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Tweak says, "have you seen my ipod?"

Joseph (laughinflames) wrote in light_of_may,
@ 2012-02-21 14:18:00

Entry tags:

2009-09-01, daisy, joseph

They just faked it to get money
Who: Bandit (NPC), Daisy, Joseph and random real-estate agent (NPC)
Where: House-hunting
When: Afternoon

The pitter-patter of rain falling was considered to be soothing to most; they even made CDs with the sound of it along with trickling streams, but to Joseph it was one of the worst sounds that had ever existed. When he woke up and heard it against the window he had groaned and willed it all away. Only it had not gone away. The fire elemental could not understand why it was necessary for it to be so loud. Earth existed without making any extra noises unless she was upheaving, Air was calm unless something got in its way and Fire, well, Fire was allowed to make every bit of noise that it wanted because it was his element and therefore leagues above the rest. Water, on the other hand, water should not be so noisy. And if it had to rain - he hated rain - then it should get it all done during the night when he was asleep or on those days when he had no desire whatsoever to leave the motel room. Today was absolutely the worst day for the rain to start up. Not even a light drizzle that could be ignored with a raincoat and a good hat, either, but a downpour that had soaked right through his shoes within ten minutes of leaving. If it could have been put off any longer then he would have been happy to, but he was getting sick of staying in the third-rate hotel that he and Daisy had taken up residence in. He had gone through all that effort of stealing a few wallets, a purse and several hours on the wireless network at Starbucks to make it so that Mr. and Mrs. Henry Speitz were a newly married couple with good credit scores, and Henry even had a little forest cottage further north that he liked to use for extensive hunting trips while getting away from business. Joseph wondered how people had gotten along before modern conveniences had made it so much easier for a good con-man to do... practically anything if he kept his wits about him.

So long as he never got caught, of course.

"You stay in the car," Joseph told Bandit as the real estate agent, a particularly chatty brunette who liked to flutter her eyelashes and bounce a little too much, pulled the car to a stop in front of a small, two-story house in one of the middle-class areas of town with a brick walkway and supposedly a garden around the back. She was talking about the advantages and seemingly paying no attention to the fact that Joseph was paying more attention to the raccoon he had not let into the car.

'I come in.' Bandit was not anywhere near as bothered by the rain as his elemental was. He had even splashed around in a puddle to prove how much it did not matter that he was soaked all the way through. If he had been confident that his tail would not have been lit on fire then he would have jumped on Joseph to get him wet. But the raccoon was pretty sure that, familiar or no, he was not actually immune to part of him getting lit on fire. 'Or. I go around back and check out the yard since I know you'll be all a freak and insist on getting and staying inside.'

Joseph ignored the raccoon and flashed a smile at whatever-her-name-was. "How about you go open up the door and we'll be right in? Wouldn't want Daisy to get too wet while she's hobbling along." A tittered laugh and the woman went to do just that. Joseph's smile was replaced by a frown as he looked out at the rain that he did not want to go out in. "I hope you can work those crutches fast because I'm not going to walk at a snail's pace because you got caught in some explosion." He rapped his knuckles against the glass and turned around so that he could look at where Daisy was seated. "You get to get out first. I've seen how long that can take with a broken leg." Plenty long enough to get soaked.

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foolofhearts
2012-02-21 09:25 pm UTC (link)

Opening the door was one thing, but getting out was quite another story. Awkwardly she brought the crutches up and over her body, placing them on the ground next to her. She had one foot out of the door before she stopped and turned to look at Joseph. "Do you want my umbrella?" There wasn't even a pause before Daisy turned and grabbed her bright, pink daisy umbrella -- it was her favorite -- and handed it to Joseph in the front seat. Whether he decided to use it or not was his choice, but she hoped that he would. Turning back to her task, Daisy pushed herself up and out of the car. It took a moment to get her balance, time which she took to look down at Bandit playing in a puddle at her feet. "Bandit!," she said with glee in her voice, "I didn't know you liked to play in the rain!" She watched him for a moment before her tone took a more serious sound. "Now you be careful not to get Joey wet, you know how he hates it." Daisy moved her crutches around the raccoon and hobbled her way to the front door that was now open for her. She stopped only long enough for Joseph to get out of the car and join her.

Daisy crossed through the threshold of the house first. The agent offered to take her coat, which only caused Daisy to smile awkwardly as she remembered what happened the last time she tried to remove an article of clothing while she was on her crutches. Realizing the difficulty of the situation, the woman offered to hold Daisy's crutches and herself as balance while she removed her soaking wet coat. "Oh! It's beautiful Henry! Don't you think it's perfect?" Daisy said once she was free. She turned to give Joseph a extra bright smile, hoping for praise later that she had remembered to use the name from the ID he had stolen. Carefully she moved forward on the hardwood floors, painfully aware of how slippery it was for the wet rubber bottoms of her crutches.

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laughinflames
2012-02-21 10:17 pm UTC (link)

'Practice'. Joseph snorted and rolled his eyes, arm propped against the window after he took the umbrella and waited for Daisy to make her way out. Practice was trying to make him dizzy by zooming around the room like she had been given a gift by having her leg broken with the need for crutches. She was actually having fun with something that most people would have cursed about, or worse, whined and moaned. Joseph could not stand people who whined and if Daisy had started it up then his reaction would have been... he was not sure. It would not have been positive, that much he knew. She had probably figured it out by now as well. She might be very bubbly and more than occasionally able to get under his skin but she was far from unintelligent. Usually. He twirled the unnecessarily pink umbrella in his hand while he waited for Daisy to get far enough up the sidewalk for him to join her without prolonging his exposure to that miserable water falling out of the sky.

'I love playing in the rain,' Bandit responded, splashing his little paws around for a minute before he scampered towards the back yard. 'You can play with me anytime you want! I know that Joseph won't play out in it with you and that's just mean of him' Joseph snorted again at the simpering tone his familiar was using. If Daisy knew how he really thought then she would not pamper him as much as she did, he was sure of it. Yet he had not told her how the raccoon really thought or spoke and he doubted that he ever would. He kept her entertained and that was better than having her sulking at him because his familiar was 'mean'.

Even with the umbrella, Joseph got too wet on his way into the house and he frowned down at his damp shoes and where the water on the path had splashed up onto his jeans. Water needed to stay where it was wanted; lakes, rivers and pipes inside of buildings until it was wanted for drinking or showers. But when it was all cold? No, no Joseph did not approve of it and he was never even going to pretend that his mood was good when he had been outside in a rainstorm. "It's one of the nicer ones I've seen," Joseph replied, smiling easy. People reacted better to smiles and it was just a facial expression, it said nothing at all about how one really felt. It was just a good thing that the majority of the human race seemed to forget how easy it was to fake a smile. "So what was it you were saying about the previous owners?" And the agent was off babbling again. Joseph hoped that Daisy was paying attention because he really found it impossible to listen to this woman's voice. He just nodded and said 'uh-huh' at what seemed like the appropriate times. "You did say there were what, two fireplaces? One downstairs and one in the master bedroom?"

"Oh yes! Right this way..."

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foolofhearts
2012-02-22 03:30 am UTC (link)

A giggle rolled passed her lips at Bandit's statement, though it was mostly at the site of his paws batting the water in the puddles. She would have called out how Joseph wasn't trying to be mean, but the raccoon had already scurried off to the back yard. Instead, she smiled and shook her head; Bandit had to know, just like she did, that Joseph never did anything that was outright mean or cruel, it just wasn't in his nature! Later Daisy would remind him of that, no doubt while she dried him in the backseat, in addition to asking him how he liked the yard around the house.

The sight of Joseph trudging through the rain with her umbrella was nothing but adorable to Daisy. She would never share her amusement, of course; it would just make him more gruff than he already was for having to be out in the rain, a fact that she also found was endearing. Once they returned back to the motel, Daisy would find a way to show him how thankful she was that he had pulled himself out of shelter and into the weather that he hated so much. She knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that the smile stretched across his face was fake, but it's purpose, she believed, was an effort to be pleasant for the sake of being pleasant. Though she may have been more attuned to Joseph's behavior, she always believed in the best in him and was always willing to give him more credit than he was due. Her faced shifted drastically, however, at the mention of the previous owners.

"Horrible thing really. You must remember those terrible demon attacks?" The agent leaned forward and whispered the last words as though they were dirty, curse words that shouldn't be spoken of out in public. "Well, the mother and father were found in the backyard -- brutalized, I'm afraid there's no other word. Everyone assumed their daughter was dead as well until she showed up months later. A real miracle, I tell you. But you'd never know that anything happened here! I personally made sure that any and all damages were fixed." Daisy realtor one hand to her chest while the other reached out to grab Joseph's arm as the realtor spoke. It was such a sad, terrible story to hear, but she tried her best to focus on the happy ending, that the girl had survived the ordeal. She couldn't help but wonder what had happened to her and she hoped that where ever the girl was now, she was happy.

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foolofhearts
2012-02-22 03:30 am UTC (link)

Daisy carefully changed her direction in order to follow the agent through the house. The living room was large enough and she was already filling up the space with furniture and decorations in her mind -- all of them centering around the large fireplace, of course. She knew, with little doubt, that that was where Joseph would spend most of his time and she would want to make sure that was the focus point of the space. When she turned her head back to the agent, the woman was standing at the base of a staircase that no doubt led up to the master bedroom on the second floor. Daisy stopped, swallowing hard and biting her lip as she looked up the length of the stairs. The brunette waited patiently, no doubt thinking that her pause was due to the fact that she was in crutches, but that was not the reason for her hesitation. Ever since the accident, when she had "fallen" out the window, Daisy had become apprehensive of second story houses -- really, anything that was more than a few feet off the ground. Her chest always tightened and anxiety filled her stomach whenever she prepared herself to climb a set of stairs. Daisy forced a smile onto her face as she walked her way up to the first step. Thankfully, the woman went on ahead of her; she didn't want to have to worry about someone she barely knew watching her struggle up a staircase or that she might manage to fall on them if she lost her balance. Carefully, Daisy propped her crutches on the step and rocked her weight up onto her good foot. The thought occurred to her that heels may not have been the most practical shoes to wear while impaired. She paused a moment before mounting the next step, not only to gain her balance, but also to work up the nerve to keep going. Her pace was excruciatingly slow and no doubt painful to watch, but Daisy was earnestly going as fast as she possibly could. Frustrated, she stopped and turned around to look at Joseph. "Maybe you should just go around me and look." The pout was in her voice more than it was on her face. She had just leaned back to put her weight against the wall when she lost her balance and began falling in Joseph's direction.

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laughinflames
2012-02-22 02:46 pm UTC (link)

It was something horrible, what had happened to the previous owners, but Joseph was affected with a lack of caring very much. He had not known whoever they were and this thing had not happened to him. That it had happened in the house did not even actually bother him. Past events did not effect how the house currently was after all. Joseph was not going to say that he did not believe in ghosts - after the Light of May and then the 'gates openings' it would be kind of stupid to assume that he knew anything about what could be out there - but he was not worried about them. This house seemed like it was going to be a nice choice, that fireplace in the living room currently being his main selling point, and so long as the upstairs was not a mess he was not about to be affected by what had happened there before. "Always good to hear about someone getting through such a tragedy." That was lip-service that earned him a smile, but the words were as empty as the smile had been. Daisy was obviously affected if the way she had grabbed him was any indicator. She could be so emotional with these things.

Joseph was more interested in seeing the upstairs than hearing anything else about the former owners, he had not really expected an answer, but he had forgotten that Daisy was on crutches. Really, Joseph did not understand what her lingering problem with stairs was. The last time he checked she had not taken any major tumbles down one. Sure, there had been that whole 'incident' with getting thrown out the window, but that had happened forever ago and who really suffered the lingering effects from that? That would be him whenever the voices kicked in and she was nearby to make them louder. He made a quietly irritated noise at the snail's pace that was Daisy's progress up the stairs. How was she expecting to sleep in the master bedroom if she could not even - Joseph had a split-second to decide if he was going to catch Daisy or let her fall. No one could really blame him if he let the latter happen. He could have easily claimed to have been looking in the other direction should the realtor say anything.

You owe me, the fire elemental decided as he moved to catch Daisy, only just managing to keep his own balance without falling. It was still mostly an act as he leaned down to lift Daisy up off the stairs. The 'aww' sound that the realtor made confirmed that it was working. "How about you grab her crutches for me?" Joseph asked with another of those grins as he reached the top. "My hands are kind of full." She was all too happy to do that, she would probably be happy to do anything so long as they kept looking at the house, and while she was going back down the stairs, Joseph set Daisy down near to the wall so she could use it for support. "You're always the one more interested in the house," he pointed out while she was gone, wishing that he had thought to stop and pick up a new pack of cigarettes. "As long as there are fireplaces I'm set." His grin was a lot closer to genuine as he called up a few flames to dance along his fingers. That was almost as good as a cigarette. "What are you thinking of it so far, Daisy?"

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foolofhearts
2012-03-02 03:07 am UTC (link)

There was not a single second during Daisy's tumble where she questioned whether or not Joseph would catch her. If she had any shred of common sense there would have been worry that most of Joseph's decisions were determined by a coin toss in his mind. Nevermind the fact that it wouldn't be the first time that he had let her take a fall that would do her damage. One moment she was falling through the air, and the next she was cradled in Joseph's arms. Her head instantly fell into its place in the crook of his neck and a content smile rose to her face as it always did whenever he showed her the least bit of kindness. She didn't notice clatter of her crutches as they fell down the steps or the other woman's reaction to the affectionate display, there was only one thing that mattered to her when she was this close to her boyfriend. Her head tilted upward to place a small peck on his jawline and whisper a soft, "Thank you, Joey" towards his ear. She had no clue whatsoever that she would owe him later.

A small grunt of disappointment escaped her lips as Joseph set her down and the smile on her face was replaced with the barest hint of a pout. She knew very well that it would have been ridiculous for him to carry her around for the rest of their tour, but that didn't mean that she wouldn't have been content to do so. It was hard not to keep her eyes locked on Joseph's as he asked her about the house, but she managed to look around the upstairs, what little she could see from where she was standing. "I guess I like it all right," Daisy bit her lip as she spoke. She really did like the place, but the thought of having to walk up to a second floor to get to her bedroom was the only thing keeping her from begging for the house with everything in her. If only she could count on Joseph to carry her to bed every night... but then her eyes caught sight of the fire on his fingertips and Daisy's eyes lit up. She snorted with giddiness that he might actually be happy here. "Let's make sure the bedroom is how you like it before decide."

"Here we go!" The agent called out in a sing-song voice as she topped the stairs and walked the crutches over to Daisy. "She sure is lucky to have such a strong, strapping young man like you to look out for her." The brunette was probably just trying to be complimentary in order to sell the house as quickly as possible, but that was not how Daisy saw it. The warm friendly smile dropped from her face almost instantly, replaced by a glare that would suggest to anyone who saw it that they had better watch themselves.

"We'd like to see the bedroom." There was no pleasantness in her voice as she spoke to the agent. The other woman's face was obviously confused as she tried to figure out what exactly had changed in those few seconds to shift Daisy's demeanor so drastically. Regardless, she extended her hand in the direction of a door on their right. Daisy didn't even hesitate in leading the way, walking over to the door and opening it with ease. It was amazing what she could accomplish when properly angered. The room itself managed to pull a smile back to her face. It was large, larger than any bedroom she had had before. To the right was a king-sized bed, and on the left was an impressive fireplace. Daisy turned to look back over her shoulder toward Joseph with an ecstatic look on her face. She hobbled her way across the room and, after a moment of fidgeting, lit the pilot flame of the gas log fireplace. Standing still for a moment to watch the flames, Daisy turned around to look at Joseph only. "Can we stay here?"

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laughinflames
2012-03-02 08:44 pm UTC (link)

Joseph wondered if Daisy paid attention to anything that had happened in the past few years of their 'relationship'. She was always just so damn happy when he did the littlest of things. Like catching her when she was falling when there was someone else right there, watching. What else was he supposed to do? It would completely ruin everything that they had worked on building up with this agent and he was not about to do that. Even if Daisy was being all cuddly. He was just glad to set her back down so that he did not need to keep up that particularly close act up. The pout had absolutely no effect on him and she needed to be aware of that by now. Nor was Joseph thinking about why the second floor might be a problem for her. Really, he did not get that and he never would. Especially since she had never taken the time to actually explain it to him. Now if she was willing to do that then he... would still not even care. Might pretend to once or twice in the presence of others, but it would never be genuine. Really, had she still not figured all of that out? "Of course we have to see that first." The fireplace had to be good. Joseph was sure that there would be other houses if this one was not satisfactory. Daisy never seemed to mind the going around from place to place. She actually seemed to like it. And the annoying agent.

Well, she had liked the annoying agent. It seemed that the moment that she complimented Joseph - for doing something to help Daisy - the blonde decided that she was not any good. Joseph read no flirtation off of her, but he could not keep from grinning when he saw the friendly smile vanish from Daisy's face. It amused him to absolutely no end to see her react like this. He just shrugged at the agent when she looked at him after Daisy crutched herself away to the bedroom. If the woman wanted to go ahead and take issue with their agent for complimenting him - or really, complimenting her for being with him - then Joseph was not going to stand in her way. What amused him even more was how quickly Daisy went to the fireplace. It was like she had been specially trained in the best way to make a room appealing. He actually appreciated it today, when it was raining outside and his mood was balancing along the line of 'foul'. "I think that we might be able to stay here. As soon as we make sure that everything checks out." Another thing that Joseph had learned was that if you were going to do something, you had to do it all the way or people started getting suspicious. "Think that we can finish the paperwork up back at your office and get everything rolling on this? Daisy seems pretty eager and I don't want to make her wait too long."

'Backyard's cool,' Bandit reported. 'In case anyone cared.'

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