kore_logs | you're the only one who can get me on my feet

Entry tags:

you're the only one who can get me on my feet

WHO: Hal and Riley! (2.0)
WHAT: Fishing, hilarious bouts of self-control
WHERE: House 7 and presumably the ocean
WHEN: Day 89!
NOTES: I should stop putting Hal in awkward situations, but I won't.

Hal has never had this much time to himself.

In some ways this has its charms; no one is prodding him to get a job, to go outside and interact with what some other vampire, in some other universe, had once called Happy Meals on Legs (Hal would get the sentiment, if not the reference). He doesn't have his routines here, but he can establish new ones. He accepts resignation better than most.

So left to his own devices he probably would just brood in his Man Attic forever, actually, and that might be fine, even if one imagines it might get a little weird for Shiala eventually, living with someone who never emerges from his own room.

On this day he has just finished doing approximately a fuckbillion pressups, and is now puttering around the living room because ...it needed dusting, and that did require leaving the attic. He is imminently botherable, so this is probably about when a dedicated person would pounce on him.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Such dedicated person had made it her sworn duty to drag said broody vampire out of said man attic whenever possible, therefore it shouldn't be a surprise to him to hear the telltale knock of hers on his door. The voice would give her away if the knock hadn't. "Hal~. I know you're in there and I know you can hear me. Come open the door, oh broody one."

Riley liked teasing him a little, amused at both the way he got so easily flustered and the way he'd look up at her as though he wasn't quite sure what she meant. It was cute and endearing and she felt like being around cute and endearing today.

Hal, who had poked his head up in about this fashion the second he became aware of a presence at the door, appeared in the entryway, feather duster in hand. God knows where he got one of those. "Riley. Good afternoon."

His facial features didn't seem to be sure whether they wanted to be relieved or resigned. Does he have to invite anyone inside? It's a terrible mess all over (no it isn't). Although there is light scattered evidence that another person lives there now. "Is there something I can help you with?"

...damnit, no. That wasn't right. By now Riley may or may not have had the impression he had once given Alex, which is that it was possible he was religious, due to his weird blend of repression and cheerfulness. "Oh, but--do come in, I suppose."

She smiled at Hal as he appeared, hands behind her back and a cheerful expression on her face. When he invited her in, she made it a point to brush her shoulder against his chest as he stepped back, all the while pretending like it was completely unintentional. Oops. Did that happen? Oh darn.

"Thanks. As for what you can help me with, you can, actually. I'm planning on doing some fishing for some people and I wouldn't mind having someone to help me clean my catch. If you think you're up to it."

She'd come into the living room, picking up some small knick knack, looking it over as she spoke before looking up at him from under her lashes at the end of it, a teasing sort of challenge in her look.

Hal guarded the periphery of his personal space with the ferocity of a very fussy lion, so he noticed the deeply subtle closure of that bubble the way another person might notice touching an electric fence. Any attempts made at smoothly sidestepping were hampered by the presence of the doorframe, which he nearly backed into. Wonderful.

The figurine in question happened to be a ceramic cat; Hal found it in hideously poor taste but was obligated to dust it anyway. His expression was pained. "Do take care with that," he ...pleaded, more or less, as if Riley wouldn't be doing him a favor by dropping it.

It took him a few seconds to work backwards and realize what she'd actually asked, at which point the pained expression withered into something between bafflement and disdain. "Surely you must know someone better suited to that sort of avocational activity."

Like, literally anyone. Including the ceramic cat.

He was so uncomfortable, Riley could almost taste it. He was watching the cat in her hands like it was a Fabergé egg and she was threatening to drop it. Silly vampire. "There might be, but I figured this would be a good reason to get you out of the house. Since you don't spontaneously burst into flames in the sun, it really will not kill you to be out in it more than once in a blue moon."

That was a bit of a dig at him, considering how he'd literally followed her around (very unstealthily, she might add) on the day of the full moon to see if or how she prepared for her 'ordeal'. Which, as it turned out, was completely unnecessary since Riley didn't need to shift on a full moon and it wasn't anywhere near painful for her to do so. That had surprised him, but from what she'd seen, it had been a pleasant surprise.

"Besides, I want to spend a little time with you. So what do you say, mm? Come with me?"

Hal would maintain that was a perfectly reasonable set of actions to take, considering his only experience with were...persons dictated the change was painful, unnatural, and full of death. That was the nature of monsters where he was from, and he avoided adjustment to what he knew as familiar like more traditional (yes) vampires did avoid the sun.

Still. It was a weight off, especially since he didn't exactly have access to a chicken on a string. There was little point in stealth; he had never been less than stellar at anything in 500 years, and he certainly wasn't about to start now.

"I suppose I could do with fresh air," he began, slowly--he'd considered saying he could do with the company, but it seemed so unlikely he'd gone with the safer bet. "But I have no intention of--cleaning fish."

Ugh, how prosaic. And possibly likely to trigger a fit of bloodlust.

"Why not? Squeamish?" She was teasing him, mostly because fish had so little blood that the idea of being driven to a blood frenzy from something that barely smelled like what came from the warm blooded mammals was just laughable to her. But she also didn't quite get what he was fighting with every day, so it was mostly ignorance on her part.

"Come on. I bet you might even have fun. I promise smiling won't hurt." She looked over at him as she set the cat back down carefully. "Much."

Hal swallowed, adam's apple helpfully attempting to constrict his throat. "I don't do well with blood," he admitted, and left it at that. It sounded ludicrous, coming from a vampire, but it was better Riley keep thinking he was just an oddity rather than a monster.

He could, he thought, if he was careful, proceed safely in that direction; she knew he didn't indulge (as it were), and there was no need to bring up the past. Or that he couldn't so much as safely be around Kia-Ora, or ...any other thick liquid for that matter. Staying clean had proved to be--well, perhaps not less of a hardship here, but a different one than he'd anticipated. As long as he didn't go out, he was safe; left to his own devices he'd retreated much as he had while staying with Leo.

Annie and Tom had different expectations, and it seemed that Riley did as well. The problem was that just as he'd come to care about Annie and Tom, Riley's expectations meant something now. He had to meet them, to show her he could be a good man.

So he attempted a smile, even if it was on the tail end of scoffing as he adjusted the placement of the cat just a subtle inch to the left, where it belonged. Their fingers didn't quite touch, but it was a near thing. He looked somewhere around their feet, adding, "Very little does."

You know, very little could hurt him. As he was immortal, much to his dismay. Fetching his coat from its stand beside the door was probably unnecessary, but he was always a bit colder than the average person, what with being dead. "All right, then. Lay on, MacDuff."

He took a moment to look pleased with himself in the process of holding the door (yes) and ushering her through. "That's most often misquoted, you know."

Edited 2013-07-18 01:22 (UTC)

She was pleased he was coming with her, closing the distance between their fingers on her own with a gentle pat to his hand. She moved towards the door when directed, giving him one raised brow at the quote that she didn't get. "Who's MacDuff and why would I want to lay on him?"

Sorry, Hal. You're going to have to educate the poor miss on things she clearly doesn't know. But she let him direct her out of the house, waiting for him on the stoop with her hands laced in front of her.

What. Said Hal's face, and just about all of his body language, which swiveled a full 180 degrees to face her in the process of locking up the house. There was no need for it in a place like this, really, but old habits (of a lot of attempted murder) died hard.

In Hal's case, that applied to ...a lot. For once he wasn't thinking about that, though, following Riley's lead to wherever they were going to engage in this spot of fishing (as he certainly had no prior reason to know) and staring in blatant disbelief at the same time. "Not--there is no literal laying."

....that was a great sentence, Hal. "I despair at what the 21st century has done to the education system, no one has the remotest of standards anymore. MacDuff," he enunciated, clipping every consonant, "appears in MacBeth, one of the finest works of Shakespeare. As a foil to the ambitious villain he centers the morality of the play. MacDuff is--a good man. One who accepts responsibility for his actions even when they cause great grief."

Of course Hal liked MacDuff. Even if the trail of bodies in his wake more easily correlated him to the titular character.

"Sorry, Hal, I was home schooled by my mom and we didn't have a drama class." She moved to walk down the road towards the woods and the river, looking back at him and expecting him to keep up. "She was more concerned with making sure we could read and add two and two and keep us from pissing off the monkeys than in teaching us about plays."

Maybe if Riley had taken an interest in literature or poetry, her mother might have pushed her more that way, but Riley decidedly didn't give two squats about Blake or Shakespeare or Frost. Hal would probably have a coronary, if he could, over her utter lack of cares given.

If he really tried, he might have been able to get up the necessary heartbeats for a coronary, and someone who didn't give two squats about poetry could indeed be the one to inspire the attempt. "I see."

He sounded appalled, but at least now he had some kind of explanation.

Keeping up wasn't a problem; he wasn't interested in taking the lead, but they were pretty well matched in leg length. "Well. The library could certainly provide a remedy. I'd be glad to show you myself, I've become quite familiar with its contents of late."

Even if she wasn't interested in literature, that sounded an awful lot like he was inviting her somewhere. Indoors, but progress nonetheless.

"I heard it was picked clean of a lot of things, leaving us with a limited selection. But the guy I heard it from didn't seem the type to read poetry. You find a big stash of Poe or something?" She was partly teasing him now, easily hearing the tone of what he thought of her lack of knowledge on the subject.

She did hear the invitation, smiling to herself over it as she decidedly didn't make a big thing about it. "I might, but fishing and hunting kind of takes precedence over reading."

To give Hal exactly the three morsels of credit he occasionally deserves, he's not actually appalled by Riley. He just thinks the unexamined life is not worth living, if he may quote Socrates. Which he would. Ergo: "Even a limited selection includes Shakespeare," he counters; this is largely true no matter the size of the library. "You won't find any of Poe's obscurer works--" he has of course read them, "but the requisite anthology remains, of course."

He pauses, considering her out of his peripheral vision. "I suppose those are necessary to survival, yes." Except for him, because he doesn't eat. Nonetheless: "Though I believe there ought to be more to life than simply surviving. I should know, I've done the former for a--a very long time."

"I guess you have, haven't you?" She moved so that she was walking just a little closer, the gap between them closed. "Just how old are you, Hal? Do vampires age like humans or shifters? Or do you have that whole immortal thing going on for you?"

Although Hal didn't visibly encourage the sudden increase in proximity, he did allow it, albeit gingerly. Closeness and all its associations had become for him a Gordian knot of trouble over the years, and he'd been with Leo for more than a decade by the time he allowed any contact beyond the absolutely necessary. When he'd first met Tom and Annie he hadn't been willing to do as much as shake hands.

It was all right, he supposed, or could be; Riley's nearness didn't send the thrum of blood fluttering through his dry veins. Without that trigger it was undoubtedly easier.

Her question caught him off-guard a little, even if it was a perfectly sensible one; he seemed to hover always on the tip of a great melancholy that could spill over at any time. So his tone was both self-deprecating and morose as the years ticked by behind his eyes. Hal never forgot anything, not even - or especially - when he wanted to. "When one's fondest wish is to die, its eternal impossibility does him no favors."

...thank you, Hal. He relented a bit and recounted more specifically. "I was born in the late 15th century. We don't age. You see me now as I was when I encountered the only death I'll ever know."

"Wow, really? So you're like, five hundred and change, huh? Pretty good condition for a really, really old guy, Hal." She grinned, moving in just a tad to brush her shoulder with his before straightening, pretending like she hadn't done it at all.

She pointed up at a path that led into the woods. "I usually take that one to the river. There's a good spot to fish not far along it, if you don't mind lounging on the bank." He always sounded so sad or looked like someone was going to stick a red hot poker up his butt. She decided she was going to try to get him to smile more.

"I was an aristocrat once, I excel at lounging." He ventured at the least the ghost of a smile, a slow upward creep of the corners of his mouth, and followed her lead along the path somewhere between the inherent grace of a predator and a person who had very little recent experience with navigating woods.

At home his more suicidal inclination had been more or less glossed over--he could never quite be trusted enough not to slip for anyone to protest with much strength. Annie, he thought, fluctuated between being grateful that his strength provided a measure of protection for Eve, and wanting him out of the house for the sake of the same person.

To Tom he was a monster, as all vampires were, although they'd come to an uneasy sort of truce. But to Riley...he wasn't any of those things, at least not yet. He was a novelty, and perhaps not an unwelcome one. The shine would wear off when she learned what he truly was, his usual pessimism contended, but for now--for now he could have this. Someone who wanted for reasons he couldn't quite pin, to be in his company.

Even if she did also want him to clean fish. He'd been tracking her movements with his eyes, said eyes having gone a bit round when their shoulders had brushed, but he recovered soon enough to explain: "Yes, really. Peak physical condition is important to my routines."

"Then you won't mind if we speed things up a bit." She shot him a quick grin before she broke into a run, heading for the woods to weave through the trees. Hal could follow the path if he liked, but she'd put in a bit more effort in finding a more direct path, yet also a more overgrown one, to the river.

She didn't really know what it was that made her push at him so much, but he was broody and seemingly uncompromising and that part of her that was all cat wanted to bat at him and make him react. Either to her or to the situation.

Fool that he was, Hal had labored for a sweet, ignorant second under the delusion that she meant to walk faster. So he was stymied initially when she took off for the trees, and gave due consideration to finishing the trip sedately, like a sane person.

But she'd made it a challenge, and he'd always prided himself on his ability to meet those. Dedication to the difficult was the only reason he'd made it dry the last 50 years. He followed the thick growth of trees visually, the same way he'd watched Riley close in, only this time with intent. With purpose. Choosing to forsake the path entirely meant that he was occasionally thrown by a tree or debris he hadn't anticipated, but once he stopped thinking so damned much, the creature that he was knew how to account for those obstacles without breaking stride.

At its core, without the measurement of good or evil, a vampire was a hunter. He let his instincts take him, and so arrived at the riverbank disheveled, sweaty, and inordinately proud of himself. He'd give it a minute to see what Riley made of that before his general neuroses drove him to start neatening his hair or brushing his clothes free of twigs and leaves.

She beat him there, turning around once she reached the embankment to see which way he'd come from. That he'd followed her, come through the trees on her tail, so to speak, had her smiling proudly at him. She came over and picked a leaf out of his hair before she threw her arms around him for a hug. Squeezing him, she drew back, hands on his shoulders as she gave him a very pleased look. "Well done, Hal. That wasn't so bad, was it?"

He'd almost looked like he'd been enjoying himself, but she didn't want to jump too far ahead. He'd done it and that was the key. He'd smiled and she wouldn't rub it in his face. Little steps (or giant leaps) at a time.

Hal's shoulders tensed inside the hug, but he was too surprised to do anything but return it with intense awkwardness before pulling back into his own bubble.

This was a challenge too, even if he suspected he was being heavily manipulated. (Although with no ill intent.) He could have kept moving back, away from the reach of her hands, but he made himself stand in place. After a second the urge to straighten his appearance proved too strong an itch, but he'd done it. He'd let her in even as briefly as he had, and no great catastrophe had dropped out of the sky.

She reminded him of Katherine, the same spark and steel, and there hadn't been a woman like Katherine in over a century. She'd been--exceptional, and it wasn't lost on him that she'd also been a werewolf. "You did make the proposition rather irresistible," he pointed out as if he'd just made some marvelous deduction of logic. "I'd be loathe to disappoint a lady."

That had her laughing in delight, her hands clapping together as she beamed at him. "Hal, you are just too much. You sound like a Jane Austin movie and it's just... wow. My mom would love you." She watched as he pulled himself back into that carefully ordered appearance, but there was something in the way he almost smiled that hinted he might actually be enjoying himself.

She hoped so.

Turning to the river, she gestured a little further down. "I usually fish over there. There's a spot you can rest if you want, m'lord," she added with a very low sweeping curtsy. It was probably the worst curtsy in the history of curtsies, but did she at least get points for trying?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

you're the only one who can get me on my feet

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject