2019-06-24 - It Takes All Sorts to Make a World

The vibrant colors of autumn foliage shifts by quickly outside, a blue of red and yellow, highway lined thickly with tall-reaching trees. The Maples are the most beautiful, dropping waxy red leaves now and then. The air is crisp and cool, slightly sweet and clean. This is definitely not Washington state. Occasionally a tree shifts slightly pink.

Gravel pinging off the undercarriage of a 1968 Ford Mustang is loud enough to have a blonde popping up from the backseat like a sleep-deprived zombie. "Stay between the lines!" She takes a sharp breath and coughs, staring at the back of Ruiz's head for a moment. Her hands smack down on the leather upholstery, gripping the shoulder of one seat. She rubs a hand over her face after a moment of being sure Ruiz is not, in fact, running them off the road. A short nap was had, but she's definitely awake now.

Luce wears a plain black ball cap pulled down low on her eyes, messy gold locks pulled into pigtails behind her ears. Her clothing is simple: a red and black flannel shirt over a white ribbed tank top, and a pair of jeans with one knee ripped out. She reaches up to tip her hat back a little so she can see a little better. Blue eyes turn from Ruiz to the road. She takes the opportunity to climb over into the front passenger seat just as the tape deck begins playing a new song.

It's June. In the real world, it's June. Not yet time for the trees to lose their leaves, or for this crispness to be in the air. This is what Ruiz reminds himself of periodically, lips even moving occasionally with the words as if to cement it in his mind even as the time spent in the Veil starts to make memory a foggy, uncertain thing. He swerves slightly to avoid a pothole, and the sleek cherry red 'stang responds easily; the engine revs just a little before settling back down to that silken purr.

His head turns slightly at the voice from behind, though his eyes stay on the road. "Las líneas son solo una sugerencia!" he calls back, grin evident in his voice. Lucinda, once she's slotted herself into the front passenger seat, is presented with the Mexican's very not-pretty profile, a pair of aviators slid on to keep the midday sun out of his eyes. Bloodied shirt and suit have been replaced by similarly casual attire: a black tee shirt, worn jeans, and hiking boots that served him well on their long trek to find and appropriate this car. His injuries have healed well, and he looks a good deal more relaxed than he has in days as the breeze from his open window blows through his dark curls, and the tapestry of warm, bronzed hues passes them by.

"Are you sure we're going the right way?" Because the landscape almost seems to repeat itself as they drive. Like they aren't actually getting anywhere at all.

Is she sure they're going the right way? Lucinda doesn't respond until she's settled into the passenger seat of the Mustang. She has a little trouble with that hat, which slides down before she manages to right herself. She's told him she doesn't speak Spanish like 102 times in the last, what, two weeks? Time is pretty fluid here, and she hasn't really been keeping track. "You better not have just said the lines are a damn suggestion."

It's getting just annoying enough that she's starting to pick up some vocabulary.

"Course I'm sure." She's not sure at all, but his questions get more annoying when she seems uncertain. She tips back in the seat, kicking her feet up on the dash. She kicked her shoes off in the passenger footwell ages ago. "Gotta keep moving. At least the weather's okay." She glances out the window, watching the trees pass by for a time. "Eventually, we'll find a sign post." What seems like the same stretch of road goes by, and the driving does seem to have loosened up Ruiz's shoulders and lightened his attitude. Maybe he can't stay cranky forever.

"You see a deviation in the landscape, follow it." Lucinda tips her head back, feet on the dash, bill of her hat fallen low. She reaches up to tip it back a little. "You in a sharing mood today?"

The man jerks his head toward his traveling companion only briefly as she settles in, and kicks her feet up on the dash. Which, for someone so worried about pesky details like lane markings a minute ago, she certainly doesn't seem to have any qualms about being ejected through the windshield. You know, in the off chance he were to stop suddenly. "You're lying," he tells her, still watching the road. Still smiling, somewhere behind that scruffy growth of beard that.. really could use a trim by now, after three weeks of being on the run. Either way, he seems less bothered than he ought to be by her misdirection.

"What kind of a signpost are we looking for? This way to Gray Harbour?" He is, of course, being facetious. Which he's occasionally capable of. His dark eyes briefly skim the younger woman's relaxed profile, then squint slightly behind those shades as he tries to make out some sign of a shift in the landscape. Some sign that they aren't just going in circles. Or worse; nowhere at all.

"Sharing?" he repeats after a minute, hand settling high on the steering wheel, thumb tapping along in time with the music. "Sharing what?"

Luce glances over when Ruiz says she's lying. Yeah, she is. He's getting better at figuring out when she's making things up, too. Which isn't the best thing ever, but shit happens. "Yeah, well, you're turning into a yeti." She reaches over and tugs on his whiskers across his jaw. "If you keep smiling so much, I'm going to start worrying what you're thinking about."

Lucinda really doesn't seem concerned about a grisly death at the hands of this car, Ruiz's shitty driving, and a tree.

"I really don't think it's gonna say that, but keep your eyes peeled. You never know." Sure, a great big Grey Harbor sign might be nice. "Bienvenidos a Mexico probably isn't the sign you're looking for." She reaches up and drapes her arms over the back of her seat. "Sharing. Personal details. Hilarious stories from law enforcement. You guys have fun, right? Cops have senses of humor, right?"

Maybe he's getting smarter. Maybe he's learning her tells. Or maybe she's just slipping up more. Fortunately, he seems cheerful enough about the half-admitted deception not to harass her about it further. The tug on his beard elicits a grunt from the Mexican, but he doesn't try to swat her hand away. Mostly because he's busy driving, and trying not to plow them into said tree.

"If we manage to hit the border, we are definitely going the wrong way," is all he has to say about 'welcome to Mexico'. There's seemingly no love lost there between he and his home country.

Silence for a minute in the wake of Luce's chatter. His eyes are on that stand of trees, and when the subtle shift in landscape is spotted, his shoulders tense slightly. The smile is gone, and the mustang is slowed as he gets in position to turn. Complete stop at the intersection, tick-tock, tick-tock while he convinces himself this is the correct way to go. They've been driving for hours, and not a single other car on the road; just that red mustang sitting in the intersection, blinkers on, waiting. Then a rumble of the engine as he steers onto the offramp and kicks up orange and red and gold leaves in their wake.

"Hilarious stories." He chuckles, weathered features washed in speckled sunlight and shadow as they pick up speed again. "Well. I had a guy steal a car once, then stop to ask me for directions. Does that count?" He's a captain. Maybe captains don't have fun.

Lucinda glances over as the choice needing to be made becomes apparent, left or right? She doesn't weigh in, mostly because she's busy waiting for the rest of this hilarious story. She sits for a moment, listening to the blinker go, and then finally turns her head to look at Ruiz's profile. He doesn't seem to be saying more things. No more story is forthcoming. "... Was that it?" Luce falls silent, chin tipping down a bit. Her mouth opens, she says nothing, then sort of just... closes her mouth, brows dropping slightly over those blue, blue eyes.

"For the love of god." That was the story, wasn't it? The whole story.

"You," Luce says, "Are just about the absolute worst."

Left. He chose left, for whatever that's worth. Possibly nothing. Maybe he's just sent them right back to the start of this fucked up little game; the same lonely stretch of lazy tree-lined highway. Maybe the Veil is trying a new tactic: give them a gilded cage, and watch them beat their wings against it fruitlessly.

"What?" He's distracted enough with his own thoughts that he doesn't immediately clue in to the fact that Luce's talking to him again. And watching him, with that disapproving look. His eyes flick over briefly, catch the press of her lips and stoop of her brows, and he almost.. almost looks chastised for a moment there. Because she's giving him that Grumpy Librarian face, and it's remarkably effective. "Was what it? De qué diablos estás hablando?" He's the worst? He's the worst? "You're the one who brought us here. You don't have a leg to stand on," is all he has to say about that.

Ruiz is quiet as the trees start to shift, and the next bend in the road reveals a familiar vista. His breathing quickens subtly, a surge of adrenaline-infused tension that's visible in the way the muscle in his biceps and forearms bunches, and his grip on the wheel tightens. Then that sudden flash of movement in the grey dusk, and while his reaction time is on the nose, the car doesn't quite respond how he expects. He cranks the steering wheel and pumps the brakes, and there's a terrible SQUEAL of asphalt shredding tires as the vehicle fishtails, then slams into the poor animal sideways.

Everything from there is a blur. A dark shape goes up and over the driver's side window, the force of it enough to throw the car on two wheels momentarily before it slams back down again and skids into the ditch. Silence, save for the radio still going, and the hiss of the engine.

"What am I talking about? I'm talking about what feels like three weeks of you asking me questions and acting like you don't understand the English that comes out of my mouth when I ask you questions. You withhold. You cling to personal information, which is fine. It's a thing people do, but then you ask all these questions of other people, like you're hoarding their secrets too." Her hat falls into her eyes and she reaches up to shove it back again, long fringe smashed flat by the hat. "And I don't speak Spanish, okay? Stop that."

"You should be more careful to whom you give closet access, because there's more in there on you than I've learned from your mouth since we met." So. The stress of a couple of weeks in the Veil with a co-pilot could be getting to her just a touch. Lucida's last few words are ground out, one foot sliding down off the dash.

Luce is just winding up with, "And you can't keep blaming me for this. I was taking me here, and you grabbed onto me while I was moderately losing my shit. You know, you were much more fun when you were bleed —" Which is right about when she turns to look back at the road, sees the deer, and has just enough time to think that's not a dog and we're not going to stop in time.

Lucinda doesn't scream, but she does take a short, sharp breath, and one hand swings down from behind her to reach for Ruiz, taking hold of his tee, nails scraping along his shoulder as she takes a handful, and then they're spinning, centrifugal force throwing her across her seat and out of it into the driver. The thump of the animal against the broad side of the Mustang is unbelievably solid, collapsing a huge dent into the metal panel.

The car veers, everything shifts wildly, and skids into a ditch. The stop isn't as hard and as fast as it could be, and Lucinda is across Ruiz's lap when they come to a stop, though she does bounce off the steering wheel at the very least, sprawling half into the driver's seat, half in the passenger seat, back across the console between the seats. That shifter had to have jammed into her ribs. She doesn't move, hat once again fallen low across her eyes.

Neither of them is quite moving, once the car comes to an unsteady halt. The embankment is steep, and the mustang leans sharply to the left, roughly a thirty degree angle. The animal didn't survive the collision; its neck was broken almost instantly, its carcass sprawled alongside the totaled car that's going absolutely nowhere. Ruiz's head is tipped backward against his seat, the left side bleeding heavily from an impact with glass, most likely.

It's a good few minutes before he comes to, and another minute or two more before his mind catches up with what he's seeing. "Luce." He pronounces her name loo-SAY. "Luce, wake up." His voice is smoke-roughened, a low murmur, because talking hurts. He struggles to unfasten his lap belt, then tries to get his door open. Which, of course it won't budge. "Háblame, Luce." Her hat is peeled off, and then his fingers are brushed over her forehead, sifted through her fair hair, searching for some sign of a wound that might have concussed her, or worse.

Every so often, a glance sent out the window in a quick sweep to the left and right, like he half expects that animal to come back to life and maul them.

It's several moments before Lucinda responds. For a long moment, she's just limp and still, aside from all the jostling Ruiz is helpfully doing while he paws around at her hair. She has a lump on the side of her head where it impacted the steering wheel or something, and his hand at the side of her head comes away wet with blood, though it seems to have taken it a moment to soak into her hair. She winces when he touches the tender spot, finally, and grunts, "Who the fuck is Lucy?"

"Ow, ow. Stop jabbing my brain. Ow. Stop calling me Lucy." Her eyes crack open and she peers up at Ruiz. Everything's tilted and sideways and... why is he above her? She squints and tries to move, but the gearshift is jammed into her side, and the middle console is bruising her back. "Motherfffff—" She gives up after a brief tensing of her abs and just flops back over. "Oh, god, what did you do?" Her mussed blonde locks spill across his thigh, pigtails still pretty cute even with a profusely bleeding head wound. It's probably fine. Head wounds love to bleed.

She's probably horrible when she has a cold. Or she's really hurt. It's hard to say.

"Did you kill plow a deer?"

There's a pause, and then, "Are you bleeding on me?" And she starts to laugh. "I said you were more fun and now you're bleeding." She coughs, "Ow god." And sucks in a few breaths. Ribs might be bruised or cracked too, it seems. Before she tries to sit up again, she wiggles her toes and her fingers, then tries, probably with some help from handsy-Ruiz, to slide back into her seat. It comes with a lot of bitching and complaining, and one hand digging into his right shoulder.

It's maybe half a minute before she jolts back to life and starts swearing at him, but it feels like hours. It feels like a lifetime. He's probably already mentally making plans for hauling her out of the car and starting CPR, when he feels that first stir of movement. Her eyes open to find him gazing down at her with that worried look on his face; pinched brows and squinty eyes, a slight downturn of his lips that increases a fraction when she starts running at the mouth. He starts to answer her, but she keeps right on going, and so he blows a sigh through his nose and gazes out the window while he waits for her to finish.

Then, "Are you done?" Now she's laughing at him, and he's looking unamused as he slides his arms under hers, hands clasped over her belly, and helps hoist her upright. "We need to get out of this pile of junk. If you're done." Berating him. His voice is tight, and that look in his eyes suggests he's got some Words for her. "We need to get out of this car, and figure out where the hell we.." He grunts as he tries to inch closer to her door, arms still around the blonde, holding her smaller frame against his. "Are." He pauses a moment to consider. Then, "Unlock the door." His, clearly, is inoperable.

Lucinda is still grousing as she sits up, and he pulls her up to a sitting position. She hisses out a breath and tips upright. At least most of that is under her breath and difficult to understand. She reaches down to wrap her fingers around his wrist, taking the opportunity to breathe. While Ruiz is Having Enough <tm> of her bull crap, she's trying to pull his hand away from her ribs, which are bruised at the very least. She gives up for a few seconds, leaning back against the bossy Mexican while he's talking.

"Fine." She doesn't move for a while. "Okay, doing it." A few seconds after she says that, she finally reaches over to pull the lock. The mechanism clicks. "Hold on. I need to find my boots." They were on the passenger side floor mat before their ditch adventure began. Her hand rests atop Ruiz's wrist, but she makes no move to actually go for her boots, just breathing a little faster than usual and trying to shake off that tumble.

"Always wear your seatbelt," she mutters.

The grousing is, for the most part, ignored. No, he doesn't let go of her. Yes, her ribs are bruised and they probably hurt, but if she can mouth off at him, she can't be doing too badly. His grip is solid, and he waits for her to pull the lock on the door and pop the handle before twisting slightly beneath the blonde, and thumping at it with his boot to shove it open. "Let's go," he grunts, seemingly ignoring the plea for boots. One arm around Luce, he grasps the doorframe in his other hand and uses it to help maneuver them out of the passenger side door. Which is tricky work, given the incline the car's sitting at.

After a bit of grunting and swearing, he manages to get them both out, and drops into the dirt with a thump. Panting heavily for a moment, he does think to crack the door open enough to retrieve those damned boots. And drops them beside Luce before checking the status of that bleeder on the side of his head. It's already started to clot, and he doesn't give it much more thought. The car's headlights are still functional, even if the engine's dead, and the high beams illuminate a swath of highway ahead that eventually recedes into gray.

"Are you going to be able to walk? O vamos a sentarnos aquí mientras me das una mierda?" He looks back to the blonde, practically daring her to suggest the latter.

There's very little griping as she's basically levered out of the car like a sack of produce. Handsy Ruiz, once more shoving her around. Once out, she stumbles a little and drops on her ass on the incline, sweeping up the boots then they're reluctantly retrieved for her. She shakes them out, just in case, and yanks them on, one and then the other. "Yes. Stop berating me in Spanish. I understand your tone."

Luce shoves up to her feet, wincing. She brushes her hand lightly town her flannel, then buttons it up halfway. It's not cold here, but the nights aren't exactly blazing either. Here, along a stretch of road lined by spruce trees as far as they can see in either direction. And now without a car. "Let's go." She turns her back on him, scrambling up the embankment and up out of the ditch with relative ease. She stands there for a moment, looking for a moment to find the rubber skid left on the road so she knows which way to walk. She glances briefly at the Mustang, glances over at Ruiz, arches both brows, then starts along the side of the road in the direction they were headed.

She mutters something under her breath, definitely not in English, then calls over her shoulder, "You don't happen to need glasses for night driving, do you?"

He lost those sunglasses somewhere between hitting the deer and landing in the ditch, and doesn't bother going hunting for them. Instead, his hands are braced against the car for a time as he watches Luce button up her flannel and climb up the embankment until she reaches the road. Then he drops his head, blows a sigh out his nose, and pushes off the ruined vehicle. His boots snap the grass and skid briefly in the dirt as he clambers up after her and spends a moment catching up.

And then, silence as they walk. A good five or six minutes of silence before he ventures, "You seem very angry with me." His hands are shoved in the pockets of his pants, big shoulders slightly slouched, gaze down as he moves alongside the smaller blonde. Every so often, he squints off in the direction they're headed, then back down to the road they're making their way along. "I will try to speak in English for you," he offers after a few moments more. "I am sorry you were.. we were thrown together like this." Maybe there's more, but it seems to take some effort just to manage that.

Luce tromps along on those boots, through the silence, as about a quarter mile goes by before they trade any more words. She walks with her hands slid into her back pockets, palms facing behind her. She listens to him say the first thing. On the second she glances over, the offer to speak English. And then the apology at the end. Her nostrils flare and she grumbles softly, "I'm not. It's..." She gives her head a toss to flick fringe out of her eyes, and immediately regrets it. She takes a step sideways, and her hands come out of her pockets. "I'm not really mad at you."

"I'm frustrated and having trouble filtering." Lucinda reaches up to brush her hair off of her forehead, which only serves to make a bigger mess of it, strands sticking up. She gingerly reaches back and touches the sore spot, fingers coming away lightly stained with blood. She wipes that on the ass of her jeans. "Me too. Look, it's fine. I'm used to traveling alone. We were supposed to be roommates. I give you shit at breakfast, you cook, Lex gives you shit at dinner, we sleep in the same house, I do my stuff, you do your stuff. " She keeps talking, palpating her ribs briefly, holding her breath. She doesn't get very far before she gives up.

"I'm not good at responsibility for other people." She glances behind them, over her shoulder, then turns to keep going.

In a way, that makes it worse. She's not really mad at him, she's mad at the 'situation'. The fruitlessness of that plunges them both into another lengthy silence. The cop with his brows slightly furrowed, perhaps cogitating on what she's said. Perhaps keeping half an eye out for any changes in scenery, or signs that they're getting any closer to what looked an awful lot like home. He makes no attempt to touch the blonde, despite what looked like the beginnings of movement in the hand closest to her. It's shoved back in his pocket a moment later.

"Then let's focus on getting home. And we can go back to being roommates. I will try to.. stay out of your hair, until then." Assuming she can get them home, that is. He tries not to let the uncertainty bleed into his voice. His eyes linger on her profile a beat or two, and then he's focused once more on finding his way in the dark. Distance gauged by how far behind them the car is. "Are we still going the right way?" he feels the need to ask.

"I'm a little mad at you," Luce finally says.

She glances over her shoulder every once in a while, then says, "Yes." She squints and says that without much of a pause, so either she's just saying yes now every time he asks, or she's reasonably certain they are actually going the right way. "That's not what I meant, you know." Lucinda doesn't elaborate for a while. They've probably gone almost a half mile from the wreck of the Mustang before a bend resolves into a straightaway once more, and situated off to one side of the road is a WELCOME TO GRAY HARBOR sign. She pauses right in the middle of the road and looks at it.

"Obviously, weird shit is our new playing field. We could try to ignore it, and maybe we can if you forget everything when we're back." Luce pauses before she says, "Lex is going to want to know where we've been. You might not forget."

"I don't think you know how to stay out of my hair. You're pathologically nosy. I'm pretty sure this is why you're a cop." Finally, she starts walking again, but it's slowly, like she expects there might be something hiding behind that sign waiting to jump out at them.

"When I was younger, I caught a lot of hassle from cops. Not, you know, as much as I should have, but a lot. It's amazing what a library science degree and a pair of glasses can do to throw off suspicion." Not that he's ever seen her wear glasses. Maybe that's a metaphor or something.

The 'I'm a little mad' elicits a soft grunt from the man, but no further acknowledgement. Might be he's still cogitating. Or it might be he's also caught sight of that sign up ahead, and is weighing the possibility of it being accurate, vs the possibility that the Veil is simply fucking with them in new and creative ways. His footsteps are heard behind her and off to one side as he, too, approaches and then comes to a full stop in order to study it. Then a look askance to Luce, like he's trying to get a read on her read of the sign.

He makes a sound like a snort mingled with a chuckle. "No." His hands are tugged out of his pants pockets, and he holds them up in 'surrender'. "I'm serious. If you want me out of your hair. I'm out." He remains where he is as she paces in closer to check out the sign from close quarters, but drops his hands. Crunch of his boots in the gravel at the side of the road as he keeps pace with her, roughly. "So did I. Believe it or not." Catch shit from cops, he means. "You don't trust me. You don't like me. But you're going to have to work with me, until we're out. Yes?"

"Nope." Lucinda wanders up behind him slowly, and it's easy to hear her doing it since her boots have hard soles. She tucks her hands into her back pockets again. "I've known a lot of cops and I find it hard to trust them. I can say I trust you more than any cop I've ever met." Luce comes to a stop right behind Ruiz. "What makes you think I don't like you?"

The blonde stands there after asking that question, falling silent. She doesn't say anything else after that, at least not for a while, studying the sign. It looks like the authentic Gray Harbor sign, from what she vaguely remembers of it the one and only other time she came by here.

"You're not the only one to feel that way." The lack of trust. He half turns as Lucinda comes up behind him, and tracks her in his peripheral vision until she stops. His bearded cheek is scratched at with his thumb, and then his hand shoved back into his pocket. It's getting cold out here, and that tee shirt of his is doing a woefully poor job of keeping him warm. With how close Luce is standing, she can see the slight movement of his shoulders and hear the occasional hiss of breath as he tries to stave off shivering. As to her question: "Asking questions. Hoarding secrets. Withholding information. And my closet? You've been snooping in my things? I.." An agitated sound is made in his throat. "Forget it."

The pockets of his jeans are checked for perhaps the fifth time, for a pack of smokes. No luck. "Let's go." And he sets off again.

"That doesn't mean I dislike you, Javier." Lucinda's voice is level, perhaps a little amused. Hard to say without seeing her straight on. She touches his arm. "The closet was something else." She turns to carry on when he moves, because walking will at least help stave off the chill a little bit.

"It's fair to be angry. I shouldn't have told you." Luce pauses. "You didn't need to know that." Most people would probably apologize after admitting something like that. Maybe I shouldn't have done that. Not Luce, apparently. "I only snooped once, very thoroughly." As if that's at all better. "You should express your feelings more often. Bottling up like that is going to give you a high blood pressure."

"No one else is going to hear you if you yell."

The blonde catches up to him in a few strides. She's much shorter, but seems accustomed to walking faster to keep up with taller people, and doesn't complain about that, at least. She reaches up to touch her head again, but only briefly.

Chances are, 'expressing his feelings' hasn't gone so well for him in the past. Or so she might, might be able to guess from the look he gives her at that. The touch to his arm garners no response, though he tenses ever so slightly at the contact, and keeps walking. Crunch, crunch, crunch of gravel underfoot, and still not a single other soul on this highway. No distant headlights, no semi trailers making late night runs. No wildlife, ever since that deer that came out of nowhere. It's cold, and he wants a fucking cigarette. And it's making him twitchy.

He doesn't reply immediately. And it seems maybe like he isn't going to speak again, at all. Until he does, voice low, and a little rough at the edges of certain words. "When my wife died, I.." He tries to choose his next words carefully. "I didn't handle it well. It was ten years, this past February. Ten years. And I'm still not handling it.. well." The keeping to himself. The unwillingness to open up. Probably.

The taller man slows his stride a fraction when he notices Luce having to quicken her pace to keep up. He keeps his eyes forward. "You remind me of her. A little." That's put there between them, and then there's a little tic in his jaw. "It was probably a mistake renting out the room to you."

Lucinda glances right back when he gives her that look about expressing his feelings. Her eyebrows tick up. What? the expression says. She doesn't actually ask, though. She's just reaching for his arm again, probably to hook her hand along his elbow, when he starts talking about his wife. She could be prodding him again because he tensed when last she touched him, she could be returning the handsy favor, or perhaps it's a gesture to combine a little warmth, to keep at least one arm warmer while they walk. Her motives are unclear, but she does let go when he says she reminds him of his wife. It takes a slight turn into awkward with that. Luce bounces back fast.

"Oh, so she gave you endless shit and got mad when you ignored her saying something to you day after day, week after week?" Lucinda could learn some better self control when it comes to the things she says, but the Veil takes its toll on everyone. At least the stress levels have decreased enough that she's stopped listing facts every time things get tense.

"I wouldn't either. If I made that much room for someone in my life and they died. I'd be..." Lucinda clicks her tongue. "I'd be really put out."

He does not elaborate on the look. If even he's aware that she's waiting for such. He doesn't tense the second time she reaches for his arm, though there is a fleeting turn at the corners of his lips that approximates a smile. His larger frame radiates a fair amount of heat, even with the chill in the air and the slight shivering. He walks in companionable silence for those few steps until her hand is relinquished, and then the warmth in his expression vanishes, and he gives his shoulders a little roll to put some warmth back into them. "No," he murmurs. "She liked books. And.." He pauses, then seems to think better of this line of thought. "I apologise. Please forget I said anything." He squints briefly up ahead, then trudges on in silence thereafter.

Lucinda reaches over and punches Ruiz right in the arm. It's not all that hard, particularly if he's ever been popped by someone larger, and let's face it, with his attitude, there's no way he hasn't been punched. The thing she has going for her is his arm is a big target, and she has bony knuckles. "Stop apologizing."

"Are the books in the house her books?" Lucinda asks that question while he's dealing with the fact that she just hit him. "Would you prefer I not touch them?"

"Que carajo?" That's what tumbles out, right on the heels of those bony little knuckles jammed into his arm. He doesn't retaliate, though it's clear the thought crossed his mind. Just for a moment there. "I would prefer you stop asking me questions." He pivots slightly to jab a finger in the rough vicinity of her face. "You. Are my roommate. Not my friend. You pay to rent the room. Not to ask me questions. You mind your business, and I will mind mine. " His nostrils flare with an irritated breath blown out his nose, dark eyes briefly seeking blue, then dragging away again abruptly as he trudges on. "I did not mean to compare you to her. And I take it back, besides. You're nothing alike." His tonguetip traces his lower lip, a rock skittering into the ditch as it's thumped viciously with the toe of his boot like it did him wrong.

"That's much better." Lucinda's response comes after the rock catches some abuse. She steps over and slides her arm through the crook in his again. If he was confused before, that probably helps immensely. "I haven't paid rent yet. " She nods. "Noted. Not friends." The blonde leans a little in, slowly slightly, though it's barely noticeable. "You already broke the Spanish thing, so I'm not holding my breath on the business minding." Luce glances briefly behind them. She does that from time to time, perhaps checking for more suicidal wildlife.

"Very assertive. Consider me put in my place."

She walks on for a while then says, "Conversation is a reciprocal exercise is what I meant when I was annoyed with you before."

He holds it together fairly well with that patronising little commentary on his aggression against the rock. But it's clear he's annoyed; his body is tense when Lucinda moves in close to slip her arm through his once more. If it weren't for the noise of their boots on gravel, she'd likely be able to hear his teeth grinding together as she carries right on with the poking and prodding and hunting for chinks in his armour. It's the comment about being put in her place that seems to be the last straw for him, though goodness knows it's purely incidental by that point.

His body pivots and he steps in front of her, hands going to her shoulders. He gives her a rough, hard shake before reaching for her jaw and attempting to direct her gaze upward, to his. "You need to stop," he growls. "Whatever fucking game you are playing. Just stop." Blood has dried in trickles down the left side of his head, originating from somewhere near his temple and ear. Either one of them might be suffering from a concussion at this point, and not realise it.

"You are.. one of the most aggravating, stubborn, confusing.. " There's more, but he stops himself in time. And makes an agitated noise in his throat, pushes her away, and scrubs his fingers through his hair. "Just get us home, Luce." He even tries to pronounce her name properly. His tone sounds tired, defeated all of a sudden.

Lucinda's head is certainly pounding, but that's to be expected. Ruiz's must be too. If that affects her behavior is anyone's guess. They haven't known each other long enough to know if any of this is really normal. The Veil is hardly the place to get to know someone properly. When he grabs and shakes her, she comes up short and grunts, squinting. The grip of his hand at her jaw has her gaze coming up where he wants it. She stares at him right in the eye. "What?"

"I can't." Lucinda grabs his arm without really thinking about it, her fingers closing above his elbow. "I can't stop." Maybe it'll annoy him. Maybe he'll shake her off. Maybe neither, though Ruiz does seem on the edge of something. "This is why I don't spend much time around people unless I'm working." Something in her tone suggests she doesn't mean shelving books and researching things in the library.

"You just keep sucking." Luce doesn't stop there, leaving it at that exceptionally rude phrase. "Your responses, you pull everything back in like a black goddamn hole." She huffs out a breath. "I don't have alcohol, drugs, caffeine, anything to do with my hands, and it's just you. Mr. Nevermind. You went from almost angry to done posture in fifteen seconds. You bypassed pissed off almost entirely. I need you to give me something other than this competent soldier in battle, but ready to step off the ledge because life is so boring thing." What she doesn't say to him is that the Veil seems to be reacting to them both on this trip, throwing that deer right at the moment they started fighting, and otherwise putting them on a series of calm and collected drives and rides all the way through to now, interrupted only occasionally by near-death experiences.

And she's a little bit afraid it's going to keep doing that, and he's going to give up before they find a doorway home.

"You're not the one who died. Stop acting like it."

Ruiz was just patting his pockets down, yet again, for a pack of cigarettes he doesn't have. Chances are, he's been doing this little dance of angry to done a whole hell of a lot, and Luce's simply one of the few people to call him on it. The trouble is, he's not done. He's not done at all. There's a raging beast inside the skin of a tired man who's gotten all too good at reining himself in. And he pauses as Luce keeps talking. His arm stiffens when she grasps it; those slender little fingers wrapped around bunched muscle and swarthy skin drenched in ink.

"I keep what?" Sucking. He looks incredulously at her until she elucidates, and it's not like that helps at all. "You need me.. you need me to give you something?" He jerks his arm away, trying to shake her off, dark eyes honing in on bright blue as he stalks in closer to her. Invading her personal space without asking, and without apologising for it.

"Please. Please tell me what it is you want me to give you then, Luce. Please enlighten me." He reaches for her shirt, fisting it in one hand while the other goes for her jaw again, thumb digging into the soft skin. "Because what I see is someone who wants to be close to people more than anything. But has no fucking clue how to get there, so instead she plays her fucked up little games, because it's better than nothing? Huh?" That's accompanied by a shake, and he bodies in close enough that she's going to be forced back if she doesn't want his face within an inch or three of hers.

Her fingers slip off his arm, but not before nails grown longer-than-usual dig in and scrape across his bicep. She leaves a couple of scratches where her fingers found bare skin under the sleeve of his tee. That was probably not her intention, but his pulling away didn't help, or did. "I need you to act like you're alive and you give a fuck!"

Lucinda grunts out a displeased sound when Ruiz grabs up a fistful of her ribbed tank and flannel twisting it up and pulling it tight against her torso. She sucks in a breath when he makes another grab for her jaw, and though she tips her head back, he's got a grip she probably couldn't break without fighting dirty, and maybe not even then. The thumb's pressure on her jaw does serve to distract her somewhat from the throbbing in her head with a new, sharper pain. She fixes Ruiz with those bright blue eyes, jaw clenching, a breath hissing out between tightly locked teeth. "It's not a game."

"It's not a game," she repeats herself, inflection harsher, but doesn't really explain what it is she means by that. She hisses out another sound with the shake. She breathes out hard, at some point having grabbed onto his wrist of the hand at her jaw and the neckline of his tee. There's a good chance she led a few lighter welts on his throat grabbing hold of that. She's not used to her nails being this long. 'Course there's always the chance she did that on purpose. "Do you feel alive yet, Javier." It comes out more like an accusation than a question. She doesn't even try to back up.

The scrape of her nails at his bicep is barely even noticed. She wanted angry, so angry's what she gets; even if not all of it's directed at her. Even if he's been carrying it around with him for so long, he's probably not even sure where he leaves off and it begins. It's woven into the fabric of his being; stitched just beneath the surface of his perpetual lethargy. "And you think I need you to tell me what it means to be alive? You are a twenty-something kid, and you do not know a fucking thing about what that means." He gives her another good shake with the emphasis, knuckles ground bruisingly against her collarbone, lips drawn slightly over his teeth when her nails gouge his throat. That one, he felt.

"If it's not a game. Then what the fuck is it?" He's not a massively built man, but he is tallish. And, moreover, bulky. Like someone built to scrap and fight, someone able to throw his weight around even if opportunity and necessity have conspired to make that less of an option, of late. "Dime que quieres. Dime lo que quieres!" She told him not to speak Spanish. But technically, she didn't tell him not to bellow it from three inches away.

"It's called a coping mechanism." Lucinda grinds that out right before he yells in her face. She doesn't hesitate to yell right back, her voice rising, "I don't know what I want! Stop asking me in fucking Spanish! Do you? Do you even want anything?" She flushes and her nails bite into his wrist. "I'm twenty seven. I saw more shit before I was seventeen than most people do by your age, you unimaginable ass. Would you like to tell me what you think it means to be alive? Elucidate. Impart your wisdom. Show me what the hell you've learned in twenty years that I don't know! Show me what you've learned in ten."

The trees on either side of the road are quiet, no sounds of wildlife, no rustling breezes. It's as if they're empty set dressings, completely devoid of substance, just light, dark, and illusion.

For a little thing, she has a set of lungs on her. He did start the yelling. She's happy to continue it, at top volume. She sucks in a deep breath, likely to begin again. Her breath is ragged, harsh, and her hands tighten on his wrist and the neck of his tee, popping a few stitches in the hem. She just. Keeps. Pushing. Her eyes slip closed a second before she just screams in his face, all of her anger and frustration laced into one loud, raspy-ended yell. She doesn't let go or shove off, in fact, she pushes in against his body.

Right in the middle of that shriek, the back of his hand connects with her cheek in a slap vicious enough to leave a bruise behind, and with enough force to likely snap her head to the side. Maybe even unbalance her a little. Her shoulders are grasped in the wake of it, his hands bunched in her flannel shirt, his eyes riveted on hers as he pants, and she pants, and they'd both be completely fucked if a car happened to come around that bend at full tilt right now.

"I want, Luce." His hands at her shoulders lift to grasp her face. Firmly, but not bruisingly this time. His thumbs slide roughly along her cheekbones, wisps of her fair hair slipped free of her pigtails and tangled on his fingers as he stands there with her, holding her close enough that she can feel his heart racing and see the flecks of gray and green in his eyes. "I want.. a lot of things." He makes a sound that could have been a chuckle, but comes out more melancholy. "Sometimes, I want things that don't make any fucking sense. Like you." His voice is raw and scratchy by this point. Too much yelling or too many cigarettes in his fourty-odd years, or both.

"I wanted you to stay from the moment I saw you sitting out there in the fucking rain." His thumb ghosts over her mouth, not quite touching it. As if remembering the dampness left there by that downpour. "Te veo." Leaning in, he whispers it in her ear, just barely brushing the shell of it with his lips.

Scream, interrupted.

Luce's mouth drops open at the shock of the slap. After her head indeed snaps to one side and she is suddenly brought right back to that moment in the Addington house when the ghostly hand made much the same point. She seems to have completely forgotten that they're standing in the middle of the road like a pair of suicidal deer.

Cheeks caught by his hands, she turns back to Ruiz and stares at him with narrowed eyes, pale gaze fixed on his dark ones. She stares at him for a long moment in absolute silence. "You're going to see a lot of things you probably don't want to see if you so much as shake me again." She slides her hand up to the back of his neck, holding on. She leans in to forehead against his shoulder. "Do you? Do you have any idea how close you've come to dying since you met me?" She shoves him backward, hard against that stupid wooden sign. She leans in, body pressed to Ruiz's to reply, lowly, "Do not slap the girl who can bleed you out without touching you, Javier."

She turns her face into his throat and takes a deep breath. "This is better." Slides her arms around Rui's shoulders. She closes her eyes again. "I think you should know — "

Ruiz's fingers are curled and uncurled a couple of times after that slap, like the force of it was enough to make his knuckles sting. She wanted him to wake up, and he's awake now. There's a glint in his eyes when she tells him what's what, and a soft grunt as he's driven backward against the signpost. He might have a splinter or two lodged in his shoulders, when all's said and done, but at this moment Luce has his full attention. "I have some idea," he retorts with a twinge to one side of his mouth that's wry, but not precisely warm.

He starts to say something else, when that peal of thunder splits the air and shreds a nearby tree. His arms are slid around Lucinda, pulling her close. One hand to the back of her head, the other going around her waist. How the hell he goes from abusive to protective at the drop of a hat may be chalked up to the Veil fucking with them. Or more likely, to his mercurial temperament.

And they stand there, in the pouring rain, for a good several minutes before he closes his eyes and presses his cheek to the top of her (wet) head. "Esto huele a casa." This? Here? Or is he talking about her? His damnable language makes that statement a little vague.

Lucinda pulls in close and doesn't even look up. A good chunk of the tree falls outward, but not close enough to them. So the outside world isn't quite trying to kill them like the Veil did. Luce doesn't even move as heavy rain slowly soaks her hair, her leather jacket, white top, Ruiz, both of them. She mhms, as he speaks. She may understand him. She may not understand him, but it doesn't really matter. She turns her face finally to look at the road again. Her hand opens from where it rests against his -- wait. Not his tee. his jacket. She lets the rain fall against her fingers for a moment, then flicks a hunk of pine park off of his shoulder, sap a sharp, fresh scent almost lost in the rain.

"Yeah, the Veil's an asshole like that." Lucinda mutters. "Sometimes, it's just a matter of where you step through." She thinks for a moment, then squints. "Sometimes you have to stop thinking about it to get out."

They'll be soaked through in another minute. She slides a hand down to her pocket. Mace. Check. Her other hand slides off Ruiz's shoulder to her other pocket. Taser, check. She reaches back for her back pocket, and slides her phone out. Life proof case, working cell phone, check. She hits the power button. Dead, of course. "Great." She presses the phone to her chest between them. "We're going to have to walk." Water slides down her face, hair thoroughly soaked now. "In a thunderstorm." Like that's the worst thing that's happened in the last... weeks? How long has it been here, though? How long has Lex been like WTF are my roomies.

Lucinda tips in until the brim of his cap keeps the worst of the rain out of her eyes too. "Stay here and huddle by the sign or walk into town in a thunderstorm?" Her attention goes from his dark eyes to the scruff of his beard, to his mouth, and then she turns her head to look at the road. She doesn't even grouse about her leather jacket taking a soaking.

Is that really a question that needs to be asked? Ruiz certainly doesn't seem to think so, as he doesn't answer it. Not in words, anyway. But Luce should know him well enough by now, to know that he's not a man of words. Besides, he's a little distracted watching her pat herself down for.. what the fuck has she got in there, anyway? He has some idea, given the shape of her pockets. And studies her eyes for a long moment, the startling blue of them in the gray rain. Then he inexplicably chuckles. Which shifts, after a moment, to a laugh.

"You certainly make life interesting." He glances up at the sky for a moment, at the rain pelting them, and the road, and the foliage with a low, wet hiss. Then he tugs his cap off, slips it over Luce's head, jams his hands into his jacket's pockets and starts walking. The wrong direction, naturally. "Coming?" he pitches over his shoulder.

Lucinda reaches up to wipe water off her face after the cap's been tucked into her head, but she wipes her wet face with a wet hand, so how much good does it even really do? She pushes soaked fringe out of her eyes, gives the cap a little adjustment, then takes a few jogging steps to catch up. "It's good you can laugh at inexplicable things. It's good for your cardiac health." She jams her hands into the pockets of her jacket too, and shoulders into Ruiz. She mutters, "Especially in this town."

"Dibs on the shower." If she gets the shower first, she's going to run out all the hot water. It's a scientific certainty. She finally slides her arm through Ruiz's again, because if he's going to haul it, he'll have to drag her alone or match pace instead. Course if she falls into the Veil again, he'll go with her. The dangers of traveling with companions.

"So." Luce clears her throat. "What are the chances you're cooking dinner tonight?"

There's a longer pause, and then she says, "Are you aware you're going the wrong way?" For once, she's companionably pleasant. She waits for him to acknowledge what she just said, then nudges his shoulder, pulling a wide U-ie.