Leigh Tharp knows we're all going to DIE. (doomsdame) wrote in invol_rpg, @ 2013-02-28 09:24:00 |
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There was the crinkle of plastic as Leigh reached a bag in Moa’s direction. “Here. Get these away from me, oh my God.” Her fingers were covered in orange powder, and she wiped them off on a nearby paper towel that was already covered in fake cheese. Once they were clean, she promptly flopped backwards in a dramatic flail. “Ugh,” she groaned, staring at the ceiling, “what is it about boys, Moa? You think you have a good one and then a boat load of insecurities and weirdness rear its ugly head.” She had told Moa all about Jimmy’s recent behavior as they’d eaten junk food and appreciated Channing Tatum’s body in 21 Jump Street. The shouting, the way Jimmy was so consumed in his own problems, how she was really starting to resent him and his do-overs, like it would fix everything and make her forget how he acted before. Her face crumpled again and she lolled her head to the side, looking across the room at Moa. “Am I being stupid and unfair? You can tell me the truth. I’ll accept it.” She pushed her mouth into an almost-smile. ==== Moa sat back against the wall, arms wrapped around her legs. It was nice to not have to worry about dating and stuff anymore, although she did feel a little bit bad about the way she’d broken up with Callum (who even did that on Valentine’s day? while crying?). Maybe she should be sadder about it, but she’d much rather focus on Jimmy and Leigh. They were a real couple, together for real reasons. Except they didn’t seem all that happy anymore. She’d been listening to Leigh describing how Jimmy was acting for weeks now, increasingly confused as she’d always thought that he was a really nice guy, and what he’d been up to really didn’t match that description. Even a little. “I guess I can understand it in a way because my power is useless too,” she said. “And I’m really good at yelling at the entirely wrong people when I’m upset. But everyone has bad memories and things from the last few months and we’re all trying to deal with them. I don’t think taking it out on you is fair. Not unless you do it right back and that sounds even worse actually.” ==== Leigh nodded, considering everything Moa had to say. “I’m really glad he was trying to figure out his power,” she said. “I mean, that’s one of the reasons we’re all here, right? And I know what he did was dangerous, but it was overseen by IVI and he went the right way about it with Moshe’s help.” She brushed her hair away from her forehead and let her hand linger near her hairline. “But the rest of it. I don’t know. He doesn’t tell his family anything, so they look to me for answers and they don’t even really know me. I mean, they’re nice and everything, but it’s weird. And then he’s so focused on himself.” She sighed. “He makes romantic gestures and stuff? And I like that - a lot - but ugh lately it’s like, I’m either comforting him or trying to boost his self-confidence or watching him angst. I didn’t even know boys angsted that much.” A frown tugged at the corners of her mouth. “I just want to have fun with him. A billion do-overs aren't really working, though.” ==== “Romantic is good, I guess,” Moa said. Although, how would she know? Mostly it made her feel awkward. That was what the last few weeks had been an exercise in. Awkwardness. And not the kind she knew a little too much about. “But you’re right. He can’t just erase bad stuff by doing new good stuff. Or I guess to a point that works because you can say sorry but it becomes a bit meaningless after a while.” She always apologised to people for everything, trying to make things better, but that was different, somehow. Or she hoped so. Maybe her sadness was annoying to people too. She wondered about that sometimes. “I’m not good at relationships and stuff,” she added, “but I think it should go both ways? Right now everyone is a bit angsty and upset and whatever, but he seems to be thinking his are worse. Or maybe he’s not thinking very much at all? It’s hard to do sometimes.” Moa had a feeling she wasn’t helping very much, but maybe Leigh just needed to talk about it. To kind of sort it out inside her head. “I still don’t know why he decided to try it on Valentine’s day.” ==== “Yeah,” agreed Leigh. Moa had hit the nail on the head. “That’s just it. Sorry doesn’t cut it when you don’t try to change the problem.” And she couldn’t say Jimmy’s experimentation had changed anything, either, especially since he’d seemed so bummed about how he’d ended up in the medical center. Leigh gave Moa a sympathetic look when she mentioned her experience with relationships - she knew it had not gone well with Cal - but she didn’t think that completely invalidated everything her friend had to say. “He kind of is, yes,” said Leigh. “I told him to talk to some of the others who had been through attempted kidnappings or were kidnapped and found early, but he didn’t seem keen on doing that.” Jimmy had a tendency of getting overly-emotional about things quickly, making a scene, and then pretending it didn’t happen, too. It was frustrating to be part of that on a recurring basis. Maybe she should have expected it. He'd acted that way when she first met him. And it wasn’t that she didn’t think he shouldn’t get emotional about what had happened when he was nearly kidnapped, it was that she thought he needed to find “coping skills,” as her counselor called them. “And I don’t even know about Valentine’s Day. I think he wanted to impress me with what he’d accomplished.” To be someone, was what he’d said. When she was feeling uncharitable, she felt surges of irritation; why did he have to change a holiday for them into a holiday about him? ==== “Could you talk to him maybe? Or would it just make things worse?” Moa kind of wanted to believe that Jimmy could change, because she quite liked him, although hearing Leigh talk to him like this made her a little hesitant. She wasn’t the sort of person who would exaggerate about stuff like this. No way. “And I do wish he’d talk to someone. If not you or the other people, maybe his counselor? I do that a lot more now, but I didn’t trust them for forever so it feels a bit hypocritical to tell someone to do that.” She still wouldn’t trust her counselor, probably, had she not been so devastated right after Erik died that she’d forgotten all about filtering the things she talked about. She’d poured it all out there, and it was hard to back away after that. “If it’s about his power being kind of useless or something maybe he needs to talk to someone whose power isn’t all fancy too. I was so mad that they wouldn’t let me help with the rescue, that they just made me sit around while Erik –” She fell silent. “But it’s really not something you should have to solve for him, I don’t think? You should be there for him, I guess,” Moa really didn’t know a lot about how relationships worked, but that was how Erik had been, even when he didn’t understand why she acted the way she did, “but it’s not fair that he’s taking it all out on you.” ==== “I need to talk to him,” she said with no small amount of resignation. “It’s either that or I’m going to completely lose it one day and like, lunge at him all crazy-eyed and shake him until he gets some sense.” She doubted that would work to her benefit. “I have to talk to him about how I feel.” They didn’t really do that anymore. Sometimes Leigh felt like she checked the importance of her own feelings at the door when she and Jimmy were together. “I think he needs to talk about his feelings with his counselor. I know he was uncomfortable with it at first, but we’ve been here for months now. They should have some kind of rapport, right?” Knowing Moa had opened up to her counselor made her feel better, both for Moa and because that meant that Jimmy might, too. “You're right. I can't solve it for him,” she said. And she wasn’t even sure that was the real issue. “And I am there for him, but I don’t think it’s doing much good for either of us.” Reaching for a pillow, she brought it down onto her face and muffled a long, irritable groan. Once it was out of her system, she lifted the pillow so that it was a few inches away from her nose. “OK I think that’s all out of my system. Do you want a turn?” She pushed her brows up at Moa. “I’ll hold the Cheetos and you can tell me about Callum, if you want.” ==== “He just needs to get into his head that there are a lot of people with powers that aren’t exactly useful. Like me. There are people who turn into dust and plants and stuff. I don’t know why his would be worse.” Moa went back to the Cheetos because it was hard not to. “And yeah. It’s about you too. I know it’s easy to forget when you don’t feel all that good yourself, but...” She had no idea where to go with this argument because she didn’t want Leigh to think she wasn’t on her side here. She did have reasons to be upset. Luckily her friend was happy to change the subject, although Moa didn’t know what to say about this one either. “I’m not sad we broke up,” she said, handing the bag back to Leigh. “I’m going to miss the distraction because it’s really hard to think about the bad stuff when you want to look at least somewhat put together to someone you don’t really know. And he was nice and he liked me and he would talk Swedish whenever I wanted to.” She would miss the Swedish. So much. Mette and her almost always talked in their own languages, with Swedish and Norwegian being close enough for them to understand each other, but there was something about just listening to someone talking just like you. “But I don’t think I ever really liked him. That way, I mean. It’s not like I disliked him, he was okay. But I think that maybe trying to sleep with him just to keep him around was a mistake. And not just because that’s when I decided I really didn’t fancy him and of course after I told him that... he left. Or maybe it was the crying, I don’t know.” ==== Leigh smiled faintly. “Yeah.” Jimmy had to come to grips with a lot of things, she thought, but she tucked it aside for a later conversation. With Jimmy. Taking the Cheetos, Leigh nodded along with what Moa was saying. “You’ll find a new distraction,” she said confidently. And she thought that it might’ve been good for Moa to get in the habit of looking put together. Maybe she’d keep up with it. Maybe it would make her feel better. “That would make me lonely, too,” Leigh admitted. “I think that’s why I like talking to Jodi, Ethan, and Kier. We’ve got a regional thing in common.” And Jimmy wasn’t such a stretch from the boys she knew at home, either. She was rustling in the bag when when Moa mentioned trying to sleep with Callum to keep him around. If she’d had a mouthful, she might’ve choked, because she hadn’t really thought of Moa that way. “Oh my god,” she said. “I knew you weren’t like, feeling him, but that sounds like such a miserable end to the night. Have you talked to him at all or are you just avoiding him now?” ==== “Yeah. He would talk to me in my accent too. Erik, he was from down south, spoke all Stockholm-ish? But I’m northern so I don’t. And Callum would talk to me like people do back home so it wasn’t like I was pretending he was Erik or anything, It was just... familiar. Made me miss home less. Which is a bad reason for a relationship, but I guess I know that even better now.” She shrugged, and slid down a little in the bed, doing her best to not wrap herself up in herself. She had no reason to be tense here, with Leigh. They were friends. “I guess. I don’t know. At least I’ll know what it is I don’t want? And maybe the next distraction will be something I’m better at. Like... not boys.” Which was, no contest, one of the things Moa was the worst at. She was too old for that, almost twenty-two, but maybe she would learn. Some time before she turned thirty. “It sounds horrible,” she said. “It wasn’t like he tried to convince me to do it. But my first time was bad and the dance was nice and he was being all romantic and it just felt like... it might be better? Just to do it and maybe I would feel the right things and he’d be happy too and – I don’t know.” She did sound more or less insane, she could hear that even as she said it. It had all made sense in her head, when it happened, but the more she tried to explain it, the worse it sounded. “I haven’t talked to him yet. I feel like I should say sorry for ending it that way, but I don’t want to make it worse.” ==== It didn’t help that their vacations had been cut short by the kidnappings, but Leigh didn’t dare bring it up because of what happened to Erik. Instead she gave Moa a vaguely worried but sympathetic smile. “If I could adapt to speaking Swedish, I would,” she said. “But all I’ve got right now is terrible Spanish. Really terrible Spanish.” She pushed herself up onto her elbows. “At least you’re narrowing it down. And maybe you do need to like, take up something else. Something you can get really excited about. Like...” A sly look flickered across her face. “Disaster planning. Okay that’s a joke, but I don’t know. I think you should find something else that makes you feel good.” Leigh understood where Moa was coming from, even if it didn’t end up working out for her. “I think I get what you mean,” she said, but she was glad Moa had decided against it, in the end. It might have made things an even larger mess. She had chosen a different route, the day after Valentine’s Day. Leigh didn’t know what Jimmy had been thinking, but she had given some thought about sex after the dance. Those considerations had come to an abrupt finality after the arguments and his experiments, though. She was just so irritated with him. And considering that even the small things Jimmy said or did only managed to perpetuate her disgruntled feelings, Leigh thought being nice and tolerant was kind enough. There was no way she was throwing sex into ring. “Yeah, maybe it’s better you don’t say anything,” she agreed. “And maybe he’ll talk to you again. Later.” In Swedish, she hoped, but she wasn’t sure that would ever happen. ==== “I have terrible Spanish too,” Moa said, although she had been pretty good at it, until the day she broke down in class because of her power. It hadn’t been very good after that, just showing up to class had been a little too much. “And Chinese. But that’s really hard. I probably should’ve chosen something else.” And not only because Callum was in that class. Ugh, she didn’t know how people dated at all in this place. You ran into people all the time, you just couldn’t help it. Another reason not to go there. “Maybe in a bit,” she said. “When I know what to say, right now I would probably start crying again and that would definitely be making things worse.” She really didn’t know why she’d done that with him, actually. She hardly ever lost it like that, even with people she did know. “I’m just glad he’s not on my team. That would’ve been a lot worse.” ==== “It would have definitely stepped up our level of dysfunctional,” Leigh replied with a little laugh. “Plust Trask would be horrified. Can you picture him comforting someone who was upset?” She imitated him, pulling a stoic face and miming stiff, forced, awkward patting. “There there,” she said, dropping her voice an octave. “There there.” ==== Moa started laughing. “That’s spot on,” she said. “I mean, it really is. He caught me looking sad once and I’ve never seen anyone look that scared. It was like I had handed him a cobra or something.” And as much as she liked messing with Trask – it made her feel almost normal, which was nice sometimes – crying wasn’t her preferred method. That was just weird. “Let’s leave the team drama to the Eagles and all that,” she said. “I like being the nerd team. It’s nice.” ==== “I think so, too,” Leigh agreed with a grin. “These days, I prefer all the drama on the quiet.” |