Holland "Holly" Sharpe (ilicin) wrote in the_colony, @ 2010-08-17 19:47:00 |
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Entry tags: | ^ week 19, holland sharpe, meghan callahan, | holly and meg |
Week nineteen - Friday night
Characters: Meghan and Holly.
Location: The Farm; Meghan and Holly’s shared room.
Summary: The two can’t sleep, so they chat for a while about various things that seem to bring them closer together.
Rating: PG
It was chilly; too chilly for Holly’s tastes, and it wasn’t like he could just go to the thermostat and jack up the heat anymore. He had a feeling that the cold was not the only thing causing him to toss and turn, but he didn’t want to think of any subconscious fears or stress that might be haunting him.
A quick glance to the bedside table made him sigh out loud in exasperation. They hadn’t had power in months, and there he was trying to check the time like a digital alarm clock might be sitting there. Some habits died hard.
“Y’know you could wake the dead...” Came the tired sounding voice on the opposite side of the room. Holly’s tossing wasn’t exactly uncommon, and it was definitely shared. Meg always had trouble sleeping (who among them didn’t?), though her problems were escalated by the fact that she heard every single noise in the damn house. She was praying for someone to find a few packets of ear plugs in tomorrow’s raid.
“Shit, you scared me,” Holly whispered, after a shocked silence on his part. “What are you still doing up?”
“Same thing I always do. Listening to every fucking thing in this house--including you mangling your bed.” Her tone was still tired, but relatively good natured. She sat up in her sheets, pushing up to rest the blades of her shoulders against the wall. Sarge reacted by sleepily rolling onto his back against her legs--instinctively, she placed her hand on his massive belly and started to scratch. “What’s wrong?”
“Hell if I know,” Holly grumbled, rolling onto his side to face Meghan’s bed. “Stress, I guess. That I hate every day here.” He sighed. “You know, the usual.”
Naturally, Meg’s lips pressed into a tight smirk. It wasn’t really aimed at her roommate, just the general attitude and pessimism laid out in the open--something she tried every day to suppress as best she could. “Yeah...well--” She sighed with her words and leaned back: her hair swallowed her shoulders, a little wild from her attempts at sleep.
“At least you’re getting out of the house for a while tomorrow.” Like that offered any comfort.
“Yeah, thank God.” A day of raiding was definitely something to look forward to, all things considered. “You’re not going on that, are you? Anything special you’re looking for?” Holly folded his arms beneath his head. “I always do a little shopping off the list.”
She could hear the very subtle up-lift in his voice, and that eased her self-imposed tension a bit. Every little bit helped, really. “Guitar strings, actually. Now that I think about it.” She rubbed the sleep from her eyes with the butt of one palm: the one not indulging Sarge with attention. It fell heavily back down to her lap afterward. “You know I don’t go raiding. I wouldn’t want to go either...” Strange place, strange surroundings... Meg had had enough of that to last a life time.
“Yeah, I guess, but you don’t seem to have much trouble getting around anyway.” When they’d first picked Meg up he’d been highly surprised she was still alive (for more reasons than just her wound), but after seeing her in action for a while he wasn’t surprised anymore. “I’ll keep an eye out,” he added. “Guitar strings shouldn’t be so hard to find.”
“Thanks.”
Meg smiled, but tightly, and it was faint. It was true she could manage herself fairly easily in the farmhouse, but only after meticulous planning and memorization. In the weeks before they had actually arrived, she was lucky enough to be looked after by a few of the more compassionate members of the group--namely Molly and Bridget. It was difficult to explain how she’d survived that long before-hand, so she usually didn’t go into it.
“You gonna look for anything in particular?”
“Hair dye. My roots are starting to show and it’s not pretty.” As Holly spoke, he thoughtfully flexed his fingers in the mass of hair trapped between his head and the pillow. “And maybe a frickin’ blanket, because this house is cold.”
A few scuffling, rustling noises came from Meg’s side of the room, along with Sarge’s sleepy grunt of protest before a rolled up fleece blanket lightly smacked Holly in the face. One regularly overlooked fact about Meg: she had uncanny aim. “I got my own personal furnace over here.”
“Ugh, thanks a lot,” came Holly’s muffled voice from beneath the blanket.
She arranged her self back under the comforter that still managed to cling to her bed. “What color? Not that it really matters, but I’m still vaguely curious.” Another thing that was hard to explain to people is Meghan’s concept of color. She could feel the strange looks given her direction when she tried to translate that--so it usually didn’t come up.
Once Holly pushed the fleece off of his face, he sat up to arrange it on top of his comforter. “I admit it, I’m a bottle blond,” he said, with a hint of laughter in his voice, “from the most drab brown you’ll ever see - or not see.” He glanced toward Meg. “Don’t ask me to describe those colors to you, because I don’t know how.”
Meg also chuckled a little, drowsy and happy to let the mood lift a bit more. “Don’t worry, I wouldn’t get it anyway. I’m told bottle-blond is popular though.” There was only a little sarcasm in her voice. “Think it’d suit me?” ...with a lot more.
“Maybe,” Holly said, after only a little thought. “Other than the creepy eyes you’re pretty stunning. You could probably pull off anything.”
Meg could’ve ignored the first part of that...odd compliment, but it amused her on a strange level: the same that had her making blind jokes since she was nine years old. “They’re not that creepy, are they?” She was only half serious.
Holly merely shrugged, but then he remembered they were talking about Meg’s blind eyes and he shook his head. “Not when you get used to them,” he said. “Besides, it’s kind of nice to know you can’t see me.”
Now that got a little more attention. Her brows pushed down a little over the freckles on the bridge of her nose, obviously a little confused. “I get people think they have some kind of privacy around me, but I’m not sensing that’s the case... Why don’t you want me to see you?”
“I just think people should be judged by what’s inside.” Holly said that as airily as possible, but in truth it almost hurt to say it. “You can only do that - I think. Unless you have some trick I don’t know about to judge on appearances.”
That did make sense, and Meg showed it with a roll of her lips and a short nod. “It’s hard to explain how I can ‘see’ things, but you’re safe on the judging part. You’d be surprised how similar every human’s face is to the next, when all you can gage differences by is your hands. On the other side of the coin, if it weren’t for my mother, I’d have no idea how to know when clothes look alright on me, or how to put on make-up. I can’t ‘judge’ anyone, like you said.. but that also includes myself.”
That brought a smile to Holly’s face. “Don’t worry, if you look mismatched or smudged I’ll tell you. I can’t let my roommate walk out the door looking like crap.” He flopped onto his back again, pulling the covers up to his chin.
She could hear his smile, and it was contagious. “That’s good to know. That was my husband’s job for ten years, and his ‘opinions’ might’ve been a little skewed from time to time.” A pause then, punctuated by the Mastiff’s sleepy, happy groan as he rolled over, completely pinning Meghan’s legs.
“Y’know... maybe, if you find some nice make-up while you’re out tomorrow...” She trailed off, letting her voice rise in pitch in hopes he’d take the bait.
“Oh?” He definitely took the bait. “Guitar strings and make-up?”
“It’s been a while since I’ve put any extra effort into---well, this.” She made an obvious gesture toward herself. There was a reason for this slight change of subject, and it was more than just bonding with Holly. She smiled broadly into the dark, staring ahead into her void. “Maybe you can even do something for the ‘creepy eyes’.”
“It’s possible,” Holly agreed, not apologetic in the least. “But you have to promise not to let Sarge lick all your make-up off after I put it on you.”
“Deal.” She said, snickering lightly and feeling a bit warmer for the conversation, or possibly with the help of the 150lb bag of heat asleep on her lap.