2019-10-25 - I Love It vs I Hate It
Sutton & Carver meet up and their conversation, as it sometimes does, takes many a winding turn.
IC Date: 2019-10-25
OOC Date: 2019-07-22
Location: Bayside/13 Bayside Road
Related Scenes: 2019-10-08 - Security is Mostly a Superstition 2019-10-15 - All Anger Stems From Lack Of Food 2019-10-24 - Alive is Good Enough 2019-10-26 - Fight Club Chapter 1 2019-11-05 - Offering (Alexa: STFU) 2019-11-09 - HOW MISTER CARVER GOT HIS CAT
Plot: None
Scene Number: 2326
Late afternoon at number 13 has all things calm and chill, soft music coming from his docked phone on the living room table. Possibly too calm and too chill, on second inspection. Laying on the floor, a cushion pulled from the couch to rest beneath his head, Carver relaxes with a leather bound journal, the wrap of string that keeps it closed hanging loose to attract idle attention from a pair of green eyes the black waistcoat he wears has recently obtained.
Okay, it's obviously Hope, sprawled out on his chest and blending in perfectly with the color of the fabric, one arm occasionally reaching out to swat at the dangling string. But you catch that out of the corner of your eye? It wouldn't be too hard to think that one of his outfits finally gained sentience. And limbs.
Limbs that go for (and narrowly miss) his hand when he licks the tip of his thumb to turn the page, the handwritten script within talking about 'Tylwyth Teg' and accompanied with a hand-drawn image of a dumpy looking humanoid holding a fork.
"Ah-chuchuchuch." Is the best description of the vocalization he makes to scold the cat. The cat obviously does not care.
Of course it's without any warning that a key hits the lock at 13 Bayside. So Sutton walks in on this amalgam of cat & man & book, with little more than a glance. She kicks the door closed behind her, doesn't lock it, and whips a jingle cat toy ball across the room, without considering the consequences of the cat's current location.
She jingles a little when she walks, so there's a good chance there are more of those in the pocket of cargoes. She's dressed like she just got off work, all uniformed up. PARAMEDIC in the house.
"I brought noodles and boba tea." Dangling from her other hand is a plastic takeaway bag that smells of deliciousness. Balanced in a little cardboard carrier at the top, inside, are two teas. That seems a dangerous proposition.
<FS3> You Assume A Jingle Toy Will Distract Me, Human (a NPC) rolls 5 (8 8 5 4 3 2 1) vs Omg Chase It Chase It Chase It (a NPC)'s 5 (8 8 7 7 4 3 3)
<FS3> Victory for Omg Chase It Chase It Chase It. (Rolled by: Carver)
Carver's seeming first awareness of Sutton's arrival would be the jingle toy whipping past his head. He was too busy humming along with the music.
And there's a moment. Just a moment. It's a moment where both he and Hope look at one another, the slow dawning of what has just occurred and what is about to occur hitting them both simultaneously. Some might observe Hope seemingly breaking into a smile as Carver's face begins to drop, getting as far as "Oh sh-" before the moment passes.
The yowl overpowers his words. The chase is on, and his face is the perfect springboard, one back paw pressing right in to his cheek as she launches herself away and after the toy, both disappearing beneath the couch.
He tried to cover his face with the book. It came about a second too late, so after being used as a launching point, Carver just slaps himself in the face with some paper as an added bonus, holding it there for a second or two before dragging it beneath his eyes to look at Sutton with some disdain. "Hi. Good. Also- WHY?!"
Sutton's answer is, of course, a shoulders-hunched trying-not-to-laugh and totally laughing snorfle. It was the book to the face that did it. She coughs a couple of times and walks into the living area to put the bag of food down on the table, careful to balance and then remove the boba teas, purple, milky liquid with black tapioca pearls floating ominously in the bottom. "What was it you named you resident overload again, love?"
Planting a hand to push himself from the floor, Carver mutters something inaudible as he brushes away the residual fur from his waistcoat. Some of the residual fur. It's black on black, which is a bonus, but a few strands here and there can been seen on the crisp white shirt he wears.
"Hope." He replies once he's stood himself up, folding the book closed and wrapping that piece of string around the covers, looping it twice to keep it snug and secure, moving around the other side of the table to drop down on the couch that said overlord did not just disappear under. That couch has a jingling sound coming from beneath it, and therefore is the most dangerous spot in the house. "You said tea. Why is the tea purple? What ungodly bullshit is this, pet?" He does not move to take one of them. He's busy staring at it, suspiciously.
Sutton unwraps a fat pink straw and jams it through the lid into her boba tea. She drops into a seat on the couch. "It's a caffeinated milky tea sweet delicious thing with chewy bits in the bottom, bit of a texture of enormous fish eggs, but really quite delightful." She probably just described Carver's own personal hell. Sluuuuurp. Several black spheres slide up the straw into her mouth. Though it's an opaque straw, it's very thin plastic and the pearls show through like shadows chasing through it. This is how alien pregnancies begin.
Carver does none of that. Carver prods the side of it with a finger, possibly checking to see if any of those pearls move. Or look at him. Or coalesce. His eyes dart sideways as she starts slurping, following the line of shadows that run up the straw to disappear between her lips.
"That is horrifying. That is someone finding a way to profit from amphibian gestation. That is wrong."
He grabs the cup and mimics her motions.
"And I must try it."
Sutton kicks her boots off after some unlacing and drags her feet up to sit on the edge of the couch curled up. She watches Carver make his comments and decisions about the purplish tea, and smiles. "It's taro root flavored."
The pearls are soft to the tongue, but toothsome, and chewy. They have little flavor on their own, but are slightly sweetened when softened up to go into the drinks. Generally speaking, people love it or hate it. No middle ground. "Good life choices." She chews some pearls and glances over her shoulder to see how Hope is faring.
<FS3> I Love It (a NPC) rolls 5 (7 6 3 3 1 1 1) vs I Hate It (a NPC)'s 5 (8 6 6 4 3 3 2)
<FS3> Marginal Victory for I Hate It. (Rolled by: Carver)
Hey. He gives it a go. Carver even actually manages to swallow the far-too-eager mouthful he took.
But his face? That is a face of regret. His features scrunch up in the effort of actually forcing the disgusting combination down, the cup and straw immediately being placed back on the table as he wordlessly stands and bee-lines for the kitchen. As for Hope? Hope's vanished beneath the other couch, the soft sound of jangling slowly fading into silence, but there's definitely the occasional swish of a tail that emerges and vanishes from the shadow beneath.
From the kitchen, after a moment, there's the soft noise of a man in his 30's going 'Pffftfbftfbtblehffftpft' over a sink, and the sound of water running, followed by the fridge opening.
And a bottle opening.
"Worked out about as well as my other 'good' life choices. How you doing lately, pet?" he calls.
Sutton's left with two cups of taro root boba tea and that is not a problem for her. She unfurls herself, leans over with a grabby hand, and sliiiiides it over to her side of the table where it will rest, warming slowly to room temperature, while she drinks the first one. "Faring well today, I think." She puts down her tea and opens up the takeaway bag, setting out a containers of noodles, chopsticks, bamboo forks, and some spring rolls in a little sleeve. "So it should be entertaining to see how the rest of the day goes."
"Haven't been vomited on yet, though that was a near miss." She means the tea experiment. "I see you and the kitty have reached an understanding." Much like he and Gunner did earlier in the month.
Carver's return comes with root beer. A lot of what Carver does should come with root beer. Sometimes, you just need that sickening sweetness.
Dropping back down to his spot on the safe couch beside her, he greets the sight of the foul concoction being moved away with some level of agreement, signaled through a slight noise in the back of his throat and an up-tilt of the head. "Good. You got anything exciting planned for the evening?" He asks, the end of the sentence coming from a mouthful of spring roll that's deftly stolen from their little sleeve, and immediately crunched on, shedding a few crumbs skittering that have to be brushed from his legs to the floor.
An action that summons said kitty out from the couch like a rocket, belly-sliding across the hardwood and scooping up a couple of crumbs with her mouth, the rest bodied under the couch with her as she slides to a stop.
Carver blinks at this sudden burst of motion, then glances over to the less-common house-guest sitting beside him. "...Kinda?"
Sutton's phone is out on her knee by the time Carver returns, the mobile balanced precariously there. She has a container of noodles in one hand, chopsticks in the other. "A bit later, yeah," she says. "Little bit of an illegal underground fight club. Said I'd play medic to the bleeders." She scoops up a mouthful of noodles and finely shredded cabbage, onion, and carrot and stuffs it into her mouth.
She glances over, her gaze straying down the new black waistcoat. She's silent while she chews, staring at all the buttons. "... she sheds on everything, hm?" She watches the kitty mop the floor and vacuum at the same time. Now those are domestic talents. "When it comes to cats, the understanding changes minute by minute by what they want, unless you're willing to assert your dominance."
"She sheds because she cares." Hope is definitely not hypoallergenic. Neither's Carver, when you think about it. He could definitely be classed as an irritant. Reaching forward to grab his own container of noodles after a little curious look to confirm it's for him, he raises an eyebrow her way once he's started chop-sticking up his own mouthful. "Wait, fid you shay fight cub?"
He swallows. "Did you say-... you know what I said. And stop eye-fucking my waistcoat."
"I'll eye-fuck what I want, thank you very much." Sutton's reply isn't as saucy as it could have been, thanks to a huge bite of noodles in her mouth when she says that.
If Carver's classed as an irritant and Sutton drives Carver to drink, what, exactly, does that make her?
When he comments on fight club, she tips her head back and sighs heavily, like this isn't the first time she's been reprimanded for doing what? Oh, right. Talking about fight club. "I have a Bake Sale later." She taps her phone. "It's saved in my calendar and everything."
"Sutton, if I know anything about you, it's that that is the truth." Carver's smile isn't weak, nor forced, but it does conjure an image of Benjamin Franklin's slightly awkward bill portrait with that half smile of 'I know you're going to use this note to do a rail in the bathroom of this nightclub, and I won't stop you. You do you, you glorious trash fire.'
Following the sentence with a little indication of a smudge of escaped food just below her lip, which conveniently takes a bit he too had missed from his own face, Carver's feet kick off his shoes to stick them up on the table. He hasn't been out today, to those pristine white socks are still ever so pristine...
Baring a couple of very dark cat hairs.
"Bake sale." Noodles hover just away from his mouth as he takes that in. His eye dart from them, to Sutton, back to his food. "I'm trying to think of a 'pound cake' line and it's just not coming."
Sutton gives Carver a bit of a look when he says the first. She lifts a foot, stretches her leg across the couch, and pokes his knee with her bare toes. She's repainted her toenails again, this time a strangely vibrant lilac.
"Are you going to pound some cake later, love, or is this merely a professional engagement." She tries a line by proxy, then wrinkles her nose and shakes her head. Naw, too unwieldy.
It's funny. He asked her to come over when the conversation turned real last night, and yet here they are in person discussing all but. She reaches up to touch her throat, like she's wearing a necklace, but she's not. Maybe it's a subconscious check now that she knows with the St. Michael comes Elias Sutton's ghost.
Funny? It's how they work. Words come easier over distance, when the person you're talking to isn't sat there and poking you in the knee with her toes.
Carver slowly chews a mouthful of noodle, closing his eyes and shaking his head in utter distaste at the attempt. There's not even points awarded for putting some effort into thinking up a line. There's just shame. Proxy shame. It's why he didn't even make an attempt.
"You know I love your company as-is, pet." He starts, goaded in to speech by her quick neck-check, his knee shifting sideways to poke her toes right back. "But what did brother-dearest see that he shouldn't've?"
Pre-amble is for chumps.
She deserved that look for that awful attempt. Sutton isn't afraid to be the first one to attempt a trip across a frozen lot in an ice storm, though, even if it means she ends up on her ass, stranded, as an example to others.
She opens her mouth to say something when Carver makes a correct leap from the touch to her own throat. She hesitates, then says, "Uh, a very awkward sexual experience, attempted murder, assault, an ultrasound, unlawful imprisonment, a Golden Girls marathon, among others."
Sutton takes a small bite of her noodles, then jams the chopsticks into it and sets it aside.
Carver doesn't stop the noodles. He's on the noodle train, the brakes have failed, and the bridge up ahead may or may not be out, but they added soy to this shit and he's in it until the end. Scooping up another load in his chopsticks as she does a brief run through the list, the only notable responses would be a slight shift in facial expression, even going as far as to edge on concern once or twice. Generally, though? Impassive consideration mixed with focused attention. Like he's taking in every word, but offering little back.
He lets silence hang for a moment, watching the chopsticks jam down, then knocks her toes with his knee again, swallowing.
"It got Golden Girls marathon level bad, huh?"
He's only been in the states for about a year and a half, but he knows.
Sutton reaches for the boba tea and tucks the straw into her mouth. She looks at him for a long moment and just say, "I was very drunk." For a while, she was very drunk. Apparently. "When you're very drunk, that show is hilarious." The blonde sips her tea, sucking up a bunch of black tapioca pearls.
Sometimes it's funny without the drinking, but nobody admits to that. Sutton does thing when she's drinking, and sometimes it's as simple as streaming video and disgusting snacks, like cheese balls. "How'd you figure out it was the St. Michael."
Carver takes one more mouthful of noodles, then tucks the chopsticks inside the box, putting the entire lot on the table when he's done. It's so his hands are free, post-plucking-away a few errant hairs, to pull her feet up across his thighs with a little sideways shifting and re-placing of his own feet up on the table.
That would be Carver's variation on 'Yeah, I know', then.
"He was here when you weren't. Told me to slash his tires. Showed up almost as soon as I took hold of the thing that day I gave it back." Maybe he could have mentioned that sooner. Maybe he should have. Maybe he was a little bitter.
Sutton watches Carver for a while. She chews on tapioca pearls. She swallows the little pearls. "Hm. Was he." She knows him, and she knows every time Elias has shown his face to her, save one, he's had something to say. "Yeah, the tires aren't surprising. That used to be how we did justice back in high school."
She nestles her toes against Carver's waistcoat. "Eli told you to slash Javier's tires." She chuckles. "By the time —" There's a cough. "Yeah, he wanted him dead not long after. Still does, I imagine. He's pouting, currently." Or maybe she left the St. Michael at 503 the night she accidentally dosed herself and forgot to pick it up again.
"Shit. Forgot to do that." Carver actually looks a little remorseful at forgetting a certain promise about harmonicas and air intakes. He gets over it by leaning forward in the couch for his bottle of root beer, but made the ultimate mistake of distance when putting it down, and only succeeds in coating his fingertips with condensation before giving up and flopping his way back in to the seat, chuckling at the mention of high school justice.
The cut-off sentence and cough is noted, but duly ignored. Ignored by his staring up at the ceiling to admire the paint job some decorator did years and years ago. Subtle as fuck.
"Soooo..." He drags out, gazing at everything possible in the room before finally settling his eyes back on her face, the soft sound of a cat crushing through spring roll crumbs coming from beneath the two of them. "Anything in particular on that list you wanna talk about?"
He'd ask about the awkward sexual experience. Anyone would. His body is screaming at him to ask about it. So he doesn't.
Sutton looks at Carver for a while, when he sooooos. She doesn't say anything, thinking on that. Which one of those things does it seem like she might wanna discuss. Blanche's hilarious sexual exploits or Mama's sharp tongue. She crosses her legs at the ankles, nudging his thigh with the ball of her foot. "There any in particular strike your fancy." She's looking at Carver like she's unsure what he's thinking, probably because she is. "We're not in therapy, so you're allowed to ask."
"Obviously, I'm still conflicted about the kid thing. I see kids and it gets hard to breathe for a second, which is fucking stupid. I don't want children right now. I'm not having kids with someone who's more self-destructive than me, and it's recently come to my attention that I'm a little unstable." Ha. She slurps up a few more pearls. "And yet."
"And yet it sucks." Carver's face drops to look at the foot currently nudging his thigh, his palm slipping from his leg to wrap around the top of it. It's totally so he can admire the nail job. That's all. That's absolutely all. "You want them in the future, though? Kids? 'Cause I remember being a kid, pet. I was a fucking nightmare."
If it helps her feel any better, Carver's unsure what he's thinking, too. Everyone in this room is unsure what he's thinking. Well, that's not true. Hope knows. Hope just doesn't care.
"Yep," Sutton says, the p in her yep popping. She flexes her foot when his hand wraps around her. Her feet are pretty cute, but she does get pedicures every two weeks without fail, no matter how hungover she is. "Yeah, I think I do. I mean... I did." She glances away briefly. "I wanted to be an aunt to Eli's kids, and I wanted him to be an uncle to mine. Divide and conquer, you know?" She smiles a little. "I believe it. We were... awful. And a team and inseparable."
"So... maybe I do still want kids some day, but that day isn't soon." She smiles a little more then. "If your kids are starting shit, that's how you know you did it right." She nudges him again with her toes. "What about you? Do you want kids someday?"
"Y'know the whole uncle and aunt thing of getting away with only seeing the good parts doesn't work when you have your own, too." Carver muses, stretching back in the chair some as his hand slides from her foot to raise above his head, shoulders popping lightly. "Sounds like double the poop and tantrums to me." Only child, whatcha gonna do?
He's brought out of the stretch by being nudged again, arms dropping down to rest in his lap, a leg shifting so that foot rests on the edge of the table, letting him prop his knee up a touch higher. "Da only ever did one thing right in his life, and none of it included raising me. But I figure someday, maybe?" His cheeks puff out a little as his lips purse up, turning to look at her with a little shrug in his shoulders. "Think I should figure out how to take care of myself, first."
A beat.
"Do you know when you're supposed to learn that, by the way? 'Cause... 37. Still not there."
"Oh, it would. Because we'd be tossing them back and forth to each other like no way you. Especially the first time they all got sick at the same time." Sutton shakes her head. "No reason to be cleaning up two houses smelling of sick." A cop and a paramedic who work all the time trading off baby duties seems... like a failed idea, and means their partners, if ever they could keep one, would be on baby duty. Poor imaginary partners.
"Yeah, that's what I think too. I should be able to take care of myself before I fuck up someone else. Then again, what if I'm never ready? I'll set 35 as my reevaluate and get on it age. Maybe babies force you to grow up. Or... fake it better." She thinks on that, watches Carver.
"One of us better start faking it."
"Don't look at me. I hit your re-evaluate point and got worse." Carver's hands go up, palms out, absolving himself of all guilt, future or past. He doesn't mention that yes, their idea was a terrible one, and that coming up with an idea that seems great but really just shoulders the burden on others does seem so very fitting for the two family members he's happened to meet so far... mostly out of self-preservation. Imagining the first day of kid-sick-bug-going around actually snaps something in the back of his head. Sympathy for strangers that he's never met and don't yet exist. Odd feeling, that.
"Knew a lot of people on the estate that saw babies as just another thing. Fuck knows barely any of them grew up. Those kids were doomed from the start." Outside the main entry doors to his block of flats were often a group of people in their early twenties that saw pushchairs and strollers as something for holding cans first, putting the baby in second. It's an image that stuck. "Upside, world'll probably burn to the ground in ten years or so. Saves us the trouble."
"How much worse could you possibly be? You own a house." Sutton glances around. He did say he bought it, right? She didn't hallucinate that and it's a rental. She has to keep checking. It's so weird, owning real estate. "You have a cat." A demon in cat form at the very least. "You have a view, you have a kitchen." Stuff, things, space, really. "Yeah..."
"Yeah some people use them as assets or wish fulfillment or paychecks." She tucks the straw into the corner of her mouth. "I like kids. They're like good people before people let the world turn them into assholes. I mean, they're delighted by everything, you know?" She looks at him for a while again, thinking over that last thing he said. "Do you really think that?" So softly asked.
"What, you think I retail therapy by half?" Carver scoffs, looking around at the house he owns oh jesus christ. His foot shifts against the table, twisting slightly as the pins and needles start to static their way up his leg, cut short in their attempts by a deep, gripping massage of his thigh with one of his hands. "Although technically didn't buy the cat. Found her. Or she found me. I don't actually know how owning a cat works."
Which gives great hope for any children in his future, obviously.
He watches her sip and espouse the vitues of kids with an idle smile that was slow to return, but got there in the end, giving her a nod and a small laugh at the idea. She's not wrong. Kids and delight go hand in hand, like kids and screaming because they can't eat that thing they just found on the floor. So of course it's a smile cut short by her softly asking the other question. "If something huge doesn't change in the next few years?" He muses, throwing her a little shrug and a pat on the foot. "I really do."
"Found, adopted, purchased, rescued." Sutton shrugs. "Semantics. You have a house and a cat."
He has a house and a cat and a view. She has an apartment she's semi-scared to sleep in and a motel room she refuses to be in alone and a ghost... and lots of issues. "Owning a cat is a misnomer. You feed them, they do what they want and yell until you feed them more. Sometimes they're cute and want to cuddle. It's like having kids, but they shit in a box and can kill mice for you."
She'd make an excellent mother.
Sutton thinks about him reiterating that and why he said it, and she just looks at her toes. That lilac polish is really quite pretty. "Yeah." The blonde reaches up and scrubs her hands over her face. "Maybe I should just get a dog."
"Fuck it, have a kid and teach them to kill mice and fetch sticks." Carver, no.
"If you do go for it, eventually, you know you won't be able to leave food uneaten like that, right?" While his thumb runs a circle over the back of her foot, his head tilts towards the seemingly abandoned noodles, a second attempt being made at maybe bringing his bottle that little bit closer and- Nope. It wobbles. Abort. Abort. Too dangerous, these are new, slightly hair covered, but new nonetheless slacks. It's a little hard to tell if he's talking about children or dogs.
Carver, no.
"... Love." Sutton shakes her head, slipping the straw out of her mouth. She hasn't been drinking it, but it keeps her hands busy. She put sit aside on the table nearby. Her food flexes under his hand, toes pointing briefly. "I guess." She bounces her toes against his thigh briefly. "No mice and fetching for children. I prefer bottle rockets and climbing trees." Much safer.
She sits up finally, unable to take his aborted attempts to get his damn drink. She pulls her feet in and rolls up and over her knees, kneeling on the couch to grab his drink and hand it to him. Then she flips around on the couch and drops her head into his lap. This is much better. One, she protects his new trousers. Two, if he drops his bottle, it's gonna bounce off her face. No wait, not better!
Do not drop that bottle.
Her blonde hair is shorter, more wild than her previously long, streaked hair. So now he can have black cat fur and blonde human hairs on his clothing. Enjoy that, Carver. "Let's not talk about babies anymore. I'm having too many feelings about it."
Carver is very, very careful not to drop the bottle, holding it firm with the hand that just a moment ago was brushing a foot, and meeting the movement of her dropping in to his lap with a hand slipping in to that shorter and a softly exhaled noise of surprise. The bottle lingers for a moment. Over her face. That condensation making it so very slippery. If he were to lose concentration for a second, or look away, it'd be ever so easy for it to just slip out of his gras-Nope, he's turning it away and to the side to take a sip.
A lucky escape, Sutton.
"Who attempted the murder and who was on the receiving end?" He immediately goes for when Sutton talks about her feelings on the current topic, looking down at her while his nails roll across her scalp, eyebrow creeping up as he watches her face. "Also, hi."
She had to leave it up to him to ask. Sutton isn't in the business of lying to Carver, which she might want to. "Um." She reaches up and folds her arms, both of them, behind her head. She waits for him to swallow his drink if he takes a sip. "The possession, you know? Not possession. The haunting." She smiles when he says, hi. "Hey." Gives her more time to get the words out, because this is really hard to say to someone. Remarkably so. Like she's hiding it.
"Javier snapped and we had a physical disagreement to the tune of several hundred dollars in damage to the shitty motel. Did you know those chairs can shatter?" The heavy ones. The ugly ones. Well, they can. "They can. It's pretty epic." La la la like it's normal that happened. Her eyes close at the nails over her scalp. Also then she doesn't have to see his face when she says all that.
"I've been in those rooms." Carver says after a moment, leaning back to rest the back of his head against the top of the couch as soon as Sutton's eyes have closed, letting the bottle rest in his hand off to one side, down by her chest and against the cushion of the seat. It's a pretty casual tone, considering the implications of what she just said. Or not. 'Physical disagreement' is wonderfully vague. The bruises he saw last time were not as vague, but Carver can ignore evidence just as well as the PD in this town. The nails don't even falter.
"I honestly didn't think they even had hundreds of dollars worth of stuff to break."
He lets that hang.
"They do. Chairs, table, lamps, the sink pipes, every complimentary item except the coffee pot, and at least one..." Sutton mms. "Wall dent. And carpet cleaning service." She doesn't say why. It'd probably be unwise to reveal the Captain at the local precinct should definitely have a couple drug tests ASAP. "On the plus side, I found out that I can, in fact, escape a choke hold." She says it lightly, again, like it's a chat about a new brand of cereal being aces.
"Pop would be proud." She pauses, then finishes, "Elias saw it all. And that's why he wants him dead. I mean it's..." She opens her eyes. "Erin healed most of it the next morning for me. But." She swallows. "I flinch every time someone touches my neck now. Which is a new and exciting brand of fucked up."
"Maybe we should have kept talking about babies."
Carver's quiet for a good while, letting Sutton talk her way through things until she reaches the inevitable conclusion of shit's fucked u-Oh, right, that they should have kept talking about babies. Yes. That.
When she opens her eyes, he's looking down at his bottle. Just. There was totally a split-second where her face was the focus of his attention. But now it's the bottle, brought up to his lips as he carefully inspects the faux-stone that covers most of the walls in this place, the sip turning into a gulp turning into a full swig. When the bottle finally goes back down, bubbles cascade up along the glass. "Did you know I adopted a cat?"
It's the thinnest of smiles when he looks back down at her.
"Give it three years. You can get the flinching down to when there's pressure on either side only. Most of the time."
Sutton doesn't say anything for a while, but she's watching Carver's face. His eyes. She watches him take a drink. She mms. "Yes." She know she adopted a cat. She shakes her head. "No, it's not going to take me three years. It's not like that was the first time I've been assaulted."
"The last time I was drugged and it was a lot harder to fight." Sutton doesn't elaborate, except to say, "That issue was removed from the board, but I think some of this brought the memory back. I just can't with two things. One of them is hands around my neck." She's not drunk enough to spill the other one. "I'm sorry you know about that flinching thing too. That sucks. People are awful. Ghosts are shits." And people are awful.
"You named your cat Hope. That's so cute." Sutton slips a hand out from behind her head and reaches up to touch Carver's jaw, fingers slipping across his cheek. Her arm's pressed to his torso briefly, elbow pressing against the buttons of his waistcoat. "I'm really sorry I threw you against the wall that one time. I was... um. It doesn't matter what I was. I'm sorry I did that."
Carver gives her a little haughty look at the denial it will take three years. There's a touch of humor to it, too, but she knows him well enough to see it for the hollow gesture it is. "Look at miss fancy pants here, not needing three years. I was being optimistic and everything!" It's a good way not to have to say anything about the follow up and reasoning she gave to it, at least. If he was being honest, he would have said he's at twenty and counting and there's still the unsettling feeling that jolts his spine whenever it happens.
His head leans in to the touch of her hand almost unconsciously for a second, followed-up by the nails leaving her scalp so his fingers can lightly press at the back of her hand. No removal, no moving it at all. Just a touch. "Eh." His lips curls a little, glancing down and away from her face to the couch, where the demon lies beneath. "I figure 'Hope' being the last thing to escape Pandora's box is always described as a good thing to give her a break, balance out all the other crap that escaped. I think it was the worst of the bunch. Hope can torment a person like no other."
Unrelated to this, that cat is absolutely plotting what to do the first time a foot drops down in front of the couch.
"And you don't need to apologize to me, pet. But I accept it anyway. Stress-induced freebie."
His face turns to give the smallest kiss to the edge of her palm.
"Happens again, though, I'm saying you remind me of my Da and I'm out."
Sutton's fingers rest on the apple of his cheek for a long moment, palm sliding across his jaw when he turns into it. "No, I won't need three years, because I'm going to aversion therapy that shit once I get over a couple months of being tweaked by it. I'm a functioning alcoholic. I don't have time to be weepy over everything."
"Hope being the last thing to escape Pandora's box." She smiles. "Alistair. You're a piece of work, you are. Here's to Hope tormenting you just enough to remind you you're alive and lovely." Hope's clearly the devil, and that's why it's not going to be Sutton's foot dropping down first.
When he says that thing about his father, her brows twitch up in the center, and something flickers through her eyes. She starts to slip her hand away, the implications of what he just said rippling right on through her brain like the smallest of tidal waves, shaking the delicate little balance she had going on there. Instead her fingers curl loosely and her knuckles rest against the side of his throat.
Oh, how quickly the transition from being called lovely to this can happen. It's the side of his throat, and intentional or not, the topic is fresh in his mind. Carver can't help the tiniest of flinches that has him leaning away for just a split-second. It's a matter of millimeters, but it's there. And there's no taking it back.
"Sorry, pet." He could be apologizing for one thing, multiple things, or everything. Whichever it is, his eyes don't leave her face, and didn't miss that flicker. "I'm a piece of work, I am."
Quieter than it should have been.
"Fuck." She's silent, just trying to think of something to say. Anything to say to make this horrible feeling in her chest go away. To make that flinch go away.
She opens her mouth to say something, and her BAKE SALE alarm sounds on her phone, with a jaunty little meep-meep repeating. Meep-meep, meep-meep, meep-meep. Jesus someone kill the fucking roadrunner already. Sutton reaches over and pokes the stop button on the screen, sitting up when it falls off the table and onto the floor. She sweeps that up and jams it into her pocket, reaching for his hand to touch it lightly, fingertips resting there. "I.. will never touch you in anger again." Sutton's gaze comes up and she looks him right in the eye.
She glances at the door, then back to Carver. "I have to go... to this... uh... thing." To act as medic a bunch of people who are beating the shit out of each other for money. This is the dichotomy of her life illustrated: putting people together and taking them apart. Her hands both take hold of his for a couple of beats, her thumbs skimming over his knuckles. "Text me later, ok?" She tips in slowly, so he can see it coming and nope out if he wants to, and presses a soft kiss to the corner of his mouth. Is she running out of here without dealing with this? 100% yes. After a shower and a change. Her foot hits the floor, but she's gone so fast, Hope's swipe utterly misses.
Looks like those claws are Carver's to deal with too.
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