InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "SNAPE LIVES!"

Matt Cavanaugh (palehorses) wrote in we_float,
@ 2010-06-12 21:00:00

Current mood:	excited
Current music:	"Big Shot" :: Kill Hannah
Entry tags:	character: matt cavanaugh, character: maxxie delacourt

At seventeen they all hated her and me
Who: Maxxie Delacour and Matt Cavanaugh
When: Wednesday, June 9, 2096
Where: Matt's room
What: Matt tries to convince Maxxie to completely chick out with him.
Status: Closed, Incomplete

He opened the door to her knock, slightly surprised - he didn't remember anyone even knocking on the door before - but took the offered note calmly. As he read it, one eyebrow rose, and he looked up at her. "Come on in, then, princess."

He completely assumed, turning away to let her in, that she would follow; it never even occurred to him that she wouldn't, nor that she might be at all disturbed when he carefully set his cigarette into an ashtray and pulled his shirt off. "You can't just, like, look in the closet," he added, his voice slightly muffled. "Dresses are worn." But hey, she'd been in gymnastics for-fucking-ever, and TKD or whatever the hell else she did, she'd seen skin.

"As for the rest of it," he added, toeing his shoes off and using the opportunity to take a drag, "I haven't called a meeting because that's rather a statement of being the fucking leader, and I'm not even convinced I want to stay in this fucking country. I mean, that's not a fucking threat, I told you that already, it's just that going from christ I don't want this to yay, I will lead us all, is just a bit fucking weird, you know?"

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palehorses
2010-06-22 02:03 am UTC (link)

"Wouldn't be a accident," he said grimly. "And it's fair. Anyone can have a gun. I can shoot with it, can generally hit what I mean to, assuming someone's not fucking flailing around at the time, but it's not the same as drawing something that'll kill them that they might never see coming." He looked at her squarely as he said it, but it wasn't defensive - just serious.

"You wanna sit down and stay a minute?" He suited actions to words, taking a seat - one nice thing about the Anhalt was that at some point it'd clearly been condos or apartments or something, and the rooms were large. Large enough that he hadn't felt crowded when he'd noted that his room had a couple of chairs in a clear arrangement meant for sitting with another person. "Another part of it," he added after a moment's thought, "is that it's - you know, it's me deciding, not some fucking power that I didn't ask for, you know what I mean? It's cleaner than my power is, in a way."

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maxblinks
2010-06-22 02:12 am UTC (link)

"That makes sense." She dropped into the other chair, pulling her feet up so that her heels rested on the edge, her hands at her ankles. "Purposeful decision versus something that happens makes complete sense. Do you not have any conscious control over your power? Is that why you don't like being touched?"

Having been given license to ask questions, Maxxie was ignoring the potential politeness rules about what might actually be asked.

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palehorses
2010-06-22 02:21 am UTC (link)

He barked a laugh at that, but she didn't know; it wasn't at ignorance, just at the humour of the situation. "Nothing to do with it, princess. My power requires me to use it, and then to figure out how to use whatever I find, it's complicated, but I also have to really, really want to kill someone to make it work, and at that point it's like it's too fucking far and I might not stop myself. I mean, I think I would, you know? I'm not completely unaware. But being that angry or that hateful, whatever it fucking is, that's a hard state to realise that you're completely committed to someone's death and then say 'right, but it was a bad idea last time and it's still a bad idea.' So it's nothing with touch. And I don't know why I don't like that either, but my dad did tell me once that it was something I kind of always hated. Like, not from him and my mom, and my brother and sister and I used to play like kids do, hitting and poking and all that shit and it never bothered me, but people I don't know really well, I don't like it, and I don't like a lot of touch even then. It almost hurts, if that even makes any fucking sense, which I doubt cause it doesn't to me."

He shrugged thoughtfully. "Suppose some've it might've gotten worse after prison - there you really don't want anyone touching you, and that's no fucking joke - but like I say, always been that way. My dad said I'd do anything to avoid having aunts and uncles and cousins touching me - for a long time, they thought I was really shy, but obviously that's not the case. Took a long time before I figured out other people don't lose it when people fucking touch them and was able to say that I don't like it. And like I say, I don't like a lot of it anyway, but it works out at home, Ma can hug me all she wants and it's fine. Why don't you like it? When you touched me the other day, that wasn't a real organic action for you, you know?"

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maxblinks
2010-06-22 02:35 am UTC (link)

Maxxie frowned, trying to follow along with what Matt was saying. It sounded like his ability took not just intent, but almost a hyper level of intent, without the safety of changing one's mind. For the moment, she let that go, not quite ready to fully wrestle her mind around it.

The touch issues made more sense; she'd done case studies of people with similar issues. "You're not unique in that. I mean, I've read about other people who find touch physically abrasive and uncomfortable, who just can't deal with the sensation. Some of them are physical conditions, but some are psychological, but they all pretty much translate into forms of sensory overload."

Okay, a detail for a detail. "It's fake, and it's a way of lying. People hug so you think they like you. They kiss your cheek to say hello when they don't mean it. I'm tired of lies." Which wasn't all of it, but it was a part of it.

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palehorses
2010-06-22 06:38 am UTC (link)

He looked at her abruptly, and there was the touch of true hostility to his gaze. "I don't need reassurance that I'm like other people," he pointed out. He'd never liked being pigeonholed, ever, and that wasn't about to change now.

But it faded after a moment and he nodded. "I can understand that. It's easy to fake something if you throw the gesture in. I mean, it's like saying please or something - might not make it any less an order - but it's more annoying."

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maxblinks
2010-06-22 05:47 pm UTC (link)

"I wasn't trying to placate or pigeonhole, I was trying to understand," Maxxie countered. If she could match patterns, see what was like what, she could find reasons and figure things out. Once she had something of a reason, she could interact. "No one's exactly like anyone else, I know that." It was, in part, why she so often screwed things up.

"Yes." Her head bobbed in a quick nod. "Where I grew up, people hugged all the time. Before you went on the floor. After a good routine. After a bad routine. For winning, for losing. To say hello, or a tearful goodbye. And they were all a vicious pit of vipers." She smiled sweetly, with absolutely no humor or pleasure behind it. "Everyone thinks that you can't lie with body language, but they only think that because they've never been in the presence of experts. Smiles are just there to hide the teeth."

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palehorses
2010-06-23 04:56 am UTC (link)

"You're trying to understand all people," Matt said finally, lighting a fresh cigarette. "You're extrapolating from what I'm saying, or what people at your events were doing, it sounds like, not fucking working out what the individual is doing or saying. Sounds like a slightly ass-backwards way of going about it - people are all different." He glanced at her curiously - he supposed, even as he'd said it, that that might not make sense. "I mean, just because people there were lying about what they meant and what they did to hide it, doesn't mean that all people lie, but it sounds like that's your fucking takeaway."

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maxblinks
2010-06-23 01:28 pm UTC (link)

"Of course people are all different, but you have to start from somewhere; that's the point of psychology." Her smile was tight. "And you'd be surprised how many people lie. And in how many ways." There were very few people she outright trusted. Two, really, that she could say: Tom and her brother. And she was positive her brother would still lie to her if he had a reason, and she could even think of a few reasons he might pick.

"And don't say go on instinct to decide about people; that doesn't work. There's no such thing as pure instinct. It's all about how some people just put the pieces together better and faster than others, and if you're not one of those people, and you try to go on instinct, it most definitely doesn't work." Relax and go with it had never worked for Maxxie, and had only served to get her into deeper trouble. She had no instinct whatsoever for people.

And she was talking way too much about herself. Lips pressed together, frowning, and a slow impish smile started as she remembered something. Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out the three bottles of nail polish she had there and let them rest on her palm. Her gaze flicked from the colors to Matt, then back again to the colors, and after a moment, she slipped two back into her pocket and held the last one out to him. The smile grew. "It'd look good with both the dress, and your eyes."

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palehorses
2010-06-24 05:41 am UTC (link)

Again she ducked the question of who she was. Matt noted it, but at this point he wasn't terribly surprised by it. Curious, yes - very curious. But surprised, no.

Her words caught at him, though; he took the polish with an appreciative smile - a nice shade and one he didn't have. "That's not a thing," he said. It was inarticulate as hell, but he was back to the feeling of being off-balance, of being pigeonholed in a way that didn't work. "I mean, I don't secretly long to be a girl or something, you know? It's just clothes, I like clothes, and I decided a long time ago not to, like, let the fucking norms of society dictate, you know?" He shrugged, his sense of discomfort increasing. "I wear that the same way I wear jeans. I see something I like, I buy it, I wear it. I'm not, like, planning to change my name to Vanessa or something."

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	maxblinks 2010-06-24 12:25 pm UTC (link)
	"You said that," she pointed out, and a small smile flickered. "Or at least, that just wear it. And I accepted it. Although the sad thing about dresses is that you can only wear them sometimes, otherwise they get in the way. Don't seem to have very many opportunities to dress up." (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

palehorses
2010-06-25 02:47 am UTC (link)

"It's weird," he said finally. "I feel like you do this every day. You know, get up, put on pants, no thought that two hundred years ago, it would've probably been better to be seen wearing your underwear on the outside. You know, you, where you means girls. Women. Both. Shit, I don't fucking know. You can wear anything, and no one ever assumes you're saying something about who you like to fuck or whether you think you were born in the right body, you know? Well, most people don't, but the rest are dumb rednecks out in Orting who should've been shot a long fucking time ago. Me, I have to explain that. Worse, I feel like I have to explain it. For fuck's sake, it's clothes. I mean, if the world wants to see me naked, they fucking well can." He grinned at that, a trace of viciousness to the look. "Probably best not to go there. But you know, seriously, you got it good, princess. And I mostly do, I'm not saying I don't, but there's still the whole ooh, freakshow thing. Fuck it."

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maxblinks
2010-06-25 02:30 pm UTC (link)

"But the world hasn't changed all that much," Maxxie countered, warming up to the debate (and oh how she loved debate). "If someone sees a woman in trousers, then she's as good as a guy, as long as those pants aren't too floofy or feminine. If she's wearing a business suit, then she's trying to be a man but feminine at the same time. But if she's wearing a long flower-print skirt that summery and bright, then she's obviously a weak little hothouse flower who needs to be protected."

She drew in a deep breath, nowhere near done yet, "so see, if you go out wearing that same flowery dress, it's not that you're a freakshow, it's that you're being looked at the same way we are and no one ever understands why a guy would want to be weak. But all you're thinking is pretty and hey it looks cool, but the rest of the world says that's a pushover pussy sort of thing to wear. They don't laugh at girls for being weak, just think it's right, better than when we wear suits or pants. It's the kind of thing that makes me want to go out heroing in a frilly dress just to shock people when I start kicking butt."

She shook her head. "Someday people will just see clothes and not label them. Maybe. It's all sociologically complicated."

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palehorses
2010-06-27 02:11 am UTC (link)

"Not like it was even a hundred years ago," Matt countered sharply. "I mean, seriously, there's been fucking progress."

He gestured uselessly, trying to think of what he could say to prove his point, but he wasn't that well versed in history. Instead, he said "You're right, though - fag's the least bad of it, I wear that out. Pisses me off, honestly, for a lot of reasons. Like, fuck, your life's kind of limited if that's what you're worried about."

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