smilestopscars | A House, Currant, Maine, Wednesday

Entry tags:

A House, Currant, Maine, Wednesday

Today's Coterie job had been a dirty one.

No, not the fun kind.

But not the supremely unfun kind, either. Just... literally dirty. There'd been a whole lot of mud involved. It had gotten everywhere, which was why Ezra's first order of business upon getting home had been to take a long and very thorough shower.

Second order of business, upon getting out of the shower, was to throw his muddily destroyed clothes in the trash. With a great big sigh, because he'd liked that shirt, dammit. Just, you know, not enough to go through the trouble of washing it.

Third order of business? Locating clothes to wear.

[ooc: NFB due to distance. Posted with one in mind, but open before her!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Prepare to be disapponted," Ezra tsked as he pushed himself up to his feet. He padded out of the living room, then emerged a moment later from his bedroom with a photograph in hand.

He flopped back onto the couch, then handed the picture to her. "Here."

It was a picture of the three of them. Ezra, Ava, and Lock, in their early-ish teens. Ava looked awkward, and frail. Lock was practically unrecognizable, all floppy black hair and eyeliner. Trying a little too hard to look like a goth badass. Both of them had a malnourished look about them, Ava in particular.

Meanwhile, Ezra looked practically the same as he did now, just younger. To quote Ava, 'it looked like he was posing with misfits he'd taken pity on'.

Kathy took the picture and looked at it, eyes softening. This was the first look she'd gotten of Lock and Ava, who were probably the most two important people in his life, and she couldn't help but feel this was a sign that she was a little further 'in' with him than she'd ever been before.

Her eyes were soft as she looked at the photo, and her face fond as she brushed her fingers over the image of his face. "Of course you were always perfect," she sighed, finally looking up at him again. "I don't know how I expected anything less."

"I told you," Ezra replied with a little shrug. He'd watched her face while she'd been looking at the photograph. he knew she was taking more out of this gesture than just the knowledge that he had always been fabulous. No matter how important it was that she know that.

"Aves and Lock don't look half as tragic these days, either," he volunteered lightly after a pause. "But you have to admit they had more reason to change than I did, over the years."

"Some people have sad goth phases. Some had terrible haircuts and a love for giant floral prints." Sigh, younger Kathy. "Fortunately, time usually has a beneficial effect on most of us."

She handed the picture back to him, fingers brushing lightly over his. "You know, if little me would never have stopped to talk to the you in that picture in front of the candy shop."

Ezra set the picture aside on the coffee table. It looked like an idle movement, but he also put it in a spot where he knew know harm would come to it.

Pictures of the three of them as young teens were pretty few and far between.

"The me in that picture would've gladly stolen candy for her from the shop."

"Now I'm a little offended that this you didn't," Kathy said, feeling nothing of the the sort. "But...you were already hot enough to be intimidating. It was only that you were an adult and adults generally don't care about being mean to little kids that let me speak up."

She looked back over at the picture, unable not to smile at it again. "You that young--I would have been terrified of drawing your attention. You were clearly too pretty to be nice."

"And it would've been her loss," Ezra decided. "I'll have you know I was pretty and nice, even back then."

And he wagged his eyebrows at her, mostly to make her laugh. "I can still steal you some candy, though, if that makes you feel better."

"It would have been," Kathy conceded. "But I also remember how surprised I was when you turned out to be nice when we were older, too. You were way too hot to have time for me."

But then he had. And it had turned her whole way of looking at things upside down.

"After all the baked goods and things I've brought you? You should be stealing me candy all the time," she added with a smirk.

"That sounds suspiciously like work." Everything sounded like work if it wasn't what he spontaneously did. "Pass."

"See if you get anymore cookies from me then," Kathy said, sticking her tongue out at him.

Ezra responded with the highly mature retort of...

Sticking his tongue out right back at her. What? Mature was only his thing a fraction of the time.

Dammit, she had thrown her own bit of ammunition at him already and she was pretty sure that if she pressed a cookie into war as a projectile, he might actually get grumpy.

"Gonna start sending some to Ava," she muttered. "With strict instructions to share with everybody but you."

"She's going to just eat them by herself, anyway," Ezra replied, shrugging as he slouched further. Sitting upright was for losers. "She needs a lot of fuel for her fire, so to speak."

No, literally.

"I get that," the superball said with a wry smile. "For me, it's just to keep going."

It made her trauma reaction of subsistence eating suck even more than it usually would. And yes, now she was making plans to bake for Ava, just because.

Kathy was the mom-friend to people she wasn't even friends with, yes.

"Does Lock need extra calories, too? Or does he just sit between you both and try to keep track of all his fingers?"

"Lock provides the extra calories." Because he was the mom-friend of the group. Stuffing energy bars in his pockets because he knew the others would forget. "Somehow he doesn't think we can fend for ourselves."

It was probably because of previous experience.

Kathy's face took on the too-innocent expression of someone thinking very sassy thoughts.

"Huh," she said, utterly unconvincingly. "I wonder where ever he could have gotten that idea from?"

Maybe because of previous experience?

"Your face is trying to stealth-sass me," he informed her, picking up the cushion she'd thrown at him before - and lobbing it at her offending face. "Quit it. This is my house."

Kathy also caught it, moving with a languid grace of her own.

"You have never let the location stop you from sassing me," Kathy pointed out, giggling. "Stealth nor otherwise."

He probably made it a point to sass people in their own home. Hashtag fox culture.

"You know, there are a lot of rules about what expressions I'm allowed to wear in this house. You're awfully bossy, Ezra Sagishi."

She was so cute when she giggled.

"Deal with it, dumpling. I'm living by ground rules, and so shall you."

And hey, his ground rules were also about things they weren't supposed to talk about! So, fair play.

"What's next, I'm not allowed to shit talk when we're playing cribbage?" Kathy asked, pouting. Well, pretending to, really. Her eyes were sparkling with far too much mischief to be really all that put out about it. "Just saying, if I'm not allowed to sass, we're going to be spending a lot of time sitting in silence."

And Kathy was pretty sure that boring Ezra was a much worse crime than sassing him.

It was actually true. There was a mucch higher risk of him just wandering off, for one. If you couldn't keep his interest then you didn't get to keep him, period.

But silence didn't always mean boredom.

... Though they'd definitely done away with most things between them that would've still been fun in silence.

But he shrugged anyway. "Silence doesn't scare me, darling."

Like Kathy had ever been good at staying silent, even if neither of them had exactly been talking in those moments.

"I'll just end up making funny faces at you to see which expressions go on the Not Allowed list," she decided. "I'm very good at being self-entertaining."

Just now, her face was going all chagrined as she realized the underlying double entendre there. Oops.

Ezra did not miss a beat in pointing at her face.

"There, that's not allowed," he said, then booped her on the nose for good measure. "You're thinking too hard about your phrasing, Kathy, I can tell. And it's not allowed."

"I just don't wanna be a jerk," Kathy mumbled. "And overthinking is kiiiinda my jam."

As he well knew. That had been one of the many reasons she'd appreciated him so much when they were still sleeping together. He'd been able to shut her brain off in such very lovely ways.

"Well, stop it," Ezra replied, although lightly enough to make sure she understood it was a joke. He knew about her overthinking, oh, he did, and he wasn't going to suggest it was something she could just magically turn off. "It gets in the way. Mostly of you, having a good time."

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject