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Post by JOSHUA DONOVAN DALE on Jun 4, 2011 11:12:26 GMT -5
Some people may have been careful about how they told her such things, but in Joshua's mind she'd asked about her eye colour and so she probably wanted the truth rather than a workaround. "It does," he said, though not coldly. He might be telling the truth, but he wasn't going to be a dick about it. "I was born with my eye colour. Yours seem like they might have been a different colour once." He knew enough about scars and scar tissue thanks to his father and his own aspirations to get into the medical field. "It looks like they might be gray because of the scars." He wasn't trying to upset her with his words, but Joshua's honesty could be a fickle fiend. On one hand, at least he wasn't lying to you. He lied about himself a lot, but if someone asked for his opinion he was usually honest enough. On another... he wasn't lying to you, and might not lie even when it was for the greater good.
He listened quietly and carefully as she described how she could tolerate him, how he was nice to her and she heard his voice differently than other people did. "Usually I am being cold," he pointed out fairly, but his tone was a tad lighter and could even be described as partially amused. His menace was a defence mechanism, after all. He was an asshole so that he didn't have to let other people get close to him. It was different with Elaine. She wasn't involved in all of their petty rumour conspiracies--most likely because she was a part of them all herself "Thank you for sharing that with me." True, it hadn't been much, and seeing as it was her opinion of him he could even have argued that he had a right to know. But not a lot of people took the time to explain why they felt about him the way he did. It was good to have a little insight on the other end of the spectrum.
She turned the question around onto him, and he frowned slightly as he thought about it. "Give me a moment," he requested. The fact was that he didn't usually explain such things to other people, so she was going to need to be patient as he formulated how to say this. It wasn't to be rude or to shun her question, he just needed time for some personal recollections of the times they'd hung around each other before. He scraped together what he could remember of the occasions and how he had felt during them, remembering that she'd never once made any remarks about how he was a jerk, or how he was too much of a bookworm. The braver idiots liked to try making fun of his study habits. These idiots usually got burn scars to show for it, and Joshua a detention and threats against his position in the college.
Finally, he spoke. "I suppose it is easy for me to hang around you," he said. "You are never as superficial as the others, and you'd never felt the need to question how much time I spend with my books." The laugh then was humourless, suggesting that he really wasn't fond of such things being called for questioning. He had a natural love for learning, how did that make him any less tough than anyone else? "And up until today, you've never said anything that's upset me. Take no offence to this occurrence, however. I was already in a bit of a mood." It was easy to anger him. It was even easier when he was already infuriated by something that had happened earlier in the day. "I suppose we each enjoy the company of the other for the same reason--minimal effort. There is never a point in staying around someone who is difficult to tolerate."
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Post by marci on Jun 5, 2011 22:15:55 GMT -5
Elaine nodded, a little sadly, when Joshua answered her question. She'd gone through a phase when she was younger, during which she'd ask what color anything and everything was. It was a sort of a torturous denial she'd put herself through when it first hit her that she was missing half the world. When she finally thought to ask about that she'd looked like...well.... ”Yeah.” She said softly, a resigned smile on her lips, ”It took forever for me to get my aunt to answer that. She'd always say they were a unique grey, and then she'd turn and sigh the way she always did when she was holding something back.” Decieving her, she'd thought once.
Goodness. Why was she saying this to Josh? Shaking her head, Elaine sputtered a little, ”That was stupid. I know you're not interested in all that.” He was remarkably patient, and very quiet. Something about him made it easier for her to just talk about things. Maybe it was because she knew he probably would care enough to judge. And if he did, at least she could be positive that he would go around gossiping about it all. Oh well. Elaine pulled herself together, straightening up a bit and brightening her expression. It didn't matter all that much.
When he said he usually was being cold, Elaine gained a humorous expression, ”Yes, but in this case what I think you mean matter a whole lot more than what you really do mean. That's the only part I react to.” Then she waited a second, letting out a quiet laugh when he thanked her. With a slight grin, she said, ”You're very welcome. If it made you any happier, then my work is done.”
She waited patiently when he had to think. She had to wonder exactly how hard it was for him to put all that together. Funny, she was constantly switching between considering him to be one of the toughest, most assured guy she knew and thinking of him as someone who was just a little confused and a lot...troubled. Everything about the way he carried himself made her think of a lot of deep, personal issues that had not been resolved. Not that she had any intention to try and touch on that, ever, in their friendly relationship they had going on. The way she saw it, everyone was dealing with something.
He started talking, and she lowered her head a bit. Part of her wanted to be shy, another part was very happy with all the compliments. They meant a whole lot, coming from him. Even with how well he treated her compared to everyone else, she wasn't really sure she'd ever heard a real compliment out of him in all that time. When he mentioned his time with books, she laughed, a few wrinkles forming on her nose, ”You are to your books as I am to my instruments.” She said, ”I understand completely. It's part of the reason I can respect you so much.”
She continued to grin, ”So that's us: friends by general convenience. For my own sake, I hope nothing changes that.” She angled her head away from him, but not enough to hide from him her expression, ”If I was being harassed and you came upon the scene, would you interfere?” She said this in genuine curiosity, hoping her tone would convey the fact that she was asking this not as a test or a challenge, but as a mere point of interest. Something about the way she said it almost insinuated that she wouldn't much care if he left her behind. Almost.
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Post by JOSHUA DONOVAN DALE on Jun 5, 2011 22:50:13 GMT -5
Elaine said something about him not caring, causing Joshua to furrow his brow in slight confusion and annoyance. "Woah," he cautioned, sounding a little affronted. "If I am uninterested in anything, believe me when I say you'll hear about it." What kind of guy did she take him for? Joshua was not the type of person who pretended to listen to something out of general courtesy. If you were boring him, he'd tell you. If you were a friend he might be a little less harsh about it, but most of the time he was very blunt and didn't factor feelings into the situation. It sort of put him off to think that Elaine saw him as someone who would just put up with that. "Just because I have a bad reputation--" He cut himself off, shaking his head and frowning. No, mustn't get too riled up today. He could feel the anger coming on again and it was a sensation quite unpleasant. It might have seemed touchy that such a small thing could go about setting him off again, but such was Joshua's volatile and unpredictable personality. You really had to step on eggshells around him. It was in fact remarkable that she'd avoided setting him off until this point.
He gave a wry little smirk and added a matching chuckle for her benefit. "Your interpretations could very well be mistaken. I've been told I'm unpredictable." And so he was--Joshua accepted this without much argument. He knew that he was a loose cannon and that many people thought he was bipolar. But he wasn't; he'd eventually went and gotten that tested just to prove everyone wrong. A lot of people saw him switching between moods without much of a trigger, but there was a difference--there was a trigger. Joshua always knew what it was that was making him angry, and it always made more sense to him than it likely ever would to anyone else. He definitely had a temper problem. His anger issues were something that Joshua would never try to make light of or deny. But he got very angry when people said that he was psychotic or bipolar because he knew that he was not.
Joshua smiled, even though she couldn't see the gesture. "With any luck, things won't change," he said. Oh, he could never tell for sure. But he felt that he could trust Elaine and that as long as she didn't hold his random outbursts of anger out on him that they could remain friends. It took a long time to get the volatile Fire student to actually relax around you, but once you'd accomplished such an effort it wasn't quite so hard to maintain the friendship. Josh was good to his friends and incredibly loyal when he needed to be. He didn't have a long list of people that would put up with him and so he felt that he owed these patient souls a bit of his time and his respect. When he'd been growing up the majority of people had treated him like a loser and a bookworm. He'd sort of put up with it then. He hadn't cried or whined about it, but he hadn't truly fought back. Then he'd met the gang, and they'd taught him to fight for all the wrong reasons. He'd thought they were friends until they tried to kill him. And now he had extreme trust issues and a habit of violence.
The question caught him off guard, but he answered almost instantly with a bit of a hard edge to his voice, "If you were being harassed and I heard about it, some people would be due to get their asses kicked." The fiercely protective tone brought with it a rare burst of passion that wasn't usually seen outside of his love for studying and education. This was what it meant to truly be on his good side--when the thought of someone hurting you or even being a general jerkass bothered him and caused him to respond with rage, you knew he was on your side. A wave of heat swept through the room as the mere thought provoked his ire, his hand clenching into a fist so tight that his knuckles bleached white against his fair skin. "Ack," he said, noticing that he was making the room a little too hot to be considered comfortable. He drew the heat in around him and turned it into a burst of flame which dissipated, taking the majority of the uncomfortable warmth with it and leaving only a pleasant room temperature in its wake. "Yeah. I'd help," he concluded with a fierce nod for his own benefit.
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Post by marci on Jun 6, 2011 11:12:06 GMT -5
Josh's quick interruption surprised Elaine. She cringed a bit when she heard the anger in his voice, a grimace showing on her features as she shrunk a little in her seat. It wasn't that she was afraid—no, it wasn't nearly that—but she felt bad for making another mistake like that. When he went on, though, her head raised sharply. She bit her lip to keep a sharp remark back. Did he really think that she thought of him that way? After all she'd put up with and witnessed him put up with, did he really think she was assuming things based on his rumor-mill reputation? She took a deep breath, releasing all the tension in her body before she shook her head.
”Josh, believe me when I tell you that I don't give a damn about what other people say about you. I would have said that no matter who I was talking to.” Her voice was soft, patient. She wanted to say more, but she knew it would be a bad idea. Even she had a hard time keeping her tone non-confrontational during situations like this. It was a misunderstanding, nothing more. So she settled back in her seat and gave him a smile. No need for hard feelings over something so trivial.
Elaine stuck her tongue out playfully, ”Well, so far they haven't been. Whether or not you have meant to insult me, which I doubt, from where I stand you haven't ever been mean to me. Thus, that particular reason for my enjoying your company still stands.” The truth was that even if on the surface he was a little distant and closed off, Elaine sensed—whether she was wrong or not, she didn't know—that there was a heck of a lot more underneath. A heck of a lot that wasn't nearly so bad as people made him out to be.
Elaine found a smile when he expressed hope that things wouldn't change, but it was soon lost in an expression of shock when he answered her newest question. His tone had suddenly changed from quieter and almost indifferent to fierce, protective, and intense. The blind girl drew in a breath, feeling her adrenaline kick in just from the surprise. She might even have felt the barest hint of fear if she hadn't been absolutely sure that the cause of his anger was the thought of people hurting her. Which, honestly, blew her away. She knew he thought of her as a friend, but she hadn't ever seen this part of him before. It was intense. And yet....
She was on the verge of calling a wind to dispel the intense heat when Josh made a noise and dispersed it himself. It dawned on her that she had been holding her breath since he'd started with the passion. She let it out, and with it went most of the tension in her body. She lowered her head, feeling tendrils of hair fall to obscure it from Josh. For several seconds she just stayed like that, dealing with the emotion that he had called forth from deep inside her. It took awhile. Longer than she'd thought it would. Though no sound issued from her, a hand moving up to remove wetness from her cheeks revealed what she'd been doing.
Her head raised, and still-damp eyes opened slowly to gaze, unfocused, in his direction. She let out a long breath, an almost smile forming and then disappearing. She hesitated, then forced a smile again, ”Thank you. Really.” Damn it, she did not like being this vulnerable. It was bad enough not being able to see. ”I feel a whole lot safer now. No one.... No one's ever really been there to protect me before.” She might have been silent about it, but she didn't want Josh to think he'd scared her, or something like that. When she thought about it, even Celia had failed in the protection department. She'd been the best friend Elaine had ever had, but she'd never made much of an effort to stop May from making her life miserable.
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Post by JOSHUA DONOVAN DALE on Jun 6, 2011 13:42:40 GMT -5
It was always difficult for him to see past the anger, to brush away the rage and calm himself down. His temperament was the type that people went to shrinks to try and figure out how to take it down a notch. But Joshua had too much pride to admit that he needed help for the problem, and he likely never would suck it up. He had no problems admitting that he had a terrible temper and that it was very destructive, but as soon as it got onto the subject of getting help, his agreeable side shut down. No. No he would not go and get help. People saw shrinks when they had problems with mental health, that was how he felt about it. He wasn't crazy, he just got upset a little easily, that was all! Admitting he was wrong or that he had something wrong with him was not an option. He felt as if he could deal with this anger on his own. Sure, he got a little out of hand sometimes and actually hurt someone, but he felt like they deserved it if they dared push him that far. He was easily irritated even with friends, but he didn't flip shit and get violent unless you really pushed him. So his solution to this was simple: Don't fucking push him.
There were times, however, when even his friends would go too far. It was evident that Joshua was trying to keep his temper in check as he inhaled deeply and clenched his jaw. She wasn't trying to upset him. A small part of Joshua understood this. But the other part--the currently dominant part--was twisting his stomach and filling it with ire. How could she suggest such a thing? He heard her insisting that she would have said it to anyone, but the rage insisted that it didn't matter. She should have known he was blunt enough that he'd have told her. Still, the small part of him scolding his brain and calling himself an idiot slowly took over and worked toward dousing the rage, enough that he closed his eyes and exhaled such as slowly. "It's... it's different for me, okay?" His words were slow and careful but also stiff with suppressed anger. "I don't... I would tell you if I was upset about something." Or at very least he'd show it like he was now.
She smiled at him as if to show that it was okay, and Joshua forced himself to swallow the hard lump in his throat and just move on. It was only a tiny, trivial thing. No need for him to stay so upset. But wait--hadn't been mean to her? What was all this anger then, all this pointless rage directed toward someone who honestly hadn't meant any harm? Still, in the hopes of avoiding anger on her part, he kept his mouth shut. If he pissed someone else off and they went off on him, things could quickly go from relatively calm to catastrophic. Joshua didn't mesh well with angry people. Yelling at him or even making snide remarks might just be enough to warrant an attack. Even his father, whom Joshua was actually afraid of, had proved he could push far enough for his son to snap. Of course, the rage that Donovan had shown afterwards had doused Joshua's anger like a torrential rain, and the sharp punch that had followed soon after had made him back off indefinitely. Of course, it had also increased his fear of Donovan tenfold, but that was a story for another time.
Things calmed down after that, Joshua relaxing once more as they switched to the subject of their friendship (how ironic) and she brought up the unexpected. What was even more unexpected, however, was her reaction to his response. He noticed how she tried to hide her face and fell silent, and he worried that he'd breached some sort of taboo boundary. "What's wrong?' he asked, the anger completely dissolved from his tone now as he sounded more concerned than anything else. "Was it something I said?" Joshua knew well enough that he didn't display the best of tact when conversing with other people. He didn't have a lot of friends to practice on and he didn't even live with his family any more so that was out.
As it turned out, she was crying. This freaked him out a little--oh, how he was terrible at dealing with crying--until he saw her smile, which promptly threw him off again. People didn't usually smile when they were upset. She thanked him and then admitted that no one had ever been there to protect her, something which both put his mind at ease and made him even more determined to do just that. "Yeah, well..." He cleared his throat awkwardly. He wasn't that great at dealing with sensitive matters or emotions or anything like that. Typical guy. "If anyone bothers you, just let me know. I'll sort it out." And he would, truly. Even if his methods of 'sorting things out' were a little... less than friendly.
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Post by marci on Jun 6, 2011 14:37:18 GMT -5
Honestly, the girl was now at a loss. There was such an unexpected outpouring of emotion that she was trying to hold back, that the only thing she could do was hug herself and keep her head partially down. She blinked a few times, feeling a lump rise in her throat as things she had never thought to be connected to this feeling started to surface. Maybe....maybe she was more lonely than she realized. She didn't make a tone of friends, she didn't like to. But it hurt, and all she wanted right now was a big hug—the kind her aunt would give her those days she came home crying from school. The kinds her aunt would give her when she began feeling suicidal.
”Wish you'd told me that years ago.” She whispered, a few more silent tears making it out of her eyes. She shook her head and shoved her hands in to her face, gritting her teeth as she tried to stem the flow. This wasn't good. Now that everything had erupted, she wouldn't be able to hold back all the emotion for very long. Once she had herself under control again, she took a deep breath and rigorously rubbed the water out of her eyes. ”Now you know I'm messed up, too.” She chuckled as she said this, standing shakily.
A light breeze came to her bruised hand just then, putting a little pressure and reminding her it was there. She grimaced, then felt the fully realized bruise with her right hand. Her sightless gaze wandered to one side as she made her analysis. ”It's swollen.” She said, ”Perfect. I read with my right hand, but this is still going to be annoying.” It would be obvious to anyone who knew her that she was distracting herself. She didn't really care all that much about her hand. It was annoying, but she'd forgotten about it until a few seconds ago, and that meant that it wasn't going to be extremely difficult to put up with.
Elaine let the breeze move about her, playing with her hair and making it look like it was floating a little. Her face was angled away from Josh, a sure sign that she was no longer all that comfortable with the situation. She took a deep breath, then said, ”I'll come to you if I need any help.” It was said almost as a promise, partially as a warning. Elaine knew she couldn't deal with everything by herself, even with the fact that she was one of the best wind elementals of her grade. But right now, she couldn't take the company anymore.
”I should really go.” She said, stepping over to where her backpack was. Then she stopped, chuckled a little, and turned back toward Josh. ”No, you know what? I'm not gonna make dumb excuses with you. Fact is I'm sad, and craving some alone time. I hope your studying goes well.”
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