it gets under my skin // take in the extent of my sin [nica]

[tendencytostart]

It's starting to get dark by the time St. John and Adam get back to Hell, even as fast as the drive back was. Zombies, don't you know. Or...zombie. Singular

Comments

[lovegonetowaste]

Nica is napping! She does this some times, people may have noticed -- she'll just decide to stop, and lie down and go to sleep for a while. Sometimes Nica gets tired. It happens. It's a sign of something bigger, but...does anyone know what to look for, as far as that goes?

But she's been napping for a while, so she stirs when St John gets close enough for her to hear him, and rolls over. "Hey. How'd it go?"

[tendencytostart]

He sits on the edge of the mattress, pushing his hair out of his eyes and resting one hand lightly on the curve of her hip. "It went, except that there was a zombie in the mall. Very, very Romero."

Shrug! Zombie, whatever, he can totally handle that. "But it's dead now -- well, more dead. We got everything we needed, I think." He cuts his eyes sideways at her. "And an X-box, so we can now frag and respawn and just generally kill the shit out of each other as we see fit."

...careful, St. John, Nica will siphon out some of your testosterone.

[lovegonetowaste]

"God, you're manly," Nica deadpans, brushing her hair out of her face and covering his hand on her hip with her own. It's more so she can immediately check him for damage without really moving rather than an affectionate gesture...but that kind of counts as affection, anyway.

"Only one?" she idly wonders how zombies became no big deal, but then remembers: apocalypse. That'll knock the wind out of a lot of sails.

[tendencytostart]

"I'm fine. He toasted nicely, poor bastard." Which pretty much covers her both vocalized and silent questions. "Adam was kind of freaked out...did Wanda say anything to you about something happening at the hospital when they went?"

[lovegonetowaste]

"No--but they showed up here afterwards. Adam looked really traumatised and Wanda's back was sliced to hell, they came so I could fix it." She taps her fingertips against the back of his hand. "Why?"

[tendencytostart]

"Dunno. Just something he said, and he was twitchy as hell a lot of the time we were there. I know a zombie's a fucking zombie, right, but it was just the one, and Chrissake, it's kind of par for the course now."

He smirks, reflexively. A lot of other people are probably horrified by the state of affairs, but it provides St. John with a sense of equilibrium. The world has alway been this way - it's just that now everyone else has to see it too.

"Anyway, we got out of it all right. Brought you something." Because he can't like look at her and give her presents or anything, he must thrust them manfully at her eye level.

(lol thrust manfully)

ANYWAY. These things turn out to be large print copies of The Catcher in the Rye and a package of hi-liters. "We can read it, or you can read it, if you want. And you can mark stuff you wanna ask about."

[lovegonetowaste]

Nica's about to ask more about the zombie, and Adam, but her thought process is derailed by the book and the hi-liters. She lets go his hand to sit up and take them, tucking her legs to one side and flipping the book open to the first page.

Even if Nica's always struggled with the written word, her mother had instilled in her a sense of reverence for it (a large part of why she was so willing to go live in a library). The way she runs her fingertips down the page maybe hints at this.

"I'll try it on my own," she says, because she wants to be good at it, she wants this connection to her mother to be stronger than it is. "Thanks." She leans forward and kisses the corner of his mouth, staying there for a few moments. The silent thanks accompanying her spare words say more than she says aloud.

[tendencytostart]

St. John closes his eyes, sighing a little, because he is very tired and he likes this so fucking much, so now is of course the part where they have to have a conversation he is utterly uninterested in having.

"Holden - that's the main character - talks kind of weird, but you get used to it." Yeah, St. John, Holden talks weird. "I like it."

Or maybe he'll put it off just for another few minutes. Or--fuckdamn everything, he won't, because if he doesn't do it now he'll never do it at all.

"Has Wanda ever told you who her father is?"

[lovegonetowaste]

"Uh, no," Nica leans back a little, visibly confused. Given that she is someone who has never put a lot of importance on paternity, it takes her a moment to realise that there might be a reason why that's important.

"Why?"

[tendencytostart]

It possibly occurred to him in that second that Wanda...definitely does not really want people to know, but this is Nica, St. John doesn't expect that she'll be calling the feds or anything. And even if she did the only federal agent in town already knows. (As far as St. John is concerned, anyway.)

"Well. I used to work for him. He was - is - a politician, but...he did other things. As you can probably fucking guess, because what am I going to do for a politician, right."

St. John pinches the bridge of his nose and is just quiet for a the space of a few breaths, gathering his thoughts. "People like us - he thought we were special. More. And - and we are, but not everybody who believes in something blows up buildings because of it."

Uhh. >_> Helo thar terrorism.

[lovegonetowaste]

"...oh...fuck," she says, succinctly. She considers that for a while, looking down at her book to focus. After a few moments of this, she looks back up at him, lips pursed. She doesn't think she wants to be that kind of special, but it's not enough to make her doubt herself; Nica has never met Erik Lensherr and likely never will. This is a blessing.

[tendencytostart]

"Yeah. That." He's succinct right back, brows drawn together, fingers pinched between his eyes again.

"Look, I left. I haven't had any contact with him in a year and I'm not going to, I'm done with that." Please let that be true. He almost crosses himself, startled at the re-emergence of such an old habit.

"I needed to tell you, though."

[lovegonetowaste]

She reaches up to pinch his cheek, light and brief, and she smiles at him. "Appreciate it. Can't have my bloke keeping secrets from me." She sounds more like her mother then, though St John can hardly draw the comparison on his own.

[tendencytostart]

St. John does...a very lot of blinking. There's calm acceptance and then there's this; for a second he can't believe that it's genuine. "You're just okay with that. I mean - fuck, not that I want you to scream or throw things or whatever, but I guess you probably have some basic fucking right to."

He was prepared for those things! He is not entirely prepared for this.

[lovegonetowaste]

Nica regards him thoughtfully for a while before she answers.

"It doesn't change who you are. You're not suddenly a stranger because you did things that you should regret." She's not assuming that he does. She's saying that she thinks he should. "It doesn't mean I don't still trust you. I don't have the time or inclination to get angry about something that doesn't change jack about our current situation."

[tendencytostart]

St. John had been looking sort of crosswise at a point on the mattress, now he actually makes deliberate eye contact. "You trust me?"

Once again, St. John, trust you to pull one little thing out of all that and make it about you. It seems like he's always trying to extrapolate what she thinks of him, how she feels, because he thinks he ought already know.

As for whether or not he regrets anything that happened in New York - well. He hasn't really put the thought into them. But now, he has the time to do that, and he's discovering, to his uncomfortable surprise, that he does have the capacity for regret. Change is rarely ever easy.