Who: Colt Byron and Joss Makepeace What: Joss returns a letter, Colt is mean When: End of the week Where: Colt's apartment Warnings: None.
The first week of every month, without fail, the publishers sent her the mail. The envelopes came, the bright colored card ones and the pastels and the crisp business ones with the creamily rich embossing all bundled together like song-birds into a cage for selling, wrapped about with the thick kind of elastics used solely for bundling. When it had first begun, they had been a slow and constant trickle into the little gold postal-box labeled with her apartment number in the lobby -- until the trickle had tided into a pool that refused to be contained and the doorman used to meet her with a harassed look and little tight lines about his mouth, handing her a packet of envelopes each time she came and went, and the piles of post sat untidily on the ornamental table the apartment building kept cleanly free of everything but ornamental flowers. She had to be tidied away, to be cleaned up until the doorman's face lost its wrinkles -- and then the quiet agreement had been that for all but one week in the month, there would be no post from the publishers and then chaos was permitted but just for one week. It was nearing the end, and the doorman looked quite happy as he (courteously) offered to put the sack of post into the elevator for her, and to heave it into her apartment on her behalf -- because 'you don't look quite yourself, Miss'.
Joss didn't, and was quite well-aware of the fact, but being told so accounted for the crispness with which she said 'no', and then the apology of a smile and she shut her door with a quiet click and took herself into her sitting room with a sack of love-letters to her stories and made herself a cup of tea to curl up with. Her shoes were cast aside -- Joss read and sat and wrote in the same sitting-turk fashion that she felt quite comfortable in, and never comfortable without -- and leaned her head against the glass of the window in readiness of what was to come. An outpouring of affection, of lives that acknowledged themselves as touched by the stories. The stories didn't care if they were loved, only told -- but nor did they care for eating and drinking or living, exactly, and Joss did, so the letters written to thank her were pored over as carefully as if they were proofs, and the writing-pad in her lap was grooved with the marks of a pen from the last time she'd answered them. Somewhere between the fifteenth and the fiftieth, there was a bundle with a letter tucked loosely, carelessly into the stack that didn't belong there. Perhaps it was the round, childish hand that addressed it that had had the sorter drop it without thought into Joss's stash, perhaps it was the fact that the envelope was a little crumpled and unclear -- but when it lay beneath Joss's hands and was smoothed with the sort of love she gave all letters, it became clear it wasn't for her at all. 106, it said boldly, not 504. Not 504 at all, no thank you -- the letter under her hands was postal marked from the very beginning of the week; it had been dropped into her puddle of post nearly a week past and gone unnoticed, unanswered -- Joss set aside her half-drunk tea, letter in her fingertips and when the door to 504 swung closed behind her, a stack of letters wobbled and fell, like butterflies cast upon the floor.
Soft and expensive carpet sprang like grass beneath her bare feet; the hallways of the Aubade were hushed, as though life could be swept behind closed doors and thick drapes and any unpleasantness quite hidden from view. Even the low thrum of rain outside was softened, made less harsh by the heavy stone walls and soft blue paint and when Joss knocked on the door that had '106' in front of it, she was peering at a painting someone had decided to hang in the hall -- something that looked like it ought to be fruit, only in shades that fruit never came in and thus worthy of some examination.
The door was unlocked, as it always was, and Colt assumed it was Erin come to torment him some more. "You damn well know it's open," he called out to her from the study, where he was reading the newspaper and frowning about all the atrocities being committed in this town that he didn't care about. If he had two good legs, he would do something about it. The place needed a good military movement, something that wasn't run by children and adults playing at being military. Any fool who thought being a savior was about the glory was bound to end up dead or with someone else dead. It made him angry as hell, and he immediately thought of Erin, who was stupid enough to think she could take on the world and win. "Get in here," he called, all worked up without even setting eyes on her. "We have something we need to talk about," he called out gruffly.
It wasn't exactly the proper invitation Joss had been taught to extend, but it wasn't far off from the way her father had addressed those who knocked on his inner-sanctum's door; gruff and sharp and irritation, when the servants would jump and drop things in the hallways and Joss had had to be sweet and calm and soothing without appearing to notice the irritation to begin with. Curling her fingers around the doorknob, she pushed, the door gave and she padded in.
The gloom was thick and hung around the room the same way the smell did - expensive, but the way sickrooms might smell, closed in and left and unloved and it took a moment or two for Joss to move silently through one room to another, examining each thing she saw in passing with fingertips, noticing as though a little of doing it now would make up for those things not being noticed for so very long. There was light now, as she made her progression and then she was standing in the doorway, looking at a newspaper and a man, and Joss swayed back against the door-frame, a little timidly and stayed there. She was all light herself; soft, white dress a little rumpled from curling up and reading, and all pale legs and bare feet on carpet, but she cleared her throat with the hesitancy of interrupting and let herself look about while she waited, eyes wide and drinking in.
He was dressed casually in jeans and an faded gray Army t-shirt, and there was a hat beside him on the end table. He didn't look up when he heard the footfall behind him; he didn't think he needed to. "These idiots are going to get themselves killed in this town," he told the woman in the room as he turned the page on the newspaper. "I don't know if you have any martial arts or military training, but we need to make sure you've got some if you're going to be running the school." The past few days, which had been spent actually catching up on what the hell was going on in this town, had made him realize the school they were opening could possibly end up being a target, if it was perceived that they were training vigilantes. He'd made two decisions then, one after the other - he wouldn't hide his involvement, and she'd learn to defend herself. "And don't you sass me, woman. It's not optional. I'll raise your pay if need be."
"I don't think you're paying me." Joss's voice was thoughtful, quiet but in the still of the room, it was more audible than perhaps she'd intended it to be, clear and light and thin. "You could, I suppose, but I don't know what for. And I think I'd know. So I don't think so. Sorry," she added, as a momentary (apologetic) afterthought, after she'd looked long at the way the carpet was rucked, as though painting it into her mind with words for future use. She reached out to touch with the very tip of one finger a globe, and laid down the envelope to do so, the other hand palm-flat against the wall as she bent over to look properly, to spin in twenty different countries in a minute. It made a little rattle as it span, rocketing through China to India to America; Joss tapped it with one finger and it stopped in Arabia; she straightened back up.
"I did knock," she said, softly.
He registered multiple things at once: The fact that it wasn't Erin's voice, the fact that the envelope had his address scrawled in a wobbly hand that changed so often it wouldn't become familiar for years yet, and the fact that she touched his damn globe.
He looked up at her, his expression all impotent rage at the fact that he couldn't get up and remove her from his space bodily. "GET OUT," he growled, low and dangerous.
She stood her ground; thin and pale and her face lost what little color it had, as though blown quite away by the force of his ire -- but Joss had stood before men all her life and been told things and shouted things and snarled at, all the while told that this was her place. She stood while he growled the way a stray might when invaded, quite still and then she picked up the envelope and held it out.
"I thought you would want it," and her voice was sweetly pacifying, all coaxing warmth and malleable softness, the way one might talk to an animal whose teeth were bared ready to bite. Her fingertips were still on the globe; her toes curled themselves into the carpet as though rooting herself for another blast. "I would, if it were mine." Her eyes were wide, trusting -- she took a step toward him, let go the globe.
He grabbed the letter from her when she held it out, as if it was something too precious for her to touch. He was about to point her toward the door again, without a hint of kindness, when he noticed her feet - no, her toes. "What the hell are you doing in my house without shoes on your feet?"
Joss looked down as though she'd forgotten. Shoes were a necessary burden, but they were never quite as comfortable; you couldn't curl up quite as tightly, tuck a foot beneath each thigh when wearing them, or feel the floor sing beneath you as you stepped -- she never wore them, when she didn't have to. "It's not a house," she said vaguely, as her eyes roamed the walls and she turned on the spot to better see what was behind her, "It's an apartment. And I wasn't wearing shoes before." It was the added afterthought, the explanation -- and the smile she gave him was warm and confiding, even as her eyes slid from him to the hat on the table. And then she looked at him again.
"I have one of those."
The not-house was entirely devoid of life except for two rooms on the main floor - the living room and the study. The open doors beyond would have displayed a blank nothingness, and the upstairs would have revealed more of the same. Still he was feeling caged and cornered and it made him ornery, and so he took exception with her description of his home. "It's my DAMN house, woman," he said loudly, as if volume would change her mind about anything.
He took the letter, and he hid it in the top drawer under lock and key, as if it was something exceptionally valuable, and the edges of other envelopes with similar postmarks were visible for a brief instance before he shut them all away in the darkness. He had just looked up at her, had just been about to threaten to call 911 if she she didn't move her tail off his property, when she mentioned the hat. His gaze skirted over to it and then back at her, and a memory teased at the edges of his mind. Oh, no. "Get the hell out." It was a soft command this time, all the more dangerous for it.
She had stood unreactive, as though volume were nothing at all -- passive, the way a doll might sit open-armed as a child railed destructively in front of it; Joss had a great deal of practice. Words held little power in volume, after all, when you could whisper them and open worlds. The drawer had opened and shut before she'd seen anything more than a flutter of envelopes, like dreams caught in a box and buried until they died, and then she was trailing her fingers against the back of the sofa, peering at surfaces and raising herself onto tiptoe to see what were on bookshelves. Then the quiet poison, a snake striking in darkness. Joss turned back, a dancer's spin on a forgotten stage and looked back at him with nothing other than curiosity and a soft sort of crestfallen look at being so chastised without cause. She was within touching distance of the hat -- her fingers reached out, brushed it.
"Ma'am," she corrected, and she stood a little straighter, heels together.
Oh, it was definitely her. The memory of the insane asylum came rushing back, all the more horrible because it had happened before his life went to permanent shit. Before Anana had died, before he'd become a useless cripple, before the pain. Mixed in with it all was the knowledge that she knew about his father, this insane woman with no boundaries. She reminded him of his fears, the ones that still kept him up at night, the fears that he would turn into his father and hurt everything he touched.
He looked at the hat, and then he looked back at her face. The crestfallen look knocked the force clear out of his anger, and he grumbled something about damn, helpless women, and he rubbed his forehead. "Listen, ma'am," he said, not even realizing he was echoing he words back at her. "I don't know who you think I am, but you're mistaken. Please, just go on back to your apartment."
A moment passed, before he added. "Thank you for the letter."
Emboldened, she took a step closer, dancer's feet arching and stepping as though inviting him into a pas-de-deux without music. Joss was stubborn, eyes alight but her voice still soft and careful. "I'm not mistaken." She said it very definitely, and she reached out again and gave that hat a soft, gentle pat. Somewhere upstairs, in a box beneath a pile of books and surrounded by tissue paper, lay its twin. She had cradled that hat in her lap in the forgotten library of that building for months -- the hat given where she'd sought a moment's friendship, but the hat had lasted longer. She pushed a handful of silky brown strands from her eyes with the heel of her palm, and looked at him, clear and frank.
"Are you worried I'm still mad?" She said it as though it were matter-of-fact, and not at all something to tidy away, to not-speak of, "I'm not, not now. I don't think I was to begin with. Just lost." Once said -- no, stated, the way one would make fact even more bare and solid, Joss was roaming again. Her fingers picked up and played with a box, sought out what lay within; her back was to him now.
"You were nice to me, then. Is it because you're hurt now, that you're not?" A flash of something bright in her fingers; she read it, slid it back into place and put it down with definite care. "I'm sorry I didn't bring it sooner," the letter it was, the subject of his illness and hers tossed up and put down again as if it meant nothing rather than everything, "But it got tucked into mine. And I don't read it before the end of the week." She turned back to look at him again.
"I'm NOT hurt," he said and the declaration was loud enough to make him shake with the effort to scream it at her. Everything else was moot, nothing else mattered. "Put that damn thing down and get out of my HOUSE BEFORE I CALL THE POLICE," he roared. It was, quite literally, a roar. This was why he needed that damn butler Erin was so impossible about letting him hire. He reached for the phone, entirely blinded by her almost calling him an invalid, and he began to dial.
"You had the door open," she pointed out, and she had left the medal against its shelf, forgotten in her haste. "You asked me to -- Why are you so angry?" She spoke as if lost, as if somehow, a vital step in getting from where she had been to where she now was had been forgotten or unexplained -- pieces stolen from the playing board. Joss didn't like that -- it felt like the stories, stealing in and taking when she closed her eyes, when anger was something that roiled itself up and threw itself at her like a wave, like knives. "I'm sorry?" she said, and she reached to put a hand against the elbow of the arm used to dial, and drew back -- his anger felt like a blanket bundled over the head, blinding and heavy and anger wasn't something that could be quelled and tamed easily, without long hours of patience, and words and feelings drawn and conjured before him to amuse, distract, soften.
"Colt?" she said, and her hand dropped. A memory, long held deep and polished and kept quite warm had been scratched over and tarnished black and he stood and he had screamed at her, and Joss waited for the punishment, and the tide to take her, and was quite silent.
The apology and the almost touch made his shoulders relax, made some of the ire flow out of him. It was't her fault she reminded him of everything he wanted to forget. He reminded himself, tried to remind himself, that she'd been a little lost thing when he'd last seen her, that she'd been trapped, that he'd felt softness for her, even as she scared the hell out of him. He forced himself to remember, and he took a deep breath, one that rattled all the way to his leg with pain.
"Joss," he said, acknowledging the memory, giving her that at least. "Go on and take the box," he said, feeling guilty for yelling at her. "Just... leave. I'm glad you managed to get out," he said, the word out sounding like it referred to a jail sentence, "but I'm not the man I was then. You gotta pick yourself up and head back to your apartment."
"I don't want it." She said it the way she'd wanted to, once, about a hat -- about the giving of something that was a substitute for something else, a second-best that was almost an insult, a piteous one, and it was soft and sad, and the way she looked at him wasn't the same at all. "I don't think you're right at all," and the way she stood, in that thin white cotton dress, with the sunlight behind her, she didn't look lost at all, but determined and strong and resolute. "I think you are exactly the man you were then." It didn't sound much like a compliment, but then, it didn't sound precisely like an insult. It was a statement, a clear one that didn't sway itself into the way Joss told stories.
"I wanted to be your friend. I didn't want a hat, and I don't want a box, and all I came for," the words picked themselves out, playing like notes; Joss was regal in her own way, "Was to give you a letter. And you shouted at me." It was worse than the threats he'd made, worse than his quiet poison. It was disappointment, the kind that curled itself deep within you and made you disappointed in yourself. "And you still seem to need one."
He let her get it all out, and he held his tongue, and he didn't say a damn word, not to any of it. In the end, he just turned his face away from her and looked out the heavily curtained window. "Go."
She stalked, rather than walked -- it was head held high and with just the smallest of backward glances to a man in the center of a large not-house who seemed more alone than she, but Joss left, and let the door snicker closed behind her until it was quite shut. Nothing left but another letter in a drawer, and a ruffle in the carpet pile where her toes had curled themselves, and a dent in the top of the hat, where her fingers had touched. And an angry man without a friend, where a friend might have been -- and that, really, was more of an absence than a nothing.