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Tweak says, "That's the way I like it"

Andy Gallagher is not the droid you're looking for (brain_ninja) wrote in vas_captio_rpg,
@ 2009-04-02 01:08:00

Entry tags:

!complete, andy gallagher, day 02, location: church, luna lovegood

Day Two - Mid-afternoon
Who: Andy Gallagher and Luna Lovegood
What: Reuniting after their respective experiments
When: Mid-afternoon
Where: The church
Rating: TBA, probably G or PG
Status: Complete

By the time Andy had dragged his sorry self back up the road from the gym, his clothes were covered in mud and what would be drying blood if not for the rain. For all the times he'd had to stop and sit on the dirt road holding his hands over the leg wound and putting pressure there, he'd lost a lot of blood in the rain and a lot of it ended up on his clothes. He was tired and all he wanted to do was lay down and rest. Well, second to seeing for himself that Luna was all right. After he'd heard that she'd had an experiment as well, his panic and worry had gone off the scale.

He sat on the steps of the church for a few minutes, letting the rain wash out the wounds he'd refused to clean in the shower. Shit, if the water was going to be cold, anyway, what was the point of sticking around the gym and letting Martha potentially coddle him when all he wanted was to be back at the church and to see Luna again?

Finally, after what seemed like forever, he pulled himself to his feet and hobbled inside, closing the door behind him. His heart sank when he saw that Luna wasn't there. Heaving a sigh, too tired to change his clothes, he made his way to the front of the church and stood in front of the dying fire for a moment, striking another match and throwing it in to reignite it.

At every creak or sound, he looked hopefully over his shoulder for Luna, disappointed and even more worried with every passing sound that wasn't her. She had to come back soon, right? Sam had said she was all right, in the journals, and that he'd take care of her...all Andy could do now was trust that and wait.

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luna_llena
2009-04-06 06:01 am UTC (link)

Her dating history was extremely spotty, in fact she had had exactly one serious boyfriend. A relationship which had ended without much of a fuss, and she and Neville and became simply friends again. He had been off to teach in Scotland, at Hogwarts, and she had been in the middle of a year of pure expeditions. Sending in her articles by owl post.

She had loved him, still did, but being friends worked perfectly well.

Before that, in school, she most definitely had not dabbled in dating. So the fact that Andy had wanted to kiss her would have taken her off guard, especially as they had just met. Even if she had not jumped to believing he was making fun of her. The thing was, before, when she had been in her fourth year at Hogwarts, something similar had happened. The guy had been a fellow Ravenclaw and a year above her, one who had never spoken to her before.

"After a DA meeting, when I was fourteen, Terry Boot asked if he could kiss me." Not actually looking at Andy, her eyes were actually on the roof above them, checking for leaks. Just in case. "It was a joke, Marietta hald told him it would be funny, promised that she would reward him for asking. Michael and Anthony could not stop laughing for some time." Of course, Luna had been both confused and hurt. Even for her housemates, it had been a cruel and hurtful joke to play. Because being in DA, to Luna, it had been like having friends.

Sometimes people were just mean, it was just how it was. Michael had been at the Final Battle at Hogwarts, but neither of them had spoken of what had happened two years before. And not years later when she had run into Terry Boot outside a book store in Diagon Alley. When he had asked her back to the Leaky Cauldron for drinks, she had simply blinked once at him and left him standing there in the street.

She looked down, although not that far, to meet his eyes. With a nod, she added an, "Of course," to his question. Putting one knee up on the pew beside him, and picking up one of the cloths and the water, she soaked the fabric. So that she was able to carefully clean out the gash in his ear, with a small sympathetic wince. Each movement was as careful as she could be, in an attempt to lessen the pain that she knew was inevitable. Without something to numb the area.

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brain_ninja
2009-04-06 08:51 pm UTC (link)

Luna's story explained the way she'd reacted to Andy's blunt request to kiss her and he furrowed his brow. He knew that kids were cruel; he'd been one of the smallest guys in school until junior year of high school, so he was no stranger to being teased. But what Luna was telling was just cruel. "What a dick..." was all he could come up with, though, because Andy couldn't fathom even the meanest person being that nasty. He hoped those people had gotten their up and comeance. Maybe they had, he thought. Maybe Luna had been a chubby, awkward teen with glasses held together with cellotape or something and now she was this bangin' hottie that they probably wished they hadn't been so rotten to back in the day. That was the kind of shit that was on Ricki Lake all the time, right? ...if Ricki Lake was even still on the air; Andy didn't know or care, really; it was just a fleeting thought.

He didn't want her to dwell on it, so that was all Andy had to say about the thing she'd confided. Luna agreed to help clean out his ear and as he prepared one of the cloths to dab at his leg, she got to work on his ear. Andy grimaced and set his jaw in pain as soon as she touched it, but he didn't want her to know that she was hurting him. Necessary evil, he thought, to keep it from getting too terribly infected. If she thought she was hurting him, she might stop and then he'd have to ask Martha to do it when she already had her own shit to deal with. "Thanks," he managed quietly, through gritted teeth as he patted the clean cloth against his leg and flinched when pain shot up his spine in response. This was gonna suck so much ass...

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luna_llena
2009-04-07 12:42 am UTC (link)

Leaving Terry and his friends in the past as much as possible, left them behind and slid easily into the current moment. Luna had no need to wallow in things past, the present was more than enough.

The flesh was raggedly torn, bleeding with the heavy trickle of blood rich skin of a head injury. The exposed piece of cartilage enough to make her wince sympathetically. Each of her movements to clean up the injury was slow and careful, each touch as barely there as possible. She hated to cause anyone pain, let alone her friend.

Still, pain could not always be avoided. Sometimes it was inevitable. A fact that was difficult to learn, but once it was learned, was impossible to completely forget.

Andy flinched, and one of her hands set on his arm, giving a reassuring grip. "Are you certain you don't require help?" The gash was high up on his leg, and she could see the bleeding and the damage left behind by the puma's attack. Pausing in her level look at him to twist the top back onto the bottle she held. This would be much easier if she had an adhesive bandage or a bottle of wound cleaning potion.

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brain_ninja
2009-04-07 01:02 am UTC (link)

Andy was pretty sure he couldn't remember a time in his life that he'd been in as much pain as he was right then with Luna cleaning his ear and himself trying to ignore the dull pain in his ribs as he leaned down to see what he was doing when dabbing at his leg gingerly. He was going to get shit done if he kept at it all gently the way he was, especially because he wasn't taking the pants off in front of Luna. Not without a pair of boxers he fucking wasn't.

When Luna asked if he was sure he didn't want help, Andy looked up at her again, feeling her hand on his arm. Ducking his head, Andy closed his eyes and admitted defeat. "Please?" he sighed. "I can't; I know it's gonna hurt, so I can't make myself do it," he admitted with a frown. He hated to say it out loud like that, but there it was.

What kind of a man couldn't just do the damn thing and suck it up? A fucking wuss, that was what kind. Setting his jaw again, Andy leaned his head back and then sighed again. So far as Andy could see right at that moment in time, the only good thing about this place was Luna. It was like he was stuck in a bad fuckin' dream and the only consolation was the random subconciously-generated and obligatory hot chick tending to him.

"Just...be quick?" he asked, trying his very hardest not to sound like the pathetic loser he felt like he was just then.

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luna_llena
2009-04-07 02:03 am UTC (link)

"It's okay," she soothed, practically petting his arm for a second. "Everything's going to be all right Andy, you will see." In her experience, and beliefs, admitting weakness was not weakness at all. But was, instead, strength. Perhaps not the best or clearest explanation for how she felt about and saw the matter, but it took more courage in her opinion to admit you needed help than to drive yourself into the ground going it alone. Especially when there were others there who could and were willing to help.

Having finished with his ear, she took the makeshift bandages and cloth from his hand and took a second to simply look at the wound. "I have seen worse, but it must hurt greatly." At least no colored Wound Imps flew about to make this even more difficult than it had to be. Nearly a decade had passed since she had had to help clean even more than superficial cuts and scratches. Her wrists and back notwithstanding.

With a nod of her blonde head, with the tips of her long hair slowly drying as it was bound behind her, Luna began what she knew was going to be unpleasant.

The fabric was torn around the wound, and she had to move the frayed edges just so to the side to free the claw marks to clear view. As swiftly as possible, taking care to still be as gentle as she could and still get the job done well, she set to cleaning the still bleeding wound.

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brain_ninja
2009-04-07 02:35 am UTC (link)

At Luna's reassurance, Andy gave her a weak smile and closed his eyes. He saw Tracy there, lying beside him in the back of his van, a sheet pulled up around her chest and he could almost feel her fingers in his hair.

"I can't live here, Trace. I don't know what to do...Jesus, I mean, what kind of asshole loses his job for coming in stoned and then gets evicted in the same week?"

"Shit happens. You'll figure something out; you always do. We can figure something out together. Everything's gonna be fine, Andy, you'll see."

Everything wasn't fine, though. He had lived in the back of the van, mooching off Tracy's generousity for food and Webber's overzealous want to be Andy's buddy for the pot. For a year. A whole year before the mind thing kicked in and rather than always having to move his van to a new spot or ignore phone calls from bill collectors - he must've owed Tracy close to a grand for his cell phone - he was able to tell people that they'd given him permisson to park or that he'd already sent in the payment and if they checked their databases, they'd see it.

He'd gotten so used to the van that he'd just stayed there, never mind the fact that he couldn't be bothered to have to use the mind thing once a month to tell a landlord that he'd paid the rent when he hadn't.

Everything wasn't fine, ever, and then she'd broken up with him and while it had been amiable, things hadn't really ever been the same. Webber was trying too hard to be his friend and Tracy was trying too hard not to hurt his feelings. He'd told Sam when asked, back in Guthrie, that he had everything he needed, which was true. Eventually he'd found happiness with what he had and he didn't need anything else. That didn't mean he was always happy with it, though. It just meant he'd settled and he was too lazy to change things.

He opened his eyes again and looked up at her when she went on talking. "Yeah, hurts like a bitch," he admitted. He winced as she moved the ravaged fabric out of the wound and out of her way, closing his eyes again to let her work without having to actually see what she was doing. Granted, the tactile sense was heightened slightly when he blocked off the sense of sight, but he didn't suppose it would make much of a difference whether he watched or not and he didn't like the idea of bearing witness. If she happened to look up at the pain in his face, Andy sure as hell didn't want to see the pity on hers. He didn't need her pity and he didn't want it.

When he was fairly certain she was finished, Andy opened his eyes again and looked back at her. "Thanks, Luna," he said quietly and sincerely. He was exhausted and didn't really have the energy to bring things back around to see if she'd object to him kissing her, so he let it lie and decided maybe that was a sign that he shouldn't. "Do you care if I lay down for a little while? I'm exhausted..." He'd stay awake if she wanted him to; if she needed him to, to feel safe, but if she was cool with him catching some Zs, he was going to. It was daylight, so hopefully things would be okay if he dozed for a little while.

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