Re: [Quicklog: Jack/Dahlia]
[It's a technique Jack used to use with great effect with the nanny. He doesn't blink in response, it's utterly disgusting but that's the point, and his look cracks as her shoulders heave down on an exhalation of whatever it is she's seen. He doesn't ask. No bloody point, it doesn't mean you haven't seen it anymore. The kitchen's reasonably clear. Ice, scooped out bare-handed and tossed into a cloth, the various parts of a response to hitting a bloody great wall with your fist.
The dog's new. Or at least, it's new to Jack. He wanted one, once upon a time, but the moving about so much made it impossible. And now, he has a Bukowski, who has probably left a scent trail in smeared fur over his trousers. Dahlia begins to burble noise, and if he didn't know better, if he hadn't seen the blot of pupils entirely normal, he would have guessed it was chemical. Remarkably coherent for chemicals, but that was the thing about building up a tolerance, you could operate entirely shit-faced except for talking absolute rubbish.
He steps carefully around the dog. Hello, dog. The rump of his tail is waggling but Jack's hands are preoccupied, and he drops a packet of ibuprofen in the region of her knees, not high enough to bounce and he sits gingerly, ice in one hand, wraps in the other and he reaches for her wrist rather than the hand itself. It's convenient.]
The memories don't belong to you. The town's having hysterics. [Ice, with an efficiency of movement because god, he knows how much broken knuckles hurt.] Something horrible's life ended and the ever so delightful byproduct is we're all in one another's heads. [He's dry. It's clipped, it's more English than he's been in months, and that's a byproduct of the conversation with Newt, the itch under his skin, the mad desire to get blindly and horribly drunk until whatever spills out is drying in sunlight.]
What about the shit you said one way, but everyone says you said different? [His voice holds her speech-pattern, it's like printing nursery-rhymes on newsprint, it's bizarre.] Hold still, it's going to hurt. [It's not even kind. He's wrapping her hand in full expectation she might kick him.]