[ prp ] Little Boxes (taymerica)

[lizbot]

She starts looking at houses again, even though she doesn't have the money to buy one outright in this world, doesn't have the time to work enough to manage a mortgage. It's not an intensive search, one or two walks over the course of the week, peering through windows, stepping through the meticulously clean halls of strangers and the dusty ones of spaces long empty. There's something ridiculously calming to immerse herself in a possible future, in goals and the idea of next year and the year after. It makes it so much easier to the smaller step into tomorrow, with all its many uncertainties.

And then there's the other part, the moving through of a mundane, if slightly more magical, world that has its own charms, its own stories, its own importance in her todays and tomorrows and next year. America tries to remind herself of it, every day, that she's a part of this world too.

There's a little square house with a pink door today, and she drags him along, because she wants to hold his hand. And because Obadiah Thompson features in her favorite sort of next year and the one after.

rejam

 

[Rejam]

lizbot

It doesn't matter how often she's gotten to see the mushy underbelly that lurks in a man who secretly craves softness and tenderness: the exterior remains resolutely prickly, and even if he isn't ashamed to tell her that he likes being dragged on interminable shopping trips and along to craft fairs, he's still going to at least put on a show of longsuffering. So he holds her hand but he smokes with the other, making dire comments about her interior decorating sense and lawn flamingos ("the ez-cheez of exterior decorating," he says, which is a hell of a comment given what he's had to say about ez-cheez) that fade away by the time they're standing in front of the pink door, and he looks up at the low-slung front of the building and his expression softens a little.

Tomorrow may seem like a joke to him sometimes, even if he's never outright said it to her, but when he allows himself the fiction it's a nice one. He puts the cigarette in his lips so that he reach out and, as is his compulsive habit, brush his fingertips against whatever surface presents itself for inspection.

"Someone," he tells her, "did not give this place any respect."  

[lizbot]

Lawn flamingos are the first sign of a fun life, Taym.

"I like it already," America grins as she turns the knob. It was supposed to be an open house, and the door did open, but there was nobody around from the look and sound of it. Turning, America takes a look at the street and the sparse scattering of cars. "Looks like we got it to ourselves for a bit."

There's an alarming waggle of eyebrows and then she's laughing, tugging him inside with her. The place is full of light and her face brightens further as they step through. "White and pink striped curtains," she states firmly, smile dimpling.

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[Rejam]

lizbot

"Wooden blinds," he says just as firmly, although he does indulgently let go of her hand just for the sake of pinching her butt. You're welcome, America. "But open all the time anyway," he adds. He touches his fingertips to hers but wanders a little, in the restless and childish way he does in a new space, scrutinizing paneling and visibly resisting the urge to touch everything. "This carpet is nightmarish," he adds, and he doesn't have to add that they're probably both itching to pry up a corner and see what's going on underneath.

"One of my mom's friends bought an old house once and pulled up all the carpet because the first corner was so promising, and they found a big-a** sheet of plywood in the middle of the dining room. Pried that up and there was a huge ornate wrought iron floor register underneath from when the house was on gas. They ended up putting in a new floor." He pauses, toeing at the carpet as if idly inspecting it for hidden antiques. "Should have sandblasted the grate and left it, but no one asked me," he adds flatly. "Probably put pink curtains in too."  

[lizbot]

"We could put in dark wood floors," the girl swayed across the room toward the kitchen, executing a little hem lifting spin along the way. "And plants. This much light, it'd be a shame to not have plants for Boop to kill."

She leans over the deep set sink, to peer out the window. The place wasn't furnished, probably hadn't been for awhile, but there was a small card table set up with bottled water and cookies that undeniably came from a bag. "A dozen garden gnomes."

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[Rejam]

lizbot

A fiction, he's forcibly reminded. He drifts along at a much more leisurely pace, a comfortable silence following her until he settles in her wake, a hand at her hip and his nose against her hair, since there was no one there to see. "Gnomes are better than flamingos," he says. "Although around here I wouldn't trust them not to get up and move around at night, so I take I immediately take that back. Flamingos would be much less terrifying."

He looks out over the little yard. "Little herb garden next to the kitchen once upon a time," he says, pointing out the bedraggled and neglected rectangle next to the stoop. "Probably unappreciated by someone who doesn't even have the decency to put out some Milanos for guests instead of ********' Hydrox." Ah, Taym and his Milanos. He has feelings. A pause. "Pink curtains are tolerable in a kitchen," he allows indulgently. A fiction. He cannot help but compulsively add: "Every house I walk into reminds me more of what a shithole the Broiler is and isn't it a ********' miracle," he finishes, dire and tired, "that me of all people I'm willing to b***h about a perfectly solid house with locks on the doors. We are a forgetful and ungrateful species."  

[lizbot]

She snorts, "If we spent every moment counting our blessings, we'd all be livin' in caves." Leaning back against him, she adds, "The Broiler's got charm, it's just a...specific sort. Maybe the opposite sort form this place, though. you'd probably have to pry up a good half dozen carpets to figure out what it started out with." Which was, of course, part of the charm.

"I bet you'd miss it a bit, all the tons of stuff from years of different people and gossip and stupid drama." The Nosy Ned went unspoken, but the smile in her voice made it clear enough.

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[Rejam]

lizbot

"I wouldn't miss having to schedule showers. I wouldn't miss not having an actual bath," he points out. "I wouldn't miss paper-thin walls when people are entertaining guests. To be fair," he adds equably, "they probably wouldn't miss me entertaining you, either." Even if she's the one at fault there. "Or people eating my ******** leftovers and pretending they didn't. Or emergency meetings about ********' beehives. Can't complain about the rent, though."

He pauses, wrapping an arm around her waist to put his nose against her temple, indulgent in this empty echoing house with the overgrown tangle outside closing them off from anyone who might see. He has always struggled to keep up when it comes to expressing his feelings, and more now, when he practically measures his days in the before-and-after of the unexpected bolts of her affection. He finds himself waiting for them, tense and hungry, and shaken and relieved after them. He's tried a few times to reciprocate, tried to concentrate, to do anything the same way he used to stare at his smouldering cigarette in the ashtray and will it to light, to prove that he's as much a part of her world as she is his, and failing.

It's never worked, and his words don't love him back, and so he generally only gives her the simplest and truest words he can, despite his superstitious fear that the shine will wear off them for her and that they'll start to sound rote.

He tries to think of some other way to say it. "I could love a cave," he says, "if you were one of the blessings I was counting." And then, in his characteristic embarrassed deflection, his cringing away from unmanly emotion by minimizing it, ridiculing it: "How was that one? Pretty good?"  

[lizbot]

There is a smirk at the mention of entertaining her. One of the many woes of having a competitive girlfriend.

Her surprise and delight at the lovedovey sentiment can be heard in the inhale and exhale of her breath. Her smile is in the line of her neck as it tips back onro his shoulder. And there it is, undeniable, the burst of affection straight into his chest. She can't help it, even though a couple times she's tried, in a misguided attempt to give him some peace from her magic and strangeness and the myriad of things he never asked for.

She's yet to manage a whole day without thinking about how much she loves the man, all angles and odd tempers and quiet humor. It's a little terrifying, to see her life so easily make a space where another person is not only welcome, but necessary. It's not a bad terrifying, though. Nothing to sending her running just yet, anyway.

"But where would we plug in the electric iron?"

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[Rejam]

lizbot

He laughs, one of those rare things even if it's barely more than a sharply barked exhale. "But on the other hand there's probably no better place for fascinating mycology lectures than a cave," he says. "And I know that's how you sweep a girl off her feet."

He pauses. He's always a little breathless after that, a little shaken and more than a bit terrified, to tell the truth. It makes it hard to chase down words, but he tries anyway, his voice a little punch drunk. "This is nice," he says suddenly, his hands seeking out her wrists to pass then over the sink in a mime of after-dinner dishes as be drifts thoughtlessly into some boring domestic fantasy. "Being actually alone with you somewhere I can stand up without banging my head on the ceiling, I mean. We should do that more often."  

[lizbot]

"Well couldn't we?" She asks and it's not what she'd come here intending to ask. But it's one of those thoughts always near the surface, lately, making it increasingly inevitable.

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[Rejam]

lizbot

He doesn't seem to get the suggestion, at least not at first. He exhales a tired noise against her hair. "I mean I think technically according to the house rules I'm allowed to ask for a few hours to myself once a week but that's theory and not practice and getting them to do it would be like herding resentful cats. Maybe we could spring for a room somewhere or something, airbnb or something." The sentence ends too abruptly, lurching into a loud silence instead of trailing off into it, and he is suddenly tense against her shoulders with an unspoken oh.  

[lizbot]

She turns around, and it's clear she's not upset he that was a little slow on the uptake, that realization doesn't come with enthusiasm. It's part of who he is, the guy that ghosted her as a one night stand, the one that responded to her wanting to be serious and exclusive with a quiet, Is it offensive, if I ask why?

"I'd like it. I like just thinking about it. But a little vacation would be nice, too. Maybe a weekend in Boston or something?"

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[Rejam]

lizbot

He seizes the moment to drift towards a cabinet under the guise of his meaningless constant inspection, fingertips searching out dings under the paint, eyes averted away from her.

"Boston is expensive," he says finally, restlessly. The new job pays better than midnight shifts at the diner but not by so much that's he indulging in many luxuries besides the occasional pack of his preferred brand. "That's not a no," he adds, his favorite phrase for prevaricating. And then, impulsive and compulsive: "I like just thinking about it too."  

[lizbot]

"Maybe a later, then?" She drifts toward the fridge, and it's an ancient little unit. Making a face, she shuts it again, "Could use some baking soda." She opens the freezer and finds a half full box of freezie pops. They might be from weeks ago, but they may be twenty years old. The magic of cheap summer treats bought in bulk.

"Last time you left a shirt at the camper, I couldn't stop thinking about it," she can't help but laugh a little at herself, how head over heels she gets over the smallest things. "Like I guess that's give over a drawer territory, or something. But I don't want you just...tucked away in some neat little corner of my day." Which was something, coming from a girl who liked to put her life in tidy little boxes.

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