2019-05-27 - Carver Needs A Win

The sawmill is supposed to be abandoned. It says it right there in the title, Abandoned Sawmill. But tonight, this unseasonably warm night, where the pale moon glistens and the park grounds are alive with festivities that one might want to run away from in order to find some peace and quiet... there is a presence here. A woman of slim build with waist-length ink black hair and skin as pale as the moon, and large bright green eyes - pretty, but certainly not beautiful. She sits on a broken piece of the sawmill wall, legs swaying like a pendulum back and forth. Like she's waiting.

In fact, under her breath, she whispers: Tick-tock, tick-tock. It's really weird, who does that?

But Carver will feel that thing immediately, that little tickle. Hers is a glimmer that is not bright like so many others here; it is darkly glistening, like the reflection of starlight upon a blackened lake.

Let's be real. If anyone knows that the abandoned sawmill is anything but, it'd be the Brit leaning up against the fence, face lit by the deepening ember of a cigarette that protrudes from the corner of his mouth. It's as crumpled as his shirt and waistcoat are. There's the soft noise of scuffling fabric as his arms move, the shirt fabric reflecting bright white in what passes for moonlight under the occasional spring cloud. A watch, silver in face and band pulled away from his wrist to sink into a front pocket.

"Pet." He starts, eyes focusing more on the wall than the woman. "I've got a million-and-one clock puns running through my head right now. It's screwing with the hangover." Apparently he's not had a drink all day. "So if you want to start up with any creepy giggling, let me know so I can take some advil in advance, alright?"

"Sarah, actually," replies the woman, whose voice is soft and almost musical in nature. Clearly trained, as there's not a single sense of an accent. "Isn't 'pet' a bit overdone?" She tips her head, her legs stilling for the time being. Her attention is wholly focused on Carver now, it's like she's drilling those emerald eyes into him. "I suppose a lot of things involving you are ... overdone though."

Carver watches the woman for a moment, taking in the commentary on his use of language with little more than a shifting of weight from foot to foot and a hand dropping down to his hip. "You know how long it took me to tone things down?" He asks, failing to conceal the slow smile creeping past the corner of his cigarette. Creepy speech while sitting on a wall might have been unsettling, but poking holes at his heritage? Carver can roll with that all day long.

"Fang 'owt of this yer proper scratch cat. Fore I onna bothered."

What was that Sarah said about Carver being overdone? Forget that, the speech she cannot understand earns him a quiet giggle and a quick clapping of her fingertips. It doesn't make any noise, the clapping, but it's the thought that counts. "Oh, that's a good trick. I suppose it's to make up for you being aggressively boring?" she cants her head to the side, and offers him a lopsided smile. "It's not your fault. I mean, it is. But it's not. The boring."

And then just like that, the cigarette he's got in his mouth sparks into a flame. Better snuff it out.

The boring Brit deals with his cigarette bursting aflame with all the cool, suave composure you'd expect from a guy dressed like he is.

That is to say he immediately yelps, barks out a sharp "Fuckin' Hell!" that is a good couple of octaves higher than he normally registers, and plucks the damned thing from his mouth to throw it to the ground, stomping and muttering caught, clipped curses as he grinds it down into the dirt. A good four or five of those stomps come after it's obvious to anyone in the area that the cigarette is long since dead, but really, deep down, those were for him and his pride.

"Alright, alright." The words he utters as he throws his attention back to Sarah are muffled slightly by the soft tending to a burnt forefinger, popping it into the edge of his mouth for any sense of relief he can find from the sharp, pulsing pain. "So you're the fire and cuts girl. Great. You got a whole diversity system going on with your sisters?" There's a soft 'Popping' sound once he figures that waving his hand against the cool air would soothe it more, offering the woman what can best be described as 'the face of a disgruntled pug being told it can't have any more food.' "Midsummer's wasn't bad, by the way. Your Lysander seemed distracted." Every sentence might as well be followed with an unspoken 'cow.' at this point.

There's a soft, tinkling laughter that is mostly drowned out by Carver's yelping and carrying on. With those dark green eyes, she watches him flail about and stomp the cigarette, almost like one would watch a monkey throwing its own poo in the zoo. "You're so funny," she laughs, but the sound abruptly stops when he mentions her sisters.

Her legs start to sway again. But opposite to how they were swaying before. Tock-tick tock-tick. "Are you jealous?" she tips her head the other way, brows climbing. "Do you miss it? Here.." she doesn't move, but all of a sudden, his hand feels very cool. It's at least a relaxing feeling, that spreads from the tip of his burned finger down all the way to his elbow; his burned finger no longer smarts. "It's not all fire and cuts."

"Funny, Sarah?" Carver's other hand wraps around his wrist, the man's natural slouch turning ever-so-slightly into a hunch in an almost instinctive response to the feel of something wrong. It's soothing and relieving, sure, but the unnatural edge to it is obviously something giving him pause for thought. "I thought you found me boring?"

There's something to be said for putting on a brave face when you're staring down the barrel. Standing upright, back straight, and accepting what's coming with a smile and a wink.

It's idiotic. That's what should be said.

"Of course I bloody miss it. Who wouldn't." Stand tall, Carver. Eventually. Give 'em a smile. Tuck your thumbs into the pockets of those crumpled suit pants. Maybe don't exactly wink at her-Oh, no. He's doing that too. "But there's something to be said for getting others to do your dirty work for you. Wouldn't you say, Pet? C'mon-" His hand leaves a pocket to beckon her forward. "Make your pitch. I know it's coming. And let's be honest to one another..." His phone, back pocket, chooses this exact moment to let off a little notification tone. A soft 'Bing Bing' that's harsh against the relatively still night. "We've both got things to be getting on with."

The cooling sensation isn't done once it reaches his elbow. This was a crushing victory after all. It lingers and reaches elsewhere, up his arm and down over his shoulder. It creeps across his chest, over his belly, around to his back. Searching for little things to heal, little cuts to fill in. But it becomes colder up his spine, until it's ice at the back of his neck.

"I do," find him boring, Sarah's legs continue to sway. "You're funny in a boring way. It's really quite disappointing. I expected.. more. Some oomph! Some.. sparkle." A beat. "Oh." She actually flinches, as though she's realized her misstep, and her lips fall into a frown. "Sorry."

But her pitch? Now, that makes her curious. She folds her hands onto the wall and pushes herself off, landing gracefully into the grass with hardly any noise. "A pitch?" She inches across the grass, eyes still on him, ignoring the bing-bing of his phone. "What do you think is coming?"

Like Carver's used to anything happening to him that isn't a crushing victory for the other person. At least his migraine's faded slightly. Which, really, should be more concerning than he's taking it. And no man stands as upright as he is without military training or the feeling of ice-cold hands running up their spine. And he never served.

"I'm... impressed." His lackadaisical bravado falters for a second, her words hitting a little close to home as they did. Bullshittery may be his one life skill, barring one he's very pointedly refusing to even consider at this point, but it's sure possibly to noticed when that needle slips through a weak point. The smirk falters. That's the main giveaway.

Only for a second, though. Which, really, is entirely Sarah's fault. You can't give a guy an opening like that and expect him not to run with it, no matter how 'raven-haired children of the corn' you're being. It's almost like his eyes sparkle when she asks the second part of the question, his grin showing teeth. "I figured I was if I played my cards right. That's why you waited for me at an abandoned sawmill, right? Regain some of that youthful vigor?" His shoulders shimmy on those last two words, ice be damned.

"I'm not," Sarah says of being impressed, but she smiles all the same. It's a dark sort of smile, a sad sort of smile. She steps closer, until she's in his personal bubble, and .. laughs. Loudly. It's like a sharp bark, and she throws her head back and everything.

"Oh, goodness!" Excuse her while she laughs even louder. "You thought I'd .. be able to give it back? Oh, this is rich!" She's still snickering as she reaches out, pat-patting Carver on the shoulder. "Oh, honey," the actress in her lays it on thick. "I don't have anything to offer you. You're... useless."

"Apparently so." Carver totally flinched when she laughed. There's no point in trying to deny that. He knows it. She knows it. The world knows it.

"I can't even innuendo about fuckin' in a sawmill to a hollow woman any more." He's relatively deadpan, only a slight twitch to his cheek giving anything away about what's going on in his mind as he glances down at the hand that pats against his shoulder. His own hand, opposite side, reaches up to pull another cigarette out. No hint of a lie, nor bullshittery roll needed, he plucks it from the mass of unkempt hair that sits atop his head, popping it in to his mouth and holding it between his teeth as he watches her eyes for a moment. "I like that you thought I really want it back. Really really. 'Cause, y'see, duck. This town has made me realize something. The problem when folks are as powerful as you are. You start seeing that little spark of yours as a hammer. And every problem becomes a nail."

There's that wink again, his thumb jerking up to indicate the tip of his unlit cigarette. "You mind?"

"Hollow? Oh, there's nothing hollow about me. You, on the other hand..." Sarah whistles low through her teeth, and picks an imaginary piece of lint off his shoulder. There's another pat, though this time she raises her hand to his cheek. Tap-tap, she smiles. "I like that you think you can bullshit me. That's your game, love, and I appreciate it. But..." Her fingernails drag along his cheek, across his jaw. "You and I both know that once you've felt it, it's so hard to not feel it anymore." And she smiles sadly. "I couldn't be you. I'd kill myself."

But as for the cigarette? No, she doesn't mind. She plucks it out of his mouth, turns it, and sticks the filter-side between her lips. A quick inhale, and the cherry ignites, no flame required. She takes a long pull, breathing the smoke back out in a plume as she extracts the cigarette, and returns it to him. "I'd say thanks for the good time, doll, but .. mm. We both know it wasn't very good."

"Oh, honey." Carver's not an actor. Well, not trained, any way. He still manages to lay it on pretty thick, though. "You've really got to work on little quotable phrases that other women haven't repeatedly said to me in the past twenty years. Hell-" running a hand along where nails just dragged, he works his jaw a little before taking the cigarette, grinning once again when it's back between his teeth. "-Some of them were even talking about the same thing you are."

There's a soft cloud of smoke when Sarah offers her opinion of the night, and his hand raises up to check out his once-burning, now cooled finger. The shiver he makes only perceptible due to her utmost proximity. "Don't worry, Sweetheart. You'll get better with experience."

"Mm. Well. If something's right, it bears repeating. Often and with feeling!" Sarah twirls onto her heel, turning her back to Carver, and lifts a hand to wiggle pale white fingers in the air. "Goodbye, useless Carver. Don't fall into the saw, that would be so very tragic." A pause. "For the saw."

Then she's gone. But inside Carver's pocket, his watch-face cracks, the glass splintering in many different directions. And the shadows that cling to the wall slither away with a sigh of boredom, like he's just not worth being around. Still, there's a faint laughter that clings to the cool night air.

Probably because Carver's pants suddenly come loose, and fall to his ankles. Whoops. Overdid it a bit.

Carver's awareness is pretty good.

Carver is more than aware that if Sarah so inclined, he would be dead. Three times over.

But damned if the man isn't an excellent, excellent bullshitter. That would be why it's only after three minutes have passed, with shards of broken watch face littering his hand and the dirt below from where he pulled it from his pocket... That he collapses to the floor, his legs completely giving out on him as all of the adrenaline bleeds away, summoning heaving, full-body shaking sobs as it does so. At least the town can have a new rumor about the sawmill's new, weeping ghost.