Aura Castillo ∴ Hel (calaveritas) wrote in paxletalelogs, @ 2010-07-18 21:32:00 |
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Entry tags: | baldr, fenrir, hel |
Who: Billy, Simon and Aura
What: Some friendly chatter
Where: Billy's apartment
When: Backdated about 2 weeks
Warnings: None
They hadn’t had much time at the antique shop before Aura had to start back to Pax to get ready for work, and her mama had called on the walk back, and she’d babbled the entire way in Spanish so that Aura was only disconnecting the call when Pax’s lobby doors came into view.
She rushed ahead to it, and she pulled the door open for Simon, just so she could watch him approach with the sort of curiosity that comes from wanting to just sit and stare at someone for awhile. It was strange, this lifetime’s worth of imagining someone, and she very much wanted to ask him to just sit and still so she could learn everything about his features without distraction.
Inside, the lobby was cool and marble-clean, and it felt so very different from the clinic and the antique shop, and Aura breathed in the cool air regretfully. This place didn’t feel like them, which was admittedly silly.
With her being on the phone most of the walk back, Simon was a quiet presence at her side, never straying too far away, the instincts of a protective sibling already taking hold of him. As they approached Pax, he had made a move to step forward and open the door for her, but as it was starting to seem, she beat him to the punch. A nod of his head was his silent thanks as he stepped over the threshold, the cool air of the lobby welcome against sun-warmed skin.
Billy was having a good day, obvious because he was not ensconced behind his door and playing depressing classic rock on repeat. In fact, the doorway was wide open, and Billy’s peculiarly bent form, the long lines of a vibrant young man collapsed slightly sideways, was silhouetted in it. He wasn’t facing the lobby, so his back was to them, but he spoke happily to someone inside about the hardwood floor that was still being installed before he backed up and began the shuffle that got him 180 degrees around. Leaning hard on the deep mahogany cane, he pulled the door shut behind him and brought his head up when he saw people just ahead. He had a quick, immediate grin for Simon, but it faded into consternation when he saw the girl at his side. His ready greeting for his friend died before it reached the air, and Billy stared, stunned silent.
Aura didn’t notice Billy when he noticed them. In fact, almost as soon as they’d stepped inside, she’d turned her back to Billy and the first floor apartment, giving her attention to Simon instead. “Now, you understand that if things don’t turn out how we want them to, I’ve already adopted you, and you’re now officially a member of the U.S.S Somberness and Gravity,” she said, her lips quirking up at the corners and her fingers reaching out to tug at the front of Simon’s shirt. It seemed like forever, the waiting they would have to do, which was silly. Twenty years of waiting and now two weeks felt like an eternity. In the end, it was the sound of Billy’s cane that caused her to turn around, and her face went immediately pale, sheet white (and she was already pale, so that was an accomplishment).
He allowed himself a laugh at her words and the fondness of her touch. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said in those quiet tones of his, following it up with a tug to a loose strand of hair. His fingers were tangled there when he heard the sound of a door closing, head lifting enough to look over Aura’s shoulder towards the source. Ignorant about any reason the other two might have had to be awkward around one another, Simon raised his other hand, a ready smile coming to his lips.
“Billy!” he called out, then glanced back towards Aura. “C’mon. Have you met him yet?”
Billy shook himself out of his surprise before Aura did. He was not accustomed to hiding his feelings, and it was obvious that there was something seriously wrong with this meeting, which was not at all casual. Not for the first time, Billy was embarrassed that the two of them had to wait for him, watching as he thumped awkwardly down the hallway until he stopped (ever so slightly out of breath, since he pushed just a bit hard to get it over with) right in front of them. “Hey, Simon,” he said, in a would-be casual voice, trying and failing to avoid staring at Aura as if she was some rare creature escape from the zoo.
Aura, never one to avoid the pink elephant in the center of the room, looked from Simon, to Billy, and then back again. “Big brother,” she said, even though she knew nothing of the sort, and even if they were twins, there was no indication of which of them was born first. “You’re friendly with the fly-boy whose been tormenting my dreams for years?” she asked, glancing at Billy at the last word with intelligent, observant eyes that took in the cane and seemed to look right over it, like it didn’t exist. “I told you that you’d get out of bed one day.”
A brow arched high on his forehead at the reactions both of them gave with the meeting, looking between the two for a moment. “And you two know one another?” he asked, a bit surprised, but really, why should he have been? They all lived in the same building, so meeting each other was bound to happen but... that didn’t explain the dreams. “And you’ve been dreaming of him?” Simon had to blink, looking between the pair one more time before pressing one hand to his forehead.
“I feel like I’m missing something here. Do either of you two care to explain?” He wasn’t upset, not in the slightest. Just confused and wondering where the lines of connection lay.
Billy’s color changed as Aura addressed him, and something stubborn and shadowed darkened his expression, flickering and then vanishing a second later. He put on a smile that was shallow and thin. “Nothing missing. I’m just a dreamy kind of guy.” The smile was directed then at Aura, but it was wary of her, wary of her pragmatic acceptance of something that Billy didn’t want to confront as reality. He did not want to think about the things he had told her, things he had not attempted to hide, because there was no need to hide in dreams. He had not considered the idea that she might exist, and caught unawares, he did not quite want her to. He preferred her where her knowledge didn’t hurt him, where her memories of his lowest points stayed in the vague mists of ‘back then.’
Aura rolled her eyes, and she looked at Simon. “Fly-boy’s going to deny it,” she said, having taken note of all the flickers of emotion that had crossed over Billy’s face. She didn’t sound like that was going to change her opinion of the dreams, however, because it wasn’t going to. She’d been dreaming about him too long for that - and here he was, injury and all. “But we’ve been having significant dream heart-to-hearts since his accident. Never met until now though,” she added giving Simon a small, apologetic shrug. “I told you I was strange.” She had, after all, told him that. Granted, dreaming about someone she had never met definitely wasn’t on par with killing people with your pinkie, but one thing at a time.
Strange was putting it mildly, Simon thought, but recently, it had been the time for strange things to happen. After all, it was pretty strange that he and his possible-twin-sister moved into the same building together. Right? Another look was passed between the pair and Simon gave a small sigh, shoulders shrugging up slightly in acceptance of whatever it was that was going on. “I’m just going to pretend that all of this is quite normal, because I don’t think there’s any other way to handle this right now.” His lips twitched upwards in a small smile, then Simon inclined his head towards Aura.
“Remember I told you that I thought I may have met my sister here, Billy?” he asked, jutting his thumb towards her. “Well here she is. I think. I guess we’ll know for sure in... a couple weeks.” It seemed like a lifetime to wait when it was said like that, and he knew the time would pass by in a crawl. But it was doable. He had spent the last 24 years not knowing who she was or where she was. Another two weeks was nothing in comparison.
Billy devoutly appreciated Simon’s enduring calm, and he should have guessed Aura would say something flippant about the meeting--though, no, not at all. Because he didn’t know Aura, and shouldn’t guess anything about her. Just something his mind made up. Coping mechanism. The shrink had said something about those. Right. “Nice to meet you,” he said, rather automatically, at Aura, looking at her again as if she had grown a new leg. Simon’s sister? He looked from one to the other, obviously seeking some resemblance.
Aura, who had realized at this point that Billy was going to cling as stubbornly to his obliviousness as he he did to his insistence that music without words was not music, looked over at Simon with a smile that bordered on a small laugh. “He’s too pretty, don’t you think?” she asked her maybe-brother, because if the dreams didn’t exist then there was no reason for Billy to find that comment as annoying as it was.
Aura smiled at Simon a moment later, and she slid her arm through his. “If my brother, the artist, thinks you’re worth keeping, then I agree,” she told Billy, smiling at Simon as she said it. It was nice to say that - my brother - she could get accustomed to it.
He gave a look to Aura then, rolling his eyes after a moment. “Don’t pick on him too much, or he’ll just turn around and go back to his apartment,” he warned her quietly, but his tone was as fond as it ever got, not intending any maliciousness in his words. As her arm linked with his, he found himself falling into a comfortable and familiar stance, and when she described him as her brother, the artist, Simon had to close his eyes for a moment, a breath let out at the same time. He was likely oblivious about the faintest wash of colour that touched his cheeks, and it was probably for the best that he didn’t.
“You make it sound as though I’ve chosen him as my pet, y’know,” he said a moment later, something to break the awkwardness that surrounded any talk of their possibility of being siblings. While he wanted to believe it, to hold tight to it so it didn’t escape him, it was still a new, fragile thought, and Simon didn’t want to overthink it quite yet.
Typically Billy was bright, accepting, and unfailingly positive, but even he had some reservations when his coping mechanisms introduced themselves in his building lobby. He almost scowled at the pretty comment, but not quite, since Billy couldn’t pull off a scowl except on his best (worst?) days. He watched as the two of them linked arms and felt, abruptly, as if he was interrupting. He still hoped that maybe they would move on on their own, so that he did not have to lurch awkwardly off under curious stares. He made small talk instead. “I’m not a pet,” he said, with some of his natural good humor lurking somewhere just out of sight. “I’m a collector’s item.”
Aura laughed at that; an honest laugh that held nothing back in order to be demure or coquettish. “Alright, that was witty. We can keep him.” She looked over Billy’s shoulder at the open door to his apartment in the distance. “Inviting us in?” she asked, and she very intentionally pulled Simon in front of Billy, closer to the apartment, so they could walk toward it without making Billy uncomfortable by walking behind him. Dignity and pride, Aura knew, were sometimes the most important thing a person had left; she assumed that to be the case with the Fly-boy.
Billy’s comment brought a little-heard laugh from Simon, but it was cut off a bit too soon when Aura gave a tug and he was left with no other option other than to follow. “Sorry,” he called back over his shoulder towards Billy as they passed him by. “She... well. I just do what she says?” He held his free hand up in an expression of ‘what can you do?’. But he sincerely hoped that Billy wouldn’t be too offended at Aura inviting them in. It wasn’t hard to see that he was having what Simon would consider a ‘bad day’, and who knew, maybe a visit and some laughter would do him a bit of good.
Disconcerted, Billy hastened to turn about (again) and follow them back to the apartment. “Uh, well...” But it didn’t seem to matter if he said yes or no, she was going in, and Simon was going with her. The door was ajar and the sounds of construction within had died down to reasonable levels as the two remaining men within finished sealing the corners of the room so the hardwood glue set properly. Someone had set Simon’s work in smooth pale wood and the frames hung well in the places chosen for them, offsetting the warmth of the hardwood and Billy’s own slapdash sense of style; where there wasn’t construction, there were standing musical instruments, complex chairs he could get in and out of without too much trouble, and a lot of expensive sound equipment that looked at odds with the plants and poorly-framed photographs he just stuck in every corner available.
The construction workers waved off attempts at greeting or explanation, and went off to lunch as if some invisible bell had sounded. Billy, still disconcerted at the change of company and plan, waved a helpless hand. “I guess... sit anywhere?”
Aura slipped her arm out of Simon’s, and she walked up to one of the smooth, pale frames. She smiled over her shoulder at Simon, and then she touched the edge of the painting as she did regularly with her own. She was quiet for a few minutes, pensive, and she barely noticed the men behind her or what they were doing in the apartment. When she finally turned again, it was with a smile on her face. “His taste in music is questionable, and he doesn’t like Star Trek, but he has exceptional taste in art,” she said about Billy. “You can stay,” she added, smiling at him.
There had been considerable improvements in Billy’s apartment since he had been in last, and he had to agree that the hardwood floors were quite exceptional. He almost wished he had the money to do something similar in his own place, but the thought of them getting spattered with acrylics and oils quickly killed that thought. But after the floors, it was the sight of his own art hanging, framed, on Billy’s walls that drew his attention. And predictably, Aura made a beeline towards them. There was a strange flutter in his stomach at seeing his art there, but he pushed it down and went to take a seat on the floor, similar to how he had done his first time over here.
“Are you giving him any say in this, sister?” Simon asked with an arched brow, arms looped over bent knees as he got himself comfortable where he sat.
Stung out of his faintly overwhelmed aura, Billy narrowed his eyes at the girl and retorted, “My taste in music is not questionable.” He could take or leave Star Trek or Star Wars or Star whatever, but the music, now that was something else. Billy looked back over his shoulder at the door the workers closed gently behind them, and then back at the room. He didn’t have visitors very often--at least, not visitors without a purpose. Even Simon had come with a purpose, and Billy had absolutely no idea what to do with the two of them wandering (sitting) in his living room.
Aura migrated from one painting to the next, touching here and there as she spoke. “Billy and I have had words about Led Zeppelin,” she said, not turning as she said the words. “We talked about it a little, Simon, when I was listening to Stairway to Heaven in techno-trance,” she said, an audible smile in her voice at what Billy would think of techno-trance-ification of his favorite song.
She turned a moment later, and she walked to a chair and sat in it, curling her legs up beside her as if she was getting comfortable for a lengthy stay. Her expression softened as she looked at Billy. “You look good,” she said softly, and he did; not being in a hospital bed tended to do that to people.
The air was awkward, full of an uneasy energy that he couldn’t quite put a name to. Watching as Aura settled herself in one of the chairs, Simon glanced back towards Billy, tilting his head to the side in question. “Billy, if we’re bothering you, I can make sure we both make ourselves scarce. You look...” He paused, frowning as he thought of the word he wanted. “Annoyed. But I’m horrible at reading people, so I could be wrong.”
Billy abruptly stopped looking quite so irritated, flashing into abashed and then uncomfortable. “Sorry.” He lifted one hand and rubbed at his forehead, scratching behind one ear in what was obviously an unconscious movement, then went slack. “On edge, I guess.” He tossed an apologetic look Simon’s way, then a faintly nervous one in Aura’s, before giving in to the situation. “Thanks,” he replied. Aura’s gentle observation did not exactly cheer him. She’d seen him a lot worse, after all. It sobered him.
Not wanting to be the focus of all their attention, Billy moved into the kitchen where he could hide behind the counter--at least from the waist down. “So what’s the deal with this sibling thing?”
Aura carefully didn’t watch Billy’s progress into the kitchen. Instead, she glanced back at the framed art on the walls, and she glanced around for the guitar that she expected to be hiding somewhere just out of sight. She smiled over at Simon, giving him the honors of explaining the mess to his friend. If it was up to her, she’d make it sound like a Twilight Zone episode (which it kind of was).
The look Aura gave him was simple enough to decipher, so Simon eased back with his hands supporting him from behind, looking to where Billy had halfway hidden himself in the kitchen. “She stopped by the first day of my exhibit and for whatever strange reason, she gravitated towards that one painting about Halloween. I’m not sure if you saw it or not but...” Simon paused, his thoughts drifting back to that night and the emotional roller coaster that they had travelled on.
“I painted that because one of the few things I knew for certain about myself was that I was born on Halloween. And talking about that got us to talking about other things and... it came out that I moved out this way to look for my twin sister.” There was another pause, and he really doubted that he was putting this as nicely as Aura could. Words weren’t his forte, not even close to it. “I had a postcard with her name on it. Her... birth name. And the pieces just kind of fell together. It felt like too much of a coincidence to be just chance so... we went out today to the clinic to get tested.” Simon trailed off then, feeling more than a little awkward with laying it all out like that. He didn’t enjoy talking about himself, but around these two in particular, he was doing it more and more often. They just seemed to get right over the lines he had drawn against social interaction.
Billy stared at them both. He came from the kind of family that grew up in a nice little house, and mom and dad loved each other while they paid the mortgage and went to work and came home. Any close-blooded family was seen either on Thanksgiving or sent cards at Christmas, and everyone else was politely ignored or politely acknowledged, depending on whether or not they were hooked on drugs. “That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard,” he said, unthinking and probably rather insensitive, considering. “I mean, cool, but...” He shook his head, trying to imagine the odds. “Crazy.”
Aura smiled. She liked Billy’s candor. She’d liked it in the dreams, and she’d liked it on the forums. He was what he was, and he didn’t apologize for it. It was one of the things she liked best about Simon as well. His himness. “I learned I was adopted when I was five, and I always managed an exceptionally sullen and appropriate sibling. One who lived for film noir and who was willing to use a Borg designation as a name. Two of Two.” She smiled over at Simon. “But this one’s okay too,” she said fondly before looking back at Billy. “Where are you hiding the guitar?”
Crazy was an apt description of it all, one that Simon thought he would probably apply to it many times in the coming days and weeks. But truth told, he somewhat envied the way that Aura’s family had handled telling her about her adoption, and he wondered if things might have turned out differently for him and his family had they been more forthright about it all. But that was in the past and Simon had worked hard to burn those bridges in a fit of anger. He would live with what had happened.
His thoughts turned inward as Aura brought up the guitar, leaving him to lean forward, steepling his fingers in front of him as he lost himself in his own, private thoughts.
Billy shot Simon a look that said he knew exactly what he was doing--brooding--and he didn’t necessarily approve. He cast Aura a startled look and said, “There are a couple guitars in the bedroom,” as if this was the oddest thing anyone had ever asked him. Billy was a quite decent guitarist, and an excellent musician, but most of his passion went into percussion and the odd sort of poetry that he could fit alongside tempting notes that fooled people into thinking they weren’t really listening to anything at all. “The piano isn’t coming until the floor is done.” Billy’s dexterity wasn’t anything like it had been before; he certainly couldn’t play anything as he had before, but he had determined that he was going to get it all back, and if he had to learn it again, he had to learn it again. Finger blisters had impeded any further practice on the guitar, however.
Aura stood and without the slightest bit of concern, she walked toward the bedroom Billy had mentioned. She had stopped worrying about boundaries and what other people thought of her years in the past, around the time she had acknowledged that she was hopelessly different, and so she generally did as she pleased and was willing to be considered eccentric.
The colors of the bedroom, like the contents of the living room, were in beach shades, soft sand pastels and sunrise blues, and it was obvious that Billy was utterly unconcerned about other people and their impressions of his masculinity, because he didn’t bother with sharp metal edges, grandiose furniture, or ridiculous pictures of pretty women on the walls. The bedroom, however, hinted of appreciation. Guitar-like curves made the bed a feature of the coast rather than a bold rectangle from a random wall. A dresser of smooth white wood like that of the picture frames was recently set to one side, and rather than a desk, chairs or multiple tables, there was an excess of open space to facilitate easy movement. A high-end silver laptop on a funny little table made to stand on the lap sat on the edge of the bed. A decent amount of books--some decidedly masculine classics, like Dickens and Hemingway, along with an apparent fondness of westerns and musician biographies--were on a low shelf that featured more photos of family and friends. There was a wheelchair backed into one corner, within easy reach of the bed. There was no drumset, only a few acoustic handdrums of various sizes stacked against the wall, out of the way. An acoustic six-string was on the bed, the old electric propped on a stand near an amp. There were quite a few things stacked, and there was a hasty feel to the room, of things moved in and put down just to put them down rather than put them away. It wasn’t messy enough to feel lived in, and there were white linen curtains and rods that hadn’t been mounted yet.
Aura had entered the room for the guitar, which she found (in the form of the acoustic six-string on the bed). She walked up to it, and she plucked at the strings with no visible skill, but she looked around as she did it. He read? Hmmm. That was surprising to her, she realized. She hadn’t taken him for a connoisseur of words on the page. It wasn’t a critique - Aura herself hated reading fiction. In the end, she didn’t pick up the guitar, however. She left it where it was, and she walked to the curtains and the curtain rods. She looked up at the space above the windows, and she wondered where the drill was.
She walked back out to the bedroom door. “Does the Fly-boy have an electric screwdriver? Or should I go find one in my own masculine domicile?”
If Simon had caught the look Billy tossed at him, he made no indication of it, only vaguely aware of what was going on around him, lost in his thoughts as he was. Dimly, he knew it wasn’t the nicest thing to do when with company, particularly at another person’s place, so he pushed what he could down to ponder later, looking up in time to hear Aura’s voice from the other’s bedroom. “Oli- Aura. I don’t think he really needs you poking around in his bedroom,” he said, giving her a look, the inclination to keep an eye on her coming to him easily. A part of him wanted to apologise for her, to say something about it, but after that comment, he kept quiet.
Aura as he had known her had seen a lot more personal things than that bedroom, a phenomenon, like her peculiarities, that he had grown used to. All the same, Billy has separated that as something manufactured by his mind, and to see an independent, clearly real and entirely un-dreamlike Aura striding around his apartment demanding screwdrivers, that was something else. He stared at the entrance of the hall, and when she did not reappear, called back, “A what? What do you want one of those for?”
Aura looked around herself, and finding nothing she walked back out to the living room. Their expressions made her smile widely. Simon looked slightly embarrassed and Billy looked slightly shocked, and they both made her smile. Simon, who tended to be exceptionally pensive, got a ruffle of his hair as she neared him, and Billy got a smart-ass grin. “Your curtain rods, Fly-boy,” he told him, and then she left the apartment to go get a screwdriver. The door behind her was left open, since she would be right back.
Simon looked after Aura as she left, one hand busy smoothing his hair back down before he pushed himself up to his feet and wandered into the kitchen where Billy was. “Apparently, she’s putting your curtains up,” he said lightly, leaning against the counter with his arms folded over his chest. “And I don’t think she’ll be content until she gets that done.” Simon paused, considering his words for a moment before he looked over towards Billy. “You okay? You don’t seem like yourself right now. Not that... I know what that is, but.” His lips pressed in a line and soon he shook his head, looking down at the floor with a sigh. “Sorry.”
Billy stared after Aura. “She’s going to put my curtains up,” he repeated, not quite believing it. Once she was gone Billy was almost a mirror image of Simon, only his eyes were on the ceiling. “I don’t know. I’m... thrown, I guess. She’s... weird.” This was the only descriptive word he could come up with, and since he was seriously concerned that his mind was assigning personalities to people he just met because it thought he needed assistance (with curtains?!), he just shook his head. “Yeah... maybe they changed the meds or something without telling me.” He didn’t seem to really hear what he was saying out loud, and he came back around from the kitchen to take the chair again. He was too caught up in his thoughts to even worry about what Simon thought about the slow and awkward process.
It only took Aura a few minutes to go upstairs and return with a screwdriver of the electric variety. She’d insisted on putting up all her shelves and curtains on her own, and she had the screw driver handy, not having put it away yet.
She walked back into Billy’s apartment like she had every right to do so, and she stopped in the center of the living room when she saw the mirrored positions of the two men. “Do you both need the speech about how I’m strange again?” she asked, not sounding at all put out by the possibility. See, she liked Simon, twin or no. And she liked Billy, the damn dream stalker. They were eternally stuck with her strangeness, so they might as well come to terms with the fact. She revved the screwdriver for good measure.
Simon looked up at the sound of Aura’s voice once more, giving her a look, and feeling slightly intimidated by the sight of her with the electric screwdriver. Passing a look over towards Billy, Simon pushed a hand back through his hair and straightened from the slouch he had adopted against the counter. “I’m ordering pizza. Please tell me one of you likes Canadian bacon and pineapple, because that’s what we’re getting.”
Billy was still trying to find a comfortable way to sit in the armchair, not because the cushioning was wrong, but because one of his legs was not in the mood to cooperate. He look up from his knee, which he’d been hauling a bit painfully into position, when Aura paraded back in and started waving a deadly weapon around. He couldn’t get over her just showing up in real life. It was wigging him out. “Hawaiian is fine,” Billy muttered in Simon’s direction. “Number’s on the fridge.” To Aura he said, as if she might attack him at any moment with the screwdriver, “You don’t have to put up my curtains.” He was going to add ‘my mom was going to do it’ but that seemed imprudent.
Aura nodded approvingly at the pizza. She would have honestly agreed with whatever Simon wanted, and it made her smile at her own willingness to let him have what he liked. She wondered if that was a sibling thing, but Billy’s voice (and the touch of fear in it) made her look at him. “This isn’t a Jason movie. No one is going to kill you with the screwdriver, Fly-boy. I’m perfectly safe,” she said. Her eyes lit on his body a moment, noticing that he was having trouble, but not wanting to offer to help in front of Simon. Pride around other men, she’d found, was a fairly strong motivator. When Simon walked toward the kitchen, she nodded at Billy and disappeared into the bedroom, giving him a chance to settle himself comfortably.
The approval on the pizza toppings was all he really needed to get him moving, his cellphone already out of his pocket (an annoyance he had given into while traveling) and dialing the number that Billy had pointed out on the fridge. A few words were said and the address given and soon the cellphone was tucked back away in his pocket. Coming back into the living room in time to see Aura disappear into the bedroom once more, Simon settled back on the floor, legs stretched out in front of him. “Safe. That’s what she says until she’s redecorating your apartment,” Simon said to Billy with a sage nod. When did he get so comfortable talking about her so casually?
Billy rolled his eyes at the ceiling, as if asking someone up there for patience. “God knows what she’s doing in there. Putting lace all over everything.” Then again, they both knew that was fairly unlikely. “Moving things around.” So he didn’t trip over something. That one was more likely. She did go about things like that carefully, so that he looked around and all of a sudden something or other was easier or less painful. He peered intently at Simon. “What does she do?” he asked, referring more to her occupation than anything else.
Aura was doing exactly what Billy thought she was doing. The wheelchair was moved just so. The bed scooted just there. The books moved closer to the bed. And, finally, the sound of the electric screwdriver coming to life could be heard. She stood on the windowsills to hang the rods, and she was careful to leave the curtain pulls long enough so that Billy could reach them with little effort. Once she was done, she plopped into one of the chairs and started shoving all the plastic and leftover screws into one of the curtain rods’ cylindrical containers, and she looked around the room for other small changes she could make.
There were two or three other boxes, a few of them actually dusty. Some of them had musical scores that were old enough to have been studied in high school or college, but the vast majority were tangled electronic wires, a digital camera of halfway decent quality, outdated video games, old Rolling Stone magazines, and similar paraphernalia.
Once she was finished going through everything, she made small changes to the bed: Arranging the pillows for more support, adding a few at the level of his hip and knee, and then she curled up in the chair she’d vacated with the copy of Rolling Stone. She was quiet, wanting to give them a chance to talk without her presence, though she smiled fondly at the door as she paged through the magazine - if felt like family, and she liked that.
There was an article on South Portal in the Stone. It was dated several years in the past, in 2002, and the main photo showed Billy in the studio. The article spoke flatteringly about the band's freshman effort and eagerly about their upcoming sophomore one. There hadn't been a tour yet, and there was some further discussion about the band's manager and it's initial difficulties with adequate exposure. Apparently there had been a heavy local underground fan-base in L.A. Billy looked serious in the photo, one of the rare depictions in which he did, and very unlike all the other photos where he stood and sat with friends and family at various ages. He was always serious about music.
She hadn’t realized he was a real musician until that moment. Aura didn’t listen to modern music, she didn’t read Rolling Stone, and what she knew about South Portal came from the (she had assumed) exaggeratedly proud opinion of her mama. Funnily enough, it bothered her more that the cousin that had been sent to spy on her was somehow really famous for his hands, than the fact that Billy was somehow famous. Still, it must have made the injury particularly emotional to recover from; recovery alone was one thing, recovery with the whole world watching was another thing entirely. She resolved to ask her cousin, and she grinned. Well, at least someone famous had bought some of Simon’s paintings, she thought proudly.
“Don’t forget painting the walls pink,” Simon added on as an afterthought, growing silent for a moment until he heard the sound of the screwdriver coming from the bedroom. “She works at the park, I think. And nights in... a clinic? I’m horrible at remembering facts like that, and ever since finding out about all of this...” Simon waved a hand in the air before letting out a quiet sigh, shoulders shrugging up to his ears. “My head just hasn’t been here. Sorry I’m not much help on that right now.”
“A clinic,” Billy repeated, as if this was what he had been expecting, but probably hoping it wasn’t so. He had his leg in place now, and sat back to wait for his spine to stop aching from the strain. His expression was faintly absent now, and he kept casting back worried looks toward the bedroom, as if he really was concerned about the walls ending up pink. Then, to Simon he said, frowning, “Why, you worried about the test?” Just when he seemed out of the room and conversation, Billy tended to come back with things people would rather he hadn’t noticed.
Was he worried? Honestly, Simon didn’t know. “I don’t know what to think about it. I mean, I just got here a few weeks ago after backpacking across the country for a year. And now, the thing I’ve been searching for, I’ve found? It’s kind of overwhelming.” Simon sighed softly and looked off to the side, his expression taking on a hint of melancholy. “Kind of scary at the same time. I keep expecting to wake up and to find it’s all been some elaborate dream.”
“Yeah,” Billy said, darkly. “It’s the other way around for me.”
Simon looked up and over to Billy at that, a brow arching in question. “What’s going on?” he asked, his voice quiet, his tone concerned. They may have only known one another for a short time, but hearing the dark tone of those words concerned him.
Billy looked reluctant. “I don’t know.” He stared at Simon. Billy did know. He just didn’t know how to say it. Then he said, slowly, “You believe her when she says stuff... that part about dreams, I mean...?”
“I’ve been finding it kind of dangerous to doubt anything she says,” Simon replied after a moment’s thought. “She told me she would never lie. So... I take her at face value. It’s all I can do right now.” There was a pause, a small frown on his lips. “You’ve dreamt about her?”
“But I just met her.” He was still staring hard at Simon, as if the guy was hiding something from him, as if someone was going to leap out and shout SURPRISE at any moment.
“And I’ve known her only since the exhibit opened, and here she may be my twin sister.” His words were pointed, edging on blunt before he deflated slightly, pushing one hand back through his hair in a nervous gesture. “If you dream about her then... maybe there’s something there. I’d say to just accept it and go with it unless you really don’t want to have anything to do with her. If that’s the case, tell her nicely or I’ll be forced to punch you in the jaw.” Simon smiled sweetly then, and the crooked slant of his lips belied the joking nature of his words.
Billy was not amused--nor threatened, actually. He just brushed it aside. “Something like what?” he said, voice rising in something distinctly like panic.
“That is up for the two of you to decide.” Simon gave a shrug of his shoulders, wishing he could give better advice, but this was stepping into territory he was mostly ignorant on. “You should just talk to her, Billy. She doesn’t bite. I... don’t think. She may actually. Have you had your tetanus booster recently?”
Aura stepped back into the living room at the tail end of the tetanus shot comment, and she quirked a brow, the Rolling Stone still between the fingers of her right hand, the guitar in her left hand. “Is someone biting the musician?” she asked, walking back out to the chair she’d been sitting in before. She curled her legs beside her, and she set the guitar flat on her lap, and she strummed softly as she looked at the two of them, the magazine beside her on the armrest. “You know, I just say what I think,” she explained. “It doesn’t mean I’m an alien, though I wouldn’t be opposed to that.”
“We weren’t saying you were an alien,” Billy said, a little hastily, looking from the guitar the the magazine and frowning a little as he tried to remember why he had an issue of Stone that was that old. It must have something on South Portal in it. Looking a little more uncomfortable, he said, “Simon was talking about your job.” He looked at her as if she might elaborate without further prompting.
“And I was telling him that I couldn’t quite remember because apparently, I have a horrible memory for things like that.” Simon gave what he hoped was a charming, innocent smile, though he wasn’t entirely sure that Aura would buy it even if he did pull it off.
Aura almost laughed at the charming, innocent smile. “We never talked about it while you were sleeping,” she said truthfully to Billy, without even one bit of embarrassment, and to Simon. “I work at Disney, which you refuse to step foot in again, if memory serves.” She paused, strummed a few moments longer, looking down at her fingers while she did so. “Or did you mean something else?” she asked, a definite smile touching the edges of her mouth. It was slightly endearing, the way they didn’t know what the hell to do with her.
Billy looked confused, as if Disney was not at all what he was expecting to hear. He ignored Simon and his attempts to pull the wool over Aura’s eyes--he knew better. Interested despite himself, he shifted stiffly in his chair and squinted at her. “What do you do at Disney?” He tried to imagine the rather quirky, solemn-faced Aura leading little kids on silly rides, and failed.
There was something muttered about Disney being entirely too full of people and cheer for him to want to step foot into it, but he did his best to keep that under his breath. “She dresses up as Minnie Mouse, obviously,” Simon added into the conversation, looking at the pair from beneath dark that that was refusing to do anything but hang in his eyes.
Aura immediately decided to find some Minnie ears at work the next day. “I work at the Haunted Mansion, being appropriately morose and macabre the entire day,” she said, using her most dead-pan Haunted Mansion voice as she said the words. “I like it there,” she admitted honestly. “It’s dark, cool and perfect for me.” She let the silence stretch a moment, and then she added, “I have a nursing degree.”
Billy, for his part, stared at Aura wonderingly. “Simon,” he said, slowly, “I think she’s serious.” Then a moment more, and his face filled with mirth for the first time since he’d seen them in the lobby. “You work at the Haunted Mansion?!” He started to laugh.
The knock to the door came at that time, giving Simon an excuse to hop up. “Pizza. Talk amongst yourselves, please,” he said to the pair as he dug his wallet out and made the short trip to the door, disappearing out into the hallway for the time it took to pay for the pizza, leaving the pair to themselves for that handful of moments.
Aura watched Simon go, and she waited for Billy’s laughter to subside. “Careful. You might hurt my feelings, and I might bite you,” she deadpanned.
“Sorry,” Billy said, not sounding sorry at all, “but you have to admit that’s probably the most well-suited job you could have at Disneyland, if you really have to work there.”
She couldn’t argue with that, and so she didn’t. “I tried a grown-up job, but it didn’t like me, and I didn’t like it,” she admitted without shame. “And, believe or not, I like the happiest place on Earth, Fly-boy.” She did. It didn’t exactly mesh with her somber personality or her sarcasm, but Disney made her happy, surprisingly.
“Why don’t you use my name?” BIlly asked, honestly curious. Oddly, it did not surprise him that Disney made her happy; didn’t Disney make everyone happy?
She paged through the magazine at her side, as if she needed it to find his name. “Billy,” she said, adding, “who’s in a band with my primo.”
Simon returned, pizza box in hand and a two-liter of cola in the other just as Aura spoke once more. He didn’t ask questions, simply made a beeline towards the kitchen to set the pizza out on the counter. “If you tell me where the plates are, I’ll grab ‘em,” he called out to Billy, wondering what the pair had talked about in that short time. Aura had used his real name, so he guess that was a positive.
Billy pointed over Simon’s head to indicate the plates, shaken out of his uncertain look at Aura. Different people acted good or bad about the whole band thing. Some people went a little weird about it and started asking favors; some people acted as if he had metamorphosed into a completely different person in the intervening seconds and stopped talking to him altogether. Aura didn’t seem to change at all, and this pleased him, so he slowly relaxed again. “You’re related to Merc,” he said, because it had to be Merc, or no one.
“His mama is my tia,” she said, not clarifying the whole adopted versus not adopted thing. For her, Billy’s band was nothing much (though she recognized the potential boon for Simon). She’d heard about her cousin’s band a million times, and it had always been nothing much too. Billy was like her primo, and her primo was a cut-up, like everyone else in the family. Nothing more than that, nothing less. “He was sent here to spy on me. It’s all very away mission.”
She watched Simon with the pizza boxes, and she smiled easily. “We didn’t kill each other, hermano. Aren’t you proud?”
Simon found the plates, pulling out three followed by three glasses from where he remembered them from the first time he was here, and it wasn’t long before he delivered food to each of them along with a glass of soda. “Quite proud. It’d be a shame to ruin these new floors he had put down,” Simon said with a small, crooked smile, settling back on the floor with his plate balanced in his lap, the glass held in one hand to keep from marking up the floor.
From the look on his face, it was obvious that Billy understood maybe about half of what Aura said, but he did get that she was, in fact, related to Merc, and he relaxed a little more. Anybody related to Merc was probably okay. His mom made these tamales...
Billy set to work on his pizza, trying to remember if he had seen Aura before at one of the countless times he had been at Merc's.
Aura set her glass beside her on the cushion, held in place by her foot and the side of the chair, and she picked a piece of ham off the pizza and popped it into her mouth. “I could kill him without him bleeding on the new wood,” she said, all monotone and deadpan, not a hint of humor unless you knew her well enough to notice the dark smile in her eyes at the comment.
That drew a look from Simon, one brow arching before he shook his head and took a bite of pizza, quiet until he swallowed. “Please don’t. I kind of like the idea of having a...” He paused, lips twisting for a moment. Were they friends? Simon wasn’t really sure and he wasn’t about to assume anything like that. “Someone to hang out with around here.” There was a hint of a smile then before the pizza drew his attention once more.