a softer side
Characters: Edan and Matt Setting: The cafeteria, early afternoon
Matt should’ve known better than to tail Edan as she left the courtyard but for reasons he couldn’t quite fathom, he felt compelled to follow her. The same way he felt drawn to her after he’d left the library, not heading up the stairs back to his room but instead standing on the other side of the tool shed listening to her talk to Leandro.
There weren’t enough people around to mask what he was doing and the courtyard offered little in the way of cover but he was well practiced and she didn’t notice his presence as she went into the kitchen - a room he knew he couldn’t follow her into without being seen straight away so he stayed outside, crouched by the corner of the gym where he snapped a couple of pictures for the sake of appearances more than anything. One eye stayed trained on the kitchen door however and when she exited through it and headed towards the cafeteria, he waited a couple of minutes and went in after her. It was a risky move but he wanted to get a better look at her and if questioned, he could say he was just making his way to the elevator to head back upstairs.
Edan had wandered for a moment, but managed to find the kitchen, her stomach growling reminding her for a forgotten routine. She was already halfway through the day and hadn’t eaten anything. Thankfully the kitchen was well stocked and she found herself something to eat, something nicer than prison fare for sure. The cafeteria was nicer as well and she found somewhere to sit, watching the room for a moment before focusing on her food. She needed to eat, then she could look at something else.
The fact the cafeteria was empty aside from the two of them was somewhat of a mixed blessing; yes, Matt was grateful not to have an audience but at the same time there was no means of diversion; he would be the sole focus of her attention if she chose to engage with him. Which there was no guarantee of, from what he had gathered from his eavesdropping, she wasn’t as forward as Autumn or Cal but there was no way to be certain either way. So he kept his head as he made his way across the room, allowing himself only the briefest glances in her direction until he was close enough to offer a small wave of greeting - a gesture easily reciprocated but that demanded nothing more in return. What happened next was entirely up to her.
There was no avoiding looking up when he came into the room, prison had taught her a few things in her brief stint there. For a moment longer than usual she watched him, finding something about him so normal, so unlike prison, so unlike Leandro. Despite the entire situation for a moment she could have been in college again, some boy from the dorm waving as he walked by her table in the dining halls.
But this wasn’t college and she wasn’t that young anymore. Later than it should have it registered that he was still waving and she found herself waving back, small smile slipping into her features before she could hold it back. It was a glimpse of the friendly girl, the one who’d been popular and well liked and hadn’t been a the forefront of her personality for almost a year.
He hadn’t planned to stop unless she spoke to him, he really hadn’t, but there was something about that smile, small at it was, that halted him in his tracks and before he even realised what he was doing, he took a step towards her. “Hey,” he said with only a faint wobble on the first letter.
“Hey,” Edan heard herself greet, friendly tone to her voice. Maybe it was the way he stumbled over the word and how it made him seem harmless that had her almost slipping back into something familiar, friendly skin that she hadn’t worn in so long. It felt comfortable, but at the same time not quite right. “Is it okay that I’m in here?”
Matt nodded, a fraction too quickly to be read as anything other than awkward but it was tempered by the beginnings of a shy smile. “Oh it’s f...fine,” he told her. “There’s not set times people come and eat, we’re free to just come and go.” He paused before adding. “It’s taking a while to get used to.”
Edan frowned, not entirely sure she liked the sound of that. She worked better with a routine, she didn’t forget things with a routine. Prison hadn’t been fun, but the routine was well placed, kept to the letter and she’d been much better at taking care of herself that way. She’d have to develop her own now she supposed. “Not having a schedule?” she asked, looking back up at him again.
Not liking that he had made her frown and unsure as to why the sight of it seemed to bother him, he was slower to respond to her next question. “That and the relative freedom,” he replied, rocking back onto his heels. “But people are already starting to find their own even if nothing is set. One of the others here, a woman called Carmel has taken it upon herself to cook communal evening meals and this morning she made breakfast as well.” He had also observed people already falling into patterns of movement but those he kept to himself.
Edan thought about that, hand reaching for the book of matches Leandro had given her. Relative freedom was right, a chance to do some of the things she hadn’t been allowed to do before. “I saw that on the computer posts,” Edan said with a nod. She’d already factored that into her new routine, but figuring out the rest was going to be harder. For a moment she looked at him, then the empty chair in front of her. “Did you want to sit?”
Slightly surprised by the offer, Matt’s eyes flicked between her and the chair a couple of times. “I wouldn’t be disturbing your meal would I?” he asked venturing another step closer. “M...more than I have already I mean?”
Meal... Edan took a moment then look down at her plate. Right she was supposed to be eating. Picking up her fork again she shook her head. “No you’d be fine,” she told him. At least if she focused on eating and making sure she did just that she’d be fine.
Hesitating a moment longer, torn between his instinct to flee and a desire to sit and figure out why he felt so compelled to be near this girl, eventually he did sit though not without moving the chair first, sitting on it backwards and making sure he could see both the door from the courtyard and the elevator. “Thank you,” he said quietly, flashing her that shy smile again.
Edan hadn’t given most people outside of her dead twin much of a thought lately, but she found herself liking his smile. Maybe it reminded her of something, though what she wasn’t sure. “You’re welcome,” she told him, taking another bite of food. “I’m Edan,” she added after swallowing.
“Matt,” he replied, glad she hadn’t tried to offer to shake his hand - valid as he considered his reasons for not doing so, it didn’t make it feel any less awkward when he refused to partake in what he knew many regarded as a harmless act. “Can I assume you only arrived here today Edan?”
“Matt,” she repeated with a nod, memorizing the name in a manner that stemmed from habit above anything else. “Is it that obvious?” she asked, taking another bite but giving him a ghost of a smile around it.
Shrugging, Matt’s eyes dropped his hands where they currently lay wrapped around his camera. “Perhaps not to everyone,” he said. “I find it helpful to know who I am...living with so I make a point of paying attention. The journals also are helpful in that regard but not everyone is comfortable using them and I must confess, I haven’t seen you post there yet.” Then again, he had been thoroughly preoccupied that day, first with his new acquisition then his visit with Cal.
“Is there anyone I should know about?” she asked, feeling more like that was a question she wouldn’t have asked before prison. Before prison she might have asked it of a girlfriend, but probably completely based in a cute guy to be on the lookout for, not who was trouble and who wasn’t. “I posted this morning, some questionnaire thing. I didn’t talk to too many people on there afterwards though.”
It was a fair question for her to ask and the fact that she did warranted credit in his view; while he too relished in the liberties that came with their new living arrangement, too many people seemed to have lost all sense of caution in the excitement of it. He was not one of them and he was oddly glad that Edan didn’t appear to be either. “There seems to be no-one overtly dangerous at this point,” he said, voice carefully measured. “Though certain individuals appear to enjoy rocking the point, Leandro being one of them. I haven’t spoken to many people yet so I can’t say for certain I’m afraid.”
Edan found the matches in her pocket, pulling them out to look at them. “I don’t think he’d do anything to jeopardize certain things,” she said about Leandro, not registering that Matt hadn’t been part of her conversation with the tattooed man. “He seemed more worried I would ruin his privileges.”
While Matt had overheard part of the conversation she’d had with Leandro, it wasn’t enough to understand what she meant and even if he had, he wasn’t going to admit to eavesdropping so the confused expression he gave Edan was a genuine one. “I don’t follow,” he admitted.
Edan held up the matches she’d been given. “He wanted to make sure I could control it. I think he and I set things on fire for different reasons.” She probably didn’t need to tell Matt what she’d done, or the fire bit, but what was the point in hiding it now? Everyone knew who she was.
Well that clarified things a whole lot. “And can you?” he asked, making a point to keep his voice free of any kind of judgement - after all, he was no stranger to compulsive behaviour himself.
She turned the matchbook over in her hand then nodded. “Probably. There’s not much here to burn.” Especially since she had her own set of rules that she lived by. “It’s different reasons, why he does it and why I do it.”
“Anything can burn if it’s hot enough,” Matt said, which was probably not the smartest thing he could have said to a pyromaniac but he really wasn’t good at small talk and wanted to keep Edan talking, even if he wasn’t entirely sure why, so painfully misguided comments about fire would have to do. “So why do you do it?”
“True, but that’s not really my style,” she said, a light smirk slipping onto her features. Part of her wonder if he meant something else by that, since it would be a decent line. “Do you ever feel connected to something? Like something the grounds you, brings you back to things? That’s what fire is for me.”
He was sure if he did really but then he had spent pretty much all of his life feeling disconnected from the people and events around him. The only exception to that was when he viewed things through the lens of his camera and the feeling he got when he developed his own photos, watching as the pictures slowly appeared bathed in the red light of his dark room. He was unsure how to say that so instead he gave a tiny nod, lifting his new camera slightly by way of elaborating. “I think I understand,” he slowly, offering what he hoped was a reassuring smile though he’d be the first to admit it probably wasn’t a very good one.
“When you take pictures?” Edan asked, giving him space to elaborate. She’d never been good with a camera, outside of the standard photos of family or with girlfriends, but there was always something stunning about what a real photographer could do with a camera. His smile was a little off, but Edan still softening slightly, giving him a small smile in return.
“M...more when I develop them,” Matt clarified. “I learnt how to do it from my grandfather when I was younger and nothing else really compares to it.” Still, he didn’t begrudge the fact that the camera he’d been given was a digital model, just the act of having it made him feel a little more like himself.
“You do that on your own?” Edan asked, looking a little impressed. She was lucky she could plug her camera into her computer and do some basic editing on the photos. “Where’d you get that camera?”
He nodded, genuine enthusiasm filling the small gesture. “Since I was fifteen,” he confirmed. “And I requested it from our ‘hosts’, it arrived this morning along with the bar and things others had asked for though just because you ask for something, there’s no guarantee you’ll get it. I was under the impression one of our fellow residents was quite upset she didn’t get what she asked for.”
“Just like that they gave you the camera,” Edan said, making a face and a consideration. She was definitely asking for something. “What did she ask for?”
“Just like that,” Matt replied. “And she asked for a pair of ballet shoes though the wine and cigarettes she requested were granted so I can’t fathom why she didn’t get them.”
Edan bit her lip slightly and nodded. “No I can’t see why that wouldn’t be acceptable... How does a dancer wind up in prison?” That just didn’t seem to compute. Though she was asking the lost looking guy with a camera. He didn’t look like he belonged either.
He shrugged. “I could say that about a number of the residents here,” he said. “Though one someone made a post on the journals suggesting we all ‘come clean’ about why we are here and a number of people did so. Susanna was not one of them so I couldn’t tell you about her I’m afraid.”
“Did you post?” Edan asked him propping her chin in her hand. She was curious what he’d done since he seemed more like the type to be a victim, not a convict.
Matt shook his head. “People would make assumptions based on a single thing I need and would never do again,” he said quietly. “I’m no harm to anyone here so I don’t see why they need to know.” Curiously though, if she were to ask him, he was fairly certain he would tell her.
“What would they assume about what you did?” Edan ventured, not quite asking him outright, but curious what he was thinking. She wondered often what her crimes said about her since they were both such an important part of her and at the same time not.
“That I’m a violent person,” he said, voice even quieter now. Not that he regretted his actions, far from it, time had nothing to dull the vindication he felt when he thought back to that night, to the justice he had delivered. He just didn’t believe that it defined who he was as much as the press had largely come down on his side at the time.
She watched him, especially since she had to strain to hear him. “Are you?” It seemed like a valid question, an important question, but at the same time she wasn’t really scared.
Although he couldn’t blame her for asking, it didn’t stop Matt feeling hurt that she’d felt the need to, a fact that was immediately obvious by the way his face fell at the question. “No, I’m not,” he told her, the ease he’d initially felt around her retreating back behind the walls he normally kept up around himself.
Edan watched his face change and nodded. “I didn’t think so,” she said, hoping that fixed things. “And I find it hard to believe anyone would think that as well. What did you do?”
“My best friend was taken from me in the worst way possible and so I killed the man that did it,” he told her, voice barely above a whisper but steady, not wavering on a single syllable. His eyes wouldn’t meet hers though, staying fixed at a point on the table top between them. She had asked for the truth so he gave it to her and even if he told no-one else at the facility, she knew why he was there.
Edan opened her mouth to answer, but stumbled over the words. The soft sound of his voice, the way he felt so sure had her reaching out, one hand across the table as if she might touch him even if she didn’t quite make it that far.
As soon as her hand entered his field of vision, Matt was pulling away, in that moment not caring how the action might be interpreted. “I don’t regret what I did, that man deserved to die,” he told, her, finally raising his eyes to meet hers albeit partially blocked by the thick hair of his fringe. “Just like I deserve to be in prison for killing him.”
She watched him pull away, drawing her own hand back and closing it into a fist. “I don’t regret what I did either,” she said. She might have done something similar if she’d been able to get her hands on the men who’d killed her brother, but that wasn’t the information she had to work with. She propped her chin in her hand again, watching his eyes even if they were half hidden.
“And what did you do Edan?” he asked, not missing the way her hand became a fist or the confidence with which she spoke. He guessed it was likely to do with her freely admitted affinity for fire but wasn’t one to make assumptions, especially not when it came to people he’d met since coming to prison.
“I burned down an Army recruitment office,” she said plainly. That she was fine with. The other counts they’d brought about her, she kept to herself, but that, that she was fine with. She’d been waiting for them when they came for her.
The forthrightness with which she just came out and said it, free from any embellishment either positive or negative struck a chord with Matt and while he didn’t condone her action, he did find himself nodding. “May I ask why?” he posed, curious as to whether she had a reason for choosing that particular building.
Edan nodded, answering the literal version of his question first. “My brother was a soldier, who got killed overseas. Then they refused to tell us what happened. I made a statement. They’re the ones that recruited him.”
The loss of a loved one was a motivation he understood all too well despite the radically different circumstances between their two situations and had he been a physically demonstrative person, he would have undoubtedly reached out a comforting hand to her. Instead he made a noise of sympathy, nodding his head in understanding. “I’m so sorry for your loss,” he said. “I can’t think how frustrating not knowing what happened to your brother must have been.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Edan pointed out. “But thank you. The same about your friend.” She tilted her chin up a little, forcing a little strength into her demeanor. Chin up you. She could almost hear him and Edan cut her eyes to one side, expecting Evan to be there and frowning when he wasn’t.
It was rare for Matt to talk about Rachel to people, even in the most oblique of terms, the memories he had of her something he guarded fiercely, so he took Edan’s sentiment to heart and the thanks he gave her in return were genuine. He didn’t miss the way she looked to the side however and frowned a little in confusion when he followed her gaze to see nothing. “Did I miss something?” he asked.
She let out a sigh, reaching to tug at her hair as Edan sunk more into herself. “I just miss him. He was my twin,” she said, thinking that explained everything because it did.
As an only child, really he couldn’t begin to fathom what having a twin was like, a human being so intrinsically linked with who you were a person, connected in a way other people other people were just unable to. He understood loss though and what it felt like to miss someone. “You’re allowed to miss him,” he told her, tone warm. “It’s been almost five years since my friend was killed and it still hurts knowing I’m not going to see her again.”
Five years, that was a long time to miss someone, an unfathomable amount of time. “I feel like part of me is missing,” Edan tried to explain, opening and closing her hands for a moment. “Her...you didn’t say she was a girl...more than a friend?”
“I can only imagine,” Matt replied, unconsciously flexing his own hands in a reflection of her actions. At her question they stopped abruptly, balling into fists that clenched helplessly against the denim of his jeans and he shook his head. “She and I were never like that. Yes I loved her but it wasn’t...she was the first person I met who I made a connection with. Who saw me rather than looked right through.” It was a paltry explanation for feelings he could only begin to describe and a situation that changed his life irrevocably but it was something.
Edan wondered about that, what it was like to be missed. She’d never really had that issue. “You loved her?” she ventured, leaning forward more and looking at him. “I see you.” Because she did. He was here, talking to her, despite their situation and while Leandro had been just as chatty, this felt different.
He nodded. "Very much so," he replied, his voice suffused with nostalgia and a fondness that hadn't been dimmed by the intervening years. "She made my life better just by being a part of it." At Edan's comment about seeing him, he couldn't help but smile a little even it held a wry twist at it's corner. "A place like this it is much harder to overlook anyone but thank you."
Edan tilted her head at him slightly. “Sounds like a great thing,” she said. Love was. She wasn’t sure she knew it as well as she could, but she had seen it before. “Has everyone you’ve seen talked to you so far then?” she asked, testing if he’d been overlooked so far. Edan wondered if he was like the boys she’d known before, or known of at least, who liked to stay on the edges of things.
“No but the few people who saw me all spoke to me,” he said, smile growing a little stronger at his little joke. “But then I am not really one for striking up conversation with strangers, even in a new place.”
“Who saw you...were you watching them when they weren’t watching you?” Edan ventured, giving him a curious look. That would be different, though maybe understandable. It was a new place to get used to. “You talked to me.”
Matt ducked his head, running his hand through the back of his hair. “You learn a lot about people by watching them, particularly if they aren’t aware they are being watched,” he explained. “I’ve found it to be particularly useful since my incarceration even if it isn’t the most sociable way to go about things. As for talking to you...” He trailed off and glanced up at her. “I am trying to make an effort and you seemed like someone I could talk to.”
“Were you watching me?” Edan asked, but her voice was curious, not accusatory. He had said she seemed like someone he could talk to. She had have to have seen something, somewhere.
“I saw you,” he corrected, as much of the truth as he was willing to admit to even with the lack of accusation in her voice. “While I was giving my camera a test drive as it were, you were talking to the man with the tattoos.” Another half truth. “I didn’t expect to cross paths with you so soon but it seemed rude to not say hello as I came through here and saw you eating.”
Edan was surprised as how easily the small smile came to her, quirking at the corners of her lips and actually reaching her eyes. "Usually people in prison don't care too much for polite."
The smile looked good on her and unexpectedly, Matt found himself wanting to make it happen again. "All the more reason to be so," he replied. "It may be a cliche but manners cost nothing and here… well one could argue its even more important."
Edan bit at her lip, eyes narrowing as she studied him a little closer. “You might be one of a kind.” He was certainly very different from those she’d met in prison. Just saying it though made her smile again, nodding towards the camera. “What have you been taking pictures of so far?”
She may not have meant it as a compliment but it brought a faint blush to his cheeks, something that wasn't helped by the distracting way she was biting her lip. Then she was smiling again and he couldn't help but do the same. "Thank you," he said.
"And very little but then I did only get it this morning, I'm still getting acquainted with it."
There was something the resonated in her with the way he blushed at the comment. It had been a while, over a year probably, since she’d had this kind of conversation, been in a position where she been in a position to elicit that kind of response from someone, probably more if she thought about it. She wasn’t the girl typically making boys blush and there was something about it that made her smile more, head tilted as she propped in her hand again. “You’ll have to show me when you have something.” Because she was quickly feeling like she liked being around Matt, which was more than she could say about anyone else she’d been around in the past year.
The kind of pictures Matt tended to take really weren't something he could share with other people, not without raising an awful lot of questions so Edan's proposition had him flailing mentally for a moment. He wanted an excuse to talk to her again though so he nodded in agreement even as his mind quickly began running through possible subjects for photos.
"Okay," he said, blush deepening a shade. "I usually photograph people though and I can't see our fellow residents being particularly happy with that."
Him blushing more was really something she couldn’t help but smirk at more. Something about that was bringing out the side of her she’d shoved so far away and she caught herself leaning forward more, wanting to be closer to him. “I won’t tell,” she said conspiratorially. “But I bet if the pictures are good enough, people won’t mind as much as you think.”
Although she had no way of knowing what she was encouraging, Edan had in a way effectively given him permission to pick up where he had left off with her blessing - a prospect that was both thrilling and terrifying. "I'll hold you to that," he replied, a little of her playful tone entering his own voice. "Even if I don't share your faith in our neighbours." He had learnt the hard way how poorly people in the prison population could react to unwanted attention and had the scar to prove it.
The playful tone had her smiling the biggest she had yet, nodding. “I promise.” She shook her head slightly, biting her lip again for a moment then smirking. “I think they’d like the attention. I know I’d be surprised that anyone would want to take my picture.” Her smile really was captivating and Matt itched to snap a photo of it, preserve the way it seemed to light up her whole face so it couldn’t be forgotten. That and the way her lip found its way back between her teeth, he didn’t even think about what he said next, the words flowing from him totally unfiltered without even considering how they could be construed. “Why wouldn’t someone want to take your picture?”
Now it was Edan's turn to flush ever so slightly as she ducked her eyes from his. "I don't think anyone has ever noticed. Maybe when I was with Evan, but one half of a whole isn't very interesting." She looked up at him again, smiling more, something akin to gratitude in her features.
Unused to provoking that kind of reaction in someone, it took a moment for him to realise that what’d he’d said was the reason for her blushing and when he did, it set off a feeling in his stomach that while strange, was also oddly pleasant. “Clearly people haven’t been paying attention,” he matter of factly. “And you’re wrong about not being interesting. Imperfections, parts of things, they can be the most interesting.”
Edan's eyes glanced to the side again, sadness creeping into her features for a moment. She felt broken, like something vital was missing. Even with Matt's sweet words it was there. "It doesn't feel like that sometimes."
Not liking the sight of her upset and unsure of what he could say or do to change the situation, Matt frowned. “Interesting is subjective, all to d..do with how we’re perceived n...n...not how we actually are,” he said, his discomfort at seeing her upset allowing his stammer to re-emerge. “N..no-one said we have to feel that way.”
Edan caught the stammer and it had her biting her lip again, glancing up at him and trying for a smile around the bite. He was trying and she could appreciate that. He'd shied away for her before but she still reached a hand towards him, but not all the way across the table. She was lonely. It was something she was slow to admit but she was, desperately so. Otherwise she would have just let it lie. “And you think I’m interesting?”
This time Matt didn’t move away from her hand, even going so far as to rest his own hand on the edge of the table closest to him, as always with the sleeve pulled down over his knuckles. They weren’t touching but it was the closest thing to it he’d done to it voluntarily in years. “Yes I do,” he replied and it wasn’t just because she was grieving for her brother, she had captured his attention even before speaking to him.
It wasn't contact but she could sense that it was something and Edan took it, leaving her hand there for a long moment. It helped, surprisingly enough and after a moment she was breathing easier, smile small but returning. "Lucky me," she said softly, meaning the sentiment.
The smile and the softness of her voice coupled with her sentiment threw him slightly and his brows came together in confusion. “Why does that make you lucky?” he asked, not quite understanding what he’d said she’d reacted to so positively.
She bit at her lip to keep her smile in check because that confused face was kind of a adorable. "Because you noticed. Because you find me interesting, any of that." Edan liked that feeling, like she mattered. She hadn't felt that in a long while.
“Oh,” Matt replied, suddenly feeling foolish. Then the ramifications of her liking what he’d said hit him. ”Oh.” Feeling even more uncertain of himself than usual, he began shifting in his seat as inwardly he began to panic.
That took the smile away and she tapped her fingers against the table lightly, if only to get his attention. "It's not a bad thing. Well unless you think so, but I don't think so."
“I don’t think it’s b..b..b..b.bad,” he stammered. “It j..just wasn’t my in..t..t..tention, I don’t w...want to overstep any lines there may b...b.be between us.”
Edan smiled softly and tilted her head a little. "You'd have to go a lot farther to overstep a line," she promised, wanting to put him at ease.
And it worked up to a point. His stammer didn’t fully retreat but the nerves subsided a little and he managed to conjure a small smile. “That is reee...ree...reassuring,” he said, ducking his head. “I am not good with people and I would hate to have misstepped with you so soon.”
"I don't scare easy," Edan promised. She found it odd, that he would think he was already over and edge when he'd barely entered the playing field, but she wasn't going to point that out to him.
“I find it hard to believe anyone would find me scary,” Matt said, smile twisting to the point where it was almost a smirk.
She smirked to echo his and shrugged. "Not scary no. Intimidating maybe but not scary."
His eyebrows rose a little at that. “I’m intimidating?” he asked, expression verging on incredulous, not entirely sure he believed her.
Her head tilted to the side a little, nodding slightly. “With eyes like yours? I’m sure plenty of girls forget their names around you,” she told him, fine with handing out the compliment. That was what kind of girl she’d been before prison, the kind that pointed out others’ strengths. But she meant it, he really was adorable, in a way that Edan hadn’t thought she’d see in years, or even care about, but here she was, staring at him a little and enjoying the view.
There was no mistaking or misreading that as anything other than the compliment it was and, much to his embarrassment, Matt turned a vivid shade of pink as heat rushed to his cheeks. “N..n...no they really d...didn’t,” he said, feeling totally lost as to how to proceed. For all the kind things Rachel had said to him over the course of their friendship, there really hadn’t been anything like that and before her...well it would be fair to say his interactions with girls his own age had been limited and more often than not, palpably awkward.
“Maybe they were too shy to say something,” Edan said with a shrug. She smiled at his blush, but not in a condescending sense, just a smile at the reaction.
He doubted that very much but was too polite to say so and rather preoccupied with reducing the colour in his cheeks, unzipping his hoodie a little in an attempt to cool down. “Maybe,” he wound up replying, even if he sounded less than convinced by it.
“What did you do before this?” Edan asked instead of insisting, giving him a distraction from her compliment which seemed like it might have been too much. Hopefully that wasn’t stepping over the line he’d been so worry he’d crossed earlier.
The change in subject may have been an abrupt one but Matt was grateful for it, moving away from a topic in which made him feel way out of his depth onto something more comfortable where could find his footing. “I was a librarian,” he replied, the words coming out in rush with his eagerness to talk about something that wasn’t his dealings with the opposite sex.
She tilted her head to the side again smiling a little. “Really? Like a big library or a college or..?” Biting her lip to hold back a laugh she nodded a little. “Yeah I definitely would have actually gone in the library at my college if you’d been there.”
“College,” he confirmed, smiling a little as he thought of the stacks at Roger Williams that had almost been like a second home to him. “Though it was pretty darn big in its own right.” Then she was flirting with him again which had him ducking his head and did little to help with his blushing situation. “W..w..what about you?”
She was surprised at how easy it was to make him blush and how she kind of liked doing just that. “I was an event planner for a non-profit group. Parties, fundraising events, things like that.” Edan had enjoyed her work, something she was really good at and helping causes that she cared about.
“What kind of work did your group do?” he asked, liking the idea she did something that benefitted others. “I imagine it must have been very rewarding.”
“Healthcare, kids and vets,” Edan said with a nod. “It was. I mean, the nurses and doctors were probably doing better work, but it was good to know that I was helping let them do their work.” She missed it from time to time, but she supposed it had been left far, far behind her.
It was probably just a coincidence that her group’s efforts lined up with his own preferred charitable causes but he smiled anyway. “We do what we are best at and help however we can,” he told her. “You shouldn’t downplay what you did because it wasn’t the front line as it were.”
Edan gave him a little look, something that conveyed without words that she was aware that he was close to flirting with her as well, playing along those lines, more gently than she had, but there nonetheless. “I try not too. But there’s only so many cocktail parties you can go to before you start to think you should be in there getting dirty.” There was another pang at the thought of her twin; he’d been on the front lines, too much of the front line.
She may have seen it as flirting, or something close to it, but Matt was pretty much oblivious to his actions, viewing what he was saying as something far more innocent than that. True it was the longest conversation he’d had with anyone in years who wasn’t a doctor or a prison shrink but the ramifications of that had yet to catch up with him. “Maybe so but you were at least doing something, so many people just don’t bother.”
“True,” she said shaking her head. “I don’t see how people just don’t help. But then again I met some interesting characters in prison so maybe I should stop saying that.” Edan looked down at her plate then pushed it away a little.
“So we’re back to interesting are we?” he asked. “It can be a most redemptive quality I’ll grant you. I can’t say I have much good to say about my past fellow inmates but precious few of them were dull.” He frowned a little as she pushed away her food, au uncomfortable feeling stirring in his own stomach as unprecedented concern began to well up there. “Are you okay?” he asked, going so far as to lean towards her a little, both hands coming to rest on the edge of the table.
“We are apparently,” Edan said. “I don’t know why I was trying to be nice. They hardly deserve nice.” She shook her head then looked at her plate then back at him shrugging a little. “M’alright I guess. Just not hungry anymore. I’m all...off. I need to get back into a routine.”
Matt shrugged. “It says more about you that you would try than it does about them,” he told her honestly, offering up a small smile. “And I don’t think its a bad thing in the slightest.” At her explanation, his lips parted in a silent ‘ah’ and he nodded in understanding - they all had their own way of dealing with their situation, clearly a routine was hers.
She felt herself aching for something her hand sliding towards his on the edge of the table again, but not getting there. “I’m not always nice. Not much at all these days.” Because nice was taking advantage of. She hadn’t been in prison long, but that was the first thing she learned, not to be nice. “You seem to have brought that out in me.”
He smiled shyly, dropping his head so his hair covered his eyes. It still felt alien to him, being on the receiving end of such warm words, but he couldn’t deny that, coming from her, he was starting to appreciate them. “Well then I shall consider myself lucky,” he told her.
“Then we’re both lucky,” Edan said with a nod, smiling slightly. And she meant it. It was nice to feel something again, with someone.