Tweak

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Tweak says, "You can't drink a pint of Bovr"

Caleb William Danvers (first_to_ascend) wrote in ipswich_rpg,
@ 2010-02-06 20:42:00

Entry tags:

!complete, 2010 02, caleb danvers, trish wellington

RP: Taking a break
Who: Caleb, Trish
Where: Nicky's
When: after dark, February 6, 2010
Rating/Warning: None?
Summary: Caleb tries to escape for a few hours
Status: Complete

So yesterday morning they'd cracked hell back open. Just one of the rifts that they'd sealed the week prior had been parted, and they'd gone in. They had voluntarily stepped into hell. Himself, Mal and Jaime and a few others who'd wanted to aid. They'd followed Jaime's points, doing their best to avoid confrontations but dealing when they came up ... and eventually they'd found everyone.

Including people who hadn't yet seen Ipswich. Or been aware of it. He, Jaime, and Mal had led the army back out, carrying the wounded, helping the ones that could walk with support. There'd been a lot of screaming, and Caleb had had nightmares when he'd finally managed to get to sleep after three that morning.

But they'd resealed the cracks, hopefully trapping everything that belonged there down there, and hopefully with everyone else back on the surface. He felt like he'd aged a couple of years, and it wouldn't have surprised him to know that he had.

Needing a break, something that wasn't magic and catering to people dropping in, Caleb had retreated to Nicky's to lose himself in the noise, in the crowd, and the second glass of beer in front of him.

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sabotage
2010-02-07 08:00 am UTC (link)

“If I need anything,” she repeated, knowing how that sounded to her but didn’t say anything in attempt that she would just embarrass herself. There was no need to shatter things with unnecessary innuendoes. “Didn’t have what?” She asked, falling silent when she heard him finish about having friends. She would have laughed at him if she didn’t want to come off as a loser. The whole friend thing seemed off base when she hardly knew anyone.

“I really don’t know,” she answered, taking a sip from her freshly brought martini as she thought about it. “I don’t keep tabs on anyone. The people I talk to are the ones I really don’t meet outside of the safety of my four walls. So, it’s really hard to tell if any of them are safe. I mean, I hope they are, of course, but it’s not like I give any of them daily calls. It just doesn’t seem to work like it does back home.”

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first_to_ascend
2010-02-07 08:16 am UTC (link)

Dark brows briefly elevated before he nodded once. She didn't know if she had friends or not? Or didn't know if any of her friends were missing? He supposed the latter was fair enough. If you didn't see someone every day - or more than once or twice a month - you might not notice they were gone for a week. Or more. Caleb honestly had no idea how long some of them had been down there.

Or how they'd all survived. Ashley had seemed to be the worst off, though a few of the others had been wearing a fair amount of blood. Fortunately, for most of them, it hadn't been their own.

Shaking out of his thoughts, he drained his drink and gestured for another. Once again, he was finding it hard to push the conversation. Once he found some place to click, a common thread to follow, he knew he'd be fine. In the meantime though ...

"I'm sure you told me, but it's probably slipped my mind. Where were you from before you were pulled here?"

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sabotage
2010-02-07 08:26 am UTC (link)

It wasn’t that she didn’t know if she had friends or not since it was obvious she thought about the people she talked to. She just didn’t know if she considered them actual friends outside of talking to them online. It wasn’t like she went out of her way to visit them or went out to have some coffee. She found it was too dangerous to consider being in anyone’s company with monsters running around and people being sucked into Hell. Even if she was good pals with everyone in Ipswich she still needed to think about her own safety. All of that made it hard to interact with anyone.

“Seattle,” she answered quickly, eager to start on a new conversation. If they went on a different track and started to talk about something easier then it was possible for the two of them to have a good time. She couldn’t keep up with what they were discussing beforehand since she honestly didn’t know how everyone was doing.

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first_to_ascend
2010-02-07 08:35 am UTC (link)

"Seattle," he echoed. "Isn't that where Starbucks was born?" he teased a little, though maybe he was thinking about something else. It occurred to him then maybe he wasn't the only one who failed at small talk.

Or maybe she just didn't like talking in a bar. He thought if he'd had more energy, he would have suggested going out somewhere else. Even just sitting in the car and talking ...

...but she'd approached him. Maybe just to check in on him. A smile flit across his lips; the thought amused him in a way he couldn't precisely define. Possibly it had to do with Jaime screaming bloody murder in hell and turning around to ask him if he was okay as soon as they were back up on the surface.

Or maybe he was just drained to the point where everything was funny. Scratching lightly at his cheek, he nodded. "We've been here ... forever," he said, laughing faintly. "Three hundred and some odd years. My family was among the first to settle in the area, after they left England. It's why we even have the colony house, out by the barn. Ancestral home," he reminisced.

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sabotage
2010-02-07 08:47 am UTC (link)

Trish stared at him, taking to mind what he said about Starbucks and she couldn’t help but laugh at it. It wasn’t really that funny or even remotely ticklish but she just couldn’t help but giggle over the fact that she was from Seattle – the place where Starbucks was born. Now she was trying to remember the last time she had Starbucks which was irrelevant to the conversation.

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s where Starbucks came from.” Trish nodded proudly; as if she was taking some kind of pride in being from the place that had enjoyable coffee. Granted the Starbuck chain was dwindling around the globe because of the poor economy, she really didn’t plan on mentioning that to him at the moment.

She took the time to listen to him while she drank some more of her martini, her mind feeling the buzz from the alcohol which made it a little hard to focus on him alongside the constant bickering from everyone else around them. She tried to hush it out, her eyes focused on him while he explained just how long his ‘family’ had been in Ipswich. “That’s quite a number of years,” she remarked, not exactly sounding impress since it seemed a bit tragic.Talk about never wanting to leave and settle anywhere else.

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first_to_ascend
2010-02-07 05:40 pm UTC (link)

He grinned as she laughed. It was nice to hear laughing instead of screaming and moaning in pain and growling and everything else he'd listened to in hell.

Nodding to her observation, he picked up his new drink and took a sip of it. "It is," he agreed. He wondered if any of his ancestors had given any consideration to moving. Ever. Anywhere. "All the families have lived here for ... for that long. I suppose even Chase' family lived here once." Which he supposed would require more of an explanation. A faint smirk edged his lips before he rolled his shoulders in a shrug. "I suppose we'll always live here, too," he continued ... though the idea of having kids and settling down with a family seemed so distant. He didn't even have a steady girlfriend. Honestly though, it was going to take a special, strong sort of woman to settle in to something like this.

"What about you? Did you live in Seattle all your life? Plans to move? College?" He grinned. "I don't know anything about you."

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sabotage
2010-02-07 11:36 pm UTC (link)

“For a while,” she admitted, knowing that she always had plans to leave Washington so that she could live elsewhere. “I went to college and after that I started building my career to be art appraiser. It’s not the best job in the world but it can be interesting since I usually get to travel a lot.” It was what brought Trish to Ipswich in the first place. She had been on a plane heading to another city and before she could even blink she landed in Caleb’s home.

“What about you? I heard some things but I don’t even know the real Caleb. I can’t go on much with just a hero title. Tell me about your life.” Trish took quite the drink from her martini after speaking; figuring she would need to be buzzed to hear what Caleb had to say. She needed some sort of standing ground if Caleb was going to explain things she wasn’t going to understand right off the bat.

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first_to_ascend
2010-02-07 11:43 pm UTC (link)

He nodded slightly. "Sounds interesting though. How does that work? I mean, what are the criteria for ... art appraisals? Isn't art one of those subjective things?" he grinned lightly. It was one of those things in life he'd never had cause to give much thought to.

"I don't think anyone knows the real Caleb," he said with a soft laugh. Sometimes he wondered if he did. If he had a real self, or a self that was still living out obligations his mother had set before him. "Well, I was at college before this. Undeclared major," he admitted with a slight roll of his eyes. "I ... hadn't really settled on what I wanted. I was sort of looking at med school ... it's kind of in my nature to help people. But then I started looking at teaching and counseling. I'm still not sure what I want to do."

Of course, he sort of had a 'break' to 'think about it' while he was stuck back in Ipswich.

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sabotage
2010-02-07 11:55 pm UTC (link)

“Don’t mock the power of art appraiser, mister,” she joked, wiggling her finger at him before she smiled, figuring that Caleb did have a point. “It’s really subjective, I guess. I’m not running around telling everyone that their art is good or bad. I’m just there to go over the legal properties of their art and making them sign loads of paperwork to make it so that it’s their art and that they actually did it on so and so day that they claimed. I’m also the person who gets to decide whether your art is good enough to sell.” Trish smirked, figuring that was probably the best part about her job. “Not that I get a kick out of telling someone their art won’t see squat.”

The noise level felt as if it was getting a little louder as she sat there, her eyes drifting off to look at the crowd, wondering if she needed to drag Caleb somewhere else to talk. “Do you want to get out of here?” She asked, raising her voice to make it easier to hear. “You can tell me more about how awesome you are.”

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first_to_ascend
2010-02-08 12:07 am UTC (link)

"It sounds interesting," he agreed. Complicated, maybe. "I can show you some of my stick figures so you can keep in practice," he teased her lightly.

Because really, that was the extent of his artistic gift.

And then it was times like this he wished girls came with translators. Was that a proposition or was it really just an invitation to relocate? Was it something he should beg off? If he accepted was he secretly agreeing to something else?

Entirely too tired to devote any further thought to it, he shrugged. "Sure," he agreed. "Did you have somewhere in mind?"

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sabotage
2010-02-08 12:26 am UTC (link)

One too many martinis made it so that Trish really wasn’t thinking about it when she asked if he wanted to ‘go’ somewhere else, usually when she asked a guy that she was offering them the ticket to the all you could eat buffet. Perhaps if she had been in her right set of mind she would have made the passes to make her words make more sense.

“I don’t know. If we walk around we’d probably freeze to death. It’s either we find another place that’s more quiet or one of us offers the hospitality of our homes.” Trish shrugged, not really seeing the problem in inviting Caleb to her place or him inviting her to his. They were just going to go there to talk, right?

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first_to_ascend
2010-02-08 12:31 am UTC (link)

He grinned slightly. "It's not too bad, if you keep moving," he promised her. "But we could ..." he shrugged. "Head up to my place, I guess." It wasn't as though his place lacked extra rooms if she was too drunk to drive back to her place.

He was pretty sure he was good to drive, if he did so carefully. It wasn't like his place was all that far from Nicky's, and the roads were mostly straight.

Setting enough money on the bar to cover their drinks, Caleb pushed back from the bar and slid to his feet. "Ready?"

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sabotage
2010-02-08 12:41 am UTC (link)

She finished off her drink before getting up from her stool, not wanting to be rude and just leave it there unfinished since Caleb had bought it for her. “Ready,” she told him, not really having brought much asides from her purse and the key to her place. It wasn’t like she had a car or anything to drive around. A person needed some serious amount of cash to afford that. “You know, sooner or later I’m going to need to make myself useful around this place. No, I don’t mean going around telling people their art sucks.”

She figured that it wouldn’t be that bad if she tried to find a normal job in Ipswich. She knew there would be some hesitance since finding a job kind of felt like settling down. If she started to make a life then what would happen if it was time to go home? What would she say or do then?

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first_to_ascend
2010-02-08 01:07 am UTC (link)

"A lot of the people are getting ... jobs. Things so they have something to live off of once the cards run out. At least you don't have to pay rent though, right?" He assumed, anyway; unless she was living in a hotel still.

Stepping out of the bar, Caleb held the door for her before heading over to his car. "Bet you could try to at least find something with art. Maybe not so much in the winter, but we have a slight rise during the summer. Tourists passing through on their way to other places. I think there's a gallery nearish the school. The high school," he elaborated.

Which ... sort of implied it would be a summer thing, which sort of implied he thought they might be here that long.

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sabotage
2010-02-08 01:16 am UTC (link)

“Teach people about art?” She asked, figuring that was what Caleb was trying to imply. She didn’t attempt to throw the idea away so quickly, knowing that she learned about art by visiting the museum that was on Harper’s Island. “I guess I could look into that. I mean, I do have some experience when it comes to explaining the art found in galleries. I spent summer jobs doing that when I was a teenager. I don’t see why I can’t do that here.”

Trish smiled, not at all feeling discouraged by Caleb mentioning that she would be stuck in Ipswich for a little while longer in order to take this job. She was too interested in the idea to worry about that. “It would be nice to do something for other people. It doesn’t sound like much but I actually would like to do something with my time here.”

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first_to_ascend
2010-02-08 01:32 am UTC (link)

That hadn't quite been where he was going with that, but it was definitely an idea. He'd simply meant to work in the gallery by the school, but ... sure. Teaching too. If she was qualified, why not?

"It's something to think about. Probably better than delivering pizzas or ... cleaning hotel rooms or whatever else." It probably paid better. He assumed. What did he know, really?

Clicking the button on his keychain to unlock the doors to the car, he gestured toward his before swinging in behind the wheel. He turned on the heater, even if they'd be back to his place before the car was warm enough to make it worthwhile.

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sabotage
2010-02-08 01:46 am UTC (link)

“Because delivering pizzas is something I would try for even if I didn’t have the art experience.” Trish wrinkled her nose as she got in, unable to really picture herself doing something like that. “It would be like I was trying out for porn or something. Pizza girl here to take your extra sausage. People would get the wrong idea.” Trish laughed, knowing she shouldn’t have said that since it really didn’t have much to do with the conversation.

“I can see you cleaning rooms,” she teased, buckling up as she sat there with her amused expression. “Fluffing pillows and all that.”

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first_to_ascend
2010-02-08 02:14 am UTC (link)

"Not that there's anything wrong with delivering pizzas. We have to eat, right?" He grinned. "But it's better to ... get a job somewhere you want than to just take whatever rolls by. Unless ... that's the only option you've got," he amended.

He supposed beggars couldn't be choosers, right?

Backing out of the parking lot, he started toward the house. "I couldn't see me doing that," he said with a soft laugh. "Not professionally, anyway." As they drove along, he glanced over to her occasionally before he redirected his focus to the road.

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sabotage
2010-02-08 02:37 am UTC (link)

“No, I guess not,” she agreed, finding that his looks wouldn’t fit that kind of quota. “If anything I can see you as a model. You’re cute enough.” Further proof would require Trish to have to expect his body, but it wasn’t like she couldn’t imagine. Caleb looked fit enough. “Did you ever have a dream job? Something you wanted to be but you know you can’t for one reason or another? I sort of wanted to try my hand at ice skating. I mean, I would find myself sitting there watching all of these people looking so elegant. It just looked like a fun profession.”

Trish chewed down on her lower lip, leaning against her seat as she looked over at Caleb, unable to help but imagine herself in some kind of outfit while she slid around on some block of ice.

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first_to_ascend
2010-02-08 02:47 am UTC (link)

A surprised laugh parted his lips; that was a first. "A model, really?" He'd see Pogue or Reid as a model before he'd consider himself for it. "I don't think I'd have it in me to sit and look pretty for the camera though," he said.

As for a dream job, he shrugged. "Really, I never really thought about it. It isn't like I had to work, given ... well." He shrugged again; they were old money, after all. He'd never have to work, but he wanted to.

"Ice skating, huh? There's a nice rink up in Gloucester. I'm sure someone could take you up there to give it a shot." He looked thoughtful. "Think there's one at the school, too. I bet Reid could take you, if you could put up with him long enough."

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sabotage
2010-02-08 02:57 am UTC (link)

“Too busy to take me yourself?” She asked, not meaning to put him on the spot, but from what she could tell it sounded like he wouldn’t be interested in doing it. “Not that I would ask you to or anything or if you would even want to.” Trish looked straight ahead, wondering how that would even work out.

“You’re probably busy,” she added, trying to make up an excuse as to why he didn’t mention himself acting the part in taking her. “And I get that, I really do. You have a lot to deal with.” She offered him a weak smile, leaving it alone for now.

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first_to_ascend
2010-02-08 03:14 am UTC (link)

"I would, but I can't skate," Caleb admitted with a light grin. "I think I could, years ago, but I haven't been in forever. I'd probably be no help at all in helping you learn. Or keeping up with you."

He did have a lot to deal with though, and he nodded slightly as he made the turn into the driveway, pausing while the gate slowly rolled open. He really wasn't sure why they even had it now; it was more of an inconvenience than anything else. "Besides, I can't get into the one at school. I'm not taking classes there." Though if this dropping-in thing continued, he'd have to look into it. Maybe they had a teaching program, and he could transfer some of his classes over to that.

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sabotage
2010-02-08 03:22 am UTC (link)

“And what makes you think I can skate?” She asked quietly, letting him in on the fact that maybe she was a little horrible at it too. “Just because I wanted to skate doesn’t mean I ever tried it. So, if you think that you’re going to completely suck just know that I’m going to be just as bad.” Trish figured that it would probably be a bad idea for the two of them to go out and attempt ice skating. She could only imagine the number of bruises they would both receive.

“It wouldn’t be that bad,” she added, coming to the conclusion that it wouldn’t be a horrible experience. “It could even be a little fun if you let it. I don’t need you to skate circles around me for you to take me.”

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first_to_ascend
2010-02-08 04:08 am UTC (link)

Caleb chuckled. "Which was why I said helping you learn or keeping up with you," he replied. "Either scenario would be bad."

Pulling up to the house, he stopped the car and turned it off. Pocketing his keys as he got out, he glanced over to her and tried to recall if he'd brought her here ... but he didn't think so. A few people had crashed here before they'd worked out the current system of government housing.

"So," he said with a gesture. "The Danvers estate," he teased ... then realized it wasn't really that much of a joke; the place practically was an estate.

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sabotage
2010-02-08 04:31 am UTC (link)

“Maybe I want to see you fall on your ass,” she hinted, not opposed to the idea completely since it would make for a good laugh or two. She got out of the car once they got there, her eyes looking at the estate with a mildly impressed look. “Nice,” she whispered, unable to remember when she saw an estate that big. “Bigger than my dad’s, I think.” She looked over at him, offering him a grin. “Not that this is a competition or anything. It’s lovely.”

Trish figured that the place was a family memento of sorts. “Did your past generation live here too?” She asked, seeing how Caleb had said that his ancestors had been around for years and years. If they didn’t leave Ipswich then they had to stay somewhere. The estate looked big enough to have housed a large family.

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