Candy Quackenbush can walk on water. (toitshour) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2012-12-08 23:33:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, candy quackenbush, tate langdon |
You're not the boss of me.
Who: Candy Quackenbush and Tate Langdon.
What: Candy sets Tate up in her old digs.
When: After this conversation.
Where: Candy's old flat.
Rating: PG-13 for language and discussion of Tate's dreams.
Status: Complete!
It was around the time that Tate said he wanted to meet Candy, so he was outside, wearing a ratty old thrift store hoodie over a t-shirt, converse all stars that had seen better days, and jeans with a hole in the knee. His hair was it’s usual bed-head blond mess. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days, if not weeks.
There was a backpack over one shoulder, with a few changes of clothes and a toothbrush. And to prove that he was trying to be a better person, Tate had even left his mom a note. The contents of the note weren’t the most pleasant thing, since it mostly consisted of: “When you get done screwing and drinking with your Fuck of the Month for December, you’re going to notice that I’m gone. That’s because I’m going to go get the therapy I need, since you’re a shitty mother. Stop locking my retarded sister in the hallway closet since her screaming helped get me where I am today and I’ll bbs.”
Yep, life was fucking awesome. Simply remembering Violet and the therapy sessions with her dad, in his dreams, was convincing him that being with Violet was what made him better, and he had to try at this, while there was stil time. Because hell knows those dreams - outside of the times that Violet was around - weren’t getting any brighter. He could sense some creeping, dark, evil thing there, skittering around the edges of every room, like a venomous spider ready to bite and leave a necrotic wound that would fester and fester, and never get better.
Candy showed up with a backpack over her shoulder. Her hair was down and her tiny 5’2” frame made even smaller by the beat up motorcycle jacket she wore. She wore combat boots messily laced, jeans that were threadbare at best, and one of Remy’s undershirts. Her mismatched eyes - left one brown, right one blue - spotted Tate after a moment and she waved. “I went and got you some food anyway. You’re not the boss of me.”
Tate looked a little taken back for a moment before he shrugged and said, "Uhh, thanks. I got some money though, to order pizza, but...hey, that works too. Thanks for doing this. I know it's pretty fucked up and weird, but...I suck at saying stuff. Nevermind. I won't burn the place down so you get in trouble."
The good thing was that he actually meant it! The bad thing was that he already missed Violet, but he wanted to prove to himself and to her, that he could get better. He remembered he wanted to, in the dreams. That was enough to try it, now, before things went from bad to worse. And he really didn't want that. Being abnormal and a weirdo was fine, but killing people when you don't really feel in control of yourself? Not fine, at all.
“I’ve run away from home enough to know that a crash pad is necessary.” Candy smiled and motioned for him to follow her with a nod of the head. “I lived here for a year, so it’s honestly not too bad. And I’m not super messy, so it’ll be at least a little clean.” She unlocked it before handing him the key, waving him inside.
Once in she went to the kitchen to unload her backpack - sodas, snacks, some candy, some frozen stuff. Things that would be easy to heat up in the oven or the built-in microwave that dated all the way back to the seventies. “Your mom?”
By then, Tate had gone inside, dropping his bag down on the floor by the kitchen. He'd deal with it later. Right now it looked like the time for fill in the blanks.
"...is a bitch. Now hold up some paint smeared on a piece of paper and I'll tell you that it looks like me strangling her, and then you can tell me I have mommy issues and I'd probably eat babies or some shit."
He was joking and being sarcastic. Naturally he was joking about eating babies, and about the paint smear looking like he was strangling her. Mostly it just looked like bats and butterflies and vaginas. Everyone knew that. The rest of it? He was expecting to hear about that when he met with a therapist.
"She doesn't know," he finally told Candy, dropping the disgruntled teen attitude for a moment. "I left her a note but I didn't say where I was going. You won't get in trouble. No one knows the address, not even my girlfriend."
“Who doesn’t have parent issues?” Candy grinned, ruffling his hair. “Even Freud said everything was because he wanted to bone his mom and then eat her or some shit.” She put up the cans of food and the frozen stuff went into the fridge. “I’m not scared of getting in trouble. If someone finds you, you can say you’re squatting. I moved out, remember?”
She took off her jacket because it was getting in her way, shrugging it off her shoulders and tossing it on the counter. Just peeping out from the edges of the men’s undershirt she wore were a fine latticework of scars, most of them thick and white, crisscrossing and making a map of unknown places.
For nearly a full thirty seconds, Tate gave her one of those WTF staring ats, because...hair ruffled WUT?! He wasn't five years old!
"If I ate my mom, I'd probably get mad cow and syphilis at the same fucking time," grumbled Tate, with the sharp shrug of a shoulder like he didn't really care. "I'll tell them that, though."
Tate noticed the scars, but with the sort of eyeing that wasn't shocked at all by it. After all, his own arms were a crisscrossed mishmash of scars and gouges. That, though, didn't look anything like what he had, where the marks were fueled by rage when they were made.
"What's that about," he idly asked, pointing down where he'd spied her scars. "You one of those people that are into that ritualistic scarring stuff?"
He wasn’t five years old, Candy knew, but she already felt a little brother kinship toward him. “Probably good that you don’t get weaponized herpes from eating your mom, then.” She smiled at him, still putting stuff away, though the smile faded when he pointed out her back. “No.” She didn’t know how much to tell him. But hell - she was in therapy, and the kid had problems with his own mom. “My dad’s a mean drunk.” Explanation enough.
It might take Tate a while to get used to anyone treating him like a brotherly figure, besides Addie, that is. But even that was different, due to his sister's down's syndrome.
"Yeah, seriously," he half-joked in response, but even that was lamely done considering her response to the scar stuff. "Parents are shit. I don't even think I want kids. The chances of a fuck up happening are too high."
“Yeah, but there’s a difference between garden variety fuckups and what our parents did.” Candy still wanted kids someday, but that would be way down the line. Hell, maybe it would never happen - but she knew she’d be a better parent than both of hers put together.
At this juncture, Tate wouldn't trust himself with a mother fucking HAMSTER to take care of, if he lost his shit and went in-freaking-sane finally. And with those dreams, it sometimes felt like he wasn't in the drivers seat some of the time, anyway.
"Maybe," was all he said to that, a vague agreement, at best. He looked away from the marks on Candy and instead looked around at what was left in the apartment. "You got internet in here? Can I pick up some wifi?"
“Guy next door keeps it unlocked. If he’s wised up, try my name, he always used to perv on me.” She hopped up on the counter, smiling at him. “You’re doing the right thing, you know. Nobody can fix you but you, therapy bullshit doublespeak aside.”
"Heh, he sounds like a real dumbass. I'll try that. Thanks." He glanced back at her and then looked around the room again. It was almost shyly done, if not for the fact that he looked a little disgruntled at the mention of therapy. He still, deep down, wanted to try. "I hope so. I'm gonna try it, because...I had these dreams...and this guy, talking to him...I really wanted to believe it would help. It felt good saying some of that stuff. To someone else. Things I couldn't tell...people I wanted to like, or wanted to have them like me. I guess. It's stupid."
He nudged his backpack aside more with his foot, so it was out of the way and he wouldn't trip over it, at night. He wondered if the neighborhood was safe or not, but it wasn't like he couldn't take care of himself. He was pretty certain that he could, because of the stuff he did to other people.
Can't really argue or fight against an axe stuck in a gut.
“You wanna talk about it now?” She shrugged and tapped her shoulders. “You already know my shit.” She was still sitting on the kitchen counter, smiling at him. “If you don’t want to, that’s cool too. I’ve been a drunk for years ‘cause talking about shit fucking sucks.”
He stared at her for a long moment before shrugging with both shoulders. He liked Candy well enough, and it was just enough to not want her to dislike him. Not before he could get it all figured out, and maybe get some meds to calm down the anger a notch or two.
"I don't want to say too much," he mumbled, but kept mumble talking, a little longer. "I always hated my mom. My dad took off, she said. I didn't ever hear from him again. I don't care, since he's the one who ditched on us. I don't want to say more, because the dreams fucked things up, bad. I dream about hurting people, and hurting myself, and scaring my girlfriend. Messed up shit, and I don't want to have it happen when I'm awake. That's all."
An uncomfortable quiet set in, and Tate was looking at Candy with dark eyes that were so dark, they looked black instead of brown. And they seemed to be looking through her, instead of at her.
“Your dreams are realistic then.” Candy ran her fingers through her hair. “That must be a head trip. Mine are super fantasy stuff, so it’s not like that stuff can happen here. I really doubt there’s fish people around.” Yep. Keeping the tone light. The kid looked haunted, and she felt for him.
"In mine," he explained in a much lower and more distant tone of voice, "...there's blood and murderers. It's stuff that can happen here. It's stuff I don't want to happen here and it'll mess up stuff with my girlfriend. I don't want that. She's got enough shit to deal with, than to have her boyfriend pile more on."
“You’re a good person.” Candy said it quietly, but it was a thing that the kid needed to hear. “Your dreams aren’t you, not necessarily, and … fuck, I can’t make this shit better. If I could, I just would, you know?”
Finally, he blinked, only once, and in that time, he was focused on her. He even managed a small ghost of a smile. Maybe he did need to hear that.
"I know. It's okay, because I don't know if anyone other than maybe my girlfriend makes it better, but...hey, thanks for helping. I mean it."
Really, Tate was hoping they'd be able to give him some meds so he could simply deal with it and feel a little better again. Even if it was marginally better, that was still better than hitting the bottom...which didn't seem too far off, if things kept going the way they were going.
“You’re welcome. Trust me, I get needing to get away from psycho parents. Well, just one in my case, but … yeah, I get it.” She swung her leg. “I made it until I graduated and left as soon as I could. The least I can do is pay it forward.” She rifled around in her backpack, pulling out a pack of cigarettes and offering him one.
"I bet you didn't have anything when you left." Tate reached out and took that cigarette, but he was the one who dug a lighter out of his pocket. He flicked the lighter and held the flame to the tip of the cigarette, puffing enough to get it lit, then held the lighter out to light one for Candy. "What're you doing now, that got you out of this place?"
“Nope. I saved up enough to buy my car and five hundred bucks for expenses. I started saving when I was … fuck, twelve? When I was old enough to babysit.” She inhaled, lighting the smoke when he held out his lighter. Exhaling toward the ceiling, she smiled. “I moved in with my boyfriend, his apartment’s closer to school. I start that in January. Psychology. I want to help the other kids who think they’re fucked up. You know, I think it’s less that you and I are fucked up. Our parents are the ones who are, you know? They just got it on us.”
"Yeah, guess that's true. So being a shrink is going to help with your paying it forward." Tate squinted his eyes through all the smoke, as he watched her closely, warily. "I guess if you learn some stuff, maybe I can talk to you someday. You gonna be the ones who give out meds? I'm pretty sure I need them. The guy in my dreams wanted me to take pills for stuff. To help."
He couldn't remember what it was that Ben Harmon wanted him to take. The side effects were the usual long list of really terrible things and he hadn't wanted to deal with them, including the sexual dysfunction. The HELL with that.
“Hell no, I’m not that smart. I’d have to go through medical school first, then shrink school.” She blew a smoke ring, smiling as it drifted lazily toward the ceiling. “You can talk to me about whatever you want as friends, you know? I don’t know much in life, but I know about parents being asses.” She tugged her shirt down a bit, turning so he could see the center of her back. Amid the straight scars there was a jaggedly round one. “Got that from his class ring. I get that parents aren’t perfect people, not even close. You dream about therapy?”
"Harsh." He had leaned in to get a closer look, not even flinching. "Your dad's a dick. Did you kill him?"
That seemed like the normal response to a beating of this magnitude. Sure, his mom had gotten drunk and slap happy all over his skull before, and she hit hard. Maybe he deserved it for mouthing off like an asshole so much - even he could admit to that - but the marks on Candy was beyond that. He was still his mom's baby, the only one not gimped out in any way, so she didn't want to leave a mark on him. Not on the outside, at least.
There was a long moment of silence, studying the mark as he took several long drags off the cigarette. It was almost like Tate was debating if he should say more, or keep it to himself.
"Yeah. My girlfriend's dad was helping me. Now I'm having dreams...where I'm shoving a fire poker up a guy's ass. Fun shit like that. Because you know the party hasn't started until someone gets fucked with a fire poker."
Tate smiled and it was a smile so sweet and benevolent, that it could have rivaled any angel painted on the ceiling of a cathedral.
“I wish. Nah, I just left. Disappeared is more like. They don’t know where I am. Because if they do, they’ll try to find me and I’ll have to kill him then.” She sighed, pulling her shirt back down.
When she heard what Tate dreamed, she raised an eyebrow. “So you’re dreaming you’re Jeffrey Dahmer, basically. Shit, no wonder you’re all rattled.” She at least had dreams where she got to do fantastic things, like talk to huge cats that could walk on their back legs.
Curling up a bit, she sighed. “Yeah, you need someone to help with - I don’t know, sorting out that these dreams aren’t you.”
"Hey," he stopped her right there, but without sounding at all angry about it, "I didn't eat them."
That point matters. It somehow made it...marginally better on that sliding scale of 'That's a shitty thing of you to do' to 'Wow, you're Jeffrey Dahmer.' It was worse that he knew it could get worse, somehow, that the path ahead wasn't a good path that anyone would willingly choose to take. It was, unfortunately, the only path. He also knew that what Candy said was right, and what he was thinking about, too.
Tate flicked some ash aside toward the kitchen sink, not looking at her while he was talking, "It's still me, in the dreams. That's the problem. But it's like...I don't have any control over some of the shit I do, and the other stuff? Yeah, I know what I'm doing. Here? I don't want to do it. I'm so going to mass owe you for this."
That made Candy snort out a chuckle. “Or fuck the bodies, I hope.” Ashing in the sink as well, she nodded. “You don’t owe me crap except working on getting better. Period. Oh, if you still need that fake ID, I can help with that too, I can take you to the guy later on.”
"I kinda like it when the body I'm fucking actually moves," he told Candy. Even if his voice made it seem like sheer sarcasm, he did smile a little to let her know that he took it as a joke. "I might need it. It's almost my birthday, anyway, but it can't hurt to have it until then."
Because, hey, he could buy some liquor. Scooooooore.
“Just until you’re eighteen,” she chided. She had one that showed her as twenty-one, but she wasn’t enabling this kid to get drunk. What kind of recovering alcoholic would she be? “Is there anything you need? Toothbrushes and stuff?”
“I got all that stuff. I think I’ll be all right.” He put the cigarette out in the sink, flicking it in and running the water enough to hear a hiss. No use in setting the place on fire. Speaking of which, “What if something goes wrong. You want me to give you a call or take care of it on my own?”
Because that might leave blood stains in the carpet that he just doesn’t want to be responsible for.
Candy gave him a Look. “Call me. If I thought you could handle stuff on your own I wouldn’t be helping you.” She took out her phone so he could put his number in it, holding out her palm for his.
It wasn't like he wasn't armed. He had a hunting knife in his bag, after all, and he knew he could carve someone up if he had to. He didn't want to, but if they busted in the place? That was a good reason to defend one's self. At least he left the handgun at home.
In silence, Tate handed her the phone, shoving his hands into his pockets and watching, waiting for any other instructions she wanted to give to him, for the time that he'd be staying there.
She put her phone number in, smiling at him. “Nobody should come by, they still think I’m living here. Perv might knock on the door, but he’s harmless.” She clapped Tate on the shoulder, smiling at him. “Seriously, though, call me for anything, I’m a night owl anyway.”
"Cool. Me too." He smiled at her, for her, so she knew he wasn't going to go out of his way to cause trouble. "I won't even mess with Perv, by making girly moany noises so he can rub one out in the hallway. Thanks again. For everything."
“Ew, jizz is gross to walk in.” She ruffled his hair again, collecting her stuff and heading out the door. “Remember, call me, even if you just wanna go grab food or something.”
"If you were barefoot, that's sick." Tate was trying to smooth his hair down with both hands, but he grunted in the affirmative and nodded a little. "Sure, I will. Laters."