Penny Lane (pjlane) wrote in downfallrpg, @ 2010-03-14 04:10:00 |
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Entry tags: | 2015-08-28, penny, penny and zane, zane |
Who: Penny and Zane.
When: 2:00ish AM.
Where: Stairs, then Penny's room.
Man, she had really been away from the alcohol for too long. There was a reason for that, of course; but three shots and she was feeling all sorts of tipsy. The empty stomach probably didn't help. Penny wasn't so far gone that she couldn't walk, or think, or do anything, but with the dark it was certainly harder. She had made it up three flights of stairs with a flashlight, studying the beam of light critically on each step. She refused to injure herself, no way, no how.
The fourth flight of steps arrived. Penny walked up, confident in herself, continuing to climb. Her eyes glazed over a bit, thinking to herself. Crap, now there was no power. What was she going to do all night long, sit in a corner and stare out at the dark? She needed to adjust her sleeping schedule, and fast; although, if she really was going to be a guard at night, it probably wouldn't be too bad. Batteries could only last so long, though, and they'd eventually run out of candles. What would she do then?
Her stream of thought was interrupted by a faceplant on the carpet. Penny groaned and rolled over onto her back, resting a hand over her eyes. ... crap.
"What is it with you and the floor?" A voice asked out of the darkness. The first time he'd met her, he'd found her sitting in the hallway. Now she was laying there. Zane wasn't hindered by such things as candles and flashlights. His powers had come in quite handy now that the power was out. He could see everything clear as day, just lacking its color. The problem that was now surfacing was his sleep pattern: nighttime felt more comfortable and the harsh summer sunlight of day stung his eyes, though he'd been an early morning person his whole life. Now he was roaming around in the middle of the night.
Zane crouched down next to Penny and offered his hand. "Need some help up or would you rather a pillow?"
"You're just loving this aren't you," she grumbled, taking her hand off her eyes and putting it in his, forcing herself to sit up. "Laugh at the rest of us silly people who need flashlights and you can walk around doing whatever the hell you want." Grunting a bit, Penny rubbed her face. That had hurt. "I think... I need... more booze. But I shouldn't have it, so I'm going to say I just need to go up to my room. That, or find things to do in the dark. You can see in the dark, what do you do all day?" she asked, tilting her head curiously at him.
"A little bit," he told her, amusement in his voice. And why wouldn't he be loving it when his little super power gave him a leg up on everyone? He'd spent his life thus far studying his brains out to try to have a leg up and now he could naturally. He stood, Penny's hand still in his, and started to pull her to her feet. "And why are you drinking?" He raised a brow, though it never occurred to him she couldn't see it in the dark. He considered her question a moment: "When I'm not doing surgery or gathering hospital supplies, I'm rather bored."
"Why not drink? I've got nothing else to do," Penny shrugged, looking around and spotting her flashlight over at the base of the next flight of stairs, the light still on weakly. She'd have to check to see if the fall damaged it in some way. Going over, she started to lean down, when she decided it wouldn't be a good idea and straightened up, pointing at it with a childish pout on her face. "Get it for me," she whined, waving her hand uselessly at it. "My power should be making flashlights come to me when I want. Like, like whoosh!" The flashlight didn't even roll a bit, and Penny scowled, looking down at her hand. "Useless, absolutely useless."
"Get it for you?" He furrowed his brows and looked over at the flashlight she was gesturing toward. "I didn't even hear a 'please' in there." He let go of her hand and crossed his arms. "How much did you drink?" The pouting was a new thing, and the 'whoosh' lead him to believe the amount she'd drank was a little too much. "Do you need assistance getting to your room?" He didn't really need to find someone at his door in awhile telling him she'd fallen down a flight of stairs and broken bones.
"Pleeeeeeease," she whined again, frowning down at it. "I don't wanna hit my head." Penny reached for it lazily, as though her arm had somehow grown in the last five seconds, but finding it the same length and still out of reach she sighed and put her hands on her hips, looking at him. "I didn't have a lot! I did the Zane thing and had three shots of tequila on an empty stomach. It was good tequila, too. Strong shit," Penny rambled, rubbing her stomach as though to thank it for doing such a good job. "You should- you should come to my room! I wanna play a game with you. We won't be boooored," she tempted, grinning at him.
Zane groaned but went to retrieve the flashlight anyway. He had a feeling Penny could whine with the best of them and that alcohol-soaked Penny was even better at it. He didn't want to positively reinforce it, but he didn't want to listen to it either. "Here." He pushed it back into her hand. "And I had more than three shots the other night," he argued. "I don't know how many, but it was more than three." He wasn't a lightweight.
"I'll take you to your room but I'd rather not play a game," he told her. He looked her over trying to figure the best way to guide her. There was grabbing her arm with his hand, which felt a little too aggressive. Or he could put his arm around her waist or back, but that felt too intimate. He considered a moment longer and then finally grabbed her free hand and linked it around his arm just before starting up the next flight of stairs. "Which room is yours again?"
"I know you did. You had a lot. But I didn't feel like getting sloshed, just a little tipsy, and I did the trick. Unlike you, you just wanted to be a drunkard all over the place," she blurted out as she took the flashlight, frowning down at it. The beam seemed weaker than it had been. Was she rambling or was she having normal conversation? It was hard to tell, considering she was talking to Zane, and Penny had always brought out the most irritating conversation specifically for him. But looping her arm through his made her smile, and rest her head on his shoulder for a moment before lifting it back up to climb the stairs properly. Just a friendly, comfortable thank you.
"505," she said, patting the key in her pocket with her flashlight. "And it's a fun game! You'll like it. Besides, what else do you have to do, look out a window and be broody?" Penny giggled, tripping over the top stair again but managing to stay upright. "It's a naked game. You should dooooo it," she tempted him, smirking, before looking back down at the flashlight and shaking it. Looking it over closely, she took her hand back so she could screw the glass part in tighter, and then shouted out when a bright light blinded her. Quickly pointing the flashlight in another direction, Penny held her hand over her eyes again, before finally muttering, "... ow."
"I just wanted to drown some things," he informed her, his voice tense. It hadn't been about being drunk, just about being numb. But he didn't want to talk about the other night or what had perpetrated his desire to drink so much, so he dropped the subject as quickly as he had defended himself. Instead he concentrated on getting them both up the stairs safely. He could see each step so he paid more mind to where Penny was placing her feet, keeping a tight grip on her arm around his in case she slipped.
"I don't brood." His brows furrowed. "I think." Of course the things he thought about weren't pleasant and they often plagued him. "Fine. I brood sometimes," he relented. He reached out to grab her as she tripped but she managed to catch herself. "What is the point of this game? Simply to get naked because that can be done without a game involved." He released her arm once they were off the stairs and onto the fifth floor--she didn't seem far enough gone that walking would be an issue--and he watched her fiddle with the flashlight. Then the beam of light boomed out brighter across the black of the hallway, cutting across his eyes though it hadn't been pointed at his face. "Fuck, Penny!" He put his hand over his own eyes, waiting for the vibrant spots to fade. "Keep the bright lights away from me."
"I didn't know it was gonna do that," she whined, shaking it again as if in punishment. "That hurt," she added on a small pout, looking down at the flashlight. After a few seconds, Penny's eyes began to adjust themselves back to the relative darkness, and she beamed it on the doors, trying to find her own room. "Ah ha," she muttered to herself, and began walking down the hall towards it, stopping in front of the door and trying to open it. It wouldn't open. She scowled, trying again, before remembering she had to use her key.
"Oh, right," she mumbled, digging in her pocket to extract it before finally unlocking the door and entering the room, flicking the lights out of habit and then scowling more when they didn't go on. "I'll explain, hold on a second." Penny went to disappear into the bathroom, shutting the door behind her and setting the flashlight on the counter. If they were going to play the naked game, she had to be properly prepared, and even though she had put make up on earlier she wanted to make sure it was still there and covered everything well.
Zane fumbled his way into Penny's room, his hand still over his eyes. They hadn't adjusted back yet, the shot of light being like staring into the sun for a moment. The bright spots danced in front of his vision and he leaned against the wall just inside her door, squeezing his eyes shut and opening them again. Spots still hoovered but they were smaller now and he could see the outlines of shapes starting to come into focus. He blinked, clearing things up further. Damn, that had hurt, and he wondered if it was anything like turning on a light near someone with night vision goggles.
Once the shades of gray were back in focus and the lights mostly gone, he stared across at the closed bathroom door wondering why he was still standing there. He had only agree to make sure she got to her room safely, and she had. He had little interest in playing a game, even if it was a naked game. Those just made him think of high school and he was beyond playing games to get a girl naked. "Explain through the door."
Penny lifted her shirt, frowning at her chest. She hadn't actually expected to get naked for anyone tonight (although she certainly didn't mind the prospect), so she had slapped on her foundation haphazardly. The outline of scars, and the very noticeable one below her left breast weren't as well hidden as they should have been. Grimacing, she picked up the stage makeup she had been using for years, noticing how low she was on it and feeling a twinge of nervousness at that. This stuff was hard to come by. What was she going to use when it was gone?
Still, she opened the bottle and put some on her pointer and middle fingers, gingerly rubbing over and blending out scars, until they magically melted into her skin. "It's kind of like twenty questions, only not," Penny started to explain, voice louder so Zane could hear through the door. She was being very quiet otherwise. "Each one of us guesses something about the other, and if we get it right we're fine. If we get it wrong we have to take off an article of clothing. You can guess anything, just not anything that's been told to you. Because that's cheating." Penny smirked a bit to herself, picking up her powder blush and skin powder, brushing it over the foundation to make sure it set. She gave everything a moment more to dry, very quietly putting her make up in drawers as she continued. "And, er, I guess that's it. Kind of like twenty questions, only you only get one question."
A game...that made him feel like he was in high school...which could potentially reveal personal things about himself. That was three strikes. And what was taking her so long in there? Just because he could see in the dark didn't mean she needed to do her hair, or whatever, just for a stripping game. "That doesn't sound like a game I would enjoy much," he told Penny through the door, the skepticism heavy in his voice. Still, he closed the door to her room and walked further inside, sitting down at the edge of the bed there. An advantage to the game was that she knew almost nothing about him and he doubted he was so transparent she would guess too successfully. So, perhaps he could easily win the game and get a free show. Then again she had been a stripper so with the right words he could probably get a free show anyway.
When she was sure nothing would budge, and it wasn't obviously noticeable even to someone with night vision, she opened the door and pouted at him. "Pleeeeeease?" Penny asked, going over and sitting down next to him. "It'll be fun! I'll even throw in a couple of dumbass guesses so you don't feel too vulnerable," she winked, nudging him gently. "Pleeeeeeease? What else do you have to do?"
There was that sound again, like nails on a chalkboard. "Whining is not an attractive quality on a grown woman," he informed her, raising a brow. "If you promise to stop, I will play for awhile." How bad could it be? He admitted a few things, maybe lost some clothes, and saw half a naked woman. Besides, he really did have nothing better to do. "The free passes are unnecessary though. I plan to win regardless. You go first."
"Whining is especially attractive when it helps me to get my way," Penny giggled, but leaned back a bit and considered him. Hm. What could she guess about Zane, since he wasn't offering any free passes? She chewed on her lip a bit, considering. What oh what could be roiling about in Zane's past life... "You went into med school because that's what your parents expected you to do," she guessed, tilting her head. He seemed so against being referred to as a doctor, it made sense.
Zane eyed her a moment. Maybe this wouldn't go as smoothly for him as he first thought. "Before I confirm or deny that, let's go over a few rules." He crossed arms. "Such as, what counts as an article of clothing? A shoe or sock separately or are we just going for big items?" Already she had one advantage if she was wearing a bra, though with Penny that was a big if. "And how accurate does the statement need to be? Is there a certain amount of wiggle room allowed?"
She smirked a bit, confident she had him on the run with that reaction. But she could save it. "Yes, a shoe or a sock counts, although that's no fun that way," Penny giggled, lying down on the back and crossing her hands behind her head. "Wiggle room is allowed, and so are hints, there's no way anyone could guess spot on, after all. For example, say you want to guess where I grew up, if you didn't know. If you said I grew up in Maine, you'd be wrong... but if you said I grew up in Reno, I could say close and you'd get one more chance, and if you blew it you'd have to strip. Something like that."
"Fair enough." He liked to know where he stood before he started. "You're right, mostly," he told her. "Just my father though." His mother hadn't had any real expectations for him, at least nothing like that. When he was a child he remembered her saying she wanted him to be happy, but nothing beyond that and even that much she had stopped saying once he entered high school. "Now, you..." He narrowed his eyes at Penny, thinking. He knew a good amount about her already: where she had come from; that she'd been a stripper; that she'd been married and divorced; and that she'd been abused. He realized knowing so much was a disadvantage as he would have to make assumptions around most of the usual childhood and bad-things-in-life categories. "You never knew your father."
She nodded, lifting a brow at him. "Correcto. He was just a sperm donor, my mom never told me about him either. As far as the story goes that I know of he was a rich, married man and refused to leave his family for his 'one true love'." Penny rolled her eyes, using finger quotations and all. Crossing her legs, she looked at him again, frowning. There were so many things to guess. "You were thinking of going into surgery," she tried, lifting a brow at him. He had mentioned his surgical residency, and all.
Love. Zane scoffed. There was that word again. People so seemed to enjoy throwing it around, and Zane couldn't help but think Penny's mother had been tricked into bed by her father. That, or the man just thought he loved everyone: his wife, Penny's mom, and whoever else he probably had on the side. All of which added to Zane's theory that love was just garbage and lies. "Yes... But you already knew that. Care to venture what my first choice in specialization was?" He had entertained several options but she was never going to guess his first choice.
Penny licked her lips, squinting her eyes at him. Hm. She remembered how he had dealt with Charity, in what seemed a very efficient and knowledgeable manner, but that didn't necessarily indicate what field he wanted to go into. Everything she knew about him bounced around in her head... and then she realized she really didn't know that much to go on, even with his personality. It seemed to bounce around at times. "Reconstructive?" she hazarded a guess, prepared to be wrong.
A small smile appeared on his face, though he wasn't sure if she could see it in the dark. That was another advantage he had--the ability to see her so much better than she could see him. Unless she planned to use that flashlight as a spotlight. "No, not reconstructive." There was money to be made in it, if that was all he'd cared about, but very little challenge. "Transplant surgery--heart transplants in particular--was my first choice," he explained. He shifted back further on the bed, watching her now that she'd lost one. Of course now he had to come up with something else for her. He had one he was almost certain would hit its mark, but he didn't really want to use it so early. So, he tried another: "Your husband was your only serious relationship you've ever had."
Too lazy to sit up to take off any clothing, she just kicked off her shoes, stretching a bit. "Transplants... really?" If Penny was at all a poetic person, she could say his preference for heart transplants was the physical representation of his desire to really have love and the ability to care. But she wasn't, so she didn't mention it. "If you don't count the one that wasn't my choice, then yeah, he was." She couldn't help but give a wry grin at that, stretching and closing her eyes. Hm. What else could she guess about Zane... "When you left med school, you opted for a lower paying job." She had no idea what it could've been, but she was certain he hadn't traded it in for being a stock broker or something of the sort. Hm. He knew how to shoot, unless he went to a gun club as a youth she was fairly certain he hadn't learned it in college. There were quite a few possibilities in mind, but she'd wait to see what his answer was before throwing anything out there.
"Yes, transplants," he confirmed. That would have been nothing if not challenging. He watched her kick her shoes off. Boring so far. "The one that wasn't your choice...?" he echoed. What a cryptic statement and he couldn't fathom what it meant. When she made her guess, he nodded. "Yes, much lower paying." Money hadn't really been a problem for him before leaving med school. He considered her another moment, feeling this was all a little too easy so far. Anatomy class had felt easy at the beginning only to become incredibly difficult as they worked down into the details of muscles and individual bones. "You grew up poor." Rich girls didn't usually become strippers.
"My step-father. That was pretty serious, at least for one of us." Penny rolled her eyes and sighed, looking up at him with a small smirk. "I wasn't poor. I wasn't rolling in dough or anything, but we were comfortable middle class. The drunkard still managed to hold onto his teaching job somehow, until he was arrested." She sighed, dwelling on it for a moment, before letting it slip out of her head. She didn't really want to sink into the feelings those memories brought up right now, otherwise she really would need more to drink. "Your father was a doctor. That's why he wanted you to go to med school."
He raised his brow as she mentioned her step-father. He was the kind of guy Zane would have loved to put away or accidentally shoot had he ever become a cop. And it seemed they were tied now. He kicked his shoes off and onto the floor. "Yes, my father was a surgeon," he confirmed, wondering how clear the picture of his father was becoming to her. Doctors were of a certain personality, generally; his own being a good example. "He wanted me to be exactly like him." And she would probably guess why he had dropped his residency--the question that had plagued her enough to bother him with it incessantly. Now, he needed another one for her... Zane sat there for a moment in silence, rolling what he knew around her in his mind and trying to draw conclusions from it. "You started stripping to get away from your step father." It was a long shot but stripping meant good money, and money meant freedom.
Penny nodded, opening her eyes to look at him. That explained some things, then. Clearly, his father wasn't someone to want to emulate. She could understand the whole 'not loving your parents as much as you're supposed to' fad. She patted him loosely on the side in response, finally pushing herself up into a sitting position and rolling her neck. "Yeah. My plan was to save up enough money to run away to San Francisco. That obviously didn't happen." Rubbing the back of her neck, Penny looked at him again, biting her lower lip. This was going to be a throw away guess, but she was curious to see what his reaction would be to the accusation. "Your new job... that's where you learned to use a gun, right? ... were you a thief?" She couldn't help the small smirk that came to her face, letting him know she meant nothing by it.
"Why are you always stretching?" he questioned, looking over at her while she rubbed her neck. "You're like a cat." Or someone with constantly sore muscles? When she asked her question he scoffed. Surely he didn't seem the sort to be a thief and her smile confirmed she didn't really think he was, but perhaps had no other ideas. "Yes to the first part," he confirmed. "Care to try again on the job or to remove a piece of clothing?"
Penny purred rather loud and long, giggling a bit. "Sorry you had to find out this way." She laughed again, shaking her head and thinking over his question. "I care to do both, but I'll try and guess again." Her smile turned into a slight frown, studying him, wondering what he would actually do. He didn't want to be a doctor; more importantly, he didn't want to be his father. Clearly he hadn't leant towards total rebellion and thrown away all sense of decorum, even if he did learn to shoot. Perhaps... "Were you in the military?"
He raised his brow as she purred and then shook his head. The purr wasn't surprising coming from her. "No, not the military." And since she hadn't guessed right, he wasn't going to give her the correct answer. It was one thing to confirm what she already suspected and wholly another to just offer the information up for free. It was likely she'd figure it out anyway now though. He reached out and plucked at the sleeve of her shirt. "Lose it." He trained his eyes on her, not shying about watching her strip. Otherwise what was the point of playing the game? "You hate the idea of being alone," he ventured. She was always seeking him out and she had married a guy who was a little controlling--at least that was what she'd told him about her divorce. Then again she had moved without him...
She grinned, but took off her shirt without a moments hesitation. Penny glanced down briefly at herself, and let out a small, relieved breath that the make up had stayed put. To her eyes, in the bathroom with the flashlight and now, it looked as natural as skin, and she had put it on so many times throughout her life that it really wasn't a second thought- but she wasn't sure how it would look to his eyes. Pausing, she tilted her head, before shrugging. "Yes and no, but I'll leave it up to you if you want to get naked or not." Looking at him, she poked him in the side and grinned. "You were a cop. Or training to be a cop, since I'm not sure when you dropped out."
He watched her peel off her shirt, his eyes raking over her once it was gone. Not that he hadn't seen her running around without a shirt before, but there was always something to appreciate about the female form no matter how many times it was seen. "If you're leaving it up to me then I'm not," he told her. In his mind almost everyone hated the idea of being alone. "Yes, I was training to be a cop." He crossed his arms, mostly to protect his ribs from another poke. "If you weren't a stripper you were going to be a..." He paused, thinking it over. Not a nurse, he knew that. She seemed to like to take care of people though. She'd helped to take care of Charity beyond the actual surgery and she had taken care of him when he'd drank too much. Something maternal, he thought. "...teacher?"
"Well you have to strip anyway, you got it wrong," Penny grinned, poking him again in the arm just for fun. In truth, she had no idea what she would have been if she hadn't been a stripper. In all honesty, she had no idea what she would've been if Jonathan hadn't been the awful predator he was. It pretty much destroyed her whole life, and her future; she had no sense of what would have happened if he hadn't done any of those things, the person she would have become. She stared at him expectantly, lifting a brow. He had seen her in various stages of undress, sure, but she had yet to see him, and she wanted to see if the reality lived up to the mental hype.
Penny paused, unsure of what to guess next. There were just so many options... She smiled gently, thinking up a good one, although whether he'd admit to it or not was another thing entirely. "You secretly hate the idea of being alone. Secretly, because if anyone outright asked you in typical conversation, you'd deny it."
He returned her brow raise and peeled his shirt off, discarding it on the floor. He was no more shy about stripping himself than watching her. Her question he considered for a long time, a minute that stretched to several. Did he secretly hate it? If he was brutally honest with himself would he have wanted to have someone always there to make him feel secure, or to talk to about anything? He had never felt he needed someone for that. And people who made him feel secure one minute could just as easily make him feel insignificant the next. That, more than anything, was what he was trying to avoid. "Denying it would be a lie," he told her. "And I don't lie. I felt that way once, like I wanted someone. But not anymore. I prefer to be alone now." He looked at her steadily; there was no dishonesty in his face. "I don't expect the feeling to return." Especially now that the world was over. "You've, at least, kissed another girl before," he said, playing the card he thought was sure to win. She had been a stripper, after all, and guys paid extra for that sort of thing.
Penny looked at him for a long moment, before finally deciding to wrap her arms around him in a hug, one that she hoped was comforting. "Must be lonely," she said softly. "No pun intended." She let go after about ten seconds, and then stood up and slipped her skirt off. She was now completely in her skivvies. "Oh come on, you knew you'd get that right!" she laughed, shaking her head and elbowing him teasingly as she sat back down. Crossing her legs, she put her elbow on her knee and her chin in her palm, looking a bit like a female version of the thinking man sculpture. "You hate lying because your father lied all the time, probably about some very big things."
When she hugged him, he tensed, uncomfortable, as though the whole thing was a foreign concept to him. For the first two seconds he wondered what she wanted, or if maybe she was making a move on him. He had expected one but not until one of them was naked. By the time five seconds had passed the hug began to feel endless, and she'd made no further moves. He wondered then if the hug was genuine: that she didn't actually want anything out of it at all besides giving him some sort of sympathy, or comfort. When was the last time he'd had a hug like that? He couldn't remember. His sister had most likely been the one to give it and he hadn't seen her in almost ten years. The only hugs he'd had in the meantime were lovers' embraces, but those had other motivations behind them. Slowly, he raised his arms up and around her, hugging her back. Not tightly but a hug all the same. "To be lonely you have to dislike being alone," he informed her as she pulled away. "And I don't need your sympathy." It was probably better if he didn't let her do that again, he thought, once his arms were back at his side.
He watched her strip off the skirt, a sly sort of smile appearing as she elbowed him. He had known he would get that one right, but it was the last sure thing contained in his arsenal for this little game. He'd wanted to have a firm lead, now he had to keep it. His brows furrowed into a scowl a moment later as she made her next assumption, the smile so far gone it was like it had never existed. "You certainly seem to have my father figured," he informed her. He really didn't like talking about his family and the worst member of all kept coming up. "He didn't lie all the time, but he lied about things that truly mattered." Which qualified as big lies in Zane's mind. "You're an only child but wished you had siblings," he returned.
Penny was about to argue, say it wasn't sympathy, but in a way it was. Not necessarily a bad one, per se, but she nodded and agreed with him. She was surprised she got any sort of response back, and a small smile touched the corner of her lips. But his guess made her think, her brows furrowing. Did she wish she had siblings? "When I was younger I did..." she responded slowly, and then Penny's grin widened. "I wanted a little sister I could play dress up with. But as I got older I was glad I was alone. I wouldn't have to protect anyone, and when I ran away my burden wouldn't fall on anyone else's shoulders." She sighed, never having really thought about the subject, but it was true. Having a sibling wouldn't have stopped him, and in her mind it would only have made the whole situation worse. Clearing her throat, she studied him again. She would be lying if she said she wasn't enjoying getting the information out of him, but the picture it was painting was not exactly pleasant. His father, complete totalitarian; his mother, never expecting much from him; his father, lying about the things that mattered... "Your mother left you, too," she said softly.
"Does that mean I won or lost that one?" He couldn't really tell by her answer: she both had and had not wished for a sibling so he was stuck in limbo. Though if she had wished for a sibling at any point, she had technically wished for one. At her next guess he exhaled. Oh good, they were on to his next favorite family member: his mother. His feelings toward her were clouded and gray. His father he hated without question, and his sister he loved without question. His mother lived somewhere between the two. She'd been a good mother when he was a kid but as he'd gotten older she'd pulled away from him, and told him he was like his father. And ultimately she'd left him behind and never sought him out. "Something you and I have in common," he told Penny, remembering her mother had left her too. "Yours left you when you were much younger though." He studied the blonde girl a moment. "You haven't spoken to your mother since she left either."
"I'm going to say you lost it, since I spent the majority of my life wishing I hadn't. Plus, I want to see if you have little red hearts on your boxers," Penny teased, tugging a bit at his waistband and giggling. She shook her head and sighed, resting her head on his shoulder for a second before lifting it. That must've been rough, at least her mother had been gone for over half her life; for Zane, it probably seemed very fresh. "Nope. I don't know where she went and I don't care. I think she knew what was going to happen when she left, and she left anyway." She rubbed her shoulder; that was the worst thing about it all, the part that had her waking up from nightmares most nights. How could any mother do that? Sometimes she wondered if that was part of the reason why she was so maternal, to make up for her mother's own monstrous failures, but that was just a theory. "I'm running out of things to guess," Penny admitted on a small laugh, feeling slightly awkward now, but she looked in his eyes again, thinking. There had to be something that caused his mother to just up and leave so late, something that finally snapped. Could it have been an affair? She had no idea what it was. But maybe... something she had been feeling protective over... She could only assume (or rather, hope) that his mother was much better than hers had been. "You weren't an only child."
He raised his brow. "Yes, I'm sure you do, but that doesn't mean I lost." Still, he let her make the call so he stood, unbuttoned, unzipped, and discarded his jeans on the floor. He set his gun on the nearby nightstand and sat down again. He listened to Penny talk about her mother, unable to help the anger he felt on her behalf. That her mother would knowingly leave her daughter to live in a nightmare like that made him feel sick. "Did she have a reason why she didn't take you with her?" He had always wondered that most about his own mother leaving: why had she not taken him with her? He had a decent idea for the reason but hearing it would be closure.
At her next guess he quieted. And there was his third family member. Even just thinking about his sister brought a sort of heaviness to his chest because most of the time he thought about how much he missed her. "I'm not an only child," he confirmed. Then he took a breath and concentrated on winning the game instead of letting his thoughts wander to Ali, wondering where she was if she was still alive. Or she had been for the last ten years. "You..." He hesitated. He needed something solid or he would lose. "Your step-father abused your mother too?" That hadn't come out as confidently as he wanted it to.
Penny scowled at both questions, wondering. She had no idea. "I... don't know," she admitted, rubbing the back of her neck as she thought about it. "He... might've? She was very... dependent on him, she didn't have many friends. I was never sure if that was personal choice or him isolating her. They... they fought a lot the last few years. The only thing that really stands out in my mind, other than flying dishes, is he would accuse her of having an affair a lot. Whether that was true or not I don't know, but if it was maybe... the new man didn't want a kid. Maybe she saw it as her chance to start over." Penny shrugged. She had thought about it for years, but nothing seemed very concrete. "That's the best I ever came up with. If I had the chance to ask her, I'm not even sure I would. I'm not sure her excuses would make up for anything, anyway, so what would be the point in knowing." She looked down at her hands, wringing them together for a second, before shrugging. "You can have that one, I don't care. Your mother took your sibling with her, didn't she?"
Clearly his family hadn't been the only screwed up one behind closed doors. Though he had never actually thought it was. What he didn't understand was how Penny could still have gotten married after all that--after her mother was abandoned by her father and after she watched the relationship between her mother and step-father. There didn't appear to be anything healthy in any of it. "I would ask," he told Penny. "Just to make her tell me the answer." Just to see the guilt and shame on her face, if there was any. "Yes." He nodded at her guess. "She took my little sister with her." He didn't quite mean for sadness to seep into his voice at the words, but it did anyway. He cleared his throat quietly and carried on. "You use sex as a defense mechanism." He'd thought that about her before and he wanted the assumption confirmed now.
Penny shrugged, again on both counts. "I'd have to want to see her again before I could care about what she'd have to say. She won't have anything to say that would make up for the way she left, the years she left, why she left." She ran a hand through her hair, wanting to lie down again, but she kept herself upright. At least for the moment. "I... don't know, I guess I do," she said softly. "Never really thought about it. They suggested as much in rehab, saying the reasons I turned to drugs and promiscuous sex was to drown out the pain. Honestly I only ever really listened to them about the drugs," she said softly, clearing her throat a bit. "But I've heard that kids who were sexually abused tend to be that way, so... You can have that one, too."
Feeling awkward talking about those things, things she really had never thought about and wasn't smart enough to know, Penny rubbed the back of her neck and kept herself from looking at him. It was her turn now, and she had no idea what to say. So instead she just asked softly, "Do you think they're all still alive?" But realizing that wasn't a valid guess, she cleared her throat again, took a second, and then added: "You became a cop to look for them."
He nodded, not blaming her for how she felt about her mother. "Your mother's leaving is far less forgivable than mine. My mother wanted to escape my father so I don't blame her for leaving." He never really had, only wished she'd taken him with her. Or least said goodbye or let him know where they were going. He watched her nervous habits as she talked about rehab: the hand through her hair, the clearing throat, the fact that she kept rubbing her neck. He imagined talking about things like abuse and rehab could make her uncomfortable. He had never suffered any of those things in his life and despite it's harsh moments, his life suddenly felt like it had been so much easier than hers.
"I don't know if they're still alive." He looked steadily at her a moment and then turned away. "I doubt it and I think it might be better to believe they're not. It's more likely and more logical. Besides, what would I do if they were? Go find them when I have no idea where to look." At her guess he shook his head. "No, that's not why I became a cop. I could see where it would be an advantage for finding them, but it wasn't the reason."
"I don't blame her for leaving, either," she said softly, biting her lip a little. "Just leaving me behind." Penny stayed quiet for a moment, hating the way this made her feel. She had definitely not imagined the game getting this deep or personal. But it had, and there was no turning back now. She just took off her bra, tossing it aside as she asked, "So why'd you become a cop, then?" She didn't have much energy left to fancy a guess.
Nor did she notice the mistake she had made with her make up. She hadn't taken her bra off when reapplying, the alcohol still dulling her senses, so while her stomach and the parts of her breasts that could be seen over the bra cups had all been covered perfectly, mimicking skin... the skin underneath her bra had on a much lighter coat, and although the scars didn't look so bad... they were obviously noticeable- at least, in this light, to someone who could see in the dark. Penny probably wouldn't have noticed even if she did look down. There were several long, dull scars across her breasts, and the scar from beneath her left one didn't have the normal covering it did either; it was probably the most noticeable of them all. "Wait... you didn't guess anything."
Zane watched her bra go flying off and then shook his head. "I'm not telling you unless you want to lose an article of clothing for it." This was a guessing game, not an offering-up-free-information game. His eyes searched topless Penny--nothing she wasn't used to, he was sure. Between admissions of promiscuous sex and being a stripper, there was no way she was uncomfortable with his roving eyes. Especially given she had suggested the game in the first place. "I was waiting until you..." He paused, his brows furrowing as he focused on one patch of skin under her breast. He didn't have to be a doctor to know what he was looking at. "...stripped," he finished. And then tilted his head a little to side. "Is that a scar?" It was a strange place for a scar unless she'd had badly botched breast implants.
"Male," she teased, rolling her eyes until he asked about the scar. Penny looked down quickly, and noticed it right away. Her eyes widened, and a stream of cuss words floated very liberally throughout her head. "I, um, yeah," she stuttered, reaching down and grabbing her shirt, holding it over her chest and refusing to look at him. She had paled, and she scratched the back of her head again, wanting to rush up and into the bathroom and cover it up, but the damage was already done.
That was a strange reaction to something he'd thought was innocuous at first. "Why are you hiding it?" He wondered that more than where she had gotten it. And surely she'd known it was there so why suggest a game where she could be nude if she was somehow embarrassed by it? "I believe hiding behind clothes defeats the purpose of the the game," he pointed out. Then suddenly it hit him why she might want to tuck herself away at his seeing it. "That scar is from your stepfather, isn't it?" It wasn't a guess for the game, though it could serve as one. Had he not just seen a few old bruises on Paige from similar abuse? "Just how hard did he hit you?" Zane continued, his jaw clenching.
Penny was caught, now, and as much as she wanted to ignore the topic she was sure it wasn't going to happen. Instead, she just didn't look at him, studying the beam of moonlight that fell on the floor with fascination. "I- managed to run away... once," she let out haltingly, voice jerking a bit at the memory. "I didn't have a lot of money, but he didn't know where I worked, and I had squirreled enough away to get a bus ticket somewhere, just away from the city." She bit her lip, not wanting to admit what would come out next, but it was the truth and she couldn't fake it; nor could she bring herself to lie to him, to push him away by that one act. "I... hid out by the bus station for a week, blew all my money on coke and got high. I'd go back to work to get more money, determined on saving up to leave and because I didn't want to go pro and I'd... blow it all... again." Tears started to come to the corners of her eyes and she wiped them away, not wanting him to see. "He found me... and brought me home... and beat me so hard he b-broke a couple of rib bones. Through the skin. I spent a few days in a... hospital... saying a very heavy bookshelf fell... on me..." She couldn't help it, a few tears fell, but she turned her back on him and just barely resisted putting the shirt back on altogether. This was her suggestion, she'd follow through on it. Just not right now.
The muscle in his jaw twitched as he listened and watched her. She was crying and he didn't know what to do with that. He wasn't an inherently comforting person at all. His sister had been the only person he'd ever been able to fix when she was crying, but those tears had been for things like scraped knees and kids' harsh words at school. Not things like pain and betrayal so deep that there were scars and she felt the need to hide--and it had sent her into the arms of drugs and alcohol and stripping. Suddenly the blonde girl who had seemed nothing short of clingy and irritating came into sharp focus and became a whole--albeit broken--person.
He considered telling her he was sorry, but he already knew those words never really landed. Sorry was just a way to brush off the topic and change the subject to make the listener comfortable again. He didn't know what to say though, and turned his eyes on his own hands in his lap, allowing her a moment of privacy. "Do you want to end the game?" he asked after several minutes of quiet, his voice soft. He didn't know what else to suggest, or what to do to stop her tears. Surely she already knew she was a strong person for making it as she did. Surely she already knew that her bright spirit was all the admirable given her dark life growing up. Saying obvious things didn't help. So he reached down and pulled his socks off, dropping them to join the rest of the clothes on the ground. "I'm down to one."
It took a second, but then Penny nodded, although there was a small smile on her face when he took off his socks. Sniffing, she wiped at her eyes before turning back around, still holding the shirt to her body. "Yeah, let's. It hasn't really been a fun round," she smiled softly, trying to make herself seem okay, although she knew he knew she wasn't. "Can I just rest my head in your lap for a minute?" Penny felt like she needed to feel close to someone, something, and although she knew he wasn't used to the comforting motions that someone else may have provided, she was okay with that.
"No, it hasn't," he agreed. He had certainly never intended to tell her as much as he had. And though his own painful stuff hadn't visibly affected him so much, it didn't mean he wanted to drag those things to the surface. At her request, he hesitated. The idea of her head in his lap when he was wearing nothing but boxers seemed inherently sexual. Only the heavy topics they'd stumbled upon had sucked all of that straight out of the game. He studied her face a moment knowing he would feel like scum himself if he just put his clothes back on and left her this way. "Okay," he agreed, leaning back on his hands.
Penny curled up and just rested her head on his thigh, not saying anything for a little while. The closeness of him being there just helped, she didn't need Zane to say anything. After a few moments of silence, she whispered, "Tre was great at this stuff. It was probably part of the reason I loved him. He never said anything, except when he thought I needed advice, he'd just hold me... sometimes for hours." She cleared her throat, and thinking it must have been awkward for him she eventually lifted her head, tucking some hair behind her ear. Gathering comfort from the closeness of others only helped if the other party was okay with the action. "I was such an ass to him," she mumbled.
It hadn't been awkward for him, though his mind spun trying to find anything to say to help. In the end he just listened to her talk about her ex-husband. Sometimes he envied people who found it so easy to be open with others. He had been once, with one specific person, though he'd never applied it to anyone else. And since his mother had left he found it impossible to trust anyway that way.
When she sat up he looked over at her, still leaned back on his hands. "How were you an ass to him?" He couldn't see it in this moment, when she'd taken care of him a few days before and now she seemed so vulnerable. Tentatively at first he reached a hand up, and then tucked her hair behind her ear on the other side. Strange how he could touch a girl so easily when he was seducing her and how now it felt like trying to reach through a glass wall. "I thought you said he was controlling."
"He became that way because of me," Penny said, hating to admit it. Smiling softly at his touch, she looked at him for a moment before looking away. "I just... I was so horrible to him." She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, holding the shirt closer to her chest now, simultaneously hugging herself and something else at the same time. "I've wanted children ever since I was one, I just... I always knew I wanted to be a mother. Maybe if I hadn't started stripping I wouldn't even have bothered with continuing my education. Maybe I still would've settled down young and started popping out kids." She shrugged. It was useless thinking about what might have been, especially since the way it all would have ended out was with the monsterish destruction of the world, anyway. "He wanted children, too, and soon after we got married we started trying... A year passed, no kids... Everyone else in his family- he had a huge family- was popping them out like flies. So we went to a clinic and found out he was infertile."
She hugged herself tighter, remembering the emotions she felt when she heard the news. "It was hard... on both of us. We tried adoption, they didn't think we were good candidates, he didn't like the idea of artificial insemination..." Penny chewed on her lip, closing her eyes, hating herself for everything right now. "And I just... lost it. Every time I saw one of his nieces and nephews I would go home and cry. I'd see a pregnant woman on the street and start beating myself up. I started taking it out on him, and rebelling, and he just... started becoming so controlling, trying to get me back to the way I was. Eventually I blamed him and left." She licked her lips, swallowing thickly. "I still loved him, I just... couldn't look at him without feeling sick."
While she turned away, Zane kept his eyes on her, just taking in her story. As she went on he eventually settled his gaze on the comforter of the bed. He couldn't imagine wanting something like that as badly as she had, only to find she'd picked someone who couldn't give it to her. Where did the loyalty lay then? Wedding vows were, ideally, for forever but could they still be upheld when she was being denied children? He had never allowed himself to think about things like marriage and kids. He'd always focused on his schooling, his mind too busy to dwell on the eventuality of a life alone. He'd always told himself he wanted a life alone. But would that have still held at the age of forty? He wasn't so sure...
"You're being too hard on yourself," he told her. "If he really loved you and wanted children with you, wouldn't he have exhausted every possibility? Whether it was bettering your candidacy for adoption or artificial insemination...?" Zane could never imagine, if he had ever chosen to share his life with someone that way, not doing everything within his power. Maybe Tre just didn't share those same qualities of determination. There was always a way. "That's how marriage is meant to work, isn't it?"
"I guess so," she whispered, wiping at her face a little. "He, well... I don't know. I guess just being with his family was enough, knowing he couldn't have children so being with his nieces and nephews was the closest he could get. Still blood and everything. Maybe he was just waiting for better technology, who knows." Penny looked back towards the beam of moonlight on the floor, studying it again. "I just didn't want to wait. I thought I was finally getting the chance to live my perfect life, and I wanted a child right then and there. I think... I think I was imagining that when I left I'd give myself some time, and then get knocked up by some random nobody so that it wasn't cheating and then go back to him and we could live happily ever after. I'm not even sure. At one point I even thought about baby snatching, I was just that obsessed with it." She sniffed, covering her eyes with her hands for a second before wiping the tears away. "I should've just enjoyed my time with him, with his family. They were all so lovely. I should've been in Atlanta with him when all of this happened, not here."
"The technology is good," Zane argued. "In vitro fertilization is an option if he had a few sperm available. How infertile was he?" Then Zane shook his head, pushing away the doctor instinct to figure things out and solve problems. "Never mind. I suppose it doesn't matter at this point." He got up from the bed then and went into her bathroom, gathering up a wad of toilet paper. He returned and sat next to her again, his leg touching hers. He offered it to her, since the tears had not stopped yet. "So why aren't you randomly knocked up?" And he had to wonder how her husband would have felt about that given he didn't like the idea of artificial insemination. To Zane it seemed the guy had been a little selfish, as though his possessiveness of Penny had been foremost over them raising a child together and making her happy.
"I don't know... infertile enough not to do it without help," Penny said softly, smiling and taking the toilet paper from him, wiping away her tears. "Thank you." She sighed, looking down at the paper, and then blew her nose and got up to go throw it away. They'd probably have to figure out how they were going to dispose of their trash soon; no more garbage trucks to come around and do it for them. But Penny pushed that out of her mind for the moment, sitting next to him and shrugging. "I don't know... I guess I just figured I had all the time in the world. I wasn't quite ready to go out there and start flirting my ass off. I haven't had sex in eight months, actually, it feels really strange," she added with a laugh, shaking her head. "I should've listened to the bums on the street corners telling me the world was going to end. What the hell was I waiting for?"
"Eight months..." He shook his head as though it was the saddest thing he'd ever heard, though he was really just teasing her some. "Are you sure you remember how?" He lifted a brow, eying her a moment before returning his eyes to the floor. It was strewn with their clothes and he could have made a wild guess what someone walking in would have thought. If it had been Paige there would have been no end to her teasing him about being so bad in bed he made girls cry. "Well, it seems like there's plenty of genetic material around here," he told Penny, looking over at her again. "You could always just shanghai one of them." Though raising a child now would probably be the hardest thing in the world, and she could end up doing it alone.
"Is that an offer?" Penny teased back, bumping him with her shoulder, but she wasn't serious and shook her head. "It's probably better I waited. I mean, what would my chances of survival have been like if I were pregnant? And giving birth right now, and raising a newborn? When things calm down and we have some semblance of... I don't know, I was going to say normalcy but that's not really possible, is it? Just when it gets to a point where I feel like I wouldn't be risking everyone's well being by being pregnant... Then yeah, maybe I will."
Zane made a grunting sort of noise and just raised his brow at her. "Yes, I imagine it would be incredibly difficult." At least she was considering that if she planned to go through with having kids anyway. He wasn't really sure how anyone else's well being factored in though. He looked her over again, his eyes not lingering too long anywhere. "Are we calling it a tie and getting dressed now? Or do you plan to continue distracting me with almost being able to see your breasts?"
She lifted a brow, lifting the corner of her shirt teasingly before putting it back down. "Up to you, although I wouldn't mind distracting you with a bit of naked. Fun naked," she specified, laughing. "The game really isn't supposed to work like that, we're just a couple of killjoys aren't we?"
"Apparently so." He looked back at his clothes, unsure exactly what she meant by naked fun. There were only so many things that were fun to do, otherwise things were awkward. And he wasn't sure if she was looking for an end to her eight month dry streak or not. "Perhaps the next time you play, you should keep the topics to favorite colors and foods," he suggested, getting up from the bed. He grabbed his jeans off the floor and pulled them on. Of course, she was welcome to stay naked if she wanted to; he didn't mind looking.
"Your favorite color is black, like your dark, edgy soul," Penny teased, slipping her shirt back on without the bra. She didn't mind being naked, but now that he knew the scars were there, she felt better being covered. "And your favorite food is a hamburger, because that's what I made when we first met," she teased, giggling insanely. She was slowly starting to feel better, having gotten a good cry in and all that off her chest.
Zane narrowed his eyes at her. "Actually, it is though I doubt my soul has anything to do with it." He watched her put her shirt back on. "I also prefer women in black undergarments. Not that I'm picky." He retrieved his shirt off the floor but didn't put it on yet. "Why would your eating a burger make it my favorite food?" He had eaten an apple that night, after all. "I'm guessing your favorite color is..." He narrowed his eyes, appraising her. "Yellow and your favorite food is burgers."
"Because I'm egotistical like that," Penny laughed, standing up and searching around for her skirt. He probably knew that that was just a front, something to make herself seem more confident, but it didn't stop her from enjoying the joke anyway. She made a note of that to herself; just because this particular session hadn't ended between the sheets didn't mean she wasn't still planning to try and get him there. She lifted a brow, looking at him. "Yes, yellow, no not burgers. But yours is... lobster?"
He made a sound that was somewhere between a scoff and a laugh. "Why would you think it was lobster? Because I was raised by a doctor and was going to be one myself?" Lobster was a status symbol of sorts. He had surrounded himself with plenty of those but food hadn't ever fallen into that category. "What is yours then?" he asked. They could spend hours going back and forth trying to figure out foods.
"Something like that," she grinned, finding her skirt and slipping it on again, turning around to look down at her bra. She'd been wearing it for a weak, it was definitely time to wash it. And furthermore, get some others, but that wasn't something she was doing now. "Mac and cheese, actually. It's a comfort food," Penny shrugged, picking up her bra and considering it for a moment before tossing it on the bed. She'd figure it out later. "What's yours? And you never told me why you became a cop," she pointed out, curious.
He looked amused a moment. "Grilled cheese," he told her. "My mother made it with two different kinds of cheese." And he'd always requested it as a kid when he was sick. Of course, he never ate it anymore. He pulled his shirt on and kicked his shoes and socks into a pile on the floor. "I told you if you wanted that explanation it would cost you an article of clothing." He looked over her fully dressed form. "And that was when you only had one left." He raised a brow.
Penny smiled, thinking it over. "We'll have to figure out a way to make those soon. I mean, if there was ever a time for comfort food, it'd probably be now," she added with a laugh, tilting her head. They had bread, that would last a while so long as they kept the kitchen from becoming too damp. Same with the pasta. They had water, and so long as they could make a fire she could boil it and make the pasta. The cheese was another matter; and two types of cheese? Hrmph. She'd have to think about this further. How long could cheese last, after all? "Well I'm not getting completely naked, so here," she said, stripping off her shirt and letting it fall. "One article of clothing."
He watched the shirt's track to the floor, and lifted his eyes back to her. "Just so you're aware, I would normally accept nothing less than naked. But considering you spent most of the game hiding behind that shirt, I'll tell you anyway." For her he figured it took more courage to throw the shirt down than to flash him the rest of what he hadn't seen. "I chose to become a cop so I could put people like your stepfather away." His eyes held hers a moment. "And to atone for some of my own short comings. I should have protected my own mother from my father, and I didn't." He sat down on the bed and began pulling on a sock. "Some people don't deserve to be walking around. Abusers, kidnappers..."
She lifted a brow, looking at him curiously. Somehow, that reason seemed to fit and not fit at the same time, much like many other things she had learned about Zane. "I'm sorry you weren't a cop in Vegas, I'm sure you would've loved to bring him down," she said softly, grinning and then picking up her shirt again, slipping it back on. "But last I checked he was in a maximum security prison in Nevada. He's probably dead now." It was strange to think that, she had spent most of her time dreading the day he got out. Now, she could just relax about it. What a strange notion.
"At least someone got him," Zane commented. He pulled on the other sock and then his shoes. He stood and got his gun off the nightstand, tucking it back into his waistband. Then he turned toward Penny, unsure how to dismiss himself casually after all they'd said to each other. "I guess I'll see you later, Vegas?"
Penny smiled, going over and cupping his cheek, before kissing his other one. "Yeah. Thanks for listening, I appreciate it. I hope the rest of your day isn't nearly as dramatic," she laughed, shaking her head a little. "But if you need to talk, come find me."
"No drama around here?" He flashed half a smile. Between monsters and people getting hurt, and the constant threat of running out of things it would be impossible not to find drama. Then he wrapped his arms around her and hugged her to him tight, only for a few seconds before letting her go again. "You know I don't like to talk about personal things," he told her, his tone light, just before he made his way out of her room and back into the empty darkness of the hallway.
Blinking, a slow smile crept to her face at the hug, even if it was brief, and she turned to watch him leave. "Offer still applies," she said after him, but Penny had no expectation of him really following through. That was a breakthrough if ever there was one... she thought to herself, smiling softly before going to crawl on the bed. The crying had tired her out. Just a quick nap...