Lloyd wished he had forgotten what day it was. He spent the morning in the clinic, which incidentally looked like some fancy whorehouse (or at least how Lloyd imagined a fancy one would look, being more used to the low budget end of things), with the beds, walls and everything in between decorated all funky. Unfortunately, there were no naughty nurses to be had. He got a splint for his foot, some painkillers and the few hours of sleep he'd sorely needed (it wasn't easy, with the jukebox doing a nice job trying to split his head in half, but he was really fucking tired). He was gifted a pair of crutches, too, and spent a long, hateful moment staring at them and wondering if they had used to belong to a grumpy chick named Jaye. Now that would have been all kinds of hilarious
( ... )
Jaye didn't GET visitors. Okay, so there was that time when Buck knocked on her door, and a few other people came by sometimes, but it was an UNcommon enough event that it got her suspicious. The fact that she was getting a visitor on VALENTINE'S DAY only raised the threat warning from yellow to orange.
She stalked to the door cautiously, one hand holding the most threatening object she could grab blindly -- a hair brush. Once at the door, she opened it a centimeter at a time, peeking out when there was enough room for her head.
And found Lloyd... leaning on crutches... holding a bear. A CUTE bear holding a BEER BOTTLE with a rose. It didn't take a genius to deduce that the stuffed animal was for HER, and Lloyd had PERSONALIZED it for HER.
"Lloyd," she said, very calmly like she was talking to a serial killer or angry customer. "Go home and sleep off the island mumbo jumbo. You'll thank me tomorrow."
Lloyd knew that tone, having heard it before more than once or twice (it was nearly always accompanied by people looking at him funny, like he was going to rape and pillage their village or something), and it didn't do much to calm him down. More like make him profoundly uncomfortable.
He didn't have the first clue what mumbo jumbo he needed to sleep off, either, so he stared at her for a long moment, trying to figure it out.
Oh great, she thought the island had given him some sort of romance bug.
"No, look, it ain't nothing like that. I'm of sound fuckin' mind and everything, I swear." To tell the truth, he was trying to convince himself as much as he did her, because he wasn't all that confident of his sanity at the moment. He was standing there holding a stupid stuffed bear with a rose and a balloon, for Christ's sake. What if the island was messing with his head?
His gaze drifted worriedly to the hairbrush in her hand. Jesus, was that supposed to be some kind of baseball bat substitute? "What's that for?"
LLOYD of sound mind? Jaye wouldn't have believed that on the best of days, and yet here he was trying to convince her it was true while holding a plush toy present that might as well have her name on it, topped with little hearts.
She looked between him and the hair brush. "To beat some sense into you with!" she snapped. "It's Valentine's Day, Lloyd. You really think the island would pass up a primo chance to fuck with us? You have a BALLOON." If that wasn't a sign of instability on his part, Jaye wasn't sure what WAS.
So okay, yeah, he did have a balloon. So fucking what? Lloyd wasn't normally the balloons, stuffed bears, hearts and flowers type, but his original plan had failed, pretty spectacularly, and now the bear was all he had. The balloon and the rose he'd decided to add because if he was going to do it, he might as well not go about it half-assed.
"I already broke my foot, Jaye, and that didn't beat no sense into me, so good luck with that brush of yours," he said, voice low. He was still just a little bit wary of that hairbrush, though, in case Jaye thought he was possessed or body-snatched or whatever. Which, despite certain suspicions, he was pretty sure he wasn't. "I'm here 'cause I want to be here. With a balloon and a goddam' stuffed bear."
Why was he looking at her like that, all earnest and cute? Why did he WANT to be here? Why did he WANT to have a balloon and a stuffed bear with him? Why was he here on VALENTINE'S DAY?
...Oh God. "Oh no." Jaye felt her stomach drop like the Titanic.
"No, no," she said, wagging her brush side to side like it was an extension of her hand. "No, you do not wanna be here. Not today, not with all this..." A wave at the offendingly romantic paraphenalia was all she could manage. "You wanna fuck? Come back tomorrow with some booze. But I may be clinically insane and you're a henchman of the God damned devil and we're both on Twilight Zone island. This is not the makings of a Lifetime made-for-TV movie!"
The way she was looking at him, you would think he'd just gotten down on his knee and offered marriage, a mortgage, six kids and a puppy. It was just a bear. Not even a live one. Just a stuffed bear with a beer.
But it wasn't like he'd expected it to go easy.
"No I don't wanna fuck. I mean, I do, 'course I do, it's just not--" he paused for a breath, but didn't go on. Didn't know what to say. It wasn't about getting laid, he knew that much. Wasn't as if he was real desperate to score, and he had Helen for mind-blowing sex if that was all he was looking for.
This was different. Jaye was some kind of crazy mind puzzle, and Lloyd wasn't exactly a master puzzle solver. He desperately wished he had a tiny Ianto hovering over his shoulder so he could whisper to him, tell him what to say and what to do. But that only made him picture Ianto as a leprechaun fairy, and his brain was already in danger of blowing a fuse. Maybe he was just thinking too much
( ... )
Why was he talking? Why did these things have to go like this? WHY was she asking so many questions in her head and just STARING at Lloyd like he'd grown a second head?
"No, you don't." She was fumbling for words, not sure what she needed to say but knowing she needed to say something. This felt like drowning, like she was falling into something and she had to stop it. "You like me like you'll have a drink with me and we're cool, but you don't REALLY like me because that really would be crazy. You're just confused."
This wasn't the reaction Lloyd had expected, or the kind he was used to. He was no stranger to rejection, or the subtle art of the 'fuck off', but this was new. She sounded sort of like she was panicking, and he couldn't make any sense of it. He wasn't sure she could.
"Well, 'course I'm confused. Case you ain't noticed, you're pretty confusing. Like, Jesus, Olympic-level confusing." Especially now, when she was telling him what he was and wasn't. "But I'm not that confused. I like you. Why's that so damn crazy?"
It was a little masochistic, sure, and a hell of a way to score a lifelong headache subscription, but it wasn't crazier than a lot of other things he could think of. Relatively speaking, it was pretty sane.
"Because!" Jaye couldn't think of anything more clear than that. If Lloyd didn't get it, well who's to say he would ever get it? And given it was LLOYD, the number's dropped drastically against him.
"Look, Lloyd, I'm doing you a favor here, okay?" The anger was seeping away into frustration, but that was just a disguise for her own nervousness. "Just GO. It's better for both of us, if you just go."
Well, that answer sure made things all kinds of clearer. Lloyd couldn't help catching some of her frustration too, because he didn't need any fucking favors, or to be told what was best for him. Shocking as it was, he was pretty sure he was supposed to decide that much for himself, for a goddamn change.
And crazy or not, none of this felt wrong to him.
"Okay," he said, nodding resignedly. But going involved moving, and for all that he was good at taking instruction, he hadn't done any moving yet. Just stood there with his crutches and the bear, looking at Jaye and focusing on some sort of white inside his head. "You, uh, want to go for a walk or somethin'?" it came out without much thought, and he was weirdly calm as he said it. Calm like getting prepared to face a firing squad, maybe, but still pretty calm. "The bear doesn't have to come."
The crazy freaking thing was she DID want to go on a walk, WITH him, but after just saying what she'd said, she couldn't say yes, could she? Talk about mixed signals. And it was still VALENTINE'S day and who KNEW what could happen.
"No," she said quickly, before she could change her mind. "No, you need to go--" Walk with someone else? No, actually, that didn't sound like a good idea AT ALL. "You need to go."
Lloyd was pretty sure she was going to give him brain fever.
Or cancer. Was it possible to get brain cancer from overexposure to a aggravatingly frustrating chick?
He thought that with Jaye, it was possible.
He didn't say anything this time, just nodded; almost turned to leave, then remembered something at the last moment. "You gonna take your bear or what?" He held it out, and it shone in the sun, looking all miserable and bear-like. "You can do whatever you want with him, use him as a voodoo doll or burn him at the stake, whatever makes you happy."
Whatever makes her happy? What a line to end on, Lloyd.
She HATED that little bear face, wanted to rip it off and throw it away, but at the same time it WAS adorable, and she DID have a heart. More importantly, she had a tendency towards pack rattage. And any inanimate object with a face was fair game in the battle of trying to figure out WHY they wanted to talk to her, even if the bear wasn't talking at the moment.
AND Lloyd just looked pathetic.
She reached out quickly and snatched up the bear, cradling it close to her as a protective measure. She didn't have enough hands to keep the door open, wield the brush and hold the bear at the same time. Her lips twitched like she wanted to say something, maybe something like THANK YOU, but she held it in.
He had no idea if she would take the bear, but there she went, snatching the stuffed toy from him like a bag from an old lady on the street. So not only was she a possibly insane, cynical and brain-cancer spreading boozehound. Now she was a bear-snatcher, too.
And then she just stood there, clutching the bear, not saying a damn thing.
"Jesus fuck, Jaye," it sounded louder inside his head, but in reality, it came out a particularly intense whisper.
He didn't have many options here. The obvious one was limping home and spending the rest of the day brooding or something, but suddenly, he got an idea.
A stupid, really fucking terribly idea.
He'd tried it out once before, with a live rabbit playing the stuffed bear's part, and it had worked back then. But there were a lot more risk factors this time around, like that hairbrush Jaye was still holding in her hand, one he was fully expecting to get smacked with, hard. Not to mention that on these crutches, he was pretty damn vulnerable.
But he wasn't thinking, was tired of thinking
( ... )
She didn't bite his head off. She was thinking of it, but the thought disappeared the second he started moving in. She knew what he was going to do, but she couldn't move away, even if her reflexes were faster. Her mind just blanked away to nothing. One second he was going to kiss her, then he WAS kissing her, and then she kissed back.
She didn't know what she was doing. Temporary insanity, honestly. She was going to push herself away and wipe her mouth and yell at him to leave and pretend this never happened except...
Except it felt kind of nice. Not nearly as scary as she thought it would, and the world didn't go exploding around her. It was just a kiss. A nice kiss.
THAT was scary enough to make her pull away and stare wide-eyed at him.
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She stalked to the door cautiously, one hand holding the most threatening object she could grab blindly -- a hair brush. Once at the door, she opened it a centimeter at a time, peeking out when there was enough room for her head.
And found Lloyd... leaning on crutches... holding a bear. A CUTE bear holding a BEER BOTTLE with a rose. It didn't take a genius to deduce that the stuffed animal was for HER, and Lloyd had PERSONALIZED it for HER.
"Lloyd," she said, very calmly like she was talking to a serial killer or angry customer. "Go home and sleep off the island mumbo jumbo. You'll thank me tomorrow."
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He didn't have the first clue what mumbo jumbo he needed to sleep off, either, so he stared at her for a long moment, trying to figure it out.
Oh great, she thought the island had given him some sort of romance bug.
"No, look, it ain't nothing like that. I'm of sound fuckin' mind and everything, I swear." To tell the truth, he was trying to convince himself as much as he did her, because he wasn't all that confident of his sanity at the moment. He was standing there holding a stupid stuffed bear with a rose and a balloon, for Christ's sake. What if the island was messing with his head?
His gaze drifted worriedly to the hairbrush in her hand. Jesus, was that supposed to be some kind of baseball bat substitute? "What's that for?"
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She looked between him and the hair brush. "To beat some sense into you with!" she snapped. "It's Valentine's Day, Lloyd. You really think the island would pass up a primo chance to fuck with us? You have a BALLOON." If that wasn't a sign of instability on his part, Jaye wasn't sure what WAS.
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"I already broke my foot, Jaye, and that didn't beat no sense into me, so good luck with that brush of yours," he said, voice low. He was still just a little bit wary of that hairbrush, though, in case Jaye thought he was possessed or body-snatched or whatever. Which, despite certain suspicions, he was pretty sure he wasn't. "I'm here 'cause I want to be here. With a balloon and a goddam' stuffed bear."
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...Oh God. "Oh no." Jaye felt her stomach drop like the Titanic.
"No, no," she said, wagging her brush side to side like it was an extension of her hand. "No, you do not wanna be here. Not today, not with all this..." A wave at the offendingly romantic paraphenalia was all she could manage. "You wanna fuck? Come back tomorrow with some booze. But I may be clinically insane and you're a henchman of the God damned devil and we're both on Twilight Zone island. This is not the makings of a Lifetime made-for-TV movie!"
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But it wasn't like he'd expected it to go easy.
"No I don't wanna fuck. I mean, I do, 'course I do, it's just not--" he paused for a breath, but didn't go on. Didn't know what to say. It wasn't about getting laid, he knew that much. Wasn't as if he was real desperate to score, and he had Helen for mind-blowing sex if that was all he was looking for.
This was different. Jaye was some kind of crazy mind puzzle, and Lloyd wasn't exactly a master puzzle solver. He desperately wished he had a tiny Ianto hovering over his shoulder so he could whisper to him, tell him what to say and what to do. But that only made him picture Ianto as a leprechaun fairy, and his brain was already in danger of blowing a fuse. Maybe he was just thinking too much ( ... )
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"No, you don't." She was fumbling for words, not sure what she needed to say but knowing she needed to say something. This felt like drowning, like she was falling into something and she had to stop it. "You like me like you'll have a drink with me and we're cool, but you don't REALLY like me because that really would be crazy. You're just confused."
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"Well, 'course I'm confused. Case you ain't noticed, you're pretty confusing. Like, Jesus, Olympic-level confusing." Especially now, when she was telling him what he was and wasn't. "But I'm not that confused. I like you. Why's that so damn crazy?"
It was a little masochistic, sure, and a hell of a way to score a lifelong headache subscription, but it wasn't crazier than a lot of other things he could think of. Relatively speaking, it was pretty sane.
Well, almost.
He was still holding a stuffed bear.
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"Look, Lloyd, I'm doing you a favor here, okay?" The anger was seeping away into frustration, but that was just a disguise for her own nervousness. "Just GO. It's better for both of us, if you just go."
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And crazy or not, none of this felt wrong to him.
"Okay," he said, nodding resignedly. But going involved moving, and for all that he was good at taking instruction, he hadn't done any moving yet. Just stood there with his crutches and the bear, looking at Jaye and focusing on some sort of white inside his head. "You, uh, want to go for a walk or somethin'?" it came out without much thought, and he was weirdly calm as he said it. Calm like getting prepared to face a firing squad, maybe, but still pretty calm. "The bear doesn't have to come."
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"No," she said quickly, before she could change her mind. "No, you need to go--" Walk with someone else? No, actually, that didn't sound like a good idea AT ALL. "You need to go."
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Or cancer. Was it possible to get brain cancer from overexposure to a aggravatingly frustrating chick?
He thought that with Jaye, it was possible.
He didn't say anything this time, just nodded; almost turned to leave, then remembered something at the last moment. "You gonna take your bear or what?" He held it out, and it shone in the sun, looking all miserable and bear-like. "You can do whatever you want with him, use him as a voodoo doll or burn him at the stake, whatever makes you happy."
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She HATED that little bear face, wanted to rip it off and throw it away, but at the same time it WAS adorable, and she DID have a heart. More importantly, she had a tendency towards pack rattage. And any inanimate object with a face was fair game in the battle of trying to figure out WHY they wanted to talk to her, even if the bear wasn't talking at the moment.
AND Lloyd just looked pathetic.
She reached out quickly and snatched up the bear, cradling it close to her as a protective measure. She didn't have enough hands to keep the door open, wield the brush and hold the bear at the same time. Her lips twitched like she wanted to say something, maybe something like THANK YOU, but she held it in.
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And then she just stood there, clutching the bear, not saying a damn thing.
"Jesus fuck, Jaye," it sounded louder inside his head, but in reality, it came out a particularly intense whisper.
He didn't have many options here. The obvious one was limping home and spending the rest of the day brooding or something, but suddenly, he got an idea.
A stupid, really fucking terribly idea.
He'd tried it out once before, with a live rabbit playing the stuffed bear's part, and it had worked back then. But there were a lot more risk factors this time around, like that hairbrush Jaye was still holding in her hand, one he was fully expecting to get smacked with, hard. Not to mention that on these crutches, he was pretty damn vulnerable.
But he wasn't thinking, was tired of thinking ( ... )
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She didn't know what she was doing. Temporary insanity, honestly. She was going to push herself away and wipe her mouth and yell at him to leave and pretend this never happened except...
Except it felt kind of nice. Not nearly as scary as she thought it would, and the world didn't go exploding around her. It was just a kiss. A nice kiss.
THAT was scary enough to make her pull away and stare wide-eyed at him.
"You have to go," she said, sounding unsteady.
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