ataraxionlogs | Her Majesty's tears and the pauper's blood

Entry tags:

Her Majesty's tears and the pauper's blood

CHARACTERS: Heather Mason (plus demon) and OTA
LOCATION: the oxygen garden, the kitchen, or just strolling the corridors looking for... stuff
WARNINGS: bad manners, bad language, and possible violence (prearranged she is not going to attack anyone)
SUMMARY: Heather hasn't been out and about much this jump, and when she has she's been with Tillman and probably engaged in what looked like pretty intense conversation ~~or trying to hold his hand under the table at breakfast without anyone noticing~~. Now it's what passes for the wee small hours and she's out unattended for the first time since the jump.
NOTES: Please feel free to grab any of the locations I mentioned or throw in your own! I promised a few people demon interaction, so this is for anyone who wants some :D I'm also cool with prose or action so pick your favourite and I'll follow.

It's been a rough couple of months. That's probably why Heather's been acting a little out of sorts. She's made and lost a dear friend in the space of a jump. Perhaps it's missing Kitten's fashion advice that means she's ditched her own clothes for the Tranquility jumpsuit again, although why she's accessorizing with dogtags instead of her usual ever-present locket is anyone's guess.

But now it's late – or early, depending on your perspective – and she's out and messing with things. Wandering the corridors looking for something to do. In the kitchens with a slight curl to her lip, poking packets of alleged food. In the garden, staring at a patch of dark red flowers she'd been tending near obsessively and looking like she's contemplating ripping them up.

She's obviously bored. Why not say hi?

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As soon as he's able to move, he's pulling away - but the combination of her expression and her actually, you know, being wrapped around him - it keeps him there. More the expression, because when it comes down to it, he's more than capable of wrenching himself out of the way. Or so he thinks.

This is not a conversation he wants to be having right now. After sex, well, maybe, but not when she has that babying, patronizing tone. Not right now. And for that, all of his pissy, tactless defenses come flying right up.

"You're not my fucking therapist," he spits - almost, almost literally spits, right in her face - "So - don't."

The hell is she even thinking.

He pulls back and she almost wants to dare him to try to make a break for it - it'd be fun to see the look on his face when he tried and she sure as shit doesn't care if he breaks the little bitch's legs in the attempt, so it's almost disappointing.

"No, I'm not," she agrees, tilting her head until it almost rests on her own shoulder and looking up at him with big, dark eyes. "Good thing. You don't need one, right? Therapists are for people with feelings. Emotions. All those dirty little human quirks."

Oh fuck, and he can't decide if she's just been waiting on this or if something is horribly, horribly wrong with her. At the same time he's scrambling to make sense of it on another level - and not the logical one. He doesn't want to lose someone he thought he could put store in, and here it is. That part of him wants to cling to any excuse she gives him, any little thread.

The logical part of him is shutting everything down and calling him an idiot, arranging a nice bailout already - and that part is the one that wins. He'd like to think he works that way, and if she's paving the way, he'll do it.

"Right."

"Riiiiight." She draws it out long, almost a growl, and the barracuda smile comes back with a vengeance. "Except that's not quite right, is it? Because if you didn't feel it you wouldn't care. And just look at you."

Really, look at him. He's doing all the work for her, practically leading her by the hand. Broadcasting the hotspots, the dead patches. The places where it's tender and raw.

"You're a mess."

And all that? Sends him straight into Shut Everything Fucking Down mode. He barely lends his trust to anyone, and this is enough to renege on everything that happened before. Plenty enough.

Right, he doesn't. Right, he shouldn't. Right, he won't.

Right, what the hell is he doing with her on the counter.

There, he finds he can't break away, not like he expected to be able to. And that is what rings the motherfucking alarm bells, his trying to pull away and somehow finding resistance.

There it is. Whatever his rationale, to her it tastes like panic and it thrills her. And sure, it might blow her cover a little, but she just can't bring herself to let him go. She's still keeping it just this side of freaky-strong, which is a good thing; partly because even though it won't hurt if he wrenches away it's fucking hard to walk gracefully with dislocated hips, but mostly because it demonstrates that he still just doesn't get it.

"Baby, don't be like that," she purrs. "I'm sorry. I'll make it up to you. Put a ribbon in my hair and act all nice. You'd like that, hmm?"

Baby. Irrational, but he despises it. Given all of this, anything that comes after is icing on the "peace out" cake.

He still can't find it him in him to wrench away hard enough to cause damage, and that? That is dumb as hell. This brat is mouthing him in a bad way, no room for negotiation. If he were a few centuries younger, he'd be punching her lights out, and some part of him wants that because it's the only way he can think of to handle this.

And fuck if ribbons don't remind him of her. Ribbons and someone too nice for their own good and a chiming laugh when his rabbit does something cute, some inane thing to bond over that turns out not to matter in the long run. The Heather he knew might not be a damn thing like Belgium... this, though. Teeth and snarls and blaring danger - through all that, she's offering to attempt it.

There are warning bells, and there is ignoring it and diving right into fantasy. It's - it's tempting. There's an entire ship, but what does he owe them?

"How nice."

Like he isn't nearly sold already.

Well that's just seven flavors of special. Honestly, she didn't know if it'd work. She just found a train thought, latched on to it and decided to see where it would take her. Apparently that particular train goes to Fuckedville, population: Netherlands.

Not that she's not willing to milk it for all it's worth.

"Brother,", she says, trying for Dutch and barely keeping a frown off her face when the translation matrix mangles it, brings it to her own ears in English anyway which means it probably makes fuck all difference what language she speaks to him. It could make things easier or harder, and the only way to find out is to try. So she settles for laying hands on him again, skimming up over his chest to rest on his shoulders, setting her face to sweet. Waiting to see just how far this will go.

Yeah, the translation doesn't work, and "brother" and "borer" aren't the same at all. Broer, with her goddamn accent? It would do everything she wanted it to and then some. Brother, though.

Brother simply jars him so much he's thrown right out of it, like that moment when you're done jacking off and once you look at the screen you're horrified at what you were participating in.

They're not siblings, technically, and this person beneath him is not his sister. Isn't even who he thought it was. And he has to wonder who this is. If it's Heather, well - he got a lot wrong.

Well, fuck. Her misstep shows all over his face, and it makes her angry. Angry enough that there's a flash of something - cold, inhuman, downright evil - in her own expression before she can even try to rally.

"Okay, I screwed that up," she says, shrugging. "But I could learn. You don't honestly think you'll ever see her again, do you?" She lifts a hand, gestures to the body like she's displaying wares. "This might be the closest you'll ever get."

He sees that flash, and while he barely notices, the child in him - the one who still believes in witte wieven and kabouter, even under all the logic he loves so much nowadays - it alerts him right to it. He doesn't know what, but something is wrong.

But what.

Something is wrong and he can't figure it out, but the further he sinks into his mind, the more absurd this becomes. No, he doesn't think he will ever see her again. Yes -

Well, no. The two are very different if he has to think on it. Belgium is laughs and frustrating cheer and curves upon curves just barely hiding a tenacity rivaled by few. Heather is practical and wiry and doesn't hide a damn thing, normally. Or so he thought. It's what he liked the most.

And at this point he's kind of checked out, mentally, and again he tries to pull back.

He's not playing ball anymore, and it's frustrating. Enough that for the barest moment she skins her lip back off her teeth and tightens her grip, contemplates clamping down and doing some damage. She resists, conscious of the need to not give too much away, realizing that there's a good chance she already has.

She could kill him, but someone might notice. Tricky.

Instead she wipes her face of expression, letting it settle somewhere around mildly pissed, and lets go with a shrug.

"Your loss."

If she's going to be like this, he doesn't want in the betting pool. As soon she lets go he jerks himself back to stare at her.

He's honestly not sure if she's been waiting for this all along, or if something is wrong. His paranoia says that yeah, he just lost someone else -

And no. He doesn't want to believe that. He desperately, direly, does not want to believe that.

"What, nothing to say for yourself?" She leans back, propping her hands on the counter, and crosses one leg over the other. Everything about her posture is relaxed, casual, but her eyes are cold and hard. He's proving harder to provoke the more she worries at it and it's tempting to spill, to tell him that Heather's not behind the wheel anymore and hasn't been for quite some time, just to see what he'd do. But he's still something of an unknown. Harder to lead than the others, so she doesn't dare. Instead she smiles, and it doesn't even get close to her eyes.

"No fond farewell? No goodbye kiss?"

No, not really. Even if he can't exactly help eyeing up the line her legs make as she crosses them, the overall effect is marred by how she's fucking looking at him. There's the thought that maybe he should try to drag her ass to Medbay, and it wars with the one that just wants to get out.

Goddamnit. Medbay wins.

He gives his head a short shake and reaches out, intent on yanking her right off of the counter.

There's a part of her that wants to break his arm just for the presumption. She settles for smacking his hands away, harder and faster than Heather ought to be able to.

"Ask me nicely," she hisses. Maybe he's not feeling particularly vocal, but he's certainly making things interesting.

"God-" The "damn it" only finds its way out in a frustrated huff as he pulls his hand back and rubs it, looking over her again, but this time more like she might be a trap he just sprung and less like an attractive woman leaning on the counter.

Ask her? Uh. No. He knows Heather doesn't like Medbay - hell, the entire ship probably does - so he's not sure that he should bother with asking when he knows he's gonna get a laugh and a no in return. Not to mention that he just doesn't want to speak to her, period.

On the other hand, it's not like she knows what he's up to.

"Get your ass off the counter."

It's more nice than yanking her off, right.

"That was mean to be nice?"

Her ass is staying right where it is, thank you. Medbay won't find anything, but she can do without the questions. Especially when she has such a sweet little operation running on the side. She tips her head and blinks up at him, wetting her lips with the tip of her tongue.

"Maybe if you talk to me like that in bed sometime, I'll bite. But not today."

A one-shouldered shrug. "Nicer."

Nicer than yanking her off the counter by the foot and letting her crash to the floor, for instance, which is something he's sorely tempted to do. If he didn't think that something was wrong and that and words might do him some good, his temper would have taken over long ago.

"Fine," he huffs instead, and rolls his eyes and tries to think of something nice. Words don't come, so he sighs and holds his hand out, palm-up, back straight, much like a gentleman from the 1700s, a posture from about the same time that he finally got this help-a-lady-from-her-carraige shit down.

Well that's... unexpected. And enough to make her wonder what the hell he has planned afterward. Whether he thinks she'll just blindly follow him to medbay, or if he's planning to drag her there. Out of sheer curiosity, she places her hand in his and hops delicately off the counter.

"How charming." She raises an eyebrow at him, the and now what? implications clear.

Honestly, that's more than he thought he would get from her, but he knows the second he opens his mouth something tactless and judgmental will come out, so he holds his tongue and keeps up the play they have going on, here.

Which means that the next part involves a bow of sorts, followed by his elbow in offering.

And how many times has he done this for Belgium?

Sometimes he misses this kind of shit...

She'll play along, but she can't do it with a straight face. When she slips her arm through his she's laughing, and it's not even entirely unpleasant. This little game is diverting, if nothing else.

"Where are you taking me?" It's light, breezy. Just this side of flirting. She's not stupid enough to think he'll fall for it, doesn't expect him to take it for anything other than what it is - a taunt. That's what makes it fun.

That's fine with him. If he has to play along to get this over with, he'll do it. It helps that he loves bickering.

"Where do ya think," he mutters, voice neutral other than the mildly amused irritation that comes along with talking back to someone and wanting to see the response it gets. He's not entirely able to stop the skyward roll his eyes make, but his stride and posture are just as jaunty as hers, step-for-step.

"I think you're going to try to take me to medbay."

She's not watching where they're going, looking up at his face instead. From a distance it could be mistaken for affection - big eyes, a bright smile and a bounce in her step. She runs the hand she has hooked over his arm up and down, stroking idly.

"Think you reckon you're going to manage it, too. Won't that be fun?"

Jesus, she can't even bicker right.

Actually. That's a decent enough diversion - he figures the longer he can string this out, the higher the probability that the both of them will make it Medbay. So why not.

"Ya skipped a couple-a steps," he chides, ignoring the way that idle stroking of hers makes him want to shrug it all off, and instead, using his elbow to lightly jab her.

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