fantasy Who: Cody and Gin Where: encore When: mid day
Gin was of a mind to sketch and paint and generally explore the nightmares she’d been having. There were canvases back to back and some that hung on the walls of her shop were of hellish, nightmare landscapes. And always, through the midst of the chaos, like a savior or protagonist (antagonist?) of a story, Cody walked in smoke and ash and fire. Immortalized by Gin’s strange need to capture him over and over again since their first interaction. She’d spent a great deal of time thinking over that meeting, wondering if he wasn’t lurking just behind her or around every corner she turned. She was almost exhausted from the constant paranoia but not quite. She was in the throes of creating a grand scene of what looked like it could have been right out of the book of Revelation. Cody included. Dark, visceral, and fairly obviously indicative of an obsessive mindset.
Cody didn't know what else to do with his time, especially after the stupid whirlwind that was his debacle with Ember. So he'd been wandering. Eventually, he came across that redhead's shop, and wandered in through a back wall, and was silently looking around the place.
He blinked as he came face to face...with himself. And as he looked around, he saw him kind of everywhere. Or at least a lot of places. He looked for her, not alerting her to his presence yet, though he knew his presence would unnerve her the closer he got. Gin was mid-stroke when something felt different in the air. Sure she'd left the door open and it was April and maybe not so safe because werewolves were a thing……. Deep breath but! The air made sure she could think at her best even if she was a little cold and shivering. Still, there was something disrupting the natural flow of things. Right? She wasn't nuts. Well. She was paranoid right now. She almost went back to her work, dismissing her thoughts, but something made her at least try. Again. Even though there'd never been an answer before. She said, "Cody?"
He actually smiled at that. Then he shifted into visibility, leaning against a counter as he watched her. "I see you really did get hit with the inspiration stick," he commented. "What's the deal?" he had to ask, looking around again at other images of him. Which was weird, and he wasn't sure at all if he was okay with it, or just solidly weirded out. But he was leaving that verdict up in the air.
Gin jumped so hard that she knocked over the cup of turpentine she used to clean her brushes, the acrid scent burning her nose immediately until tears threatened. Which looked like perhaps she was so scared she was going to cry but it wasn't so. "Shit. Fuck," she murmured but ignored the spreading turpentine. Her face drained of color and her eyes widened. This time out of embarrassment. "I … well … you scared me," she said lamely and could have been talking about just now or the first time they'd met. "I haven't been able to sleep properly and all I have are nightmares. Which is what I'm painting. And there's a small market for it so I've been making some good money. So thank you." Her voice had started out tremulously and then strengthened as her heart stopped racing from the initial shock.
He had to smirk, at her rambling there. It was actually kinda cute. “You're welcome,” he told her. “What's the story of the nightmares? Some of these don't really look like I'm the scary part,” he noted, getting closer to one where he featured pretty prominently. He was clearly the focal point, and it was interesting.
Gin didn't know how to answer because it was true, he wasn't exactly the scary part of the paintings. Not any of them if he looked closely enough. Mostly he seemed to walk through it all without being scathed by their terror. "I don't know. I think knowing that you exist opened some kind of doorway in my head. Turned on some kind of dark portal," she said, her hands waving around her head, fluttering like butterflies because she had some of those in her stomach.
Arching a brow, he glanced to her again. “I opened a dark portal in your head,” he repeated. “Sounds painful.” He walked a little further along, looking over the details of another one. “What's happening in this one?” he asked, nodding to the one he was looking at. “And where are you during any of these?”
Gin craned her neck to see which painting he was talking about and blushed immediately then touched her cheek because what the hell? She didn't do that. Except that painting was her imagination. Pure and simple. Annnnd Cody was nude. His most tender bits hidden behind machine debris at a futuristic spaceship crash site. "Well, I think you just woke up after a thousand year sleep on another planet." It sounded like horseshit the minute it left her mouth but there it was and the turpentine tears fell then. "Me? I'm the biographer. The one meant to capture it all for posterity. I think?"
“Are you crying? Or...?” he asked, surprised. He also thought she was pretty flattering to him in the paintings here. No way he looked that good. Some of them, he didn't even look that dead. “And if you're the biographer, you have a place, so...” he trailed off. “You should be there. Plus, aren't these based on your dreams? You're telling me you didn't feature in any of them? Color me skeptical.”
Gin's eyes went wide at his question. Her fingers flew to her eyes and she laughed. "No, no! I dumped my turpentine when you showed up. It's burning my eyes." Her cheeks took on a more scarlet color at his assessment of her dreams. He was a lot more astute than she'd realized. He seemed to pare through to her soul, look in, and make observation on what he saw. If she hadn't been intrigued and feeling positive about him that would have been scarily unwelcome. Nevertheless. "I don't paint myself. I never have. I don't feel like I have a place. More like I'm a conduit."
Cody had to grin at that. “You didn't answer the question. Here, I'll rephrase for you,” he said, stepping into her personal space, just like he had before. He stared into her eyes from right up close. “When you were dreaming about me,” he started, voice lower than before. “Where were you?”
When he got that close, Gin's hands went out to touch him automatically. She couldn't help herself. But something stopped her from really trying. Some part of her did not want to find out he wasn't corporeal. So they fluttered and fell to her sides again. "I … I was watching. Or sometimes I was having… sometimes I was there but I edited me out."
“Why?” he asked, not giving any space back. “What was your role? What did you do?” Then he had to put the kicker in. “You know, I gave you inspiration, which seems to have worked, and you've painted me pretty much naked and then some. Do you owe me an answer? I think you might.”
Gin swallowed, wanting to kiss him for some reason. No… maybe what she wanted was to engulf him. It was a weird thing. A need rather than a desire and she didn't know how to explain it or act it out or … acknowledge it. "Cody," she began, her voice an almost whisper. "Ssss-sometimes I was your wife, sometimes a concubine. Sometimes daughter, sister, mother. Sometimes you saved me from the hell. Sometimes you put me there. I think I've had every relationship fucking possible with you in my dreams."
That was intense. And fascinating, and he found himself drawn in even if he'd been intending to keep drawing her in. “Yeah?” he asked, wanting her to go on. His voice was a touch quieter even than before, as he watched her eyes. But damn, that was a lot of him in her head. He was thinking that description she'd used wasn't actually far off.
"You scare the shit out of me. I've spent hours thinking you were there, invisible, looking over my shoulder. In my bed next to me. Whatever. Anything." Gin watched him, her eyes round and unsure. What was happening to her? She'd never had a problem like this before. She'd always known if a knee belonged in a crotch or a punch belonged on a nose. But he perplexed her - especially in reality. "And I don't want to know if I can touch you or not."
He grinned, a dark expression. “Then don't find out. Isn't it better if the mystery is still intact?” he posed. If he had this much of an affect on her, he didn't want to destroy any of it with dumb reality. Not when her fantasy life was apparently entire worlds deep. “What was your favorite dream? Did you paint it?”
"That's how I got here in the first place," she affirmed though part of her longed to understand and be clear where he was concerned. Yet she didn't touch him or try to. Instead she let herself go. What purpose did it serve to not answer his questions? "My favorite?" she asked and then moved, going to stand before a painting where there was less darkness. More of a Garden of Eden feel to it with fruit trees and Cody ensconced in leaves but obviously naked beneath them. The setting was lush and beautiful and peaceful. "This one," she said.
He walked over, and while it wasn't his taste – he was drawn to the darker ones – he couldn't deny it was gorgeous work. All of her stuff seemed to be. He took his time gazing at it. “Feels empty,” he told her. He looked around at all of them. “...I sure seem to be alone everywhere,” he said. Then he looked at her again. “Where are you in the garden, there?”
It hadn't ever occurred to her that she'd ever be faced with the subject of her paintings. She'd come to think, after numerous hours spent paranoid and thinking he was there when he wasn't, that she was the one alone. But he was right. He was alone in her paintings because she'd omitted herself. "I was there. In at least 80% of these settings. I just didn't include myself. In the garden… I was…" She stopped and pressed her lips together because the garden scene was the most vulnerable one of all. "I was your other half."
“So what happened?” he asked, honestly curious. “Tell me a story,” he invited, leaning against a nearby shelf, attention landing and staying on her. Like she was the only person in the universe, at that moment. One thing being dead and a habitual stalker had honed was his attention. He could focus like no one else.
So they were shouldering heavy burdens. Or she was. Alright. She could do it. She took a deep breath, continuing to let go because that was what felt the best. She was the conduit. The art flowed through her even if that sounded like utter bullshit but she wasn't saying it out loud so what did it matter? "The beautiful garden. So untouched and so perfect. Enter sadness and emptiness. We filled it. Together. We were life and death in symmetry. Together." She made a face at herself.
Cody didn't make a face. He listened, picturing things. She, of course, in his mind's eye, represented life. “What exactly were you representing?” he asked. “Life? What happened that sadness and emptiness came in? Did I fuck up?”
Gin smiled at that finally, her eyes lifting to his face. "You? Fuck it up? No! You and I were twins. We fixed it all. I don't know why sadness and emptiness came. It wasn't our fault. No, we healed it." Then she paused a moment, her mind turning. "Why would you ask that though? Why would you ask if you fucked up?"
Cody shrugged. “It's my thing, I suppose. I fuck things up. If a plague were to take the shape of a man, you'd be looking at him.” It was how he felt most of the time. Hell, he couldn't even manage a spontaneous hot and heavy fuck in the woods without that turning into massive drama with someone he considered his best friend. He still didn't even really know what he'd done wrong. “Some of these other ones seem to reflect that a lot more...” he added. “What am I like in your dreams?” he had to ask. “Am I always the same? Different? Do I change, depending on the scenario? Do I have different names? Am I just a dream extra that stands in for someone else?”
Gin gave him a dead look. Disbelieving and a little disapproving. "A plague? I mean, come on. You've scared me a couple times and invaded my dreams but I'd never call you a plague. You're maybe more like unexpected muse crossed with strange karma." His flood of new questions gave her pause though. "You're not usually snow white, no. But I've never felt like you were evil in my dreams. No stand in. I've never met anyone like you before. Like I said, I'm afraid to know if I can touch you or not. I'd rather think I could and not know differently."
“You don't know me,” Cody pointed out. “You have no idea what to call me. You don't even know if I'm really here, beyond that shiver up your spine,” he pointed out. “You said there was a dream where I put you into a hell. Tell me about that one.”
Gin didn't like that. He was piercing her reality with.. well.. reality and it was kind of unhappy. She frowned and moved to another painting she'd put in a corner, out of the special concept lighting. In it there was a faceless female, naked and bound. Her vulnerability lay in the fact that around her was a dirty, dangerous world that she couldn't protect herself from it in that state. Her voice had a hard edge to it as she said, "You sold me to the highest bidder. Your only wish? To hear me scream. So I screamed."
He walked closer, seeing the faceless girl there, and he reached out, to almost touch her, but he didn't quite. “Just for me? Or because you were in pain from something else?” he asked, really taking in the lines of the painting. The shadows, the light, the way every little thing seemed to jump out at him. “Did I bind you? Or did the bidder? Am I there anymore? Or gone?” He wasn't in this painting, though with the story he could almost feel the shadow of his presence there.
When he asked that question Gin realized, for the first time, how fucking ridiculous she was. She wanted to almost cry for real at this humiliation but something compelled her to continue. "Just for you," she whispered. "I was yours. Your bonds were mine. Until I was sold. You're only there if you want to be."
“I don't know if I do or not, if I sold you,” Cody said. He glanced at her again, tearing his eyes away from the painting. “Did I just leave you there, with the new owner? After you screamed for me?” He watched her eyes closely as he asked the question, for the first time in quite a long ass time thinking that being able to actually talk to someone properly was fucking awesome. Mostly he'd been stuck thinking it kind of sucked, and he didn't want much to do with it, but this? This was something else entirely.
Gin pushed her fingers back through her hair. "It could have been two different dreams. It could have been five I suppose. But, Cody? You pervaded so much of my sleep that I couldn't anymore. Sleep that is. You were cruel. You were loving. Husbandly, ghostly, brotherly…" She paused to move away and hopefully get a better sense of her own feelings.
“That I can't do anything about. If I'm in there, I'm in there,” he said, gesturing to her head. “If you dream about me this much, what am I to you usually?” he asked. There had to be something that popped up more often than others. “And you didn't answer my question. Did I just leave you there?”
Gin looked at him long and hard. She was memorizing him but she was also trying to figure him out. "You didn't leave me there, no. But you didn't come in riding the white steed either." She paused to think on his next question. Her fingers found the turpentine and they spread out and through it as she did. "We fucked," she said finally. "In most of my dreams we do. I don't know why. I don't want that from you. But when you leave me, in my dreams… fucking afterward is a relief. I can't get past that."
“Even when we're related?” he had to know. “Am I your brother sometimes, and just...can't resist?” he asked, walking closer again. “And do you mean you wake up, after a dream I left you in and find someone to scratch the itch? What exactly can't you get past?”
"Seriously? Are you here to fuck with me now? Yes, sometimes you're family. Sometimes a brother." She wanted to not exist then. But she did and there wasn't much to do about it. And she'd let go so she was answering it all if he wanted. And once he was closer she leaned a bit, not able to resist that much but she so wanted to know now that he was real. "No one scratches the itch. That's what I can't get past. The dreams. Where I'm fucking … you." Which she didn't completely get because she was sure that was not what she wanted from him. Or anyone right then.
This was just unendingly interesting. He glanced back toward the bound woman on the canvas. “Did I unbind you first? Or were you helpless when I took you?” he asked. “Are you ever the aggressor? When we were twins...filling the garden. Did that happen by making you come?”
Gin paused. "Unbind me?" The idea, in light of her paintings and nightmares was sexy. No, it hadn't happened and so she was there answering his question. "I was helpless," she answered, frustrated some. Part of her was seriously aroused by the whole scenario but part of her figured it was all a ruse. "The only time I was the aggressor was when I tethered you. I'm not sure how I did or where or whatever but I was able to do with you whatever I wanted."
“Tethered, huh?” he had to give a little dark grin. “No other details at all? How did you tether me? Was I just kept? Did you own me, and I was at your mercy?” He started drifting closer to her again, amused by the fact that they seemed to be moving around the room like magnets. He got closer and she did for a little bit, then maybe a movement like one repelling the other.
"Can you just stop?" she asked. He'd invaded her dreams, made her paranoid. An insomniac. And she had no idea if he was real. She could be sitting here in her studio just looking at her own work and analyzing it. For no reason. "Just tell me why I want you in my life but you don't exist. I think you own me and I think you know it."
Cody paused. “I can, I just don't want to.” It was at least honest. He considered her next statements though, and in the end, he found he did think he had an answer. So he shared it, since she demanded he tell her. “The answer's obvious. I'm anyone. I'm everyone.” He gestured to the images of him in her paintings. “You don't know that much about me, so you can fill in the blank with anything you want. And I might not even be real, so it doesn't hurt anyone. You can let your fantasies run completely wild, untethered, as it were, and it can be as beautiful, forbidden, dark, or sick as you want it to be, and it's all okay. And if I do own you? Well, then you're wanted, aren't you. Wanted so bad you're owned.”
Gin's breath caught in her throat and literal tears threatened then. What he was saying made so much sense and yet what it unveiled was such deep-seated loneliness that she was ashamed of herself. She wanted to tear every last painting from the walls; find the buyers of the ones she'd sold and force them to give those obvious representations of her pathos back. She'd filled him into every damned scenario in which she literally had no one in reality. No fucking wonder she'd been like a mad woman painting all of this, tortured by the dreams, wishing he was there and real because she'd made him the face of every unfulfilled desire and need she had. She shook her head and walked to a painting of a landscape of horrific plants with teeth sharp as shards of glass.
"No, I'm not wanted," she said matter-of-factly, her voice threatening on the edge of emotion. "If all I've done here is put you in place of everything that I need and never get, there is no one wanting me. No one owning me but my own major pity party on a canvas." She touched the painting, her fingers on Cody where he stood in the landscape because she didn't dare touch him where he stood in her studio. “And, because I looked it up once,” she added quietly. “Having sex with someone in a dream means you want to be closer to them. Not that you want to fuck them in reality.”
“I meant within the context of the dreams, your fantasies. It’s all part of it, that ownership thing,” Cody said. “If you aren’t wanted outside of your own head, then you need to meet more people,” he added. “And I don’t see it as a pity party at all,” he had to tell her, glancing around again but not getting back in on her space this time. He let her keep it. “It’s a huge imagination, given a voice. Which I like, actually. It’s interesting. It’s bright, and colorful and dark and light, and sexual and needy and the only thing it isn’t is boring. Nothing about any of this is even a little dull. Every single painting tells it’s own unique story, and honestly, I’d sit and listen to every one of them.” He’d already been asking extensively about them, after all.
At the last statement, he rolled his eyes. “Whatever, dream interpretation is bullshit.”
Gin listened, wrapping her arms around her middle and staring at the painting in front of her. "Within the context of my dreams… I don't know if I'm wanted there either. I know that I want to be, but I'm not sure if I am. It's hard to explain why I think that." She looked around at some of the other paintings, feeling very exposed and uncomfortable still. But she couldn't or wouldn't disengage from this conversation. "People. I know people. Plenty of them. Not the way I want to know them. I don't think many of them take me very seriously and why should they? I don't let them see all this with any understanding that it's part of me." She shrugged. "They do all have stories, yes. I write them in a journal before I paint them. Dialogue and colors. Light caressing flesh. The sounds of life." She let her voice trail off.
She couldn't help but laugh, a burst of bright sound, at that. "Okay, but then you're telling me that I want to have sex with family members. Which I really don't." She glanced over at him, with a half smile playing on her lips.
“Yeah, but not real family members,” Cody pointed out. “So in your dreams, there's you and I, and a lot of banging, but you don't know if you're wanted. Am I distant? Uncaring all the time? Why is it I didn't leave you after I sold you in that one?” he asked, gesturing to the bound girl. “And maybe you should tell people what's on the inside of your head. Or see about publishing your stories or something. There's got to be bored people wandering around the dome who'd kill for a little decent housewife porn.”
Gin thought a moment, trying to find the right words to say what she felt about the 'banging' in her dreams. "It's just a physical act. There's no connection in it. No gentleness. No desire other than for the end result. It's animal and it's … empty. Usually." She looked back at her paintings, walking toward another, unconsciously distancing herself from him physically even though she was letting him see more of her than maybe even Daniel had ever seen. "You didn't leave after I was sold because you didn't intend to sell me. All you really wanted was for me to scream. When I finally did, you were pleased." Who knew why the brain chose such odd events and feelings to toss together for dreams like that one. What was the meaning of a scream? Gin chuckled and her eyes flickered over her shoulder at him. "Tell them that this is what's inside my head? I told my best friend a little about it, showed her a small sample of it, and she immediately began worrying about me. Rightly so, I guess. I mean, look at it. It's not… not what one would consider healthy, I don't think," she said wryly. "Publishing? I doubt people want to read this. Not after surviving zombies… But maybe..."
“Ah. You're one of those people,” Cody concluded. “Which I guess is actually accurate, on my end. I'm all for something so immediate and consuming that it's an animal urge, where the world dies down to nothing but chasing the end.” He shrugged as he looked at another painting. “Never felt 'empty' to me. It was just what it was.” But he also knew he was pretty much weird in that. Seemed like most people wanted that shit to 'mean' something.
As she distanced herself, he kept letting her, in fact he started toward the opposite end of the room, to view another version of himself up on canvas. “What's to worry about? What exactly did she say?” he had to ask. “And escapism – it's never going to go out of style.”
"No, I'm not 'one of those people,'" she said and made a face at him. "I'm all for that too and I've done it. Sometimes that's what it needs to be because when you let your brain or heart get involved it gets stupid, breaks down into questions of reasons and motivations that don't have any business in bed. But it's been too long without real emotional connection of some sort. That's a part of me that needs to be filled too. I'd give anything for a touch to make me tremble for a reason other than the fact that it's between my thighs. For a touch to mean something other than a physical urge. Any touch. My hand. My face. Whatever." She sighed and tossed her hair back, the red catching the concept lighting at odd angles.
"She literally said it didn't sound healthy and she was concerned you'd done something to hurt me mentally. She wasn't impressed that I didn't push you to explain how you could disappear." And Gin understood why Lia would feel that way. It had begun not to feel healthy to her too in the past day or so. "Escapism. True enough," she said thoughtfully. She turned and fully faced him, arms still wrapped around her own middle.
It sure as hell does, Cody thought. Because she was describing exactly what happened with Ember, even if he still didn't even really get that whole thing. But all he did know was they were playing around just fine, gave in to passions then she freaked out on him. He listened to her, letting her get it all out.
When she said the part about her friend worrying about him fucking with her mentally, that got a frown out of him. Sure, fine, he did shady things. He messed with people on purpose. He'd even messed with her. But he'd done it to inspire her, which clearly he had. He'd wanted to scare her, but that was hardly the same thing, right? He didn't like the connotation of him truly emotionally damaging someone. And up until that point, he hadn't seen the circumstances in that light. And, in response to that, he did drop from the visual spectrum, disappearing. He stayed where he was, just frowning to himself, not happy.
Who the fuck was this chick anyways? Who was she to put that in Gin's head? With that, the nearest light bulb to him cracked, the light sputtering out.
Gin hadn't been prepared to see him disappear. Truthfully she'd almost forgotten he did that even though she'd just said it. It made her stomach swoop and she shivered. "Cody?" she asked, her voice hinting at disappointment. She jumped when the lightbulb near where he'd stood cracked. "Cody? Are you still there?" She took a hesitant few steps toward the busted light. A strange thrill went up her spine. As though she were walking through a pitch dark room wherein she knew someone potentially dangerous stood waiting. In a way that's what it was because he could move through space without being seen. For all she knew he was behind her now. Or standing so close she could have reached out and touched him if … if he was touchable.
He didn't answer her, watching her get closer again. He wasn't sure he was going to say anything, or reappear. His anger issues were really taking root with the bullshit out of her friend's mouth. Who did she think she was? She didn't know anything. Did Gin think that now? Fuck. Just because he didn't specifically know what he was doing didn't mean he was damaging to her, did it?
His problem was he didn't know the answer to that. Maybe he was. She apparently couldn't sleep anymore and had hit full on obsession. He was taking up her time both waking and sleeping. Another bulb died, the glass shattering this time.
Gin flinched again and stopped moving when the next bulb popped. She glanced around, feeling the tug of hauntedness at the edges of her mind. Her voice was just above a whisper when she continued, "You know, you already had the desired effect. You said so yourself. You inspired me. You… you don't have to scare me again. I mean, if you want me to continue with this or write it or whatever, I can do that." She stopped, finding herself bargaining and feeling odd about it. She wasn't necessarily scared, but she knew there was potential here, the extent of which she had no knowledge. He could do anything for all she knew.
Cody looked at her, then got closer. Close enough that he knew she'd feel him, though he didn't actually make himself visible. He reached out, and touched her cheek, ever so lightly, knowing the cold would be apparent to her. Undeniable.
Gin's breath went in slowly and audibly through her nose as she felt that undeniable presence that she now recognized as Cody. There'd be no more wondering if he was around anymore. If she didn't feel this she would know he wasn't there. Or at least not close. A beat later she felt the icy touch and she shivered at the cold, but she also gave a slight tremble, her mouth opening without a sound. She whispered, "Thank you."
He hadn't realized it when he'd done it, but he supposed he'd just fulfilled her desire. To tremble from a touch. He kind of wanted to kiss her then. Drop into being, kiss her, disappear. But he didn't. After all, with her fantasy life splashed over all the walls around them? At no point, in no way, could he ever live up to that. He wouldn't be able to live up to even a single reflection of him in her paintings. So he resisted. He also wasn't sure what else to say, or if he should fuck off and never come back.
Whatever had been the intention behind his touch, it was at least symbolic to Gin. If he didn't tell her otherwise she'd continue to take it as him having gifted her with what she'd been saying she needed. Because in a way, she'd connected with him emotionally over this time they'd spent together. Whether he'd connected with her or even wanted to, she didn't know, but she could be okay with that. She felt no obsessive urgency where Cody was concerned anymore because he'd shown her the underlying reason behind it. She felt like she'd just been through one hell of an intense therapy session. "One day I'd love to ask you as many questions as you asked me," she said, still whispering.
Cody really didn't know what to do there. He brushed his thumb over her lower lip, then stepped back entirely, continuing to walk until he figured his strong presence thing would fade too. Did he want to invite that? Her asking questions? Getting to know someone alive? Someone who'd painted him like this, who he'd taken up a starring role in her dreams? He was still feeling like he couldn't live up, and maybe this should be it. She could chalk it up to whatever it was she wanted, and he could fade right off into the background, and be some fleeting dream. A ghost, who was there then gone.
Gin's breath caught in her throat as he touched her lip, holding it until she realized she didn't feel him anymore. Maybe he'd moved back or maybe he'd gone. Either way part of her felt disappointed he wouldn't talk to her again. Or show himself to her. She wanted to say his name again but he hadn't responded at all so far to it. She kept silent hoping he hadn't left. What did you do if the one person you'd shown the barest parts of you to, who seemed fascinated by them, went away? She supposed you grieved and then you got back up and did it all over again because the connection was always worth it even if it was fleeting. "You're always welcome here," she said a little louder now that she wasn't half overwhelmed by his nearness.
He was so torn on things. And he wasn't usually given to shit like that. Being a waffler hadn't been his thing. He was more a do first think later type. Why he was caught up in this he didn't know. Maybe it was due to what happened with Ember. Or, maybe it was just Gin. This whole menagerie of fantasies. The more he knew about it the more fascinated he was, but at the same time, it was daunting and left him feeling like he was growing cold in his own shadow. He wound up saying the first thing that really came to mind. “You don't need me here. I'm already everywhere. I live in your head.”
Gin startled when he spoke, wishing that she could avoid those kinds of reactions because he didn't scare her. And at this point it felt rude of her but she couldn't help it. She smiled a little though and shook her head. "No. That's not you in my head. That's everybody else with your face. That's what you showed me. And no… I don't need you. But I like you." She paused and swallowed. Frowning slightly but only at how lame that sounded. She liked him. It wasn't the right word but the way she felt about him got lost in translation. "I like knowing that I can, in fact, feel you," she said in the hope of detracting from the over simplicity of the previous statement.
He looked around again. “Does that mean all of this is over?” he asked. He meant the artwork, the dreams, the stories attached. He sort of liked being the center of that. It was the most positive representation of him. Ever. He didn't really want to lose that, even if he didn't understand why.
Gin shook her head. "No, I doubt the dreams and everything else will stop right away. But they'll vary, I'm sure. Maybe my paintings will include me more. I've never had so much business until I painted these. Maybe people could feel the lack of me in them." She wondered if he would reappear but she wouldn't ask. That he was talking, not gone, was enough. "And maybe you could inspire me again. In other ways." She wasn't sure what that would look like but she had a feeling he could be quite a resource of inspiration. That wasn't the only reason she wanted him around though. She was fascinated with him and wanted to know more. She smiled a bit thoughtfully.
Cody went to sit down, under a shelf and not quite out of view, but not actually right out there either. He was aided by the fact that the lightbulbs had gone out over there, so when he went back to being visible, it was unobtrusive. It didn't call any attention. He leaned his back against the wall. “I think you already got all I had to give, there.”
"Only because you haven't talked about you," she said, following the sound of his voice to a new location where she could just make him out in the shadowed relief from the concept lighting. She put a hand to her mouth because that statement had flown out before she'd even had a chance to think about it. "I mean, you're more than a 'boo' and some disappearing. Obviously."
“Am I?” Cody asked, looking back over at her. He didn't add to that, it was a flat statement. This was why he didn't really spend a ton of time with people. He had such ups and downs, he was all over the place. All the time. He'd always been like this, even when he was alive. Being dead hadn't helped. Committing creative suicide hadn't done a damn thing.
"Mm," she said, not moving toward him but settling on the floor to be more on his level. She was a little afraid that if she got closer, he'd disappear. This time for good. "You're intuitive, worldly, wise. Curious. Intense." She kept her tone quiet and slow. She could have gushed but she felt reverent in a way. "You have a way of asking questions that force me to think. And of making me answer even when the answers cut bone deep and leave me naked. If that's there in a few moments' conversation, there's a lot I haven't seen."
Or I'm all surface, and you already scratched it all. Cody thought to himself. Yeah, he needed to get the fuck out of there. He was getting maudlin. “Just accept what you've already got. Trust me, it's better.” Then he drifted back into invisibility, and started to head out.
Gin's shoulders slumped in disappointment when he said that and disappeared. He was really wounded, she realized. Something internal didn't give him the benefit of forcing him to change his outlook the way he'd forced her to change hers. She wondered what stopped him. What it was that kept him negative about himself when he could be positive about her and her work. New ideas, new sketches began forming in her mind. A study of him as she saw him in reality, not dreams. She felt colors and shapes beginning. "Well, I would accept… except you just did it again. So thank you. And you are … you're always welcome here, Cody." She let her hands fall into her lap feeling both saddened and hopeful.
He heard it, and paused, glancing back at her, then he turned to walk out. He needed to not come back here...even if he already knew he really wanted to. He almost wanted to talk to her. But it would ruin what she already had going there, and he didn't want that. Maybe some version of him could live on in a good way, not be a dark, forgotten waste of a footnote in history.