Just part of the job

[need_to_rule_it]

Who: Billy, Jilly, Willow, and Ray
What: Jailhouse blues
When: Ice cream day
Where: Jail
Rating: PG-13

Comments

[ectobabble]

If Billy was so intent on listening and waiting that he didn't notice Ray move up out of the Headquarters, that was alright - because a minute or two later, he came back with an armload of --

--- ice cream.

"Hey, Billy! Check this out!"

[need_to_rule_it]

Billy still didn't know what to think of Ray. He just didn't seem to... fit, here. He didn't seem to match up with the typical hero archetype. He didn't shoot Billy dirty looks; he didn't go out of his way to make sure that he knew just how little he thought of him. At times, Billy really had to wonder what the guy was was even doing here. The only guess as to how he got to be Billy's main 'babysitter' was because no one else wanted the job.

Whatever. If it meant that he was stuck with someone who wasn't a huge jerk, so be it.

"What've you got there?" --only managing to sound half-interested.

[ectobabble]

Honestly, from all he'd heard, the 'buster felt kind of bad for Billy. He seemed like a guy who'd either been stepped on or around one time too many, and ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time.... a bit like Janosh, but less genuinely crazy, and without that funky European accent. He was convinced that if he even had just a little bit of mood slime, the problem would be solved.

Ray's enthusiasm didn't flag in the slightest as he set his bounty down on the workstation, careful not to drip on the open ghost trap he was tinkering with. "You're never gonna believe this... there's an ice cream truck in the lobby! And all the flavors are named after everyone here. And I mean everyone! They even had me!" He sticks a spork into Billy's and totes it over.

"I brought you some of yours."

[need_to_rule_it]

He definitely looked on the wary side now, though it was more directed at the castle than the bearer-of-ice-cream.

"...The castle is giving us ice cream? That's not suspicious at all."

But, it was something to occupy his time with, it was a break from the usual prison food, and... really, at this point, how much worse could it get? So, he stuck the arm that wasn't bound up in a cast through the bars.

[tehoniongirl]

Jilly hadn't participated in the ice cream. Silly as it might be (and mostly incomparable) she'd avoided them for the same reason she'd avoided people's headspaces. Other than taste testing her own, she didn't really want to learn about people by invading their privacy.

Or tasting them.

She had, however, stopped by the kitchen for coffee before making her way down to the basement and into the Peace Patrol's prison. And part of her wondered, as she shifted her grip on the hot cups, whether she should have gone and looked in Billy's room anyway. She'd wanted to. But...unlike Legato, he wasn't her enemy. She wasn't afraid of him. Just...hurt. And she figured he had the right to speak for himself.

So, with coffee as a declaration of truce, she went looking for a familiar evil genius.

[need_to_rule_it]

His cell was small, with the typical setup of bars making up the inside wall of his cell. There were other, more sophisticated cells, but something like that was deemed unnecessary for him. Especially being stripped of anything that he could possibly use as a tool, and arriving in the shape that he had, a regular run-of-the-mill cell held him just fine.

He didn't look up when Jilly came into view of the cell. No one had warned him that he'd have visitors, and he didn't expect to want to see whoever was walking around outside of his cell. So, he just kept his eyes on the journal, and pretended not to notice.

[tehoniongirl]

Since she'd decided to do this, she'd been trying to figure out what she would say when she saw him. She'd run over words and phrases and questions, trying to imagine how this could possibly go, and none of it had gone anywhere. She'd pictured Crowley's suggestion of just hitting him..but looking at him now, she didn't feel anger. She felt...something...but it wasn't anger.

Now that she was here, she was at a loss for words. Standing lamely in front of his cell, cups of coffee cooling in her hands, she opened her mouth...and then closed it without sound. Maybe it would be easier when he looked at her.

[need_to_rule_it]

It took him a minute before he finally couldn't feign ignorance anymore, and glanced up.

And this glance immediately turned into a double-take.

It wasn't that he didn't expect to see Jilly ever showing up here, just... not now. Or, maybe he'd expected to have warning. Something.

His mind unproductively spun for a couple moments, before he found his voice.

"...Jilly?"

After Jilly

[its_worthdoing]

It takes her a while to get up the courage to go.

Truthfully, her first instinct had been to storm down there and ask why. Why he would do this. Why he would want to do this. Why he would keep -- why were there secrets? But they were all kept in isolation at first and all that did was allow Willow to think. Think, and wonder and question.

Until there was less fire and more hurt. She could hardly manage a conversation with herself about it, much less Jilly. And it sat there, between them. All the expected words.

Finally, she took some times away. From the castle, the shop. From all of it. And when she finally came back her footsteps brought her to one place.

Now she could onyl stare. For all the things she prepared herself for -- and there was a lot of preparing -- Willow never once stopped to consider the imact of seeing Billy there, behind bars.

It felt like Oz all over again.

[need_to_rule_it]

It took him a while to notice that he had company. Sitting on his cot, trying to work a straw in under his cast in order to scratch his arm, lost in his thoughts. It was the only place to go, lately. And no matter how far he wandered in them, he never reached a satisfying destination.

Even still, nothing in particular drew his attention out and made him glance toward his visitor. Maybe it was some sense of familiarity prickling the edge of his brain. Whatever it was, she wasn't standing there long before he glanced up.

There was no great shift in his expression-- aside from recognition and a bit of cold surprise. His features didn't freeze over, but neither did he adopt something that looked particularly apologetic. Just tense. And honest.

[its_worthdoing]

Why did there have to be bars?

They blurred all the lines, making the seeing that much harder. Because Willow wanted to see onlyBilly. It was what she finally had the ---what? Courage? Is that what kept her away? Or was it the fear of what she might do it retaliation.

For making her hurt. For making it hurt again.

She hated those bars and how they made her feel. A part of her wanted to hate him. So why couldn't she? And why couldn't she ask --

Why.

"You hurt your arm."

[need_to_rule_it]

"It's almost better, I think." He wiggled the fingers of his busted arm as he answered, as if to prove it. As if it actually mattered.

Which-- it didn't actually matter, of course. In the scheme of all the things that mattered in this little encounter, the state of his arm really wasn't on the list. But, he hung around the topic like it was a slowly sinking life-raft, reluctant to set foot in the ocean of Other Things.

"The itching is the worst part."