[PRP] lovely and loathsome (cass & ro)

[GhouIs]

"Cid!"

Ro entered the shop as he always did, bursting through the front entrance with a string of words already tumbling out of his mouth.

"Guess which grown a** ******** adult ate the ******** pavement trying to pull off a kick-flip at the- oh, uh... you're not Cid." He frowned at the woman that was not Cid, realizing how crazy he probably looked to someone who didn't already know him (like Cid). His white tee was still specked with the blood that had dribbled from his split lip and he held within his skinned hands the two pieces of his newly broken skateboard; all testaments to the story he was about to launch at his old friend. Who was not here.

"Is, uh, is he around, or...?"

dem0n_pachabel

 

[demon_pachabel]

"Not Cid!"

Cassandra had been organizing the comics. Again. Cass was sure if Cid came in and saw some punk had left a manga in the Marvel section again, he was going to stage a grand production of catching them in the act and sacrificing them to their old one. The image in her head was something akin to dog-shaming, involving a sign and looking very embarrassed. She'd called out her answer before she'd even had a chance to turn around and see who had walked in.

The young man had been part way into his story by the time Cass turned around and - well, if she was supposed to seem surprised from the blood on Ro's face, her expression didn't betray her thoughts.

"Cid went home because of the baby," Cid hadn't been exact in his phrasing, just the word 'Baby' was a discovered surfire way to make her practically teleport over as long as it was after 10. Despite this, she offered a smile, "So, where were you doing a kick-flip?"

Clearly she didn't want to lose the other end of this story.

GhouIs

 

[GhouIs]

"Little man?" Ro immediately looked worried. "Is he okay?" He didn't wait for an answer and instead dropped the skateboard bits on the ground so he could whip out his phone and send a swift text to his old friend. He didn't look up from his furious typing when he spoke next.

"I, uh, just at the skatepark..." He said. He'd gotten the most exciting bit of the story out before realizing he was speaking to Not Cid. "Broke my board."

He looked up at Cass with a frown.

"I've had it since high school."

demon_pachabel

 

[demon_pachabel]

"No clue. I heard about 'my son needs-' before I found myself already here," she explained with a shrug, not seeming offended as Ro stared at his phone. Cass quietly just stuck to putting books back in their right places. "Well, I'm sure you've had your face since High School too," she commented, half smiling at her oh so witty comment in regards to the bloody face that had also been brought in, alongside the broken skateboard.

Once her arms were empty of books, she finally stepped from behind the bookcase to approach the man who had come busting into the shop, arms folded behind her back as she looked between him and the board in his hands. "Damn shame to lose the good things, though," though Cass safely kept such 'good things' at arms length now for the same reason. "Gonna memorialize it or just get a new one?" she asked, "Y'know, glue what you can together, maybe put some nice resin over it, hang it above some...memorial to who knows what." she shrugged. Clearly Cass had never done such a thing.

"Also would you like me to get the First Aid kit for uh..." she motioned to her own face with a hand, half-smiling as she did so.

Ghouls

 

[GhouIs]

"I'll probably hang it up in the shop, yeah. It's got some good stickers on it." Roman almost smirked at Cass' antics. Almost. Cute. "I'd like to think my face has at least thinned out a bit since high school, but I guess you're right." He'd been a chubby teen.

There was a more pressing matter at hand than discussing the past, however. And Not Cid wasted no time in pointing it out.

"s**t, is it bleeding again?" Ro wiped at his lip with the knuckles of his hand. Sure enough, the blood leftover on his skin was fresh and red. It dribbled from the wound and added a few new stains on top of the old darkening ones. He gave the shopkeep as close to a bashful look as his tired, bloodied face could muster.

"I guess I should clean it out, if you don't mind..."

demon_pachabel

 

[demon_pachabel]

"Gotta keep it for the good stickers," Cass agreed as she walked over to the register and ducked down behind it to fish out the not-so-used white and red box underneath it. Sure, there were times it probably should have been used, but those times weren't a bleeding face that had literally eaten pavement. Maybe not so literally. Unless he swallowed. Then maybe literally.

"Well, even if it hadn't been bleeding, I wouldn't want a scrape full of dirt." she said as she cracked open the case, pulling out first a wet wipe, then some sort of antiseptic. Cass looked from the case, then up at his face,then down at the kit. "I'm not sure if I use a bandaid on that, or if just cleaning it out is good and maybe we decide if we test your pain tolerance against my sewing skills or maybe visit an urgent care to see if you need stitches." Her head sloooowly tilted off to one side, "I'm gonna guess the second of those would be preferable tho." she decided as she offered him up the two one-time-use swabs she'd taken out.

Ghouis

 

[GhouIs]

some sort of outlet... and he'd gotten one. A painful one.

"It's probably not that dirty, I think I just bit it when I fell. My hands... well, they're scraped to hell." He flashed her a view of his bloodied palms.

"My knee hit pretty hard, too, but it's not bleeding." He'd been limping when he walked in. <********, I'm a mess. Why did I think that was a good idea?

He took the swabs from her and dipped one into the provided antiseptic. When he touched it to his lip, it stung- but it wasn't anything he couldn't handle. A rowdy youth had prepared him perhaps more than he even needed to be for the pain of minor scrapes and bruises.

"Thank you..." He mumbled, applying pressure to the wound with the soaked swab.

demon_pachabel

 

[demon_pachabel]

Cass shrugged. "Can't tell, really. It mostly looks like dirt," she confessed, frowning at the view of his hands, then beginning to pull MORE wipes and antiseptic out of the kit. She also topped it off with a few bandaids. Once she'd taken what was needed (hopefully nothing else would be) out of it, she grabbed a post it and wrote what had been taken from the kit down and stuck it to the register.

Mostly to let Cid know to stock up a few more things. Just in case.

"Good to hear. Probably gonna have an impressive looking bruise tho. Always fun to have a battle scar for a day or two," she smiled as he began to wipe up his lip, leaning onto the counter to watch as he did so. "I can pull out more if you end up needing it." From the way he was looking, though, it looked like it wasn't going to be that bad once everything was cleaned up.

"Got all your teeth or do we need to superglue any pieces back into place?" she asked, clearly very versed in the 'putting people back together' department. "So you like skateboarding? I haven't boarded in like four years." A different town, a different boyfriend, a different last name. Kind of made anything more than a few months feel like ancient history.

Ghouis

 

[GhouIs]

Again, she almost made him grin.

"Teeth are in tact," he confirmed this by flashing his pearly whites at her, though regretted it a bit when his lip started bleeding. Again. He sighed and added more pressure, voice sounding somewhat off due to the contact. "I drank a lotta milk when I was kid. Never underestimate the mighty powers of calcium."

Once he was sure it had stopped (again), he started to work on his hands; wiping the left one first, then the right. He spoke as he did this, eyes cast down towards his palms.

"I haven't really kept up with it since my old bandmates left town," he admitted. "Today was probably the first time in... what... three or so years that I actually gathered the energy to pick up my board and go out. So of course I gotta end up breaking the damn thing." He glanced at the broken bit of his youth, more upset than he thought he would be about a piece of wood.

Then, realizing he hadn't yet introduced himself, he lifted his gaze to meet Cass'. "I'm Ro, by the way. I own the vinyl shop next door. I'd, uh, offer to shake your hand, but..." He trailed off, the rest of his sentence as obvious as the blood on his palms. Literally.

demon_pachabel

 

[demon_pachabel]

As Ro wiped off his hands, Cass leaned in closer to take a look at the cut in his lip, frowning slightly. "Well, the bad news is, it looks like s**t. The good news is it looks like s**t that won't need stitches," she said sagely, nodding before pushing herself back to her spot on the other side of the register. Her eyes wandered to a few teenagers that were roaming the store.

She saw you putting One Piece next to Thor you sons of bitches.

Then, as quickly as it had wandered off, it was back to Ro. "Band, huh? Sounds fun. Exhausting, but fun. Guess it depends on what you wanted from it," Cass hadn't ever had aspirations of fame, but she could tell where some people just enjoyed the catharsis of playing an instrument.

"Well, it sounds like you gave it a good run, though. I mean, you're what? Twenty five? Twenty six? That's a good..what, minimum.." she did math backwards and counted on her fingers. Clearly it wasn't her strong point, "Seven years if you wait until after minimum for a board to have lasted. That's not bad if you often did kick-flips and the like on it." At least she was optimistic about it. "It can be the beginning of a skateboard legacy. Better it go out from being used than rot away because it got forgotten somewhere."

She couldn't help but laugh as he pointed out his hands would be bad for shaking. "Ah, good ol' vinyl. Well, Ro, it's nice to meetcha. I'm Cassandra. I'm..here sometimes. Sometimes I'm somewhere else. It's a mystery." she shrugged, a smile plastered on her face.

Ghouis

 

[GhouIs]

Finally, she earned one. A real live Roman Kennedy grin.

"Actually, I'm thirty-one, but your guesses were flattering thanks." It was the Cree blood in him that kept him looking young and the lack of sleep that added on a few years anyway. Twenty-five was the usual guess.

"That makes me feel a little bit better, though, about the board. It got in one last hoorah before biting the dust, and it got its revenge on me for leaving it alone for so long." He was starting to warm up to her. He even, gasp, offered her a soft smile.

"Nice to meet you too, Cassandra. Thanks for all your medical expertise. Cid probably woulda just laughed at me. Maybe he woulda handed me a ********' beer, I dunno." He finished up sanitizing his hands and tossed the remains of the med kit supplies into the bin by the counter.

"You should let me buy ya food or somethin', to repay you for your time."

dem0n_pachabel

 

[demon_pachabel]

So he did know how to smile. It was a nice look on him.

"Thirty one?" she whistled, "Damn, I need some of those genetics," then again, Cassandra's pure youthful energy would outlast her body by years, so maybe she didn't need the genes for it. "That means you got like...twelve years of board. It definitely deserved to go out good." It looked as though he'd cleaned up everything, and Cass nodded as she tucked the medkit away under the counter again.

Hopefully to collect more dust now.

"Hey, if I was allowed to have beer at work, I'd probably have handed you a beer too. Hell, a beer is probably what those sore hands need. At least a cold one to soothe the pain," it'd probably also feel great on that sore lip of his too.

"Yeah? I won't say no to a free meal. I don't feel like I did more than watch you patch yourself up and maybe plan out the last rites of your board." she glanced at the pieces, "Gonna write a eulogy?"

ghouis

 

[GhouIs]

Ro perked a brow.

"He doesn't let you guys drink? What a ********' hypocrite. We just had a couple beers down in the basement a few days ago." After the words left his lips Ro thought to himself that maybe this was something he was supposed to keep to himself. Cid hadn't specified. Oh well.

"How does a free meal and some booze sound, then? I'm always looking for an excuse to go to Darlene's." Not that he really needed one, seeing as he'd already been once this week.

A eulogy? Ro frowned. "Nah, I'm not all that great at goodbyes."

He'd attended enough funerals to last a lifetime.

demon_pach4bel

 

[demon_pachabel]

"We have minors here. If there's beer, I definitely don't have access to it." Cass nodded, though she couldn't help but briefly ponder if she'd handled that key at all if there was. Nothing a little extra zing couldn't help her with. But there was no way to guess where he'd hide beer at work and if there was a way she could use her...thing...to open it.

She stopped thinking too hard on it.

"I won't say no to a burger and a beer at Darlene's. Better than my of my meal plans," most of which consisted of turning into a food Gremlin over at the Mercer place or hoping Marcus would feed her. Man, she was like a wild cat, pandering from house to house for a meal.

"Very well, we'll leave it at 'a skateboard that got a good life out of it'." Not that a eulogy needed to be anything more than just that.

Ghouis

 

[GhouIs]

Ro nodded, it was as good a eulogy as any. And one meant for a skateboard certainly didn't need too much thought involved.

"Are you workin' 'til close today?"

He wasn't even sure what time it was. He'd been out all day.

demon_pachabel