Izanagi / Deandre Stanton-Pope (inviting_joy) wrote in monte_logs, @ 2012-09-25 12:00:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | izanagi, izanami, ~complete |
Characters: Izanami/Paige (inviting_sorrow) & Izanagi/Deandre (inviting_joy)
Date/Time: Early afternoon, Saturday Sept. 22nd
Location: Outside the Wellness Center
Rating: PG
Warnings: Fluff?
Summary: Deandre has managed to track down Paige and will stop at nothing to talk to her again.
There were a lot of things Deandre didn’t understand in this lifetime. Women, for one. How to fix a car, how to repair a leaky faucet, how to extract his foot from his mouth. His talent lay more in the creation of things, the cause and the catalyst. Things happened because he chose to do them - or in some cases because he chose to run away from them.
But if there was one thing Deandre knew a little better than other things, it was flowers. They just kind of made sense. Maybe it was Izanagi telling him to get back to nature, to the root of who he was, because he’d gone so far off course he was barely recognizable to his family. And one thing was for certain - knowing Izanami was here - here! - and not going to her? Was the most unnatural thing of all. It just didn’t help that he didn’t understand women!
Kelsey had been easy enough to know - he’d grown up with her. But she hadn’t been...his wife. Not like Paige had been. It was confusing, to say the least. He’d kept Izanami close to his heart long before he even knew who he was. She was a part of his soul. But he didn’t know Paige. He’d excused himself from every single woman who’d ever approached him because he’d been waiting for her. For what? To be with her again? To apologize? To get a good look at her and realize he’d been kidding himself? Deandre didn’t know what to expect.
But when he’d spoken to her - the shock of finding out who she was - it was as though Izanagi was speaking through him, like he was trying to make amends in some way. But he was Deandre now in this lifetime and Deandre was shorted the talent of words and of expression. He was so confused. What did he want? Did he really want to be with her? Was that what was supposed to happen?
But flowers. Flowers Deandre knew well enough. And while the bouquet arrangement he carried looked kind of ridiculous - amaryllis for worth beyond beauty, gladiolus for faithfulness and honor, and purple hyacinth for asking for forgiveness - it didn’t stop him from hauling it all the way over to the Wellness Center where he had learned (snooped) that she would be. He stood around for a good hour, too scared to go inside, but too determined not to leave. People filed in and out regularly: several students, some patients, handfuls of nurses who gazed sidelong at the bouquet and wondered what this nervous boy was doing here. He was this close to talking himself into going back home when by chance he caught a familiar and yet unfamiliar figure exiting the the doors in a harem of busy people.
“Paige!” He hollered gracelessly, trotting up to her. “Woman, wait up!”
~
Ever since Paige had made the decision to out herself as Izanami, she’d known that the possibility of meeting her mythological counterpart in this life was high. After all, Izanagi was the central figure in her story, as she was for him. But several years had gone by without Paige truly considering what it would be like to meet Izanagi in this life.
At first, she had refused to think about it out of a fear that meeting him would drive a wedge between her and her then-boyfriend at the time. Paige wanted to love him, not save herself or or wait to revenge herself upon a legendary figure who had not yet done anything to her. Although she would sooner deny the existence of the sun than deny the intense emotional resonances she felt in her dreams as Izanami -- with love and loathing in equal measure wrapped around her “memories” of Izanagi -- Paige was also determined to not allow her previous feelings to drive her current relationships.
History, however, had a cruel way of repeating itself, and Paige experienced betrayal in this life again, once more because of a lover. She hated how that moment changed her, but if she could thank Izanami for one thing, it would be for teaching her how to channel all of her sorrow and rage into energy. She had felt these things before, after all, and they wouldn’t break her -- they would strengthen her.
But, as Paige was learning, the thing about bottling up and using such tainted energy was that it could just as easily poison and weaken you.
Currently, the newly re-acquainted incarnates had reached an uneasy consensus the day after Deandre’s outburst and revelation. But Paige couldn’t stop thinking about it, and she was mortified by how strongly she was feeling. ‘What does this mean? What does he want from me? What do I want from him?’
During the morning rush hour, Paige was beginning to think she should have followed Marilyn’s advice and taken Saturday off from the Wellness Center. Whatever vibe the nurses and other lab technicians had picked up from her was causing them to look the other way; probably because, she was ashamed to admit, she had impatiently snapped at her colleagues. Twice. So she worked in isolation for the rest of the day, hoping that having work to focus on would somehow ease her out of what her grandmother would call, her “funk.”
When her shift ended, Paige gathered up her belongings and made her way out, head ducked down and shoulders hunched. She just wanted to slip away unnoticed to her apartment and try to relax, to return to an equilibrium after being knocked off balance.
Despite being deep in thought, her steady gait still hitched when she heard her name. Paige looked up and...stared.
Izanagi. It was him. Izanami knew him. Paige knew it was Deandre from his profile picture, but it was altogether a different experience to look him in the eyes and know.
So completely swept by the sense of recognition, she didn’t notice the flowers quite yet. Paige began to move towards him, her hand unconsciously lifting, when a co-worker bumped into her. She blinked, broken from her trance. After murmuring her apologies, she squared her shoulders and gestured for Deandre to head towards the sidewalk, out of the crowd’s way.
“What are you doing here?” she asked him. Paige didn’t want to sound cold, but she couldn’t help it. Izanami couldn’t help it.
~
This was all going to be easy. Mostly. Give her the flowers, tell her he wanted to stay in touch, and then flee from the scene in a way reminiscent of times before. Deandre was petrified at the reaction he may or may not get from her, but the moment their eyes met, it was...
“Magic” couldn’t describe it, nor did “love at first sight”. There was a sense of rightness about it - he felt the urge to hug her like she was a sister, kiss her like she was a wife, and bend to his knees. But there was also this tone in the back of his head, reminding him that a man did not bow to a woman. It was a strange thought, as Deandre himself never felt that way, but there were parts of Izanagi he felt great shame for and he could feel all of it. But the most intense feeling he had was to walk numbly to her and hold her tightly. What would follow, he didn’t know, but he couldn’t think of anything else.
When Paige stepped to the side and wordlessly gesture that he follow, he did, albeit it anxiously and borderline spellbound. A part of his soul whispered that wherever she went, he would follow.
The question was expected, as was the tone, but he was dumb in the face. At any moment, his brain would restart, and words would follow. And true to his talent, he’d be sticking his foot in his mouth.
“I, uh.” His parted lips snapped shut and Deandre turned to walk away from Paige. The three steps were littered with “you can do this, you can do this” under his breath before he spun back around. The blank look in his eyes was gone, filled with the hopeful stupidity and recklessness of starting again. “Hello.”
He walked back over to her. “I found out where you worked because I was spying on you.” Alright, the foot was still in the mouth. “I knew you were busy, but-” the flowers, he had flowers! “-I wanted to give you these.” Deandre held the bouquet out to Paige. “They’re flowers. Kind of like the springtime thing. In my heart. But without talking. With flowers. Because it’s...better?” Licking his lips, the nerves really starting to get to him, he tacked on: “You should take them.”
~
When Deandre turned away, Paige couldn’t tell whether she felt more sad or relieved as she watched him. With shame, she remembered what she’d involuntarily written that night in response to his outpouring of poorly-worded poetry and romantic declarations: You left me. Again, her inner goddess recognized this in pain and resentment. But the decision as to whether or not to go after him to demand an explanation was taken out of her hands when Deandre walked back himself and gave her an explanation that banished both her sadness and relief instantly. Instead Paige experienced an emotional whiplash of anger that snapped her out of her numbness. Izanami was feeling anything but cold now.
“You were spying on me!? How could you!? How--” Her expression darkened as her eyes passed from his to the flowers at last. Now Izanami’s wrath had a target.
Within seconds, the flowers withered and decayed as though someone had pressed fast-forward on time. Without even touching them, bright green turned to murky gray. Petals shriveled and leaves wrinkled as the once fresh-cut bouquet was ruined and began to fall apart. The moment it happened, she cursed herself for her lack of control over her ability and cursed him for his well-intentioned, ill-fated gift.
“I could, but it would be pointless. As you can see.” And as furious as she was, Paige felt regret as well. This inevitably happened over fifty percent of the times she’d ever received flowers. Wasting such gifts made her feel like the lowest creature on the planet every time, even when they came from a fool.
~
Whatever babble and utter nonsense was going to spout next from Deandre - and, to be sure, there would have been a lot of that - his trap sealed shut when the bouquet in his hand wilted and died before his very eyes. His gaze lingered on a shriveled, ashen hyacinth flower as it fell gracelessly to the ground between their feet. Despite his initial surprise (written all over his face) and subsequent silence, he looked up at her with a raised eyebrow. While this was supposed to deter him, it had only granted him another level of confidence. If she wanted to play that game, he was most certainly ready to participate.
“Oh, yeah?” His head wove back and forth on his neck like he was sassing. “I see your thousand and raise you fifteen-hundred.”
With that, the flowers perked back up. The shriveled bits on the ground remained so, but the wilted leaves regained ever last centimetre of color, every crumpled flower yawned itself wide open and in the stead of fallen flowers, new ones bloomed, brighter and healthier than their predecessors. Deandre looked smugly from the bouquet to Paige, a barely compressed smile of self-satisfaction so tempting for one to try and kill. Let’s see what she did with that.
“Now will you take them? Pleeeeeeease?”
~
If anyone other than Deandre had been sassing her, Paige could usually brush off the unpleasantness and irritation with the wisest response of all: silence. Or when she did choose to respond, she employed logic and practicality without resorting to malicious or crude language, and she was proud of her ability to keep a lid over her emotions. It normally took much more to rile her up, but this situation took far more out of Paige’s temper than mere immature responses on a forum or sly whispers in the workplace. No, this had the potential to bring out the worst from her, the worst that was made up of everything that made Izanami justify bringing death into the world.
“You listen here you arrogant --” Izanami was still raging in the back of Paige’s head when she received yet another shock. And perhaps it shouldn’t have been such a shock after spending a month among her kind, who could bring down thunder or change how people felt at the drop of a hat, and yet it was.
To see those flowers return to life right before her eyes -- something about seeing it happen, about seeing the bouquet’s beauty be restored so effortlessly and purposefully, somehow brought Paige back to herself as well. Her mouth opened once, twice, while the anger drained from her face to be replaced by a reluctant wonder. She clamped down on the rest of her emotions as she looked back up at Deandre and tried to tell herself that she wouldn’t let him get to her... even while she feared that he already had.
“Tell me why you were spying on me, and I’ll take them,” Paige challenged, feeling stronger and more herself now that her initial anger wasn’t overriding her common sense.
~
The initial fury flaring from her barely registered. For someone who created so many beings and was so expansive in his imagination, Deandre could be far more single-minded than Izanagi. Especially when the woman he felt he loved was standing before him. He had a thousand things he could have said in response to her first bite of a comment. But when her eyes fell to the flowers, his eyes stayed glued to her. He’d seen nothing but annoyance and anger in him since he first approached, but to see her like this caused his pulse to flicker. The stumbles of pride and silliness dissipated as he smiled back at her, happy to be meeting her eyes now with a different understanding between them. Deandre was feeling genuinely hopeful about things for the first time since he’d come across her.
“Do I really have to answer that?” He cocked his head, but the moment of distraction was quickly dismissed as he slid nervously into his next answer. “I wanted to know where you worked. What was going on. I was curious; I wanted to know who you were.” He wanted to ask Paige if she could really blame him, but he held up the flowers again. “Please?”
~
“If I didn’t want an answer, I wouldn’t waste my breath.” Izanami couldn’t resist inserting the little barb after all, but the anger didn’t have as sharp an edge as it could have. Paige wasn’t the kind of woman to melt into a puddle under the sun of a man’s smile, but she couldn’t say that Deandre’s smile had no effect on her at all. She wasn’t a stone, as much as she would like to be one at times.
With a quiet sigh, she listened to him closely, and maybe a bit of his hope started to wear Paige down because she couldn’t quite find the energy to be angry at such a simple, clear-cut response. It was natural, she knew, to be curious, and who wouldn’t be curious about this entire, bizarre situation? Across however many eons since the dawn of creation, this once divine pair found themselves in Colorado, of all places. That was nothing short of impossible and miraculous, and maybe that meant something, as much as Paige’s scientifically-inclined mind balked to consider something as ridiculous as fate. The only element her ego struggled with was the question his statement inevitably brought to her mind: Was he interested in her as Paige? Or only as Izanami? How should she respond if it was the latter? How should she feel if it was something else?
She still hesitated to reach out to take the flowers. They represented an olive branch, a kind gesture, but Paige found herself...
“I’m afraid -- I’m worried they’ll just... die again before I can get them home.” But even as Paige said that, she managed to make herself raise her hand up to accept the gift. “I... Thank you...”
~
If Paige expressed to him all the questions on her mind, he would admit they were similar thoughts to what he was having. He was driven beyond comprehension to meet with her, to see her face-to-face. He’d lived 24 years of his life without her but he’d also spent a good half that lifetime carving statuettes of Izanami in his room. What did it all mean? Was he to ask her to stay with him forever? Maybe charging into meeting up with her wasn’t the best idea. Perhaps he should have taken a page from her book and tried to breathe before hunting her down. Chasing after her had been an act of deliberation and choice, which would make anyone think he’d made up his mind on his feelings for Paige, but he’d never been faced with this before. This was the girl of dreams and a complete stranger.
But if you didn’t know an answer, then you pursued it. As far as Deandre was concerned, waiting for the answer to fall in his lap just didn’t work.
“They won’t.” He assured her, but the cocky tone had been replaced with gentle insistence. “And it was kind of, uh, my plan?” Nervously scratching an “itch” behind his ear, his fear drove him from looking directly at her. “If they ever wilt, then I’ve gotta come and spruce them back up a bit. See? It’s insurance. That I have to keep coming back. And despite being cut from their plants, we can prove that they can keep living forever. Kind of...a metaphor.”
It was corny, cheesy, and kind of not like him. But he had the advantage of knowing her in ways no one else did.
~
Paige wished she could be half-as-certain as Deandre seemed to be about the health of these flowers. Instead of dwelling on that, however, she finally took a moment to admire the vibrant colors of the reborn blooms, especially the rich purple of the hyacinths. Despite his brash and unfortunate methods of objectifying women and writing poetry, Deandre did have good tastes when it came to this. She could see herself placing these colors on a canvas, replicating the hue and shade of each plant under the tips of her brushes and the drops of the watercolors. Normally, painting was the only way she could enjoy gardens long term without concern that a sudden dark mood would ruin them, but if what Deandre said was true...
“A metaphor, huh?” Even Paige had to smile a little at that. Who knew a metaphor could be taken so literally, or be used for such an obvious motive? It was cheesy, corny, absurd... meaningful. The thought that this meant so much to him made it her turn to be afraid to look at him. Luckily, she could hide it better with the bouquet.
Izanami may have still wanted to kill this gift a thousand times over -- she hadn’t forgotten her anger or necessarily forgiven him for his intrusion -- but Paige knew what it meant, and maybe... was beginning to feel curious about Deandre back, about what drove him to do this for her.
She knew she was further feeling a return to herself when she began to notice how long the two of them had been standing outside of the Wellness Center. Shifting slightly on her feet anxiously, Paige was certain that what had just happened between them was getting them a lot of stares.
“...I was going to grab a coffee at Muddy Waters before you interrupted me.” Paige ventured a glance his way before taking a look at the sky as though to check the weather, like it could give her an excuse to call off this suggestion before it was too late. Unfortunately, the weather was clear and without a thundercloud in sight. “...Would you like to join me? Make sure these flowers do stay alive?”
~
Whatever coolness and collectiveness Deandre had sort of began piecing together (the kind that allowed for false confidence or the incorrect belief that “I’ve got this covered”) had altogether vanished when Paige pulled out the one response he never expected. He had anticipated a, “Thanks...?” at best, a, “Are you an idiot?”” at medium, or a, “Get the hell out of my life, weirdo.” at worst, but this was, when he compared it to the Expectations Chart, off the chart.
Thus Deandre quickly reverted back to being dumb in the eyes and slack in the jaw. Paige was holding his flowers, looking almost happy (or as close to it as he could bring her, but small victories and great successes. The look in her eyes for that one moment was already reward enough) and it was almost startling how easily he succumbed to her, even when she wasn’t trying. She really was breathtakingly beautiful. Both in this lifetime and from the last. Slowly but surely, he could begin to distinguish between the two. But it ultimately mattered little, as they were so greatly intertwined that he felt he could love Paige for being Izanami and love Izanami for being Paige. It was a frightening thought.
“I, well, I...” the words weren’t coming. Yes was a must, but do you mean it? seemed to be a more prominent thought. For all of his enthusiasm, Deandre was still floundering through reconnecting with her. “Y-yeah. Did you - we could - I, uh -”
Stumped and desperate to stay on her good side - which was going to be an uphill battle, even he knew this - Deandre held out an elbow should Paige feel inclined to take it. It was both to be chivalrous and, as he realized, an opportunity to touch her. If looking at her had stirred such an immense reaction, his further inquisitiveness begged him to feel her now.
~
Considering that Deandre’s outward personality would not quite make Paige’s “Expectation Chart” if she’d ever seriously tried to imagine or hypothesize what Izanagi’s incarnate might be like, one could say that the two had equally and thoroughly shocked each other off the Anticipation and Predictability Scale. At the very least, it showed that they had a lot to learn from each other if they were ever going to get along. She could be as hard on other people as she was on herself; it wasn’t for an overabundance of standards and expectations, but because so many others seemed to take them for granted. To take her for granted.
She wondered if maybe he felt that way, too. If there was something that made him push himself too hard in ways that Paige couldn’t imagine yet.
Seeing him fumble and stammer like this, she had to admit with a chuckle, provoked a sense of boldness in her that Paige might not have felt otherwise. There were always men who were too arrogant about their beliefs concerning the opposite sex, who spent too much time trying to manipulate the situation to their advantage, as though it was just as fun to one-up women as it was to get in bed with them. But this, for once, was different. She realized she was seeing the cracks in Deandre’s usual cool-guy armor and it gave her a boost of confidence. It was a heady feeling, to know that she had affected him and knocked him off his balance as much as he had her. Perhaps it wasn’t just him registering as Izanagi on her radar after all.
Cradling the bouquet in one arm, Paige used her confidence to wordlessly accept the invitation to take his arm.
Again, that sense of pure recognition returned with a flood of emotion, but already she was getting used to it. It was just becoming a part of the person she knew as Deandre, and as Izanagi. She thought that perhaps as Izanami, she should be repulsed, but she didn’t feel that way. It was... just natural.
~
Having come to Izanami with the intentions of blowing her mind, she’d been evil and turned the tides. How could he have predicted that folding his arm with hers and walking side by side with her while she carried his flowers would have ever felt so foreign and yet completely as it should be? Deandre felt as though they must have taken long walks together as Izanagi and Izanami, with all the time in the world to create and to conceive. When things were simpler. Happier. While it had been Izanagi who had known these times, it was Deandre feeling he wanted to have them again.
Her chuckle had him hooked like an eager fish. He wanted more of that, more of her to feel confident and at ease. A part of his Shinto ancestry consistently reminded him that he was the man, and therefore this and therefore that. It was a wisp of wind when comparatively the smile she gave him more than blew him away.
All of his plans had gone up in smoke. Planning wasn’t going to solve this, his twisting gut told him this. The natural course of things would have to do. And with a steady pace next to his lady love and a grin so big and happy that the flowers in her hands found it impossible to even consider withering, Deandre felt that whatever the future held for them, time with Paige was going to be exciting.