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Post by JOSHUA DONOVAN DALE on Apr 18, 2012 14:04:31 GMT -5
"You know, I think we should get a dog." As usual on long days when he had nothing better to do, Joshua was hanging out with his sister. Sprawled out on her rainbow-coloured bedsheets, he was watching as she mowed down hordes of undead in her favourite game, thankfully without the usual addition of her headset to yell things at her friends. She snorted at his words. "Why's that?" Joshua would have shrugged had he been in a position to do so but as it was he merely said, "Dunno. We've got the space. Don't you miss Quartz?" The Shepherd was living quite happily with their parents. Joshua had seen him the last time he'd dropped by to visit and had been greeted by huge paws on his shoulders and licks to his face. Annabel nodded. "Sometimes, yeah." It seemed like she might drop the topic there as she threw a molotov at the horde but after a long pause she asked, "So what kind of dog would you want?" He had to think about that one, realising that he didn't have a straight answer for her. "Maybe a shelter dog, I don't care what type. Could even be a mutt." Annabel laughed in reply and Joshua smiled slightly. "What?" She finished the level and sat the controller down, taking a swig from her bottle of Pepsi before saying, "Are you planning to turn our house into an animal shelter, Joshy? Cause really, I think you should ask Nell first." Josh laughed and shoved his sister playfully, rolling his eyes.
As the door was open and Annabel's room was fairly close to the second floor indoor balcony that overlooked the front foyer, both turned toward the sound of the front door opening downstairs a moment later. "Speaking of Nell..." He'd seen her earlier when she'd said that she was heading to work and he'd gotten quite a few things done in that space of time, including a trip to the liquor store to restock the living room cabinet. "Go down and hang out with her, bro," Annabel said when he glanced at her. It was amazing that she knew what he was asking without even having to open his mouth. Why had he never formed this deep of a connection with Bryce? He shrugged off the thought and went downstairs, pulling Nell into a kiss without so much as a 'hello'. It was not until after he pulled away, grinning lazily, that he said, "Hey, babe. How was work?" He'd worked the earlier shift today and he had a day off tomorrow, one he planned to use to his full advantage. Weekends were great because classes did not get in the way of other commitments and the two days of reprieve provided enough time to catch up on schoolwork and rest a while. Especially for Joshua, whose vocabulary seemed lacking in words like 'relax' and 'slow the fuck down'. "I've missed you. Spent the past hour watching Annabel kill zombies." He nodded as if this was a normal, every day thing (it was, really) and left it at that.
He went into the living room and flopped down on the couch, a bottle of unopened whiskey on the table. Gesturing to it, Joshua glanced at Nell with an inquiring look. "Drink with me?" They had all manner of alcohol, of course. Gin, vodka, whiskey, rum, regular old beer. Whiskey was simply his favourite and so it was the drink that he usually defaulted to whenever he felt like getting drunk. He opened the bottle and poured himself a shot, downing it. "We haven't drank together in a while." He thought it would be fun. Maybe not get shit-faced, he thought. A few shots or something couldn't hurt. When faced with whiskey, though, it wouldn't take much to convince him to keep drinking. It would be a while of drinking before he was in a totally compromised state of sobriety and so he sat close to Nell and simply enjoyed her presence and company. She was different from his other friends. He had a lot of close friends but he only had one fiancée. "So I was thinking," he said conversationally, playing with her hair out of boredom and habit. "What do you think about getting a dog?" He liked pets. Forget running a shelter out of his house, he'd take them all in himself and be perfectly happy about it. "I know it's a little random but, eh, it's just a thought that crossed my mind." He shrugged and waited for her opinion.
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Post by NELL DOE DALE on Apr 18, 2012 20:31:06 GMT -5
Nell colored in the lines with a pink crayon, tongue poking out a bit, blending in well enough with the children that surrounded her. ”Nooo.” She blinked and turned to look at where the whine had come from, a boy sitting next to her with a pinched expression. ”Elephants are…they’re…they’re supposed to be grey!” He had trouble getting out his words, and she looked back down at the elephant she’d been coloring in. In some countries there are in fact pink elephants. She smiled as she thought of it, but wouldn’t lie to the kid. Because eventually he’d find out and he’d remember her as the lady who lied to him about elephants. She didn’t want to be the lady who lied about elephants. ”All right, all right, let me just…” As she reached for the grey crayon she heard the wail and peered over to find Ms. Kustack holding Rachel’s hand. She wiggled out of the tiny, plastic chair that she’d crammed her rear into and walked over to see what had happened. ”The back part of the truck closed on her finger.” Nell sighed as she picked up the girl, walking over to the bathroom in the back of the room while cooing, “Shh, shh.” She ran it under warm water. It didn’t actually do anytthing, but there was no real injury, she just wanted to calm the child. ”It’s gonna be all right, baby, it’s all right.”
Soon the hysterics quieted and the girl was sucking on her thumb. Nell turned off the faucet, then smiled at her, asking, ”Better?” Rachel nodded in quiet ascent and she dropped the girl down, turning off the bathroom light as she hurried back to play some more, as if completely forgetting the trauma of a pinched finger. Nell returned to her own business, found that her elephant had turned into a sort of brownish color, and looked at the boy who’d sat next to her with a lifted eyebrow. He simply giggled and returned to his picture, and she felt a warmth in her. After the day had ended, she noticed that The God of Small Things lay on Ms. Kustacks desk. Nell smiled. ”You should read it, ese, one of my favorites.” She would have lent the woman her own copy, but it looked like she had gone out and gotten it herself. During the conversation that marked the end of their day, Nell wanted to say a lot of things. What do you think of my father? Do you want to fall in love with him? Did you know that he can’t handle broken people? I hope there’s nothing wrong with you, because there’s already so much wrong as is. Would you trust him if I told you all the things that’s he’s done?
But she never said anything, and she carried the weight all the way home and into the house and she didn’t know how to unload it. If she should unload it and let Ms. Kustack know about the man Nell had set her up with. She smiled when Josh came down and kissed her, shrugging when he asked about work. She tried not to ramble on and on too much, even though she could talk for hours about every kid in that place and what they did that day, down to each movement. ”Lovely. Got yelled at for coloring an elephant pink. Blasphemy, I know.” She’d been told that kids don’t develop a personality until they’re older, but judging by how different ones colored, she begged to differ. Some kids would have appreciated a pink elephant, but Mark, clearly, did not. She guessed he was the realistic type, he was going to grow up and be an account or something similar, dabbling in logic and reason. She liked doing this, guessing at futures, making sure that they ended up comfortable and happy. ”Sounds horrifying,” she deadpanned when he spoke of his own day, remembering that she’d told Lark that she would like to teach a class about zombie survival with her English degree. Seemed it would be necessary. She’d like to do everything.
She joined Josh, dropping the messenger bag, hearing something metallic. What did I break? Nell thought about it for a moment before deciding that it was nothing, and told Josh, ”Sure.” She didn’t have anything against whiskey despite it tasting like rusty nails, but she decided to hop her way over to the cabinet to fish out the bottle of tequila, getting the shot glass. She had to force her bartender mind to keep away from mixing drinks. A good thing she wasn’t tired, it could take only one sip to knock a person down who’d had a long day. And she also had a full stomach, or at least full for her. ”Yeah,” she agreed as she poured the tequila after sitting back down, holding up the glass like a scientist with a beaker and watching it fill up. Nell wrinkled her nose as she swallowed it. She lent him an ear as he played with her hair, talking about getting a dog. It wasn’t necessarily random, at least not to her. ”I think sure. Dogs are cool.” She loved everything on god’s green earth, dogs were not exempt. ”I was thinking about birds myself. And butterflies. Harvesting caterpillars.” She poured another glass, again watching the clear liquid fill up. ”What kind of dog? Big or small? How old? Like…a puppy or an adult one?” She had a lot of questions, because for one, she’d never owned a dog before. And for another, she didn’t like making decisions that would affect the household.
[sorry for shit post. ><]
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Post by JOSHUA DONOVAN DALE on Apr 19, 2012 17:28:29 GMT -5
Ironically enough, Josh would have been perfectly content to sit and listen to Nell go on about her day. He found her fascinating and he didn't mind children so stories about the daycare and her experiences in working with the kids did not bore him in the least. Still, he took what he could get and laughed at the thought. "There's a kid I could understand." He said it jokingly but in reality it was quite true. Josh as a child had been very stubborn and serious when it came to most things, from the colour of elephants and the existence of Santa Claus to whether or not playing pretend was really realistic. ("There's no such thing as dragons and that's a stick, not a sword.") He was glad that she agreed to drinking with him and didn't insist that she had stuff to do tomorrow and that hangovers really weren't a good idea. What was the fun in life if you didn't take risks every once in a while, right? Besides, we might not get that drunk... It all depended on how carried away they got, right? He forgot to take into account that neither he nor Nell was the most responsible person on the planet. He chuckled at the expression on Nell's face when she tipped the shot back, entertained by it if nothing else. It reminded him of the first drink of whiskey he'd taken and how he'd quite literally spat it out in surprise. Then he'd drank straight from the bottle with no one stopping to tell him this was a bad idea and the rest was a hazy blur in his mind.
She was such an agreeable person. It surprised him sometimes how cool with his ideas she often was and it was probably because he'd grown up with people who were not so easy to live with that this shocked him. He did value her opinion, too, even if she didn't value it herself. "Birds would be difficult with five cats but I'm sure we could find a way. Butterflies, though?" He quirked an eyebrow at her, wondering if she would explain. "We have a lot of those in the garden." As if the flower gardens weren't colourful enough without monarchs and birdwings making it their home but they came around anyway. Not that Canada actually had birdwings, though he thought that would be pretty cool. They were massive. He didn't have much feeling toward regular old butterflies, though. Maybe it was an Earthie thing. He watched as she poured another shot and did one of his own for good measure. "Why birds?" He sounded curious rather than exasperated, always a good sign. He was not opposed to keeping birds, reptiles, fish. He liked having pets around the house. He knew that if they got any birds he'd definitely want to make sure that they were allowed to fly free, though, and not just around a room in the house. He didn't like restricting their freedom too much but with cats, indoor flight seemed dangerous. He knew their cats (Pablo and Eris came to mind immediately) probably wouldn't care whether the bird was wild or domesticated.
He thought about the question, for it wasn't really something he'd considered quite yet. 'We should get a dog' is really as far as he'd gotten with his persuasive speech. She'd agreed quicker than he was expecting her to. "Huh. Which would you prefer?" He really didn't have a preference. "Puppies are fun but older dogs can be, too." It was the companionship he missed. Cats were independent and they only came and hung around when they felt like it. Dogs were there when you wanted them to be. He missed Quartz and all his goofy glory. "Doesn't have to be right away, of course. Just a thought, like I said." Waiting was fine by him. Hell, if Nell was excited by the idea they could have a dog the next day. Joshua could be laid-back about these sorts of things. "Wanna play cards or something? I could do with a game or two." Or three, or five, or however many they ended up playing before they got too wasted to understand numbers. Was that possible? He didn't know, because by the time he got that drunk he had forgotten everything by the morning. "I don't have work tomorrow, thank god. Have you got anything to do?" It made sense to ask before they were too inebriated to give that a second thought. Responsibility didn't matter after a while, after all.
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Post by NELL DOE DALE on Apr 19, 2012 18:37:47 GMT -5
Josh didn’t seem too put off by the idea of birds, though he was questionable about the butterflies. She didn’t really understand why. They were good pets, didn’t take much to care for them and they passed on quickly. ”I guess the Tweety bird cartoons are true then,” she said. She knew Pablo liked to sit at windows and stare at birds when they passed by, as if formulating plans to get past the glass barrier. Nell didn’t know if she could trust him with birds, really. She blinked. ”I don’t mean keeping butterflies in the house, cariño,” she told him, a smile tugging at her lips. ”More out back, to make sure they stay around. Caterpillars are fuzzy, and their nests are neat.” They never had them in the city, they were new and foreign to her like most else on the planet. ”Butterflies only live for two weeks or less though.” She loved that about them, though, the transient life. They had to live out everything in just a short span of time, and she thought of them as inspiration. Living like butterflies. She shrugged. Nell rarely had reasons for a lot of things she did or wanted, she lived in the moment. ”Why not birds?” was the best she could come up with. They were cool, they flew around, they were animals. What was not to like about them?
Nell puffed out her cheeks in thought before blowing out the air and saying, ”How about both?” She didn’t have preferences, so why not? They had plenty of room, and that’s what she loved about the place. It didn’t feel like a house, and she knew that sometimes she could get a little claustrophobic in her old apartment. Especially when feeling stressed out, even though she rarely let that happen. ”Right away sounds good to me! Why wait? Let there be dogs!” She threw up her arms then, shaking the tequila in the bottle. Speaking of dogs, if she were one her ears would have twitched at the mention of games. A slow grin creeped over her face, quite close to an excited serial killer. She reached into one of the front pockets of her bag and took out her deck before moving around to sit on the other side of the table, placing the bottle next to her on the floor. She shuffled, pivot cutting the deck before triple weaving it. ”Let’s do crazy eights. Whenever there’s a gap between the two cards, drink the difference in shots. ¿Que en?” She really shouldn’t have been challenging Josh to a drinking game, but like pacing themselves, no one actually thought of stuff like that. She just wanted to play. She dealt out the deck. Even though the game usually needed more people, she played it between two before and it was just the same.
She listened to Josh as she dealt out the hand, seven to each, placing the deck between them on the table and flipping over the first card. She fanned out her hand, poking at the inside of her cheek with a tongue. ”I was thinking of working on Lucille,” she told him, organizing her cards out of habit even though she didn’t need to for this game. She was careful about that in bullshit, in case there were observant people around. ”Just got new spark plugs and a fuse block. And I still need to put in the coolant resevoir I got a while back.” It took quite a bit of money to fix up a junker and so she understood that it would take a while. She didn’t mind. The poor thing didn’t even have seats yet, though, nor did she have a hood ornament. She actually looked forward to the search, even though it would be rather difficult. She welcomed the challenge of it, but she would save that for last. She laid down a seven, lucky that she had it and didn’t need to take a drink. ”Added rule, you have to take a shot when you draw a card.” It seemed suitable for the game.
translation: you in?
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Post by JOSHUA DONOVAN DALE on Apr 19, 2012 19:55:16 GMT -5
Joshua laughed, for he'd really thought that she meant keeping butterflies in pets, in tanks like one might keep an iguana or a snake. "We can do that, but... where are we getting the butterflies? I'm not sure pet stores have them." There were plenty of butterflies that mother nature herself provided but if Nell wanted more butterflies then Joshua was willing to oblige. He really would do a lot for Nell. He wanted to keep her happy when she was staying with him and if that meant getting birds and butterflies then that was what he was going to do. As long as she didn't start strapping extraterrestrials to tables in their basement. He figured there would need to be a line somewhere. "Really? That's... not very long." He knew that some animals, mayflies for example, lived even shorter lives but two weeks to a human being was almost nothing. He did not think he'd be able to live his entire life in the span of two weeks. It was almost unfathomable. "Can't argue with that. Maybe we can use one of the rooms in the sunroom tower? Lots of windows." The sunroom was on the top of the circular set of rooms but the rooms below it had plenty of windows of their own. Windows that could be opened in order to let their future feathery friends fly free. "What kind of birds should we get?" He liked birds, probably not as much as her seeing as she actually wanted them as pets, so he wouldn't mind discussing them.
Really, having two people without much limits in one house could be dangerous. Why get one new dog when you can get two, as well as birds and butterflies and fish and cats and whatever else you could fit into a mansion? "Works for me. Should we just go to the shelter and go for whatever dogs attract our attention?" He'd prefer it to be a shelter dog, of course, because they tended to be the ones that really needed homes. They weren't free (it didn't make sense to him that they cost money if they would otherwise be euthanized, but whatever) but of course that was never a problem. "When should we go? Tomorrow, or...?" He was all for going to the shelter whenever the both of them had some free time on their hands. "We could look for birds, too. Butterflies. Whatever we want." He was comfortable with anything at this point, just as long as he knew what was going on. He wouldn't like being kept in the dark about things but Nell didn't seem the type to do that to him and so, in return, he was comfortable with her. "A drinking game, eh? Estoy en." He smirked, definitely feeling up to the challenge there. He was good at drinking games because of the fact that he was tall and he held his liquor well. Was it really smart for Nell to challenge him to one, given this? No, probably not, but who cared about intelligence when you were planning to get shit-faced? Let's see if I can outlast her. Crazy Eight's was luck and skill. If it was solely based on skill he had a feeling he'd be screwed.
Knowing that Lucille was the junker that she had in the garage, he nodded at Nell's words. "Cool. Where do you find this stuff, anyway?" He'd never been particularly interested in fixing up a car, he was fine with Harper, but he was curious nevertheless. This was Joshua, curious about absolutely everything. If there was a question to be asked, he would ask it. If he felt comfortable around a person, that is. There was no such thing as discomfort with Nell. He enjoyed that bond to the fullest. "We'll be down and out before we've finished the round at this point, babe," he said. But he was grinning and he lifted his shot glass as he said, "I'm game." Really, drinking games were fun. He hadn't really enjoyed a bottle of whiskey like this in a while. Everything was more fun when he was drunk, even things that weren't the least bit entertaining when he was sober. That was the fun of alcohol. He glanced at the seven and then at his own hand, blinking and putting down an eight before he tossed back the shot. One's not bad. Still in the game. He did not know when to quit, unfortunately. He would drink until he was blacked out on the floor if it was for the sake of a drinking game he would go all out. It was like Nell and her birds. Why? Well, why not?
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Post by NELL DOE DALE on Apr 21, 2012 10:38:49 GMT -5
Nell held up her finger to Josh, as if about to deliver a very important message. "Harvesting caterpillars, as I said," she repeated. "Their nests are easy to find if you know where to look. Or you can find butterfly eggs on leaves." They may have been in the city, but there was something that made it better than New York--one could actually find wildlife, there was the hiking trails and the mountains. She would have never been able to find the silken nests in America simply because there were no trees, but here there were limitless possibilities. "All right," she agreed with Josh when he mentioned the sun room tower. She'd been thinking of building a wooden bird cage, but that worked just as well. Her first bird was toucan, but then she remembered that they couldn't be kept as pets. Legally, at least. "Uh...Cockatiels are nice, I guess. It doesn't really matter." She waved her hand. She'd like to keep chickadees if it were legal, but she understood that native birds couldn't be kept as pets.
She nodded at him. It had been a little while since she'd gone to a shelter. And hell, maybe she was always in a shelter, but one for humans. Nell was used to it. "Yeah, sounds like a plan." Nell had never went looking for pets before, actually. Save for one instance. She didn't understand how one could choose the kind of pet they wanted until they actually met the animal. Well, she guessed some people may want small dogs for apartments and things like that, but they didn't have that concern. "Tomorrow, I s'pose." She wondered if her love all animals had something to do with her Earth nature, and maybe it did. She never really questioned it. She loved a lot of things. Pretty much everything, actually, and why should animals be excluded? Especially since or most of her life she'd mostly seen stray cats and dogs and pigeons. Everyone yearned for what they didn't have, and for her that was a lot of things.
She inspected her hand, keeping her eyes there as she focused. There was really no need, but she liked to focus. "Auto shops," she responded. Where else? She wouldn't be getting things to fix up a car with at a junkyard, that was rather counterproductive. And sure, there might be some friends who could give her some things she needed that they might have, but the only place to get things for cars were auto shops. Nell shrugged. "Maybe. Maybe not." Did it matter? She really didn't care much about the drinking. She didn't focus much on drinking, anyway. Having a beer or two was just like having a soda. Tequila was hard liquor, but it was still the same concept. Just like she could gamble with Mike and Ikes or money. The gambling was the fun part, not actually getting the money. "What suit?" Nell questioned, looking at her hand. She didn't have another eight, so she knew she'd be playing a suit.
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Post by JOSHUA DONOVAN DALE on Apr 22, 2012 14:29:12 GMT -5
The Fire graduate arched his brows at Nell with an amused smirk when she held up her finger, humouring her by lending an attentive ear. He'd never heard of anyone going out and stealing butterfly eggs to carry into a garden but he wasn't exactly opposed to it. Whatever you want to do, Nell. The amusement did not die from his gray gaze even though he relaxed the rest of his expression back to its usual calm neutrality. "Sounds like a plan. It'll be nice, I guess." He lifted his shoulders in a shrug but smiled to show that he really was okay with it. He had a little more to say on the subject of birds because they were a little more familiar to him than butterflies. "They're the ones that always look like they're blushing, yeah?" He didn't care what sort of birds they got as long as Nell was happy and their feathery friends weren't illegal. He trusted Nell not to do anything that would get them into trouble, though, and so he would leave all the final decisions about birds up to her. As long as he felt like he was part of the decision making process he really could be quite relaxed about the whole thing.
He had figured that the answer would be something along those lines but he had also thought that she might have her own connections. This was Nell, after all, he was never certain of anything with her. The way she remained focused on her hand amused him and Joshua himself was a lot less intense. His only precaution was to ensure that he didn't accidentally tilt his hand toward her and give her a give view of all that he had in it. He glanced down at his hand when Nell asked the question, frowning as he studied it. "Hmm... clubs." He had the most of those, though not by too much, so he figured that it was best to make a decision that would benefit him. Provided she didn't draw an eight and change it right around again soon enough, or play a number instead of a suit and change it that way. Still, Josh was enjoying the game whether or not he won or lost. He could be competitive with some things, like tennis or grades, but card games didn't bring out his fighting spirit quite like they did.
A couple games and he'd-lost-count shots later, Joshua scowled at his fiancée, though the expression was not meant to be serious. "You win," he concluded, tossing down the cards for dramatic flair. "Least I beat you at drinking." He seemed vaguely triumphant then as he jabbed a finger at her. It didn't really matter that he'd managed to stay sober longer than Nell because he was drunk now and he wanted something to do. The fire flickering in the fireplace caught his attention for a moment and he lost his train of thought for several seconds before he turned back to her and said like nothing had happened, "I'm hungry, Nelly. I need... sustenance." He gave a bit of a snort at how ridiculous the word sounded, grinning. His tone was slurred but cheerful nonetheless as he staggered to his feet and gripped the arm of the couch, the room spinning around him. If he were sober he might have realised that putting out the living room fire would be a good idea but it only served as a distraction for another moment. Fire was nice. He bumped hard into the frame of the archway on his way out of the living room but the pain was not registered in his mind. There was plenty of food in the fridge when he opened it but still the Fire graduate was dissatisfied. "We don't have cupcakes, Nell." He spoke as if it might just be the end of the world. "No brownies, either." Real food was best for satisfying hunger but honey badger doesn't give a shit and neither did Joshua.
[Let the baking commence -cough-]
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Post by NELL DOE DALE on Apr 23, 2012 18:02:39 GMT -5
Nell was more than enthused to become the owner of butterflies and birds and dogs. It was nice to have things in general, though in the back of her mind there was the clicking of uncertainty, gears coming together to say that she belonged back in the past where she didn’t have anything. Who said she deserved a life like this, that she deserved to own anything when she was best at purging herself of anything good for her, burning it away? I did, she thought definiantly to wipe away these thoughts. ”I’m more impressed by their mohawks,” she commented. She wondered if that’s where people got it from. A lot of things seemed to come from nature, and she supposed that made sense. Nell decided she’d mull it over a little more when she wasn’t playing a card game. He called clubs, and so she tossed down a three, glanced at the tequila. One-hundred proof, how wonderful. It wasn’t too big a jump from eighty to one-hundred, but thanks to her ex-occupation, she knew how much that twenty mattered. Eighty could bring a six-foot man down with two shots. Nell had no hope, but she hid it well. It got difficult to stay in line when she found it hilarious, like she was hiding a secret.
Especially when she laid out on the floor, legs still crossed, arms at her side. Keeping her eyes on the ceiling, she shot back with a potentially witty, ”Least you beat me at…” For lack of a better argument, she ended with, ”Shut up.” It was hot, her face burned, and she held a card up in the air between her index and middle fingers, squinting at it. ”Ever notice… ever notice that the joker looks like Willem Dafoe?” A sudden epiphany for her, it started to freak her out, so she pulled herself up and shuffled it back into the deck, looking confused when the cards dropped from her fingers and then snorting. God, they were freaking slippery. When she got a good grip on them, Josh spoke and she held up the deck, fanned out cards. ”Lots of fiber, ya dig?” She was pretty sure. What were cards made of, anyway? As much as she loved them, this tidbit of information was unknown to her. In her mind, they were made of something with fiber. Cardboard, mayhaps. For a moment she was tempted to try it, but she remembered that she didn’t want to ruin her already half-destroyed deck.
Nell followed him out into the kitchen and pulled herself up on a counter, something she didn’t do thanks to manners. She held up a hand at his words. ”Just saying, holmes…brownies and cupcakes are not sustenence. Unless you have low blood sugar.” Nodding quickly, her words became fact with that gesture. She wrinkled her nose. ”That’s not right…” she murmured before meandering over to the cabinets for pots and pans. Not paying attention to the structure, she pulled out a sheet for brownies, alerted to her mistake when she heard the glatter. She held up her hands, as if the air itself would prevent any sort of collapse. ”No, no, stop,” she said haltingly, warily eyeing the cabinet, it was an animal about to jump at her if she wasn’t careful. They listened and she placed the pan on the counter, retrieving ingrediants with an intrepid determination. She was gonna provide for her man, these brownies were gonna get did. Soon enough the counter was cluttered with spoons and cups and bowls. ”You like paprika? I think this would taste good with paprika. Spice it up a little, give it some…dinamismo. Pizzazz.”
mmm.
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Post by JOSHUA DONOVAN DALE on Apr 24, 2012 21:21:25 GMT -5
Grinning, Joshua teased Nell's hair a little more, grabbing a few strands of it before saying, "You should get a mohawk, babe. I think it'd be cool." He was joking, of course, joking in that incredibly serious tone that he always used. At least his facial expression was light enough to give it away this time. He wasn't drunk yet and it was a good thing, too, else he might have offered to give her a mohawk. Why he ever trusted himself drunk after the things he'd done while under the influence was a mystery in and of itself. Why Nell trusted him was even more of one. He'd tried to knife her once, would have done if she'd persisted in her quest to follow him home. He didn't think about that now, though. He examined the strands of her hair that he'd caught between his fingers, thinking back to their conversation about dying it blonde and how much he wished Nell wasn't so hard on herself. I like her hair, it's nice. He liked everything about her so that wasn't hard. "I couldn't pull off a 'hawk, though. My hair isn't long enough." Not that he'd want to. Joshua didn't think that he could shave his head, even the thought of it bothered him. All for the sake of the joke, though, he didn't amend his own words. He was sure that Nell wasn't stupid, that she knew it was probably one of the last things he'd ever to do his hair or ask her to do with hers. She'd probably look silly with a mohawk, he thought.
Having not a clue who Willem Dafoe was, Joshua merely nodded and agreed with a, "Sure, sure. Yeah. That's... yeah." If Nell said that he looked like this Willem guy then he did, right? The Fire graduate leaned forward to take a look at the offending card but Nell was already shuffling it back into the desk. He huffed his disappointment and then leaned back on the couch. It was comfortable. He sprawled out on it to get more comfortable considering he was no longer sharing the space with Nell, currently occupying the floor, and he would have cocked his head at her if he was not already laying down. "Ew," he said, wrinkling his nose at the idea of making a snack out of the cards. Then he looked more thoughtful. "You think?" He wasn't contemplating eating one, no, but he was wondering whether Nell was onto something here. He opened his mouth to question her further, then closed it again and shrugged. He'd get over it. He didn't know what cards were made out of because, intelligent as he was, there was no way for one person to know everything. He knew loads about History, Biology, random things in other subjects he'd picked up from books or school, but he'd never really had an interest in the materials of playing cards.
He might not have had low blood sugar, no, but Joshua was certainly a sugar whore in every sense of the word. "It's my life," he said importantly, nodding to back this up. "I do what I want." He really did do what he wanted for the most part. He was a free spirit, not willing to be tied down or controlled. Watching Nell with the items in the cupboard, he blinked at the way they stopped as if on her command. Fascinated, he said seriously, "You're fucking magical, Nelly." Like Harry Potter. No, no, she was more like... Hermione, maybe? Nah, I'm the smart one. Nell was intelligent but Joshua was the bookworm of the pair of them. I'm not a girl, though. Hey. Why are there no smart guys in the Harry Potter series? What a sexist. These thoughts ran through his head as Nell set the baking materials onto the counter. Paprika really wasn't supposed to be used in brownie making, not to his (sober) knowledge, but Joshua nodded his head. "Sounds like a plan." He chuckled. "Pizazz." That was such a silly word. So many Z's. Zed's, he thought, and that amused him all the more. He laughed to himself for a minute before shaking his head.
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Post by NELL DOE DALE on Apr 25, 2012 20:55:57 GMT -5
Nell grimaced and tilted her head away, even though it was obvious she wasn't displeased. "Really? I'll think about it then." She'd seen chicks pull off mohawks, and they were also the chicks with septum piercings and tank tops and a sour look stuck on their faces. Who said she couldn't be that girl, though? She could be anything. It was something she'd been taught before she'd even been given the opportunity to do so. That's why her father and his parents had come to America--to be so much more. "Course you could," she told Josh, running her fingers through his hair and tufting up the top part as if to see how good it would be before patting it back in place. "A mini-hawk. Or a faux-hawk. Don't underestimate the versatility of a hawk." And if Josh ever took a fancy to it, she could get out the clippers. Hell, she was pretty good with hair. And salons were so expensive, at least for her and her frugality. She was sure Josh didn't have the same inhibitions.
Eating cards? Well, why not, why not? You could technically eat anything that you fit into your mouth. Technically, of course, and technical was all she needed to make a theory come to life. "But...maybe not mine, please. They were a gift, hombre." She bit he lip as she looked down at them, laughing at the cards in her hands, the numbers and the suits. Clubs, hearts, clovers, spades. She stared at the one on the bottom, the seven of clovers. So innocuous, it made her snort. Who cared about the seven of clovers? I do, she cooed in her head. Still laughing, she said, "Oh, shut up," at his comment about it being his life. "Not telling you not to do it." She snorted again. "That's a lot of not's." She spent a bit of time going over how to make that sentence better in her head as she fanned herself again. Alcohol and its stupid heat. She slipped the rubber band off her wrist to pull up her hair, the air against the back of her neck a foreign and amusing feeling.
She grinned, a triumphant sound coming from her throat. "Y'all better recognize. Check yourself...'fore you wreck yourself." She didn't think about how she really was magical, she was an elemental, for God's sake. She went to a freaking Academy for them. It took a second for her to remember that this had been going on for a while for the simple concept left her breathless for a few moments. Then another thing clicked, her mind swimming and working to connect everything. Nelly. Most people only called her that when they were patronizing her or being stupid. She missed the times when it was said with obvious affection, when it was with her sister and she even missed the times when it was just Nell out of anger. She missed a lot sometimes, and things liked to be picked up easier with alcohol seeping into her bloodstream, a trap for her thoughts. "I'm like a bird, I only fly away..." she chimed up with the song, not even connecting the name to her own. What was a name, anyway? It was a tag. She could change it any time she want. She could become Jorge Shepherd, all it took was some different papers.
She shook her head, the movement lasting a long while, and she realized this, so she started moving her head in other directions, up and down and side to side. "No, no, no, no, no," she told him. "No. That's not what we need for muy dinamismo." She looked at her mess on the counter, her gaze pensive and thoughtful. "What we need..." she whispered before booming, "We need car-a-mel!" Nell pronounced each syllable with a different inflection, for that dinamismo. She threw open the refrigerator. "Do we have caramel? Oh, caramel, where in Batman's name are you?" Where would one keep caramel anyway? I should no this, her thoughts deadpanned back to her like it was a Q&A. Nell was glad they had her back.
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Post by JOSHUA DONOVAN DALE on Apr 27, 2012 0:32:40 GMT -5
Joshua smiled slightly as she ran her fingers through his hair, liking the way that it felt. He wasn't usually touchy around other people and so this was something that Nell alone could get away with. "Hey, hey, I will not be a mohawk poser. That's not cool." The humour danced in his eyes as he spoke. Really, though, he thought he'd look pretty weird with a mohawk, or long hair, or anything other than the short hair that he'd always had. He supposed that sticking to such a familiar thing meant he wasn't open to drastic changes or some shit in psychology but in reality he just liked the way it looked and wasn't willing to experiment. "Your cards are like an endangered species. Should be illegal to hunt 'em." Or eat them, or any of that good stuff. He didn't plan on eating them anyway. There were people on the cards, too, faces to stare up at you as you munched their numbers. "S'kinda like cannibalism, anyway," he joked, prodding at the Joker as if that explained everything. They weren't really people and he understood that even when he was drunk. Josh was just a bit silly under the influence of alcohol. It'd be cannibalism if she ate Willem Dafoe, though, he remarked in his head, and that was funny too. Everything was funnier than usual.
He recoiled dramatically as if offended when she told him to shut up, though it was fairly obvious from the grin plastered onto his face that he was perfectly fine. "Nuh uh," he disagreed. "Just two." He held up a finger and stared at it for a long moment, quite sure by the fact that everything was shifting and that he had double vision by this point that it was indeed two. He was fairly decent counting to about ten eighty percent of the time. Any higher than that and he was fucked. Don't ask him to recite the alphabet, either. Who knew N could come before M? They sounded pretty damn similar when he was shit-faced and so if by sheer dumb luck he managed to get that far he was nearly guaranteed to fuck that one up. It was a good thing Joshua's control over Fire had slipped his mind when he was staring at the fireplace. One needed good control to manipulate their power and there was nothing 'in control' about being intoxicated. Nothing. He'd sooner burn the house down than be able to keep control over what he was trying to do. Thankfully it was hard to use one's power when drunk so the chance of accidents only happened when you managed to figure it out.
Had he been sober, Josh would only have snorted at the fact that Nell had started singing. Now? "I don't know where my soul is," he chimed in, grinning, "I don't know where my home is..." Alright, so he wasn't a chick or anything but he thought that he was pretty good. "We should get a record deal," he told Nell with a nod. Never mind that drunken duets were a pretty damn common thing if anyone starting singing a song Joshua knew around him when they were intoxicated. He liked singing sometimes when he was sober but it was more for the fact that it was fun than anything else. He wasn't like Lark, he wouldn't turn it into a career. The guy'd never had singing lessons anyway. He giggled (the sound abnormally high-pitched in his throat) when she shook her head. "You look possessed," he crooned. "Like Emily Rose." Josh liked horror movies in large groups because it was fun to see everyone else freak out. He was a calm person, not very jumpy, so he tended to be the stoic one when others were shaking in terror.
Caramel was usually pretty boring. The way Nell said it, though, she made it sound pretty fucking good. He stared at her for a long moment and then stood up suddenly, blinking in alarm and gripping the counter like a lifeline when everything pitched. The lights in the kitchen were hella bright, he realised as he tilted his head and looked at them. "Uh, nuh... yeah!" He corrected his sound of contradiction sharply and slammed his hand against the counter he was still clinging to. "Well, not really, but we can make some." Making things was fun. Barring the fact that he didn't really know how to make caramel. Nell had this in the bag, though. She's got this, Nell's got this. She had a confident air about her. He'd drink poison right now if she told him it was okay. "I like caramel..." Really, he liked anything associated with candy. Anything.
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Post by NELL DOE DALE on Apr 27, 2012 19:24:42 GMT -5
The Earth graduate squinted her eyes at Josh when he spoke about her cards being an endangered species. "I can buy more cards, due, they're not very endangered, are they?" She said the last part like a kid who'd just proven another kid wrong about Santa Claus. Conscious of her money, she tried to save as much as she could after the initial splurge. It wasn't something she could help, and any person who's normally broke can attest to that. Well, she could name a few friends who had better control. She wrinkled up her nose when she looked at the joker. "Would not want to eat Willem Dafoe. Think he'd taste like...leather." She tried to imagine it, and the train of thought was quite horrifying. Not because of the fact that it was cannibalism, but because it was cannibalism of Willem Dafoe. She puffed out her cheeks indignantly. "'S still a lot." Her s's went on for too long, which she also noticed, but made no comment on.
Nell sighed heavily. Oh music, she'd love to make it. And she could, if she tried in the future. She tapped a spoon against the counter rhythmically but with no purpose. "If only people cared more about covers. We have to write our own original stuff first. And then come out with a cover album." She punctuated the sentence with an mhmm. She blinked a few times, tilting her head to the side, and then tilted it back again, amused by this even though it was giving her a head rush. "Really? Emily Rose is who you thought of first? Not Regan from The Exorcist?" She sighed, lamenting his lack of movie knowledge. And then she thought of something. "The Last Exorcism, bro. Her name is Nell. It was about me." There was some shock in hearing her name on the previews when they came on television. She'd lift her head and look at it, confused at first. Of course, she then felt honored that her name was in a movie. It was surprising, considering she didn't think it was that common of a name.
She held out her arms when Josh came up with an answer before decisively abusing the counter. "Are you sure?" she teased. "Need to think about that more?" Nell licked the spoon that already had brownie batter on it. It was for the two of them, and they had the same germs. Or something. Even though they weren't related. She huffed when he amended himself. "You're a liar, Joshywa. How terrible of you." Getting her hopes up and all that. Not a very nice thing to do. But making them? Yes, she could definitely do that. "Get the sugar, then, ándale, ándale." It was something that only someone who grew up speaking Castillian, but she was prideful that she knew American Spanish. When she put the brownies in the oven, she asked, "Thirty minutes to bake, what do we do?"
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Post by JOSHUA DONOVAN DALE on Apr 27, 2012 20:57:33 GMT -5
He shook his head emphatically. "No, no," he protested in an important tone, as if he was about to divulge the secrets of the universe, "Your cards, Nelly. They were a gift, so they're special. Rare." His tone mimicked hers, like he was certain he was right and she was wrong. He was fairly good at debating when he was sober and drunk it was even more difficult to divert him from his goals and opinions. He was generally a cheerful drunk, though, so thankfully he didn't go off into angry rants about anything unless you managed to set him off. Angry drunks were quite frightening because anyone with a weapon or a balled fist could be dangerous no matter how steady on their feet they were. "Fuck the system," he said, dragging out the last syllable a little longer than was necessary and leaning against the island. It was cool to the touch. It felt good against his arm and so he kept it there. "We could make our own way, we're good enough." In reality the music industry was exactly the sort of future Joshua didn't want. It wasn't set in stone enough for him, wasn't predictable enough for his liking. It relied too much on fanbase rather than talent and that
Never having claimed to have a wide range of titles in his arsenal, Joshua shrugged his shoulders. "Her name's in the title," he said, stating the obvious. "Not that it matters." It didn't matter to him, anyway. He blinked at her when she pointed out that she shared a name with a character in the film and stared for a long moment before he reached out to poke her on the arm. "Knew you were possessed." He didn't really get the excitement that some people did when their name was in a movie because his name was in a lot of things, it wasn't like it was ridiculously uncommon. Perhaps not as bad as being called Chris or Michael but it wasn't as rare as Nell's name for sure. "Yeah? Well my name is from the Bible." He said this as if it was the argument to end all arguments. Did Joshua actually care about the Bible? Well, no, because he wasn't religious. Still, it was a pretty big thing to have on your side in a back-and-forth like this, right? He thought so. The Fire graduate wasn't concerned in the least about her licking the spoon. Hell, it was a little hard to be a germaphobe when you spent half your time with your lips pressed together anyway.
He laughed lazily, the sound more like a hum in his throat than anything else. "Liar, liar, pants on fire," he recited. He thought about how much that would hurt and gave a light sort of shudder, his thoughts going morbid for a short while. Once the room had stopped spinning enough for him to coordinate, Joshua retrieved the sugar from its place in the cupboard and slid it across the counter toward her. A rather silly thing to do, really, but it bumped into the side of the fridge without falling off or doing any real harm. It was like playing air-hockey with the counter-tops. He liked air hockey. It was a lot easier than real hockey, a sport that he could watch but had never thought to try playing. "Let's go kill shit," he said enthusiastically, pointing out the kitchen's archway to the curved stairs that were visible as if he had to clarify what he meant. Not that it was a very good clarification. It was a good thing the stairs had railings or he doubted he'd had made it to the second floor without breaking his neck and he waltzed into Annabel's room and sat down on her bed, throwing an arm around her neck. "Hey, move over, we wanna play." She looked confused for a few seconds before she wrinkled her nose. "You're drunk." He just grinned. "Yep. Gimme that." She seemed uncertain of whether to be exasperated or amused as she handed one of the controllers to her brother and looked at Nell. "You playing too, sis?" She'd officially adapted the use of the nickname after gaining Nell's approval.
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Post by NELL DOE DALE on Apr 27, 2012 22:58:22 GMT -5
Nell squinted at the cards, before her eyebrows shot up. ”Ooh, right,” she said slowly, remembering that she’d said they were a gift. She couldn’t buy another pack like them. Right. So maybe they were an endangered species. No, still doesn’t make sense. One-of-a-kind. ”Last of the Mohicans,” she murmured. The last of its race. Poor babies, they didn’t even know she bet. And already they were pretty damaged. She couldn’t help the fact that people enjoyed cheating. Nell held up her hands when it came to the matters of the record deal. ”If you fuck the system, then…what is there? Nothing.” Nell waved her fingers like she was demonstrating the emptiness. She stopped, a smile creeping over her face as she nodded slowly. ”Ahh, Indie label. Ha ha.” It seemed like an idea had crossed her mind, and she was rather content about it. ”I can play the harp,” she said. She’d never tried it, but it was a bunch of long strings that you strummed. Like a guitar, but not really. It seemed easier for that. Maybe because the people playing it made it look effortless, just gliding along the strings.
Nell shook her head, like she was offended about the fact that The Exorcism of Emily Rose was the movie he compared her to. The cinephile in her would not have it. ”Movie still sucked huevos.” She turned her thumbs upside down and blew a raspbery. She didn’t actually have a strong opinion on it, couldn’t think of a movie she actually hated. She wriggled when Josh poked her. ”Then you have horrible judgment,” she said, each word short and stern. ”Letting me into your home. I hope I break something the next time I start convulsing.” She forgot that she wasn’t actually possessed, and the prospect of her body contorting out of her control was very scary. She didn’t like to be out of control of herself, even though she was at this moment, in this second. He went on to state that his name is from the Bible, which he’d told her before so it wasn’t news to her. She paused for a long moment before saying, ”Oh, sorry, I was waiting for the second part of that.” Where did the Bible come from with this? They weren’t discussing name origins here. But she let Josh do his thing.
When he said the nursery rhyme, she bobbed her head. ”Yes,” she stated. ”Yes you are.” Like it wasn’t a joke that he had confused her about the goddamn caramel. It wasn’t a nice thing to do to someone in her state, no it was not. Nell took the sugar, her full attention on the pan now, making sure that she didn’t screw up. Because it was very easy to screw this up. But baking was easy otherwise, barring the time it took for brownies. Even after the half hour, they had to cool. Nell froze at his suggestion of what to do. She furrowed her eyebrows, her expression withdrawn. ”But I don wanna,” she muttered. Why would she want to kill anything? Why was he telling her to go kill things? Nell reluctantly followed. Jesus Christ, does he mean the cats? Her heart twisted for a moment in her chest. But then they were in Annabel’s room, and she sat close to the television, almost tempted to put her hands on the screen for a Poltergeist reenactment. When she heard Annabel regard her, she pointed to the screen, her finger almost touching it. ”What is this, ’mana? What’s that thing? And over there?” She moved her finger around, squinting in concentration.
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Post by JOSHUA DONOVAN DALE on Apr 28, 2012 21:43:04 GMT -5
Joshua rolled his eyes and shrugged his shoulders at her. "So? S'why you watch horror movies. You don't watch 'em cause they're good." He couldn't think of any sort of good horror movie he'd ever watched, one that he'd genuinely enjoyed in all it's horrific glory. Then again, Joshua was not easily scared. Maybe you had to be a chicken to get that sort of enjoyment out of them. He liked horror movies to see just how stupid they made their case, just how cheesy the effects were, and just how much everyone else flipped their shit over the 'scares' in the movie. "Well maybe you're a seductive demon," he told her, laughing. "A... a succubus, that's what they're called." Never mind the fact that horror movie demons that were supposed to be reincarnations of the devil were a lot different than the seductresses in the tales he was thinking of. Fuck logic, logic wasn't his friend when he was joking around. "No, no, I won't bother explaining. Clearly you wouldn't understand." Well, there was that, then there was the fact that he just didn't feel like explaining it because he was shit at explaining things under the influence. He knew they weren't discussing the etymology of names. He was pointing out that, 'Hey, your name is in a movie? Well my name is in a more important place.' Kind of a joking sort of 'mine is better than yours'. Still, he'd let her think what she wanted.
Not realising that Nell was fearing he'd hunt down their cats, something Joshua would never do under any circumstances, he tugged at her arm insistently. "Yes you do, Nelly, it'll be fun, c'mon." He went off upstairs before she could offer much further protest and didn't bother waiting to see if she'd follow him. It was probably a good thing she did else Joshua would have gotten distracted by video games and simply not came back down until she got his attention verbally. Maybe he should have been a little more considerate of the fact that Annabel probably didn't want to hang around her drunk brother and his fiancée when she was trying to get through a game but she didn't protest and so it was probably okay. She did move his arm away from her, though, scooting over slightly. "I can't play with you hanging off me, Joshy," she told him with a roll of her eyes. Joshua ignored her, busy messing with the controls and trying to figure out what all of the buttons did. He found video games too boring and hectic to concentrate on when he was sober but there was a certain intensity to the way he paid attention when drunk. "Kill shit, Nelly," he elaborated on his earlier suggestion, pointing at the screen. "That kind of shit." He gestured at the screen, though he didn't get as close as she did.
Annabel appeared amused but patient as Nell bombarded her with questions and if he'd been sober Joshua might have wondered why she reacted so calmly. Like she had experience in it, like maybe some of her friends weren't as good of influences as they seemed. He was oblivious as he found the 'jump' button and spent the next minute or so jumping up and down and enjoying the physics of the way the character moved. "That's ammo," Annabel said after she leaned over to look around Nell to what she was pointing at. "That's—Josh, what are you doing?" She paused in her explanation to stare at her brother's character via Nell's screen. "He jumps funny," Joshua said accusingly. "Lookit." He pressed the button a few more times before losing interest and finally moving away from that stationary spot. "Nelly, heads up!" He fired at her with a wicked grin on his face and Annabel blinked at him. "You suck at this game," she said, less of a statement and more of a surprised show of confusion. He usually sucked at the game. He turned around and fired at Annabel, too, who glared at him. "I don't suck." Annabel scowled and glanced at her 'sister'. "Tag team?" Joshua just cackled and directed his character around a building to try and take cover from his teammates. Ah, the hazards of leaving friendly fire on.
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