βͺ in her life before, everything was a race. there are no second chances, no thinking-about-its, when opportunity comes, she had had to grab it β if it means a few extra dollars, some food, a gap in a window that would mean a warm, dry place to sleep at night. this is how she had approached relationships, too. who knows who'll make it through the next month? all the worse during those times when she had tried to sort her life out, stumbling into closeness at the same time as she's trying to handle bills and appointments and shitty jobs.
part of it is simple personal growth, of course, and learning from past mistakes. part of it is the fact that she knows he'll be there tomorrow. and the day after. and next month. she doesn't have to rush through each step β with him, she can savour the hours they have, talking about everything and nothing, getting to know him. there's no attempt to stomp a future out of the ground with a near-stranger. it's more setting down each stone for a foundation, letting something grow from the tension and the warmth.
in the here and now, she's a civilian, of course. this is the moment when she learns that exit wounds look worse than entry wounds, and that, this close, to know how close he must have been to death almost physically hurts her. but his shoulders are tense, too, and she rests her hands gently against them, hot as they are from the water that's steaming all around them. β«
I think it's just what they meant when they said it's 'rustic'.
βͺ her voice is warm, she's... focusing back on what she meant to do. take care of him a little, after all, he did all the driving and some of the wood-chopping necessary for the oven-heater later. he can't be downright accused to not taking care of himself, but she sometimes wonders what he's keeping at bay by always being on the go. when he's not at work, he's at the youth centre, and when he's not at the youth centre, he's making plans for it, or bonding and mediating and community-building with the shifters at the bar. it's the way he engages with the world she admires, it's how much his heart's blood runs through the spaces he makes for others. she just wants to make sure his heart's taken care of as well. she wants to make sure that. now and again, he rests, breathes, takes space for himself, not for others. β«
You got a nice singing voice.
βͺ it's a light, but genuine teasing, to distract him from the way she'd noticed the scars as she begins to massage his shoulders. β«
( and just like that, the wariness dissipates. like sunlight coming to the ground through a gap in the trees, flora always seems to know just the right thing to say. he rolls his shoulder, laughs a bit. )
You were awake for that, huh?
( just him and whiskey in a jar. when i was going over the cork and kerry mountains... ironic, that as a cop he'd love songs about career criminals so much. maybe it's the rebel in him. )
Well... thank you. Just don't tell anybody, you might ruin my street cred. Tough guys and singing... ehhh...
βͺ it's a bit ironic, she's not going to lie. then again, she wonders how many people picture their cops with tattoos, a beloved car, a passion for photography.
and that's ignoring the fact that most people from flora's circumstances don't necessarily picture cops as the kind of people who spend most their free time trying to help. β«
I won't tell, no worries.
βͺ she says it with a laugh, but she means it. nice for the atmosphere, anyway. tracing circles where he seems most tense -- β«
I don't think you have to worry about your cred. Unless you're secretly knitting.
( he leans a little, into the warm pressure of her hands. christ, when was the last time anyone touched him like this? he's not even sure he and bill had time for it, their marriage happened mostly while he was overseas and she was in school and then it was over. they'd been closer, somehow, in high school when everything had seemed so simple, before the world changed. working with kids now, looking at sixteen year olds who've been on the street or in the system, sam wonders sometimes how he was ever that young.
idly, he reaches to tie his hair up. he's always got a band around his wrist for just that purpose. )
No. But I'll confess, I do kind of know how to do some beadwork, though.
( a woman's work, traditionally. the peril of growing up with more women than men, though his grandfather had tried to teach him to work leather he's not sure how much of it he's truly retained. )
βͺ she's fond of his hair, but it's true that it's a little in the way of the massage, especially if he wishes to keep it mostly dry. it's so good to feel him relax, leaning into her hands as she works. there's a calmness and a trust she feels around him, and in moments like this one, it seems so good and mutual. β«
Oh! βͺ while she'd been teasing before, she sounds truly genuine now that she continues, and while he can't see her smile, he can definitely hear the warmth of it in her voice. β« Your grandmother must have been so proud.
βͺ it's another good picture, the idea of a young sam learning from her or someone else in his life back then. β«
( the grief is still a jagged, grasping thing. the only good he's ever taken away from the timing of his grandmother's passing is that she didn't have to hear that he was missing in action. that alone might have killed her.
instead: )
No, she'd — passed on by then. I learned from my older sister. She was always more into that whole cultural preservation thing than me. She's the one I'm learning Lakota from, too.
( plus, she's nearly fifteen years older than he is. she just... had more time with their grandparents. )
βͺ the hurt is still real, every bit as real as the scars on his back though of an entirely different nature. it feels cheap to say 'she would be proud anyway', she's never met the old woman, though part of her wishes she'd have had the chance. she'd done good by sam, it would have been immensely precious to see the roots of it all. β«
It's a way to keep them in your life, isn't it?
βͺ she can only guess β she's never met her grandparents, doesn't remember her mother, no longer talks to her aunt. surely, she's got family somewhere, but they're not family in the way the other shifters at the bar have become. β«
Yeah. We don't always get the luxury of choosing what to keep.
( there are people trying to keep the old customs alive, but not enough to be choosy about what you learn to carry forward. so sam knows a little beadwork. )
βͺ there's quiet for a moment, the comfortable silence that sometimes settles between them, when there's not a hundred questions and fifteen funny stories from the bar bubbling out of her. that said, no proper massage can stick to his shoulders, and she can't do this unevenlyΒ ββ which means she lowers her touch, gently caressing where she wants to continue β her right hand on skin, her left on skin, too. skin and scar-tissue. β«
Yeah. Not a lot of sensation. Scar tissue's a bitch like that.
( maybe it's easier to talk about with her than he'd anticipated. but how many times in ten years has he been deliberate about letting other people see them? be this close? not many. the women he's slept with mostly thought they were sexy, or used them as proof positive he must be in dire need of fixing or saving or both, somehow. the real answer is so far away as to almost be on another planet. scars just mean something you've survived.
there are other things that've hurt him worse than bullets in his life.
he's silent a moment. then, )
It was a Kalashnikov. Russia really fucked up with that one, left probably half their second world war armory in Afghanistan after they pulled out in '89. The guns migrated with the militants.
βͺ the pressure she applies is even, then, but not deep enough to cause pain β just enough to soothe muscles beneath, in as far as she can, as she listens him talk with some passion, but almost some kind of personal impassiveness about his injury. that, she thinks, is almost typical for him β he thinks of an 'us', the men he fought side by side with, who were all faced with the same weaponry, the boys, she guesses, who didn't outlive them. he speaks of the gun that did it, rather than the life it had almost cost him. she wonders if that's his way of self-defence.
she lowers her head β he can feel her curls against his back before she pulls herself together. β«
Sorry 'bout that, I just. βͺ her hands remain steady, uninterrupted. β« It doesn't look survivable. And it's hard to think about that.
( he wants to lift his arm, angle his elbow and bury a hand in those curls, but he doesn't. tell her it's okay. she feels too deeply for other people, and empathy can be soul-crushing when you're new to the idea of emotional tolerance and regulation. she hasn't had people to care about in a long time. )
Shifter things, you know. The crow wanted to live.
( all shifters are inherently hardier than humans. something in their dna. they're stronger, they heal quicker. it doesn't seem to depend on the type of shifter or the durability of the animal in question — he doesn't think he's inherently any weaker than his grandfather was in his prime.
βͺ she wants to hold him, but she doesn't. these are old wounds, it isn't fair to suffer at him right now, not when he's sharing a story. there's time for that eventually. β«
I'm glad we met.
βͺ it can't encompass all she feels, but it's... it's an important part. β«
Can I ask you about something else? The coordinates?
( he has a very real, very visceral moment where he wants to tell her no. where he wants to keep that old moment to himself, play close to his chest. the scars he'll talk about. the grueling walk through the desert that came closer to killing him than the bullets did. hell, he'd even tell her about the men who did it.
but the coordinates aren't only the place he got shot.
he sucks a breath in between his teeth, hands clenched beneath the still water of the tub. some of flora's questions have, in the past, been invasive, but she hasn't asked any that makes him angry like this one does. and he knows it's not reasonable or rational for that sudden ember of rage to combust into a conflagration, incandescent with the burn, but.
he has to walk himself back. focus on the mist. the air. the ambient sounds of the woods. somewhere, in the distance, a wolf is howling, and maybe that's how he finds center again. )
Sorry.
( for the shift, the change. his father's anger was a storm to be weathered, sam still recalls how the mood would drop like the ambient temperature when the sun had gone down whenever his father came into a room and he'd told himself they'd never have that commonality.
softer, )
Sorry. 'Don't get a tattoo if you don't want people to ask', right?
( breathe in. breathe out. the wolfsong has stopped, and he wonders if they're coming closer. )
It's just a place where a lot of people died.
( they'd been laughing. joking about something stupid. heartbeats between moments, and everything can change in the space of one. military equipment is built by the lowest fucking bidder, rocket launcher meets metal plating and it was like tissue paper. jefferson never stood a chance. none of them did. if he hadn't been so disoriented by the blast, maybe — maybe it would have been different. but it wasn't. )
βͺ she lowers her hands, instead, reaches for his, which he has balled into fists under the surface. he's seen her shift and hide from angry patrons before, a habit she'd developed around some of her aunts more drunk, more rage-prone lovers, and her less than relaxed aunt herself.
it's not that his anger leaves her unaffected β it's that she believes in this moment, it's caused by hurt, rather than a true wish to lash out at her. so she lets him breathe, waits until the water's calmed, listens to his breathing, syncs her own with it. β«
I shouldn't have prodded into it.
βͺ not: i shouldn't have asked, her question's fair enough in her eyes. what she feels she shouldn't have done is find out they're coordinates, type them into a search engine, that kind of thing. sometime's a message's coded for a reason. β«
( 'a lot'. it's probably fewer than the number she's imagining. four, in this case. a small quantity of things, in the grand scheme of the universe, but it had been his whole world, then.
she doesn't flinch from the anger, and maybe that's why he leans back into her. just a little. it's instinct to cling to whatever isn't sinking in a storm. )
No, it's fine. ( her prodding. therapy's convinced him, sometimes he needs to talk. ) It was war. You don't go in expecting zero casualties.
( and they'd all been world-weary vets of afghanistan. fighting in the hindu kush. mountain warfare with a population that knew the land like the back of their hands. christ, he lost count of how many times fngs asked him why he, the only native guy in the unit, wasn't better at tracking them. like it's a fucking inherent skill he could just pull out of his ass on command.
afghanistan had cut their teeth. iraq was just more of the same. problem was, they'd let their guard down. complacency. maybe if someone'd been up in the turret scanning the horizon, maybe if they hadn't been goofing off, maybe if they hadn't all been thirty-six hours without sleep, maybe, maybe. each thought is a deeper furrow than the path the bullets took, and he carries them just the same as the scars. )
βͺ it takes her a moment to place what these words remind her of, as he sinks back into her touch, as she slowly lets go off his hands to get back to massaging his back, tend to the tensions in the most physical way she can. it sounds familiar ββΒ
it's an odd comparison, in the end, but it feels fitting anyway. drugs. not that she's ever done anything worse than smoke a little weed, the fox had saved her from that, had given her a place of safety and comfort and simple joys that were enough of a home to keep her from it. but addicts spoke that way about dead friends, sometimes. it's heroin, you don't expect to live that long. β«
I... I don't think it's fine. βͺ her voice is very soft. β« I think it's very, very difficult, actually.
βͺ there's a moment's hesitation, as she tries to wrap her thought into words.β«
I know you're strong. I just... I need you to know that I'm not going to fox off the moment you're feeling something other than calm and good humour.
( he surprises himself with a laugh. a little chuff of noise that's almost more crow than human, perhaps in presentation more than sound. )
No, I meant it's fine you're prodding. Six years of therapy has actually managed to convince me I'm pretty fucked up about it.
( there's a million words for what he feels. survivor's guilt is probably the foremost of them. his tone's a bit flippant, but that's just one more way he deals. easier to talk about it like it happened to something else. easier to pretend that infection isn't still below the surface waiting for the right pressure of a sharp knife to lance it out into the open air. )
But trust me, Flora, you wouldn't see that side of me if I didn't know it was. ( his mouth twists into a grimace. the word-choice that follows is deliberate: ) safe.
( for her, first of all. he couldn't control being angry, but he can control the anger. but. safe for him too. to show it. )
βͺ he's likely caught flora do much of the same thing, the shrug that usually pre-faces some revelation about her past that she knows isn't normal or healthy or good, but the truth all the same. maybe not the best trait to share, but if nothing else, it means they speak each other's language. β«
Good! We're on the same page.
βͺ she says it to try and lighten the air, as she's still doing what the jets wouldn't bless them with, easing tension out of him moment by moment. β«
I've been talking to friends a lot about... everything, but I'm going to get myself one of those therapists too, when we get back. Turns out the college's got a bit of an offer for students, counselling and such. Wouldn't be something I would have considered much if we hadn't met.
( her hands feel fucking wonderful. between that and the hot water, if the conversation weren't as fraught as it is, he'd be thinking about a nap. instead, he just ducks his head down, stretching out the muscles as she works. )
Just make sure you get a good one. Not every therapist's a fit for every person. The first couple I had really made me want to punch holes in drywall more than anything else. One of them thought it was a great idea to get critical about the war and the American invaders. Loved that. ( a bit of a sharp exhale. ) All I'm saying is, don't throw the baby out with the bath water if it doesn't stick at first.
βͺ it's right on the money β she fully hadn't considered that. β«
I'll keep it in mind. And... I'm glad you found one who works well for you.
βͺ there are other things she's thought about β boris, like every year since billie suggested it, is happy to host a thanksgiving for the youths. flora's sat herself down and thought of some things she can do with the kiddos without doubling down on things billie or sam or the others are already doing, and came up with a few ideas.
but... and that might be a bit selfish. but part of her just wants to enjoy the hot water, wants to do just what she's doing right now. sink in the moment. β«
βͺ part of her wants to joke, before she remembers the way he lives and realises that this is, truly, the kind of thing he can just buy. working jets and all. by now, with her place being as crappy as it is and the occasional generous tip, she's got her paycheck and savings that, well, don't amount to more than two hundred bucks, if that. and that's already a lot, considering where she used to be.
she's paid no mind to the wolves. it's... not her habit to focus on the soundscape of nature like that. β«
I'm not stopping you. I'll trade you breakfasts and dinners for a dip.
( he knows that it's wholly possible she's got a chip on her shoulder about the money. he tries not to lord it over anyone, but it's an undeniable part of him — but he didn't have the typical model of wealthy upbringing growing up. his father was frugal. every penny had to be accounted for, clothing was bought second-hand or mended unless it was to be worn in front of the cameras, belongings beyond that had to be earned. sam mowed lawns every day for a summer to buy the nintendo he'd had as a child. and after he moved out of that old, big house at sixteen he'd been as dirt poor as anyone else.
honestly, he had no idea how much money the old man had skimped and saved away until a lawyer was muttering millions into his ear over a poor-quality phone connection. he'd thought at most the house was the only asset of any note, and that he'd wanted to sell. his mother was the one who changed his mind, who'd said that he should take it as a chance to turn a place of misery into something better.
he's not. quite there yet. maybe once he throws out the last useless box of hoarded garbage he will be.
but in the meantime, he has more freedom than he's ever had in his life. money has gone from meaning everything to meaning almost nothing. he's not rich, but he's certainly wealthy. he could quit his job tomorrow and live off the interest of the sundry investments. instead, he pays them back into the community. sets up grants and programs and ways for people to better their lives. all things his father claimed to do but rarely did. he never made a financial move unless it doubled his return somehow. sam feels a kind of petty, vindictive pleasure in spending his money frivolously. )
Deal. Also, god, yeah, that spot. Right there, right shoulder.
βͺ he is not unpleasant about his wealth ββ in fact she's had no idea of it until she saw his house. that aside, he knows, intimately knows, in part through his work, what her side of the financial equation looks like. β«
Like so?
βͺ she can feel how tense this spot is, and she focuses her touch, amping up the intensity just enough to hopefully rub out the tension. β«
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part of it is simple personal growth, of course, and learning from past mistakes. part of it is the fact that she knows he'll be there tomorrow. and the day after. and next month. she doesn't have to rush through each step β with him, she can savour the hours they have, talking about everything and nothing, getting to know him. there's no attempt to stomp a future out of the ground with a near-stranger. it's more setting down each stone for a foundation, letting something grow from the tension and the warmth.
in the here and now, she's a civilian, of course. this is the moment when she learns that exit wounds look worse than entry wounds, and that, this close, to know how close he must have been to death almost physically hurts her. but his shoulders are tense, too, and she rests her hands gently against them, hot as they are from the water that's steaming all around them. β«
I think it's just what they meant when they said it's 'rustic'.
βͺ her voice is warm, she's... focusing back on what she meant to do. take care of him a little, after all, he did all the driving and some of the wood-chopping necessary for the oven-heater later. he can't be downright accused to not taking care of himself, but she sometimes wonders what he's keeping at bay by always being on the go. when he's not at work, he's at the youth centre, and when he's not at the youth centre, he's making plans for it, or bonding and mediating and community-building with the shifters at the bar. it's the way he engages with the world she admires, it's how much his heart's blood runs through the spaces he makes for others. she just wants to make sure his heart's taken care of as well. she wants to make sure that. now and again, he rests, breathes, takes space for himself, not for others. β«
You got a nice singing voice.
βͺ it's a light, but genuine teasing, to distract him from the way she'd noticed the scars as she begins to massage his shoulders. β«
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You were awake for that, huh?
( just him and whiskey in a jar. when i was going over the cork and kerry mountains... ironic, that as a cop he'd love songs about career criminals so much. maybe it's the rebel in him. )
Well... thank you. Just don't tell anybody, you might ruin my street cred. Tough guys and singing... ehhh...
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βͺ it's a bit ironic, she's not going to lie. then again, she wonders how many people picture their cops with tattoos, a beloved car, a passion for photography.
and that's ignoring the fact that most people from flora's circumstances don't necessarily picture cops as the kind of people who spend most their free time trying to help. β«
I won't tell, no worries.
βͺ she says it with a laugh, but she means it. nice for the atmosphere, anyway. tracing circles where he seems most tense -- β«
I don't think you have to worry about your cred. Unless you're secretly knitting.
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idly, he reaches to tie his hair up. he's always got a band around his wrist for just that purpose. )
No. But I'll confess, I do kind of know how to do some beadwork, though.
( a woman's work, traditionally. the peril of growing up with more women than men, though his grandfather had tried to teach him to work leather he's not sure how much of it he's truly retained. )
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Oh! βͺ while she'd been teasing before, she sounds truly genuine now that she continues, and while he can't see her smile, he can definitely hear the warmth of it in her voice. β« Your grandmother must have been so proud.
βͺ it's another good picture, the idea of a young sam learning from her or someone else in his life back then. β«
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instead: )
No, she'd — passed on by then. I learned from my older sister. She was always more into that whole cultural preservation thing than me. She's the one I'm learning Lakota from, too.
( plus, she's nearly fifteen years older than he is. she just... had more time with their grandparents. )
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It's a way to keep them in your life, isn't it?
βͺ she can only guess β she's never met her grandparents, doesn't remember her mother, no longer talks to her aunt. surely, she's got family somewhere, but they're not family in the way the other shifters at the bar have become. β«
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Yeah. We don't always get the luxury of choosing what to keep.
( there are people trying to keep the old customs alive, but not enough to be choosy about what you learn to carry forward. so sam knows a little beadwork. )
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βͺ there's quiet for a moment, the comfortable silence that sometimes settles between them, when there's not a hundred questions and fifteen funny stories from the bar bubbling out of her. that said, no proper massage can stick to his shoulders, and she can't do this unevenlyΒ ββ which means she lowers her touch, gently caressing where she wants to continue β her right hand on skin, her left on skin, too. skin and scar-tissue. β«
Is this okay?
no subject
( maybe it's easier to talk about with her than he'd anticipated. but how many times in ten years has he been deliberate about letting other people see them? be this close? not many. the women he's slept with mostly thought they were sexy, or used them as proof positive he must be in dire need of fixing or saving or both, somehow. the real answer is so far away as to almost be on another planet. scars just mean something you've survived.
there are other things that've hurt him worse than bullets in his life.
he's silent a moment. then, )
It was a Kalashnikov. Russia really fucked up with that one, left probably half their second world war armory in Afghanistan after they pulled out in '89. The guns migrated with the militants.
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she lowers her head β he can feel her curls against his back before she pulls herself together. β«
Sorry 'bout that, I just. βͺ her hands remain steady, uninterrupted. β« It doesn't look survivable. And it's hard to think about that.
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Shifter things, you know. The crow wanted to live.
( all shifters are inherently hardier than humans. something in their dna. they're stronger, they heal quicker. it doesn't seem to depend on the type of shifter or the durability of the animal in question — he doesn't think he's inherently any weaker than his grandfather was in his prime.
he lifts a shoulder in an absent shrug. )
It healed up fine.
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I'm glad we met.
βͺ it can't encompass all she feels, but it's... it's an important part. β«
Can I ask you about something else? The coordinates?
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but the coordinates aren't only the place he got shot.
he sucks a breath in between his teeth, hands clenched beneath the still water of the tub. some of flora's questions have, in the past, been invasive, but she hasn't asked any that makes him angry like this one does. and he knows it's not reasonable or rational for that sudden ember of rage to combust into a conflagration, incandescent with the burn, but.
he has to walk himself back. focus on the mist. the air. the ambient sounds of the woods. somewhere, in the distance, a wolf is howling, and maybe that's how he finds center again. )
Sorry.
( for the shift, the change. his father's anger was a storm to be weathered, sam still recalls how the mood would drop like the ambient temperature when the sun had gone down whenever his father came into a room and he'd told himself they'd never have that commonality.
softer, )
Sorry. 'Don't get a tattoo if you don't want people to ask', right?
( breathe in. breathe out. the wolfsong has stopped, and he wonders if they're coming closer. )
It's just a place where a lot of people died.
( they'd been laughing. joking about something stupid. heartbeats between moments, and everything can change in the space of one. military equipment is built by the lowest fucking bidder, rocket launcher meets metal plating and it was like tissue paper. jefferson never stood a chance. none of them did. if he hadn't been so disoriented by the blast, maybe — maybe it would have been different. but it wasn't. )
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it's not that his anger leaves her unaffected β it's that she believes in this moment, it's caused by hurt, rather than a true wish to lash out at her. so she lets him breathe, waits until the water's calmed, listens to his breathing, syncs her own with it. β«
I shouldn't have prodded into it.
βͺ not: i shouldn't have asked, her question's fair enough in her eyes. what she feels she shouldn't have done is find out they're coordinates, type them into a search engine, that kind of thing. sometime's a message's coded for a reason. β«
I am sorry you lost so many people.
no subject
she doesn't flinch from the anger, and maybe that's why he leans back into her. just a little. it's instinct to cling to whatever isn't sinking in a storm. )
No, it's fine. ( her prodding. therapy's convinced him, sometimes he needs to talk. ) It was war. You don't go in expecting zero casualties.
( and they'd all been world-weary vets of afghanistan. fighting in the hindu kush. mountain warfare with a population that knew the land like the back of their hands. christ, he lost count of how many times fngs asked him why he, the only native guy in the unit, wasn't better at tracking them. like it's a fucking inherent skill he could just pull out of his ass on command.
afghanistan had cut their teeth. iraq was just more of the same. problem was, they'd let their guard down. complacency. maybe if someone'd been up in the turret scanning the horizon, maybe if they hadn't been goofing off, maybe if they hadn't all been thirty-six hours without sleep, maybe, maybe. each thought is a deeper furrow than the path the bullets took, and he carries them just the same as the scars. )
no subject
it's an odd comparison, in the end, but it feels fitting anyway. drugs. not that she's ever done anything worse than smoke a little weed, the fox had saved her from that, had given her a place of safety and comfort and simple joys that were enough of a home to keep her from it. but addicts spoke that way about dead friends, sometimes. it's heroin, you don't expect to live that long. β«
I... I don't think it's fine. βͺ her voice is very soft. β« I think it's very, very difficult, actually.
βͺ there's a moment's hesitation, as she tries to wrap her thought into words.β«
I know you're strong. I just... I need you to know that I'm not going to fox off the moment you're feeling something other than calm and good humour.
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No, I meant it's fine you're prodding. Six years of therapy has actually managed to convince me I'm pretty fucked up about it.
( there's a million words for what he feels. survivor's guilt is probably the foremost of them. his tone's a bit flippant, but that's just one more way he deals. easier to talk about it like it happened to something else. easier to pretend that infection isn't still below the surface waiting for the right pressure of a sharp knife to lance it out into the open air. )
But trust me, Flora, you wouldn't see that side of me if I didn't know it was. ( his mouth twists into a grimace. the word-choice that follows is deliberate: ) safe.
( for her, first of all. he couldn't control being angry, but he can control the anger. but. safe for him too. to show it. )
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Good! We're on the same page.
βͺ she says it to try and lighten the air, as she's still doing what the jets wouldn't bless them with, easing tension out of him moment by moment. β«
I've been talking to friends a lot about... everything, but I'm going to get myself one of those therapists too, when we get back. Turns out the college's got a bit of an offer for students, counselling and such. Wouldn't be something I would have considered much if we hadn't met.
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Just make sure you get a good one. Not every therapist's a fit for every person. The first couple I had really made me want to punch holes in drywall more than anything else. One of them thought it was a great idea to get critical about the war and the American invaders. Loved that. ( a bit of a sharp exhale. ) All I'm saying is, don't throw the baby out with the bath water if it doesn't stick at first.
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I'll keep it in mind. And... I'm glad you found one who works well for you.
βͺ there are other things she's thought about β boris, like every year since billie suggested it, is happy to host a thanksgiving for the youths. flora's sat herself down and thought of some things she can do with the kiddos without doubling down on things billie or sam or the others are already doing, and came up with a few ideas.
but... and that might be a bit selfish. but part of her just wants to enjoy the hot water, wants to do just what she's doing right now. sink in the moment. β«
I like this place. I'm glad we came here.
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Honestly, all this is doing is convincing me I should put a hottub in my back yard.
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she's paid no mind to the wolves. it's... not her habit to focus on the soundscape of nature like that. β«
I'm not stopping you. I'll trade you breakfasts and dinners for a dip.
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honestly, he had no idea how much money the old man had skimped and saved away until a lawyer was muttering millions into his ear over a poor-quality phone connection. he'd thought at most the house was the only asset of any note, and that he'd wanted to sell. his mother was the one who changed his mind, who'd said that he should take it as a chance to turn a place of misery into something better.
he's not. quite there yet. maybe once he throws out the last useless box of hoarded garbage he will be.
but in the meantime, he has more freedom than he's ever had in his life. money has gone from meaning everything to meaning almost nothing. he's not rich, but he's certainly wealthy. he could quit his job tomorrow and live off the interest of the sundry investments. instead, he pays them back into the community. sets up grants and programs and ways for people to better their lives. all things his father claimed to do but rarely did. he never made a financial move unless it doubled his return somehow. sam feels a kind of petty, vindictive pleasure in spending his money frivolously. )
Deal. Also, god, yeah, that spot. Right there, right shoulder.
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Like so?
βͺ she can feel how tense this spot is, and she focuses her touch, amping up the intensity just enough to hopefully rub out the tension. β«
I'm so going to do this more often. It's fun!
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