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

[unsanguine]

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.

Comments

[undomesticated]

"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."

[unsanguine]

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."

[undomesticated]

"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?"

[unsanguine]

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."

[undomesticated]

"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.

[unsanguine]

"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."

[undomesticated]

"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.

[unsanguine]

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.

[undomesticated]

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.

[unsanguine]

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."

[undomesticated]

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?