a man who loves a diamond.

[oleanderknife]

Hasibe is still not quite used to spending her days in the house, though she's taken to long walks around the neighborhood in the morning to occupy herself--it's not as though she has nothing to do, but she will definitely be happier when she is working more consistently, no matter what path she chooses.

Comments

[beingtwofold]

Dr. Jekyll's magical adventures in salt-procurement concluded, he is actually in the house when all of this occurs, specifically on the computer responding to an email from work which was apparently sent in the twenty minutes it took him to drive home (Hasi's car, for the record; they can function as a one-car household, but certainly not permanently). He does actually check his email this obsessively, determined to excel in this new position with all possible speed, perhaps aside from the affection-strewn messages he tends to send Hasibe on an hourly basis, but they don't prevent him from finishing the things with which he is tasked well before they are required, and also it's academia, someone is probably just glad he's sending these things to the girlfriend he lives with and not some hapless graduate student.

Because that happens. Meanwhile: he is noticing being noticed at work, in the vein of how hard he pushes himself, although it's not with as much downward force as it once was; he knows better, now, and he has certain

[oleanderknife]

She pushes herself up onto her hands, palms flat, when she spots him in the doorway, and lifts the right to slide it through her insane twisting mane of curly hair. Hasi's smile is automatic, upon seeing him, as though she can't actually help herself (this may be true), sleep-tousled as she is, camisole straps slipping and unnoticed. "I was," she says, ruefully, "and then I was abruptly not, owing to my unconscious's whims. But I'm happy you're home."

And she demonstrates as much by sliding closer, on her knees, to kiss Henry hello.

A lot. It is entirely possible she will never ever tire of this. Also seen on the bed, half hanging over the edge: a book of plays. She'll get to that soon enough, presumably, but first and most important things first. Domesticity aside, Hasi will never really be the traditional housewife type; her version of 'settled,' of a 'welcome home'...still involves her teeth in his lip.

[beingtwofold]

"Mmmn," He says...into her mouth, basically, since why not; they're close enough that it seems to warrant it. "Can you tell your unconscious it shouldn't provide me with undue stress? I've had a hard day of menial intellectual labor."

Mostly kidding, but apparently he has decided to entertain himself by bitching genially about his job. This is actually a good sign, it tends to mean that he likes it, but never mind, it is safe to say he likes this better, their very own charmingly skewed version of domesticity, a house still only mostly unpacked that feels genuinely like a home. He fixes her straps for her, absently, and then realizes belatedly that is just silly and pushes them down again.

....what, they've been separated for like nine hours.

[oleanderknife]

"Oh," she says, sympathetic, and demonstrating as much with an assortment of shorter, delicate kisses to his mouth and then jawline, "Believe me, I'll send along a memo. It's mostly just that I haven't quite adjusted to six years' of repressed psychic energy being...ah, abruptly unleashed. So I woke up to the furniture levitating."

So casually. She wraps her arms around him with an inhale that is both contented and prepared to cope with the consequences of being able to do what she can. That aside, she knows good and well they are in a similar boat there, and actually at least she has some background there, so...there is that, the fact that in a way she is actually quite lucky. And there is Hasi, all up on her boyfriend, like usual.

"It happens. It'll happen less with time. But clearly you need to unwind after your day, don't you?"

[beingtwofold]

Henry, who is entirely unopposed to being up...on'd, pulls her without much effort into his lap. "I don't know, I didn't make anything levitate; it does pale a little in comparison."

Sometimes, doubtless, they are deathly serious about the fact that they are neither of them quite human anymore, although as noted she never really was and he's only recently so, but if he thinks in terms of crushing despair all the time it will actually crush him, and there are times it seems like it might as things are. So he judges as long as she doesn't mind, sometimes they're allowed some levity. Especially when there's actual levitation involved.

"But you seem to be equally invested in winding me up first, bella dame." The 'sans merci' part is tacitly implied, he can do that. With his teeth. Correct language is for people who aren't referencing poetry.

[oleanderknife]

"Well, if we're referencing Keats, maybe I'm trying to get you in my thrall." Apparently sliding her hands underneath his shirt is key in enthralling him. Hasi smiles up at him in the meanwhile, thinking idly that she is still adapting to the height differential--he was already a tall guy, but now even in heels she is often shorter than him. She suspects he gets a kick out of it.

"What can ail thee, knight-at-arms?" This is murmured primarily into his ear (for the ease of applying her teeth immediately thereafter) with all the elegance the lines require, even now, though Hasi switches to more conversational speech soon enough. "I have some things I want to talk to you about, but...they can wait, if you've got something else on your mind. After all, I am at your service."

While she often likes making a show of doing this, it's also pretty much because she is totally comfortable putting off conversation in favor of other things.

[beingtwofold]

It occurs to him somewhere, dim like the memory of a dream he hasn't had in months, that there was a time in the not so recent past when virtually all of this would have sent him scrambling for perhaps a protective vest of some kind, and it is still such a relief to sink into her without fear or regret or guilt, although he is always mindful of all of those, like how the little sliver of poetry sends a warm shiver down his spine, and he is also mindful that there's a reason for that.

But those reasons are his own now, for him to either own himself or be destroyed by, so: he is forthright, fingertips playing down her spine like over the keys of a piano.

"Nothing but the lack of you," he murmurs in response to what 'ails' him, since they're being poetic, although he is not performative by nature. "I want you like always," this is just ...true, he laughs a little in saying it, sound caught in his throat with his mouth on her collarbones. "But I'll wait, I'm good at that."

[oleanderknife]

"You are, but I'm not," she laughs in return, as a reminder, "but I'll be good, I'll wait, too

[beingtwofold]

It's possible they are tall for exactly the reason of being able to reach stuff without ever detangling from each other--no, but it does help.

Meanwhile he is just going to spend a lot of time staring delightedly at her; while they have reached as much equilibrium as they're going to regarding Hasi's job (and it helps that they're very careful about communication), he does, as she notes, worry, and while he tries to be as supportive and useful as he can, he was never exactly a saint to begin with, and now he's ...certainly less so

[oleanderknife]

The fact that she has pleased him so much is honestly momentarily incentive enough to make her happy she's considering this choice--obviously there is a good deal more to it, but she does like making him happy in the first place. "I'll probably just work until the end of the month, so if I can sell really hard and get a few big things, we can save up some. I didn't do escorting for very long, so I don't have many regulars that'll be upset, and it helps that I sold all that jewelry--if I got rid of a little more..."

She smiles at Henry, leaning forward to kiss him.

"All the psychology could even be useful, if I combine the two. There are a lot of applications for the both of them together, come to think of it, and acting is actually something I really enjoy, but I didn't really get to explore it as much in the business before. Oh--this is the book."

She offers it to him (Sarah Kane, Complete Plays).

[beingtwofold]

Henry takes the book gingerly, expression dubious in the customary set of people who just do not understand theatre in general, and anything really avant-garde even less. Do not ask him how he feels about musicals. The concepts are not even remotely similar, of course, but one may surmise someone still as characterized--maybe more so, now--by restraint as the good doctor here just does not get the appeal of either people bursting fitfully into song, or performing strange metaphors involving giant wire cages and chicken feet

[oleanderknife]

"Are you on 'Blasted' or 'Cleansed'--" She leans to the side to catch a glimpse of what he's looking at; curiosity apparently satisfied (those are the darkest two that she can think of, Phaedra's Love aside, but that one is pretty rarely used and significantly shorter than the others besides), she looks up at Henry's expression.

"Yeah--there's...a lot of violence, a lot of sex, a lot of the combination of the two, and, well, the first one is all about the Bosnian war, and 'Cleansed' is mostly about an illegal medical facility that tortures its patients." Sort of, anyway. She bites her lip, half-wondering where this is going, half-suspecting she has any idea. Hasibe is more than willing to explain what she can of theater, of this performance aspect of her life, but she is aware that certain things are just not innate in everyone, and she's fine with that; speaking as it personally pertains to herself and Henry, their differences are part of what make them fit together.

[beingtwofold]

Henry responds to her biting her own lip by touching his thumb to it, quiet at first--she knows how he looks when he's figuring something out as he goes. For someone who spends as much time thinking as he does, occasionally he behaves as though it is a laborious, painful gear-grinding process, a concept which is actually inversely sort of flattering as applied to Hasi, who still makes him think about things he never has before.

He suspects this will still be the case in another three months, or ten, or a hundred. Even if in this case it isn't necessarily something he's sure he wanted to have to figure out; there's a reason he never looked for any of her movies, and this is markedly different, at least in some respects to what she was doing most recently. "If this is something you really want, then--you should do it, and not be worried about what I think, and I'm sincere about this; I know that--if you give up something you love for someone you love, it's hard not to resent them for it. But I don't know, that might just be me,

[oleanderknife]

Hasi is silent for a while, processing this--she did have some correct suspicions, but there is more to it than she totally realized. She stops biting her lip in order to speak, choosing her words carefully, trying not to make this harder to hear than it has to be. "I will be truthful: there were times with Hyde when I was afraid of that, because...I don't know, sometimes I was actually more afraid of that than dying, honestly; it seemed more plausible, and it would have happened so casually, if it did. But I have those issues, and I have to find some way to deal with them, and some kind of theater catharsis would maybe help in that regard."

Hasi takes a deep breath, and her speech pace speeds up a little as she becomes more certain of how she wants to say what she needs to tell him. "But I don't need to take parts that would involve something like a graphic rape scene; there is a lot else I can do, and honestly, in 'Cleansed,' only one of the women deals with that at all. There are two roles there. And I can find another way

[beingtwofold]

Henry makes this aborted motion like he might turn away or close his eyes for some of that, but eventually he does neither; even if he could, or would allow himself to hide from the recent past, he can't get away from what he is now, and he owes it to Hasi to try to look in the mirror without flinching. (He feels, sometimes, like she is the mirror in which his best self is reflected anyway, especially when he needs the reminder he has a 'best self' left, or at least the possibility of one

[oleanderknife]

Her hands fold together at the back of his neck when he speaks, after that long, comfortable silence in which they simply and wordlessly acknowledge, once again, the wreckage with which they must contend: it is considerable, but they're strong people, she believes, and they'll be okay. In the meantime, what he says makes her smile glimmer brighter again, at once very fond and aware of the subtext. They don't have to spell out what she was afraid of with Hyde, when that aspect of Henry was separate from him and autonomous and uncontrolled, but being so explicit about how they feel for one another is definitely necessary. Or at least Hasi certainly feels that way