Maizie Wolfe (maizielou) wrote in remains_rpg, @ 2016-09-27 18:13:00 |
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While Maizie waited for FaceTime to connect, she drummed her fingers against her leg. After trying a couple of different spots in their room over the past few days, she'd finally come to the decision that the bed was just straight up the most comfortable place to video chat. So that's where she was, shoes off and legs crossed, waiting for the freaking call to connect already. This was totally and absolutely the highlight of her day. Finally, it made that little plonk sound that meant they were underway and Liv’s face popped up on the screen. Maizie withheld the happy sound that really wanted to pop out of her at the sight of her girlfriend, but couldn't help the smile that spread across her face. She even waved, earning a laugh from Olivia right away. “Hi!” "Hey, babe." Olivia propped the phone up on the pillow next to her and lay down on her side, tucking one of her hands under her chin. God, it was so good to see Maizie's face. She took a moment to study her girlfriend's image on her phone screen, looking for clues regarding her overall demeanor beyond the extra chipper front she was putting on, before adding, "How are you?" “Oh, you know. I'm good.” Maizie rolled one shoulder into a nonchalant shrug. The effect of which was kind of ruined by the fact that her sunny expression wavered while she spoke. Even now, at the worst of times, when it really counted, Maizie still couldn't keep her every thought from showing on her face. Of course she was miserable. But it wasn't like she could just say that. “I cleaned out the closet,” she supplied instead. There wasn't a whole lot else to do with the lock down in place. “Finally separated my shorts and your shorts again. I mean, I'm still totally wearing yours right now, though.” To illustrate this point, Maizie shifted the angle of her camera to show Liv her legs, stretched out on the bed and definitely in a pair of borrowed shorts. "Hmm." Olivia eyes had narrowed as she took in Maizie's terrible attempt at pretending as though she was okay, though it certainly wasn't the first time over the last week that both of them had attempted to play this whole situation off like it was nothing. Still, though, she couldn't help but allow her gaze to linger appreciatively on Maizie's legs. "I like that you're wearing my clothes," she said, allowing herself a small smile. She sniffled then, the effects of the cold she'd caught -- or worse, but she wasn't thinking about that -- and made as though she was about to reach out to stroke Maizie's hair before remembering she couldn't. "How's Savannah doing?" She wanted to keep asking about Maizie's well-being, but it wasn't clear if that would be receptive. The stray sniffle caught Maizie’s attention, and she wondered in passing whether Liv had been crying or something before her call. God, she really hoped not. Maizie hated to think of Olivia being sad in a place where she couldn’t comfort her. It made her heart ache (and her eyes water a little) because Liv almost certainly was sad. And scared. And a whole host of other emotions. And all while she was completely alone. God, this sucked so hard. “I dunno. Worse than she’s letting on, I think.” Maizie pressed her hand against her sternum, which was right where that aching, anxious feeling was centered. “I’m worried about her, but I don’t know what to do.” She bit her lip, then added, “I wish you were here.” "Me too." Olivia found it hard to breathe, suddenly, watching Maizie's face shift from excited to see her to despondent to straight up near tears. While she was like, seventy-five percent convinced she was fine and would be home soon, she knew Savannah was dealing with way more than just her. "I'm sure just you being home is really helping her, though. When you were -- back at the end of January, you know, when you were stuck at the library, Savannah was a mess. I mean, I was too. But she wanted you home more than anything, babe, and I know she's glad you're with her even if everything sucks right now." Okay, now it felt like she was sniffling because she was on the verge of crying, too, and not just because of her cold. Oh, no, telling Liv that she missed her had definitely been the wrong call. Now they were both sniffling. Maizie really needed to pull it together, or else they were going to end up sobbing through the whole FaceTime session. “I’m pretty sure she's totally freaking out now too, though. Just, like, on the inside. Maybe I'll do something nice for her this week.” Maizie let her hand drop back down to her lap and shifted to sit cross-legged on the bed. All the while her eyes never left the image on her screen, trying to drink in as much of Liv as possible until the moment they had to hang up the phone. “Do you need anything else? Did I send the right hats and clothes and stuff?” "You could put Sven in the box, maybe," Olivia said lightly, hoping the humor would help her stave off the tears. Thinking about their cat was sort of bittersweet, though. "Everything you guys sent was awesome, though. It sucks just wearing generic stuff, you know? But it was really sweet of you to do that." She offered Maizie a smile as she shifted on the bed, leaning her head against the pillow. Olivia was glad that it felt a bit less wavery on her face than some of the previous ones. "I love you. We should just think of this like…. An experiment. In something. In our resolve." If there had been a way to sneak Sven into quarantine, Maizie totally would have done it. Liv needed the cat’s company way more than she did right now. “I love you too,” she said, the words bringing a soft smile to her own face as well. “What do you mean an experiment in our resolve? For, like, how well we can take being away from each other? No wonder I hate science.” "Yeah. Something like that." Science had never been Olivia's strong suit, and somehow she'd ended up pursuing a related field. It was karma, or something. Still, she forged on in the interest of making Maizie feel better: "After everything we've been through together, this is by no means the worst of--" Olivia cut herself off to sneeze, grimacing as she remembered what the doctors had told her, then added, "--them." “Bless you.” Maizie said it reflexively, like a ‘thank you’ when someone hands you something, and it was a second before what had just happened really sank in. Then her eyes widened, her heart stuttering inside her chest. “Are you sick?” Normally it wouldn't have mattered, aside from the fact that she would be sorry to have Liv feel ill when she was away from home. But the kid in her class had been feeling ill too, right before he converted. Olivia's eyes narrowed in alarm, her mind racing through a couple of different options, before settling on one of the poorer choices: "No, sweetie, just dusty in here." After all, the doctors weren't entirely sure it was a cold. It could've been allergies, or strep, or she was spontaneously turning into a zombie. No one was certain. "I'm all right." Olivia was lying. You couldn't live as closely with someone as the two of them had with each other without being able to pick up the signs. And Maizie totally knew why Liv was lying too. She might be on the cusp of nineteen, but all of them still saw a kid when they looked at her. Just like Dad. Everyone kept putting her in that damn tower, even her girlfriend. Maizie gave a short, bitter laugh. “Okay, yeah. It's dusty.” "It is." Except it wasn't, and both of them knew it. Maizie had never taken that tone with her before, either. Olivia's gaze dropped down to the wrinkled blanket between her and the phone, frowning. "I'm just sneezy today." The absolute last thing Maizie wanted to do was upset Liv right now, with all the other stuff going on. She felt silent for moment, her expression pained as she struggled with whether to back off or keep pushing. Finally, she sighed. “I'm just really tired of being left out by everyone. If you're scared and you don't want to talk about it, that's okay, but I still want to know that truth about what's going on.” To her credit, Olivia didn't ask what Maizie meant. Even without the details, she could put together bits and pieces from Maizie's life in Austin, beginning with how she'd only started leaving the LBJ almost a year ago and she was still kept out of a lot of the stuff Savannah dealt with. Olivia was too, of course, but it seemed to bug Maizie more. It was admittedly hard to get over the instinct to protect her by omission, but at the same time Olivia couldn't exactly blame Maizie for feeling that way. "They don't know what it is," she said after a moment, her gaze rising back up to meet Maizie's as one of her hands fiddled with the blanket, squeezing the fabric reflexively. "Whether I'm actually sick or if it's just allergies, you know? You'd think they'd be at least able to pinpoint that much. But like, it can't be that. I haven't even been -- I haven't been bitten." Some of the tension coiled inside Maizie released at Liv’s words. Not all, of course, because it wasn’t like this was particularly good news, but Liv was talking to her, telling her stuff. And having her do that was enough of a relief that Maizie actually felt tears pricking at her eyes again. “Thank you,” she said, and rubbed at her eyes before pressing on. “Okay, let's think about this. You don't have any cuts or scrapes or any place where the infection could have passed from the shuffler to Kitty to you. Which has to make the risk really, really low. So getting sick doesn't have to mean anything. If we could get the virus from a head cold, we'd all have had it by now.” This all made logical sense, but it begged the question: "Then why are they even keeping me here if there's like, little to no chance that I could actually have it?" Olivia knew she sounded petulant and frustrated, but she couldn't help it. Every single minute she spent in quarantine only served to make her even more worried that maybe this wasn't just a precaution. Maybe there was some other way to convert. After all, those kids at school hadn't had any signs of anything before it'd happened to them. Olivia wasn't sure what was worse: the thought that within the next seven days, she could turn into a zombie, too, or that all this time had been wasted for nothing. Actually, she did know what was worse. She bit her lip as she tried to think of something else, anything but that, but it was no fixing her suddenly blurry vision. "I don't know if I really want to talk about this anymore." “Okay, then we won’t.” Maizie wanted to say that she was pretty sure the Capitol was just trying to cover their asses. And that after missing that first guy who got his whole family infected, they were sticking even the people with basically no chance of converting into quarantine. She'd said they didn’t have to talk about it, though, and so she just nodded and bit her lower lip, reminded once again of how much it really, truly sucked to watch her girlfriend on the edge of tears and not be able to do anything to help. “We could talk about your gym instead, and about how you're totally going to get my ass in shape once it's opened.” Maizie laid back on the bed, tucking an arm under her head as she settled into a comfortable position. “Or what about Savannah’s birthday? I wanna come up with something to order her from Denver.” "Yeah, me too." Olivia bit her lip again, now facing off with the guilt she still felt from how she'd behaved on Savannah's last birthday, but it was enough of a jolt to get her mind off of her worries about spontaneous zombie conversion and what else her cold or allergies or dust sensitivity could possibly be. She had a few birthday ideas in mind, but what came out instead was: "I don't mean to leave you out of stuff. You know that, right? But like, I'll… I'll try not to do that anymore. I just don't want you to worry when I don't even know what's really going on." “I know.” Maizie nodded, her head shifting against the pillow. It was a hard feeling to try to put into words, but she owed it to Liv. “Nobody really does it to be hurtful or anything, but ... I'd rather worry than have my ability to even have a reaction taken away. You know? It doesn’t protect me to put me on the outside of the situation. It just means that something is happening to someone I care about, and I'm not only in the dark, I’m being kept there on purpose. I don’t like that feeling.” Of course one, huge glaring example sprang to mind, but Maizie purposefully didn’t mention Dad. Rereading through their last text conversations the month before had reminded her about the way he hadn’t even told her about being bitten -- and that still hurt to think about. She focused on Liv instead, raising her gaze from the picture on her phone screen to look straight into the camera. “I appreciate it, that you’re trying. It means a lot to me.” Olivia nodded too, biting her lip as she looked over at the little image of Maizie on her phone screen. She actually had more things to say, too, big things that were bothering her about Nathan and Savannah and the reason her sort of-uncle had moved out. She'd been going back and forth on telling Maizie about what she'd overheard, but then the next day she'd ended up in quarantine. After the conversation they'd just had, she didn't think she could get away with waiting until October freaking Sixth to tell her. "I love you," she told Maizie, just so they could start this off with something positive before she got to the shitty stuff. "But like, while we're on the subject… You know how Nathan moved out a few days ago? Him and Savannah were arguing downstairs while you were at work but I kind of heard a lot of what they said. They were both pretty mean to each other but Nathan kind of… I don't know. He said a bunch of stuff about your dad after Savannah said he'd been a shitty husband and that's when she threw him out." The change in subject to Nathan was an unexpected one and Maizie fell silent for a moment as she absorbed what Liv was telling her. She knew Savannah and Nathan had been fighting, but somewhere she'd gotten the idea that him moving out had been a mutual decision. “I love you too,” she said, then frowned a little. “What kind of stuff about Dad?” Olivia studied Maizie's face for a moment, thinking; she was of half a mind to rescind the offer, but she'd already gotten this far. Maizie was totally going to call her out if she kept sticking to her protective, withholding instincts. "Okay. Well, I guess Nathan was super pissy about the fact that Savannah and Gray never got married. But like, not in the protective kind of way, like he was rubbing it in her face that it never happened." The problem was, once she started talking she couldn't stop. She'd been so mad at Nathan on Savannah's behalf; even though she didn't know how Maizie would take it, she needed to talk to someone about it and there was no way in hell she was gonna ask Savannah about it. "That Gray didn't want her to see him when he was in quarantine. And that he must not have been committed to her." Olivia risked one more glance up at Maizie's face. "She was 'arm candy,' nothing else." “Well, that was all really shitty for him to say.” She was gripping her phone too tight, the sides of its case digging into her fingers, and Maizie deliberately made her grip loosen. Her anger wasn't even all directed at Nathan either; she knew arguments always made people say things they didn't really mean. If he'd found a chink in their family’s armor, though, it was because Maizie’s dad had put it there in the first place. “The worst part is that some of its true -- I really don't think Dad did want us to come to see him in quarantine -- and that makes the rest of it sound like it might be true too. Even though I know it's not.” A worried look crossed her face, and Maizie swallowed, feeling a scratchy ache in her throat. “Do you think Savannah believes all that?” "I don't know." Olivia hadn't talked to Savannah about it the day it had happened, and she wasn't even sure that Savannah had realized she'd been home during it, too. "She was really upset that day, but then you came home... " Another instance that Maizie could interpret as people hiding things from her, maybe, so she added: "I don't think she wanted to talk to anyone about it, me or you or anyone else." She frowned, looking up at Maizie again, then added quietly, "Maybe she does believe it and that's why she kicked him out." “Maybe,” Maizie echoed, still frowning. She was just going to have to come up with some way to ask Savannah about it, because it wouldn't right to have her walking around thinking she hadn't meant anything to Dad. “I'll see what she says.” At that, she scooted into a more comfortable spot in her all-too-empty bed and adjusted the position of her phone again. Talking like this had its difficulties, but Maizie wouldn't give up the opportunity for anything. “Let's talk about something else for now, though. Just for a little longer. I don't wanna go yet.” "Sure." Olivia was hurting for the company, anyway, especially Maizie's. Tucking her head on one hand, she just barely resisted the urge to reach out and run her thumb over the image of Maizie's face on her screen. There was more she wanted to say now that Maizie had discovered her 'cold' and she'd finally come clean about the Poseys' fight, but she put on a brave face and smiled. "I'll stay as long as you want." |