2019-11-20 - Car Shopping Advice

Closing time at Steelhead, not that Itzhak had too much to do. Thorne's Rolls is under a tarp, broodily awaiting the return of its master. Sutton's Triumph is looking sleek and perfect, the scrapes and dings ironed out, paint reapplied. Itzhak claims he's not a paint shop but for some reason that never stops him from taking on smaller projects (probably because he's bored, and the technical challenge of matching the paint on a '66 Triumph keeps him busy). The bay windows glow in the gloom past dusk, since the sun sets around 4:30 nowadays and by 5 it's as dark as the inside of a cow. Inside, Itzhak is sweeping up, doing his last rounds. Music is playing anyway, though he's not playing it personally. He found time to install speakers and a second-third-hand sound system. The music is something Cajun, of course, lively, made for dancing.

Rebecca steps through the regular customer door of the garage. She likely took an Uber here, since she still hasn't chosen a car to buy. She's looking dressed for work, in a long-sleeved white blouse under a blue-grey tweed jumper, white tights, and nude strappy heels. Her hair and makeup are flawless as usual. She has a laptop case slung over one shoulder, leather, expensive. She smiles at the sight of him sweeping to the cheerful music. She stands there a moment or ten, just watching him, taking in the place that he's made his own.

Itzhak is even singing along, in French, sweeping in time. Phonetically, but really pretty good for all that; he's got the slurry Cajun influence down pat, syllables running together like watercolors.

"Les Mardi Gras s'en vient de tout partout
Tout le tour autour du moyeu
Ça passe eine fois par an
Demander la charité
Quand même si c'est eine patate
Eine patate et des grattons..."

Of course, he's startled when he turns with broom in hand and spots Rebecca. "Whoa!" He points at her, mock-menacing. "I got my eye on you, Carr." Then he's grinning at her with all his crow's-feet crinkling. He takes a moment to look her over, smiling, the expression on his face obvious: Bex is a gorgeous woman and she's his. "Lemme wash my hands before I get mechanic paw prints all over ya."

"Mardi Gras comes from everywhere," Rebecca chuckles and nods, moving to poke around curiously, stopping to visit the sleepy colder months Lemondrop with a fond smile. She and the snake got along just fine when he was in the hospital. "I thought we might talk about what cars I should be looking at for myself," she calls after him.

"Sure!" Itzhak calls back, washing up at the metal utility sink. He keeps soap, both here and at home, that's made full of finely-crushed walnut shells. It smells delicious. "We talked about a Subaru." Of course he remembers car stuff. He can barely remember his own birthday, but car stuff, he's got it down. Scrubbed off (the walnut shell soap is a minor miracle with how it takes grease off), he strips out of his coveralls and comes over to offer Bex a hug. That's something else he remembers, the way her OCD interacts with the world around her; he's not going to force a hug on her when he's fresh off work. Sometimes it might be okay, other times it might not be. "Hiya, beautiful. How was work?"

So domestic.

Rebecca appreciates the thoughtfulness more than he can know. She slides her arms around him and hugs him with a warm smile. "Work was grand as always. You know how happy a well organized day makes me," she notes with a little chuckle. "I know you brought up a Subaru but it's just so..." Utilitarian? "...boring. I was thinking maybe the Lexus ES? They look really nice and it isn't as expensive as the BMWs and their like."

"There's ones ain't so boring, but I gotta agree, I think a Lexus is more your style." Itzhak's voice resonates through his chest as he hugs Rebecca snug and firm and adoring, rocking her back and forth a little the way he does. Oh, he's happy to see her, and it comes across clear as glass in his body language and his touch. His mental presence buzzes with it.

Since he came back from Portland, his mental strength is different. Stronger, almost certainly. In other ways, his shine seems changed and not for the better. He's so strong, the spotlight of his shine is overwhelming at all times, but now it seems like...there's something missing that was there before. Also since he came back from Portland, he's been skittish and upset, so that he's chipper right now is a nice change.

He told her he'd had one hell of a bad Dream while there. The bad effects from the Dream have lingered, along with all the other bullshit he went through.

She looks at him carefully. She's been worried. She knows something bad happened there, and she is hoping the Dream was the only thing that took some sort of chunk out of him. She knows he was there with Isolde and Ruiz was there with the Addington girl and that could have gotten messy. She hasn't asked about the social niceties though. "Come sit down with me? You still didn't tell me much about Portland. I'm worried about you."

Rebecca tugs on his hand, to lead him over to one of the armchairs, giving him a little push to sit, so she can climb into his lap. "Talk to me, Itzhak. You've changed."

Itzhak goes willingly enough, although worry ignites in his eyes. He sits, lets Bex climb on him, wraps his long arms around her waist to tuck her against him. The pressure of her weight on him is comforting in the way only pressure can be; he sighs, his tension easing some.

"I know. I..." hesitating, Itzhak turns his head away, like a dog asking for mercy. "I lost somethin' there. What Roen can do, what Fincheleh can do...I used to feel it a little. Just a little, you know? Now I can't. I used to be able to know your body. Now I don't. Now it's just like before I shone at all. Skin deep. I can't tell if you're hurt, or I can only tell in the normal ways. Whatever was in me to do that, it's gone to sleep. I don't know why. It just happened. After that Dream, it happened."

Rebecca listens, running the fingers of one hand through his hair soothingly. She knows his needs, because she has similar ones often. Pressure, gentle, calming connection. A quiet presence to listen. Her other hand presses over his heart. "I only have a little of that myself. Maybe your Glimmer decided you needed a boost elsewhere? Does anything feel stronger than it did before? Maybe it is temporary?"

She lets her own Spirit Aspect, meager as it is, to try and feel out if he is hurting anywhere physically. "It's not like some others, like your friend Roen. He can probably feel the blood move through our veins. But you can still feel my mind, and I think that may be the most important thing."

Itzhak nestles his long, beaky face against Rebecca's neck, sighing out again, his breath warm and tickly. His black curls are springy between her fingers. "Yeah, actually," he murmurs. "I can do the thing with knowing what emotions happened on an object. I picked up a wrench and got pissed the hell off," he laughs low. "Until I realized it was just the feeling of me being pissed off in the past, tryin' to move a frozen bolt. Didn't used to be able to do that."

The sense of his body is that of a vital man in his physical prime. Ferociously healthy. Itzhak is strong and dexterous, tough, in shape. A fighting man or a working man, or in his case, both. He's not hurt anywhere, nor is he sick. No major scars or old injuries. Most of his wounds are emotional. Those throb like healed broken bones in the damp.

Rebecca chuckles. "Be careful with the object reading, love. Sometimes it shows you things you would be better off not knowing. Or at least happier not knowing." Like everything she touched that told her about her husband's cheating and loathing of her.

Her mind reaches out gently for his, snowflakes in all their perfect symmetry and uniqueness, and in their surfaces the reflection of that mountain lion she'd become in the Dream. She is not the weak victim she was when her husband abused her trust. She has grown strong. She stands her ground and protects those she cares about. She lets him feel her contentment, her simple joy at being in his presence.

"How are you spending the holidays?" she asks. Stroking his hair gently to try and ease those emotional aches of his. Thanksgiving and Hannukah/Christmas.

Itzhak freezes, eyes popping wide. "Did you--" He pulls his face out of Rebecca's neck to look at her with an expression of startled pleasure, eyebrows up. "Did you just call me 'love'?"

He's already trying to talk himself out of caring about it; maybe she just calls people love (he's well aware she doesn't), maybe he misheard, his audio processing might be fucky. Maybe she didn't mean it! Itzhak braces himself for any of those answers or answers he hasn't thought of. All other considerations must be put on hold for the moment.

If he doubted what he heard, the blush across Rebecca's cheeks and nose clears away any uncertainty. "I did," she murmurs. "Is that bad? I can stop," she offers, looking concerned.

"No! No that's not bad." Itzhak smiles full and brilliant, the rarest of Itz-expressions. He turns Bex's face to him with a finger on her chin and kisses her. "I'm worried I'm gonna fuck this up," he confesses to her, and kisses her cheek, and kisses her lips again. "I've fucked up a lot. I never wanna hurt you, baby."

Rebecca returns the kiss gently, affectionately. "You've only done right by me, Itzhak. Just follow your heart, ok? It seems to be in the right place." She smiles. "Now, what about the holidays? What are you plans?"

"I'm tryin'," Itzhak says with a complicated smile. He cups her face in his broad, rough palm, tipping their foreheads together. That's a lot of nose now up close and personal. "New York, for Thanksgiving, but early. Izeleh's goin' with me. We wanna be here for the actual holiday, plus travelling on Thanksgiving sucks. I'm holdin' Hanukkah at my place, I'd love it if you came with. If you wanted."

Rebecca tilts her head to kiss the tip of his nose. "Isolde is going to New York with you? To meet your family?" she asks curiously. That sounds pretty serious, but she smiles anyway. "I'd love to come to Hanukkah. I'll make sure my schedule is clear for it."

"Yep." Itzhak's looking at Bex with melting fondness. "I thought maybe sometime next year if you wanted, I could take you to meet 'em too. ...Ma don't know about, well, anything to do with the way I date, so that'll be new for her," he adds, resigned to needing to tell his mother yet another problematic, weird thing about him. There's no end to his rabbit hole of not-like-everybody-else.

Which is why he'd thought there was no way Bex would ever want to date him.

"Good," he says, in response to her wanting to come to Hanukkah, and squeezes her around the waist.

"You'll need to educate me on what to expect. I haven't attended Hanukkah before and I want to be sure to do things properly," Rebecca notes, because of course she does. Anything less than perfection is failure when she strives to do something right. "Have a safe trip, and I'd love to meet your family some day. Mine however..." is still blaming her for Kelly's death. They are not speaking. "Well you can meet my brother Andrew. He's still talking to me at least."

"There ain't nothin' to worry about," Itzhak assures Bex. He leans back in the armchair, beginning to hum along with the music under his breath. He's so content with her in his lap. Interrupting himself, he goes on, "It ain't like Christmas with a bunch of weird expectations. Hanukkah isn't even a high holiday. You light the candles, you tell stories, you eat, you gamble for chocolate. Not too serious, you don't even gotta go to shul for it. It's a home kinda holiday. Best kind."

But the news that Bex's family still isn't speaking to her puts a scowl on his face. "I'd like to set ya folks straight about a few things," he grumbles.

Rebecca just settles in his lap, resting her head on his shoulder and listening to the sounds of his life around them, so different from her own. "It would fall on deaf ears I think. They needed someone to blame. And we can't give them the murderer, so they won't ever have that closure. Andrew knows though. I told him about things, about the family curse and stuff. He's a cop and he's seen things he couldn't explain. He gets it. He has a little of the song too." Her brother.

Itzhak's flat belly flexes as he grunts. He's growing tense. The bad kind of tense. Someone else might say 'maybe they'll come around in time' or 'it must be painful for you'.

What Itzhak says is, "They're fuckin' wrong. They oughtn'ta do that to you, sweetheart. At least your brother's got some sense."

Rebecca lets her calm wash over him, so he can feel it. She's not all that angry. Sad maybe, but not angry at her parents. "It is what it is. Whether they come out of their grief and apologize or not is on them, not on me. I've come to terms with it. And I'm all right." She gives him a smile and kisses his jaw gently. "Thank you for caring though. I appreciate it."

Itzhak rumbles in his chest, a warning sound as clear as a snake's puffing and hissing. He does not like that, no sir he does not. Rebecca touches his mind, her cool, crisp snowflakes swirling to interface with his spiky fractals, and he sighs near-silently, eyes closing. Mentally they're strikingly similar: fractal shapes, the mathematics of nature, infinitely complex, infinitely variable. Itzhak is more abstract and Bex more concrete, but the two of them are both brilliant in their particular ways, the things that make them them things that also have diagnoses and entries in the DSM-5.

"I care. A lot," he says, tone gruff. "Too much." When his unshaven jaw is kissed, he smiles, finally. "Hey, you hungry? Want me to make dinner? I got a present for you, too."

Rebecca smiles up at him. "I could eat. And a present? For me?" She grins. "What did I do to deserve a present?" she asks, arching a brow playfully. She can think of a few things. She gets up off his lap so they can get a move on. "I had coffee with de la Vega earlier today too," she drops like a bomb.

Itzhak is a little reluctant to let her get up, but he unwinds his long arms from her anyway. He's hungry and he wants to give her her present. Later he can wrap around her like a constrictor to his grouchy heart's content. "Yeah?" he says, eyebrows hitching up in pleased interest. "Ain't he terrific?" Getting up, he stretches his lanky frame to its full extent until something pops in his back and he winces in relief.

'Terrific', he says, about the man who put him in an armlock and threatened him, and hassled and insulted him for months. Except Itzhak had played that game with him more than willingly, allowing himself to get roughed up and talked nasty to. It was a sort of courtship, between a pair of asshole tough guys.

"He is very interesting. I think I may have shocked him though, by being rather direct. But that's just who I am. As well you know," Rebecca points out with a smile. "What are you going to cook for us?" she asks, sliding an arm around his waist.

"Ahhh yup, yup that I know," Itzhak says, grinning lazily in the fashion of a man who's got a lot to smile about. "He told me you, uh, you got right to the point! ...Then I made him mad," he adds, mouth twisting. "Not sure how, but, he sure got mad. Anyway, how about stew? Stew's easy and it's frikkin' freezing today." He drops an arm around Rebecca's shoulder.

"Stew sounds lovely," Rebecca agrees with a small smile. "You made him mad? I hope nothing too serious? I hope I didn't offend him with my directness. I know not everyone is used to people actually just coming out and saying what they mean." She nestles into the circle of his arm comfortably. "Cook at my place?" she offers.

"Ehhhh." Itzhak wobbles a hand. "We maybe argued a little bit." He's hedging. That means he and Ruiz fought. With their fists. As Rebecca will find out in the near future when he takes his shirt off. "He wasn't offended at you. At me. But I dunno why." He cranes over to smooch the top of her head and escorts her towards the door, snatching up his violin case as they go. "Cook at your place. And I'll give you ya present. Don't ask what you did to deserve it. You deserve all the presents just for bein' you."

Rebecca chuckles. "Ok ok, I won't ask why any more, if YOU don't ask why I ever do nice things for you. Deal?" she offers with a grin as the stroll to the door.

Itzhak laughs, somewhat contritely. "I dunno about this deal. Seems fishy!" He locks up behind them. "Go on home, I'll meet ya there in half an hour or so, okay?"

Rebecca leans up to plant a warm, memorable kiss on Itzhak, then nods her head. "See you soon."