#jrbev

hap new! / @timetear. 

     chell is new to this— this … well, everything, really. it’s hard to continue traditions she can’t remember. it’s hard to find the things she loves when she can’t recall ever loving them. she can’t comment on ketchup, she can’t comment on mustard. she’s never read a book with her after-eyes (after, because it isn’t like she knows what came before) and, unless she finds something written entirely in binary, she certainly can’t manage it now.

     but wheatley is easy.

     he shouldn’t be, either. not with all of the awful things they went through. sometimes her fault, sometimes his. but maybe that’s it. maybe that’s the trick: they did it all together.

     the earth is greener than she’d imagined. cleaner, too. colder. none of it is familiar to her. she sits huddled next to wheatley, expelled breath turned foggy and white in the winter air, seeking warmth at his side. he runs hotter than any human she’s met so far. something with the processors, she thinks, or the circuitry sparking inside of his chest. so, she sits as close as she can.

     they’re finally out. free, boundless soil to explore. anywhere in the world, anywhere they want. the idea of going alone didn’t occur to her. and if it had— who would she go to? who could do better?

     anyone, glados might say, still too sharp.

     chell doesn’t want better. she doesn’t want different. she wants wheatley. imperfect, impractical, and warm against her side.

     even when he chatters on and on. he fills her silence, fills her hand with his, and reads her as keenly as anyone else might read book. who else?

     she squeezes his hand, a call that slows his tongue to half-silence.

     ‘ am i going on again? ’ wheatley asks. ‘ you can stop me anytime, you know. really. any time. just — ’ he cuts himself off with a laugh, almost nervous. as it always is. just squeeze my hand, is what he was going to say- is something he has said many times before and will likely say many times after.

     they aren’t alone, not distantly, not really. there are people scattered all around them, paces away at least and meters at most. there’s a hush on them all, a warmth and a weight in the silence that’s finally caught her notice.

     she squeezes his hand again. and this time he looks at her.

     a new year, she says, extricating the one hand and telling him once she has both free. she doesn’t understand the significance, not fully, but she thinks she likes the idea. something about freedom.

     the crowd is no longer silent, a rush of cheers rolling over them in the final snapping of a clock’s hand. he looks away, off toward the noise.

     she goes for his cheek, but then he’s turning again to say something, gleaming eyes and excitement in the wake of something new, something bright— so whatever it was finds itself smothered under the press of her mouth on his.

     and if she could laugh, she could, but he cracks and does it for her— a good laugh, a full laugh, a laugh that suggests he doesn’t mind the way things landed, either.

fight club meme / accepting.

‘ it is kind of a big thing though, right? like, it’s kind of huge? ’ with some afterthought dory might realize she’s being rude, but she feels entitled to drip with disgust in the moment, face wrenching up. you don’t hear that a man has a fear of touching women and assume the best, not if you want to make it home in one piece. that’s how she’s rationalizing her reaction, anyway. her defensive stance, her voice pitching upwards. nuance, or even a split second reevaluation of bev, would be an enemy to her righteousness, not a friend. 

    straight out the gate like that, some folks might call that suspicious. summer is naturally disinclined to that particular route of thought, but that doesn’t negate the appearance of a rare stumble. (and still, the extent goes, i didn’t think that. are you alright? what a day you must be having.) ‘ oh, um -- ’ the skin between her eyebrows pinches, and then smooths out in the introduction of what she hopes is a reassuring smile. a gentle laugh makes an appearance, too, for his sake. ‘ i mean, you don’t even look like one, if that makes you feel better? ’

     ‘ are you -- okay? ’ (are you okay? has got to be the silliest question to ask someone, right? by the time you’ve been pushed to vocalized concern, isn’t it clear that they are not, in fact, okay? shouldn’t you be asking the why’s, the what’s?) summer sinks into a crouch at a careful distance, forearms against her thighs and hands loose between her knees. 

   the boy was nervous. 

   of course that wasn’t unusual in benoit’s line of work-- very often the people he interacted with had many doubts, about themselves, about other people, about blanc himself. it came with the territory of being a private investigator, after all, from sifting through the sand and washing off the dirt and finding the truths and untruths interred in the layers of sediment underneath, both the ones they wanted uncovered, and sometimes those they wished to remain buried. but his method did not discriminate based on his clients’ wants-- and if a truth was to be found, it would be. 

   still, he had hoped the usual offered sustenance of sweetened tea and homemade lemon cookies would have put his 10 o’clock more at ease. he had been talking at first, a lot of maunder about nothing of any particular interest. now he simply sat quietly opposite of him, knee bouncing slightly. benoit flipped through his notepad -- more for show than anything else, as the man’s singular name was at the top of the very first page. a fresh pad for a potentially fresh case.

Bev is making snake shapes with his arms, hands formed like he’s controlling Muppets. Elise is copying him.

How does she let him know that it doesn’t matter what he does, who he is, or how quick he’ll be to back away if she says the word, he’ll still make her skin crawl as long as he looks at her, as long as he talks to her. Jack’s very nearly mastered the art of pretending everything is fine, thanks for asking, until someone takes her passivity and tries to draw it out, keep her talking. Her face stays calm, even if she’s not. Her heart thrums quickly in her chest, but it’s not hard to blame it on the jog.

Bev says therapy, Jack thinks me too, and decides exposure therapy might do them both some good. He is, after all, about the least threatening version of it she’ll ever get the chance to go up against. 

‘ Weird, ’  is what she says, at first. Just that, while she looks at him for a while. A long while, and then back over her shoulder just to make sure they’re still in public, that people are still around, that the sun is still shining and everything still looks the way it’s supposed to.

         ‘ i don’t know what this is. i don’t know—what this conversation is, that we’re having. ’ there’s no ‘wish it would end’ in the subtext: he sounds focused and curious, as though bev has shifted into pig latin and the answer to some personal existential query lies in the jumble.