(no subject)
Who: Jacob Anser (MOTHER GOOSE), Nate Katz (STRAW PIG) and Delilah Rousseau (LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD)
Where: Anser and Delilah's apartment, the Pentamerone
When: A few days after Nate and Delilah's discussion on the merits of bath desks.
Summary: Astounding how quickly the innocent construction of a bath desk can turn bad.
Rating: R for the F-bomb.
Delilah: The bath desks at the store were $30. It was ridiculous. Maybe if Delilah needed all those things - the iPod slot, the cupholder - she could justify it, but she simply did not. All she needed was a way to overcome the persistent post-workout ache while also being able to do her homework, read a book, and not drop any of it in the water.
That's where Nate came in. He built stuff, right? Surely he could come up with a more workable solution than a sanded-down board propped precariously across the tub. So, with promises of real hamburgers, kosher even, she lured him over. Tub measurements were taken, supplies were gathered, and space was cleared in the living room for this momentous moment in history. Wolf milled around the construction site for a while, but after his dinner was put out and he was not ordered to tear out Nate's jugular, he contented himself to lying nearby and receiving the occasional belly rub.
Delilah, meanwhile, considers the problem before them. "I know you're feeling adventurous but the cup holder is totally unnecessary. Unwelcome even. The suggestion that one would drink while in the tub is offensive to me."
Nate: If he's going to be honest with himself, Nate's not here because of the "kosher hamburger" bribe. Hell, he's not even here due to being lured by promises of free food in general or building ridiculously awesome contraptions instead of homework. Sure, the hamburgers were prime and trying to cajole Delilah into upgrading bathtub desk features was proving pretty sweet, too, but the point still remained that even if Delilah had said, "Oh, I'm going to drop all this shit off at your dorm and pick up the desk in a week," Nate's pretty damn sure that he would've nodded, smiled, and agreed to the whole thing. It's a fact that unnerved him more than slightly on a number of levels, and not just because he could hear Skip in the back of his head making a whipcrack noise. Thinking back on his side of the conversation that had blossomed the very idea of the table, he swallows a little thickly. Definitely unnerving.
Still, momentary preoccupation aside, Nate still has duties as a craftsman and gadgeteer to uphold. The entire ixnay on the upcay olderhay? A sham! A crime! A complete and utter waste of resources! So he only finds it good and right and, dare he say it, proper to cry out "Hey!" in yelping protest to the very idea of no cupholders ever. His face is comically sad as he turns to Delilah with his protest, hand-held reciprocal saw in his grasp. "You never know when you need beverages, you know. When my mom gets back from the community center, she's always shrieking at dad to get her another cup of tea and relight her aromatherapy candles, lest she get 'super-tense' and not 'unwind,' or whatever she calls it. You too, Delilah Rousseau, might find a time in which you need a cup of tea to chill out with you in the tub, and then you'll totally regret this. Totally." He says this as if being a bathtub table consultant was a daily business for him.
Delilah: Delilah has four categories of the male species: The Anser-type, the Easy-type, the absent-type and the friend-type. Perhaps the last one has gotten a little fuzzy and puzzling around the edges, such as that sudden urge to shank in response to a female classmate giving Noah a candy heart. But surely that is a matter of protectiveness, and creating an entirely new category would be unnecessary. Excessive, even. So she sticks to her guns, and every friend-type remains in a state of almost total equality with their female counterparts, trusted not to think such complicated thoughts and operate in a world where hamburgers are exchanged for bath desks and nothing more.
She makes a face at Nate. "Dude, caffeine is so bad for you. It dehydrates you like no other. I'm already keeping a freakish watch on electrolytes, do you really want to undo all that and give me seizures anyway? Is that your master plan sir? I may have to rescind the hamburger offer. But anyway no. No cupholder. If I really need a glass of water I can just stick it next to the tub. There's like, flat surfaces everywhere. You'd be surprised."
Nate: "Fail," he proclaims helpfully, face twisted into a rather sorry excuse for "grumpy and disapproving." Perhaps it's an Anser impression? Who knows. "Seizures are fail, complete and total fail. But," he tries to press with a hopeful glint, "maybe, just maybe, we can put some sort of badass bookholder in? Vitamin holder? Built-in magazine rack? Lighting system? Well," Nate says with another frown, "not a lighting system. Electrical units too much for comfort, and that would cause a new set of seizure issues, but please?" He's about to cry salty, big man tears into his power tools, really really, and Nate makes sure to milk this by turning to Delilah while nursing his saw in his lap. "Please, let me put something custom in here. Just one thing -- one thing! -- to make it remotely badass. It can be, I don't know, a compartment for your taser! An inkwell? Eraser cubby?" His wandering hands grasp onto the electric drill and made it whirr pitifully. "Seriously, my tools are made to pimp."
Anser: Anser's arrival was generally easy to predict - his muttering could be heard halfway down the hallway, along with the irritable jangling of keys. There was a brief struggle with the lock before the door swung open and his muttering - punctuated with the occasional coherant word like 'liver', 'ingrates' and 'Wonderlander' - was cut short. He stood frozen in the doorway, briefcase in one hand, coat slung over his arm, and staring with utter disbelief at the small construction zone set up in his living room. His eyes moved from the mess of tools to Delilah, and then from Delilah to Nate, where it seemed to crystallize in a look of sheer, unadulterated blame.
"Oh, heeeell no." He finally announced, complete with an emphatic rolling of his head. His briefcase and coat were sharply thrown aside, and he advanced menacingly on Nate, snatching an umbrella out of a nearby stand as he did so. He brandished it like a sword as he stomped forward, and it didn't look like he was joking - if Nate doesn't start backing up fast, he's going to get some decidedly un-playful prods with the business end of a rain protection device. "You. Out. NOW." Was all he said as he endeavored to herd the poor piglet out of his living room, without so much as giving him a chance to pick up his tools.
Nate: Nate's accustomed to hearing the words "you," "out," and "now" in a slightly different context. With girls? Sure, a little bit. In the middle of building a fucking bath table, though? This? This was new. If he had the blessing of possesing even a modicum of hindsight, Nate should have seen this coming. Becoming friends with Delilah Rousseau whilst possessing male genitalia, one would think, would come with its own set of dangers, least of all the fact that the girl owned a taser and had little fear in using it. (And the dog? The fact that she had to tell the dog to not attack him? Hello?!) But at that moment, holding a power drill and wearing every single precious scrap of clothing on his body, Nate's quite sure that he's face to face with the biggest goddamn attack dog anybody could ever encounter, and he goes by the name of Jacob Anser.
Well, at least he lived to the ripe age of eighteen. It was, as they say, a good run.
But, for sake of putting off the inevitable, Nate scrambles to his feet with reasonable haste and with his arms above his head and in front of his body. Look, ma! No boobies in his hands! "Uhhhhhh," is about the only thing he can manage with what little feeble faculties of mind that he has left, and even then, flight or fight responses means that this was quickly fading. "I," sputters out next, an orphaned syllable that comes from parts of his mind hitherto unknown, absolutely as helpless and retarded as Nate is currently proving himself to be. Quick, idiot! Verbal evidence! Save your balls for the cemetary! "I can, um, ahahahahahaha?"
Yeah. Ripe old age of eighteen.
Delilah: There are some things Delilah probably should have picked up on about five years ago. But putting herself in the minds of others, particularly when the mind is so crotchety, was never her thing. So even while Anser fumbles with the door, she only has, upon his entrance, the absent greeting of, "Hey. Mind the spl-" But a perfectly civil warning about splinters never comes, as Anser seems to want to attack her helpful building assistant instead. She's a little stunned. Though probably she shouldn't be.
At the very least, she gets over it quickly. Scrambling to her feet just as Nate looks about ready to cry, she shoots out her hand to grab the umbrella. She doesn't try to wrest it from Anser - he'd probably just find a new weapon, and there are so many heavy books around - but to deflect it, pushing the tip back towards its wielder. "Dude. What do you think you're doing? I knew you couldn't behave yourself in polite society but I figured you could at least stay non-homicidal. Anser, this is Nate, Nate, this is Anser, and Anser is going to put his fucking umbrella down and say hello." All the while, she stares at Anser, expression set in a sort of appalled frown.
Anser: Anser just keeps swatting and threatening Nate with the umbrella until he has the boy backed up against something immovable, at which point he hefts his makeshift weapon up for a killing blow. He's just about to bring it down with extreme prejudice when Delilah interferes, pushing the umbrella aside and throwing off the wielder's momentum. An annoyed look is cast the way of his ward, before a glare of pure, unadulterated criticism is leveled back on the little piggy.
"She," a gesture is made towards Delilah, "May be on par with Georgia on acerbic, well-aged cynicism, but that does not discount the fact that she is still in high school, whereas you may have the emotional maturity of a particularly dimwitted toddler, but you are in college. God knows how." The umbrella is shaken menacingly, though no more blows rain down upon young Nate's head just yet. "Seriously Katz, first Pearl, now this? Have you actually struck out with every conceivably girl on your own proper age range already? No." Extra emphasis is put on this, in a tone more appropriate for scolding Wolf than Nate. "No no no no no!"
Nate: With every swat, Nate's positive he can't back up quickly enough. If he would've known that he was going to be running away from Jacob Anser, Resident Psychopath, backwards over a spread of discarded power tools and wooden planks that night, he would've at least made sure to be a little more neat about his construction area. But wishes aren't able to make tidy clearings, much less get him out of inexplicable shit, so Nate finds trying to manage to not trip over his feet (much less his mess) to be a small victory and is only able to do so by virtue of weaving through the proverbial land mines like an overlarge crab. He's surprised when he hits the bookcase, mostly because it seems far too soon for him to finally be pushed into the corner, but it provides small comfort nonetheless. Instincts from years of bullying in awkward places tell him this is about the best thing that could've happened, for at least he has something at his disposal, even if it means that he'll be able to defend himself by virtue of paper cuts alone. Yet when his hands, in all their blind and desperate scrambling, find a particularly thick spine, Nate can only give a sigh of vague and pitiful hope before brandishing the leather-bound book like a poor man's shield. If he had balls, he'd consider it his club, too, but Nate Katz is nothing if not conservative when it came to his battles.
His retreat means he hadn't been listening much, but Nate picks up Anser's raving just as he says something about Pearl, and it suddenly makes sense. Horrific, twisted, mutilated sense that comes from the mind of the foreign third party known as "the father figure," sure, but Nate's heard enough about his dad's thoughts on his sister's dating habits to translate Anser's ravings to something he can compute. The general message makes his jaw drop in rather comic mask of horror, complete with eye bulging, and it's enough for the boy to thrust out his book in a way to get Anser away -- possibly because he's about to barf. "Um, dude, are you serious?" Nate's jaw just keeps on sinking and sinking. "Listen, first of all, if you think I'm pulling moves on Pearl, you're seriously, seriously wrong, Professor. Do you know how old that girl is? That'd be like," and Nate seriously needs to take a pause to swallow for all the nausea that he's getting based on the sudden mental image he's getting, "dating my sister. My fifteen-year-old sister, Professor. Let me tell you, sir," he says with an unusual amount of chutzpah considering the situation, "pseudo-incest is not best."
But that doesn't touch on the "problem" of his issue of scolding him for being in the same general area as Delilah, and Nate knows that he doesn't have the same sterling defense that he does with Pearl... and, if he's to be honest with himself, it's not totally sterling, courtesy of certain plans. He can only manage a lame, "But um, about Delilah," before clinging to his book with white knuckles and a queasy stomach. He's not the liar of the three, he's the fucking puppy dog, and if anyone would think that Nate Katz is stupid enough to think that such a ruse would work with Anser? Well, he's just a lazy bastard, not an idiot.
Delilah: It is not Anser's ire, so much, that surprises her, but the reason he ultimately states for it. That's enough to get her to pause - not in thoughtful consideration or anything, but utter shock. And horror. Also there's some horror. "DUDE," she pronounces, loudly, when the initial stunned silence, very brief, has worn off. She makes a grab for the umbrella, aiming to wrench it entirely from his grasp. "Why'd you have to go there? Nate's my friend and nobody's thinking that way except you. And what the shit is up with this double standard? I've had a creepy pedophile stalking me for a good chunk of this lifetime and plenty of others but you don't freak the fuck out when he gets within ten feet of me. Oh no, I have to do the freaking the fuck out all on my own. So when I have a friend over that's when it's time to flip a shit? Is that how your brain works? No. Don't answer that." She dismisses the question, largely rhetorical in the first place, with a wave of her hand.
As an afterthought, and because of the unfortunate proximity of Anser to Nate, she then moves that hand to give Anser a little shove, trying to back him up and at least wedge her way between the two. "Look man, clearly we've got some shit to work out sans audience, but right now Nate and I are building a desk, so if you'd do me and my sanity a huge favor and go get yourself a drink, watch some C-Span, and cease with the physical assaults, that'd be swell."
Anser: Indeed, hell hath no fury like Father Figure Rage. It exists without any logic or rationality, but is exceptionally dangerous in its purest form. Nate's efforts to explain himself do little to further his defense - if anything, the incest metaphor only serves to further stoke the fury turning the professor a particularly unhealthy shade of red. "Of course I know how old she is," he practically spits, "I'm her Librarian, and thus charged with protecting her from libidinous, disrespectful frat boys only looking to--" Oh, and then Nate was implying that Delilah was a 'different story'. This was not going to blow over well. Nate was afforded a brief reprieve while Anser processed this information in utter shock, during which period Delilah deftly, and luckily, disarmed him of his umbrella.
Furthering Nate's (relative) lucky streak, Delilah's intervention managed to draw Anser's attention away for the moment, and he turned on her with significantly less anger. "Yes, but there have been measures taken regarding that creepy pedophile, and furthermore, he does not go worming his way into your home." An accusatory glare is cast back at Nate, and a hand darts out, seemingly to strike, but in fact only snatching the bound volume Nate had been toting as a shield from the boy's hands. "Give me that! It's a first edition." Despite this announcement of the book's value, he still seemed ready to smack the piglet over the head with it, if not for the timely insertion of Delilah betwixt them.
He backed up a step as his ward's hand jabbed into his chest, looking at her with a mix of dourness and petulance, scowling away her peacekeeping. Still, he looks mildly chastised, and all he can offer is a churlish, "You have a desk."
Nate: "Hey! I've said nothing but 'sir' and 'professor' all night!" Nate can't help but yelp this as Fancy Leather Bound Book #527 is ripped from his hands after, in turn, being ripped from its mahogany nest of self-importance. Really, it's taking the boy all of his power to not cry out some Anchorman reference, so considering that he's proclaiming his incensed nature at being accused of being disrespectful is probably the more innocuous route. But he's not about to go without protection, so he grabs for another book in hopes that the great Goose Beast will be, somehow, placated -- or, at least, diverted. This time, it's Dante's Inferno, and the irony is not lost on him. For, much like the eponymous narrator at the Gates of Hell, there is nothing on Nate's face other than pure, unadultered fear; the type you see when young children see their first horror movie, perhaps, or when you find out that gentiles let Santa Claus break into their homes on a regular basis for the fucking hell of it. He's too young to die at the hands of an angry mother bird! If he had known that he was going to be forced into Waterloo with Anser, he would've set his affairs in order earlier! After all, he had that "My School Work is Too Much" will in the wings, but he hadn't really been forced to use it yet. He needed more time! He needed more wills! Hell, he needed more time for his wills!
With all of this going on in his head, Nate's not sure what's really coming out of his mouth anymore -- only that his lips are moving of their own accord and there may or may not be sounds coming out. It doesn't matter that Delilah (oh, G-d bless you, Delilah) is saving his ass, for to say that Nate is starting to get a little punch drunk on adrenaline is the biggest understatement of the year. He makes sure to remember this, for it is the absolute only way he can justify the next bout of babbling squawking out of his addled mouth before he could've even stopped it: "But!" The crack in his voice was more palpable than his impending, grisly death or the dread horror of fat men in red suits breaking and entering. "It's portable!"
He forgot that his voice got that high. Huh, go figure.
Delilah: Now with umbrella in hand, Delilah is quick and merciless to wield it. She points the tip somewhere around Anser's chin, and tilts it ever closer in an attempt to get him to step back. Personal bubble and all. "'Measures taken'?" she repeats, incredulous. "Uh well good fucking job because I'm pretty sure I had to set my attack dog on him last December. Unless your 'measures' only work within.. what, the walls of the Pen? I hate to break it to you but sometimes I go outside. And - worming? Worming? You seriously think I rolled through this many reincarnations from a Tale that was idiot enough to tell a wolf her travel plans and didn't pick up a thing or two about who to invite over and who to kick in the groin? Fuck you, man!"
She jabs her (because it IS hers now) umbrella forward. "I can take care of myself. The second you start coddling me again, the second you even suggest, even think that I'm too dumb to handle my own goddamn life, is the second I remind you you need me a helluva lot more than I need you. Nate is kosher because I say he's kosher and I know what I'm talking about so step. the fuck. off."
There is a lengthy pause, only towards the end of which does Delilah's frown waver. She clears her throat slightly, then tacks on, "Uh, since he's a Pig I now realize kosher was not the best descriptor but the point still stands." It's somewhere in this pause, too, that she realizes Nate is both still alive, and saying something. "...yeah! That too."
Anser: Poor Nate is summarily forgotten by both members of the dysfunctional father/daughter duo - though at this point, such a fate could easily be considered a blessing rather than a curse. Anser finds himself forced steadily backwards with each jab of his own umbrella, though he does so with a surprising amount of dignity and a defiantly squared jaw. He glowers back at Delilah in a way that is particularly unpaternal, but there's also a sort of familiarity in the way they are treating each other that might leave a terrified observe to believe this is just another Tuesday night in the Anser/Rousseau household.
"Well it's awfully hard to look out for you when I don't know where you are." He practically mutters in response to her first tirade, though he seems mildly rebuked. In fact, Delilah's whole spiel seems to calm him somewhat; perhaps calm is not necessarily the right word, but the fire in his eye is somewhat abated nonetheless. He realizes what happens when he gets too overprotective, and they're consequences he doesn't want to have to deal with again. Pointing out that while he trusts Delilah in full, Nate is another story is likely futile.
Instead Anser is pointedly silent, looking grimly down to his livid warm, and then casting an accusatory look over her shoulder to Nate. A look that quite clearly blames him, in full, for this entire situation. Without a word he just turns and picks up his briefcase, pulls out a stack of papers, and with them in hand settles himself into an armchair right in front of their workzone. With surprising dexterity - given that he never stops glaring at Nate through the whole process - he pulls out a red marker, uncaps it, and sets about making little notations on the papers in front of him. Okay, he has to glance down occasionally for THAT, but he still spends most of his time fixated on Nate, with an unmistakable message clear in the look.
She won't always be there to defend you.
Nate: Even Nate Katz, who is arguably as emotionally stunted as Anser called him a few moments before, knows that something's not smelling right in the state of Denmark -- or in the Anser-Rousseau apartment, as it were. So, post-adrenaline spike, he's content to nurse an uncomfortable and altogether shifty silence as he watches the guardian-ward banter unfold, Inferno slowly sinking from chest to its proper place on the shelf. It's the sort of thing he knows he shouldn't be seeing, and so the contents of his stomach sour with the unwitting voyeurism. You'd have to be on the road to retardation if you thought that a girl living as the ward of Jacob Anser was without her fair share of problems, sure, but Nate finds himself at a loss of preparation for the sudden onslaught of harsh reality and its accompanying issues. The utter discomfort makes short work of the flimsy protection of his plush middle-class upbringing, and all Nate can do is squirm. After all, what else can he do?
The intrusion's making what little sensitivity he might have scream for retreat, and it takes all of Nate's self-control to not start picking up power tools while Delilah and Anser continue their tirade. Although, if he were to be honest, between the scrotal-shriveling glares and the cries of pedophilia, tools are the least of his worries. He waits as patiently as he can for a pause, which comes at considerable length and, possibly, only because he seizes the first opportunity with a feeble and lopsided smile to Delilah and a lame jerk of the thumb to the middle of the room. "Um. Listen, I'm going to go. If it's okay, I'm... I know you'll take care of them, so is it cool if I just leave this stuff here? It's just..." He can't help but shrug; it's the only thing that he feels to be totally and entirely apt for the situation, for anything, and it's also something that takes the least amount of effort. All he can think about is leaving them to their private matters, to things he should've never seen, and before he can even get much of a protest from his hostess, he's made a beeline for the door.
"Call me when you're free to finish this up." Nate pauses before the next phrase, swallowing the bile and heavy lump within, before nodding slowly. "Evening, Professor." And with that, Nate Katz gets the fuck out of dodge.
Delilah: VICTORY! Delilah is too gracious a winner to smirk, or even stop looking angry, really, but she feels the win in her heart. Even though Anser goes about making an ass of himself by hovering around, she is already turning to Nate with something like a smile, except - "What?" Stunned! Utterly stunned. She did all that, just so he could be chased off anyway? Her expression immediately sours. "Dude, come on, don't be like that. I mean-" But he's already on his way to the door. Her shoulders sink. "Yeah, sure."
He's well ahead of her on his way to the door, so Delilah just sort of lamely follows, feeling her win snatched from her hands just as soon as it was gotten. She doesn't manage any of those polite hostess things, like opening the door or waving as he departs - he's sort of ahead of her on that one - so she just stops halfway, at the pile of the half finished desk. "I'll see you later then. Uh.. bike safe, or whatever."
And in the silence that hangs after she's given her lame wave to Nate, and he's left, door shut, she half-turns to look at Anser. There's a thinning of her mouth, then, "What's wrong with you?"
Anser: With paper in lap, Anser continues to glare Nate all the way out the door, without so much as a waver in his piercing, accusatory gaze. "Hmph." Is his primary response to the pig's exit, along with a satisfied, "The swift retreat of the guilty conscience. I knew he was up to someth--" But his little bit of crowing was curtailed by Delilah's sharp comment, and he immediately stopped. He even looked a little guilty in his victory, under her susprisingly scathing glare. His eyes dropped from hers down to the papers, and he shuffled them uncomfortably in his lap.
"Delilah," he began, with an awkward effort at diplomacy. "You're getting to an age where... what I mean to say is, boys have very different things on their minds than girls, and... It's my responsibility to..." Oh god, this was painful. He made an expression akin to drinking sour milk as he struggled to get out this age-old parental talk, though he didn't expect to be allowed to go much further. "Look, boys are trouble, alright? As if Easy wasn't bad enough, I don't need to worry about the rest of our libidinous male population skulking around." He seemed to build up some momentum, finally looking up to meet Delilah's gaze again.
"And those pigs are especially bad news! This is probably all part of some ridiculous hazing process anyways: get close to the Librarian's daughter and--" He at least had the minimal sense to stop himself there, though it may have been due to the realization that he had just referred to Delilah as his daughter, which he usually tiptoed around so carefully.
Delilah: "He's my friend! Am I not allowed to have friends now? I have a good judge of character and a tazer so I don't know what else you need to stop freaking the hell out!" Delilah is more than prepared to hold her ground here, even demonstrate her superior tazer technique - but then Anser drops the bomb and if he wasn't Anser she'd swear he did it just to kill the argument entirely. But he is Anser, and Anser doesn't say those things, let alone think them, and she just sort of stares at him in a stunned and more than a little baffled silence. But the awkward tension is very quickly too much to bear, and she turns sharply, making a beeline for her room.
"I'll clean up later," is all she says. She whistles, then, and Wolf, who had been lounging lazily all this time, jumps up and lopes to her. She disappears, followed by the dog, and shuts her door.
Where: Anser and Delilah's apartment, the Pentamerone
When: A few days after Nate and Delilah's discussion on the merits of bath desks.
Summary: Astounding how quickly the innocent construction of a bath desk can turn bad.
Rating: R for the F-bomb.
Delilah: The bath desks at the store were $30. It was ridiculous. Maybe if Delilah needed all those things - the iPod slot, the cupholder - she could justify it, but she simply did not. All she needed was a way to overcome the persistent post-workout ache while also being able to do her homework, read a book, and not drop any of it in the water.
That's where Nate came in. He built stuff, right? Surely he could come up with a more workable solution than a sanded-down board propped precariously across the tub. So, with promises of real hamburgers, kosher even, she lured him over. Tub measurements were taken, supplies were gathered, and space was cleared in the living room for this momentous moment in history. Wolf milled around the construction site for a while, but after his dinner was put out and he was not ordered to tear out Nate's jugular, he contented himself to lying nearby and receiving the occasional belly rub.
Delilah, meanwhile, considers the problem before them. "I know you're feeling adventurous but the cup holder is totally unnecessary. Unwelcome even. The suggestion that one would drink while in the tub is offensive to me."
Nate: If he's going to be honest with himself, Nate's not here because of the "kosher hamburger" bribe. Hell, he's not even here due to being lured by promises of free food in general or building ridiculously awesome contraptions instead of homework. Sure, the hamburgers were prime and trying to cajole Delilah into upgrading bathtub desk features was proving pretty sweet, too, but the point still remained that even if Delilah had said, "Oh, I'm going to drop all this shit off at your dorm and pick up the desk in a week," Nate's pretty damn sure that he would've nodded, smiled, and agreed to the whole thing. It's a fact that unnerved him more than slightly on a number of levels, and not just because he could hear Skip in the back of his head making a whipcrack noise. Thinking back on his side of the conversation that had blossomed the very idea of the table, he swallows a little thickly. Definitely unnerving.
Still, momentary preoccupation aside, Nate still has duties as a craftsman and gadgeteer to uphold. The entire ixnay on the upcay olderhay? A sham! A crime! A complete and utter waste of resources! So he only finds it good and right and, dare he say it, proper to cry out "Hey!" in yelping protest to the very idea of no cupholders ever. His face is comically sad as he turns to Delilah with his protest, hand-held reciprocal saw in his grasp. "You never know when you need beverages, you know. When my mom gets back from the community center, she's always shrieking at dad to get her another cup of tea and relight her aromatherapy candles, lest she get 'super-tense' and not 'unwind,' or whatever she calls it. You too, Delilah Rousseau, might find a time in which you need a cup of tea to chill out with you in the tub, and then you'll totally regret this. Totally." He says this as if being a bathtub table consultant was a daily business for him.
Delilah: Delilah has four categories of the male species: The Anser-type, the Easy-type, the absent-type and the friend-type. Perhaps the last one has gotten a little fuzzy and puzzling around the edges, such as that sudden urge to shank in response to a female classmate giving Noah a candy heart. But surely that is a matter of protectiveness, and creating an entirely new category would be unnecessary. Excessive, even. So she sticks to her guns, and every friend-type remains in a state of almost total equality with their female counterparts, trusted not to think such complicated thoughts and operate in a world where hamburgers are exchanged for bath desks and nothing more.
She makes a face at Nate. "Dude, caffeine is so bad for you. It dehydrates you like no other. I'm already keeping a freakish watch on electrolytes, do you really want to undo all that and give me seizures anyway? Is that your master plan sir? I may have to rescind the hamburger offer. But anyway no. No cupholder. If I really need a glass of water I can just stick it next to the tub. There's like, flat surfaces everywhere. You'd be surprised."
Nate: "Fail," he proclaims helpfully, face twisted into a rather sorry excuse for "grumpy and disapproving." Perhaps it's an Anser impression? Who knows. "Seizures are fail, complete and total fail. But," he tries to press with a hopeful glint, "maybe, just maybe, we can put some sort of badass bookholder in? Vitamin holder? Built-in magazine rack? Lighting system? Well," Nate says with another frown, "not a lighting system. Electrical units too much for comfort, and that would cause a new set of seizure issues, but please?" He's about to cry salty, big man tears into his power tools, really really, and Nate makes sure to milk this by turning to Delilah while nursing his saw in his lap. "Please, let me put something custom in here. Just one thing -- one thing! -- to make it remotely badass. It can be, I don't know, a compartment for your taser! An inkwell? Eraser cubby?" His wandering hands grasp onto the electric drill and made it whirr pitifully. "Seriously, my tools are made to pimp."
Anser: Anser's arrival was generally easy to predict - his muttering could be heard halfway down the hallway, along with the irritable jangling of keys. There was a brief struggle with the lock before the door swung open and his muttering - punctuated with the occasional coherant word like 'liver', 'ingrates' and 'Wonderlander' - was cut short. He stood frozen in the doorway, briefcase in one hand, coat slung over his arm, and staring with utter disbelief at the small construction zone set up in his living room. His eyes moved from the mess of tools to Delilah, and then from Delilah to Nate, where it seemed to crystallize in a look of sheer, unadulterated blame.
"Oh, heeeell no." He finally announced, complete with an emphatic rolling of his head. His briefcase and coat were sharply thrown aside, and he advanced menacingly on Nate, snatching an umbrella out of a nearby stand as he did so. He brandished it like a sword as he stomped forward, and it didn't look like he was joking - if Nate doesn't start backing up fast, he's going to get some decidedly un-playful prods with the business end of a rain protection device. "You. Out. NOW." Was all he said as he endeavored to herd the poor piglet out of his living room, without so much as giving him a chance to pick up his tools.
Nate: Nate's accustomed to hearing the words "you," "out," and "now" in a slightly different context. With girls? Sure, a little bit. In the middle of building a fucking bath table, though? This? This was new. If he had the blessing of possesing even a modicum of hindsight, Nate should have seen this coming. Becoming friends with Delilah Rousseau whilst possessing male genitalia, one would think, would come with its own set of dangers, least of all the fact that the girl owned a taser and had little fear in using it. (And the dog? The fact that she had to tell the dog to not attack him? Hello?!) But at that moment, holding a power drill and wearing every single precious scrap of clothing on his body, Nate's quite sure that he's face to face with the biggest goddamn attack dog anybody could ever encounter, and he goes by the name of Jacob Anser.
Well, at least he lived to the ripe age of eighteen. It was, as they say, a good run.
But, for sake of putting off the inevitable, Nate scrambles to his feet with reasonable haste and with his arms above his head and in front of his body. Look, ma! No boobies in his hands! "Uhhhhhh," is about the only thing he can manage with what little feeble faculties of mind that he has left, and even then, flight or fight responses means that this was quickly fading. "I," sputters out next, an orphaned syllable that comes from parts of his mind hitherto unknown, absolutely as helpless and retarded as Nate is currently proving himself to be. Quick, idiot! Verbal evidence! Save your balls for the cemetary! "I can, um, ahahahahahaha?"
Yeah. Ripe old age of eighteen.
Delilah: There are some things Delilah probably should have picked up on about five years ago. But putting herself in the minds of others, particularly when the mind is so crotchety, was never her thing. So even while Anser fumbles with the door, she only has, upon his entrance, the absent greeting of, "Hey. Mind the spl-" But a perfectly civil warning about splinters never comes, as Anser seems to want to attack her helpful building assistant instead. She's a little stunned. Though probably she shouldn't be.
At the very least, she gets over it quickly. Scrambling to her feet just as Nate looks about ready to cry, she shoots out her hand to grab the umbrella. She doesn't try to wrest it from Anser - he'd probably just find a new weapon, and there are so many heavy books around - but to deflect it, pushing the tip back towards its wielder. "Dude. What do you think you're doing? I knew you couldn't behave yourself in polite society but I figured you could at least stay non-homicidal. Anser, this is Nate, Nate, this is Anser, and Anser is going to put his fucking umbrella down and say hello." All the while, she stares at Anser, expression set in a sort of appalled frown.
Anser: Anser just keeps swatting and threatening Nate with the umbrella until he has the boy backed up against something immovable, at which point he hefts his makeshift weapon up for a killing blow. He's just about to bring it down with extreme prejudice when Delilah interferes, pushing the umbrella aside and throwing off the wielder's momentum. An annoyed look is cast the way of his ward, before a glare of pure, unadulterated criticism is leveled back on the little piggy.
"She," a gesture is made towards Delilah, "May be on par with Georgia on acerbic, well-aged cynicism, but that does not discount the fact that she is still in high school, whereas you may have the emotional maturity of a particularly dimwitted toddler, but you are in college. God knows how." The umbrella is shaken menacingly, though no more blows rain down upon young Nate's head just yet. "Seriously Katz, first Pearl, now this? Have you actually struck out with every conceivably girl on your own proper age range already? No." Extra emphasis is put on this, in a tone more appropriate for scolding Wolf than Nate. "No no no no no!"
Nate: With every swat, Nate's positive he can't back up quickly enough. If he would've known that he was going to be running away from Jacob Anser, Resident Psychopath, backwards over a spread of discarded power tools and wooden planks that night, he would've at least made sure to be a little more neat about his construction area. But wishes aren't able to make tidy clearings, much less get him out of inexplicable shit, so Nate finds trying to manage to not trip over his feet (much less his mess) to be a small victory and is only able to do so by virtue of weaving through the proverbial land mines like an overlarge crab. He's surprised when he hits the bookcase, mostly because it seems far too soon for him to finally be pushed into the corner, but it provides small comfort nonetheless. Instincts from years of bullying in awkward places tell him this is about the best thing that could've happened, for at least he has something at his disposal, even if it means that he'll be able to defend himself by virtue of paper cuts alone. Yet when his hands, in all their blind and desperate scrambling, find a particularly thick spine, Nate can only give a sigh of vague and pitiful hope before brandishing the leather-bound book like a poor man's shield. If he had balls, he'd consider it his club, too, but Nate Katz is nothing if not conservative when it came to his battles.
His retreat means he hadn't been listening much, but Nate picks up Anser's raving just as he says something about Pearl, and it suddenly makes sense. Horrific, twisted, mutilated sense that comes from the mind of the foreign third party known as "the father figure," sure, but Nate's heard enough about his dad's thoughts on his sister's dating habits to translate Anser's ravings to something he can compute. The general message makes his jaw drop in rather comic mask of horror, complete with eye bulging, and it's enough for the boy to thrust out his book in a way to get Anser away -- possibly because he's about to barf. "Um, dude, are you serious?" Nate's jaw just keeps on sinking and sinking. "Listen, first of all, if you think I'm pulling moves on Pearl, you're seriously, seriously wrong, Professor. Do you know how old that girl is? That'd be like," and Nate seriously needs to take a pause to swallow for all the nausea that he's getting based on the sudden mental image he's getting, "dating my sister. My fifteen-year-old sister, Professor. Let me tell you, sir," he says with an unusual amount of chutzpah considering the situation, "pseudo-incest is not best."
But that doesn't touch on the "problem" of his issue of scolding him for being in the same general area as Delilah, and Nate knows that he doesn't have the same sterling defense that he does with Pearl... and, if he's to be honest with himself, it's not totally sterling, courtesy of certain plans. He can only manage a lame, "But um, about Delilah," before clinging to his book with white knuckles and a queasy stomach. He's not the liar of the three, he's the fucking puppy dog, and if anyone would think that Nate Katz is stupid enough to think that such a ruse would work with Anser? Well, he's just a lazy bastard, not an idiot.
Delilah: It is not Anser's ire, so much, that surprises her, but the reason he ultimately states for it. That's enough to get her to pause - not in thoughtful consideration or anything, but utter shock. And horror. Also there's some horror. "DUDE," she pronounces, loudly, when the initial stunned silence, very brief, has worn off. She makes a grab for the umbrella, aiming to wrench it entirely from his grasp. "Why'd you have to go there? Nate's my friend and nobody's thinking that way except you. And what the shit is up with this double standard? I've had a creepy pedophile stalking me for a good chunk of this lifetime and plenty of others but you don't freak the fuck out when he gets within ten feet of me. Oh no, I have to do the freaking the fuck out all on my own. So when I have a friend over that's when it's time to flip a shit? Is that how your brain works? No. Don't answer that." She dismisses the question, largely rhetorical in the first place, with a wave of her hand.
As an afterthought, and because of the unfortunate proximity of Anser to Nate, she then moves that hand to give Anser a little shove, trying to back him up and at least wedge her way between the two. "Look man, clearly we've got some shit to work out sans audience, but right now Nate and I are building a desk, so if you'd do me and my sanity a huge favor and go get yourself a drink, watch some C-Span, and cease with the physical assaults, that'd be swell."
Anser: Indeed, hell hath no fury like Father Figure Rage. It exists without any logic or rationality, but is exceptionally dangerous in its purest form. Nate's efforts to explain himself do little to further his defense - if anything, the incest metaphor only serves to further stoke the fury turning the professor a particularly unhealthy shade of red. "Of course I know how old she is," he practically spits, "I'm her Librarian, and thus charged with protecting her from libidinous, disrespectful frat boys only looking to--" Oh, and then Nate was implying that Delilah was a 'different story'. This was not going to blow over well. Nate was afforded a brief reprieve while Anser processed this information in utter shock, during which period Delilah deftly, and luckily, disarmed him of his umbrella.
Furthering Nate's (relative) lucky streak, Delilah's intervention managed to draw Anser's attention away for the moment, and he turned on her with significantly less anger. "Yes, but there have been measures taken regarding that creepy pedophile, and furthermore, he does not go worming his way into your home." An accusatory glare is cast back at Nate, and a hand darts out, seemingly to strike, but in fact only snatching the bound volume Nate had been toting as a shield from the boy's hands. "Give me that! It's a first edition." Despite this announcement of the book's value, he still seemed ready to smack the piglet over the head with it, if not for the timely insertion of Delilah betwixt them.
He backed up a step as his ward's hand jabbed into his chest, looking at her with a mix of dourness and petulance, scowling away her peacekeeping. Still, he looks mildly chastised, and all he can offer is a churlish, "You have a desk."
Nate: "Hey! I've said nothing but 'sir' and 'professor' all night!" Nate can't help but yelp this as Fancy Leather Bound Book #527 is ripped from his hands after, in turn, being ripped from its mahogany nest of self-importance. Really, it's taking the boy all of his power to not cry out some Anchorman reference, so considering that he's proclaiming his incensed nature at being accused of being disrespectful is probably the more innocuous route. But he's not about to go without protection, so he grabs for another book in hopes that the great Goose Beast will be, somehow, placated -- or, at least, diverted. This time, it's Dante's Inferno, and the irony is not lost on him. For, much like the eponymous narrator at the Gates of Hell, there is nothing on Nate's face other than pure, unadultered fear; the type you see when young children see their first horror movie, perhaps, or when you find out that gentiles let Santa Claus break into their homes on a regular basis for the fucking hell of it. He's too young to die at the hands of an angry mother bird! If he had known that he was going to be forced into Waterloo with Anser, he would've set his affairs in order earlier! After all, he had that "My School Work is Too Much" will in the wings, but he hadn't really been forced to use it yet. He needed more time! He needed more wills! Hell, he needed more time for his wills!
With all of this going on in his head, Nate's not sure what's really coming out of his mouth anymore -- only that his lips are moving of their own accord and there may or may not be sounds coming out. It doesn't matter that Delilah (oh, G-d bless you, Delilah) is saving his ass, for to say that Nate is starting to get a little punch drunk on adrenaline is the biggest understatement of the year. He makes sure to remember this, for it is the absolute only way he can justify the next bout of babbling squawking out of his addled mouth before he could've even stopped it: "But!" The crack in his voice was more palpable than his impending, grisly death or the dread horror of fat men in red suits breaking and entering. "It's portable!"
He forgot that his voice got that high. Huh, go figure.
Delilah: Now with umbrella in hand, Delilah is quick and merciless to wield it. She points the tip somewhere around Anser's chin, and tilts it ever closer in an attempt to get him to step back. Personal bubble and all. "'Measures taken'?" she repeats, incredulous. "Uh well good fucking job because I'm pretty sure I had to set my attack dog on him last December. Unless your 'measures' only work within.. what, the walls of the Pen? I hate to break it to you but sometimes I go outside. And - worming? Worming? You seriously think I rolled through this many reincarnations from a Tale that was idiot enough to tell a wolf her travel plans and didn't pick up a thing or two about who to invite over and who to kick in the groin? Fuck you, man!"
She jabs her (because it IS hers now) umbrella forward. "I can take care of myself. The second you start coddling me again, the second you even suggest, even think that I'm too dumb to handle my own goddamn life, is the second I remind you you need me a helluva lot more than I need you. Nate is kosher because I say he's kosher and I know what I'm talking about so step. the fuck. off."
There is a lengthy pause, only towards the end of which does Delilah's frown waver. She clears her throat slightly, then tacks on, "Uh, since he's a Pig I now realize kosher was not the best descriptor but the point still stands." It's somewhere in this pause, too, that she realizes Nate is both still alive, and saying something. "...yeah! That too."
Anser: Poor Nate is summarily forgotten by both members of the dysfunctional father/daughter duo - though at this point, such a fate could easily be considered a blessing rather than a curse. Anser finds himself forced steadily backwards with each jab of his own umbrella, though he does so with a surprising amount of dignity and a defiantly squared jaw. He glowers back at Delilah in a way that is particularly unpaternal, but there's also a sort of familiarity in the way they are treating each other that might leave a terrified observe to believe this is just another Tuesday night in the Anser/Rousseau household.
"Well it's awfully hard to look out for you when I don't know where you are." He practically mutters in response to her first tirade, though he seems mildly rebuked. In fact, Delilah's whole spiel seems to calm him somewhat; perhaps calm is not necessarily the right word, but the fire in his eye is somewhat abated nonetheless. He realizes what happens when he gets too overprotective, and they're consequences he doesn't want to have to deal with again. Pointing out that while he trusts Delilah in full, Nate is another story is likely futile.
Instead Anser is pointedly silent, looking grimly down to his livid warm, and then casting an accusatory look over her shoulder to Nate. A look that quite clearly blames him, in full, for this entire situation. Without a word he just turns and picks up his briefcase, pulls out a stack of papers, and with them in hand settles himself into an armchair right in front of their workzone. With surprising dexterity - given that he never stops glaring at Nate through the whole process - he pulls out a red marker, uncaps it, and sets about making little notations on the papers in front of him. Okay, he has to glance down occasionally for THAT, but he still spends most of his time fixated on Nate, with an unmistakable message clear in the look.
She won't always be there to defend you.
Nate: Even Nate Katz, who is arguably as emotionally stunted as Anser called him a few moments before, knows that something's not smelling right in the state of Denmark -- or in the Anser-Rousseau apartment, as it were. So, post-adrenaline spike, he's content to nurse an uncomfortable and altogether shifty silence as he watches the guardian-ward banter unfold, Inferno slowly sinking from chest to its proper place on the shelf. It's the sort of thing he knows he shouldn't be seeing, and so the contents of his stomach sour with the unwitting voyeurism. You'd have to be on the road to retardation if you thought that a girl living as the ward of Jacob Anser was without her fair share of problems, sure, but Nate finds himself at a loss of preparation for the sudden onslaught of harsh reality and its accompanying issues. The utter discomfort makes short work of the flimsy protection of his plush middle-class upbringing, and all Nate can do is squirm. After all, what else can he do?
The intrusion's making what little sensitivity he might have scream for retreat, and it takes all of Nate's self-control to not start picking up power tools while Delilah and Anser continue their tirade. Although, if he were to be honest, between the scrotal-shriveling glares and the cries of pedophilia, tools are the least of his worries. He waits as patiently as he can for a pause, which comes at considerable length and, possibly, only because he seizes the first opportunity with a feeble and lopsided smile to Delilah and a lame jerk of the thumb to the middle of the room. "Um. Listen, I'm going to go. If it's okay, I'm... I know you'll take care of them, so is it cool if I just leave this stuff here? It's just..." He can't help but shrug; it's the only thing that he feels to be totally and entirely apt for the situation, for anything, and it's also something that takes the least amount of effort. All he can think about is leaving them to their private matters, to things he should've never seen, and before he can even get much of a protest from his hostess, he's made a beeline for the door.
"Call me when you're free to finish this up." Nate pauses before the next phrase, swallowing the bile and heavy lump within, before nodding slowly. "Evening, Professor." And with that, Nate Katz gets the fuck out of dodge.
Delilah: VICTORY! Delilah is too gracious a winner to smirk, or even stop looking angry, really, but she feels the win in her heart. Even though Anser goes about making an ass of himself by hovering around, she is already turning to Nate with something like a smile, except - "What?" Stunned! Utterly stunned. She did all that, just so he could be chased off anyway? Her expression immediately sours. "Dude, come on, don't be like that. I mean-" But he's already on his way to the door. Her shoulders sink. "Yeah, sure."
He's well ahead of her on his way to the door, so Delilah just sort of lamely follows, feeling her win snatched from her hands just as soon as it was gotten. She doesn't manage any of those polite hostess things, like opening the door or waving as he departs - he's sort of ahead of her on that one - so she just stops halfway, at the pile of the half finished desk. "I'll see you later then. Uh.. bike safe, or whatever."
And in the silence that hangs after she's given her lame wave to Nate, and he's left, door shut, she half-turns to look at Anser. There's a thinning of her mouth, then, "What's wrong with you?"
Anser: With paper in lap, Anser continues to glare Nate all the way out the door, without so much as a waver in his piercing, accusatory gaze. "Hmph." Is his primary response to the pig's exit, along with a satisfied, "The swift retreat of the guilty conscience. I knew he was up to someth--" But his little bit of crowing was curtailed by Delilah's sharp comment, and he immediately stopped. He even looked a little guilty in his victory, under her susprisingly scathing glare. His eyes dropped from hers down to the papers, and he shuffled them uncomfortably in his lap.
"Delilah," he began, with an awkward effort at diplomacy. "You're getting to an age where... what I mean to say is, boys have very different things on their minds than girls, and... It's my responsibility to..." Oh god, this was painful. He made an expression akin to drinking sour milk as he struggled to get out this age-old parental talk, though he didn't expect to be allowed to go much further. "Look, boys are trouble, alright? As if Easy wasn't bad enough, I don't need to worry about the rest of our libidinous male population skulking around." He seemed to build up some momentum, finally looking up to meet Delilah's gaze again.
"And those pigs are especially bad news! This is probably all part of some ridiculous hazing process anyways: get close to the Librarian's daughter and--" He at least had the minimal sense to stop himself there, though it may have been due to the realization that he had just referred to Delilah as his daughter, which he usually tiptoed around so carefully.
Delilah: "He's my friend! Am I not allowed to have friends now? I have a good judge of character and a tazer so I don't know what else you need to stop freaking the hell out!" Delilah is more than prepared to hold her ground here, even demonstrate her superior tazer technique - but then Anser drops the bomb and if he wasn't Anser she'd swear he did it just to kill the argument entirely. But he is Anser, and Anser doesn't say those things, let alone think them, and she just sort of stares at him in a stunned and more than a little baffled silence. But the awkward tension is very quickly too much to bear, and she turns sharply, making a beeline for her room.
"I'll clean up later," is all she says. She whistles, then, and Wolf, who had been lounging lazily all this time, jumps up and lopes to her. She disappears, followed by the dog, and shuts her door.