luke henry ; robin (notjustsidekick) wrote in musingslogs, @ 2011-01-24 22:18:00 |
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Entry tags: | ramona flowers, robin |
Who: Luke and Audrey
What: First meetings.
Where: Aubade 506.
When: Backdated to after this.
Warnings: None.
Luke had been out late the previous night and by the time he’d slipped back through the window he was far too tired to stay awake, due to a combination of sleep deprivation and a particularly stubborn drug dealer with thugs to spare. He wasn’t around for the carjacking fallout and by the time the three of them were back in the apartment it would have taken a lot more than just a heated discussion to wake him up. It wasn’t even until the next morning that he remembered Max’s sister was supposed to be moving in, but since he had to head to the university to take care of a few loose ends there wasn’t time to introduce himself--if she was even there. She was supposed to have arrived last night, hadn’t she? Maybe not. It was hard to keep everything straight these days.
Within a couple of hours he made it back to Aubade and paused outside the apartment for a moment, still on the fence about having another stranger move in. As long as Max and her sister--Audrey--could get along without killing each other and they kept the vigilante thing hidden maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.
He opened the door with the intention of making noise, nudging it shut with one foot once he was inside and tugging off the hood of his sweatshirt as he headed towards the kitchen. Hopefully the sound of the door opening and closing would be enough to get her attention, since he had no idea how else to approach the situation. Meeting Allen for the first time had been a lot easier.
Audrey had settled into a bedroom on the second floor. Most of her things had been lost in the nightmare of the carjacking incident the night before, and it was going to take weeks to build them back up. Those things most important to her - souvenirs from home, her current, in progress sketchbook, her skates - were in her bag, which was something of a comfort. She would have liked to at least have something to give them room some color and personality of her own, but that would have to wait until she could afford some things.
When Luke walked in the front door, however, she was in the kitchen making lunch. She had the day off from work, so she’d spent most of it coloring a piece she’d done on the computer - she had neither a tablet nor a scanner, so it definitely wasn’t her best work, but she was getting better at it the more she worked on it. She’d realized sometime in the afternoon that she hadn’t eaten since sometime the previous day, so she emerged cautiously from her room to put together a sandwich. When the front door opened and shut she paused for a moment, then walked over to the doorway, expecting (and dreading) Max. But no, instead it was a stranger she had yet to meet.
“Hey,” she said. Her hair was still blue for the moment, and she was dressed in comfortable clothes, a sweatshirt and an old, worn pair of jeans and no make up. She’d lost a lot of her clothes to the shoot out as well, so there wasn’t going to be a lot of variety in her wardrobe for the next few weeks. “I’m Audrey. And you’re...?” He could be Allen or Luke, since she had yet to meet either.
Luke stopped short when he saw the blue-haired girl standing in the kitchen, studying her for a moment in an attempt to pinpoint similarities between her and Max before he realized he was approaching staring territory and catching himself just in time. “Hey.” He shuffled forward and leaned on the counter top, hesitating briefly before extending one hand. “I’m Luke. Nice to meet you, Audrey.” Had Max told her who he was? Did she think he was just some teenager living in the apartment? It would have been useful to know that. “Did you get here last night?”
She expected the uncomprehending stare by now. Whenever she’d been introduced to people back home who knew her sister, they would always try to find something of Max in her. More often than not, they failed. Audrey wasn’t particularly good at meeting expectations. She waited it out, and smiled a touch when he introduced himself and shook his hand with one good pump before letting it go. Cute. The boy shook hands. “Yeah,” she said, biting her lip without thinking. “Ended up being a little...more exciting than I expected.”
She slipped her hands into the pockets of her sweatshirt, head canting to the side. “So, do me a favor and clear something up for me. Are you a castoff like me, or are you here for some other reason?” She really didn’t have any idea who he was or why he was here. Max hadn’t told her, and she hadn’t thought to ask Thomas.
He was just relieved that his handshake hadn’t been rejected and so far things seemed to be going well. Max hadn’t said much about her sister aside from a name and hints that they didn’t get along, which hadn’t left him with much of an idea of what Audrey would actually be like. “Exciting?” Luke tilted his head to the side, wondering what he’d ended up missing. “The good kind or the bad kind?”
And there it was. There was a simple answer, of course, but the situation was more complicated than that. He decided it would be better to stick to what counted instead of trying to explain everything and making things even more confusing. “I’m... Thomas is my dad,” he said after a pause. “So that’s why I’m here. I guess they didn’t mention that.” He shrugged. “What makes you think you’re a castoff?” Sure, maybe she and Max didn’t get along, but family was family.
“The not so good kind,” she said, tone wry. “Let’s just say that it involved some carjackers who didn’t take a shine to me.” Her sweatshirt covered the bandages on her arms, which stung a little when she moved them, but not too badly.
Audrey blinked. “Oh.” She’d had no idea. It would have been nice if Max had mentioned that to her before - now she felt sort of awkward. Wasn’t Thomas sort of young to be the father of a kid in his late teens? She tried to do the math, then gave up. “No, sorry.”
She leaned against the counter. “Because I didn’t want to be here if I’m honest. No offense meant but...Max and I don’t get along so great. I wanted to stay in my apartment, she decided I needed to move here, I didn’t want to be treated like a child...” She made a gesture indicating that it had continued on back and forth like that. “Long story short, the windows in Hamartia are broken and it’s cold as hell, so I agreed to move in here for a while.” And there was the whole issue of the gang that had shot at her, but that was probably best left out of the story. “It was never my intention to move in with my older sister, I’ll put it that way.” She pushed away from the counter. “Thomas seems like a nice guy, though. She lucked out.” Not bitter, or anything.
Carjackers. Max must have loved that. “I hear they don’t take a shine to many people,” he said, assuming that it hadn’t gone too badly or she would have been in the hospital. “At least you made it here.” It wasn’t the most reassuring thing to say but he tried to keep it lighthearted rather than overly serious.
Luke knew that reaction well, since he’d gotten it from practically everyone when he explained how he and Thomas knew each other, and he was aware that the math didn’t make much sense no matter how you tried to reason it. “They probably forgot to mention it.” He shrugged, as if it were no big deal.
Her blunt honesty was both surprising and refreshing at the same time. “No offense taken,” he told her, shaking his head. Since he’d never had any siblings of his own he wasn’t too acquainted with how difficult things could be between them, but he’d heard enough from friends over the years to get an idea. “I don’t have any older siblings, but I know what it’s like to be treated like a kid even if it’s not intentional.” He wondered how old she was - younger than Max, but he didn’t know how old she was either. “The apartment’s pretty big, though. And Thomas... yeah, he’s a nice guy.” It wasn’t the best way to describe him, but it was good enough. He waited a moment before saying anything else. “So how long have you been in Seattle?”
"At least there's that," Audrey said, smiling. "Trust me, I'm happy not to be injured or anything. I miss my stuff, but it was my own stupid fault. And don't tell Max I said that."
"We were sort of arguing through the whole conversation, so that's probably why," she said. It wasn't a cover - she genuinely did assume that if things weren't so acrimonious with her sister, she might have thought to mention it.
She shrugged. "Then you know what I mean, siblings or not," she said. "A few weeks. The whole chaos with the zombies was a really neat way to get introduced to the town. I wish people had included that in the description. 'Oh, Seattle! It's rainy all the time and the restaurants are great and they have occasional zombie infestations.'"
“I won’t say a word.” He wondered if there was a reason Max and Audrey argued so much or if it was just a sibling thing that sometimes happened because it was part of the package. “Oh. Well, at least Max told me you were coming. It probably would’ve been really awkward if I just walked in and found a stranger in the kitchen.” A blue-haired stranger, no less, although he secretly thought it was pretty cool.
Luke pulled a face. “Yeah, that was full-on insanity. It wasn’t normal around here before but that... kind of pushed everything over the edge.” He didn’t think he’d ever be able to forget the sight of those things tearing people apart, and too many people had suffered too many losses in just a matter of days. “Hopefully it’ll be the last zombie infestation we ever have.”
“Good,” she said, smile widening a touch. “I’m glad to have some backup around.”
She shook her head. “It’s definitely not what I thought I was signing up for crossing over. I never said I wanted to live in a survival horror game, no matter how much I like playing them.” She hadn’t talked to anyone about the things she’d seen during the Reaver attack. She didn’t want to talk about them, because that would make them real. If she didn’t mention them, she could pretend they were all a trick her mind had played on her and let them pass away. She hoped, anyway.
He let out a laugh and moved around her towards the coffee machine, turning his head to keep talking over his shoulder. “Yeah, me too.” Most of the time Luke didn’t mind their current living arrangement, but sometimes it got a little tiring, living with two adults who seemed hyper-focused on him at times that it started to become frustrating.
“I know how you feel. I can’t even count how many hours I’ve sat in front of a TV and played Left 4 Dead until I fell asleep, but... some things are better off staying fictional.” He frowned down at the cup of coffee he was pouring. “Anyway, we’re just lucky it ended without the entire city being destroyed.” He paused, deciding that mass slaughter and zombie-things ravaging the city probably wasn’t the best topic of conversation, but he didn’t want to push any boundaries by asking too many questions. “What made you decide to cross over? If that’s not too personal a question or anything.”
She grinned. “I don’t know if I’m going to be playing Left 4 Dead any time soon, but you should give me your gamertag. I just play on my computer, but I’d be more than happy to school you in Team Fortress.”
When he asked why she’d crossed over, her expression changed immediately, face falling a little. “Kind of...a long story,” she said. “I’ll put it this way - sometimes, the best thing you can do in a relationship is wake up, smell the coffee, and get the fuck out before wasting any more of your time. Does that make any sense at all?”
The fact that she not only knew what a gamertag was but played computer games to boot only convinced him further that having Audrey living in the apartment wouldn’t be so bad at all. Max seemed overly worried about some kind of invasion of his privacy, but the apartment was just as much hers as it was his. She was the mother of Thomas’ kid, after all; his real one. “It’s nice to know I’m not the only one here who knows what a gamertag is,” he said with a grin. “Well, aside from Allen. Mine is shootemup99 - I know, I know. Pretty lame, but I was too lazy to change it.”
Luke regretted asking once he saw Audrey’s expression, but he had no intention of pushing her for details. Despite his lack of experience in the area of relationships what she was describing still made sense, and after a moment he nodded. “Yeah, it does. At least you got out - and zombies aside, Seattle really isn’t that bad.”
“Mine’s Whoisatlas. I was really into that game for a while there.” Audrey had decided she’d lucked out as far as forced room mates went. Luke seemed nice, he was cute, and he played video games. What else could a girl ask for? “If Allen plays, I’ll be happy to take him out too.”
“If I’m totally honest, zombies included, it still feels good to get away from home.” That seemed a little drastic after she said it, but it was mostly true. She felt as if she’d been freed from something constraining her - even if Max was still here and still thought she could run her life.
He recognized the reference almost immediately and couldn’t help a bit of his approval slip through into his expression. “”It’s an awesome game,” he agreed. “Allen plays almost as much as I do, so I bet he’d love to meet another video game enthusiast even if you do take him out.”
There hadn’t been any dire reason for him to leave Musings, and most people would have wondered why he’d even left at all considering how normal his life had been - but that in itself was part of his reasoning. Even if it wasn’t the same, Luke could still understand where she was coming from. “I miss it sometimes,” he admitted, “but I’m not sure I’d go back even if I could.” Especially not now. For a moment he wondered what Audrey’s plans were - whether she had class or maybe work. Max hadn’t mentioned either of those, so he figured he’d hazard a guess. “Are you in school, or do you work?” He knew people did both, like he once had, but assumed she’d say it if she did.
“Only if he promises to buy me dinner,” she said, grinning, enjoying the dual layers of that.
She looked him over again. He sounded like he’d lived in Musings long enough to have feelings about leaving it behind, and she began to wonder when he’d crossed. “How long have you been here?” she asked, then added, “I work. I’ve been thinking about going back and trying to get my degree, but I don’t know...I got two years in before I dropped out, and starting all over doesn’t sound like my cup of tea.”
“Careful. He eats a lot - it’s some weird metabolism thing. You might end up getting more than you bargained for.” Luke grinned, figuring that Max had already mentioned Allen’s hyper-speed ability. He was a little jealous of it, although it would probably be a lot more useful once he got the hang of it instead of accidentally running up buildings and smashing into walls.
For a moment he had to give the question serious thought. “Almost six months,” he said decisively. “Sometimes it feels like longer, sometimes it doesn’t.” School wasn’t his best area at the moment, not with everything else going on that threatened to take precedence, but he counted the fact that he was still managing to keep his grades decent as a major victory. “Well, if you decide you ever do want to give it another shot just let me know and I can point you in the right directions.”
Audrey hadn’t head about his hyper speed, but she’d had a lot of friends who were boys in high school, and was thus well-acquainted with their hyper metabolisms. “I’ll watch myself,” she said.
“So not that long,” she said. “I don’t really want to go back either. There’s nothing for me back there now. Here...I mean yeah, bad stuff can happen anywhere, but I don’t know. It all feels fresh and new, I guess.” She stopped. She was blathering on about herself to a boy she hardly knew, and she smiled. “I should probably finish my sandwich before it chooses to rebel because I’m ignoring it,” she said, thumbing behind her. “Get online, tonight, though, I’ll be happy to frag you.”
As strange as it was Luke agreed with her about how home no longer seemed to hold anything for either of them, but he just nodded instead of vocalizing his agreement. “I’ll leave you to your sandwich-making.” He grabbed his coffee and turned in the direction of the stairs, pausing to glance over his shoulder. “I’ll be on,” he told her before turning back around and heading up to his room.