I. Training Wheels

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The Czarina
old hat

Posts: 66

writes for: Jade "Jaycee" Cooper (verdantclarity)
writes for: Vivian Kearny (spectreofiife)
writes for: Roman Kerrs (idealdanger)

I. Training Wheels Sept 22, 2015 20:34:23 GMT -8

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Post by The Czarina on Sept 22, 2015 20:34:23 GMT -8

Cast: Alex Kearny ( a moribund usher ), Vivian di Marco ( spectre of iife ), Cameo from Tucker North ( hesitantly yours )
Summary: Date night for Alex and Vivian doesn't turn out as planned when Death sends a little old lady named Judith Alex's way via his new channel medium -- Viv. Hilarity ensues. Alex has some feels.

[ Vivian ] Okay, so maybe Vivian wasn't quite good with change. Or maybe she just wasn't good with commitment. ... Or maybe a little bit of both. She really did love Alex. She really, really did. She didn't have a problem committing to him -- now, at least. She had no plans of ever leaving him. But the whole moving in together thing had scared her. Not because of Alex; because of herself. It's not you it's me, or whatever. But she'd given in, and he'd managed to convince her that it was a good idea, even if she sometimes got a little bit of a tummy turn when they discussed things. Right now, though, she had let him know that she was going to meet him at Joe's for some coffee and pastries (she really did love cheese danishes), and she had gotten there a little early. With any luck, he wouldn't be caught up in having to chauffeur a spirit to the afterlife and he'd make it to their coffee date. Hopefully.

[ Alex ] Nope. London was mysteriously and thankfully devoid of spirits to shuffle off dat mortal coil tonight. His only hold-up was an inability to properly sum up his thoughts on a contemporary commentary on the Children's Crusades, which he eventually gave up on in favor of his date with Vivian. Alex meandered in without his laptop bag, without any of his standard accoutrements for an evening at Joe's, because he was usually working on something these days, be it papers or the apartment hunt. But not tonight. Tonight was about chillin' for a bit before the week started all over again. Blues glanced about until they lit on Vivian, and without bothering to do something like stop off to order first, he stepped on up behind her and dropped a kiss on top of her head. "Hey. Quick question. What are your thoughts on the Children's Crusades?" No, he didn't expect her to have a legit answer for him. He wasn't even sure what his thoughts were, and he was the one studying it--other than that was fucked up, sending a bunch of kids as young as seven to go marching to the Holy Land like that. What the hell, Europe. But still, it was a better question than asking her thoughts on children.

[ Vivian ] Please don't ask her her thoughts on children. Please. Unless you want to see Vivian running the fuck out of Joe's going a million miles an hour, do not ask her her thoughts on children. Besides, he knew her thoughts on kids. She would be a horrible mother. She smirked when she felt the kiss atop her head, and she tilted her head all the way back so she could steal an actual kiss from her scruffy little debt collector before giving him an answer. "Well, I suppose they're easier to get into small spaces, but I don't think they'd have the strength to really wear chain mail or anything. Maybe they just rolled them up in some sort of medieval bubble wrap and shoved them out the door like some sort of weird Christmas Story version." No, Vivian didn't have an intelligent answer at all. She wasn't even sure what the Children's Crusades were. She could glean enough from the name? But yeah. "No more homework. It's still the weekend. No Crusades or other history mumbo jumbo."

[ Alex ] Okay but she also said she'd be a horrible girlfriend, and a horrible everything else ever. But this wasn't the time to bring up babies. Alex was pretty cool not having any right now, thanks. He was only twenty-five, and in grad school, though he supposed financially he was kinda set so long as he could keep beating the shit out of people for Nero. He snickered into Vivian's hair. "They just sent their kids off to march on the Holy Land, because I mean, if this is a situation where adults are being picked off by bandits and shit, children will be just fine, right? Everyone was high on shit better than Caleb's medical grade back then, I'm convinced." There was a brief brushing of his hand over her arm as he stepped away. "Yeah, yeah, no more homework. I gotcha. Alright, let me grab something and I'll be back. Keep my seat warm." Was Vivian looking for a real kiss? Because she got one then, right up to her mouth in the form of three short ones that came together to form a long. And then he was meandering away to go harangue the--oh for fuck's sake, the cambion was manning the counter today. Don't make eye contact, Kearny, you'll be fine, just order your latte and your slice of apple pie.

[ Vivian ] Mmm, dat kiss doe. All three of the little ones were returned, and that longer one was ended with a playful little flick of her tongue on his lips as he started to walk away. She turned her head so that she could watch him walk away and towards the counter, smirking to herself. The way his arms strained against the fabric of his shirts was always so sexy... Ahem. But they were in public so she couldn't just sit there and drool over him while he ate his pie and drank his latte. Vivian, for what it was worth, was already halfway through a cheese danish and an iced chai, and she picked up her drink to plop the straw in her mouth while she continued to admire her boyfriend while he made his order. In order to keep his seat warm, though, she turned to the side and plopped her feet up on the chair. Either that or he could sit in her chair and she would sit in his lap. But that would probably go downhill really fast. It wasn't too long, though, while Alex was looking away and at the counter, that Vivian's eyes flashed, her expression went blank, and her head sort of lolled forward and then snapped back upright. Confusedly, Vivian's body looked around.

[ Alex ] Yep, there was Alex. Before he had gone over to grab his stuff, he had taken off the red and black flannel shirt he'd been wearing over his black tee and draped it over the back of the chair across from Vivian, so she got to check him out in all of his strong-armed glory. It wasn't long before Alex was able to get his coffee and his dessert without so much as a glance into Tucker's eyes--not that it would have done anything, Alex was one hundred percent straight okay--and was headed back over to join his girlfriend. Since her feet were on the chair, he sat on them lightly. "Huh. This chair's uncomfortable. Maybe somebody needs to stick a matchbook under one of the legs?" He wiggled playfully, until he noticed that confused look on her face. "Hey. You okay there?" Popping back up, Alex gently nudged her feet out of the chair so he could sit in it properly, stir his latte, and dig into his pie. His favorite. Apple went best with the generous scoop of vanilla ice cream that he'd ordered on top. He dug in his fork, took a bite, and then snagged up a second and offered it across the table to Vivian. "Hey, this pie's almost as good as Alison's." Considering the somewhat contentious relationship he had with his stepmother at times, that was a definite compliment.

[ Vivian ] Oh, it was Vivian's body, alright, but it was not Vivian's consciousness. No, no. The actual Vivian was tucked neatly away in her brain while the spirit of somebody else had taken control of her body. She raised an eyebrow as she looked at him and crossed her legs over her chest. "Do I know you?" she asked in what could only be described as some sort of older New York Jewish lady. "And should you really be eating that, what with the stomach on you," she said, giving a little gesture towards his mid-section. When she glanced down, she happened to catch sight of her own body, and her hands cupped her breasts. "I haven't had bosoms like this since I was burning my brazziere back in Woodstock," she said, then gave a wistful smacking sound of her lips. "Ah, bless this body, huh? Though I think I could probably stand to eat a sandwich. Maybe I should be eating that pie instead of you. But you sure do have some chutzpah coming to my table."

[ Alex ] That pie in his mouth was going to stay in his mouth for a moment, unchewed, because Alex had no idea what the fresh flying fuck was going on here. It was only once the ice cream started melting in his mouth and threatened to drip down his chin if he wasn't careful that he chewed and swallowed. "What?" Yeah, just...what? Once before he had seen Vivian do this, though. He remembered that she had become somebody else, someone very close to his heart. Lacy, his babiest of his baby sisters. This, however, was an unknown presence, and he narrowed his eyes. "Uh." No, he knew what was up. Maybe. Sort of. Why Vivian, though? Why did it have to be his girlfriend, and why did this have to happen on date night? "Hi. I'm Alex. I'm not fat." That part came out too quick, and perhaps a little wounded. So he was a bit pudgy, so what? It was hard to lose weight when you were on tour, and harder still when you were attending university. Either way, you lived off a lot of fast food. He'd brought the habit to England with him. He was just eating fish and chips or take-out curry now instead of poutine and Mickey-D's. "You, uh...you seem to be borrowing my girlfriend's body. Can I help you?" Stare. Fuck his life, man.

[ Vivian ] "Okay, so you're not fat, whateva' you need to make yourself feel bettah'," she said, rolling her eyes and waving him off like he was nothing. "Alex. That's a good name. You know, one of my grandson's has a little girlfriend named Alex, but I always thought it was a little on the masculine side..." It was Vivian's voice, but most definitely not her accent. No. "Ah, the more I look atchu, the more precious you are. C'mere and let me get a good look atchu, Alex." She reached over to take his face in her hands and examine him. "I have to say, the facial hair looks good on you. There's too many men now, what with their facials and their waxing, even on their you-know-whats. You're not waxed down there are ya?" she asked, glancing down to his crotch suspiciously. She gave another little smacking sigh and let go of his face dramatically. "I'm Judith, and I was eating dinnah with my girlfriend Charlotte. She's a nice woman, but a little on the, you know.. The promiscuous side... For an old lady, she gets around, if you know what I mean..." She waggled her eyebrows at him and leaned back against her chair back. "I don't know how I got here, though."

[ Alex ] Alex had one Jewish grandmother already, his mom's mom. He didn't need a second one asking him even more invasive questions than the first one. Blues went absolutely huge as she reached out to grab his face and look him over. To be honest, without the beard, he had a chronic case of baby bitch face, so he at least smiled a tiny bit at the compliment. Only to have it fall with the commentary about waxing. "That's..." No, he decided that Judith here did not need to know about the state of his pubes. Nobody did, other than the lady whose body Judith was currently borrowing. Yeah, he was just gonna gloss right over that, thanks. Yikes. "Okay, so you and Charlotte were eating dinner. And then you were here." How was he going to coax this spirit out of Vivian so they could go back to enjoying their night? He was not about to take Judith back to his dorm for Netflix and chill. "Do you remember any sort of pain or discomfort?" he asked. "Before you came here?" Pie date with grandma. How...quaint?

[ Vivian ] "You know, this little girlfriend of yours, she's quite nice lookin'. If I was into that, I think I would totally go for her. You know, there was one time back in college... It was an all women's college, and I had this one roomate. What was her name... Oh.. It was.. Ah, yes, it was Margaret. Well, Margaret and I tried a little something, but it nevah was quite as good," she trailed off and was brought back when Alex asked if she had felt any pain or discomfort. "My left arm went a little numb, and I had this pain right here.." She brought up her hand to press to her chest, but looked back down again. "I just can't get over these bosoms. I bet she doesn't even have to wear a brazier!" She made a smacking cluck. "Lucky girl. Marry this one; she looks like a keepah. And I bet the relations are fabulous!" Okay, so Judith was a bit of a dirty old lady, but at least she gave Alex something to go on. Left arm numb and a pain in her chest while she was eating dinner with Charlotte.

[ Alex ] Jesus Christ whyyyy. Alex had exactly the look you might expect a twenty-five year old man to have while an old lady's spirit possessed his girlfriend's body and told him about her lesbian experimentations in college. Was that a hushed snicker from the barista as he walked by? Shut the fuck up, North. But at least Judith was giving him something there, true. Numbness and pain. Bad news for Judith, but good news for Alex, sort of. "Yeah, I can't get over those bosoms either. Alright, Judith, I'm afraid I've got some bad news for you. You had a heart attack. You're, ah..." Normally he had the body right there beside him and he could point and go look, see, you're dead now, that's you laying there riddled with bullet holes. He didn't have that now. He'd just have to hope she believed him. "You're dead," he said gently. "You died and your spirit found me through Vivian's body. It's because it's my job to escort the dead to the next life. So..." Uh. "Hey, Tucker." The cambion turned and blinked. "Watch my seat for a few?" There were some vague protestations about being on the clock, but in the end, the blue-eyed half-demon ended up lazily leaning against the table while Alex escorted Judith-in-Vivian to a stand. "Come with me. We'll get you sorted out."

[ Vivian ] Judith sighed a bit. "It figahs. You know, I knew that one day I'd get struck down for not eating kosha." She shrugged a bit. "I guess it was time to go then, huh? My Abraham went ten years ago." She stood up, but when the snickering cambion came over to the table, Judith smirked at him. She pointed a shakey finger at him and then spoike. "Now you're a lookah. You know, if you cut your hair, you'd like just like my Abraham. Have y'ever been with an older lady, honey? What's that called? A cougah?" But she was being led out, so she left the cambion with just a little wink before she took Alex's arm. And gasped. "Your arm is so nice. Like a rock, it is." Yes, Alex was going to get his arm felt up while he escorted her to the next life.

[ Alex ] Funny how Tucker just always did that thing with that lazy smile. "It's a pleasure meetin' you, miss, but I think you should probably go with Alex, yeah?" Hey Tucker, what did you do at work? Got hit on by an old lady inside my ex's quadmate's body, nbd. Still a better day than Alex, though. The psychopomp snorted slightly at Tucker on their way past, and then they were stepping outside, Alex and Judithian, into the last light of day, the bit of gold before the sun sank down. "I bet you'll see him again, Judith," he said. "Abraham. A lot of people see their loved ones again." He stepped behind Vivian's body, hands placed on familiar shoulders. "Look down there," he said, gesturing down the street. "What do you see?" It was easy, escorting a soul. Even if they tried to run, the holes in the thin, thin fabric between the worlds followed them. So what she would see when she looked down the street, and what Alex would see, but nobody else, would be whatever it was that would welcome her to the afterlife. If she was a good woman, and she seemed to be, it would be something that would make her happy. "I doubt it's because you didn't keep kosher, though. I mean, bacon's good."

[ Vivian ] "Maybe anotha time then," she said to the long-haired barista before they left and stepped outside into the dusk. When urged to do so, she looked down the street, but she didn't see the streets of London. She saw a quaint little house. Two stories, but nothing overly big. It was blue with white shutters and it had a beautiful lawn with dozens and dozens of flowers in flower beds beneath the windows. "Ah!" she said with a little gasp, her hands shakily coming to cover her mouth. "It's the house that we had to sell when the economy went undah..." she said, her voice muffled into her hands. And standing on the front porch was Abraham, waving his hand and smiling at Judith. She knew where she needed to go now, and she turned towards Alex. "Thank you for takin'me here. You're a good kid. Make lotsa babies with this one; they'd just be beautiful," she said, giving Alex's cheeks a little pinch before literally stepping out of Vivian's body. Vivian, for what it was worth, fell backwards (so it was a good thing that he was positioned behind her, huh?) and gasped like she'd been punched in the gut. Judith's spirit rushed towards Abraham, both of them becoming younger and younger with each step she took until they were in their early twenties once more.

[ Alex ] There was always something nice about this part. Watching as the spirit went off to the next life. At worst, he got a bit of a vindictive thrill out of it when somebody evil got what they deserved. At best, though, it sometimes almost brought a tear to his eye. He remembered the last thing his grandfather had said to him, when he brought his spirit along after three weeks of malingering in a body that was kept alive by nothing but machines. He called out to his long-dead wife, his Lucy, and laughed and ran to her. Alex stood back with his hands on Vivian's shoulders, and he was there to catch her when she fell. "You're welcome, Judith. Take care, okay?" Make lots of babies with this one. Pretty little things with black hair and big blues and no Alex I've already got one character going through this emotional crisis and I don't need a second one right now. Ahem. Vivian would be able to see it too, the spirit rushing away towards Abraham and growing younger and younger and happier and happier. "It's nice, isn't it?" he asked her. "That's Judith. She borrowed you for a bit before moving on. Can't figure out why you've become a rest stop on the death highway, though. Oh, also, she says you have great titties." Alex copped a feel.

[ Vivian ] alex pls.

[ Alex ] Psychopomping and chill.

[ Vivian ] NO.

[ Alex ] AWYIS.

[ Vivian ] It took a little bit for her to get back into her own consciousness, and when she did, she took another gasp to restart her own breathing. She found herself caught by Alex and .. groped. And looking at some old-fashioned people. The woman with long black hair pulled up into a pony tail with a ribbon in it. The man tall and bearded, there to catch her when she ran into his arms. Vivian's first response to that whole thing? "I do have great titties," she said, perhaps a little breathlessly. She scrambled back onto her own two feet but stayed rather close to him. "Why the hell am I being possessed? I mean, I guess I could get it when it was Lacy? But do you know this old lady? Or was she just some random lady taking over my body?" She smoothed her shirt over her stomach and double-checked that she was okay after that experience. "...Where's my pastry?"

[ Alex ] Blues watched the pair for another moment. The long black hair, the tall man with the beard. His mouth turned up, into a smile that was warm and soft and sort of understated. He wasn't going to give his thoughts a voice. Some things were best left bottled up inside until the time was right. Alex wasn't stupid enough to open his mouth and tell Vivian that he was seeing the two of them in that old couple reunited by death. "I don't know," he said, shrugging. "I got nothing. Maybe you're just lucky? I'd never met her before, but she sure had a lot to say about my body, my beard, and your boobs. She said I was too pudgy for my pie." Yeah, he'd just carry that insult with him a while, even though he'd otherwise liked Judith. "Your pastry's inside. I've got Tucker standing guard over the table." Something cold blew behind them, a wind that was too chilly for September, even in London. The voice that spoke was a whisper, neither male nor female. Alex knew it. Vivian would too, from the night of the summer formal. "This is your lot now," the voice said. "My gift does not come without a price." And then it was gone.

[ Vivian ] Vivian frowned and furrowed her brows when he said that she had called him too fat for his pie. "What a hairy old cunt," she said, immediately disliking this Judith lady. "You eat all the pie you want. I love your tummy," she said, turning around so she could give the aforementioned tummy a little rub with her hand. It was probably a good thing Alex kept his thoughts to himself because seriously, Vivian would have blanched and ran. "She's just jealous," she said, wrapping her arms around his neck and pushing herself up on tippy toes so that she could steal a kiss. .. But before she could, there was that chilly breeze and that voice. ... Aw, fuck. Yeah, she knew what it was. Chillflesh rose upon her skin, and she shivered against Alex. "...The hell does it mean?" she asked. "You had a favor, and it gave you that favor." What Vivian wasn't putting together was the fact that it had brought back two lives that night instead of just one.

[ Alex ] There were a lot of things that she had said that Vivian wouldn't like, Alex thought. But he grinned and puffed himself up a bit, before Death's insidious whisper brought him right back down. There was nothing there to see, it was gone in the same moment that Judith and Abraham were. London's busy streets returned to their normal state, though to most people, there was no difference, no change. Alex hung on to Vivian while she tried to recover. "I don't know. I had a favor. We made a deal. We made a fucking deal!" He snarled it out through grit teeth. And then it hit him, and his eyes went enormous. "Vivian. Viv. Death didn't give back one life that night. There were two. We never asked for two, but there were two..." He stepped away a tiny bit so he could reach his hand out to her wrist and start to drag her back inside. "Come on. C'mon. Let's have some coffee. I...we can figure this out, I guess. I mean, I can't tell Death to fuck right off." He sure wished he could.

[ Vivian ] Judith could say all she wanted to. She wasn't the one that got to see that spark of sheer power in Alex's eyes when he came home with blood all over his hands. Vivian didn't care that he had a little extra pudge. He was just making up for her, right? Something like that. Whatever, she thought he was a sexy beast. She rolled her eyes, but when he caught her attention again, she looked up at him. ... And when he explained it, she blanched. There were two lives, and Vivian had gone and killed the second one. Again. Purposefully and without a second thought. "...Oh, for fuck's sake," she said finally. She hadn't thought about that at all. Alex's specific words when she was brought back had put them in this conundrum. Well. That and her own promiscuity from the fifties. It was both of their faults. She started to walk with him, groaning as she trudged. "That means there's gonna be all sorts of possessions, isn't there?"

[ Alex ] Sexy beast Kearny, aw yes. Well, y'know, he did have the strong arms and shoulders and back and all that. And the blue eyes. And the goofy smile. And now that he was no longer panicked when he came home bloody, yeah, maybe there was a bit of power there. Back into the shop they went, the barista stepping away from his table-guarding to go back to doing his goddamn job, while Alex returned to their table and sat back down with his coffee and pie with only slightly melted vanilla ice cream. "I know, we didn't ask for it. Look, I wasn't thinking when I told Death what I wanted, okay? I was just excited you were agreeing to go along with it. I should've been more specific, like, y'know, minus fetus or something. So..." He huffed a sigh into his coffee. "So yeah, I guess there's gonna be all sorts of possessions. Gee, I can't wait until you get possessed while I'm fucking you. That's gonna be a great night for everyone involved." Sarcasm out the ass, there, in case you couldn't tell.

[ Vivian ] She flopped herself down into the chair next to him instead of the chair across from him, and she leaned against him so that she could rest her head against his shouldler in a resigned fashion. "No, it's not your fault. We... We got too excited. We weren't thinking. I should have... We should have thought about it a little more. Maybe.. Maybe communicated about when would be a good point in which to bring me back, you know? Pre-fetus. Then there would only be one abortion and not two." Of the same baby. Vivian would be a horrible mother. Just as she'd be a horrible wife, and more importantly, a horrible roommate. She snorted when he brought up the fact that it wasn't an 'if' but a 'when' she was possessed while they were fucking. "Well, I guess it's your pass to cheat? I mean, you get to fuck other ladies in my body? And I guess I can't really get mad at you, so it's a pass for you. Score?"

[ Alex ] Poor Vivian. Alex felt for her, he really did, and he slid his arm around her shoulders to pull her in against her. When she finished her speech about banging other ladies while they were in her body, he popped a forkful of pie and ice cream into her mouth. "Oh my god, Viv, shut up and eat this pie," he laughed. "I don't wanna do other people, I want to do your body with your brain and your spirit and all that shit still in it. What if it's another little old lady like Judith? What if it's a dude? I don't wanna bang a dude." Getting back to the heart of why Tucker made him so uncomfy, there. Alex ran his hand up and down her arm. "Look, don't blame yourself, okay? We're both to blame for this. We both fucked up somewhere along the line and then it gave way to a two-person fuck-up of epic proportions. We can't undo it, so the best we can do is live with it and go on with our usual business. Work, school, looking for a flat. I kinda liked that last one we saw yesterday. The one with the fancy-ass stove with the flat burners."

[ Vivian ] Alex was such a good boyfriend. Why he picked her, she'd never know. He deserved a lot better, let's be honest. She turned her head to press a kiss to his cheek while he reassured her that it wasn't her fault. That they were both to blame in this clusterfuck of channel medium fuckery. She sighed heavily and reached over to pluck a piece of crusty sweetness from her danish and plopped it in her mouth. She did, however, snicker when she thought about the fact that a dude might posess her at the worst of times, and it would be awkward for everybody involved. She nodded a bit at his change of conversation. "I did, too..." She nuzzled her nose up under his scruffy jawline and pressed a kiss to his neck. "Your friend Judith gave me a bit of a headache. I think maybe we should head out. Take pies and pastries to go." Since, you know, he'd gone and shoved some in her mouth and she ate it and it was delicious.

Last Edit: Sept 27, 2015 21:09:57 GMT -8 by The Czarina

The Czarina
old hat

Posts: 66

writes for: Jade "Jaycee" Cooper (verdantclarity)
writes for: Vivian Kearny (spectreofiife)
writes for: Roman Kerrs (idealdanger)

I. Training Wheels Sept 27, 2015 21:19:46 GMT -8

Quote

Post by The Czarina on Sept 27, 2015 21:19:46 GMT -8

Cast: Alex Kearny ( a moribund usher ), Vivian di Marco ( spectre of iife )

Summary: Alex tells Vivian about his plans to take her home to officially meet his parents over Canadian Thanksgiving. They get into their first screaming match because the medium's self-esteem gets in the way of taking their relationship to the next level. Viv puts her foot in her mouth and spills a well-guarded secret about her emotions.
TW: Mentions of IV drug use, mentions of abortion

[ Alex ] "So here is what I'm thinking." Alex draped his arm over Vivian's shoulder, snuggling up to her on the couch in his dorm. He didn't think Caleb and Dee were around, or if they were, he didn't really expect them to emerge from the bedroom anytime soon. Since mun can't even remember who the fuck else lives with 'em, we can just assume that it was only the two of them hanging out in the quad tonight. "If you want to come for Thanksgiving, which is next month, not November, we can see about leaving on Wednesday morning. That would give us enough time to fly on Wednesday, make it to Toronto probably sometime stupid fucking late, sleep in, and then show up at Dad's around like...I don't know, noon or something. They won't make you help cook, you're the guest. They'll make me do it. You can just...I dunno, hang out and let Lacy braid your hair or something. Take a nap. Whatever." His other arm reached over to the carton of Thai take-out, chopsticks digging down for another bit of peanut chicken. Honestly, he expected resistence from her. Every time he tried to do something that involved taking their relationship to some next level, no matter how arbitrary that level might have felt to him personally, she always had something to say about it and about how she was not good at it, or something. She said she'd be an awful girlfriend, and she wasn't. She said she'd suck at being alive, and she didn't. Sooner or later she'd hopefully figure out that he was in no way lying, that he knew she'd be good at these things. And he was sure she would say that she'd be awful at meeting his family. Even though she kind of already had. But let's be real, that trip to Toronto hadn't been for fun. That had been to make sure his baby half-sister wasn't going to die. Cameron said she was doing just fine, though.

[ Vivian ] Everything seemed like it was going so fast. So fast. Vivian was definitely not sure that she could handle life right now. When you were dead, you had all the time in the world to do things. You could take your time and literally float through 'life'. Now, though, there was a time limit on everything. You needed to get things done by X time. You needed to do things by Y date. Before Vivian had been resurrected, her forever was different from Alex's. Her forever was an eternity. Alex's was some ninety-odd years. Ninety-odd years was nothing when you were going to be around until the end of time. Now, though... It was both of their forevers. It was... A long time, their lifespans. Somehow, the tables got turned, and spending her life with anybody seemed like a really, really long time. She just wanted some Thai food! That was it! Some Thai food and some time to not talk about the impending move. Thankfully, that was what was given to her. ... Unthankfully, he brought up the trip to Toronto to officially meet his family. Like... Hang out with them like a good girlfriend or something. Not just check in with a little wave while making sure his little sister was breathing. No, she was going to have to, you know... Sell herself to them. Sell them on the fact that she was a good prospect for their son. It.. It was all a lot. She wasn't sure she could do that. "I... You know... Maybe it's something that you should do without me? I mean, not that I don't want to, you know that I love being with you, but I'm thinking that maybe your family would just rather see you instead of having some weird girl hanging around."

[ Alex ] Blues glanced sidelong at Vivian as he unwrapped his arm from her, just for the sake of more convenient eating. His hip was still kinda gently smushed against hers. Hair was still damp, too--he'd showered while he waited for the take-out, to get the blood off him. Not a kill. Not his kill, at least. A psychopomp gig, and one that thankfully she had been left out of. Alex suspected that Death was sparing Vivian the violent cases, which was just fine by him. This one had been a gunshot. A suicide. So it was no wonder that all he wanted to do right now was talk about life and the future and happy things, things that weren't guys who put hunting rifles under their chins and pulled the trigger. "What? No, Viv, they invited you too. Dad mentioned you in the email, and Cameron asked about you too. I think she likes your style." Cameron, at fifteen, was kinda coming into her own. "Please give her some fucking fashion tips. I see her on Facebook and I want to smack her for doing the whole prosti-tot thing. Like, come on, stop flashing your boobs, you're not even legal in England, much less Canada..." Here he drifted off, shaking his head and returning to the topic at hand. "They know who you are. They know you're Vivian, you're my girlfriend." Here he raised a brow, and dangled some peanut chicken in front of her from his chopsticks for her to snag, the carton kept underneath it to catch the sauce. "Besides, what if you get possessed while I'm gone? You're going to be somebody else for like three, four whole days, until I come home to escort them away. Do you really want to be an elderly Jewish woman again, asking innocent young psychopomps about their pube upkeep in a coffee shop?"

[ Vivian ] Ooo, peanut chicken. That sparked her interest, if even for a moment. She leaned forward so that she could snag it from the chopsticks with her mouth, perhaps a little suggestively sucking on the ends of the sticks while he pulled them away. You know, if she could get this whole conversation turned around and forgotten because of sexytimes, then she wouldn't have to deal with it. She nibbled the chicken and leaned her head against his shoulder, her hand falling to rest upon his thigh. Nothing sinister yet... Just... Just resting, fingertips settled upon the inside of his thigh, rather high up. "I think Death would know better. After all, it seems he can pick and choose which ones get sent to me. If he knows sending them to me would just mean they're stuck for four days inside my body, then he's not going to do that, right? I mean, he's not stupid..." He might have had a good point, but so did Vivian. "Besides... I'm the worst girl to bring home to your parents. I know I've met them, but that was different. This is in passing. It's different, and once they get to know me, they're not going to like me. Nobody likes a junkie living with their son, you know?" She pressed a little kiss up under his jaw line. "C'mon. Let's work off our Chinese food, yeah?" She gave his thigh a suggestive little squeeze.

[ Alex ] Oh, hello. Alex did glance downwards at those fingertips curling around his thigh, over his jeans. And Vivian did get a somewhat peanut-sauce-flavored kiss to her lips. "Yeah, okay, true enough, Death knows what he or she or it or them is or are doing." Because the truth was, he had no idea if Death even had a gender and therefore no idea what pronouns to use. Look, Kearny was sensitive to the needs of others, okay? He was good like that. It wasn't until she started up with the whole worst girlfriend ever act that he gently caught her wrist in his hand. Delicately. There was almost no pressure applied. "First of all," he pointed out, "it's Thai. Secondly...why do you keep telling me that you're bad at everything? That you're a shitty girlfriend? No, you know who was a shitty girlfriend?" He thumbed towards Caleb's door, but he obviously didn't mean Caleb, though Caleb would be a shitty girlfriend on account of being a straight dude. "Fucking around on me makes you a shitty girlfriend. Having a lot of nasty demons from sixty years ago doesn't make you a bad girlfriend. And would you stop calling yourself a junkie?" Alex released her wrist to reach his hand up and gently brush back some of her hair, tucking it behind her ear. "You're not a junkie, Viv. You're an addict in recovery. You know what addiction is? A mental illness. You're sick. You're not a bad person, you're just sick, and you're getting better. We're all a little sick. I am." He felt it every time he was beating somebody down for Nero, that something-else that filtered into his consciousness and made him want to hurt other people.

[ Vivian ] Mm, peanuty kiss. It was returned, complete with a little nibble to his lower lip. She grinned when he pulled away, convinced that she could just distract him away from this conversation completely. ... It looked like Alex had something else in mind, though, and she blinked in surprise when he snatched up her wrist. "Thai, Chinese, whatever, it's all the same, and we can just go work it off..." but she let her sentence sort of trail off when he was going into his schpiel on how she was a good girlfriend. Cue the eyeroll. At least she had the forethought to close her eyes before she rolled them, though, so he wouldn't see it. "Once a junkie always a junkie, Alex. Do you think your parents will be a'okay with these?" she said, turning her arm over so he could see the scarred up track marks on her arm. "They're so pretty, aren't they? 'Look, Dad, ain't she a beaut? She has the whole Toronto freeway system on her arms!'" she said in an admittedly poor impression of Alex. "I am a junkie. It's what I am, and you can sugarcoat it all you want. But it doesn't matter how much sugar you put on a rotten apple, once you take a bite, it's foul inside. Ruined. It's not sixty years ago. It's recent. Would you like to tell them how you found me in your bathroom and had to break down the fucking door? Or perhaps you'd like to tell them about my baby-killing. I'm sure that'll be wonderful dinner conversation. C'mon, Alex, let's just... Let's drop this whole thing."

[ Alex ] Vivian might have closed her eyes when she rolled them, but Alex didn't do the same. He rolled them openly, and not without a bit of agitation curling his lip. "Vivian, knock it off. First of all, I don't give half a shit what Dad and Alison think of you. If they like you, great, that's awesome, and if not, I'm twenty-five years old and I don't need them to sign a permission slip before I get involved with somebody." Blues dropped to the track marks on her arm. He'd traced them with his fingers so many times, kissed them, accepted them as a part of her and who and what she was. Now he just sort of glanced at them and back at her face. "You are not foul or ruined or anything like that! Vivian, stop, stop talking about yourself like that!" Now both of his hands were on her shoulders, and he didn't really shake her or anything, but he definitely gave her a little nudge like he hoped it might help her get her shit together. "I love you! I want you to come be a part of something that my family has invited you to be a part of. It seems like every time I try to take a chance with you, or try to take something to the next level, you just dig your heels in and insist you'll suck at it. I had to convince you to date me, I had to convince you to even entertain the notion of being brought back, I had to convince you to move in with me. Is this how it's always going to be?" Alex didn't really sound angry. He sounded upset, but not angry. Yet. It was coming, though, and if she kept pushing him, she'd get to see just what a hurricane he could really be under the mask of polite stoicism and, well, Canada.

[ Vivian ] Okay, so he wasn't going to drop it in favor of sexytimes. This was going to be a whole to-do, wasn't it? She could feel everything start to tense up, especially when he raised his voice and snatched her by the shoulders. "You might not care what they think, but I certainly do. I fucking care. Because I know it's going to come down to the fact that they agree with me. They agree with me that you deserve better than this, and you're under some... Some... Some rose-colored delusion that I'm this good person or some shit like that. I'm not. I'm not a good person. I'm most certainly not what somebody wants their son to date." She sighed with a loud harumph. "Alex, you knew this. You knew this was how I felt to begin with. You deserve someone who can give you the life that you want. Not... Fuck, not this broken pile of trash I call my body. And I fucking love you, but you don't know what it's like to have parents disown you because of your choices. And I'll be damned if you lose your family because of me!" she said, raising her voice and pointing to herself with both of her hands. Her eyes were starting to get a little glisteny with tears. "The world's not a happy fucking place, Alex. I'm not a perfect girlfriend just because you love me and I fuck you. They're going to judge, and it's going to put you in a really hard fucking place."

[ Alex ] So this was going to be it. Their first actual fight. The time she had gone orb and hid underneath Scarlett's bed for nine days didn't count. That wasn't a fight so much as her picking up and abandoning ship. At least now she was staying where she was. "You're jumping to conclusions!" he answered. "Nobody can look at you and know your life history unless you tell them! If you're feeling self-conscious about the track marks, wear long sleeves. It's October in Canada, it's not like you'll be out of place or dressed inappropriately." OH OKAY ELEVEN DAYS THAT MADE IT BETTER. Ahem. "When are you going to just accept that you are a part of the life that I want?" Agitated, he stood up from the couch and did that thing that he did when he was bothered, that pacing, that slow movement around the room like he was an animal in a too-small cage. "Stop trying to tell me that I'm making bad choices, because I'm not! You know why you're a good girlfriend? Because you love me. Because you accept me. Because you're good to me. That's why you're a good girlfriend. Because you love me even when I have to leave you mid-date to go help some random motherfucker shuffle off this mortal coil! Because you love me when I turn up covered in blood!" Here he lowered his voice. "Because you love me when I've just committed murder. You get it. You think my family is going to turn their backs on me because I found somebody who cares about me who just so happens to have a checkered past and what boils down to a mental illness?" His jaw set. "They won't. And don't kid yourself, this isn't I love you and you fuck me. It's not that simple. You know it's not that simple."

[ Vivian ] Yeah, this was not going to end prettily. Vivian had done a lot of thinking (and panicking ... and vandalism) over the last day or so as the impending move got closer and closer. She knew what she was, and she knew that she wasn't anything that Alex deserved. He deserved more. So, so much more. When he stood up, so did she, but she didn't pace. Instead, she balled her hands up and held her arms stiffly at her side. "No, Alex," she said with trembling consternation. "No, that doesn't make me a good girlfriend, it makes me fucking selfish. It makes me selfish!" she yelled with a little stomp of her foot. "Because you know very well that you wouldn't be doing what you do if it weren't for me. If you didn't have me to be the fucking devil on your shoulder. You and Caleb and Dee... You'd be working at some fucking.. I don't know, some bookstore, but instead, you're working for Nero, and that is my fault, and you've been dragged into my world!" Her eyes were most definitely moist with tears at this point, and she was trying to blink them away. "I look at you, and I see everything that I want. Everything! You make me think about consequences to my actions. You make me think about the future! You make me think to myself, 'God, I hope he doesn't ask me to marry him because it's all I would ever want, and it would just ruin his life! You shouldn't have to fucking deal with my baggage your entire life. You shouldn't have to worry about trying to fucking convince the woman you love to do things. You shouldn't have to worry about whether or not she's going to abort your fucking baby that you probably want if for some reason her birth control fails!" She pointed to her arm to punctuate her sentence. And no. She really had no idea what she had just said. It had all just come out in a tsunami of word vomit.

[ Alex ] There was a long pause. Alex just needed to take a few seconds to parse all of this, everything that had just happened. At least it took some of the burgeoning anger out of him, but not all of it. There was too much in there for the shock to completely soothe it away. When he picked his jaw off the ground, he spoke again. Less of a growl, but no less tense. And he had stopped pacing, so that was something. "You know where I'd be without you, Vivian? Dead. I would've put a hunting rifle under my jaw like the hapless motherfucker I took care of today, and pulled the trigger. I would've done it the second Caleb told me he was fucking my ex-girlfriend. Tht would've been it. I would be dead. I would have told Death that he could go fuck himself, cashed in my favor. My favor would have been to die. Do you realize that's what I was saving that for all these years? An early death. Just in case it drove me fucking insane." Some people had bullets. Some people had razor blades. Alex had a favor with Death. "I wouldn't have been working in a bookstore. As for Nero? I went in looking for a job as a cook. I would have done that with or without you, assuming I didn't blow my brains out first. He offered me something better, so I took it. I didn't even know you had a Mafia background when I took that job. You told me that when I told you what I had accepted. Or did you conveniently forget that? A little sketchy on the timeline, aren't we?" Now he crossed to her, to stand in front of her. To stare her down with an expression that was nothing if not impassive. "You deal with my baggage. I deal with yours. That's what love is." And he kissed her. It was maybe not the nicest of kisses. It was rough and angry and passionate, because right now, he was as pissed off at her as he was in love with her.

[ Vivian ] Of course she was muddled on the timeline. Her argument really made no sense, but she really didn't have anything else to go on. It was like grasping straws, making that connection. She had the drug ties with Nero, which made him want to go there. ... Right? Wrong, but that's where she was going with that, no matter how incorrect it was. Her heart sank when he told her that he would be dead right now. The look on her face was one of abject horror and denial. No, no, no. The world needed Alex Kearny, and not just because he ferried the dead. But because he was the most amazing person she had ever met. Her breathing was as heavy as her heart while he explained, in no nice terms, about how he would have put a bullet to his brain. She had to close her eyes and shake her head to get rid of that image. No, no, no. She didn't want to envision that. It wasn't until he came up in front of her that she looked back up at him, and the reaction was a little gasp of air as she tried to choke back tears. She loved him. She fucking loved him so god damned much. He kissed her, and she didn't hesitate in returning that kiss. Her hands came up to his cheeks to grab his face, and not exactly gently. Her whole heavy heart was put into that kiss. One that would distract her from the fact (at least right now) that she had told Alex that she wanted to marry him someday. That she wanted to be his horrible wife. It would register. At some point. And likely freak her the fuck out.

[ Alex ] No, no. Nero ran the Clockwork Cat, which was a restaurant, and Alex could cook. His other option would have been Joe's, which would have put him working with Tucker, and there was only so long he could handle that before he had some sort of existential crisis about his sexuality of the sort that was best left behind in his teens. Besides, he could do so much more than bake a pastry, which Vivian had surely learned by now. He could pan-sear steaks and chops with the best of 'em, made pretty good Italian food for somebody who was of half-Irish, half-Jewish descent, and put together a kick ass omelet on mornings that he didn't have to hustle himself out the door for an early class. He had gone to Nero to cook. He had come out of it with a job beating the shit out of people because it would pay him substantially more. And yes, he knew exactly what she had said. That she wanted to marry him. And he wanted it too, he did. When he pulled from the kiss, he pressed his nose to hers and let out a heavy sigh. "I love you. And marrying you won't ruin my life. It'll just give us tax breaks, or whatever the perks are here. Okay? One step at a time. Let's move in first. See how that goes. Maybe then we can start thinking about that...that other stuff." Vivian Kearny. It wasn't a bad name, not to his ears. This is my wife, Vivian. Yeah. Not bad at all. "Let's move in, and let's see my parents for Thanksgiving. You can stuff yourself so full of turkey you can't move, and I'll get Dad's wheelbarrow from the backyard and roll you to the rental car. It'll be romantic as shit."

[ Vivian ] Oh, balls. Alex had caught it, even if Vivian hadnt. She was lost in the afterglow of the kiss (seeing as how it had calmed her down considerably), and she nuzzled her nose against his. Her Alex... Mmm... But then Vivian's mental brakes slammed down and her brain came to a squealing halt. Wait, woah woah. Marriage? "I didn't... I didn't say that.." she sputtered, trying to go back over her words and figure out if she had said it. Her lips moved as she lip synched the words that she had yelled. Her hand up near her face, her head going side to side just slightly with each syllable. And when she got the the part where she had sure as shit said that, her eyes went wide and she gasped. Vivian blanched the same color as she was when she was dead. "Oh no. .. Oh no, no, no. I didn't ... I ... I was mad, and I was... I was making a point. .. I said that I hoped you wouldn't, see? Right? That's... No... That's not what I meant..." Never mind the fact that she had said that was all she wanted someday. Nevermind that fact. Vivian had put her foot in her mouth, and she was back tracking to try and save some face. Forget about the wheelbarrow, Vivs had made a huge mistake.

[ Alex ] Oh no, Vivian. You had said that. You had definitely said that, and he smiled a tiny bit as he watched her backtrack. It was better than the anger he'd worn on his face previously, at least. "No, hey. It's okay." Alright, this time she could be forgiven for freaking the fuck out, he supposed. He smoothed his hands over her shoulders, down over her upper arms. "Hey. That's something we really don't need to think about right now, okay? Viv, we've gotta take this one step at a time. Take a deep breath. I'm not whisking you off to Toronto to elope. ...If I was going to elope with you, I sure as shit wouldn't do it there." Who elopes to Toronto when you have the entire world at your fingertips? And with the money he was earning from Nero, and her ludicrous trust fund or whatever, the two of them could afford to go anywhere. It almost made him grin for a minute, until he grounded himself and moved on with the current conversation. "Calm. Calm, okay? C'mon. Do you want to go grab some dessert at Joe's or something? Maybe we can get more of that apple pie. Maybe they sell whole ones."

Last Edit: Sept 27, 2015 21:50:52 GMT -8 by The Czarina

The Czarina
old hat

Posts: 66

writes for: Jade "Jaycee" Cooper (verdantclarity)
writes for: Vivian Kearny (spectreofiife)
writes for: Roman Kerrs (idealdanger)

I. Training Wheels Sept 27, 2015 21:20:39 GMT -8

Quote

Post by The Czarina on Sept 27, 2015 21:20:39 GMT -8

Cast: Alex Kearny ( a moribund usher ), Vivian di Marco ( spectre of iife )

Summary: Alex starts to worry when Vivian misses date night. When she shows up, she's soaked to the bone and acting a little weirder than normal. Eventually, she tells Alex about why she was gone and agrees to visit his parents for Canadian Thanksgiving.
TW: Mention of IV drug use

[ Vivian ] Oh, the last twenty-four hours were simply ... interesting. It had been quite a while since Alex and Vivian had gotten into a disagreement, and their screaming fight was really a first. It was a good thing, though, that he managed to defuse it with an angry kiss, but Vivian was still a little bit on edge today. Things that she had said without realizing it weren't exactly things that she had ever voiced out loud before, or even really admitted to herself. They stayed in her brain, bothering her in the edge of her consciousness. Every once in a while, it would poke its ugly head into her focus, and she'd lose herself in some sort of daydream. That was where her little scrawl had come from earlier. A daydream wherein she had been just absently writing while lost in her mind. When she realized what she'd written on the back of Nero's business card, she not only scratched it out, but ripped it into a dozen pieces. Ugh. She couldn't believe she'd even done that. That wasn't what she wanted! ... Was it? .. No. ... N-No, certainly not... She'd actually gone to class today and did her best to focus on the lectures because it gave her something to do. She had agreed to meet Alex later in the evening, but Vivian was late. ... Not just fashionably late, but a good hour, hour and a half late. Finally, though, she made it to his quad and knocked a few times.

[ Alex ] An hour and a fucking half? Really, Vivian? Alex had surely texted her a couple of times, and then figured she wasn't going to show up. So he had laid out on the couch and grumped to himself, storing her half of the dinner he'd made in the fridge and making himself comfortable as he could with the TV and a beer. Was she running away again? After a fight? Was this going to become common? Was she going to hide under somebody else's bed for eleven days? It was when he finally heard the knock on the door that he got himself up and hauled himself over to see who was waiting for him there. "Yeah?" The door was opened without bothering to peep through the peephole. "...Vivian?" It was clear when he saw her that he wasn't sure what to think. On the one hand, Alex was happy to see her, happy that she hadn't had something terrible happen to her or something. Happy that she hadn't been attacked or...who the fuck knew what? On the other hand... "I texted you," he said lamely. "I made you dinner and I texted you. I did fettucini alfredo. I made the sauce from scratch." Because that was all he could fucking think to say when she just rolled in beyond fashionably late. And then he stepped aside to let her come in. "I put your portion in the fridge, I can heat it back up for you." Because he was expecting an explanation. At least this sort of blunt statement of facts was followed up with a soft, "I was worried about you, Viv."

[ Vivian ] When he opened the door, she looked up and gave him a little bit of a smile. It was small? But it was genuine, at least. She knew that she had sort of fucked up here. She hadn't returned his texts. She hadn't even opened them, but she did read them in the previews. Even though he'd put it up, she could still smell the dinner that he'd cooked, and she was a little disappointed in herself that she had missed it. Well, dinner and Alex, of course. "I'm sorry," she said, casting her glance down so that she could sort of toe at the ground a bit. "I wasn't really paying attention to the time, I guess? I was doing a lot of thinking." She stepped inside, pausing in the doorway so that she could push herself up on tippy toes in order to press a kiss to his cheek. She frowned a slight bit when he let her know that he was worried. "I didn't mean to make you worry. I'm sorry." As she stepped inside, she took off her damp jacket, her own dark hair damp with the outside misting. It wasn't raining, but it wasn't exactly dry either. "It smells good?" she said, giving him a wary little smile. Hopefully he wouldn't be too mad at her?

[ Alex ] Going cold would have been the easier response here, for Alex. He could have just shut himself right the fuck down. He could have let Vivian in and then been kinda cool and frosty for the rest of the night. Instead, he reached out, brushed her damp hair behind her ear, and smiled, a smile just as small as her own. The kiss to his cheek was returned with a kiss to hers, his nose brushing against her ear. "You've been out," he observed softly. "Do you want me to heat the food back up?" In all of the time that he'd been with her, Vivian hadn't missed a date, not like that. Oh sure, she'd been not ready yet. And there was that infamous eleven days. But she had never been an hour and a half late without responding to his texts. A hand gestured to the couch, motioning for her to sit down, and he made a detour there himself to grab his beer from the coffee table. "What's been on your mind, Vivian?" He wasn't waiting for an answer about her food, though. He was heading to the kitchen to nuke her dinner. The good news was that it reheated well, especially considering he'd kept the noodles and the sauce separate. The bad news was that Alex felt like he was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

[ Vivian ] She smiled softly when he kissed her cheek, and the nuzzle to her ear really did make her smile more genuine and bright, even if it was a little bit shy and it tickled. She shrugged her shoulder upwards to fend off the tickles gently without pushing him away. It was just a reflex to the shivers that traveled down her neck and beneath her dampened blouse. He had invited her to have a seat, but she didn't. Instead, she followed him to the kitchen. She let him work on getting the stuff on a plate and reheated, and once it was in the microwave, she slipped her arms around his middle and hugged onto him. Not tightly, mind you. Just sort of snuggling against him, her ear against his chest. She listened to his heart for a few long moments, not saying anything. Silent. For probably longer than was remotely comfortable for him. Finally, she turned her head up so that her chin was on his chest and she could look up at him. He wanted to know what she'd been thinking about? "I'll go with you," she said. Without explanation, but hopefully he knew what she was talking about.

[ Alex ] Snuggles? Huh. That was...that was interesting. It wasn't that Vivian wasn't a handsy kinda girl, she was. But this sort of clingy wasn't her usual M.O. She was more likely to wait til they were settled, then slide into his lap for some tonsil hockey or something. And when she put her arms around him like that and he felt that she was damp and chilly, Alex caved utterly and any sort of annoyance was gone. "You're cold. C'mere." He wrapped her up tight in one arm, passed her the rest of his beer with the other. "You're fucking soaked, too. You wanna get out of your wet clothes, grab one of my shirts or something?" His hand splayed on her back, and he leaned down to press his forehead lightly against hers. "You scared me. You really did. I thought...I don't know. I thought either you'd gotten hurt, or somebody had possessed you and you'd wandered off under their influence." Or that you'd run. I was afraid you'd run again. The microwave beeped, and he pulled away enough to open it up. The container with the sauce was dumped into the container with the pasta, and he was in the process of tossing it with a fork when she spoke up. "Yeah?" That smile grew a little brighter, though it was too soft, too sweet, too adoring to be the sunrise. "I'm glad. What made you change your mind?" The fork was twirled in the sauced-up pasta, and he offered that fork out to her. "Taste it first. I kept it kinda bland so you could season it the way you'd like."

[ Vivian ] Snuggles were always awesome. But he was right. It wasn't often that Vivian took on a bit of a meek streak. She was definitely more, ah... take-charge than she was delicate hugs. She sort of melted against his chest when he hugged onto her, and she gave a little nod when he asked if she wanted to change into one of his shirts. "I'm sorry," she said again. "I guess I ... I guess the time got lost on me," she repeated, because what more could she say? She'd gone off to think and it had ended up with her getting lost in her thoughts outside, the sun setting on her, and the mist slowly drenching her and cooling her to the bone. It was a gradual chill, like the backwards boiling of a frog. She hadn't noticed how cold she had gotten, and there was a little bit of chillflesh rising upon her arms, under the damp, long sleeves she wore. If Alex was paying enough attention, he'd see the teenies, tiniest little tremble in her jaw to indicate that she was cold. Not quite chattering teeth, but her muscles were definitely reacting in a way that they hadn't in decades. After all, it was summer when she'd been brought back. When he asked her what had changed her mind, she gave a light shrug. "I don't know. I just... I thought a lot." She wasn't even sure how she'd come to the conclusion, but she'd dwelled on it quite a bit. She was going to take that chance. She opened her mouth to accept the noodles, closed her lips around the fork, and pulled the food off the tines. ... Mmm. She smiled a bit while she chewed and gave him some nods in the positive. It was good.

[ Alex ] Blues peered at her, watched her as she shivered and her jaw tensed, and then as she munched on the offered food. "Good. Alright, c'mon." The food was foisted upon her. It was in a tupperware bowl, so it would be easy for her to walk and carry it at the same time, as he lead her into his room. First came the towel. A fresh one, one that he chucked at her from the linen closet in the hall and draped over her head with a snicker. "Hey look, you're a ghost again! Too spoopy for me." The towel was green. She was a camo ghost, maybe. Once they were in his room and she was free to set down her food and everything, he rifled through his dresser to pull out a suitably large shirt for her. Dark gray, faded, there had been a logo on the chest once but who the hell knew what it had been? It had been washed into the sort of softness that you only got from nine thousand washings. "This work for you? You can stay the night if you want, we'll dry your stuff off in the bathroom." And this was why they needed to move in together, wasn't it? He stepped closer, seized up the towel, and began to dry off her hair for her, though he knew she was perfectly capable of doing it herself. "I've been looking at airfare. We can afford first class. Well, I mean, I can. This is my treat, okay?" Kind of a weird treat considering she hadn't wanted to do it in the first place.

[ Vivian ] She took the tupperware in both hands and cradled it in her palms as she walked. Halfway to his room, she shifted the weight of the bowl so that she could grasp it in one hand and start to shovel some of the noodles in her mouth as she walked. She didn't realize how hungry she was until she'd taken the first bite and her stomach had growled. She followed him inside, snickering when she ended up with a towel on her head. She chewed and swallowed the noodles. "Ghosts don't get cold," she said with a bit of a playful huff. Hey, at least she was trying to be playful? Vivian was still a little off, but she was trying. She was trying, damnit. She nodded at his choice of t-shirts; it honestly didn't matter to her which shirt of his she was wearing. As long as it smelled like him, she was golden. She sat down, still in her wet clothes -- sorry Alex's bed spread -- and let him dry her hair for her. ... That was nice, you know? Being taken care of? She never really had that sort of intimacy before. Even with her parents. Do you really think the di Marcos raised their own children? Pah. Maybe if they had, they would have known a lot sooner that their daughter was hooked onto illicit drugs. She closed her eyes, luxuriating in the feeling of him drying her hair. She sort of zoned out for a moment, then realized that she was still starving. Another forkful of noodles were plopped into her mouth, and she chewed and swallowed before replying. "You don't have to pay for me, you know."

[ Alex ] "Huh?" He gave a blink of those blues, chucked the towel onto the floor, and started to unbutton her blouse for her. It was a slow affair, and he slid his palm over her skin very couple of buttons to try to warm her up a little more. "I want to treat you, okay? I don't care that I don't have to pay for you, shut up and let me do it." The buttons were finished, and he guided her a little to get the blouse off her form. "Jesus, Vivian. You're not a spectre anymore. You're gonna get sick if you do this kind of stuff. And I don't know if you remember what the common cold feels like, but we still have no cure and it's awful." The towel was dragged over her back and shoulders now, collecting any of the moisture that was still left on her. He retreated back towards his dresser for the moment, not to give her space or preserve her modesty--let's be real, he'd probably get her naked later anyway--but to give her some room to change and to check on Frank. The betta was doing his betta thing, and Alex dumped a couple flakes into his bowl. "It'll be nice to have a dog," he said. "Let's get something big and stupid that loves everything."

[ Vivian ] There you go, Alex. That made Vivian shut up and accept it. He didn't argue with her about why he should pay instead of her. Instead, he just told her to suck it up and accept it. The corners of her mouth twitched upward in the hint of a smirk. "Okay," she agreed. But her smirk fell slightly when he started to undress her and he remarked on how she was cold. "I didn't realize it was getting that cold," she admitted. As the sun had set, it just grew colder and colder at such a slow rate that she had acclimated and didn't notice. Now that her shirt was off her, she took control of the towel and curled it around herself to warm herself up. With a shiver, she reached behind her to unhook her bra, drop it on the floor and pull the t-shirt over her head. Her shoes were toed off, and she shimmied out of her jeans. Thankfully, the denim was thick enough to absorb the moisture so that her undies weren't soaked like the rest of her clothing. That left Vivian in his old shirt and a pair of low, low, low riding bandeau briefs -- red -- hanging off her hip bones. She wrinkled her nose at his suggestion of a big, stupid dog. "A frou frou dog for you that you can carry around in a purse."

[ Alex ] Alright, alright, so Alex checked Vivian out when she dropped her pants. Dat ass. Damn, she was hot, especially now that she wasn't quite heroin-thin anymore. Or at least she shouldn't have been, with Alex fucking feeding her. "You gotta pay attention to what your body tells you. I know it's not easy to re-learn. Let me know if you start feeling sick, I'll get you taken care of." Hm. That made him frown. He was leery about giving her any sort of sedative medication, like NyQuil. But he could give her other stuff, and he could make her some soup or something. "What the hell, Viv?" At least he was laughing. "I don't have a purse to put a frou-frou dog in. I don't want one of those little shivery things that looks like it's going to have a seizure at a a moment's notice. My mom has one of those." He brought his hands together to indicate something that was small. "It's a long-haired chihuahua. And it's not a bad dog, but it's so little that I worry about stepping on it every time I visit." He glanced at her, a tiny smile on his lips. "You know, Mom won't be at Thanksgiving with Dad and Alison. You wanna see her while we're there, maybe the day after? You can pet her purse dog. Its name is Peaches." Presumably, Peaches had a gender, but Alex wasn't about to pick it up to look.

[ Vivian ] No, she wasn't quite as heroin thin. She was still pretty thin, but at least she wasn't just skin and bones. She had a butt? That much was pretty awesome. She'd likely always be on the skinny side, but at least she didn't look like death warmed over anymore. "I'll try to pay attention," she said. He'd take care of her while she was sick? That was nice! Also he didn't need to be worried about NyQuil or sleep aids or anything of the like. They activated different receptors than opoids. She could take NyQuil without an issue. She certainly wasn't going to say no to some chicken soup, though. Alex was a really good cook, and she'd eat pretty much anything that he gave her. She sat back down on his bed, though this time she scooted up towards his head board so that she'd have something to lean against while she ate her leftover dinner. It was really good, but it was probably better fresh, and she was a little upset with herself for missing the date. "Oh dear god," she said in regards to the shakey dog. To be honest, Vivian looked like that dog not but three minutes ago, but let's ignore that fact. "If I'm going to do this, I might as well go whole hog? We... We can meet your mom, yeah.. I just..." She stopped and thought about how she wanted to phrase her question. "I mean... You're sure you want to take me home to your mom?"

[ Alex ] A single digit was put up. "One sec." And Alex strolled out of the bedroom for a few minutes. When he came back, it was with three items. Two cold beers suspended from his fingers by their tops, and his laptop tucked under his arm. The laptop was set down on the bed, one beer was cracked open and passed to Vivian, and the other was opened for himself. The bottles were clinked gently before he took a sip. "Yeah, I'm sure I want to take you home to my mom. You don't know my mom, she is the least judgey, most forgiving human being on planet Earth. She's kinda..." How did he describe his mother? "Mackie. She's kinda like Mackie, but adult and with pants." Sweet and scattered and doting and loving. "She'll love you, she really will. And I think you'll like her." The laptop was grabbed up, and he opened it and pulled up Chrome. "C'mere." Scoot scoot. He was right up against her on the bed now, hip to hip. "So Thanksgiving is October 12. I was thinking if we left really early on the 11th, we'll roll in to Toronto pretty fucking late, but that's okay. We can sleep on the plane. We can either get a hotel or stay with my Dad, but to be frank...I'd rather get a hotel."

[ Vivian ] Oh, he thought he was going to be able to just sit next to her, huh? She took the beer and pulled a swig off of it to wash the last of her noodles down. The tupperware was set on the nightstand, and Vivian moved herself into a better place -- between his legs, nestled right up against him, and leaning back against his chest. She snickered thinking about his mother as Mackie with pants because honestly, she couldn't picture the wacky blonde without some bizarre leggings that literally didn't match anything in the world. Okay, so his mom would like her, huh? She wasn't going to argue with him, even if she had her doubts. That fight didn't ever go anywhere constructive, and she was all fought out. She took another pull from the beer before settling it down between her thighs so she could look at the computer screen. "Whatever you think is best. I've only made the flight over once, but I wasn't exactly ... tangible then." She was a spectre then, and she just sort of settled herself as an orb in a piece of luggage. This time, it was going to be something else entirely.

[ Alex ] "Oh man. Your first flight as a human again. We're gonna spoil you. We'll get drinks and shit." Despite his best intention of laptopping and planning right now, he was clearly not going to get it done. Not with Vivian in his lap, thanks. So instead of further clicking and investigating, he curled his arm around her and drew her up nice and close, not that she wasn't already particularly close. "And we'll get a swanky hotel. I can afford that now. We'll stay somewhere super nice and swanky. We can stay an extra night, and we'll go see Toronto together, just you and me, okay? There's this fucking awesome Asian fusion place, you'd love it. They serve fancy crap on tiny plates and it's expensive as hell and we can get all fancied up and go out on the town. And then..." Hey, at least he wasn't talking about his mother and his father again. "And then we can go back to the hotel and order room service and get naked on sheets that somebody else gets paid to clean." It was a glimpse of a life that Alex didn't usually get to live. It was a glimpse of a life that he knew Vivian was accustomed to, and for just a few days in October, he'd be able to provide. He couldn't do it regularly, but every once in a while, as a treat? Sure. "I want to spoil you, Vivian. Even if I can't always do it. I want to spoil you for at least a little bit."

Last Edit: Sept 27, 2015 21:50:31 GMT -8 by The Czarina

The Czarina
old hat

Posts: 66

writes for: Jade "Jaycee" Cooper (verdantclarity)
writes for: Vivian Kearny (spectreofiife)
writes for: Roman Kerrs (idealdanger)

I. Training Wheels Nov 7, 2015 18:07:56 GMT -8

Quote

Post by The Czarina on Nov 7, 2015 18:07:56 GMT -8

Cast: Alex Kearny (a moribund usher), Vivian di Marco (spectre of iife)

Summary: After Vivian agrees to move in with Alex, they manage to find a fancy flat in the city. Alex does the heavy lifting while Vivian unpacks. When she leaves to go pick up dinner, Alex worries that she's left for good.
TW: None

[ Alex ] The problem with moving was that it was exhausting. Alex had spent most of the day either directing movers or moving things himself. Hope you enjoyed that, Vivian, the psychopomp pushing furniture around in a black t-shirt and jeans. Get in on dat arm porn now. But now that it was evening and the movers had left and the vast majority of stuff had been put into some sort of a position or another that was approximate to where it belonged, Alex had sprawled out on the hardwood floor in the living room. Very much sprawled. Spread-eagle, arms and legs out like he was halfway to making a snow angel. Blues stared blankly up at the rotating cieling fan. The two-bedroom, one-bath flat overlooked the Thames and was within easy walking distance of Shepherd, and it was spacious. And it was kinda steep in terms of cost, but they could afford it. They both could. The curtains were open, letting in the last of the evening's sunlight, and it pooled gold and warm in a diagonal that bisected Alex's stomach neatly. "Fuck this shit." It was the first thing he'd uttered since he had decided he was done shoving crap around for a day. "We're done. We're fucking done. I'll put sheets on the bed so we can sleep, and towels out so we can bathe, but other than that? Done." There was no couch. All their shit was still boxed. Send help.

[ Vivian ] Vivian wasn't the best mover. ... Not at all. Not only was her ass spoiled, but she was super skinny and lacked the amazing arms that Alex did. So instead of moving shit all day? She stayed in the new flat and unpacked the things that Alex and the movers sort of just deposited in the living room entryway. She'd pushed and shuffled boxes and dragged furniture around to place it and unpack it. She didn't know where other things needed to be placed, so she just kinda... Left it alone, shoved into the corner of the room. She did, however, unpack the kitchen and the bathroom the best she could. At least they would have plates to eat and toilet paper? When he flopped down on the floor, she came into the room and grinned down at his form there in the last bits of the sunlight. She stepped over him with one leg so that she was straddling him and then lowered herself down so that she was daintily sitting on his tum. "You be done. You did a lot. But heeeeyyy, guess what," she said with a beam. "There's already sheets on the bed and towels in the bathroom. ANNDDD, there are forks in the kitchen. Like a boss," she said, flexing one of her arms with its really pitiful little muscle.

[ Alex ] You know, somebody had to unpack the boxed stuff. Otherwise Alex would have to do it all himself, and he doubted that she would leave him to do all of it. The necessities were unpacked, anyway. With Vivian parked on his stomach in their apartment--their apartment!--he settled his hands on her hips and gave her a gentle squeeze. "Forks? Good, because we're ordering out for dinner. Thai or pizza? And you got the sheets on?" Oh, good. Good good good. He gently nudged Vivian downwards, so that she was within reach of a gentle lift of his head to kiss her. "Thank god. We can eat and pass out." He rolled with her, so that they were laying side by side on the cool, smooth wood. "We're gonna need a rug in here," he murmured. "A rug, and that couch from Mom. It shipped out today. Until then I guess we're just sitting on the fucking floor when we want to watch TV or something." At least Alex had thought to purchase some things. A new bed, king-sized, despite the fact that they really didn't need anything that big. Sheets to go with it. Frank had been set on the coffee table that was currently parked up against one corner of the room, but that would be moved into the center of it eventually.

[ Vivian ] Eheee. She leaned over reaaaaally slowly so that she could press a kiss to his lips and let it linger for a short while. Mm, Alex kisses. She gently ran her hands over his arms affectionately -- and also a little selfishly because gawddamn those arms -- until he rolled her off to the side so that they could face one another. She kept one leg hooked about his hip, though, so that he would stay close to her. "Ooorrrr," she started, thinking that it wasn't exactly her fantasy to sit on the floor to watch tv, no thanks. "We could just move the tv into the bedroom and watch in there." And roll around on the bed because a king size was huge, and Vivian was pretty sure she was going to end up getting actually lost in the sheets. She reached up to gently brush some slightly damp (sweaty, ew) hair out of his face. We can eat whatever you want to eat. Which do you feel like more? Thai? Or pizza? Or I might be able to muster up some energy to go and pick up some curry for us. You're the one doing the heavy lifting, not me. I just put forks in drawers," she said with a smirk.

[ Alex ] "Ugh, move the TV?" Alex made a low, whining sound that could have come from Tina Belcher's mouth and dropped his forehead against hers. "I don't wanna. Let's just bring the laptop into the bedroom and we can watch that." Because you could bet your sweet ass that he had made plans for the internet to be set up on the same day. They needed access to it for school, and they needed it for other things. Like Netflix and streaming porn. Oh come on, Vivian, don't think Alex isn't watching porn around here. He's absolutely watching it and you're welcome to watch it with him. "You'd go get us curry?" Oooh, that sounded good. "The kind I like?" The kind that he liked, for the record, was yellow curry with chicken and shrimp and a boatload of veggies to try to convince himself that it was somehow healthy. "I could grab a shower while you're out, get the laptop ready in the bedroom...our bedroom." Aw, now that made him grin, and he even offered her a gentle poke in the chest. "Our bedroom. Hey, when do you want to christen this place? We gotta break it in, Viv." Oh yeah, Kearny, like you're in any state to break it in right now.

[ Vivian ] When he made that whining noise, she snickered a little bit. "Okay, okay," she relented. No, they didn't need to be moving the tv, but at least he had the good idea with the laptop. "There is enough room on the bed for the both of us and the laptop," she commented. The more that he called it 'our bedroom' the more little bits of anxiety grew within Vivian's chest, but she was damn well determined not to be scared the fuck away right now. It was a good thing. It was a good thing. He was really trusting her to come back with curry, wasn't he? He thought highly of her! She would come back, though. And not four hours later. "The kind you like," she agreed, though she didn't exactly make a move to pull away from him. Now. When he brought up the prospect of breaking in the apartment, she really didn't follow him exactly. He... He wanted to plan peeing? She blinked long and slow, then spoke up. "Too late. I already peed," she said. That's what he meant, right? Right?

[ Alex ] "Mmmhm. Better get cracking, Viv, I'm fucking starving. I've been moving furniture allll day." At least it was September, and it was cool out and not a thousand degrees. That didn't make him any less sweaty, though. A hand slid down, and he gave her ass a little squeeze, just for the hell of it. Which lead to some chuckling at her analysis of christening the apartment. "No, no, I meant fucking in it. Though fine, I'll give you the first pee award, but I'm calling dibs on first shower." Though he seemed reluctant to do so, Alex eventually rolled away from her, laying flat on his back again. Well. Flat for a moment. Then he put his hands behind his head, palms down, and actually pushed himself up in a surprisingly graceful backbend until something cracked in his spine. With a contented sigh, he settled back down again. "Mmm. I'm gonna give you a little extra cash. Pick us up some beers too, okay?" And yes, for some reason, he trusted her. Permanently, abjectly, adoringly, Alex trusted her with his whole heart and his whole mind. He expected nothing more than Vivian being gone for a half hour or so, getting the curry and the beer and coming home. Then they could hang out in the bedroom, eat, and watch Netflix on the laptop. Which he was going to have to get hooked up to the new wi-fi network. What a pain in the ass.

[ Vivian ] OKAY now that Riley was off of Kat and she was caught up, she could post! "I knooowww, poor thiiiinnnggg," she said in the same sort of whiney voice that he'd been using to talk about how starving he was because he was moving allllddaaaaayyyyyyyyy. She snickered when he gave her ass a little squeeze, and it made her sort of move closer to him for a moment, at least until he rolled away. ... And did a bridge? She watched him curiously, quirking a brow. "Who knew you were a gymnast?" she said a little sarcastically. Not mean spirited, though? Just poking fun. She did wince, however, when she heard the little pop in his spine. It made her shudder; ahh, popping bones were the worst. "Okay, you can have first shower, then." She leaned in to steal another few kisses from his lips while her hand meandered into his jeans -- settle down, Alex -- so she could snag his wallet for the curry cash. After a few more playful kisses, she grinned. "Go shower, Stinky. I'll be back in a bit." Promise.

[ Alex ] "Cameron taught me to do that," he said about the backbend. "Helps me pop my spine back into alignment. I probably fucked it up at some point doing something or another." Yeah, that was spoken with a whole lot of concern. With those additional kisses stolen, with the grin on his face that suggested that he was looking forward to a little groping and instead was maybe a tiny bit disappointed that all she did was snatch his wallet, he finally hoisted himself up off the floor. A hand was extended downwards to help Vivian do the same. Once they were both up, he offered her one more kiss. "Alright. I love you, Viv. See you soon. Don't forget the keys!" And he watched her go. Not because he thought she wouldn't come back. Because he really enjoyed watching dat ass sashay out the door. God, she was hot. And he was going to fuck her stupid. Maybe not tonight, though. Tomorrow he'd fuck her stupid. As soon as Vivian had shut the door behind him, he was pulling off his shirt and half-hopping his way out of his jeans, so he could head for the shower. It took a few moments for him to get the hot and cold water knobs working at the right temperature, as it always did with an unfamiliar shower, but once he had it, he was in for a nice, long shower. ...Only to find that he had not unpacked his own shower stuff. Well, Vivian, your boyfriend's gonna smell like you tonight.

[ Vivian ] No groping for you, Alex. Sorry. Just petty theft. "I love you, too, Alex. More than anything." She gave him what amounted to a shy little smile before heading towards the door. At his prompting, she snagged the keys from atop one of the boxes, held them up high so that he could see that she had them, and then headed out the door with one little look back -- complete with a little wink from the raven-haired beauty. With the door locked behind her, she headed towards the street, pulling her phone out so that she could order the curry on her way. That way, it would be ready by the time she got there, and she wouldn't have to wait around. There were a few people outside and abouts the streets, and the skinny little thing got a few cat calls as she walked. She didn't pay them any attention, though. It didn't take her too long to get the curry, as it was about a ten minute walk there, a few minutes to pick it up, and ten minutes back with a short stop at the corner drug store to pick up some beer. Bag of food in one hand and a six pack of bottles in the other, Vivs made her way back. If he had any doubts, they'd be squashed when he inevitably heard her struggling with the key in the door. Finally, she won her fight with the key and managed to open the door. "Honneeeyyyy, I'm hooooommmeee!" she called out. Where is her girly smelling boyfriend?

[ Alex ] You know, he'd started to worry. He really had. What if she didn't come back? What if she just fucked right off? What if she wandered around in the cold again and he had to take care of her tomorrow instead of, you know, unpacking? But his worries were mercifully unfounded. Because soon enough, there was the sound of a door opening. And Alex was waiting. It had taken a lot, a whole lot, to get these in without her noticing, considering she was prowling around the apartment and taking care of the unboxing and whatnot. But he had managed to sneak them off in the closet of the spare room. It wasn't the best environment for them, no. But by the time she had finished fucking with the keys, there was Alex, standing in the doorway and admittedly smelling like her shampoo and conditioner. He was still damp from the shower, and just wearing a pair of pajama pants, and clutching on to a big bouquet of pure white flowers. Lillies, roses, daisies, they were all there, and he held them out to her. "Great. I'll trade you. I'll take the food, you take these flowers I've been hiding from you all fucking day." Smirk. The original plan had been to bust them out in the morning and let her wake up to them on her side of the bed, but the curry trip had presented such a perfect opportunity.

Last Edit: Nov 7, 2015 18:42:56 GMT -8 by The Czarina

The Czarina
old hat

Posts: 66

writes for: Jade "Jaycee" Cooper (verdantclarity)
writes for: Vivian Kearny (spectreofiife)
writes for: Roman Kerrs (idealdanger)

I. Training Wheels Nov 7, 2015 18:27:50 GMT -8

Quote

Post by The Czarina on Nov 7, 2015 18:27:50 GMT -8

Cast: Alex Kearny ( a moribund usher ), Vivian di Marco ( spectre of iife )

Summary: Spoiled Vivian concocts a story about not being able to do the hard labor of using the waffle maker because she's pregnant with Alex's baby. She could hardly keep a straight face while saying such, so Alex makes her go pee on a pregnancy test. Vivian finds out the hard way that the methadone she takes for her recovering heroin addiction can cause a false positive on a pregnancy test. Alex has feelings.

TW: false pregnancy, mention of abortion, the waffle of oppression

[ Vivian ] Okay! The day? Sunday. The time? Morning. ... Well, more like the brunchy time of morning. A little bit after eleven, and Vivian was awake. Alex, not so much. She hadn't been awake for long, though, and she had just sort of been stretching and playing around on her phone in bed... When there was a little grumble in her tummy. It was audible for sure, and Vivian lifted the blanket to peek down at her own t-shirt clad (his t-shirt, of course) stomach. She checked the time on her phone and knew that she was going to start to get hangry if she didn't eat soon. And what did she want? "Babe..." she whispered, giving him a gentle nudge. "....Babe.... Are you awake?" It was a quiet voice, and she didn't get much of a response. So? She took inspiration from a cat. She kicked her bare foot out into his calf rather sharply. Not enough to seriously hurt him? But enough to wake him up. And when he did? She just smiled sweetly at him like she didn't just kick him. "Oh heeeyy. Good morning, sleepy head! You awake?" Innocent beam.

[ Alex ] Alex had been out late, which wasn't uncommon for him. If he wasn't going out to do the psychopomp thing, he was going out to do the organized crime thing. One way or another, it was actually rarer for him to be in bed and done for the night before midnight or one in the morning. But at least Vivian could know that he would never cheat on him, that he was always out doing whatever it was that he needed to do for the money. So at eleven in the morning, he was still curled up in bed and sound asleep, naked save for the blankets that had been draped over him haphazardly. His legs and feet were still sticking out, and he was laying on his stomach, as though he had come home, undressed, flopped down, and just called it quits. The whisper and the nudge got nothing from him, but the kick in the calf had his eyes shooting open. One of the downsides of the organized crime thing was that he had developed a bit of comparatively healthy paranoia, and his first response wasn't to mutter or swat. It was to move for his bedside table, where he kept the brass knuckles. Halfway to putting the first one on his left hand, he realized that there was no danger, and he sighed in relief and put the knuckles back down. "Well, I'm awake now..." Arms curled about the once-spectre, and he pressed a few quick kisses to her cheek. "What's up?"

[ Vivian ] At least he didn't have a gun, lest Vivian already be shot in the head. She smirked at his automatic reaction to get the knuckles on. "What? Were you going to get some money out of me?" She grinned and curled up against him, facing him, and brushed some of the hair out of his face. "Did you have a bad dream?" She totally didn't kick him... Ahem. Despite any dragon breath there might have been, she stole a few kisses from his mouth in response to the kisses to her cheek. She hooked her leg over his hip, and pressed herself against him. Now, he might have been naked, but Vivs was wearing a pair of panties. ... She just figured that she could get what she wanted if she put her thing against his thing. "You know what would be awesome?" she asked, playing with the hair at the back of his neck with her fingernails. "You should make waffles... I'm totally craving waffles... And I'm starving... Don't waffles sound good? And you're such a good cook..." The last sentence was half murmured half purred against his mouth. ... Vivian was laying it on thick.

[ Alex ] "Bad dream? No, I didn't...I don't think I dreamed at all. I was exhausted last night, when I came home..." Alex was starting to think that he was going to have to choose between his education and Nero's organized crime gig. Doing both of them at once was proving exhausting. Maybe he just needed to cut down on the number of classes he was taking. Or something. Because he wanted to have time to spend with Vivian, too. Time like right now, with his girlfriend pressing up to her with nothing but a pair of panties between them. Oh, hello. And the fingers playing with the hair on the back of his neck? That never failed to elicit a little shiver sliding down his spine. "Waffles?" Yeah, like Alex was focusing on waffles right now. He stole a kiss from her, a deep and slow one, and then pulled back with a tug of teeth at her lower lip. "Mmm. Alright, alright. I'll make waffles. You want to come keep me company, maybe help me out? Give me something pretty to look at?" He slid off the bed, stretched, and went digging around in the closet for a pair of pajama pants. He couldn't just make waffles with his junk hanging out. While he got himself as dressed as he was about to get on a lazy Sunday morning, he eyed Vivian, and offered a wink in her direction. "Damn, you look good." Yep. First thing in the morning and not wearing a lot of clothes? Totally. If she hadn't been so gung ho about the waffles, he would have probably gone for some easy, lazy sex.

[ Vivian ] Waffles first, then sex. Vivian was starving, and if she didn't eat soon, she was going to bite somebody's face off. Considering he was the only thing around here with a face (other than Frank), it was Alex's face that was in danger like she was Florida Man on bath salts. She returned his kiss and grinned against his lips when he pulled away. Aw, yes. Waffles ya'll. Did she want to help? ... No. But she would keep him company and be his waffle cheerleader with no pants. She swung her bare legs over the edge of the bed and shot him a wink. "Not so bad yourself, Sexy," she said. Vivs followed him out of the room and started to usher him towards the kitchen a little faster so that he could hurry up and make delicious waffles. "Waffles, waffles, waffles, waffles..." she said, tickling and lightly pinching his sides from behind to get him to put some pep in it. "Are blueberry waffles a thing? Is that a thing that can happen? Or does that not work... I want blueberry waffles... Let's make that a thing..."

[ Alex ] Hey, give Alex a break here. He was still waking up! Vivian had been awake longer than he had, and the drummer's walk was slow and shuffling and sleepy, rubbing at his eyes with the heels of his hands. "Mmm, alright, alright. I could do blueberry waffles if I had blueberries, but I don't..." Turning, he set his hands on her waist and plucked her up, setting her onto the counter beside the sink, away from the stove. "Alright, you hang out there and I'll see what we can put in the pancakes instead. I think we've got some chocolate chips." There were some in the pantry, he found, and he tossed them her way. "Think fast. And don't eat them all before I get the batter mixed up." What followed was several minutes worth of pulling down ingredients and utensils. A mixing bowl on the counter. A big skillet on the stove. And while he got to stirring and mixing, he couldn't resist the little smirk that he threw her way. "Hey. C'mere. I could teach you to make waffles. I mean, I know you won't make them nearly as well as I do, but then you'll at least know how. What if you want them when I'm out working or something?" Measure and stir and mix, and he paused to playfully brush a little flour over Vivian's nose.

[ Vivian ] Yeah, she was a lot more awake than he was, but she figured this would help move things along a little. "Booo..." she pouted when he let her know that he was out of blueberries. "I'm gonna need some blueberry waffles soon or I'm gonna explode," she whined. She beamed when he put her up on the counter, and she gently swung her legs back and forth, letting bare feet dangle. She almost dropped the bag of chocolate chips, but she saved them at the last minute and immediately shoved a hand in the bag to get a few of them. She furrowed her brow and made a grumpy face when he told her not to eat them all before he got the chance to put them in the waffles. "Killjoy," she said, trying to keep the grumpy face, but not being able to keep the smirk off her face. She took about five of the chips and dropped them in her mouth. ... Pausing everything when he asked her to come over to teach her how to cook. ... Uhh... "...No, I'm good. You're so much better at it than I am, so I'll just stay right here. You're the Top Chef here," she said, offering him a bright, sweet smile.

[ Alex ] "Killjoy my ass, I'm waking up before noon on a Sunday to make you waffles. How the fuck am I a killjoy?" He smeared another bit of flower on her nose, then snagged the bag of chocolate chips from her. The amount of chips left in the bag was eyed, and then he shrugged and just dumped the entire three-quarters of the bag that remained into the bowl. Stir stir. "What, cooking? Nah, everyone can cook. You just need to give it a solid try. C'mere." Mun remembered that they were making waffles and not pancakes, so he had obviously taken out the waffle iron instead of the skillet. Obiously. "Watch." Batter was dropped into the iron, which had been heating up while he mixed. Down went the top of the iron, press, and after a moment, he opened it up and dropped the waffle onto the serving plate. "See? Easy as can be. Batter, close, wait, open, waffle." Alex paused in his cooking to head back over to Vivian, and he pressed his lips to hers a few more times. Once, twice, thrice. "C'mon. Try it with me?" Those blues flickered up to her own eyes, and the playful grin was right there on his face, sweet and innocent.

[ Vivian ] Yes, it was waffles, not pancakes, but mun knew what she was talking about. She brought up her hand to wipe away the flour that he'd put on her nose, and she gave it a little wiggle to get the tickling feeling off. The kisses were returned, but if he thought that she was going to help cook, he had another think coming. Di Marco women didn't cook. They had people cook for them. "I'm sure it is... But you're doing just fine without me," she said giving him a few pats on his head. "I'm good just sitting here looking pretty and being your cheerleader. Yaaay!" The last exclamation was said with both hands held up in the air and waved like they were pompoms. She dropped her arms and let her hands fall into her lap. "No cooking for me, thank you. That's not my job." Nothing was Vivian's job, to be honest.

[ Alex ] "Well, yeah. I've been cooking just fine for years. You know, after my parents divorced, my mom started teaching me to cook because she wanted company in the kitchen. We'd put on music on weekend mornings, like this one, or maybe TV, and she'd make the batter for the waffles and I'd close the iron. Or I'd whisk the eggs and she'd scramble them. I was a kid, so nothing too tricky." Alex had briefly gotten lost in the memory, and he smiled as he made another waffle. That was when something that she had said connected in his mind. "It's not your job?" he asked, blinking at her. "...Is it my job, then? 'Cause I don't do it because it's my job. I do it because, I mean, we have to eat. And it's kinda enjoyable." At least he wasn't going to dwell on that too much, or let it get to him, though the way she had phrased it did bother him, just a bit. Yeah, Vivian had been hoity-toity in her old life, but that wasn't the way things were anymore. Who the hell had things like personal cooks or butlers or whatever in 2015? Other than the super rich and the super famous, of course, of which Alex was neither. Though Nero was certainly paying him a very nice salary. He'd even gone out and bought a car! A nice one! Alex reached out his hand, snatched up her wrist, and gently pulled her off the counter and towards him. "C'mere. C'mere." Ohhh no. That hand was placed on the waffle iron, her hand. "We'll do it together, okay?" Prepare to make a waffle, Vivian Di Marco.

[ Vivian ] NO SHE WASN'T GOING TO MAKE A WAFFLE. And you know, she had really phrased things badly without realizing it. "I... No, it's not your job either...? But I mean... I don't... I sh--- Idon'twantto," she sputtered out, being tugged over by him and sort of struggling against it. Not too much, 'cuz it wasn't like he was holding her tightly or anything. "Nobody's job but a cook; hey, we should get a cook!" she perked, but before her hand could touch the waffle maker, she pulled it away. "Noooo, I don't want to! I don't want to make a waffle! I don't cook! I don't coook!" She squirmed and looked back at him, knowing that she really needed to come up with a better reason than 'I'm a spoiled rich kid,' but there wasn't a better reason... Time to make one up. "I shouldn't be doing any physical labor," she said. Because, really, waffle making was strenuous exercise. "It's not good for me." This was going to backfire, she knew it. But god damnit, Vivian di Marco was not going to make breakfast.

[ Alex ] "Come on, Viv, we all have to do things that we don't want to do, sometimes." He gently tugged down on her hand. "And we're not going to get a cook. We don't need to pay somebody else to cook for us, not when we can do it ourselves." Not when he could do it for them, considering Vivian was astoundingly stubborn about this whole thing. It wasn't like he was going to leave her barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen for life! He just wanted her to know that she could easily make her own waffles, too! She didn't have to wait for him to get home or wake up! She could just go online and google up a good waffle recipe. Strenuous physical labor?! "Oh, I think you'll live," he teased, tugging down the lid of the waffle iron with her hand. "Ta-da! Look at that, you just made your first waffle." Yes, Vivian, your first. "Was that so bad?" It probably was. But Alex was laughing. At her? No. With her, and at the cirucmstances. He held her hand down for another minute or two until the waffle was done, and then he helped her raise the waffle iron's lid. "Look at that. One perfect waffle." It was dropped onto the serving platter, but he tore off a small piece of it and offered it up to her, pushed against her pretty mouth. "Here, try it. You did a good job." Damn, this was kinda like what his mother used to do when he was learning to cook.

[ Vivian ] "No, no, no, I can't!" she said, whining and squirming and trying to pull her hand away. God damn it, Alex Kearny. You just had to make her make a waffle. "No, it's not good for me!" Stupid waffle. That was like slavery. She'd been forced to make a waffle, and now he was going to make her eat it?! Oh, hell no! She pushed her lips together and tried to reel her head out of the way. "No, it's not good for me, and it's not... It's not good for the baby! Yes, the baby! I'm pregnant, and cooking waffles is bad for the both of us. Oooh, little baby, I'm so sorry daddy forced us into manual labor...!" she said, putting her hand over her stomach. She was a lying liar pants, one hundred percent, and she whacked the waffle out of his hand so that she wasn't going to be forced to eat it. "Me and Vivian Junior will not be forced to eat the Waffle of Oppression," she said, completely straight faced. There, Alex. How'd you like them apples.

[ Alex ] For just a second, Alex belived her. He dropped the waffle, let it fall to the ground, and stared at her. Pregnant? "Wait, you..." And then it clicked. "Oh, like hell you're pregnant. You're on birth control!" The floor was clean enough for him to pick up the waffle bit and shove it against her mouth again. "Eat iiiiiittt. Eat iiiiiit. And then go piss on a stick and prove to me that you're pregnant, because otherwise I am inclined to think you are full of shit." Nonetheless, though? Nonetheless, he reached his hand down to press, ever so lightly, against her flat belly. Was there really a baby in there? No, he doubted it, because if there was, he would have heard a lot by now about how she'd be a horrible mother, just like she was a horrible roommate and a horrible girlfriend and a horrible living person and whatever else she thought she was horrible at but was clearly great at doing. But still. His eyes flickered to hers for half a second, and his face was unreadable. Don't get your hopes up, Kearny, no matter how much you might like a baby of your own. She's probably making shit up so you don't make her put forth the massive exertion required to close a waffle iron. "Go on. I know we have pee sticks. Go pee."

[ Vivian ] Oh, she was absolutely making shit up. She had the Implanon implant in her arm, and it was relatively recent. It wasn't like it had run out of hormones; those things last for three years. No, she was definitely not pregnant, but she wanted to be a fuckhead and get out of cooking food. It weirded her out when he touched her belly like that. "Stop thaaat... You're weirding me out..." she said. But she knew she had to keep up the charade. "Vivian Jr. is very agoraphobic, and she doesn't like to be touched." She avoided the waffle and put her hands on her hips. "Fine. Fine, I'll go pee on a stick, and I'll prove it to you. But know," she started, pointing one finger at him. "Know that those things sometimes don't work and they give you wrong readings because it's early and shit." She has clearly been around Alex too long. Vivian stole one of the waffles that he had made, completely avoiding the Waffle of Oppression, and skittered quickly into the bathroom. Well, into the bedroom to snag a blue pen, then off into the bathroom to pee on a stick. "I'll show you! I'll prove that I can't make waffles!" she called out from the bathroom as she unwrapped one of the sticks and got herself ready to pee on it. She was totally gonna draw a second blue line on it with a pen, even though she knew it was going to look fake as fake could be.

[ Alex ] "How do you know the baby is agoraphobic? How do you know the baby is a girl? Why not Alex Jr., huh?" But fine, if she wanted to play this game, he could play it right along with her, and the psychopomp went back to making waffles all by himself because apparently Vivian was pregnant with a baby so fragile she couldn't even lower the lid of a waffle iron. Which, of course, he knew was a load of shit. But still. This was a fun game for an otherwise dull Sunday morning, wasn't it? One of the waffles, not the Waffle of Oppression, was grabbed up and munched on while he finished, and short post was short because basically he was just making waffles and waiting for his girlfriend to come out of the bathroom with the negative pregnancy test.

[ Vivian ] Vivian, hygenic as ever, sat on the toilet with a pregnancy test in one hand and a waffle in the other. She waited to get the tingling peepee feeling before putting her hand down to pee on the stick, making extra certain that she was not putting the waffle down to pee on it; that would have been a tragedy. She nibbled at the waffle until she was done peeing, and then she shoved the chocoate-chippy goodness in her mouth to hold it so that she could pull the test up, set it on the edge of the bathtub to develop or whatever the fuck it was supposed to do. She wasn't worried. She hummed while she held the waffle with her mouth, cleaned herself up, pulled up her panties and flushed. Her hands were washed, and she finally brought another hand up to grab the waffle (it was getting soggy) out of her mouth so she could hold it in her left and grab the blue pen in the other. Another nonchalant bite was taken, she chewed, and then sat back down on the toilet, fully clothed, so that she could lean over and mark a third line. ... Wait, no, that wasn't right. ... That... Why... Why were there two lines already..? She... She was supposed to make the second one fake with the pen, but there it was, a second line that had popped up with the first. "Oh... fuck..." she said, her stomach churning and her eyes gone wide. Pause... Pause pause pause... "A-Alex!" she screeched.

[ Alex ] The TV was on in the living room/kitchen area, and Alex was fucking around on Netflix, trying to find a good audiovisual accompaniment to a Sunday waffle brunch. He'd already loaded up his plate with a few. There was butter and syrup and another plate and a fork on the kitchen counter, for when Vivian came out with the negative test and he made fun of her for it. Which was what was going to happen, right? He hadn't selected a show yet when she started screaming, so he heard her loud and clear, and came rushing towards the bathroom at full tilt. "Vivian?! Viv, are you okay?" Oh no. What if something was wrong? What if something was horribly, horribly wrong? Of course, there was always the chance that she just saw a spider in here or something, and he was prepared for that eventuality as well, stopping in the bathroom to grab one of his boots. And his brass knuckles. You never knew just what you might need when your girlfriend is screaming in the bathroom. Privacy be damned--it wasn't like he had never seen her lady parts before--he threw the bathroom door open and looked around, expectant. "What is it? What's wrong?" He'll brass knuckle the shit out of that spider for making you scream like that, man.

[ Vivian ] No, no. There was no spider. It was worse. Much, much worse. It was a fetus. Maybe he could just punch the fetus, and she'd be a'okay with that. By the time he got to her, she was in tears, her brain going into overdrive. She had been craving blueberry waffles, maybe it was because she really was pregnant!? That's what the test said. When he came into the bathroom, she immediately ran up against him and started crying into his chest. A big ol' run-on sentence with quavering words through her tears. "I was just fucking with you because I'm too pretty to cook and I didn't want to because I'm spoiled, and I made that shit up only I didn't make that shit up and the test says I'm pregnant and we have to get rid of it we have to get rid of it, Alex," she cried against his chest. Her sobs choked and shook her shoulders. She was going to have to write a strongly-worded letter to the Implanon people for this one...

[ Alex ] Wow. That was a lot to take in all at once, wasn't it? So Alex took it bit by bit. One: she was up against him and crying. That was easy enough to deal with. Arms around her, and he held her close and tried to stroke her hair to soothe her. "Hey, it's okay, it's..." Two: She had been making up the business about being pregnant because she was pretty and spoiled and thought that meant that she didn't have to learn to cook. He was going to tackle that part, he really was. Tell her that she needed to learn because she might need to be self-sufficient at some point, if something were to happen to him. He was in a dangerous line of work, after all. But then number three came up. She was pregnant. The test came back positive. Alex stood, silent and shell-shocked, while she delivered number four, that they had to get rid of it. Did they...did they have to? Did they really, truly have to? He frowned. "Okay. Okay, one thing at a time." He reached for the test, gingerly because it was full of pee or whatever, and eyed it. Okay, two lines apparently meant positive. What a dumb system. But that was definitely a positive test, with a blue pen nearby. But the second line didn't look like pen, so he dismissed that detail. "Vivian. The first thing you need to do is calm down. Okay? You can take another test, and if it's positive we can take you to the infirmary at Shepherd, and then we can decide what to do from there." There was a pause, and when he spoke again, his voice was almost too soft. "I won't make you keep the baby if you don't want to. That's not fair to you." He sounded sad, but resolute.

[ Vivian ] Oohhh, this was bad. This was bad bad bad. She would be a horrible mother. She didn't have a maternal bone in her entire body. She never had. She wasn't the nurturing type. Hell, she even refused to learn how to make a waffle to fend for herself. How the hell would she manage to keep a tiny, helpless human alive. If it even made it out of her alive. Let's face it, Vivian wasn't one to think of consequences for her actions, even if she was clean and sober now. His arms were around her, but she didn't let up the crying. This was the worst thing that could have happened. God, the lady at the clinic was going to judge her so hard for coming back twice in the same year. But she had used birth control! Oh, life was not fair. "I don't have any more peeeeeeeeee!" she wailed when he told her she could take another test just to be sure. He wasn't going to make her keep it? Well that was fucking good because she sure as shit didn't want it. "I don't want it, I don't want itttt," she sobbed into his bare chest.

[ Alex ] Oh geez. Okay. Time to bust out the big guns here, maybe? Vivian was easy to lift, considering she was a tiny waif of a thing and he was a drummer-turned-hired-goon. Alex plucked her up in his arms and carried her gently out of the bathroom, settling her down on the edge of their bed. "Okay, okay. We'll get rid of it." His voice sounded hollow when he said that, until he steeled himself. The time wasn't right, after all. They were both in college. It would be damn hard to have a baby in college. Maybe they could try again, actually try, when they were in more stable positions? When they were a little older? Yeah. That was what Alex told himself right now, to make him feel a little better. It worked, and he knew that he was right. "Do you want to go to the infirmary right away? They can do a blood draw or something and see if you're pregnant, I think that's how that works." His recollection of that sort of thing was fucking weak, because he really just remembered when his stepmother was pregnant with Lacy, and even then he didn't know the nitty-gritty details because he had been a kid and he didn't want to know. "You can take your waffles to go and we can head down there. I'll pour you some orange juice to drink in the car so you can, uh, make more pee." Because that was how that worked, she'd magically convert OJ to piss.

[ Vivian ] No, no, no. Vivian didn't want kids. She didn't want kids ever. She hated kids. Even if it was something that was half her and half Alex. It... It would have been the culmination of their love, but fuck... She didn't want to carry that... And raise it... And wipe its ass and wipe its nose... Gross. She didn't care that it'd probably be the cutest little chubby-cheeked, blue-eyed little thing. She didn't want it. She wasn't ready, and she never would be. She wrapped her arms around him when he carried her, and once she was on the bed, she curled up in his lap. She didn't want to be alone right now. She didn't want to do this on her own. God, it was like... It was like way back when. When Samuel had been so pissed that she had even gotten pregnant because it had harshed his high. He'd made her go on her own, of course. ... For various reasons. One being the fact that Samuel was... of color, but that didn't matter to her back then. Even if it mattered to everyone else. Flashbacks, flashbacks, flashbacks. "I don't want to go alone," she said with a squeak, but she did nod her head when he asked if she wanted to go to the infirmary right now for a test. Maybe, just maybe, they could get rid of it for her there.

[ Alex ] It was like way back when? Was it really? Was Alex angry at her for harshing his high? Was Alex angry at her at all? He wasn't even mad about her waffle-related temper tantrum. He certainly wasn't mad at her about the maybe-baby. He wasn't mad at her for wanting to get rid of it, either. That was her decision. It was her baby. Alex's mother didn't raise a man who was unsympathetic towards women! "You don't have to go alone," he immediately answered. "You're not going to. I'm going with you, we'll go together. If you're pregnant, we made that baby together, so we'll go deal with it together, okay? Though you should really look into better birth control. I thought that thing in your arm was like..the best on the market?" Huh. Maybe he'd go buy condoms on the way home, just to be extra safe. When she nodded her head, he gently eased her out of his lap. "Okay. You get dressed. I'll get you some orange juice and some of the waffles, because you're going to need your strength no matter what happens. But I'm not going to make you do anything that you don't want to do. And if you don't want to have this baby, well...then we won't. Simple as that." With what he hoped was a reassuring kiss to the top of her head, he hopped off the bed to grab a shirt, stuff his feet into the closest shoes, and return to the kitchen to grab some sustenance for his apparently pregnant girlfriend. He stared at the inside of the fridge for a long moment, though, his expression slack.

[ Vivian ] He wasn't going to make her go alone. He wasn't going to make her go alone. That was different and reassuring. Now, she should have realized that he would always be with her for these types of things considering he went with her last time. That time, she figured, he had gone with her because it hadn't been his and it needed to go away. She had already killed it once, you know. But this time was different, and it was his, and she just... She was beside herself. "It's supposed to be," she confirmed about the implant through her sniffles. When he got up to go get her some orange juice, she started to get dressed. All this consisted of was putting on some sweat pants and flip flops. Didn't matter how cold it was in London right now, she was not about to put the effort out to put on a bra right now. While she waited for Alex, Vivian reached up to feel at her upper arm. That small, flexible, plastic implant was there. It was there, and she was angry at it. She wanted to rip it out with her own two fingers. How could it betray her like that!?

Last Edit: Nov 7, 2015 18:42:59 GMT -8 by The Czarina