other fits to her waist, fingertips juuuuust edging at the hem of her sweater, slipping back and over the curve of her hip. So yes, it's probably a good thing that she didn't try to do anything with his tie, because the mere proximity of her hands drags a low, eager rumble out of his throat.

What's left of his breath exhales in a puff when she draws away. Then he needs to blink at her. "You're - " What-now?! Oh. "Mm. Hmm. We should walk." He shifts uncomfortably, smiles perfectly. "In a minute." It's time to do more long division.

Violet is oblivious to the blinking, mostly because her lashes are lowered, the focus of her blue eyes on his tie. Her fingers graze down the length of it, slipping over the fabric to the very tip, and when he says he needs a minute? "Okay," she breathes out, and then ruins his concentration by giving his tie a firm enough tug to bring him back down into her, so that she can kiss him again. If the eager press of her lips ruins his ability to perform long division, she's very sorry. But not really.

She'll release him eventually, once her knees start to wobble and her lungs burn and she needs to breathe. After she does, she gently smooths his tie back into place, and proves how wet she is by getting to her feet. Her butt was very damp from the rain, get your mind out of the gutter. "You can walk me back to the store?" she tips her head, her smile adoring and just for him. "I'm glad we were able to talk."

Somewhere - probably in Heaven because Alex comes from good, honest people - Alex's gramma is like 'i wish this kid would get laid already and quit thinking about me all the damn time.' Because Violet pulls on his tie and kisses him again and the whole process of being able to walk is all reset. He looks up at her when she stands, his brows all knitted as if painfully, his eyes large and dark and readable again, and the whole story they tell is one of hopeful wanting, even while he passes her his umbrella. She can sort that out, he still needs a minute here.

A minute not spent staring at her very wet butt. "So am I," he gets around to eventually, also glad they were able to talk. There, he pushes to his feet, drawing both arms around her (never mind that he just made his umbrella her problem, and she has her own, too), pulling her to him. Not for more of those kisses, but to suggest, "We need some sort of safe word." There's more to this thought. "For texting. So we can communicate that the conversation is going off the rails, and we should save it for face-to-face." He buries his nose in her hair briefly, and there says, "Tuberculosis?"

Violet was doing her very best to focus on her rain-soaked rear end and not all the other parts of her that were left wet and wanting. After all, she vividly remembers how things went down in the office and she didn't want to experience that ever again. So maybe it was best that they were here, his umbrella in her hand and the ghost of touch on her hip and damn did he look handsome today - whoops, maybe Violet needs to think of his grandma, too.

"Hm?" She's forgotten the conversation, lashes fluttering wildly as she jerks her attention up into his eyes. "Oh. Yes. It's good," she agrees vaguely, about to pop open his umbrella when he draws her back into him, the suggestion of a safe word making her blink again. "Mm. How about 'we need to talk'? No, that sounds very serious," she bites at the corner of her bottom lip when she thinks - then decides, perhaps she'll think better if she bites at his lip instead; so she picks herself up on her tippy-tippy toes to do just that. A quick nibble, not the kind that'll leave him broken and bleeding (hopefully). "Pepto bismol?" she suggests with a crooked grin, "Or I could always just.." with her free hand, she taps her index finger to her temple and then arches through the air to tap it against his.

Yeah, they're gonna need safe words for a lotta things. Like... 'stop chewing on Alex, because it makes him get handsy.' With the dragging her hips up against his, so there's just no way to hide the whole reason he had to sit on that bench for a year thinking about long division and whoever's gramma. "No no no," about the temple-tapping, he'll just take her hand right off his head and curl it up in his, dragging it on around his waist where it's safe. "Because I can't just. So we have to solve this like rational, mature adults." Who are awful at texting. And remembering they're supposed to be leaving this park, not biting each other (in the sexy way, not the scaryshadowmonster way), since now he dips to return the favor.

"Can I see you on Sunday?" he asks at the tail-end of that, finally getting himself together enough to nudge the umbrella with his toe. Make it work, Violet, so he can walk her to the shop.

Right. They needed to act like rational, mature adults, which are probably not the kind of adults that get flustered and startled when they brush up against reasons for grandmothers and long division. But that is the kind of adult that Violet is, and flustered she gets, her cheeks splotching red as she ducks out of all that lip-nibbling with wide (impressed) eyes and a sudden desire to get this umbrella open. "Oh. Hmm," she passes her tongue over the spot where he's nipped her, and jerks the umbrella handle to make it blossom, her heart racing and making her feel like she was going to pass out now, thx. "Yes." He can see her on Sunday. "Yes please."

And she's going to spend the next however long trying to think about anything but Alex, a rather difficult thing to do since he's probably going to expect conversation on the walk home

I mean, they don't have to talk about, like, insane sisters and monsters eating them and ex-wives with twins or anything. But. Y'know. Like. He wouldn't object to hearing more of her random bizarro factoids. That carousel probably killed at least 4,000 people since it was installed, right? That could carry them for the few blocks from here to there. Oh, and he'll tell her about how his car is here, and he's mad because it arrived all dirty, RUDE CAR.

Alex will not try to come inside (either the shop or Violet) when they get there. Just kiss her on the doorstep. And then make a bunch of irritated phone calls to the person buying furniture for him, he needs a literal fucking bed. Too bad he missed the trip to the mattress store. 🙁