Simon Curran; Peter Parker/Spider-Man (bigtimehero) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-04-14 00:35:00 |
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Entry tags: | sam winchester, spider-man |
Who: Meredith and Simon
What: Hanging out at Meredith's for tea and apologies for neck bitery.
Where: Meredith's apartment.
When: Just a little while after the masquerade, before the fear gas craziness.
Warnings/Rating: Some swearing on Simon's part.
Meredith’s place wasn’t anything to write home about. There was very little furniture to speak of, just an old, battered couch she picked up off of Craig’s List, a few small tables, city map pinned up on the wall, and very little in the way of pictures or mementos from home. It spoke of someone who had brought very little with her when she moved, but somehow, she made it comfortable. The shades were drawn, just a bit of light trickling into the room, an old throw thrown over the back of the couch to make it a little less shabby. The television (the only extravagance besides her computer) was on, the volume turned low to some daytime television drabble, just something to fill the air with anything other than silence.
She was looking forward to meeting Simon, as she now knew him to be named, because their encounter had been dangerous but had somehow ended on a positive note. It was interesting, to say the least, and putting a real face with the name was something she really needed to do. It would get her thoughts off of that unnamed threat on the forums, something she was still thinking and making plans on.
Curled up on the couch, Meredith passed the time until Simon arrived with a book, some trade paperback from the author of the hour. She was dressed casually in a pair of dark denim jeans and a white tank, red hair pulled back away from her face in a messy twist. The teapot sat on the oven in the kitchen, her small selection of bagged and loose leaf teas sitting beside it, ready to be perused and chosen.
Simon arrived in the afternoon wearing sunglasses and with his head ducked deep under a hoodie. He didn’t exactly look inconspicuous, but it was, at least, a little harder to tell who he was. Then it was up to Meredith’s front door, and a brisk, quick knock. He thought Meredith seemed cool, honestly, and he was looking forward to talking to her, but he didn’t want to bring the stupid paparazzi down on her head just because she’d been nice enough to invite him over. He toyed with the ring in his lower lip with his tongue, and swiped the hood back after double checking to be sure nobody had followed him. He was starting to feel like a fucking spy in his own life, lately. It was annoying.
At the knock on the door, Meredith was moving, marking the place in her book and tossing it on the small coffee table in front of the couch before darting over to the door. A quick peek out the peephole didn’t really tell her anything other than there was a dark haired guy with a pierced lip standing there waiting. She hoped that was Simon, because if it wasn’t, there might be problems. Undoing the lock, Meredith tugged the door open, a ready smile on her face as she got her first real look at Simon. He looked familiar, like she had seen him somewhere, but where was a hard thing to pin down. “Simon?” she asked hopefully, her brows arched, not pushing the issue of where she might have known him from. If there was some familiarity there, it would come in time; not her place to push.
Simon smiled sheepishly and ducked past her. “Hey,” he said. “Meredith, I’m guessing.” He gestured to the door. “I don’t mean to push my way in or anything, I just don’t want the parasites to stake out your house.” He gave her a quick once over, his eyes lingering on her face. The mouth, at least, he recognized, though everything else had been covered by one of her masks. “It’s nice to see the rest of you,” he offered. He realized then that his sunglasses were still on, and he pulled them off, folding them and tucking them away. The Dhampir had lacked his piercings and his nervous energy, as well as the good-natured bent to the small smile, despite mohawked appearances.
“The one and only,” she answered with a grin, closing the door behind him and leaning back against it as it clicked shut, giving him a long look before she pushed away. “And likewise. And what do you mean parasites? You being followed, or something?” Though he had lingered in her thoughts since the masquerade, she hadn’t been so brash as to make assumptions about the person behind the ‘mask’. So whatever her expectations were, there was no disappointment in her expression or posture. “Sorry it’s kind of sparse in here,” she said a moment later, stepping past him towards the small kitchen. “I didn’t bring much with me from Colorado, so, I’m kind of living off of what I can scrounge off of Craig’s List at the moment.” Meredith gave a laugh at that, turning to look back towards him, her smile bright. “People actually try to give away their gross, stained couches where who knows did god knows what upon them. It’s kind of like a horror show, browsing on there sometimes.” A pause, her smile softening a bit before she stepped backwards, further into the kitchen. “Sorry. Rambling. First visitor and all of that, so I’m feeling self-conscious and trying to keep your attention off of this place.” It wasn’t to say that the place was bad, because it wasn’t, not in the slightest. Sparse, as she had already said, but clean, surfaces sparkling, fixtures clean and spot-free, the house of someone who knew how to clean and made it a habit to do so.
“Something like that,” Simon said, glancing out her front window. No sign of them, thank goodness. “I don’t mind sparse,” he said, looking around. “It’s a lot cleaner than my place,” he observed. Simon was used to sparse. His entire childhood had been ‘sparse’, in its own way. “Yeah, Craig’s list is a serious nightmare. I’ve gotten stuff on there before, though, sometimes it’s fine.” He’d had a lot of tiny, empty apartments to furnish over the years, and had never bothered to bring anything with him when he moved from place to place. When he had only been staying anywhere for a few months at a time, what was the point of dragging a whole furniture set with him, anyway? “No worries,” he said, brushing off the concern over her rambling. “You haven’t even seen me get fucking started with the rambling yet, just wait, it’s gonna happen. The place is cool.” He tapped the toe of his boot on the floor, gave it another sweep of the eyes, and then nodded to her, emphasizing the fact that, yes, he approved.
She wasn’t one to need reassurances, to look to others for any sort of validation, but everything that she was doing as of late was different than her life had been less than a month ago. Baby steps to get back to where she had been years prior, before married life, before motherhood, before everything that had felt so suffocating to her very person. And this, this was a good step in the right direction. “I really need to take a page from my own book,” Meredith said after a moment, her smile sheepish as she moved towards the stove and turned the burner on, dropping down into a crouch to check the flame before letting the water heat up. “And stop apologising. I don’t know what’s gotten into me, to be honest with you. Nerves? Something. And you can ramble all you want. I’m a good talker, but I’m pretty good at listening, too.”
The boxes of tea were picked up and she turned towards him with a flourish, displaying her small collection. “Pick one. I guarantee every single one of them are delicious, so long as you don’t hate herbal mixes. And if you do, I’ve got regular black tea as well.” As the moments ticked by, her anxiousness fled, more the woman from the night of the party than the anxious mess she had been when he first entered. It was all a matter of ease, of finding her pace and falling into it.
Simon wandered slowly after her, watching as she turned the heat on, his eyes falling on the tea. “How about that one?” he asked, pointing to a box with a blue label. He had no idea what it was. He didn’t drink too much tea, really, he usually kept it pretty simple, peppermint or black or sometimes green if he felt like it. Herbal mixes sounds possibly complicated, and he decided to leave it up to chance rather than seeming boring by just picking black. “How long’d you live in Colorado?” he asked, leaning against the counter. “I was there for a while one time. It’s nice. Kind of cold, compared to some places.” Wow, specific. He was not doing so hot. Hopefully she wouldn’t notice he sucked at the small talk thing.
“One of my favourites,” Meredith assured him, putting the rest of the boxes away before she got the cups ready for the hot water, moving to sit at the kitchen table to wait. “I grew up in Colorado,” she said after she had sat, hands folded together in front of her, her attention on him. “Lived there until last month when things... happened. I kind of miss the cold, to be honest with you. Heat and me...” She pulled a face. “We don’t get along very well. Give me the ski slopes instead of a beach, and you’ll have a happy camper.” There was a pause, lips pursing for a moment as she thought. “What brought you to Colorado? When you were there, that is? Family, or something?”
Things happening was none too specific, but Simon had learned a long time ago not to pry when people clearly brushed over stuff on purpose, not unless you had a really good reason. “I’m not super big on the heat either,” he said. “But it’s better than Canada or something, I guess. I like it where it’s warm, but not like this.” California had been pretty good for that, actually, a nice middle ground. “Oh, I used to travel like a fuckton,” he said, looking down at the chipping black paint job on his nails. “Not so much anymore, but there was a few years there where I didn’t stay anywhere longer than a couple months. Colorado was one of the places I stopped. I liked it. I can’t ski, though.”
“Remind me if we ever need a reason to get out of this desert environment to take you to Aspen for a weekend,” Meredith said, the offer honest and something she would do if the chance ever came. “So, are you trying to settle down a bit now?” she asked a moment later, hopping up when the kettle started to scream for attention, moving swiftly about the kitchen as she turned the burner off and poured the hot water over the teabags, a hot, steaming cup soon sat down in front of each of them, soon joined by a tin of cookies that she had removed the lid from. “Baked them the other day. Uhm. Chocolate chip and snickerdoodles. My so-” Meredith abruptly clacked her teeth together at that, giving him a long look before she sat back down, squeezing her eyes shut for a moment as she wound her hands around the teacup. “Sorry.”
Simon sat down across from her, sliding the mug close when she dropped it off with a quiet, mumbled, “Thanks.” He couldn’t get over how nice she was being to him, considering what he’d tried to do to her. “Basically, yeah,” he said, taking a sip from the cup. It was pretty good, despite being off the beaten path of what he usually liked. “Things have been kind of hectic. With the hotel and everything, obviously, but outside of that too, life’s been nuts. I figured it might be good to just get a little place and try to stay off the radar for a while.” As much as that was possible. He took a cookie from the tin and took a serious bite from it. He had a little bit of an obsession with things other people baked themselves. Nobody ever cooked anything at home when he was growing up, and the idea that other people did it all the time, like it was nothing, was a fascinating thing. Her bitten off word made him glance up, and her long look made him linger. “S’ fine,” he said, in part because he had no idea what she was going to say. Her son, maybe? She looked kind of young to be a mom if that was the case, and he didn’t see any sign of a kid. Maybe something had happened to him - probably best not to ask. “It’s really good,” he offered, as a hopeful balm, cookie bits still in his mouth.
Everything he said kept coming back to that nagging feeling she had in the back of her thoughts that she recognized him from somewhere, and finally, it was too much to ignore any longer, but she phrased her question as delicately as possible, to offer him an out if he didn’t want to provide details. “Off the radar?” Meredith echoed, occupying herself with a sip of tea, grateful that he had taken her slip and simply moved past it. She wasn’t ready to bring any of that up, doubted she would ever be ready simply because of the guilt for what she was doing, what she had done. “And I’m glad you like them. Baking was kind of a hobby for a few years. I was one of those girls who bought every magazine and tried to cook everything in it that sounded edible. Pretty much, I’ll try anything once.” She gave him a smile that was all warmth and sweets.
He picked at the handle of the mug with his fingernails. "Yeah. You know. Away from the craziness. People taking my picture and wanting me to talk about my family or whatever." He grimaced at the mug, like the very idea made him feel like he was going to break out in hives. "I...got some money recently. Found out I was kind of adopted. It made the news about a month ago, and people have been following me around since then. Everybody thinks I make a great story." He picked up another cookie. "I'm not a story, though," he said, glancing up. "I'm just me. I keep waiting for them to figure out I'm not going to go fuck the shit out of every movie star I can get my hands on or crash my car or start doing like, buckets of coke. I figure if I'm boring for a while they'll forget I'm here."
"I can't cook," he declared. "I suck at it a lot. I tried to make spaghetti in my apartment the other night and the sauce turned out black and the noodles were hard."
Meredith couldn’t imagine that kind of life, people following you around, just waiting for you to do something worthy of the tabloids. “I never got the press when they do things like that. They’re just... ruining lives. Stressing people out just to make a story. What’s enjoyable about that?” She shook her head, quiet for a moment before she reached across the table towards Simon, grasping his hand in her own for a brief moment, giving his fingers a tight squeeze. “If you ever need a place to escape, just let me know. I’ll punch anyone who follows you.” The grin that followed was wide and toothy, and there was something in it that said she was quite serious about her statement.
Laughing to herself, she pulled her hand back, letting her fingers curl into the handle of the mug, thumb running over the rim. “And if you ever want to have dinner over here, give me a heads up. I tend to cook more than I can eat on my own, and I’m ashamed at how much of it gets thrown out because I’m tired of it.” She liked him, Simon, and she wanted to help him if she could. She didn’t consider herself to be someone who could do a lot, but she wanted to offer what she could if it would make a difference.
“Yeah, but the people they sell to don’t care. The people who read don’t fucking care either.” It was hard for Simon not to turn bitter and angry on this particular topic, so he left it at that. “Thanks,” he said, with a small smile. “I mean, you only get to punch them if I don’t get to them first. I don’t want you on the front page of the tabloid next to me, I wouldn’t fucking wish that on anybody.” The squeeze of hands was a nice reassurance, and he gave her fingers a quick squeeze back. Meredith was a good egg, he’d officially decided.
“I might just do that,” he said, nodding. “As long as you let me at least bring stuff. Wine or something. I wouldn’t want you to just cook for me for nothing or anything, but if it’s just going to get thrown out, I’ll totally take it.” He wondered again why she was cooking so much - was somebody missing at the table she might otherwise have cooked for? “You know,” he said, “Considering I sucked your blood and everything, you’re pretty fucking cool to me.”
“Yeah, staying off of the front pages might be a good idea. Don’t need people talking and speculating about things that aren’t true, after all.” And she didn’t need her face plastered anywhere where her husband might see; she might be running away, but that didn’t mean she needed him worrying that she was off doing god knows what with god knows who, because that wasn’t the case in the slightest. “But if it comes to that, at least let me break their cameras. That might teach them a lesson or ten.” The return squeeze of fingers had Meredith smiling, glancing down towards the table a moment later to reel herself back in.
The mention of wine had her perking, looking up from the table and wherever her thoughts had wandered off to. “I will never say no to wine. Ever. So feel free to bring that at any time. I have horrible luck in picking out anything good, but I’ll drink anything someone offers.” Meredith paused, chuckling softly. “I’m not a lush. Honest. Just wanted to get that clear before you started thinking anything along those lines.” Chewing on her bottom lip, Meredith went quiet for a moment, pondering Simon’s last comment. She supposed it did seem weird, at least to anyone who didn’t know her well, but she couldn’t find it in herself to feel disgust or anger towards him after what had happened.
“I think holding anything against you that happened back then would be... just senseless. It is what it is, and I would like to think I’ve made a friend out of it. So why dwell on that dark spot? Yes, it could have been bad, and yes, it nearly was, but we both made it out, relatively unscathed.” She reached up, running the tips of her fingers over the bruise that was still fading. “Besides, fang marks are like, totally in fashion right now, don’t you know.” It was said with a laugh, barely able to keep even somewhat serious at those words.
“Nah, I wouldn’t assume that,” Simon said, leaning back and draining his mug. “Like I said, I don’t really drink much or anything, but I don’t care if other people do. I never really got into wine, because I never got the notes and shit. Didn’t make much sense to me.”
Simon glanced out her front window. Was that somebody down on the street staring their way? His eyes turned back to her, and lingered on the bruise. At least he hadn’t done any permanent damage, he guessed. Still, it was seriously messed up, the whole thing. “I had a girl keep trying to tell me that a while back,” he said, with a small smile. “She wanted that sparkly guy, whats-his-face, to bite her and take her away on a white horse.”
He glanced out the window again, and the figure down on the street hadn’t moved, and they were definitely holding a camera. What a pain in the ass. “Well, thanks for the tea,” he said, pushing his chair back. After a moment’s thought, he picked one of the cookies out and stuffed it in his mouth. “And the cookies are awesome,” he said, with earnest appreciation.
Simon’s comment about the girl wanting to be whisked away made her laugh in appreciation, but the sound died soon after as his attention moved towards the window. She could imagine what he was looking for, and her suspicions were confirmed when he pushed his chair back to rise. Pressing the lid of the tin back on, the remainder of the cookies were firmly boxed up and she pushed it towards him. “Take the rest with you. I’m glad you like them.” Meredith pushed her own chair back, standing up and stretching for a moment, arms coming back down for fingertips to rest against the top of the table. “And I meant what I said earlier. If you need to get away, let me know. I like having the company. Not used to such a quiet apartment, so...”
Meredith stepped around the table, and before Simon could rise, she wound her arms around his shoulders in a tight squeeze, a kiss pressed to his cheek before she straightened. There was nothing intimate about her hug, no intentions other than friendship in her warmth. She was not a woman who needed others to exist, but she was one who existed to help others, to change the world for the better. “Take care of yourself. You hear me?”
Simon placed his fingers on the lid of the box, but hesitated for a moment, unsure if he should accept the gift. As far as he was concerned, those cookies were worth their weight in gold. “Thanks,” he said, after realizing she’d only insist if he tried to refuse, holding the box tightly to his chest. Stupid fucking cameraman did not get to see what he was holding. They could write a whole fucking article about it if they wanted, he didn’t give a shit what they thought was in the box. “I will, seriously. I could use a getaway, sometimes.” Everything was such a chaotic mess lately that the prospect of a quiet place seemed like more of a luxury than any money he spent could afford.
The squeeze and the kiss were kind of a surprise, but he hugged her back, maybe a bit awkwardly. He wasn’t super great at that sort of thing, but it was nice of her. He felt incredibly aware of her neck while she was close. “I won’t jump off anything high,” he assured her, and smiled, a bit cheekily, before ducking out.