nishka//loki (![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} nishka) wrote in ![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small} paxletalelogs,@ 2017-04-20 23:10:00 |
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Who: Nish and Chris
What: Old friends reconnect with an uneasy truce.
Where: Pax, Fifth Floor
When: Thursday, April 17, 2017, afternoon
Listen: Gibu. (Translation.)
gdoc complete
She’d been painting again. The canvas was still wet, the air around her smelling of oils and pigments, but it was done. This one...it was from her dream last night. Compared to the sharp images in her mind, it appeared blurry, distorted, but that was a reflection only of her lack of skill, and not her memory.
She and Rafe were done. Her emotions were still a riot of conflict inside her, but it had helped to focus on something else. A puzzle she was still sorting out. She was at times depressed, angry, accepting, or all of them at once. The bitch of it was, she’d known it would happen. Loki had warned her before she’d even gotten involved with Rafe. He’d told her it would end badly, and he’d been right. Now, Loki was all she had left.
With a sigh, she stepped back and admired her work - a log house in a copse of trees, a starry sky behind it, snow beneath it, smoke billowing from a hole in the roof where she knew a fire was blazing in the hearth and song was spilling out into the night. It was like all the other paintings - familiar, and yet strange. Something she was certain she’d seen before, but not with her own eyes.
’Looks good,’ Loki praised. She smirked softly.
“Bob would be proud,” she murmured. “Where is this?” She studied it, wiping paint off her hands onto a rag, which did little to budge the oils from her skin.
’Home,’ Loki told her.
“Fine. Be cryptic. I’m going to get a drink.”
’Finally,’ he replied, and she could hear the laughter in his voice. She grinned and picked up her mug, heading out of her apartment and into the hallway, ready to have another comfortable evening by the fire with several mugs of ale.
Chris lingered in the space, further from the elevator and deeper into the hall as he'd trudged through grass trying to find some lingering trace of the coyote. As before -- and every day since -- there was nothing. Something in him told him that the dream was not merely a dream, which was propped up by evidence of other dreams held elsewhere with other people, who also remembered what had transpired between them.
He glanced up and over toward the opening door, frowning at the contents spilled out. Then he turned away, making no effort to reach out to her or even further acknowledge her presence. He looked back up toward the stars shining clear through the ceiling, trying to remember constellations his abuelo had taught him.
Nish stopped in her tracks, surprised by Chris’ presense on her floor. She swallowed nervously, this meeting not one she’d anticipated having for...a while, at least. She hesitated, about to turn back into her apartment, find something in there to drink instead, but her feet wouldn’t obey her.
’You need to do this,’ Loki insisted.
’He hates me,’ she sighed inwardly. Loki, if anything, seemed amused.
’Get used to it, Princess, lots of people are going to hate you. But you need some of them.’
’I already tried; he won’t listen to me.’
‘Try harder.’
She sighed heavily, hesitating again at her door, and then stepped away from it, towards him down the hall. “Hey,” she said quietly, awkwardly clutching her empty mug in both hands in front of her. “I’m glad I didn’t get the floor with the crocodiles,” she said with a half smile, a slight tinge of humour in her voice, though it fell flat.
He gave no reply, instead purposefully turning to the side as if to imply go the fuck away. Chris' eyes squinted, one hand rising to trace the outline of what he thought might be Cassiopeia.
Nish grit her teeth, warring between Loki's words and her desire to just give up on this as a bad idea. Instead, she forced herself forward, stepping closer to him, though still out of striking range. “Okay, so I'm not much of a baker,” she said, as if that was the problem, “but the batter tasted alright. I hope you liked it.” She paused, more stoney silence followed, and she finally sighed in frustration.
“Chris, look, I…” she bit her lip, paused, and then spat it out. “I’m sorry. I am. I was...in a dark place. I didn’t mean for things to get so bad, but they did. And I was thinking of me and not...us. Our friendship. And...I don’t know what I can do to make that better.”
He clearly tensed, and did not turn to look at her; he made no mention that he'd thrown the cake out a side fire escape window, directly into one of the dumpsters behind the building. Hopefully the rats and the cats that still seemed to linger around the complex enjoyed the batter.
"I don't know either," he finally replied. "I'm not honestly sure it's even worth it. Lil hard to trust someone when they basically spit in your face."
“It is worth it,” she said on reflex, chewing on the inside of her lip and shifting from one foot to the other. “You’re my friend. And I miss you.” She was lonely. With Rafe out of the picture, she didn’t have many other people. There was Daniel and Jay, but they were wildly different sorts of friendships from what she’d had with Chris.
She moved again, leaning against the wall he was looking at so she’d be on the edge of his vision, still not coming too close, as if approaching a wounded animal. “I messed up. I should have come to you instead of...going back there. But I wanted to keep you out of it. I was trying to protect you, in my own messed up way,” she let out a self-deprecating smile that faded quickly.
That, much to his chagrin, he could understand. Daniel and Kal would say he'd done the same, and had been rightfully upset over it -- just as he had, over her mistakes. It certainly didn't make it easy to tolerate. He'd burned bridges over less, leaving people behind over the years. It was what had kept him alive.
"That's kind of hilarious," he said, though his expression showed no humor. Chris finally turned, just enough, to look at her. "Considering I'm the one who even put you in that situation to begin with. You can take the drugs away from the drug dealer, but does that mean he stops being a drug dealer?
"Christ, Nish, you put me and someone I care about in danger. I get that addiction's a demon, but now you want me to forgive you?" He raked a hand over his hair, ruffling it. "Anyone ever tell you that you're fucking demanding?"
A humourless smile. “I don’t mean to be,” she said with a half shrug. “And I don’t…” she took a deep breath and sighed, crossing her arms, her mug hanging loosely from one hand. “I don’t blame you for the drugs. I could have said no the second you told me where we were going.” She looked up at him, trying to catch his eyes. “It wasn’t your fault, it was mine. I’d been sober for five years...I should have known better.”
Chris nodded, biting his tongue from another smart comment. It would have been too easy to cut her down right then and there, but it was clear she was making an effort. The least he could do was offer her an olive branch in return.
He turned, looking her square in the face, though his expression had fallen back into one of apathy. He shrugged.
"So...what now?"
’What now?’ she asked, nervous of saying the wrong thing.
’Be careful.’
She bit her lip, meeting his eyes. “Now...we start over?” she asked hopefully, though kept her expression and her voice guarded. She looked down at her hand holding her mug. “Want to get loaded?” she asked, showing him her pint mug, a very slight smile tugging at her lips, but then she shook her head. “Sorry, bad idea…” she said, suddenly unsure of herself. Getting shitfaced had been what had caused their rift in the first place, she didn’t want to jeopardize them even more.
He nodded, and they lapsed into silence for a moment. Chris rolled his eyes to the floor, discomfort written into every move. He looked back up, then to Nish.
"You haven't... Have you seen any animals, on this floor?" A hand rubbed at the back of his neck, clearly unsure about voicing this particular question.
She watched him carefully, but then shook her head. “Seen them...no. But I hear them.” She looked down the hall, towards her apartment, then back to him. “Mostly insects...crickets, cicadas, frogs...but I swear I heard a coyote once. It was so close it woke me up.” She’d been certain it had been in the room with her, but when she turned on the light she was alone.
Chris frowned, but nodded. It did little to help him, to know that there were noises of the things he sought. His own floor contained no nighttime creature sounds, only those of a howling wind and creaking boards that held fast against something outside, something that made him shiver with a loneliness that he thought might engulf him.
He swallowed, wetting his lips.
"I think I'm just gonna go then," he said, teeth nibbling lightly into one side of his mouth. He glanced toward the stairwell, then to her. "Where were you headed?"
She smiled slightly and lifted her mug. “Third floor...there’s a never-ending supply of mead down there, and…” she paused, but then shook her head. “Well, it’s strange. I feel...more at home there than I do here these days. Crazy, right?” Every time she went there she felt...peace. Belonging. It did more for her sense of wellbeing than the antidepressants ever did. Her depression seemed to lift by small degrees the longer she spent there, even the sting of her breakup with Rafe didn’t hurt when she was there.
Chris shrugged. He'd grown up in the city, was far more comfortable with paved roads and cracked sidewalks than he was with vast open spaces like the fifth floor implied. And yet he'd felt compelled to come back over and over and over.
"That's where I was headed -- back to my apartment," he said, with a slight nod. He motioned to the stairs; if they were headed in the same direction, there was no point in dragging things out. "Shall we?" He started toward the stairwell, moving in his usual slow pace that hid as much of his limp as possible.
She nodded, following him, letting him set the pace for them down the two flights of stairs. As soon as he opened the door to his floor a sense of calm settled on her and she sighed just slightly. She pressed a hand to the roots lining the walls, as if greeting them after a long absence. “We should trade apartments until this is over,” she said quietly, half a joke, half serious. She practically lived here now anyway, mead in hand, sitting by the fire, the golden light of which she could see at the end of the hall. Her eyes shone with joy, just being there.
Chris glanced back at her, a frown already curving his mouth. He didn't even meet her response with a quip, instead shaking his head and turning away, heading directly to his apartment without so much as a simple farewell.
Nish watched him go, frowning slightly.
’Well that could have gone better,’ she thought as she headed down the hall towards her goal. Loki seemed to nod.
’Progress takes time,’ he mused, then fell silent.