2019-08-25 - It's Been Awhile

Paraphrase an off-camera text conversation: probably no serial killers at the boardwalk around eight, fried fish sounds good, though.

And that brings us to sitting at one of the picnic tables outside the fish joint, eating fried stuff out of a little paper tray that glistens with grease in the light from the Ferris wheel. Since one can never trust benches, Hailey opts to sit on the table top with her feet on the bench - which is pretty much the way everyone else around seems to prefer to sit, hence the shrugged, "When in Rome," comment. She had been in the middle of recounting her adventures at the Waffle Shoppe with Alexander and August, a story that ends with, "The question about being an actor threw me. Why an actor, you know?"

Will the serial killer jokes ever get old? Probably not, no. Though they've at least put those aside temporarily in order to consume little fried fishies that they got from a poor Latina girl dressed like a mermaid. She was /definitely/ a serial killer in the making.

Harvey was currently making a piece of popcorn shrimp dance in too-red cocktail sauce while she rehashed her adventures in waffle shopping, brows hiking at the last part. "That'd throw me, too. You don't seem anything like an actor," because she was a bad liar. He was polite enough not to say that part outloud though. He tilts his head back, tosses the shrimp up, and attempts to catch it with his mouth - look ma, no hands!

And just barely, he catches it, grinning smugly around the mouthful of popcorn shrimp. Though, he totally has a smear of cocktail sauce on his bottom lip though; it was a success, sure, just not a good one. And now that his athletic prowess has been displayed, he continues the conversation: "The town had a troupe come through awhile back? I saw a couple of advertisements in the archives. Maybe they thought you were part of htat."

Hailey ducks reflexively from the flying shrimp, not that it's headed her way, but she leans away from it just in case. Then it winds up being boring and going where it's meant to, and she's just over here, cringing for no reason, so she stops. "As impressive as that was... You want this now." The napkin she holds out on the ends of her fingers, making vague gestures in the general direction of Harvey's face, specifically the cocktail sauce he's wearing. "Are there really archives?" Not that she doesn't trust Harvey to tell her the absolutely and complete truth, but it never hurts to double-check! "And do you really read them?"

Hey now, it's not Harvey's fault he has excellent reflexes. Think of all the things he can put in his mouth with this talent he just displayed! Anyway, he reaches across to steal the napkin dangling from her fingers, rolling his eyes as he rubs said napkin just all over his mouth. "Do I have 'filthy liar' Sharpee'd on my forehead or something?" There's a hint of amusement in his tone, and he uses the back of the napkin to scrub vigorously at his forehead, just in case. He leans back after, squinting at the napkin and then up to her, brows hiking further upward. "Nope, doesn't look like it," he decides, balling the napkin up in his hand. "But yes, there are really archives. And I really did read them. Just a couple here and there for the past six months or so, it was a 'learn about the place you're living in' mission."

Harvey then proceeds to toss the balled up napkin - smeared with cocktail sauce and face oils - right at her!

This here's the gosh-darn truth: "No," he doesn't have that Sharpee'd on his forehead. Hailey even looked first and everything, just to be sure her answer was both truthful and correct. "Cocktail sauce, though. From the napkin?" She might have been helpful and given him an inkling where on his forehead, but he's throwing shit at her, and she only has to lean a little ways off the side of the table to catch it - since apparently he throws like a girl.

No rebuke is forthcoming about him throwing things. She puts aside her fried clams and stuff, making room on her lap to start (kinda grossly) un-wadding the napkin. She pulls it as straight as ruined paper is gonna get, then lifts it by either corner and holds it up, makeshift Rorschach Test made out of a greasy napkin with cocktail sauce on it. "What do you see, Harvey?" Butterfly, bird, maple leaf, Johnny Five?

Damn Hailey and her gosh-darned truths. Harvey could just reach for another napkin and get the cocktail sauce smear off his forehead, but he was too busy throwing things at her and having her grossly unwad it on the table. His elbows go 'plunk' down on the tabletop and he leans forward, putting his chin on the heel of his palm. "What do I see?" he repeats, but his eyes go up - off the napkin, to her face, where he puts on his best dreamy smile. "That's easy. A woman with beautiful blue-green eyes," he replies, the grin broadening as he sits back up. "Or, oh! Do you mean on the napkin?" It's almost apologetic, although that would be an act.

He shifts his hand to tap his forefinger against his lips as his attention drops to the napkin. Think-think-think. "A .. book? No, wait. A shark. Final answer," he drops his hand, chuckling as he leans forward on the bench. "What does that tell you about my psyche?"

So as to help him focus, Hailey raises the napkin up and up till the corners she's pinching are roughly on the level of her forehead, effectively veiling everything from her eyebrows down to her chin. Behind a nasty used napkin. "That you're easily distracted. And possibly something about how you're... afraid of literacy?" She yanks the napkin-veil down abruptly, looking at Harvey like she's just found all the cause in the world to be worried about him: "Are you an editor because you're afraid of prose? And being an editor lets you, be in control of the writing, so it can't be in control of you?"

Before she gets too proud of herself for that, she points out, "At least it's not daddy-issues?" She folds the used napkin up tidily and finds the least-dirty corner to swipe the aforementioned cocktail sauce away from Harvey's hairline. "It looked like chunky blood." That visual should help him enjoy his fried shrimp?

The makeshift veil - albeit gross (srsly Hailey that's got Harvey's forehead oils all over it, nasty) brings out a chuckle from him as he leans into the table, canting his head this way and that whilst he inspects the impromptu cocktail-and-oil-blot test. When the veil's lowered once more though, it's right back into her eyes that he looks, the dimples on display from the grin that he wears. "Sure, we can go with that," he says of her assessment, giving absolutely nothing away until she mentions daddy issues.

It's too bad her tidy cleaning of his forehead probably won't distract her from the grimace that he makes, leaning back after the 'chunky blood' was cleared away. "How can you be sure that daddy issues aren't what causes my need to be in control of the narrative?" It's a question made with a challenging raise of his brows - and is probably the most honest statement he's made to her since he's met her - but he waves it all away with another laugh. Less about him, more about her, he breezes right past that question and opts for a different one: "You learn about this stuff during your other residency? Not to be a Debby Doubter but I find it hard to believe you can learn anything at all about a person from some ink blots on a piece of paper."

He's not the only one whose eyebrows know how to climb, though the one Hailey lifts is more surprised and/or intrigued that challenging. After she ditches the nasty napkin once and for all, tossing it onto the little paper thingie that used to be full of fried clams and is now full of little bits of crunchy stuff, she laces her fingers together, looking importantly at her hands and not Harvey and his freaking dimples. "It's all connected," she says of daddy issues and his whole raison d'etre. Leaning forward just a little, she lowers her voice (not that anyone is listening but she does it anyway) and says authentically, "Sorry if I touched a nerve."

Fine, go digging again. She shakes her head flippantly. "I can't learn anything from ink blots on a piece of paper. But some people think it has value, so." She shrugs. "Have you ever taken one? An ink-blot test? For real, I mean."

"Everything's connected if you look hard enough," Harvey says - it's a bit of an aside, a passing remark, though his expression softens at her genuine apology. He responds with a lift of his shoulder. The response of, "No harm no foul," is as authentic as her apology, though believe you me he was thinking about all the jokes he could make about nerves he wouldn't mind her touching in the back of his mind. Thankfully he keeps that to himself, along with his daddy issues and his desire to control narratives.

But speaking of narratives.. She sure knew how to control her own, didn't she? "Me? Nah. I don't really subscribe to the whole 'lay on the couch and talk about your problems' thing. I prefer to deal with my issues like a real warm-blooded American: I lay on the couch, smoke some weed, watch cartoons, and avoid thinking about it," it's mostly a joke. Somewhat. But this is about her, not him. "But I guess some people like us need a little something else. You know, you never did answer my question last time," he points out. Then again, she seems to avoid most of his questions. A popcorn shrimp is fished from the box and he pops it into his mouth, chewing before he adds: "About the hospital you worked at before. If it was just for people like us?"

One more reason we should've made mind-reading a thing on this game, goddammit, because now Hailey will never know about the priceless jokes she's missing.

"Oh, so you're definitely going to pop one day," is her takeaway from Harvey's coping mechanism. She lifts her fingers to her temple, all bunched together, then makes an explodey noise and fans them out into the air - kaboom~! And then drops her hand to the edge of the table, using it to push herself to her feet. Speaking of coping mechanisms, "Do you want to walk? Just around the general boardwalk vicinity? It's relatively well-lit, so I think we'll be safe." It's only funny because the death-machine Ferris wheel is the primary source of that 'relatively well-lit' lighting.

She's not the kind of person to just walk off without him, so she loiters to answer, "Yes," then hastily, "but you should really be careful who you talk to. About that place."

"At least I know a good former mental hospital resident. You'll be the first person I call when I go off the deep end," Harvey replies with a warm chuckle, shifting when she does to get up off the bench. "Yeah, we can walk," he replies, but he's still expecting an answer to his question - so he's going to wait around expectantly for it, straying near the bench with a pretense of sweeping the trash off into the nearby bin. At least the answer comes readily - along with the warning.

And that, admittedly, takes him aback; he doesn't even bother to hide the expression. "Why?" It's a natural question, one that comes with another climb of his brows, as he falls into step beside her. He can, after all, walk and talk at the same time, it's basically a superpower.

After fighting the urge to 'roll walk and talk' on the off-chance it fails...

Hailey can walk and talk, too! First, she helps clean up because she's not rude. Then with the walking and the talking. "Because it's dangerous?" She eyes him for a second, visibly struggling with this particular turn of the conversation. "It's just not a place you ever want to go. And it's not that I'm ashamed of what I did there, but I'm not really - " Something. She takes a breath for the sake of her composure.

Which means she doesn't like burst into tears, but she's troubled, Harvey, and looks away toward the water for inspiration. To sum up: "It's a dark place."

The perfect follow-up to Hailey's reply would be 'why', but that was far too predictable a question. Besides, Harvey didn't want to risk sounding redundant. So he's quiet for a moment, brow knitting as he hooks his thumb into his pocket and walks with her down the boardwalk in the light of the wheel-o-death. At least he meets her troubled expression with one of genuine apology, a slight downward turn of his lips that doesn't quite make it into a full-fledged frown. He keeps his focus on her even when she looks over to the water, and he chooses his next words with a bit of care.

"You said it was necessary, before," he's a good listener! But that wasn't really a question, just a statement of facts. "What made it dark? If it was necessary. If you were helping people?"

After a very long time thinking about it, Hailey comes up with this very vague response: "Sometimes things have to hurt before they heal." She walked while she thought about it, so they're covering some pretty good ground here, and now it's a nice view of that city getting darker by the second (not metaphorically - like, actually darker). It would serve him right if that's where she left it, but a sideways look at Harvey later, she makes a face and drags out, "It's not a black-and-white thing. The people there - there's just no other place for them. But that doesn't mean they want to be there." She's gonna do the thing again, with the large eyes that fix on his and really hope he gets it. "It's really complicated, Harvey, so trust me that you just never want to go there?" She, after all, is a wholly trustworthy person~

Harvey bites at the very tip of his tongue when she talks about hurting before they have to heal. What he should say is that her patients likely don't feel very comforted when she tells them that. What he does say is nothing at all, which seems like the best approach. He does stall out in their walking progress, stopping just where they get that good view of the darkening city, and reaches out to touch her arm so that she doesn't just go walking on ahead without him. The touch doesn't linger at least, and his hand soon drops back to his hip, while she fixes him with large eyes and his own squint at her from behind his glasses. "Would you have stayed?" It was an odd question maybe, but there was something in his own look that suggested he was searching for something in her. Maybe it was a question of character. "If Doctor Marshall hadn't died? Would you have stayed at the hospital?"

Hailey's not a suspicious person by nature. All the stuff with the serial killer aside, she's still here - still texted random strangers, had lunch, ate fish after-dark - so it doesn't immediately occur to her what's wrong with his questions. She answers the first question honestly, having slowed and stopped at the well-timed arm-touch, mission accomplished. "Yes, until my residency was finished," and feels bad about that, says the knitted brows and look down at her toes, so thanks for asking. "There's more - wait, what did you just say?" So at least now she's not feeling bad, just confused, peering at him with the same intentness just for different reasons. "How...?"

Harvey realizes almost immediately that he opened his mouth and stuck his shoe directly into it (and no, his shoe did not taste very good at all), but he has enough presence of mind to keep his expression schooled. Maybe she'd miss it, the Doctor Marshall reference - and the quick look down to her shoes, the feel bad expression, it was enough to suggest it'd gone right over her head and he was in the clear. Except.. well, he obviously wasn't. "Uh.." There's a shift back onto the heel of his sneaker, brows climbing like he was questioning her questioning him. Sure, he could take the high road here, the route where he tells her the truth and nothing but the truth so help him God, and risk her storming off and probably never talk to him again. Which would be a bummer on several points, because he was enjoying these random outings and her presence.

So Harvey takes an alternative route that will definitely not bite him in the ass later. The road of half-truths and mostly-lies.

"... I Googled you," it was mostly true, albeit a sort of reversely engineered. "It comes up. That you were a recipient of the Marshall Foundation, it's a couple pages in but you never just take the top hits off Google really." There's a lopsided grin attached to those words, a dimpling of one cheek. "Sorry. It's a bad habit, you know? You've never Googled anybody you've been interested in, Miss 58% of White Men are Serial Killers?"

Hailey (marginally) believes his quick-thinking response there. But he's going to have to look this silly, trusting soul in the eyes and lie to her, so hopefully that stings later, the slow shift from her rightfully earned confused-borderline-suspicion to gradual understanding and acceptance of this reply as realistic. "Honestly, no? The internet is full of lies and fake news," with a weak laugh, born as much from relief that she can totally trust Harvey again as from that being a stupid joke. "Sorry. For overreacting." Which she didn't even do, but she's kinda floundering now. "He was always kind to me, and I've been missing him the past few days, so you caught me off-guard. We should - " Walk back to safety! Her head-tip suggests picking up that stroll back toward land.

If it makes the meta feel any better, it was totally stinging now but it was a little too late to turn back. Besides, it wasn't even a lie! It was just an omission of facts along with a side of twisting the circumstances. "Well, not entirely," he points out. "You can Google me if you want. Turnabout's fair play and all that. But I know what you'll find, even in the back pages of the search history, and you're gonna have to wade through a bunch of articles I wrote for the Chronicle before you even get to any of the personal stuff," he shrugs, casting a look back from whence they came when she suggests heading back.

But he doesn't go immediately. Instead, he turns to face her again, stepping just a little closer until he's on the edges of her bubble. "You don't have to apologize," there's that twist of guilt again, bringing a knit to his brows. "Really. But I'm sorry that you miss him," and this was all very sincerely spoken, no lies or omissions or half truths here. "I know what it's like to lose somebody. Somebody important to you."

This is no time to be making euphemism jokes about Googling people till you get to the good-bits, so Hailey just answers, "I'm not going to Google you, Harvey," like that should make him feel better. "Okay, I might. Read the articles." Yes, she heard that, which is why she shakes her head at herself for a second and then presses on.

She has a much more practiced arm-touch methodology than his little wait-up earlier. She does this to people at work all the time, after all, so it's a professional competence when she puts her palm on his forearm, fingers with a little extra pressure to say, "Thank you for being empathetic." Then she pat-pats his arm and notes with a sort of teeth-on-edge smile, "We got all dark again."

"Make sure you read the one about the baby pandas at the zoo. It was my best work," Harvey offers mildly, with just a note of humor, offering her a smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes or dimple his cheeks. "I could tell you the highlights sometime, of everything else. But I guess it's the stuff you can't find online that's more interesting than the stuff you can."

And then she goes and touches his arm with that professional competence of hers. It's his turn to get caught off-guard, looking away from her down to her hand as she does the pat-pat and really staring at it for a tick or two. Then it's a sweeping glance back up to her eyes, huffing another laugh at her talk of getting dark. "Yeah well. We're on a dark boardwalk, in a dark town," metaphorically speaking, this time. "Guess it's only natural that our conversations turn grim?" He shrugs, it makes sense to him. There's a secondary glance to her hand, before he frowns to himself. "I just.. I'm sorry. I just have one more question," famous reporter line. His voice is quiet, keeping things private. "You helped people, right? You helped them cope? Did you help them understand that they weren't just.. that there was a reason that they broke?"

After the second time he looks at her hand, Hailey peels it away and pulls it back over into her own keeping, even tangles up the fingers of her other hand with that too-brave one, like that'll keep it from getting an ideas in the future. "Sorry," she tucks in somewhere. (Though she ought to be all indignant 'cause he's the one pestering the perimeter of her personal space and then wants to get weird about an arm-pat? She needs to work on her self-righteousness, clearly.) Anyway, she nods about the excuse for shit getting dark, echoing the brief laugh in a useless exhale.

Then he just has one more question (which was actually three questions, btw, so he's just lying all over the place here), and she... looks elsewhere again, like over his shoulder at the spinny-lights on the Ferris wheel. "What do you mean, a reason that they broke?"

"No," Harvey replies to her apology, though the word actually starts to form as she peels her hand away, "It's just.." there's a hesitant beat before the next words roll out, "Been awhile. That's all. It was nice, you're --" And he hears himself this time and doesn't bother hiding the wince that crinkles the edges of his eyes when he admits that. "You're nice." Ugh.

At least he can laugh at himself, and he puffs out a few self-depreciating chuckles that taper off when she looks elsewhere. Her question gives him pause and he sighs as he turns to hang his arms over the boardwalk railing, looking out past towards the water. "I mean, this. What we can do. Our whole thing," he twirls a finger around in a circular motion, and a broken seashell detaches itself from the sand, hovering in the air for half a moment before it is pulled through the air, and drops into Harvey's outstretched hand. He brushes the grains of sand from the crevices, smoothing his thumb over it before he turns back to her.

"I can move stuff without touching it. I can make people feel emotions that aren't theirs. Some people can fix other people. And they can hurt them, too. Between that, and the Dreams, and sometimes there's that feeling that you're being hunted," he draws out a breath, stepping past the edges of her bubble and straight up into her zone, reaching to take her hand and carefully unlace her naughty hand from the one keeping it in check. Assuming she lets him? He drops the broken seashell there, right into her palm. "Maybe there are people like us who were crazy before, legitimately schizophrenic or whatever. But I'll be damned if this thing we got doesn't drive some normal people batshit."

Super quietly, like right on the edge of hearing, Hailey sums up the fact that it's been a while with a very low, "That's sad." It's a thought she probably should've kept to herself, but at least it can go be happy with you're-nice over there in the Lameville. The levitating seashell is a nice distraction from the dorky commentary, though there's a second when she takes a breath that wants to be exhaled with a word - and that word is almost definitely 'dude thats how you get yourself hunted' - but it literally goes without saying.

It figuratively goes without saying that of course she lets him open her hand. And of course, despite her own unfinished warning from mere seconds ago, that broken seashell starts to mend itself - at least until she claps her other hand over it quickly, hiding it from sight and any further attempts to repair it, because that was dumb, and she'll pay for it later. But right now...

"Mostly, I just patched them up and sent them back to their rooms," she admits, dropping her eyes from Harvey's to her own seashell-bearing fist. Slowly, "The people who were lucid enough - I would talk to them. Normally, most of the time, like they were normal and I was normal and everything was normal?" She glances up, to see if that landed in the 'makes sense' zone, then looks back at her hand and concludes, "Empirically, there's no data to validate what you're saying." The particular stress on the adverb suggests she agrees with him, data or not.

It was sad. Harvey had half a mind to agree with her aloud, but he opts instead to draw attention of Others with his floating seashell trick. At least it was nice here in Lamesville, under the flashy lights of the killer Ferris wheel. His hand, the one that presses the broken seashell into her palm, lingers for a moment before he pulls away with a brush of his fingertips along the side of her hand. Then, with a sigh, he goes back to hanging over the rail while she talks, keeping his head tilted in her direction to watch her as she does.

"I get it," he remarks about the normal on normal on normal, "I bet the Dreams were bad there. A hospital full of people like us? Must've been like shooting fish in a barrel," it's a quiet remark, his brow knitting into a furrow that he can't force to smooth back out. But there's some notable tightening in his jaw at the 'empirical' comment. "Empirically, there's probably no data to validate whatever we have even exists," he remarks, and leaves it at that. They were treading far too close to uncharted personal territory, and it's been enough darkness for the night. "We should probably head back," he says, though he makes no real effort to pull away from the rail.

"No, I never had any of those kinds of Dreams while I was there. Only the patients did." Hailey should learn some of them lies of omission and stop sharing things that just make her feel guilty, leave her staring at her fist with a tightly-woven frown in place. After a white-knuckled tightening of that fist, she does what Harvey didn't, steps away from the railing and looks importantly in the direction of the city. The head-tip that way becomes a lean, the lean becomes a step, the step becomes two steps, and the questioning look at Harvey becomes an invitation to walk?

"I'll walk you back to your car so no one kidnaps you and feeds you to their snake." It's a weak effort, and she makes a face to acknowledge its weakness.

The admission makes Harvey blink, staring at her for just a moment. But then he shakes his head and looks back over the water, the faintest twitch of a frown there at the corners of his mouth. It would be information he'll need to process later, because she was already on the move. So with a huff of a sigh, he pushes himself away from the railing, turns, and falls in step beside her. This time, he walks a little closer, stepping right there on the boundaries of her personal space. At least he doesn't try to do anything predictable - like hold her hand. Or kiss her cheek!

"But then who will walk you to your car and make sure that nothing happens to you?" It's not his strongest effort either, but he flashes her a hint of dimples. "How about I walk you to yours instead? Getting eaten by a snake is a risk I'm willing to take to make sure you don't end up sleeping with the fishies."

Oh good. At least she finally told him something he didn't already know. It's only taken like five hours of conversation for him to get that much. Must be a helluva journalist.

"I will?" Walk herself to her car. Or they can just debate about this all the way back to the street, where the only fair resolution is to stop halfway between both cars and go their separate ways. She doesn't do anything predictable either, unless a sudden hug is predictable? Because that's what Hailey does, tucks an arm around his middle and squeezes with it, the shell-gripping hand squishing his back. "This way, it hasn't 'been awhile,'" is the explanation. She totally did that all for him, that's how nice she is.

Actually, saucy meta, she said a lot of things he didn't already know already SO THERE.

Either way, the sudden hug was totally not predictable - it was yet another thing that catches him off guard tonight. But at least this time he doesn't stare awkwardly at her arms or anything. Instead, he just shifts to wind his arms around her and squish her back. "Thanks," he murmurs while he's close, breathing out a quick sigh before he peels away.

Then he very unpredictably does not kiss her cheek, and heads to his car.

The funny part is that they live on the same street, so they have to wait at all the same stoplights. Hailey finger-waves buhbye before turning into the driveway. Where she will sit in the car a while and try to sort out whether she did enough good in the world - she hugged someone who is obviously lonely for human contact! that's nice! - to outweigh all the crap Harvey keeps bringing up all the time.

MAN, she should really put that shit together at some point. Oh well.