2021-02-20 - Happily Never After

Nova was pretty good at distinguishing when a situation was unfriendly, shots or no shots. The enemy of her enemy or what have you. Her hoodie is back on, the two of them having hurried out the door before even trying to cut the tension with a knife. Once on the stoop outside, the dancer side eyes the Dane. "I'm not driving my car right now, and you are not welcome to...so I guess we walking fam." Without waiting for a reply, she starts forward in the cool air in the direction of her apartment. Fur boots hit the sidewalk almost without sound. They move in silence for a bit before Nova looks over to make sure Ravn is still beside her. "You don't ever miss cuddling nobody?"

If anyone walks quietly it's the tall Dane; it seems to be a thing that comes naturally to him -- moving without making much sound. His wind breaker rustles a little. His boots on the ground are near-inaudible. "I walk most places," he says. "Town's not exactly big and it helps me stay in shape. Gray Harbor's the last place I want to slow down and become complacent, you know?"

He seems to have decided to walk her home -- or possibly they simply live in the same general direction. From the looks of him he's not quite trailer trash -- but he's certainly not middle class, either. "I don't know that Vic would kick me out but -- some talks I don't think they need an audience for. Feel a little sorry for Seth but he's a big boy -- he'll deal."

That last question prompts him to glance at Nova though, and laugh softly. "'Course I do. I'm not a monk."

For an instant, Nova flashes a bit of fiery anger through an air of nonchalance. "He knew I was coming over and thank I was bringing booze he told me to when I offered, So I don't really feel all that bad for him. He also said he had a 'not-girlfriend'. From the way they was acting, you'd think my being there was causing a custody battle over the kids." She takes a deep inhale of cool air and tries to calm herself down, mostly to stop possible misfires of her abilities. "I'm okay with open mierda, He just was a total pussy, made it seem like I was the problem. If he was really happy, he wouldn't have answered my texts."

The Latina kicks at a stray pebble ahead of them, sending it flying. "I just hoped he was better than that was all, maybe a friend? I don't got a lot of those here. Don't sleep much. Place is like the epicenter of hell for someone like me." Hazel eyes fall on Ravn sadly, the fight in them mostly quelled. "What's your deal then?"

Ravn considers this. There's a few angles there that had not occurred to him previously. "That's a fair point," he cedes eventually. "I'm not very great at the whole dating game, but I can see how it can be read as -- well, maybe not an invitation but at least not the absence of one? I guess Seth and Vic really do need to sit their asses down and decide what kind of relationship they have. Last I heard it was a no labels, no rules thing and yeah -- they sure as hell weren't acting like no labels, no rules back there."

He pauses a moment, and then adds, "Vic did jump to conclusions awful fast. For all she knew, you could have been there with me. My ex-fiancee -- the girl who died -- reacted in the same fashion if she saw me talking to another woman. Some women are -- very easily jealous. And perhaps not always entirely rational about it."

Hands go in wind breaker pockets. "But I guess Vic knows me well enough to realise that the odds of me turning up with a girlfriend anywhere are pretty much non-existent. What do you mean, what's my deal? Work? Girlfriend? How I know Seth?"

"I mean other than your attitude, you're not that bad. You could have a lady or hombre if you wanted." Nova seems more agreeable with Ravn's matching assessment, like she needed the validation to fend off guilt she didn't want to carry. "I stopped doing monogamy when I had an ex who would hunt me down and beat the hell out of me on a bad day. Being owned like that, not a life."

She nods her hooded head at him solemnly. "I'm sorry that she hurts you still." Is what she finally decides on saying. Being sorry for a loss didn't mean much. After all, the dead were the dead, it was the living who suffered. "I dunno, whatever you want to tell me about you. I don't got nothing else to do besides talk to you right now."

Nova moves a stray piece of dark hair that had stuck to the gloss of her lips in the wind. Seth had really put them out in the cold here.

"You know how some people don't register on the radar when you walk into a room and look around for someone exciting? I'm one of those people." Ravn's tone is not asking for pity or begging to be gainsaid; he's just stating a fact. "And of course there's also the whole -- shine issue. In this town, of all places. Don't think I could deal with being with someone, only to watch the Veil edit their memories all the time. I'd wake up from one of those dreams with a stab wound and have to make up a plausible explanation. It doesn't work. We stick to our own kind. Because we have to. And the dating scene for people like us is -- well, pretty damn small, let's be honest there. Same reason you don't go down to the Poorhouse and pick up the nearest mill worker when you need someone to talk to about the Veil."

He walks in silence for a moment and then seems to decide to fill in at least one of the blanks. "She doesn't hurt me anymore. She's dead. Twice. Just, the second time wasn't long ago, and it got... pretty bad. Fortunately just one of those horrible dreams we get around here."

"I guess I wonder if you want to be noticed?" She agree'd with what he was spewing for the most part, but about now she'd take the random mill worker to not have to sit in her empty apartment. Seth had mentioned the Poorhouse, but she still had yet to actually go there. "I think it's worse here than other places though, Rek has an easier time popping in and out here. Some places he couldn't do it at all." Nova had dated her fair share of people here and there as they had moved, most not shiners.

She stops walking and looks at Ravn seriously. "It's just like, the way you talk about yourself, it doesn't seem like you want people to notice you." Nova cocks her head to the side. "Like I want to be noticed for every part of me, you bat it away." She considers this could have something to do with the ex, or maybe it had been a part of him then too.

"I like keeping things quiet," Ravn agrees. "Don't like getting a lot of attention, don't advertise my presence much. I'm an old fashioned romantic, I suppose? Or maybe I just like my privacy. There was a feminist writer once who said that in order to find a prince you have to kiss a hell of a lot of frogs. I don't have the patience or the energy to do the whole dating dance. Most people wouldn't be able to put up with the crap Gray Harbor puts us through. Might be I meet a girl some day who can handle the Veil's bullshit, and thinks I'm worth looking twice at. I'll worry about it when it happens."

"Besides," he adds with a grin, "town's not exactly full of lonely women with the shine."

When Nova stops walking so does Ravn, gloved hands still buried deep in pockets. "You need to get seen, though. It's literally your job -- you're a performer, you need people to look at you and want what you offer. I can do it -- step into character, be the flamboyant boardwalk confidence man, if I have to. But I don't much enjoy it, and on my own time? I prefer to watch, rather than get watched."

"Everyone needs to be seen for who they are and accepted for it. Less refurbished, more as is." It was difficult to tell if this was more to him or herself. "It's not like practical is malo or nothing. Being watched is always the same thing as being seen. You don't gotta be no different." Part of her is angry that he seems to treat love like a chore, than a gift. Given her five of six shots and a lack of filter, Nova brings this up.

"The more you treat the idea of being with somebody as a job, the more you won't want to trabaja." She shrugs, her hoodie clad shoulders rising and falling in the gloom of the day. Nova found it odd that someone who seemed to nail down the concepts of others, was so bad with the concept of themselves.

"There's a whole world. Parts of that have thinner bits. You think so small as one town." She brings her hands to her mouth, blowing on them and rubbing them together to try to warm them in the cold. Placing them back in her pockets she starts to walk again, at least the movement kept her muscles from freezing.

"I've travelled over half the world," Ravn says with a small smile. "Something I'd probably not have ended up doing if I'd settled to start a family instead. I burned my fingers pretty hard on romance once. Makes a man wary."

It's Gray Harbor. There's no real point to beating around the bush; Nova's got buckets more shine than he does and probably buckets more weird, too. "Doesn't help that for years, my dead ex followed me around the world, and I had to consider the possibility of her turning up to try to hurt anyone I looked twice at. Gets you out of the habit of even looking. Neuropathy on top? Deal breaker for a lot of women. Life's too short and too beautiful to sit around moping about missed opportunities. If it happens? It happens."

He keeps stride, hands also buried deep in pockets; winter here in Washington State seems not so cold to him, but then, the climate here is much similar to his native. The water is colder due to the glaciers, but the nine months out of twelve being rain, with rain, and then some rain? Yes, that's what life in the peninsula that separates the North Atlantic from the Baltic is like, too. With a glance back towards Seth's house and obviously thinking of the anger on Vic's face he adds, "My ex was like that. Saw me speaking to somebody, came to all the wrong conclusions. She never did stab anybody but she certainly looked like she wanted to."

Nova rolls her eyes dramatically, even more so due to her intense make-up. She stops walking again. "I'll ask this time. If I promise not to freak you out or hurt you, can I try somthin'?" One hand with banana yellow acrylics extends to him. She stares, waiting.

"I... guess?" Ravn looks a little puzzled; a little wary; and a little surprised. "I can touch people. Just, it takes focus. I need to not get surprised."

Nova reaches forward and take's the Dane's hand in hers. Her skin, though cool, is soft. Plastic hard nails rest atop the back of his hand. Hazel, thick lined eyes focus on him, her being beginning to sparkle a bit brighter. He had said he wasn't going to fight her, so this time, she is more gentle with reaching out to his mind. The sensation conveyed is something akin to a warm blanket, fresh from the dryer, snuggling itself around his brain. An embrace from a trusted friend. His cat choosing to snuggle near him on a cold evening. The feeling she gifts him is security.

Nova releases his hand from hers, but the feeling does not fade. "That isn't a perfect way to solve it, but it's a way to make it better." She shrugs her shoulders and moves her freezing hand back to her pocket. "You gotta look for more solutions than problems if you wanna be less miserable." The stripper waits to see his reaction, the glow she had fading to that only visible in the everyday.

Ravn nods, slowly. He doesn't draw away, gloved hand resting in Nova's until she releases it. "Every solution has a problem," he says quietly. "This one? Is new. It's a lot of work to ask someone to put into it, though -- and most people can't do something like that, and certainly not with the ease that you can. It's a nice feeling. Thank you."

He smiles a little; a bit more relaxed, a bit less guarded, a bit more open than he usually seems. "I'm not -- miserable, though. I've spent most my life alone, and it's never really bothered me. Being with someone who'd fly in the face of any woman speaking to me -- bothered me a lot more. You didn't deserve to get the stink-eye back there. It was a very... familiar kind of situation."

Nova shakes her hooded head, a glint of sincerity in her eyes. "Someone who cares about you will never care about what it takes to make you happy. I don't mean you are miserable with out sex. Life is miserable without nobody to be close to. It's not realizing how much you miss the sun when you livin' in the dark." Her eyes trail upwards to the sky in thought.

"Thanks though. Means somthin' to not be the villain in somebodies story, even if I don't get a happily ever after." Sadness is woven into her words. There is a sour irony to someone who can gift a calm to others, but fights greater demons for it. Someone so alone who craves simple kindness but casts a lure of lust into a sea of many fish. Nova Nazario entered her day with the hope that someone who had been sweet to her might do so again, she was going to end it disappointed.

"Not going to lie and say I think God created a special someone for everybody," Ravn says with a hint of wryness. "But, Seth seems to like you, and I don't imagine that's going to change just because he and Vic get themselves sat down and finding out what they want from each other, at long last. As for me -- well, we're not contemplating each other's murder anymore, that's got to count for something. Seth Monaghan I ain't, but I'm not hitting on you when I say, I wouldn't mind having coffee sometime. Can always use more friends in this town. Sounds like you could too."