Placeholder! Who: Liah and Verity When: Early evening Where: The living room What: Chatting as amicably as they know how.
The day had passed mostly uneventfully, which was a good thing when you were surrounded by monsters and death, Liah supposed. They'd found a suitable sheet and supplies to paint a sign, had let it dry so it could be hung up, although she'd let Rowan and Verity deal with the actual hanging of it, since she didn't have the patience. She'd cleaned up the paintbrushes instead, then done some exploring of the house and what all was inside it that they might potentially need. Nobody or nothing had tried to get in, and everything had been relatively quiet until just a few minutes ago. Something was howling outside now that the sky had darkened, and it was making Liah twitchy as hell.
She was sitting on the living room floor, scraping the polish off her fingernails in preparation for repainting them with the polish she had in her bag. She couldn't find any polish remover in the house anywhere, and really it was something for her to do besides pace and cringe every time there was a noise from the yard or the street. She'd decided to hang out here instead of in her room because she figured she'd spend enough time in there tonight, tossing and turning and not sleeping.
Verity had been hanging out with Jasper for a while. Hanging out with his brother right now consisted of sitting near him while the little boy made extremely elaborate card castles and still didn't say a word. Verity had always been quietly disdainful of his dad's job. Having a shrink for a husband hadn't helped his mother any, and Jasper's... difficulties had always been there, too. But at least he'd have an inkling of what to do. That line of thought brought his mind back to what his father's fate might be, and that was too hard right now. There was no way they'd be able to find him if he was alive and stuff human.
So when Jasper had lost interest in the card castles, Verity had walked him back out into the rest of the house. He would have loved to just spend time with his little brother, but the silence was utterly deafening and he just wanted a voice to interrupt his thoughts. With Jasper's fingers in his own, he headed out to the living room. He almost stopped when he saw Liah, who seemed even less given to tolerating him than Rowan, but they were living together for the foreseeable future. He couldn't be a hermit here. "Hi." He waved and dropped into a chair, wishing he'd snagged another stupid book or something. Just so he'd have something to do with his hands.
"Yo, V," Liah said, starting in on her left thumbnail. Just three fingers to go after that. Rowan had shortened his name to 'Ver', and Liah to 'V', just because it amused her. She eyed Jasper but didn't speak to him. She might not be the most well-versed about children, but it hadn't escaped her attention that Jasper pretty much didn't say anything. He was a cute little dude, and she might've been inclined to hug on him or something if she'd thought he'd tolerate it. She'd probably scare him to death, though, so she figured she'd better keep her hands to herself. "What's going on?"
Verity seemed wary of her, clearly thinking she didn't like him, but the problem with Liah was that she was just a sarcastic bitch a lot of the time. She was strident and occasionally abrasive, and most people couldn't handle that. Very few people got to see her softer side; that was just how it was.
V was actually the nickname he was most accustomed to. At the garage he'd pretty much gone by his first initial all the time. Not that "Ver" was surprising. Either way, really. "Hi." He wrinkled his nose a little. Nail polish wasn't a smell he was used to. His mother hadn't worn it and the other residents of the house had been all male. He crossed his ankles and braced his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands, craning down a little so as to carry on a conversation with someone on the floor. He didn't really feel like getting out of the chair. He was comfortable, at least physically, for the first time today.
She was quite right in her estimation. Verity couldn't help taking her comments rather personally. He'd always been the nerd and didn't really expect to be liked. He felt he could at least get along with Rowan based on their shared concern over the kids, but he had no idea what to say to Liah that might break the ice. "Not much. There's not a good book in this whole house, so I'm pretty much out of ideas."
"You said that already," Liah told him when he said hi again. Did she make him nervous? That was kind of cute. "I couldn't find any polish remover," she said randomly, as if he might have asked her what she was doing. She guessed it wasn't an everyday sight to see a girl peeling old polish off her nails to make a little pile on the floor. She had the bottle of polish she'd had in her bag sitting next to her; it was black. How uber-goth. Maybe somewhere along the way she could find some more, in different colors. She wasn't really a girlie type of girl, except she liked to have nail polish on, and she couldn't stand to have dirty feet. Hence why she wore flip-flops just about everywhere when she didn't have regular shoes on.
She jumped and nearly gouged the side of the finger she was scraping when another blood-curdling howl came from just outside. "Fu-- man, I hate that," she amended, remembering Jasper was in the room. Poor kid, he blended into the background pretty easily considering he was so silent. She let out a pent-in breath and said, "There's nothing to read in my room, either. A few computer books, a Spanish-English dictionary, a medical terminology book." Scrape, scrape. Two nails to go now. "I keep hoping to find some porn buried in a drawer or something, but no such luck."
Verity was mildly amused. She'd edited her language, which he vaguely appreciated, but Jasper heard far worse. He came to the garage with his big brother sometimes and spent a lot of time with adults instead of other kids. But she had no issue with discussing porn in front of him. He didn't think Jas knew the word, or he'd probably have blushed. They came from a very repressed household in that respect, and Verity's awkwardness had prevented him from really expanding his horizons in that respect. "It's a pretty bland house. I don't get any impression of the people who lived there. Which, honestly, I think is good. I don't think I could deal with the leftovers of a few more peoples' lives."
He quieted. He hadn't meant to go on. Blathering was like him, but he usually just yammered about whatever came to mind. This poignant reflection stuff wasn't like him. He just didn't like thinking about questions that had any bearing on the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. He coached everything in sarcasm and a few layers of fantasy to keep it distant. He sat up straight. His spine didn't really like where it was.
Liah enjoyed saying shocking things and seeing if she could get a reaction, which was really where the porn comment had come from. It wasn't likely that a kid Jasper's age would even know what the word meant, in her opinion, so she didn't feel bad about saying it. She set to work scraping neon-green paint off the last remaining painted nail as she listened to Verity's conversation. "Bland," she mused, stiffening her shoulders as another howl came from outside, followed by a chilling, ululating scream. It was actually nice to have someone to talk to to distract her. "Yeah, it is, kind of. The walls're all beige, and there's nothing that really stands out as interesting." She smirked. "But then my house still had macrame plant holders that my aunt made a million years ago, so..." She shrugged, trying not to feel the effect of that word: had. Done with removing polish, she picked up the bottle of black and began to shake it up.
Verity winced at the scream and looked over to Jasper. Maybe he was curled up a little more tightly in the chair? But nothing more than that. He didn't want his brother to be panicking and terrified, but barely reacting was so much worse than scared. He took Jasper's hand as though the boy had reacted to him. "Mine was all carefully decorated. Mom was into that. So it was boring too, but coordinated boring." Though his mother had the sense to allow her sons total control over their own rooms. It prevented rebellion when she decided to paint the cabinets golden sunset with burnt ocher trim. So Verity's room was covered in fantasy art, Jasper's in little cars, Lego sculptures, and, for some reason, horses, and September's in a uniform robot motif. Verity gulped a little. The loss of his littlest brother, especially that way, was still just too much to feel. When it hit, he'd be useless, but he was still barely processing. He changed the subject rather abruptly. "Don't they make, um, stuff to get that off?" He looked askance at the pile of green chips on the floor.
Liah wondered what was the matter with the kid, but she didn't want to ask right in front of him. Was it the monsters and death that had turned him mostly catatonic-- admittedly, that could have been enough for a child his age-- or had he been like this before that had happened? Juniper had grown extra arms and a tail, and she still seemed normal and reactive to things, like you'd expect a child to be. She eyed him with a slight frown before dropping her gaze to the small bottle she was holding and unscrewing the top. "I guess coordinated boring is better than beige boring or random, broken furniture from the 80s boring," she commented, grasping one corner of her lower lip between her teeth and beginning to smooth black paint over her nails. It would take at least two coats to look decent, but that was okay. It was something to do. At Verity's question about the little pile of old polish she'd left on the floor, she darted a glance at him. "Yep. I couldn't find any though. Guess whoever lives here doesn't wear nail polish." The polish had already been in her shoulder bag when she'd grabbed it to pack, but she hadn't been carrying polish remover in there.
Verity nodded. The subject didn't exactly interest him, but it was funny to realize there were completely ordinary (or what had been ordinary) aspects of life that he had never, ever given a moment's thought. Weird. He twisted about in his chair a little, fidgeting. He couldn't get comfortable. Probably because physical comfort didn't go well with mental turmoil. He leaned his head against the back of the chair. He didn't know what to talk about. He didn't dare ask about her family or her home, or even how she knew Rowan. She'd laughed at him every time he'd tried to talk about their present situation. And the future was a dark, terrifying void, almost as dangerous as the past. "It's kind of a spot of color, I guess. Well, the black not so much." He was terrible at smalltalk at the best of times. When every subject was taboo, it was even worse. He couldn't even really talk about the weather. The heat was making the gore more unbearable and it was hard to think about what was going on outside without hearing the shrieks. Ugh.
"I like black," Liah said to his comment. "Goes with everything. I'm more Hot Topic than Aeropostale." He might not know what the hell she was on about, but yeah. Small talk blew sometimes. She painted away, not minding the lull in the conversation. She had a big mouth and she knew how to use it, but she didn't have to be talking constantly when she was in the same room as someone. Verity seemed uber-twitchy, but then that could have been all the noises from outside. If anything, the more time passed, the worse they became. She watched him discreetly as she got the first coat applied and blew on her nails to dry them. Once there was no danger of the discarded paint sticking to her nails, she got up and brushed it into her hand and took it to the little plastic wastebasket on the far side of the entertainment center to throw away. There, she'd cleaned up her mess. Then she paced, occasionally peeking out through the closed curtains until the things she glimpsed unnerved her too much. Finally she resettled on the arm of the chair in which Verity and Jasper were sitting, placing herself on the opposite side from the blond child, not wanting to crowd him.
"So, like, what did you do?" she asked, just to have something to talk about. "Before. I was a waitress." She swung one flip-flop clad foot and examined her newly black nails.
He was glad she'd asked. That opened up one conversation they could actually have. No, he didn't know much about Hot Topic and he didn't really know what Aeropostale was. He had a faint idea it must be clothes, if only from context. Having no idea what was being addressed made it hard to be distracted. He wished he had something to fiddle with. He had active hands, and without a project to poke at, his fingers plucked at the upholstery or beat out meaningless patterns against each other. In lieu of his workbench, with its bits of wire and odd parts. He didn't even necessarily produce anything that served a purpose. But now, work, he could talk about. He folded his hands neatly in his lap again. "Well, a couple things. I'm- I was a student. Mechanical engineering." He shrugged. His parents had been able to send him to school, but work outside had given him a sort of sense of purpose. And provided a great excuse for having no social life or skills whatsoever. Working thirty hours and doing nothing but homework otherwise made for a wonderful psychic armor. "But I worked in a garage, too. Not quite full time. I had enough seniority to get more hours, but I let the guys who needed the insurance and stuff get those."
He had to mean college student, Liah thought. He looked at least as old as she was, maybe older. "That sounds pretty heavy," she said, her expression quizzical. "You must be smart." She'd gotten that impression from everything she'd heard him say so far, anyway. He almost struck her as one of those people who was too smart, the type whose intelligence made it difficult sometimes for him to navigate interpersonal waters. She herself hadn't even considered college, because while she was reasonably bright, she wasn't book smart and had never done all that well in school, and also there was no money for it. She'd figured she'd do much better for herself to just get a job, so she had. "Fixing cars. That's pretty cool. My brother liked to work on his cycle." Things like that kept slipping out and surprising her, reminding her that Jensen, her quiet, somewhat cynical and yet gentle brother was... something else now. She swung her foot harder, curling her toes to keep the flip-flop on. "It's probably better than waitressing," she said with a shrug. "Not as many people to deal with."
Verity hated that comment. He'd heard it plenty since he was an overly precocious kid. A little tousle-haired thing with big eyes was cute when blathering in over-sized words about things no one understood. He'd lost his cuteness pretty early on with a very awkward adolescence, and ever since, "You must be smart" had felt like a condescension. What was he supposed to say? He sounded like a dipshit begging for more compliments if he denied it and like an arrogant ass if he agreed. And Liah was right on the dot thinking that living far too much in his own headspace had left Verity not so well equipped as he'd wish for social situations. He'd talked more to Liah and Rowan in the last few days than he'd talked to anyone who wasn't family, coworker, professor, or customer in at least a month. He was rather glad to move the conversation back to his job. "Well, the people you do get are a handful. There are the ones who've got no idea how cars work and think they do, the ones who haggle over everything on their bill out of a conviction that all mechanics are crooks, the ones who demand that their cars be done within the hour or bring their kids with every intention of sitting and waiting for however many hours or days it's going to take..." Verity shrugged. He'd had to deal with customers, quite against his will, because his coworkers were pretty good at hiding when they came.
Liah had no idea she'd annoyed Verity with her comment on his intelligence. It seemed patently obvious that he had a lot of wheels clicking together in that brain of his, and she didn't see anything wrong with pointing that out. Of course, she'd never had people remark on anything about her-- except maybe, wow, you're a fucking bitch, aren't you?-- so she didn't really know how uncomfortable that could make a person feel. She actually thought their chat was going pretty well and hadn't intended any condescension. "Wow, yeah, I never thought of it like that," she said. "I guess every kind of place you work has their own special jerky customers. I used to hate when people'd bring their screaming brats into the diner and let them run all over the place. I almost broke a plate over one of 'em's head because they were under my feet every ten seconds." She rolled her eyes. "Not everyone's a decent kid like Jas over there." She smiled at the boy, having no idea if he was listening to their conversation or not.
Jasper did look up at her, though his expression didn't change much beyond a twitch that might have been a smile. Verity was still glad to see it, though, and gave her a much broader one. Even that was a lot to get from Jas lately. "The kids weren't always so bad, really." Verity had odd standards for behavior, growing up with adults who couldn't modulate theirs or the kids' and two brothers who'd been, in their own ways, rather odd. "It was just that their parents didn't have any control over them. And they'd try and pick up whatever was lying around or run into the workroom where we'd have all sorts of things little fingers shouldn't touch." Except most of those kids were dead or monsters now. Maybe all of them. There wasn't a safe conversation topic anywhere. Verity swallowed a little uncomfortably, trying not to show where his mind had just gone. "And at least I didn't have to depend on tips. Can't imagine that's pleasant. People who stiff you because you didn't get your coffee to them or didn't answer right when they felt the need to ask if you'd accepted Jesus Christ as your lord and savior or who just didn't bring enough cash and didn't want to use their cards..." Talking too much. Yes. It almost wasn't worth remarking on, was it?
Liah was pleased to have gotten even the tiniest response from Jasper, and her smile widened before she turned her gaze to Verity again. "There's a lot more ways they could get hurt in a garage area, too," she said. And then, of course, the inattentive parents would sue. Sometimes she thought that most of the world suffered from a persistent lack of logic. She blinked, wondering where Verity's mind had gone; he looked either upset or uncomfortable suddenly, and she couldn't decide which. She didn't know him well enough to ask him, and she figured he wouldn't want an emotional encounter session any more than she did. "Seriously," she said, having gotten used to the boy's flow of words by now. She honestly would've had to admit that she appreciated it tonight, because silence emphasized the howls and guttural noises that were coming more and more frequently from outside. "Or someone screws up in the kitchen and it's your fault, or you forget something they asked for when you're covering your section and someone else's, too." She rolled her eyes. "Not the most fun ever." She twitched and nearly fell off the arm of the chair when something howled/snarled from the other side of the barricaded front door... like it was standing right there on the porch. She grabbed Verity's shoulder for balance and pulled her legs up, like whatever had made the sound might be slithering by on the floor to grab her ankles.
Verity reached out to steady her. Apparently his job today was catching his housemates. He looked around too, following the line of her eyes, and then toward the window. The sound was unpleasantly close. He was tempted to go and look, but he probably didn't want to see whatever it was. He didn't like how indefensible the place was. Some of those things were very big. He imagined they must have once been big dogs, or just large people. Once he didn't think Liah was going to fall over, he walked as softly as he could and turned the light off. He went to Jasper to pat his hair. He felt the boy trembling, but he didn't shriek or anything. Though if it hadn't been for the danger, he'd have almost welcomed his brother's voice, even crying. Though it was now almost too dim to see, only the light from the kitchen illuminating them, he held a finger to his lips. Verity didn't want to give those things any reason to investigate the windows, which didn't seem to be in any way reinforced or even storm-proof. He sat on the arm of the chair and Jasper leaned against him a bit.
What the hell was that? was on the tip of Liah's tongue, but she didn't say it. She just clung to the back of the chair after Verity'd gotten up to go turn the light out, swinging her feet over onto the cushion, her heart beating what felt like way up in her throat. She hated behaving in a girlie way, but damned if she wasn't terrified right then. She was thinking the same thing Verity was: what if something came through the window? She watched as Verity walked back over and sat down on the other arm of the chair, right next to Jasper, and she nodded when he put his finger to his lips. Where was Rowan? she wondered as they sat there in complete and total silence. Maybe putting Juny to bed... she wasn't sure. She kind of wished he was out here, too. Somehow she thought that would make her feel safer, silly as that might be. She held herself very still, putting one hand over her mouth without really realizing she'd done it; she felt like she was breathing too loudly.
Jasper gave Verity a tight hug and hung on. Verity didn't know what to do but sit quietly and hope they didn't seem interesting or smell like much. He hoped that the dead bodies in the street might distract the thing soon, but he didn't want to speak out loud. And that was pretty cold comfort, too. He sat still while the horrid noise rose and then faded. When it had been silent for a while, he relaxed. "I'm going to get Jas to bed," he whispered, still afraid to raise his voice. "I'm almost thinking we should stay in one room, but we'd probably kill each other, wouldn't we?" He shrugged sheepishly. Verity knew he'd be more likely to be on the receiving end of any killing that happened, but he still preferred peace. If he heard more like that, though, he might just go find Rowan or Liah anyway.
Liah's arms were wrapped around herself once she'd dropped her hand from her mouth as she listened to the hideous sounds that seemed to be right on the porch and strove not to make a sound. It was rare for her to be particularly quiet, but she absolutely didn't want to draw anything's attention inside to them. The suspense was very nearly making her queasy, and she bit into her lip as she drew a ragged yet almost soundless breath. Finally, Verity seemed to think it was safe to speak, and she relaxed just a touch, herself. "I don't think we'd kill each other," she said, "but it might get a little crowded." She tried to smile, feeling that the expression looked strained but unable to help it. She wasn't all that happy about being the only solo person in their little group; crowded or not, one of the boys might find her taking refuge in their room if it stayed like this all night. "Guess I'll go to my room, too," she said, unwrapping herself and sliding off the chair arm. "'Night," she said to both Jasper and Verity and headed down the hall.