make mine a pain in the neck

[glassbox]

WHO: Harvey Dent & Lil Crawley.
WHERE: A local park.
WHEN: Morning.
WHAT: Totally normal best friends forever.
WARNINGS: These two.


[ Frustration always becomes something of a physical presence for Lil Crawley -- something that gets under her skin and sits in her gut like a tumor. She dwells on things until they consume her, keeping her up at night. She knows it was mostly her fault, what happened with Matt, because she'd been reckless and impulsive and careless, like she always is, but that knowledge doesn't make it any better. If anything, it makes the state of things harder to accept. It makes her restless, filling her with fitful, volatile energy.

So, she takes up running in the mornings again. It isn't as if she's sleeping well anyway.

Lil takes her old path through the park, letting her mind linger on her taste in men, or how much of her romantic troubles she can possibly blame on her husband's rejection of her. That train of thought works her running pace up to a relatively aggressive one, and she nearly sprints right past what initially appears to be a homeless man, sleeping on one off the nearby benches. She wouldn't have given him a second glance, except that face is one she's become so familiar with that she unconsciously registers some recognition -- enough that her steps slow and she pauses, squinting over her shoulder.

Finally, she walks back towards him. Another pause, then she shakes him roughly by the shoulder. ]

Harv?

Comments

[glassbox]

But I know him better than you.

[ She doesn't know why it seems so important to contest that point -- some possessive impulse, a reaction based out of emotional injury, her wound from arguing with Matt still fresh all this time later. She won't think about the words that had been said -- how he'd said they could've been something, or that if he didn't have a right to be jealous, neither did she. But here she is, sitting across the table from Harvey Dent and becoming gradually more aware that she might just be jealous of him after all, as ridiculous as the entire notion is.

Lil folds her arms and crosses her legs under the table, just barely bumping it with her knee thanks to the crisp, frustrated nature of the movement. ]

Either way, we're gonna have t'stop fightin' over him every single goddamn time we see each other.

[indenture]

No you don't -- and you're the one picking fights over this, Lil. I'm trying to stay out of trouble.

[ Harvey sits back, face more scowly than ever, but he relaxes himself through small, easy movements -- refolding his napkin, adjusting his shirt collar, aligning his silverware. Little things that require enough time and focus to clear his head even that much. ]

You don't even have a reason to be getting weird about him. We're entitled to a friendship. [ He puts his menu down. ] What're you getting?

[glassbox]

It ain't friendship, whatever y'got goin' on. Or at least it ain't a normal one. I dunno what it is, exactly, but that ain't the word I'd use.

[ Her tone still has a slightly catty edge, but at least she's looking at the menu again when he asks her that question -- determined, it seems, to still have a meal with this man. Speaking of odd definitions for "friendship." ]

I'm gettin' waffles an' OJ. [ She eyes him over her menu. ] What're you gettin'?

[indenture]

Nothing about me is exactly normal these days, if you ain't noticed.

[ He winces at that, though, irritated by the coarseness of both his tone and his vocabulary. "Ain't" isn't a Harvey Dent word. So Harvey Dent needs to stay more focused, present in his current state of mind.

Which means he simply glowers before pinching at the bridge of his nose and responding with: ]

Eggs. Toast. Coffee. Nothing fancy.

[glassbox]

[ Not that Lil even has a well-calibrated sense of what normal even means anymore. In way, this has become it's own twisted kind of normal-- her and Harvey, their bad tempers, the situation escalating. But at the very least, they aren't at each other's throats. Not for the moment.

Lil leans to wave over the waitress before glancing back at Harvey. ]

Don't know what you're talkin' about. Y'sayin' y'think y'were more normal before this?

[ Not that his appearance had ever really fazed her -- but aesthetically, he seems more normal to her than ever. ]

[indenture]

[ Harvey levels a look at her, more deadpan than annoyed. ]

I used to be. What, you think I was born with burns up and down my body?

[ But he's also convinced -- at least some part of him is -- that what happened to him happened for a reason, that maybe he really was meant to be that other Harvey Dent, Harvey Two-Face, to view the world the way it really was. Does it count as blindness is Harvey is trying not to see something?

He doesn't think about it for now. He just turns toward the waitress to make his order. ]