🌹 (off_trajectory) wrote in the_dome, @ 2013-12-12 00:21:00 |
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Entry tags: | 04-15-2017, cody, cody and ember, ember |
live it up
Who: Cody and Ember
Where: The cemetery
When: Morning
Ember sat before a grave marker, her fingers pinching tightly at the petals of a bouquet that belonged to whoever’s grave this was. Her eyes shifted down to read the name, Rosemary Evans. She lifted a delicate finger to trace over the edges of the stone, observing how smooth and cool it felt thanks to the intense elements as of late. She probably looked like some teenager rolling her ass off with how enthusiastically she had been touching and feeling the environment all morning, but she was just a ghost. In a cemetery. And she was marveling at how it felt to be able to feel things again, to be able to move them, to see with her own eyes that her hand wasn’t just moving through objects, but was actually stopped from passing. Her other hand, decorated with her engagement ring, wandered over the grass while a small smile meandered across her lips. She closed her eyes and took in the sensation of the wind gusting through her black hair, loose curls dancing towards the ends.
Cody had actually been looking for Ember. Just because he had no idea what to say to her didn't mean he didn't miss her. So, this could go incredibly poorly, but he had been looking around for a day or so for his wayward companion. Eventually he caught up with her, spotting her in the cemetery.
He came up behind her, eyes taking in the scene. Something seemed different, but he couldn't tell what immediately. It was only when he got within five feet that his brain clicked it into place. Her hair – it was blowing in the wind. Cody stared at her in amazement, not even speaking immediately.
Ember was continuing to soak up the moment when she felt a presence drawing in; it was unique and strong and one that she was quite familiar with. She opened her eyes and glanced behind her, glad it was the person who she had expected to see standing there. “Well, sneaking up and staring at a girl isn’t creepy at all.” She pushed herself to her feet and swatted at any dirty that may have rested against her ass, turning to face him. “Look!” She was trying to avoid any awkward feeling that seemed to linger within her, but she couldn’t deny she was happy to see Cody. There were things to share and just his general person had been missed in her life. She bent over and plucked a flower from the bouquet, doubting Rosemary Evans would be missing it. Standing back upright, she held it out to him with a bright smile.
“I'm creepy by default. Looking in a dictionary under the word shows a picture of me,” Cody said. He stared as she picked up the flower. “How...?” he asked, voice quiet. He could manifest, he knew that, but it wasn't for very long. So short, it wasn't actually worth it. But she seemed to be maintaining just fine.
“True.” Ember mused, grinning down at the flower before she fixed her attention back on Cody. She gave a slight shrug of her shoulders and shook her head, twisting the flower’s stem between her fingers. “I made that Lance guy give me my engagement ring back.” She lifted her hand to show the jewelry. “And then.. I could be like this. Like, solid.” She was still confused by the whole thing and a little worried that she would go completely invisible again. “Sometimes it works, and then sometimes no one can see me at all, and then other times it’s just like things were before.” She was talking quickly, just as fast as her mind was trying to process things.
He listened, wondering how that even worked. “I...congrats?” he suggested, not sure what else to say. “All that from what – the ring?” he asked, looking at it as he got a little closer. He'd never heard of what she was talking about at all.
“Try sounding a little more excited, creeptastic wonder.” Ember said as she pushed her hand forward toward Cody. If it was some type of power her ring had, maybe being near it would allow him to go solid too. “Seems like that.. try picking something up. Or touching something.” She kept her hand hovering near him, but purposely didn’t extend herself far enough to touch him. For one, she might just pass through him if she were technically solid. And two, even if she didn’t pass through him, she still wasn’t sure she was comfortable enough to make physical contact with him without her mind wandering elsewhere.
“Sorry, I'm still wrapping my head around it all,” Cody said. He looked around, and didn't want to do it. Mostly because if he went through just like usual, like he expected to, it might kind of suck. Still, he crouched and waved his hand negligently at a flower nearby. There was no contact, it was just like usual. He kept his eyes on the ground, not looking up at her. “Guess it's just you.”
Ember watched curiously, looking down to her ring again and giving it a small shake with her hand before she gave up. She frowned, disappointed that it didn't seem to work that way. Being able to run around together solid would been a lot of fun. She watched him for a beat before taking a step closer, crouching down and hugging her legs. "We'll find your ring. Or, whatever it is that can make you do this too. I can't be the exception." She shook her head. "Until then.. how the fuck have you been, stranger?" As if she hadn't purposely been avoiding him.
Cody glanced at her but didn't say anything. Really, if he hadn't found it by now, he was pretty sure nothing like that actually existed. But he didn't say it, he didn't want to really take away from her joy. He was a natural downer at the best of times, but that didn't mean he did it on purpose all the time. “And I've been alright, I guess,” he said, opting to skip right the hell over their weirdness. “I'm going to try something. Gin, she paints me. I'm going to have her paint me as normal as possible, so I can maybe try that appearance change shit you do so easy.”
Ember tilted her head as she listened to him, her conversation with Gin coming back to mind. She got nervous then, wondering if she told him anything that they had talked about. “Have you seen her lately?” She blurted out before recollecting herself, looking down to the tops of her knees for a moment before back up to him. “I could try to help you too, if you want. I can be your awesome Sensai, and you’ll be the kind of cool Grasshopper.”
“Yeah,” Cody said. He wasn't sure if he was supposed to mention they'd talked about Ember. Did he not? Shit, he never had proper social interactions even when he was alive, he didn't know any better now. With her going on, he jumped on that topic. “I'd like that. Thanks. I'm hoping I can pull it off, so maybe between the two of you, I can get it done and stop looking dead all the time.”
Further questionings on when exactly Cody had seen Gin and what they had talked about rang through her mind, but she tried to stay focused on other things. He didn’t seem to be acting any differently toward her. Did he? Shit, he was kind of more quiet. She pushed herself to stand on her feet, hands moving to play with the bottom edge of her shirt. She realized he had said something, though she wasn’t exactly sure what it was since she had only been half listening. “Sure, yeah.” She searched for something else to say, anything.
Cody realized that Awkward was in the air too, and shuffled his feet. “...so...” he started, immediately regretting it. He didn't have a follow up. Like at all. He had nothing, and he hated it.
Ember was quickly realizing that pretending things were normal wasn’t an option. Not if they had any hope of salvaging a friendship, and friendships were rare enough in the afterlife. Not to mention the fact that she actually really cared about Cody, and would have probably held the same feelings for him if they were both alive. “We should probably talk about what happened, right?” She said the words before she really thought about them, knowing she had to force things out into the open. Maybe if they talked through it, they could get back on track and not have to dance around each other.
Cody scratched at the back of his neck, nervous. “...I guess so, yeah,” he agreed, but it wasn't the most confident answer ever. Then he decided to go for it. “I don't know what I did wrong,” he told her. He was still not sure and he still didn't quite get any of it.
Ember was quiet for a minute while she processed what she should say. She could leave it at telling Cody he did nothing wrong and that they should be fine, or she could be a little more honest.. like Gin had recommended. Either way, it wasn't so much that he had done something wrong, so she figured that could be a good starting point. "You didn't do anything wrong." Her hands dropped to play with her skirt, glancing around to avoid making eye contact. "I.. I don't know. You're the only other person I've had sex with other than my fiance." She paused, trying to gauge his reaction to that before she would make the decision if she would continue or not.
He didn't believe her for a second, that he'd done nothing wrong. But he did bite his tongue on the 'bullshit' that he wanted to say. He listened to the rest instead. It left him blinking. “I...really?” he asked, shocked about that. It showed. His poker face left a ton to be desired on that. “I...jesus, really?”
Ember didn't know if she should take it in a positive light or a negative one that Cody seemed so shocked by her not having had an extensive sexual history. "Don't sound so surprised, asshole." Her hands moved nervously to her hair next, playing with the ends. "So I got confused with feelings." She swallowed hard, glancing to him before directing her gaze elsewhere. "They may have been there before, I don't know... I think just ignored them. It's stupid."
“And why would I not be? You've met you, right? Every single goddamn time you're within ten feet of me, you tease the shit out of me. It's your favorite thing to do to me. I would assume you weren't experienced why?” Cody asked. “And feelings? There are feelings now? Or...er....then? Or something?” he asked, clearly thrown. Not angry, and he wasn't pushing her away, he was just a lot of shocked.
Ember’s eyes shifted towards Cody angrily, crossing her arms as her nerves seemed to melt away. “You know what? Fuck off.” She turned and began moving in another direction, any direction she could head in to get away from him. If all he was going to do was make her feel like an idiot for being honest, he could go back to fuck knows where and do fuck knows what. She fought back any sense of disappointment that was lurking within her, trying to force the hardened center she had forged so well into its place.
“Ember – wait,” he said, clearly still bewildered. He was bad at this. Obviously very, very bad. If they were giving out awards for least amount of clues in circumstances like this, then he would win by a landslide. He didn't know how to follow up the 'wait', but he wanted first to see if it would happen at all.
Ember didn’t stop. She was determined to get as far away from him as possible because she could feel her face getting red with embarrassment and a small buildup of tears that threatened to spill down her cheeks if she wasn’t careful. The sex had awesome, but had it been worth it? Making her feel all confused and awkward with her best friend. She clenched her hands into fists as she continued to storm in the random direction she had selected, frown pulling heavily at the corners of her lips.
He stopped walking, but shouted after her. “Ember, I don't live in your head! I can't play to whatever script you've got in there for me!” he snapped. “I get to react how I'm going to react, and I'm sorry if I still don't quite know how the fuck to react at all! But if you're going to storm the fuck off and be pissed at me every two seconds, then we're never going to get anywhere, damnit!”
Ember took an extra beat to process his words, her feet slowly coming to a stop. She didn’t turn around right away, but instead crossed her arms and glared forward. It was easier to be angry than anything else. Still, she didn’t want to lose him as a result of this; it had to be possible to just shove everything aside and just be friends again. Act like nothing had happened and that the only types of feelings she had ever had for him were of a friendly nature. She turned around and stared at him, but didn’t say a word.
He sort of didn't expect her to stop, so he had to take a second to process that too. When she turned around, he shoved his hands into his pockets and shuffled his feet a little. “...look, I suck at this shit,” he said first. “Which is pretty clear by now, I'm guessing. I swear I'm not doing it to piss you off or be an asshole.”
Ember watched him warily, remaining quiet as she listened to Cody speak. At least he was trying to explain himself, but she still wasn’t sure what she wanted to hear from him. It wasn’t like they would ever be able to live happily ever after, they were fucking dead. She uncrossed her arms and let them rest at her sides, nodding her head slowly. “Okay.”
“My life was shitty, I didn't have friends, I had one girlfriend and we sort of fought like wildcats just as often as we were fine. You never had sex with anyone but your fiance? I've never with anyone but my girlfriend. Who died, by the way, before I did. You can freely assume everything about me comes from a pretty damn fucked up origin. Nothing was really normal or nice. So, if you expect me to behave like that, you're gonna be disappointed, just...not because I'm trying to disappoint you.” he told her, voice sincere.
Ember watched Cody as he spoke, a part of her wanting to move forward and comfort him. It didn’t necessarily appear he needed it, but it did suck that he had had such a hard life even when he was alive. She remained where she was though, thinking quietly for a moment. “Well what do we do? Where do we go from here?”
Cody shrugged. “I dunno,” he said honestly. “We're dead. So there's that. But you can be, what, like,” he made a vague gesture in her direction. “You're in the real world again. So, I dunno. Maybe you want to explore that for a while, or something. I can't do that. And, if I could? I'd probably want to figure out a way to get back into the world, I guess. You belong there. I mean, you're...you. You're alive, even if you aren't.” He didn't quite know how to word things, but that was sort of close. She was a spark that hadn't been put out by death. It was what he liked about her. He didn’t want to risk dragging her down because he couldn’t be part of the world with her.
Ember blinked at him curiously, taking a step closer to bridge some of the distance that had occurred by her trying to storm off earlier. “I don’t think I can be all that much more involved in the real world.. I probably can’t eat or drink or.. be with people like that. I might still make them cold.” She wasn’t sure about that, if things worked differently when she was solid. She made a mental note to try that with Gin at some point, just to see how she made her feel. “And I don’t know if I want to be in the ‘real world’ if you’re not there.” She spoke honestly, shrugging her shoulders lightly.
“Yeah, but you wouldn't not try because of a maybe,” Cody said, knowing her better than that. “You have to try, at least. And you know I'm not actually that great company, right?” he asked. “Besides, I'd be around. I'm not actually going anywhere.”
“You should give yourself more credit.. you’re entertaining a good half of the time.” Ember lifted her hands to rest them on her hips, looking to the ground. “I guess I’ll give it a try.. maybe design some clothes and shit, try to fool myself into believing I never died.” She glanced up to him, finding this conversation to be a weird, sad not-quite-but-kind-of break-up, even if they were never dating. “I guess.” She looked down to herself again, contemplating trying to find new clothes. She looked back up to him, not sure what else to say. “At least try? To find something that lets you get like this.. it’d be pretty cool if you could too.”
He agreed. It would be cool. But he really didn't know how he would go about finding something. “...yours is the ring...it was important to you. I don't think there's anything left that's important to me here. The whole town is gone. So...don't get your hopes up, okay?” he asked, not wanting to disappoint her. He stepped closer, hesitant, hoping that she didn't try to back off herself.
Ember frowned at Cody’s words, but could see the logic in his words. She remained where she was since she had pretty much cooled off from her previous temper tantrum and was good with him being closer again. She looked down to the ring on her hand and played with it with a sigh, hoping he really would still be around after this.
He reached out for her, not sure what else to say. He didn't know if he'd be able to touch her when she was like that, solid, and was just a tiny bit heartbroken when he went through her. He pulled his hand back, but didn't actually step away. He felt like he was going to miss her, even if he'd been honest when he said he'd be around. He wanted to be around. As confusing as everything was with her, he was loathe to lose her. Ember was probably his best friend, among other things. Things had gotten complicated, but he was willing to get through it. Just...with this development, and knowing just how alive she was, he couldn't actually even try to tie her down to a guy who just wasn't as alive as she was.
Ember looked up in time to see Cody reach out to touch her, sure that if her heart was still a working thing that it would have skipped a beat in that moment. She felt crushed when he just passed through her, hardly feeling any physical ghostly sensation like she would have in the past. This ring was a mixed blessing and curse, it seemed. She searched for something to say, but found she was just continually coming up short with english lately. “Promise me you won’t disappear on me?” That was probably the one thing she was scared of; losing him from her life completely.
He forced a smile, and while not perfect, he didn't do too bad a job. “'Course,” he said. “I mean, where else am I going to go, anyhow?” Nowhere was the pathetic answer. But he did plan on being around. He wanted to be. Just...maybe slightly farther back than usual.
Ember nodded softly, finding a little comfort in Cody’s smile. It didn’t seem to be fake, so she guessed he at least didn’t have the intention of disappearing on her. “Sit with me a while?” She asked hopefully. If she was going to go attempt to live it up, she wanted to at least have some normal ghost one-on-one time with her best friend before she likely made a complete fool of herself trying to be human.