Who: Neena Thurman, Booker DeWitt. What: Neena facetimes the wrong contact. When: Today! Where: Their respective rooms. Rating/Warnings: PG, but some brief mentions of the things Neena's dealing with, which may be triggery to some. Status: Complete!
Well, the swimsuit was hot, but Neena looked at herself in the mirror and thought that she might actually cry. No, she wasn’t going to cry. It wasn’t like anything on her was drooping. That would have been a reason to cry. But the suit revealed areas of her skin that still looked roughed up and scratched up, and she didn’t want to deal with the questions.
There were some questions that were still uncomfortable to answer. She let out a sigh, and got out her phone. Clarice would understand this. She could talk it out with Clarice and put it out of her mind, that would help.
She rubbed at her face with one hand and tapped through the contact list with her thumb. Without looking, she hit the facetime button and waited for it to connect.
Booker groped around for his phone. It was still early in the morning and he was still hungover from drinking last night. He’d had a rough week. He hit his finger on the screen and peered at the figure. “Uh. Hello tits.”
"Shit," Neena mumbled. Her face was still somewhere off camera, and she hadn't even been looking at the phone when it connected. But that voice was Booker's, not Clarice's. How the fuck did that even happen?!
"Sorry, I misdialed. I'll just..." Her face looked down at the camera while she spoke, eyes focused on the button that would end the call. Booker looked like hell, though, so why did her heart skip a beat when she saw him?
“Just who are you misdialing like that? Your pink pussy?” He couldn’t help it. He was jealous, and angry, and fucking fucker fucking bitch.
Her eyes had already been scratchy and red when she'd dialed, but Booker's words made them look watery around the edges. She drew back a bit from the phone, in fact, like his words had physically hurt her, "It wasn't a booty call. Fuck you."
Booker grunted, and rubbed his fingers against his temple. He felt immediately bad, but he couldn’t take it back and he wasn’t going to back off against Neena. Even if she looked… hurt? Why the fuck did she care? “What’s wrong?”
"You can't ask me what's wrong," Neena mumbled. She felt bad, too. Her problems weren't Booker's concern - hell, her problems had physically hurt him, and probably mentally, too, "It's not fair."
Her face left the area on the camera, then, and it looked like she was putting the phone on the bed. Which was accurate, because she needed a fucking cigarette like nobody's business right now. She sounded tired when she added, off-camera, "To you. It's not fair to you."
“I’m askin’ what’s wrong.” He sat up. He was shirtless and there were a few slashes on his chest. “It’s my problem if I say it’s my problem.”
Of course that was the moment that Neena picked the phone back up. He got a great view as she leaned over the phone before her hand grabbed it. But also a view of some of the rest of her - slash marks of her own, and a stitched cut along the side of one of her arms. There was still a bruise on the back of her hand from the iv.
But her eyes were on him and his unbelievably attractive shirtlessness, "You got beat up too, I see."
“Yeah. Used up all my ammo but it was worth it.” He felt this irrational urge, like he wanted to put his arms around her. Ugh. Bitch. Okay so he had a lot of unkind thoughts and every one was a defensive mechanism.
"There's more ammo back at my place if you need some," Neena said. She was feeling somewhat charitable. Or at least, no one should be left without ammunition. Just in case.
She puffed on her cigarette a bit, then tried to zoom out enough for Booker to see what her problem was. The camera panned awkwardly down her body to her legs, and she sighed, "That's my problem. Clarice gets it because she's been there."
“Are you freaking out about the bruises or are you afraid of people seeing?” He rubbed at his head and said groggily, “Ain’t you got coverup?”
Both. It was both. Did she want to admit that to him? Did he even fucking care? Freaking out about the first one was weaker than freaking out about the second one.
Now she was taking too long to answer. And she didn't even want to think about how adorable he was when he was this groggy. Neena sighed, "I do, but it's not waterproof. I'm just not going to swim, that's all."
“No one is gonna care, an’ if they do they ain’t worth talkin’ to.” which was probably the opposite of good advice but he didn’t care.
“_I_ care,” Neena finally admitted, “I took an arrow lower down, too, and it just looks like I’m in some kind of abusively medieval relationship with someone. Or like I’m on the run from the law, maybe. I don’t need the questions. I don’t need the looks.”
Booker sighed. “Maybe you shoulda gone skiing.” He felt like he wanted to give her a hug. He hated that feeling. “If you ain’t got coverup you might just wanna avoid swimin’ anyway.”
"If the bounty had run to somewhere with Skiing then that's where I'd be," Neena pointed out. She puffed on her cigarette some more and sighed, then put the phone down so she could undress. It wasn't like Booker hadn't seen the goods before.
"Yeah. No swimming. I'll just sun myself in a tank top, I guess. Rose made me promise to rest, I'm trying to be good."
He loved looking at the goods. Really, Neena stirred things that he’d thought been dead. “You? Rest? Since when?”
"Since... I don't know. I found some grey hairs. I'm not as young as I used to be, I don't snap back. I should probably retire but it's in my blood too much to stop."
She was pulling on a black lacy bra as she spoke. Things like that were sometimes the only way to tell that Neena had a girly soft spot somewhere underneath all the leather and kevlar. Then she pulled a tank top on over it, "I actually got winded the other day. Eighteen doctors would tell me to quit smoking because of it, but I'm gonna blame old age and volcano shit."
“You’ll be old and grey before you retire. Or dead.” Ain’t like it bothered him much! “We both should quit smokin’...”
"Kind of surprised I'm not already dead," Neena muttered. No one in her line of work made it very long before death or PTSD took over. Everyone knew that, it wasn't a shock. The people who survived this long usually ended up eating their own gun.
She snorted and shook her head to clear it, "I'll quit if you do."
“Deal.” Booker stared at her, as if daring her to not agree with him.
"Fuck. Really?" Neena picked her camera up to stare at him. It was more a shocked stare than anything else.
“Yeah, really. I need to stop anyway. I was out of fuckin’ breath that whole fuckin’ time.” He grimaced. He needed to stop other things but that wasn’t going to happen.
It was actually a relief that they could talk to each other like this again. Neena tried not to read too much into it, but she’d been terrified that Booker was just going to hate her for what she’d done. Things were still kind of awkward, but maybe they’d eventually go back to normal.
Normal for them, anyway. She pulled the cigarette she’d been smoking out of her mouth and put it out while he could see, “Fine. You’ve got a deal.”
He’d gotten over the anger. Mostly. “Okay then. You go...have fun.” Try not to get laid.
“Yeah. I’ll go and try to do that. You get some sleep. You look like hell.” Neena let those be her parting words, and hit the end call button. She tried not to concentrate on the fact that her tone had even sound slightly worried. Booker was a big boy and he could take care of himself.
Now? Now was the time to have fun. Maybe just to spite him.