Re: Chinatown Apt: Robert/Selina
"It's a story, isn't it? Do you like the story?" she asked, wanting to stay with the book. The book was safe. The book was like their old conversations, things without the immediate pressure of the words being about them. The days when it hadn't been so obvious to her that he wanted to crack her spine and spread her pages. And she just assumed the book was a story; she assumed all books were. She didn't understand why readers read, not when the feel of wind against skin was so much better than reading about the same experience. "Poverty and class warfare?" she asked, a quirk of brow and the sleep letting her string words together in sentences in a way she hadn't done in days. "Sounds like Gotham."
When he approached the bed, she looked like a cat that didn't want to be grabbed, and maybe she should get him one - a cat. She sat up, though it wasn't exactly easy with heavy limbs and a stomach that insisted on hating every movement. But she managed, and she sat up against the wall, clawing at the vulnerability of lying in the bed while he loomed. Better now, and she looked at the food, the clothes, the bathroom door, the apartment. And, finally, settling her gaze on his face.
She knew the apology was coming before it came, and if she could've silenced him she would've. She didn't want to talk about it. She didn't want to, but he dredged it up like a dead body at the bottom of a well, and she exhaled. "Don't try so hard," she told him, breath through her nose and her knees up against her chest beneath the blankets. "Don't try so hard. Don't hold on so tight. It just makes me want to run."