callbacks | Ruby City Inbox

[It's their first Friday in the new world.

She's been trying as best she can not to think about it, but the fact of the matter is that after what she and Dave have been through at Hell Hotel, there's really no shaking off the apprehensions that inevitably come attached to the standard repetitive weekly cycle. Mondays are the only day one can let one's guard down; Tuesdays are tense with anticipation for some new horror. Wednesday and Thursday are survival days. Thursday nights are impossible to sleep. Fridays are —

She died on a Friday.

It's practically a nursery rhyme, isn't it? Solomon Grundy, born on a Monday; christened on Tuesday, married on Wednesday, took ill on Thursday, grew worse on Friday, died on Saturday, buried on Sunday. Sometimes the memories feel a little bit like that; grew worse on Friday is always unfailingly true, isn't it.

But supposedly that's not how it's going to be, not this week, not here. This isn't the bed and breakfast, but they're under a roof and behind walls with doors that open to the outside whenever they want; there's been no danger and no despair, and everyone they've met has seemed content to simply live in harmony, rather than growing desperate and plotting murder.

Even so, she's up all night. She's known all week that she was going to be, once Thursday night rolled around.

But she suspects Dave isn't going to be sleeping either, so a little bit after midnight she goes to find him, bundled up in borrowed clothes and carrying her stuffed chinchilla rabbit close to her chest like a little girl after a nightmare.

But then, maybe that's precisely what she is: a little girl, after a nightmare.]

[He doesn't even try. To sleep, that is.

Dave can't not be aware of the inexorable, orderly progress of time, heavy like chain links he can dart around and through and back and forth but never, just like anyone else, leave behind. He spent his whole day--the whole week, really, but especially today--busy. He's been looping freely to shovel the whole neighborhood, pausing in between to take naps on the soft, perfect, horrendously ugly couch he found; he's been, at one point, in about four places at once today.

It's night, now, and it's cold, and Dave was never going to sleep anyway. Also, he's kind of sore from all the shoveling and running around.

He would have wanted to just be with Meridiana, to listen to her heart beat and murmur stories to each other in the dark, but he's been trying--he doesn't know. Not to lie or anything, or to block her protectively from the truth, but to really firmly treat this as something they can Handle, something that doesn't have to totally upend their lives, despite all evidence to the contrary. It's not unlike them to cling like children on any Thursday night, but he wants Meridiana to have all the sleep she can get.

So, knowing he was going to hold a vigil all night, knowing he wouldn't be able to stand still, knowing he was going to tense at every sound in this unfamiliar old house--knowing she's so attuned to him, she'll wake when he does--Dave kissed her good night with a weary kind of smile and told her he'd be up for a while. In the meantime, he patrols the house silently in three pairs of socks, learning its shadows and corners in the darkness, too, until it's theirs.

He's quiet every time he passes the bedroom door, but not silent. He's here. He's fine. She won't wake up alone. Sometimes he pauses there and thinks about how Haruka can't sleep anymore unless it's in a bedroom, afraid of breaking the rules, and he wonders if they'll ever really get out of that hotel.

When the door opens, he's just about to walk the corridor again. He stops, silent, then exhales as he releases a tension he didn't even know he was holding.

Dave lets go of the poor, ragged edge of his arm-warmer and holds his hand out to Meridiana.]

Hey.

[It was always going to be like this.]

We can make hot chocolate.

[Hey.

She remembers the conscious process of adapting to that, the transition from a more proper good day or why hello into accepting the flatter, stranger hey as her greeting of choice. It's a silly thing to dwell on, but the fact of the matter is that she's sort of dwelling on everything right now; it's only to be expected when it's so easy to get caught up in the riptide of encroaching memories in the dark of the night.

He offers his hand and she gravitates to it, to him, as naturally as breathing. If they're holding on tight, they can't be separated from each other. That's just how it is.

That's the comfort right now, even moreso than the prospect of hot chocolate.]

I think...I could use a hot chocolate, very much so. And you, too.

[She leaves that vague, open to interpretation — does you, too mean she's not the only one who needs a hot chocolate, or is the chocolate just not the only thing she needs right now.]

I don't think I've any chance of sleeping anymore, for a while.

I probably should've just set up camp with you to start with. Sorry.

[He holds her hand between both of his to warm it, to apologize, then lifts it to his lips for a soft kiss before leading her kitchenwards. They have pots and pans, they have groceries. Dave starts to heat the milk he pretty much only uses for this and for cereal and watches the little flames on the gas range for a moment without speaking.]

It is kind of like before, isn't it.

[Night never was the time for bravado.

At night, Dave was always with someone else, talking quietly, sleeping back to back, making just as much noise as breathing makes to remind himself they're alive, he's alive, he's not alone.

He's layered shirt over shirt under sweater and he still feels cold, like memory is its own phantom pain, untreatable.]

[It makes her wonder, watching him, if the reason why he didn't end up setting up camp with her is because his track record back in the hotel had been particularly ugly in that respect — going to sleep with someone else in the room and then waking up alone, and coming to find that the reason he was alone was because they were dead. Maybe that's just superstitious, but she still wonders; maybe that's part of the reason for his vigil, for his pacing.

Maybe he's trying to keep her safe in two ways — one by standing guard over her, the way he'd done when she was sick or distraught or couldn't rest, and the other by not getting too near her on a Thursday night, lest she be the only one for his curse to take hold of...and take away from him.

While he works, she moves around behind him and wraps her arms around his waist, resting her cheek somewhere vaguely between his shoulderblades and letting him feel her hanging on without tangling up his hands from the task he's trying to complete.]

Too much like it for my comfort, at least.

[She closes her eyes.]

But...it's strange. It's as though I know full well that we're safe, but I can't seem to...make the rest of me believe in it.

[When Meridiana holds him, something unlocks. Dave tilts his head back and breathes out, long and shivery, and places one of his hands on her wrist.

It means a lot to him, that his people let him into their space, are pleased with his tactile gestures of affection and respond with welcome and joy. It means something else when they initiate. When they show they'll hold onto him even when he doesn't. It's important. He needs them to want what he does; needs them to want him, too.]

I think. I think I don't know that at all, yet. That we're safe.

[The unrestricted ability to flip back and forth through time as he pleases is proof against many things, but also not the sole platform he wants their safety to rely on. Dave knows too many ways time travel can go wrong, and too many reasons depending on a single weapon is a stupid idea. He's broken too many swords.

With his free hand, he stirs the milk slowly. Gotta heat it up even or it'll do the gross filmy thing.]

The people are nice and all but there's too much they don't know, so I can't... I dunno how to make sure we're ready.

[Besides stocking their space with all the non-perishables he can find. And looking for weapons to hide around the house. Never will he ever again let them be helpless.

Dave can't shake the feeling that something's going to come, eventually, that they'll need to be ready for. He sighs.]

And I like everybody. But. ...Well.

[He likes a lot of people he doesn't know how to trust.]

[It'll occur to her someday, maybe, that one of the benefits of a big house isn't so much that there's more room to live in — but rather that there's more room to store safeguards in, for someone who can't help but prepare for the worst in expectation that it'll be along sooner or later.

What occurs to her in the moment, however, is that she feels bad about Dave being left to those preparations mostly alone, simply because defense of others has never been something she's been very good at, and self-defense is something even less so. It isn't right that Dave is the one kept up to pace the halls, to examine and re-examine their situation for any possible weaknesses, to shore them up with forethought and razor blades. If she could do more of that, it would lift some of the burden from his shoulders, but she knows she can't. For Dave, it's at least a burden he can bear to hold; for her, it'd crush her before long.

That's why there are other things she needs to do instead, other ways to support and contribute to their continued survival. It still makes her sad that Dave is left to suffer like this, have no doubt. But she has to keep reminding herself that her inability to take that from him doesn't mean she's powerless in every respect. There are still ways he needs her, still things she can do that he can't.

How strange, to think that there are things she can do that someone else can't.

She hugs him a little tighter, leaning a touch more of her weight onto him so he can feel her more solidly.]

But disagreeable people are never the ones to watch out for.

[She won't name names. She's never going to. But plenty of disagreeable people ended up victims of murder before their eyes, and plenty of kind, generous, agreeable ones ended up with blood on their hands.]

I've been thinking...perhaps I should try to read my cards for some of them. They'll learn something about themselves, to be sure...but that will mean we'll learn something about them, too. At least a little more than we knew before.

like we need any more threads but FIGHT ME | 12/16

FIGHTS. Gently. With love.

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12/28

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let's just say this is present dated and love ourselves

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3/30 | WERE YOU EXPECTING THIS I BET YOU WEREN'T

Oh man what's this now

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