(Untitled)

[once_invisible]

The black coat wasn't one he'd expected to find in the clothes box. Rodney recognized it instantly, the leather familiar to his touch, like coming home to something he'd missed for a long time. Since coming here, there hadn't really been anything to completely jar him out of a harmless sort of complacency, but if there was going to be anything,

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[lastof_five]

"Nice duster, Rodney," Helen quipped as she walked into the laundry room, her chipper expression fading a little when she caught a glimpse of Rodney's face. He was normally a jolly fellow, so very much like her own Nigel that it hurt to look at him sometimes, and Nigel had also been prone to a rare, but evident, melancholy side. Perhaps Rodney was as well.

"Is something the matter? Or am I reading into things?"

She would never be as good at reading people as Will. No way and no how.

[once_invisible]

He glanced up as soon as he was addressed, a small flicker of a smile the most he could muster for the moment. Something guilty factored into his expression as well, partially because this wasn't the sort of thing that he felt he needed to burden anyone else with. A silly thought, he knew, but one he couldn't help harboring.

"You're not reading into things," he admitted, with a slight toss of his head. "These were the staples of my wardrobe back home. Coat and facepaint. Made me visible."

[lastof_five]

Helen settled next to him, laundry forgotten for a moment in lieu of Rodney's comfort. Nigel had been able to control his gift, use it voluntarily. It didn't appear that Rodney had the same luxury.

"You never learned how to turn it on and off, did you?"

[once_invisible]

Rodney shook his head, still staring down at his hands.

"It was just something you had or you didn't," he said, starting to screw the cap back onto the tin of paint. "You know, I don't even know if they had a cure for me. I could have been working for something that didn't exist."

[scotsfriction]

Even now Amy Pond can't quite get past it.

It was selfish and more than a little foolish, but she couldn't see Rodney without thinking Vincent with his sad features and lovely paintings. Of what he'd asked her and how they'd have had spectacularly ginger babies. It wasn't that she didn't love Rory, for she did. He had waited for her and she had remembered him despite the fact that he had never existed for a while there. But Vincent was different, taking up a different sort of space in her head.

But she ignored all of that as she flopped rather ungracefully onto one of the chairs in the rec room. "Something funny in there, tiger?" she asked a curious smile on her face. "Or less funny than not?"

[once_invisible]

"Not as funny as I'd like, love." Rodney smiled back, the task (as it was for the moment) easier given the smile she was wearing. They hadn't talked much, but for what it was worth, he liked her so far. There were specific traits that he always loved in other people. They were more indefinable qualities than not - brightness, a certain life - but she possessed them all. He didn't know who this Vincent fellow was, but he didn't mind the association; it had been their first tack of conversation, after all. "I got a couple of souvenirs from home."

[scotsfriction]

A frown tugged slightly on the corners of her mouth, but Amy was not about to let expressiveness get the better of her. With a thoughtful nod, she picked slightly at the cuticles of her thumbnail. It was an awful habit, one that she fought with nail varnish and the like. Maybe there was someone here who could whip that stuff up. What she wouldn’t give for even a chance at a manicure. It was actually a bit scary.

“Ah, I hate that sort of stuff,” she said with the right amount of righteous anger. Sure none of that had had happened to her yet, but she was certain it might only be a matter of time. “From the looks of it they’re more the like sort of bad souvenirs that you get on an absolute crap holiday. That bad, eh?”

[once_invisible]

"That bad," he conceded, amusement coloring his voice at her choice of metaphor. It was surprisingly apt, although he supposed it depended on how one classified an absolute crap holiday. "I probably shouldn't mope," he added, one eyebrow arching as he looked back at what the island seemed to have chosen to bestow upon him. "It isn't as if these buggers are going to bite me, eh?"

[liliesfromluce]

Luce is a little free with personal space intrusions when it comes to people she knows and she knows Rodney. She's in close, almost enough to share his body warmth as she rubs two fingers over the paint on his, curling up to him and sharing a smile. "Hi," is all she says. "Fingerpainting?"

[once_invisible]

It's not a fact he ever bothers to make terribly apparent (perhaps because he has always, due to his line of work, tried not to get close to anyone), but physical contact is something he's fond of. "Something like that," he murmurs, fingers catching hers. "Close, but no cigar. At least, I think that's how the saying goes."

[liliesfromluce]

Luce drapes her arm easily around his shoulders, taking her paint-covered hands and rubbing it on her cheeks in battle-formation, giving him a very serious look before a smile appears. "Are you going to tell me? Or will I keep having to make a fool of myself with it?"

[once_invisible]

He reaches a hand up, fingers tracing over the streaks of paint now on her face. "I used to wear this, when I was home," he begins, voice quiet. "In order to be seen." He doesn't remember if he's told her about his origins (so to speak) or not, but he figures that that's as good a conversational start as any.