[ prp ] like real people do (taymerica)

[lizbot]

It's late when the call comes, and it's the Ashdown PD. He's been waiting for it, but in this version, the real one, she's been found. She needs a ride home and has asked for him to come pick her up. And there's an edge to that, almost an accusation, because Leanne's been a regular visitor the past week and wasn't at all the person on the girl's lips.

The girl in question is paler than he's ever seen before, she'd been avoiding the bright sun even before she'd gone missing. Now she looks like she hasn't seen light in days. Despite what he's told, that she claims to have been lost in the woods all this time. A story that isn't entirely unbelievable. It happens more often here than anyone cares to think about. Her head is bent, hair obscuring her face and maybe she's back but maybe it's still not her, until she looks up, eyes sharp and impatient.

America's not relieved to be back, she's not relieved to be told Taym's coming to get her. They've told her what day it is, and she thinks about how long it's been since she's been herself and it's all she can do not to throw herself at something, someone in a fit of red red rage. She wants to slam into something unyielding, over and over again until it begins to break down as she breaks apart. Later it'll form into coherent thoughts and desires, vicious and vengeful and burning, but right now it was just thoughtless anger, just barely kept in check by a survival instinct that said not here.

The look softens, just a bit, when she's sees past the emotion and actually sees him. She looks like s**t and feels like s**t, but she's missed him for much longer than she's been missing.

"We're just about done with the paper work for now, but we need you to know Miss Jones has to stay in the area for further questioning."

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[Rejam]

lizbot

He does not call anyone. He does not tell anyone: America is safe.

He isn't sure whether he believes it. He impatiently runs two redlights on the way to the station, and it's not until Mr. Bitterberry greets him with a raucous and cheered hello from the tree outside that his nerves start to unravel with relief. There's a lot he wouldn't have believed--maybe even seeing her face--but he trusts the blue jay, and he's never been more grateful for the little string that's still around his wrist when he pushes his way inside, barely hearing any of what he's told through the cotton in his head and his impatience to verify the reality of her.

Seeing her, actually seeing her, knocks the wind right out of him. He's worse for the wear himself, all haggard and unkempt with a beard that needs taming and hair that needs a brush and clothes that need an iron--he looks a way that he hasn't looked for a long time, not since he's met her--but seeing how much worse she looks stops him in what was a very clear lead-up to him barreling into her.

He ignores the nothing-voice of whoever it is that has the gall to be here that isn't her, and he takes a hesitant step towards her with his hands shaking, not the way they usually shake but violently, right up to his elbows, like they'd be shaking anyway. Nothing has ever been a better comfort to him than catching the end of that sharp, angry expression right before it had gone. He tries to touch her hair, her face, her hands; tries to find some way to both look at her and wrap his trembling arms around her at the same time.

He tries to say something but all that comes out is a wracked, incredulous, "baby," and then a strangled kind of silence. It is, by far, the most he has ever touched her in public. It is, by far, the most emotion he's ever shown her.  

[lizbot]

"Angel," she tries to laugh around the nickname; tries to smile but her face doesn't know what to do with itself just yet, if she's breaking down or coming finally together into a whole person again. America roughly pushes her face into one broad, bony shoulder and inhales, deeply.

"I've got a...." she catches her breath. She has a great big story to tell that isn't all that great or big at all except in the implications, in the lives shaken by it. But it wasn't a story to tell. "I gotta pee," she continues instead. "So let's get out of here cause I saw the last person going into that ******** restroom and heard what went on and I have been through too much to be dealing with that right after." Her typical lazy drawl, so often pleased with itself runs on like freight train. Despite her appearance, there was something running at a constant pace just underneath.

Her hands slip down to catch at his.

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lizbot

He laughs, but it's the shaky little laugh that suggests it's the only dam holding back unseemly tears, and maybe it's not doing too great a job, at that, because he's not even trying to hide them when he finally lets her go, his hand still clutching at hers a little too hard.

He doesn't seem to know what to do with himself, trying to finish up whatever needs to be finished up and walk to the car and grab her arms all at the same time; he's visibly pained to separate from her long enough to bundle her into her seat and he has to stop and take a few deep breaths before he can bring himself to turn the key and get them moving, her fingers under his on the gear shift.

And they don't make it far, and he's saying: who do you need to call, use my phone, here, text whoever you need to text, your mom's been here, call your dad, call Jeremiah and Algernon; his outgoing call list, if she sees it, is expansive and they're names she knows and some he's entered: PD, hospital, morgue. They make it a mile, maybe, and then they're off on the shoulder because he can't, he says, his voice breaking down as he kills the engine to reach for her again.

"I know you gotta piss," he says against her shoulder, with another shaky laugh at the idea that something as banal as bodily functions can possibly exist in this moment, "but give me a minute." And then, abruptly and pitched: "What the ******** happened?"  

[lizbot]

She keeps her hands gentle as she cups the bluejay in her lap, casting glances over to the drivers side as Taym spoke. She tells him that she'll text them, she doesn't want to have to talk anybody else right now.

"Don't have to pee," she admits to the lie with a wry twist of the mouth. "I just..." She opens her hands, letting Mr. B fly up to sit on the back of the seat, no longer trusting her hands to take care. Flexing them, she goes on with a bitter laugh, "It was a ******** worm. A magic ******** worm mean to make me...pliant. Cowed and scared enough to meekly let a person-sized ******** tick thing keep me over in the other world, willingly," she sneered at the word, "giving it my blood and the power that goes with it."

It was like something off an old pulpy sci-fi monster mag. And it had worked.

"Some folks found out by ******** chance, I guess. Not for anyone looking, just the right person noticing. A group went and got us, got the worms to come out and here I am." She spoke through her teeth, feeling shitty and demeaned and used by something so...

"I'm sorry," America's hands clenched and unclenched, "...you shouldn't have had to...it's so ******** up. I don't believe in...deserving and not deserving, but ******** if I could say you ever deserved to have to deal with all this."

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[Rejam]

lizbot

He leans back, then, with his hands still on her like he's afraid she'll wisp away if he lets her go for more than a breath. It's a bit much to hear and even after all this time when strange things have become more or less a constant undertow to their life here, it's a lot to process. All he manages is a quiet what the ********> until she gets up to the point where she's talking about deserving things.

"I looked," he tells her. He sounds pleading. "I tried, I really--I did try. Don't ******** me sorry when you're the one who, who--"

His hands go still on hers, and he looks at Mr. Bitterberry, and then his eyes slip past her, out the window to the unassuming buildings beyond.

"I hate it here," he says. "Ashdown."  

[lizbot]

"I've found a lot of good things here," she offers with the closest she's come to a real smile, one that wasn't ruined by the everything else behind it. "I know you tried, Taym. When I found out how long I'd been gone, and all your...and all the worry while I was ******** you wanna call it. You took care of me as best you could, and you looked as best you could. Of course you looked, you're Obadiah ******** Thompson, you looked harder than anyone and I wish doing our best meant more than it has but..." she exhales, gripping his hands tight.

"Things have to change. And maybe we can just keep doing our best until either they do or I die, and then they'll change anyway. But right now it's just..." her eyes turn hot, and she clenches them shut against the threatening tears. She's cried...so much and so stupidly over so many things the past month, she doesn't want to again, doesn't want to be like that ******** shell of frightened, permissive girl, and yet here they were. Being with Taym makes her want to think of better things, of fixing things and shouldering her responsibilities and be a good enough person. But she can't. She's not.

"I don't know what to do, Taym. I don't know what to do and all I want is to either burn down every building in town that thing's touched and just run until I don't got legs anymore, until I leave my lungs behind."

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lizbot

He is quiet, watching her and thinking about being made pliant; all the times he'd seen her cry before she vanished that he'd never seen before, all the times he'd dismissed it as just too much for one person, and here they were.

"Can you run?" he asks finally, gently. It is not a rhetorical question. He knows as much as he can understand about Ashdown and her place in it. It is not will you or should you but can you.  

[lizbot]

She shook her head, "Not for long but..." There's a pause and then America admits, "We're trying to fix things. And one of those things gmay have us undoing the sigil I'm part of. I can't count on that, but..." There's a maybe one day in the quiet that follows.  

[Rejam]

lizbot

His restless eyes wander past her again, back out to the rows of lit windows behind which people have no idea what she's going through, and he doesn't say it but he doesn't need to: it's obvious in the sudden clench of his jaw, in the meaningless movement of his shoulder. He hates Ashdown.

He loosens his hands from hers, and he takes his phone back and starts the car, and he picks up the numb recitation of mundane details because it's all he can think to do, because everything else is too big and too insane to grab at.

"I can call people when we get back, let them know you're OK but don't wanna talk to people yet. Boop's at my place, and some clothes from--before--... and a shower. I'll call Cokie," he says. "She'll empty out the house and give us space and I'm sure if you want something to eat she'd be glad to take the car and grab something. Do you? There's nothing but cup noodles and ********' tofu blocks at the house." On and on, his own touch of worried drawl chugging along over something that feels very much like rage.  

[lizbot]

She shoots him a grateful look that he misses and wonders what she'd have done without him there, and then says it aloud. "If you weren't here, it seems like half my life might've collapsed in on itself. Ramen is fine, anything's fine right now."

America knows what it's like to feel helpless against the greater motions of the world and other people's lives in it, what it's like to have to focus on the smaller, simpler things as much as you can to do something, anything good. The sympathy and gratitude ease around the simmering anger and feels like she can breathe a bit more.

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lizbot

He doesn't have an answer for her. He generally doesn't, not for compliments, not unless he's in one of his playful moods where he plays it off faux-cool, and certainly not for a compliment like that, one that he doesn't feel even close to equal to. He just scrubs a hand over his face and calls up Cokie.

He doesn't say much for the ride back, once the call is over. Put his hand over hers again, restless and insistent, driving more carefully than is his wont. The Broiler is never really empty but Cokie has at least seen to it that they have the kitchen, the bathroom, to themselves; everyone is scarce which leaves Ivy plenty of room to have a complete yelping meltdown, her usual good manners completely overridden by her I thought you'd never come back and disrupting Boop's attempts to curl frantic circles against America's legs.

He doesn't want to leave her alone, not even long enough to boil an egg for her ramen, so he orders food, instead, while he hands her fresh towels, pajamas. He doesn't want to leave her alone so he sits beside the tub and makes his promised round of calls, his tired recitations that alter very little--she is fine, she isn't ready to talk to anyone yet, she's fine, she's fine--except that he also tells Algernon he's taking the day off tomorrow. He says, between calls, to use Allison's expensive Lush s**t if she wants, but other than that he has very little to tell her, waiting instead, when he finally pockets his phone, to listen. Or, failing that--if she has nothing to say--to share an unpressured silence with her, waiting to help her dry her hair and her tired arms and to sit on his bed--unmade, with laundry in the floor--with a calming-down Ivy and little foil packets of Indian from the only place open this late that delivers.

Then and only then he cracks a little, and cries silently with his arms around her waist and his chin on her shoulder, saying he isn't hungry.  

[lizbot]

She had her cry earlier, arms wrapped around Ivy, Boo rubbing against her leg and Mr. Bitterberry warbling a pleased, This is Home. This is Good. The simple, uncomplicated affection opened a flood gate. She tells him later that it's nice, to have a cry over something good again.

Dipping under the bath's surface, America listens to the muted sound of Taym's soft voice, abstracted under the water until it's just tones. She thinks she can hear her mom across the line, even down here. Happy and angry and worried. Leanne sounds like tomorrow's problem.

At first it's a little off, the feeling of being cared for when it'd become so warped before, but then the consistency of his care comes through louder. He is himself, as he ever has been, even when she's not. There's a poison sitting on the surface of this well, an oil slick of humiliation and anger. But maybe it doesn't have to stay. Maybe she can have this back and when he starts to cry in that quiet way that goes from his tears to the tips of his fingers, she doesn't want it to stay. Not here, not with this person.

America's hands try to be gentle but when they can't manage it, she doesn't let him go. The food is room temperature by the time they get to it and by then she is undoubtedly hungry and the sight of her eating is so very normal, it could be from two months ago; could be from last year, the curves of her lit by cheap motel neon while he smokes at the door, cheap delivery at her knee.

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[Rejam]

lizbot

He stands by the open window and he does, in fact, smoke, eyes wandering from her to the tree outside and back while he absently and with a distracted flinch feels out a particularly nasty bruise on his collarbone.

It feels peaceful and normal, except for the moments when it doesn't, when he remembers what his day started as through a fog of disbelief and grief and realizes there's no real guarantee against some tomorrow that starts the same.

He watches smoke trailing out into the front yard and he does that thing that he does sometimes, working words through a protracted and difficult silence, turned away from her. When they finally come they're something he's said to her often, but they're tense, like they're hanging on something unsaid. "I love you," he says.  

[lizbot]

Her fork drops as she sits up, bracing herself. "I love you too," she states plainly, a hint of defiance in it. "If there's a but waiting in the wings, angel, I need you to get it out nowish, 'cause I'm ready to get angry and I'm ready to get sad but I'm not ready to wait for either."

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