Marisa Selwyn (a_singing_cat) wrote in light_of_may, @ 2010-11-16 20:35:00 |
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Entry tags: | 2009-08-02, julian |
The one that got away
Who: Julian, the twins (NPC) and Marisa
Where: Supermarket
When: Early evening
There were a lot of ways that Marisa had gone about getting around not leaving the house unless she was visiting Jacob or going to Ann Arbor to work her way around her syllabus and get used to the campus. But Felicity kept trying to get her out and it seemed liked she'd finally found the way. Felicity was a little under the weather and it was shopping day - and not the sort that could be put off, but the sort that had to be done or else they'd be eating turkey sandwiches so if Marisa wanted to eat then she had to go. Thankfully she hadn't been hungry during the day and could wait until the sun had started to set, she felt more awake then anyhow. Climbing out of the car at the supermarket she paused and just looked for a moment, taking in a deep breath to sort out any familiar scents that might've given her a reason to go home. Really there was only one that'd give her reason to pause and while she caught the door of dog on the air she didn't think it came from him. Slinging her purse over her shoulder she hurried into the store and shook most of the wetness out of her hair; ugh, the rain always got everywhere. Accepting the cart she was offered by a vaguely familiar older man she gave a slight smile before turning for the aisles. Frozen section first if only because most of the things on the list were back there. Two leopards in one house meant that they went through a decent bit of meat while things like vegetables were a little more lacking. Marisa made a silent note to herself that she'd need to change that when Jacob moved in just to balance his diet a little better. Even if he was every bit the leopard she was.
Humming along to the song playing over the speakers, Marisa leaned into the cooler to reach what she needed. When she straightened, cold box in hand, she very nearly dropped it. A scent that hadn't been there a moment ago filtered in and pale eyes sought out the person attached to it. Walk away. Her feet weren't listening for some reason. Instinctively she ducked her face down, tugging her hair over her neck like that would help mask her own scent. Maybe he wouldn't remember what she smelled like. Maybe he was too distracted by the two little girls he had with them. They were adorable, Marisa had seen that in a moment and they smelled as much like wolves as he did.
Julian. The one person she'd been avoiding and there he was, looking happy as she had known he'd be. With the kids she'd known he would have. Her heart was thundering in her ears and she felt dizzy, she hadn't eaten since the previous afternoon thanks to the lack of food and her mom hadn't gotten after her for it since she was sick and the shock of that wasn't mixing so well. She really needed to break that habit of not eating unless she thought her stomach was going to eat itself. Get what you need and get out of the aisle so I can breathe again. His scent was clouding her already fuzzy mind and mixed with those little girls it was worse. This was exactly why she'd been happy to remain practically a hermit the past few months. Just because she'd known that she'd be faced with this sooner or later didn't mean she was anywhere near ready for it. He even got himself twins. Twins. And it had to be on purpose because she remembered his little condition all too well. Her head turned slightly to steal another look at him and the little girls who looked... like they adored him. So how come she felt like she was going to throw up, cry, pass out or combine the three into some massive spectacle? Better question - could she fit into the freezer and would that be likely to get her less attention?
It had been a weird day for Julian. The clinic was closed and he didn’t have any pressing appointments so he’d spent most of the day cleaning out the garage and souping up the jeep (like a man). Everyone that still lived in this branch of the Davis household had been home today and it had been Julian’s dad that saw the package first. Considering there was no note, the thing was unwrapped and hung up in the living room before Julian could have a say. So, it was the reason he was here in the grocery store with the twins despite it being his theoretical day off from babysitting. There had been a fair amount of yelling with Julian having to back off first because if it stopped being about baring fangs and became a real throwdown, there was no way he could hurt his father. For several reasons, both sentimental and physical. So, he’d taken the twins with him (who refused to be left at home) to...well, the grocery store. It made sense. They were somewhat low on produce and he might as well make his sulking productive.
Chloe and Cleo were both in their human form but that didn’t make them any less restless. Julian understood that it was partially because of the upcoming full moon and they were always just that much more excitable when that time of the month rolled about. Somehow, Julian didn’t ever want to see the twins hit puberty. Or at least he hoped their mom would be back by then to deal with it. She would. Julian missed her. There was far too much testosterone in that house without her. Chloe began to wriggle out of her seat in the cart as he looked at a freezerful of meat. “Chloe, sit down,” he said absentmindedly as he touched the top of his sister’s head to sit her back down. Cleo was starting to get agitated, too, which meant that he would have to succumb to their desires or have a full-out rebellion on his hands. Removing the little seatbelts that kept both girls in place, he let Chloe climb up onto his shoulder, where she put her arms around his neck. Cleo jumped into the bigger part of the cart and started going through the boxes, pretending she could read them.
He scratched at his nose as he caught the faint scent of cat. Another were. Not a surprise. In fact, he was pointedly ignoring the smell because he knew it was simply because he’d seen a portrait of a snow leopard and a wolf and it was fresh on his mind and that was all there was to it. There was a werecat in the store but just because he thought it smelled familiar didn’t mean it was Marisa. She’d been gone for a long time. And she would never be back. She’d made that clear. Sliding Chloe around so that she was seated properly on his shoulders without much threat of falling down as long as he kept one hand on her legs, he continued to shop for food one-handed. Though he couldn’t resist turning his head. After all, what better way to confirm it wasn’t...Marisa.
For a few moments Marisa was going to believe that Julian wasn’t going to look at her. That either his senses had started to go dull through some weird happenstance or that he just wasn’t paying attention. Either option was one that she’d have accepted over him turning and seeing her. Because she wasn’t able to make herself look back into the freezer or even her cart, her eyes had affixed themselves onto Julian and those little girls and she wasn’t looking away until he was gone. So she was just wishing him gone without seeing her there. Let another few months pass before that happened so she could figure things out a little better and actually learn the story behind his twins and all that’d happened since clearly she wasn’t - Marisa was sure that her heart stopped beating when Julian turned his head and she was suddenly certain that’d she been frozen to the spot. This wasn’t fair. She’d just come out to do some shopping because her mom was sick, she wasn’t supposed to end up in the same aisle as Julian and his kids. Cruel and unusual punishment.
And he was not even no the other side of the store or a parking lot. Of course he wasn’t. He was right there and Marisa couldn’t pretend that she hadn’t seen him or been staring. Closing the door to the freezer she straightened and, leaning heavily against the cart because she really was feeling light-headed, Marisa moved until she was a few feet away. Overpowering, his scent was overpowering and again, the little girls weren’t helping. “Hello Julian,” she said after a moment, clearing her throat because that lump wasn’t all that easy to talk through. “Umm... cute... kids.” Going to be sick.
“Da!” Cleo screamed at him as she threw a box of cornflakes at his head. He didn’t really feel it, though, because he was transfixed and staring. Just staring forever at someone he’d never really thought he’d see again. Suddenly, the painting was more than a reason to be angry at his father forever, it was...ominous. A wild thought ran through his head. Could she have? No, no way. Then again.... His train of thought was cut off, however, by her approach. Chloe was pulling at his head but he could hardly feel it. The twins didn’t like being ignored. And they didn’t like the smell of cats. And...they were impossibly spoiled. Cleo began to growl in the back of her throat, though in baby human form, it sounded more like the angry pouting noises children made when they didn’t get their way. Julian reached over to stroke Cleo’s hair to calm her down. It simply wouldn’t do to have her shift in the middle of the store. Why was the air suddenly impossible to breath in? He’d had several visions of a reunion with Marisa, most of them involving her begging him to come back on her knees while he turned her away like in a country song. It wasn’t supposed to happen in a grocery store on a bad day in his old jeans with one of the twins on his head like a Christmas angel.
Julian found his voice somewhere between Cleo’s tantrum and losing a clump of hair to Chloe’s fists. “Hey, Marisa,” he responded, voice oddly calm in the way only truly panicking people can sound calm. “...what are you doing here?” Smooth. Real smooth, Julian. Over a decade of no communication whatsoever and the first thing he could think to say was demand an explanation for her presence. “Other than getting groceries. Of course.” Because that made it better. There was a reason why Julian wasn’t exactly being chased after by multitudes of women. It had something to do with the fact that he smelled like dogs half the time and the other half was spent suffering from...this...a distinct inability to talk like a normal human being.
And there it was - one of them called him ‘Da’. It wasn’t quite right to be angry at a child for existing but Marisa couldn’t really help the little pinpricks that rush down her spine at the sight of them clinging to Julian like that. Again, she hadn’t wanted this today. She’d wanted something to eat. One hundred different ways that I’m not ready for this and number one starts with what I’m wearing. What? Her appearance had been extremely important to her for a really long time and it was hard to let it go at all even if she wasn’t trying to show off for anyone. Because she wouldn’t try to show off for Julian. Why should she? He’d mated and had kids. Which her mind was just not letting go of. Why wasn’t it letting that go? It’d be so much easier to talk like a normal person and breathe if she could just not pay attention to the little things, one of which she half-thought had growled at her.
He really did smell like dog. And Marisa didn’t like the smell on anyone else but here she wasn’t rubbing at her nose in an attempt to make it go away. That’d be rude. “I came home,” she said after a moment of fidgeting, touching her side without even noticing she’d done it. She hadn’t really chosen to come back to Scarlet Oak but there were a few good reasons for it that she wasn’t sure she should tell him. Though he didn’t have any more of a right to care that she was partially there because of her son since he had his kids hanging off of him. Both of them had grown up somewhere and she really should have just let her mother tell her what had happened with Julian so it didn’t hit her over the head. “I missed... things. How’s life treating you?” Her eyes flicked at the girl climbing on him and no, her vision wasn’t cloudy at all. “It looks like you’ve gotten two pretty little girls.”
Wondering if this was what an aneurysm felt like in first person (because he’d only seen it happen and not really have it happen to him before), Julian tried his best not to pass out because that would be unmanly for one thing...and because he’d drop Chloe, too. He started fidgeting with Chloe’s shoes instead and tried to ignore Cleo throwing things around in the cart. She’d taken to beating the beef jerky into submission by slamming the package repeatedly against the side of the cart. “Daaaaaaaa,” both girls whined at the same time. This twin connection thing was really creepy sometimes. He continued to try and fix the velcro straps on Chloe’s shoes until Marisa began to talk and then his brain just drifted off someplace else.
“Ah, well, welcome home,” he told her, nodding. Diffuse awkward moment. “Are you staying with your mom?” he asked, trying to adjust the velcro straps on Chloe’s other shoe. Cleo had taken to gnawing on the plastic around the beef jerky. Julian reached over to pull it out of her mouth as Marisa commented on his kids. He dropped the salted meat back in the cart as he stared at her. “No, they’re not. Well, yes, they’re pretty. Very pretty. But they’re not mine. Well, I mean...they are...but not in the way you’re thinking...they’re my sisters,” Julian said in one breath. “My parents had a couple more after you left,” he said, fixing his attention on Chloe’s shoes again. “This is Chloe and that’s Cleo,” he added. “And you know only my parents could come up with silly names like that. So. Yeah. How’ve you been?”
Hearing them say that was going to kill her. Marisa had been stabbed and she wasn’t sure that this was really all that different except there wasn’t a set point and she couldn’t smell blood. Plus, her mother probably wouldn’t have to come and get her out of the hospital for it. Hopefully. She’d been told by someone that people couldn’t die from a broken heart but she’d also heard that yes you could. It’s not broken, it’s not broken- The more she thought it than the more true it would be. And if she thought of Jacob then maybe it wouldn’t be as bad. Jacob along with a strict regiment of thoughts about how she’d known this was going to happen. And her mom could just do the shopping from now on.
“Yeah, she came to get me and decided I’d be better here.” Pretty much true. But it didn’t really matter how she came to be there since she already was and besides, everything in her mind blanked when Julian called the little girls his sisters. Sisters. Not his daughters. Marisa’s legs shook for a moment and she leaned a little more against her cart. For some reason that made her feel better and then right away worse for being glad that he didn’t have kids. “Chloe and Cleo are pretty names.” She couldn’t really judge since she’d never met another Marisa. “Well, right now I feel a little sick but I think I’ll get over it. More general...” Successful. Which led to knocked up which led to married to someone she didn’t want to be attached to which led to unhappiness and a whole lot of other things she’d stuffed into a ‘do not discuss’ box back when she left California. “I’m teaching theater at UofM come fall semester.” I have a son. “So I guess that’s a pretty good thing, mom was kicking at me to stop sulking around the house. You didn’t tell me how you are.” Her eyes went to his hands, even though they kept moving, and she realized what she should have caught when she first saw the kids - lack of a ring. So what was mom trying to tell me?
There was something to be said about awkward turtles. Mostly that Julian must have invented the term. Except awkward wolves weren’t quite as cute as awkward turtles. Cleo was proceeding to inspect the rest of the groceries, having decided that her human teeth weren’t quite sharp enough to tear through the plastic wrapping around the jerky. Chloe’s shoes had been fixed, re-fixed and even re-re-fixed too many times to be considered normal by this point and Julian needed to find something else to do with his hands and everything other part of his anatomy. He slid Chloe from around his shoulders and rested her on an arm, as if creating a sort of baby shield between him and Marisa. It, at least, gave him some sort of comforting weight against his chest so that his insides didn’t feel like exploding. Or imploding. Or...melting into a puddle of goo.
“Are you okay?” Julian’s first instinct was always to make sure everyone was a-okay. He stepped forward to touch her arm before he even realized what he was doing. He tried not to jerk away because that would have been construed as offensive no matter what the circumstances but he did remove his hand just as quickly as he’d put it against hers. “Teaching? That’s good. I’m a doctor now. Well, a veterinarian. So I help animals...and not humans...though I’ve been seeing a few weres, too, mostly for setting bones and removing...fleas,” Julian rambled. Verbal diarrhea, get it away from me. He rubbed the back of his neck with a free hand before reaching into the cart to pull a can of peaches away from Cleo before she killed herself on accident. “Cleo...stop it,” he muttered under his breath before picking her up as well. Now, he was a bit of a sight, one girl in each arm, hair mussed beyond fixing and a cart with things thrown about haphazardly and, of course, his old, ratty jeans from over five years ago. Sweet.
Having a child of her own meant that Marisa noticed when they needed something done and when they didn’t. And right then, whichever one of the twins that Julian was holding didn’t need to have her shoes played with. It was still almost endearing and just how she’d imagined Julian being with a child. Which she hadn’t ever, ever imagined. Marisa was very good at lying to herself about that sort of thing. An ability that found itself temporarily suspended when she realized that he had just reached out and touched her. His hand was warm. Maybe too warm because normally getting brushed did not make her entire arm feel hot. Don’t do that, she thought, glancing at his hand with huge eyes before blinking up at him. Her fingers itched to reach up and attempt to fix his hair or at least find him a hat because it was such a mess. But she couldn’t do that. Wasn’t her hair to touch.
“I’ll be fine, I just have to remember to keep the fridge stocked so that I don’t forget to eat and not-” She bit her lip and glanced away for a moment. The rest of that thought had been ‘run into ex-boyfriend’s whose heart you broke into itty bitty pieces’. “Stress myself. Though if you remove fleas then I might have to stop by this clinic of yours. I’ve got this itch on the back of my neck... well, if you treat cats.” It was a joke, she even managed to smile to make it evident. Her voice grew a little softer when she spoke again. At least the lump had left. “It’s good to hear that you’ve got a career, I’m happy for you for that, Julian. You always did fit here just perfect.” See? You should be glad you stayed. Californa wasn’t even that great, you’d have hated it.
“That’s good. You’ll need to keep your strength up if you’re dealing with college students,” he joked. He could joke, too. He was fine. She was fine. Everyone was clearly fine. There were no problems here, no sirree bob. Whatever that meant. “Oh, you know me. We don’t treat felines,” he added with a strained laugh. Cleo agreed with the sentiment with a nod, even if she probably didn’t understand a word of it. Personally, Julian refused to look at her hands because while he was fairly certain she’d shunned the idea of marriage a long time ago, a lot of things could have changed in that time span. He’d been a depressed little jock pining over a lost love. Now, he was....well, a less depressed veterinarian pining over a lost love. So some things didn’t change. But Julian was reliable like that. Other people weren’t quite as stagnant. Or steady. Steady was the preferred term.
Staking her claim on her older brother, however, Cleo leaned forward to cling to Julian’s neck, making it even more awkward for Julian. “Yeah, I suppose Scarlet Oak’s always been home and it always will,” he agreed. There was once a time when he would have done anything to have made California work for him so he could be close to Marisa. As it was, there were the twins to think about now and they would be sorely neglected if Julian had not stayed in Scarlet Oak...even if his reasons for staying or coming back were not the best of reasons. His sisters were his little girls now and he was committed to raising them right...though they would have done fine in California. They might have even loved it...well, that wasn’t even supposed to be in consideration anyway. Julian shook himself mentally. “Um. Yeah...nice to see you again, Marisa.”
And there he went joking right back with her. Marisa could handle this, she could even make herself laugh like she always did. Or like she did with people who she thought deserved the effort. That number of people had never been particularly large and it’d shrunk in the past decade or so but it seemed like Julian still fit right there. Which isn’t fair. None of this is really all that fair. Marisa was independent of people, damnit, she didn’t come back to a place after being gone over a decade and get hit over the head by Julian. He was happy here and he’d always belonged here. Maybe he could’ve been happy in California but she hadn’t been ready to let him do that to himself because she’d seen how much the pack meant. Really. It’d seemed like such a good idea at the time and Marisa knew that if she could go back she’d still do the same thing because she wasn’t selfish enough to do anything else.
“You know, there’s something to that,” Marisa agreed. If she’d eaten that day and been in full possession of her wits (which would’ve involved not running into Julian) then she probably wouldn’t have said that. “Scarlet Oak is home.” Two of the friends that she’d had from school were even still there and she’d really have to go along with their plans to have dinner and catch up when she was feeling more up to it. Which might take a little longer now that she’d come face-to-face with someone she wasn’t ready to face. Or hear say that it was good to see her. Her skin flushed a little and she looked down at the car. Just because she was good at being up on stage sometimes didn’t mean that she was all that used to this. “It’s nice to see you too, Julian. Maybe sometime if you’re not too busy we could... have lunch or something, catch up properly.” Now one of her hands was tugging at a damp curl and she blinked up at him, knowing her eyes had done that thing where they went wider than they had any right to be. “Or you could lift that no-felines thing and I could stop by the clinic, get a check-up from the doctor.”
Julian smiled a little wryly at Marisa’s acknowledgement that Scarlet Oak was home. It was definitely home for him, but was it really her home? Well, she was back and that had to count for something, right? The only thing he wished had gone differently was the appearance of the painting the same day he had found Marisa back in town. Had she been the artist? As far as he knew, she didn’t paint but she could have picked it up in California. “How long have you been in town?” he asked casually. It seemed a lot less invasive than ‘do you, by chance, paint and did you, by chance, paint a wolf and a snow leopard having a staredown and dropped it off at my house?’ Then again, he wasn’t even sure if she knew where he lived. Theirs had never been the ‘come over to my house’ type of relationship. Not with the other kids in the house. It would have driven both of them to madness.
Setting the twins back in the cart, Julian let Chloe claw at his ear for a second before pulling her hand away. “I think we’re too old to be playing doctor, Marisa,” he responded, voice strained. Cleo began displacing cans and boxes again. Julian reached in to hold her in place. “Lunch would be great, though. It’d be nice to catch up,” he smiled as he reached into his pocket for his wallet. Pulling his calling card out, he handed it to her. “I have to go take the girls home. They’re getting a little rowdy, but it was great seeing you. Give me a call when you’re all settled in,” he said, narrowly avoiding a can of green beans chucked at his head. It was the only downside to having sisters with more strength than your typical two-year old. They could throw things normal kids couldn’t.
What was the saying... home is where the heart is? Marisa’s home was here because Jacob was here, her mother was here, everything that she had missed when she went to California was here. It would be more complete if Kelly was here but she’d liked it out west and probably wouldn’t come for anything more than visits. Giving herself a mental shake at the question she tilted her head and blinked, eyes probably wider than they had any right to be. “Oh... a few months,” she admitted, glancing down at where one of her feet was trying to dig a hole into the hard floor of the store. Recovering. “I’ve been staying at home, getting used to the change and going about applying for that job at the university. Haven’t really come out at all or seen anyone.” Until today. Was it a good thing that she’d come out? She still wasn’t sure.
Too old to be playing doctor? Marisa felt the hints of a pout slipping onto her face but she was able to wipe it away without too much trouble. He didn’t need to see that, probably wouldn’t even have the same effect that it used to. “Who said I was going to play?” she tossed in quietly as he settled down the unruly little girls. For all she knew maybe he had figured out something that helped the scarring that weres got off of silver. Sure he was a vet but he was also a were and part of a pack so it was a thought. Accepting the card she smiled slightly at the can of something that went sailing by. They really were a little handful. Jacob was so much calmer than that. Maybe it was because he was older. “I’ll give you a call soon, you can count on it,” she promised as she placed the card in her purse next to her phone, knowing she would program the number in when she was back in the card. “Don’t let them give you brain damage with all those things they throw. I’ll see you later, Julian.” Her legs could stop threatening to give out any time now. Any time. That would be great. Walking around the store all wobbly would get her attention she didn’t even want.