2019-09-12 - Doors

It's a beautiful, sunshiny, late summer evening. Though clouds threaten rain, they have yet to follow through, leaving the ground cool but not wet. Sparrow lays sprawled on her belly on the lawn with her opened backpack nearby. One might guess she came right out here and collapsed onto the grass right after getting home from classes, setting right to... homework? No, no. She doesn't have any art classes this semester, and those are definitely art supplies she's got spread out around here. Oil pastels discolor her hands in rainbow smudges while she works to get some idea out of her head and onto paper. Potentially unsuccessfully to judge by the irritated grunt which preceeds a flip of her sketchbook to the next page, one failed attempt abandoned so she can start on the next.

A pair of beat up red sneakers are somewhere near the entrance door. A pair of white socks, rigid along the soles from sweat and distance traveled are hanging from the edge of a step down onto the crisp blades of grass that have baked in the sun but not yet lost the brilliant raw spinach-green that promises moisture and holds none.

He's sitting and leaning back on his hands in a button up shirt with short sleeves in gray. He wears cargo pants meant for a taller person, rolled up at the ankles to let his bare feet breath. Strewn close to his bracing hands is a small collection of items. One, a lighter, and two, a closed tin - both partnered to a bong no larger than a coffee mug. Lastly, a book. 'Passage to Juneau' by Jonathan Raban. Its pages are yellowed; several of them, dog eared. He exposes his clothed belly to a cloudless sky as Sparrow gives hers to the earth.

"I'd breath in the water if it rained right now," he declares, echoing a desire that the grass cannot speak.

"That's called drowning," Sparrow counters casually, not particularly committed to that correction. Glancing up from the mostly blank page in front of her, already smudged with muddied colors from the edge of her left hand, she croons, "Do you need some drowning today, baby? Submerged and immersed and distant from the rest of us?" Her smile skews crooked while she watches him, happy for the distraction. She's in gloomy tones today: a soft grey tee shirt, oversized, with an obscured white logo printed on the front, over a pair of charcoal black shorts, her glossy red boots the only pop of color aside from her hair. Even her socks and laces are black. It suits the overcast sky, even as it sets her as a contrast to all the color of the garden around her.

For once, Corey isn't a) gardening, b) cooking something or c) gathering inspiration for his next culinary experiment. No; he's been to the kitchen, fetched himself a bottle of beer, and is coming out to flop down into one of the wicker chairs up on the deck. "Phil. Alf," he greets, a lazy smile offered along with their names. "Drowning? No drowning. I like you both alive."

A non-commital grunt concedes that the act would constitute or lead to drowning and at the same time implies that he's craving water in his lungs all the same. Alfie closes his left eye and tilts his head to give his right a region of the sky to look at, free from the sun but also devoid of content in its gradient blues. "Maybe," he admits, as to his needs. He's been quiet in classes and aside from familiar faces from before the year started, hasn't been seen socializing much in the time between while on campus.

He tilts his head back at the sound of Corey's voice, searching without turning around. His wisp of a smile is upside down while his head is. "Happy to hear your preference," he answers. "I'd rather neither of you drowned, either," he adds.

Sparrow's smile sharpens at that lazy little 'maybe' from Alfie, taking on a predatory cast which might be more convincing if she weren't so comfortably sprawled upon the grass, no particular threat evident in the way she's propped up on her elbows. That edge dulls and dissipates at Corey's arrival, brown eyes rolling his direction as she points out, "It's metaphor, weirdo." She, too, has been difficult to pin down for more than a few minutes on any given weekday, her schedule pretty intense and demanding a whole lot of her attention right out the gates. She meant to be around last weekend, but she didn't get home from Friday's Amateur Night until Saturday evening, and then there was a whole lot of sleeping. One of these days, she'll slow down. Probably a few decades from now. "Did you see someone fucking stole our porchlight? I fixed it this morning. But still. What the fuck?"

"Is it?" Corey lifts one shoulder in a casual shrug; if it's a metaphor, it went right over his head. "I'll do my best not to drown, though after walking in the torrential rain we had yesterday and play-fighting in the waves with a friend, I should try harder not to end up breathing water." He takes a sip of his beer, looking down from the deck over to Sparrow. "Yeah, heard a bunch of 'em got stolen. Should find out if the guys next door lost theirs too. It's probably freshers, or something."

"I hadn't noticed," Alfie admits, regarding said porch light. But he strikes a tone of curiosity when he says it, declaring some interest in finding out the answer to that minor mystery. "I'm a fresher," he adds when the likely culprits are addressed. Though he's only one in terms of definition. His attitude is different than most. He's keeping his head down and serving his time without causing any trouble. If he's not at home, school, or off on a winding walk with no clear destination, he's at his new job.

He tucks his chin in toward his chest rather than leave his head dangling back off his shoulders for too long, and he lays back on the grass. Facing the sky, in equal non-regard of both Corey and Sparrow, so that he can equally address them both. "Has anyone heard much from them lately?" The neighbors, that is. "Seems quiet."

Sparrow stares at Corey as he so casually shares the details his yesterday, a little grin twitching at her lips. "This a new friend or an old friend?" she wonders, brows arched high, expectant. Alfie's movement tugs her attention away, expression softening as she watches him sprawl, no attempt made to keep the fondness from her features. "Classes," is her answer. It's the reason why they've been quiet. "Jens has been busy with commissions. Figure Ash and Astrid are working. Last I heard from Runa, she had some auditions?" And she just doesn't know enough about Marius' life to even take a guess. All of which is to say: being a grown-up is hard. That realization hits pretty heavily, and she turns her attention back to her page, tracing the outlines of a face, a figure, curled horns on its head.

"We all were once. God knows I did some dumb shit during my first year," Corey admits to Alfie with another grin, another sip from his bottle following. "Nah, been busy myself. Work, classes, and rescuing damsels from the waves." His tone at the end suggests he's not at all serious, nodding at Sparrow. "New. Left it open, we'll see what happens." Slouching into a comfortable sprawl, he eyes what his twin is doing, though isn't close enough to see what the picture is.

Alfie's left eyebrow perks upward at the detail snagged by Sparrow as she questions her twin. And at the end of the list of what their neighbors have been up to, he nods, understanding. "Commissions?" he asks, afterward. He hasn't seen Jens since his own abridged version of high school - if they even knew each other beyond sight and name back then. His open eye moves as he searches the sky, tracing shapes that aren't there in the ombre of blue and bluer.

"I think I've overheard some of that," he says to Corey's notorious first year. He might be teasing, but he makes his delivery dry. "Fingers crossed," he adds, on a more honest note, regarding damsels in the waves. And he lifts both hands, his index fingers entwined around his middles.

"How many openings is that then?" Sparrow quips back to Corey, grinning way too wide for that entirely insensitive question. The figure she's drawing seems broad-shouldered, masculine, with his right hand lifted and left one down. Those familiar with tarot or occult imagery might guess at some variant of Baphomet as The Devil on that outline alone; it's the same starting point as her last two tries, those failures having little influence on where she begins on take three. "Art," she answers Alfie of Jens. "Online requests. People wanting their characters drawn and stuff. He's way better than I am. Him and Rink both. And they're both making money off of it. Whereas I am laying here wasting my afternoon trying to figure out how to communicate my own idiocy in color when I should be doing homework. Or making out with you." Sigh. "Art is dumb."

"One open, two closed," Corey replies to Sparrow, making a lazy gesture her way, a flipping of the bird. He doesn't seem terribly offended - it's her, after all - and then notes, "Yeah, Phil. Homework. Get to it. No top grade, no panna cotta." That reminder ever in force, he adds sidelong to Alfie, "You should ration out make-out sessions too, or she'll never graduate." His tone is amused rather than serious.

"Their characters?" Alfie adds, finding more questions in the answer that Sparrow asks regarding commissions. He readjusts and stretches out scrawny across his bed of grass, his strewn items safely to either side of him; as tall as he'll ever be, with gravity flattening rather than shrinking him. "I would have paid for my painting," he admits, regarding Sparrow's feelings regarding art. "Though you make a good point," he adds, another dry tease. "Not about the homework though."

"But then where do I get the make-out sessions back that I'm giving up for the good of her education?" he counters Corey, in equally less-than-serious tones. "Starving myself for the sake of someone else makes me sound like Gandhi. Celibacy-test Gandhi."

Sparrow's mouth opens at Corey's answer, then closes again. Her expression goes thoughtful as she is successfully drawn from art-woes to lewd jokes and her brother's love life. Skipping over the former--too easy, Phil, too easy--she moves on to the latter, wondering, "Closed how? Like... doors shut or just... you already went through... or some sorta pseudo-monogamy..?" She just stares off at nothing for a moment as she tries to work it out on her own, like a very complicated math problem for which she doesn't have all the variables.

"Nerd stuff," is her half-assed answer to Alfie's question about characters. There might be more to it, but his willingness to pay for that alluded-to painting has her smiling all soft, even as she scrunches her nose. "Not the same as a commission," she counters quietly. "That was what I wanted to say. And you can't be a paid artist and do that. Not really. Not reliably." His last words earn a laugh, rough and bright, as she shakes her red-tressed head. "Yeah, sorry. No storage bank for missed make-outs. Gotta get 'em while they're hot." Even if she's not looking, there's a wink for Alfie, playful. "Unlike panna cotta. A dish best served cold."

"Fair question," Corey acknowledges to Alfie, tipping his bottle of beer slightly in confirmation, then taking a longer drink from it before sparking up a cigarette. "This metaphor really isn't working," he then notes to his twin, shaking his head. "But not monogamy, no. Two friends I'm enjoying spending time with, a potential third if she decides to make the call." He seems relaxed about the whole thing; either she will or she won't.

Nerd stuff. This doesn't spawn further questions. Alfie just nods, accepting that as an answer. He sits on the sidelines of the subject of Corey's love life, curiously attending but not familiar enough to provide useful input. "I should have brought candy out," he decides, aloud. "Hard candy, to click against my teeth as clouds don't pass by." It's a narrated aside, a line of thought triggered by sense memory and given voice by a marijuana buzz that wears at his usually introspective silence.

Corey and Sparrow both address his concerns regarding rationed make-outs, and he nods, conclusively, as they note his fairness in the matter. "But I would. Starve for your art. But it would have to be your choice to make, not mine," he tells Sparrow. From there, he launches a question at Corey. "How's your job going?"

"Three seems a good number, right?" Sparrow drops her dark pastel at Alfie's comment about candy even as she answers Corey's abandonment of overstretched metaphor, unzipping a side compartment on her backpack. "Got this cute chick's number at the club, like." She just shakes her head, sure it's been over a week by now, but not sure by how much. "A while ago? But when am I gonna find the time?" Plastic crinkles as she pulls a bag out from that pocket. Rather than tossing it over to Alfie, she abandons her work to crawl over to him where he lays sprawled on his back, setting the mostly-empty bag of Jolly Ranchers on his chest. The heat's gotten to them a little, leaving them sticky in their wrappers, but they're fine besides. Softer, barely carrying up to the deck, she tells him, "I'd rather keep you fat and happy," with a wide, warm smile.

"It's not like I have a number in my head that I'm trying for, or a quota to fill," Corey notes in a dry tone towards Sparrow. "What will be will be. Though, yeah, the lack of time makes it harder." He finishes his beer, pushing up to his feet and nodding at Alfie. "Yeah, really good thanks. The other chefs are all pretty awesome, and I'm learning as I go."

"Three was a lucky number, in Beijing," says Alfie. "Birth, marriage, and death." A tidbit of an encyclopedic knowledge - in this case, with very little practicality. He spent a year of junior high abroad, prior to his years sent away to a less exotic kind of locale. His head tilts minutely toward the sound of the crinkling wrapper - and further when he recognizes the motion of Sparrow crawling over. He offers a flash of a smile up at her as she leaves the remainder of the candy on his stomach. Fat and happy? "You won't hear a complaint out of me," Alfie says softly in return. He fishes out something in blue raspberry, unwrapping the Jolly Rancher flavored by at partly imaginary fruit, and he pops it into his mouth. It clicks against his teeth under pressure from his tongue. He only pauses - the candy caught between his teeth - to reply to Corey. "I'm happy for you. That's a perfect opportunity for you." A ghost of his earlier smile touches his lips. "I'm a little jealous you already figured out what you want to do."

Sparrow does not return to her abandoned artwork, choosing instead to settle right here, flatter than she had been, with an arm slung across Alfie and her head on his shoulder. Seems she's given up on her whole list of things she should be doing, not even making a go at making out. "Just saying that you hit a point where it's like... how many doors can I leave open." Quietly, she notes to Alfie, "I know which you are," of that specific three. "I know which each of you are," follows on a more thoughtful note, a little 'huh' breathed through her nose. On the topic of work and dreams and paths forward, she keeps quiet, letting the pair talk without any interjection of her own.

Gathering up his empty bottle, Corey grins at Alfie. "It helps," he confirms quietly, glad of having something he wants to pursue. And then, lifting his bottle-holding hand in a wave, he heads inside to get ready for his evening classes, leaving Sparrow's door-related comment unanswered.

Alfie waves at the departing Corey, and he settles comfortably, partial to the extension of contact that is Sparrow - head on his delicate shoulder and her arm slung across him. "Relationships aren't the doors I open," he says, declaring himself inexperienced and thus unwise for advice given on the subject. "I wait, and I see who else opens them. What they're looking for." He shrugs his shoulder opposite the one that Sparrow has claimed. "Much more frequent in Seattle," he admits. And he turns his head in toward Sparrow's own. "But I'm more happy for the one who did, here."

Sparrow might be about to echo her twin's earlier sentiment that it's not really a great metaphor, but Alfie's words still that thought. She likes it through his filter, a happy sound muffled against his shoulder where she presses a soft kiss. "You're death," she tells him instead, circling back to that earlier point as she peeks up, too close to really catch his eyes without more effort than she's willing to expend at the moment. "Who I want to be with when the world falls apart. When we transform into dust and take to the stars. An ending and a beginning and a middle all at once." Her color-smudged fingers curl against his thin hip, squeeze him a little closer for just a second. "I know who's marriage, grounded and steady enough to make something of it. Creation. Something ours." A little softer, still, "And I know who's birth. A messy beginning. A giddy blindness. All new and sloppy and foolish and dumb and wonderful." And annoying? She can't quite keep that edge of frustration from her tone. Which might be why she hurries on to offer, "I could play wing man for you. If you want more hands on your knob." She really shouldn't be so pleased with herself for being so tasteless.

Like a tension wire was just cut, Alfie slackens at the kiss pressed in against his shoulder. There may not be enough to him to be the most comfortable pillow, but his posture does its best job at relaxing between Sparrow's head and the grass beneath. He snorts at being referred to as such an imposing figure as that of death, but he nods his understanding as she extends the metaphor and clarifies. He offers no input throughout Sparrow's naming of the three, but accepts it curiously, in his quiet nods. He nuzzles in against her as she pulls him in, close. He shakes his head at the offer. "If someone peeks in, they do - if they don't, oh well," he concludes. But does note, in addition, "And if you're there to wingman me, I think I'd still rather go home with you."

"Fair," comes on a warm breath as Sparrow nuzzles back, drawing in closer to Alfie as she imitates his ease, borrowing his lethargy like it might excuse her from all the things she's not doing instead. "I'm glad I come home to you," is more thoughtful than she maybe meant, like she's working it out as the words come, on the spot. "Even when I don't leave with you." Fingers fuss a little at his hip, an edge of restlessness betraying this feigned laziness. "Missed you Friday night," she admits. "Don't regret at all how it went, but I still missed you. Still wondered if I should've come home right to you, check in." It's almost a question, indirectly voiced, something that's probably been on her mind since the weekend. Nevermind all evidence that suggests they're alright.

"Me too," is Alfie's answer to the statement easiest to reply to. A shared gladness for a shared space - a place for them to reset and reconnect. He remains outstretched, laying back on the grass as she fusses and sucking on the Jolly Rancher in his mouth. It takes awhile for him to put his own thoughts together, so for a time, his only answer to the rest is silence broken by the frequent clicking of hard candy against teeth. "I missed you too," is another snippet taken from the whole, an easy truth in the complicated nature of conflicting needs and desires.

"Things worked themselves out," he said, as to his reason for leaving after the performance - setting aside any requirement to have checked in, in the unevenly unwritten and often contradictory handbook to relationships. "And I love you for who you are, not who you're concerned about being."

Sparrow settles fairly comfortably into that percussive quietude, the delay in a deeper answer not dredging up any anxiety for the redhead. Nevermind the way her fingers continue to fuss at the seam of his jeans, surely leaving an inconsistently black-blue-red-violet line against the denim where the oil pastels are rubbing off. His last remark earns a soft laugh, a shake of her head against his shoulder. "I'm concerned about you," she clarifies. "That's all. You being okay. You being happy. You getting all the amazingness you deserve." With another nuzzle that brings her nose up beneath his jaw, she kisses his neck, a firm press that's meant to say things for which she can't find the words. But then it's followed by a few more, by a tease of teeth and a little bit of nibbling. Those thoughts are something she's already voiced, put to more direct action now. Potentially to distract away from awkward relationship conversations.

"Me too," Alfie repeats, with concern to his happiness. He's of two worlds. His body is responsive, squirming as Sparrow toys with his jeans. But the subject matter had his mind adrift. His gaze is that default state of distant wondering. "But I think I'm still figuring out what makes me happy. What I want to be. What I want to do," he starts. "Whether the town feels like a treadmill inside of a cage. Or if I just feel like that because standing still reminds me that I'm not going anywhere. That the only traction that I've made on a professional level is running around with my head cut off until I pull the trigger on the first gig to answer my call because my parents cut me off while I was in the middle of enjoying a night out with you." A beat. He needs to breathe. "And there's this shadow here. The time I don't remember." Maybe he senses the purpose of the distraction from his point of distance because he lays bare what he's been dealing with. None of it, jealousy. Just the isolation of where he hadn't meant to return to. He tilts his head against those nibbles.

Sparrow's affection slows without immediately faltering as she listens, incentivizing that continued openness with lips and fingers and warm breath. Doesn't hurt that it hides her face, that it keeps her from showing any response to all of that while she listens. Her fingers still and squeeze when he explains what had pulled him away, the gesture almost protective, like one arm slung across his body might help protect him from all that frustration and strangeness and uncertainty. Lips press and linger where teeth had been before she draws away enough to look at Alfie.

"I know," soft and simple. "Not all of it. Not all of that is mine. But enough. The figuring it out stuff." She flashes a rare frown before hurrying past that, not wanting to wallow in her own nonsense when there's more to conersation than that. "You get that you aren't alone, right? We're not going to kick you out on your ass if you can't make rent all the time. We'll move you into my room and get a fifth roommate if we have to. Drag my drums out of the basement and get a sixth if we have to. As long as you want to be here, we'll make sure you can be here, okay?" Dark brows pitch high as she goes on, "And if you decide you don't? That you need to get off the treadmill and run away?" She flicks a look up to make sure Corey's not hovering close somewhere. "Then we go, okay?" So quiet, a promise. "You don't need to open any doors you don't want to. But I'm here for all of 'em. However many you want."

"I feel like it's on me to find out what makes me happy," Alfie says, winding down, his volume decreased to a mere whisper. His expressions show little of what he's said. That mask keeps so long as his gaze is diverted, and he doesn't habitually take on someone else's countenance. That default expression of his mind and emotions being elsewhere - in existence, but not always culpable in connecting to the rest of him. He doesn't nod as to knowing that he isn't alone. But he listens all the same, and that tension wound back into his frame starts to dissipate again. "I know that you're there for me. That you'd do it, all of that. More than anyone could ever do for me," he admits, with soft affection. "But I also wouldn't ask you to run. Not while you still have promises to keep," he adds - primarily with concern to that glance she pays before saying it. He lets out a deep breath. It's been a long week. But here he is. No longer living out of his parents' wallet, lying in the grass with the woman he loves, in reach of someone's version of happiness and still trying to figure out if it'll fit him.

Sparrow wants to protest, wants to fight on that point of promises. So bad. Because he's right. Not because of some silly agreement she's made with her brother about keeping up with her classes. She could fuck off from school in a heartbeat if given even the barest glimmer of a worthwhile reason right now. It's the contradiction in the promise she just made him, the assurance that this home is safe, his as long as he wants it no matter his financial situation. She's the lease-holder. How can she promise that to him without the same courtesy extended to the others, to her own brother. She can't really help the way she scowls down at Alfie, but she can hide it. She sinks back in against him, head bowed so that her ear is pressed to his chest, so that there's no risk of him seeing her expression at all while she clings to him. "I get it," might sound like she doesn't, an effect of that irritation at his being right, but she means it. And, it would seem, she means to leave it at that.