maskormenacelogs | [open] get knocked down over 7000 times.

[ Allison isn't sure what to say to that yet. Anymore than ever. Anymore than she can't congratulate people for being here years. Just watches over people do with that sickening dread and nurtured under-hate. Rather than respond she copies a link in. For a restaurant that has a cocktail menu on which there is a scattering of 5-6 mimosa options they offer off of it, too.]

How's this look?

Like I'll have trouble picking

[So, par for the course, which means it's just fine. V fumbles for a moment, typing and deleting and typing when she realizes Allison might not get that.]

It's good. When do you want to meet?

[She is afraid to check the state of her hair at this point, but also, she's not sure she cares.]

I don't have anything for the rest of today.
How about in half an hour? An hour?
Whichever's better for you.

Half hour

[For the exact same reason she didn't want to wait for a real bar: she'd get ready in five minutes, and then sit twisting and wringing her hands, waiting for the moment everything goes wrong.

Why did she agree to get out of bed?]

Allison gets there a little before the time, trying not to be amazed she can go right back to as nervous as she was the week they all came home. The week it all went wrong. The first week here, that it isn't for her, but is for Vanya, and in some ways means it is for Allison, and this, whatever it's called, all over, again, too. She adjusts her sunglasses against the sun, waiting outside, and tries to be polite enough to people asking questions and whispering as she passes.

A thing that she knows is only going to increase in a few days when that summer shoots get out. That she briefly wonders if will be more like home, or strangely different as it somehow mingles both fighting for and in this world, with the life she'd chosen after it. She'd never had, or thought it was possible, to have a life with both in it. She still didn't want it if it came at the cost the rest of this place did.

Vanya, by contrast, is running late. It really was hard to get out of bed, in a way it hasn't been in a while for her. The schedule of rehearsal and lessons had helped to fill in the gaps when she slipped away from therapy: now she has neither, and the lack is already easy to feel.

She destroyed a planet. She almost killed her brothers. She finally played her solo. She could have killed Allison.

All of it keeps running through her head, with no release; it makes her ear hurt more, and that - Jesus, that she's been too afraid to really look at. Too afraid to test. She snapped once, the first night back in Maurtia Falls, directly outside her ear. It sounded dull and muted, and her stomach dropped out from under her at the idea that she might not have heard it at all if she'd had an ear plug in her left ear. That was the first night she'd tried to get trashed, and she regretted the very cheap bottle of wine she'd managed to find by morning.

Getting out of bed is hard: getting ready is harder. She brushes her hair, finds something clean to wear. It's like going through the motions, but an alien has replaced her in the process: it feels wrong, even while it feels right. She tries not to think.

So by the time she reaches teh restaurant, she's already a few minutes late, speed walking through the sidewalks with her head down to avoid anyone who might have a curious work to say.

"Hey. Sorry."

It's fine. I haven't been waiting long.

It's true. Not to mention that she'd probably wait a whole lot longer than she had. Vanya even just being back made it worth making it through the last month of days. Like somehow, something had managed to make anything about waking up, going to work to pay for the house for the others, and going back to sleep worth it.

Allison turns them toward the door, with brisk long strides even in those constantly tall heels, pulling it open and holding it open for Vanya to be able to grab it before she lets go. She gives a glance back, with a half-turn as they're approaching the hostess stand for this place.

Are you thinking straight-up bar-drinks, or do you want some food with this, too?

Edited 2019-07-15 00:40 (UTC)

Vanya's eyes drop to the floor - not a particularly unusual thing - and settle on her sister's heels. She used to wonder, when Allison first started dressing outside of their uniforms, if she had rumored herself into being able to walk comfortably in them. The height had always seemed so impossible to Vanya. But then, what's a few more inches when Allison already stands almost half a foot taller?

Grabbing the door, Vanya slips through in Allison's wake, letting the glass fixture close behind her. The question catches her off guard - or rather, catches her as she's starting to dive into the noise in her own head, the constant whirl of thoughts and judgements that she never seems fully able to escape. She blinks up at her sister once, twice.

"Oh, uh--" She needs to say something. She shrugs. "I - I don't know. Whatever you want." She knows she should eat, and she knows she wants to slip back into what counts as home so she can just drag the covers over her head again. Logic versus emotion. She is desperate to not have to choose.

Allison considered Vanya for a long second. The likelihood of how much Vanya had probably been outside of her house, to shop or explore, even just to eat. Or if she wanted to take it painstakingly even closer, how much she has or hasn't come out of her room, mingled with the people in her house, if they've helped her adjust, if Vanya would let them (if Vanya will let her).

After that single perusal, she looked toward the hostess podium and its cheerful smiling person behind it, in their near little suit and then back to Vanya. Table, then, I think.

That way we can get appetizers, or something to go with them, if we decide we need them. It couldn't hurt.

A nod, and it's that simple. Decision made, not by Vanya, and she doesn't have to bite her tongue in frustration that she couldn't just give Allison a simple answer, but she'll do it anyway. This all feels so much - worse than it used to. So much harder. And it's impossible to keep from feeling it, from knowing that it's her fault. She's the one making it awkward, she's the reason for her own discomfort. What she did.

The shame floods her, and her eyes find the floor again as the hostess leads them to a booth in the back, and she grits her teeth at the frustration that comes hot on shame's heels. This doesn't help anything. She's not helping anything.

"I, um ." Oh, no. She started talking to distract herself, but Vanya can't actually think of anything to say.

"I found out one of my roommates is some kind of exorcist."

Allison followed behind the hostess, trying not to pay attention to the fact it was just one more tiny annoyance in days full of them. Not being able to ask for the table or the location of it herself, or really anything, that wouldn't' be pantomime, or asking for someone full name to be able to send them a message. It's a worn in one. A bruise as constantly abraided as it was ignored.

She slid into a seat, reaching for one of the menu's on the side of the table, already flipping it to the back, looking for the drinks section, as Vanya started talking. She looked up and then down, as Vanya was still finding her words, letting her take her time with whatever she might be saying. Only to look right back up, again, as Vanya found them and ended them with the strangest, most unexpected word of all.

Her face wrinkled up in something like confused-surprise. All pinched in question and she tilted her head, slightly leaning forward. She didn't think she'd need more than the expression that happened so she didn't reach for the words or the network.

It's been years since they lived together, and sure, Allison can hide her thoughts - probably better than a lot of people Vanya has known (with maybe the small exception of Leonard) - but she can be expressive as hell and Vanya looks up in time to catch it.

(She's struck mute, for a moment, remembering the last time they went out like this, sat at a back table and ordered drinks. Allison could speak then, and Vanya can remember what she sounds like, what she would sound like now if she asked what? Her eyes drop to the scar at her sister's throat, then down to the menu on the table in front of her.)

His name's Constantine. We only spoke a little - he was on the network, asking about some...really weird ingredients? I've been afraid to open the fridge.

[The tone her voice takes on is a little sarcastic, but at the same time, she uses their shared facilities as little as possible.]

Allison dimly remembers the post on the network, nothing really specific, but definitely a little about the utterly sleazy guy doing the asking. That didn't make her that happy, but somehow that seemed entirely par for the course with how the people here just pushed people into housing together with no real discretion or decision making skills about the people involved. She gave a shake of her head.

Two of the people in my original place were vampires. She taps her thumbnail a little against the plastic sheet around the menu, thinking about it as she sent, and then added more. Like drink blood, have black out curtains on all of the windows, weird frilly clothes sometimes, all the way vampires.

One of them loved drugs as much as Klaus, so Klaus was pretty much living on our couch about half the time before we moved into the house, too.

Well that gives her pause, and her eyes jerk up from where they'd started perusing the menu.

"Was one of them named Kirk Langstrom?"

It stumbles out, and she wonders if that's something that she wasn't supposed to say - but the guy works at a place called the Crimson Mist, and she's almost certain she saw what she saw, so...how secret can it really be?

(What she doesn't spend much time on is Klaus and a vampire doing their drug of choice; she learned to stop caring about what he did to himself years ago.)

Allison pauses unexpectedly again -- just for a moment thinking of the guy at the bar at the Swear-in during FanPort, bushing just barely against the memory of talking to him about Patrick and Claire on Father's Day, and she wants to be more surprised than she is, but she finds that she isn't -- and shakes her head.

No. Their names are Cassidy & Eccarius. One of them owns a Bluetube show for fashion makeovers, so you might catch him on the Network first, or just roaming around in the Falls. They live in #2.

But that's good to know about Kirk, too.

Oh. Did she share something she shouldn't have? Vanya pauses, wondering, but - she's good at that, isn't she? Making private things public. She picks at the corner of her menu with one nail, scraping along the plastic and pretending to read the drink selection without really seeing it.

It probably wasn't a secret. She's probably just making something out of nothing. Vanya rubs her eyes, and struggles to push past the sudden new stumbling block in her head.

"He was nice, he offered me a job at his bar." She still doesn't know if she'll take it: the bar was baffling and potentially overwhelming. But at least it would pay.

V's relief when the waiter shows to take their order is palpable: she picks the first thing she spots, since she spent just about no time reading the menu...and only then realizes this might be a difficult thing for Allison to do. She freezes, looking over at her sister - ostensibly to help, but there's panic lurking behind her eyes.

Vanya looks instantly like she put her hand in a cookie jar and got it caught, some combination of alarm and worry, but Allison can't bother to look too surprised by it. People here were ... strange. It was more usual in that part than anything else and odd as it was, some people here were just vampires. Apparently. She didn't love it, but at least they weren't underfoot.

But Vanya's words gave her a blink of surprise, and she'd been leaning forward, halfway into writing her question when the waitress came up. They floated, half a sentence made and left, as Allison watched Vanya order.

Then, she lifted her menu and turned it, so many times at having had to do this with no one around already. There's a pasted, yet play-pleased, smile that goes with looking up at the waitress, and then to the menu where she pointed at the cocktail she wanted to start with first, forgoing Vanya's mimosa longing.

It doesn't take her more than a second to figure it out, and when she repeats it as a question, Allison nods.

Then, she leaned back in her chair, looking back to the words at the edge of her vision, and then Vanya, finishing them, and then sending. Are you going to take him up on it?

Allison navigates the world so much more easily than Vanya could ever hope to. It's impressive to watch, and ever since - well, ever since Dad's funeral, it's been hard not to look at that particularly talent the way a moth looks at flame. The simile isn't sound: Vanya wants to gravitate toward her sister, but she's the dangerous one. Her eyes find the scar again while Allison smiles and points out her order, and she has to look down quickly once the waitress leaves again.

The text is what makes her look up, blinking. She's done it every time she's received a text like that, like there's something suddenly in her eye that needs to be blinked away.

"I don't know." Without the menu, she drops her hands in front of her, one atop the other so that she can press little half moons into her skin under her nails. "I got a couple other suggestions, but," she shrugs. "It was a really weird bar."

Vanya mostly looks at her lap and Allison is wishing there were already glasses of water, and there's only vaguely the urge pick up a fork and distract her own hands with it. She can't take her eyes off Vanya. If she thought it'd been a compelling need not to the first time around, the first time around Vanya hadn't vanished for a month to god knows where without any notice.

It's a little like if Allison looked away now, she'd look back and the chair would just be empty.
That this would just turn out to be some new turn of imagination and horror from this place.

Blood in goblets weird, or some other kind of weird?

And what other options?

She feels Allison's eyes quickly, and has to wonder if it's faster than she might have, if she still had her meds. That's not an avenue she wants to wander down, and Vanya presses the nails of her right hand into the back of her left a little harder. Despite that, she manages a halfhearted smile.

"No, just...It was like people showed up for two different bars. Half the crowd wanted some quiet country thing, and the other half wanted to pretend they were vampires." She pauses again, shifting her hands onto the table to lace her fingers together.

"I don't know. Maybe they weren't actually pretending." Another shrug, and she furrows her brow. "A girl - Haru? - She told me the Memorial Center in Heropa might be looking for help, but I never heard from the guy hiring. I mean - I didn't reach out to him."

Allison's eyes wavered, but she nodded. That does sound weird.

Not the kind of place you'd find her, real vampires or fake cosplay vampires. Not that she went to all that many bars in this place. Not that she needed to really once Vanya's first disappeared and suddenly their kitchen turned into a bar's worth of alcohol and then some. Also, she knew well enough what it looked like and what would happen if she walked into and sat on a barstool alone.

It's only a flash in the pan though, though, as Vanya is continuing on.

You should call, then. Find out about if they are looking, and if so, what kinds of jobs. You don't have to take one just to ask about them. See if anything might be a better fit.

"Yeah."

Vanya doesn't say that's what her high school guidance counselor told her when she was heading to college. She doesn't point out that she was given that advice in her work study program, or when she was seeking full time employment. She doesn't point out that it sets her teeth on edge to hear the same advice that people always give about this kind of thing, and she definitely doesn't explain how much harder it is in practice. People say you should call like it's as simple as picking up the phone and dialing. Like it doesn't make her freeze up with the number halfway typed, like she doesn't start thinking about every possible thing that could be said, or asked, and trying (and failing) to preemptively come up with acceptable answers.

You should call, she says, and Vanya stares down at her hands. "I guess that would be smart. Being a secretary can't be that hard." Just...not what she cares about.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that Vanya basically curls in on herself. Even if it's not something she's physically doing, she might as well be. She's staring at her hands and not looking up, and in Vanya speak, at least for as much as Allison is trying to learn it, as a whole language, it's nothing like good. She might not know why, or how exactly, but she's sharp enough to have picked up even that much.

She can still hear the sentiment in her head from months ago.
I just wanted to be a good sister. I guess I failed at that.

She tries again, turning it slightly more over. Or you could keep looking? See if anything you might like better than it appears? You don't have to take the first thing that's available simply because it's there.

"It feels like I do."

The words come out before she really thinks them through, but there's no taking them back. At least this is just an uncomfortable, normal-world issue, and now...well, the nightmare of issues between them. "I mean...there's no rent, that's nice. But i can't remember the last time I was barely getting by like this."

Before she joined the orchestra, really. Before she'd landed this position, she'd been surviving on only lessons, too proud to ask Dad for money, too afraid that he'd turn her away as the most useless child he'd made the mistake of adopting. She'd struggled, but not for long. With her income from the orchestra, she'd been getting by okay. It helped that her only hobby was practicing her violin.

Everything is different now, and she doesn't know what to do with it.

It occurs to her that Allison is probably trying - harder than Vanya is, which makes her close her eyes. She exhales and risks a glance up at her sister.

"There's no...it's okay. You don't have to...find a solution for me."

Allison's head tilts and there's a flicker at the edge of her mouth, that doesn't quite become a smile. Or anything else for that matter, because her focus turns into returning words. Of course, I don't have to.

I want to.

It's short, but it doesn't quite feel like enough and Allison presses her lips, starting a second one, even as she rubbed one nail on the back of a different finger. Fidgeting, just barely. She doesn't know how many times she'll realize that Vanya doesn't know something all over again. How big Vanya knows nothing about the last three months is, when everything keeps coming up and for a second she assumes. Only to remember. That Vanya doesn't.

I hated my job when I first got here, and I chose not to go in a lot of days because I'd rather have set fire pretty much to the whole place with everyone in it. And, even then, it took me months, and several not so great reviews and paychecks, before I considered doing anything about it.

I don't want you to have to go through that if you don't have to.

Edited 2019-07-17 03:07 (UTC)

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