smilestopscars | A House, Currant, Maine, Saturday

Entry tags:

A House, Currant, Maine, Saturday

Earlier in the week, Kathy had requested Ezra to tell her when he was free to be visited at home in Currant. And today, well, he was free for a visit: the house was empty, Lock was off in Boston with Bianca, and Ezra had nothing in the way of obligations happening. So he'd told her that.

And now he was just waiting around, lounging on the couch, reading a book. Easy Saturday, just like he liked it.

[ooc: NFB. Primarily for the one mentioned, but open also for texts/calls/whathaveyou!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"I know."

He didn't really know what else to say. But at least that sounded the tiniest bit softer.

Kathy would take it. She leaned over, tried to run her fingers across the back of his hand. Just to kind of...be there. If he'd let her.

He let her.

Didn't say anything, but he was letting her touch him. And he was watching her.

After a moment, he turned his hand, offering her his palm instead.

Kathy took it, lacing her fingers through his. She bit back another apology, instead bringing his hand up to her cheek and resting it against her skin.

She didn't kiss it, just because he was still upset and might not want it. But she was tempted.

There was no telling, even for Ezra. He was just so, so tired.

So he just kept watching.

Kathy wasn't sure what was okay to do. She tried to tug him in to her side, her hand inching up into his hair. If he'd let her, anyway.

"I wasn't trying to force you into something or to make you feel guilty. I honestly thought..." She shook her head. "Doesn't matter what I thought. I was an ass to you and I hate that."

Ezra shifted closer to her. But, instead of leaning against her side, he flopped over to lay across his lap, his head cushioned on one arm which in turn was on her thigh.

"Please stop explaining." He sounded weary.

"Okay," Kathy said. "Quiet? Or a sudden topic change?"

"You can try the latter."

He made no promises.

She expected none.

"I'm taking classes at NYU now," she said quietly, stroking his hair. "I'm a visiting student, not a permanent one. Haven't figured out a major or a degree yet, either. My therapist says I'm not allowed to. She says I have to go for at least a year, maybe a year and a half before I decide. And I have to try a bunch of different classes, including at least one or two that I'd normally never look at twice."

Ezra frowned faintly at the ceiling. He still sounded a little far away, but something had caught his interest all the same. "That sounds like a lot of control. Is that what therapists normally do?"

He wouldn't know. They had some excellent Coterie insurance these days, but mental health wasn't really covered in the package.

"I mean, I don't have to listen," Kathy said. "I mean, okay, she said it's a good idea, not that I can't. But..." She frowned, running her hand through her hair. "She wants me to spend time experimenting with things. Figuring out what I liked, not just choosing stuff because it's what I think I'm 'supposed' to be doing."

Her voice faltered for a moment. "She says I need to live a little, because it's not something I've done enough of yet."

"Now that sounds like something I can agree with," Ezra replied, with a faint gentleness to his tone. Not that he thought all the rest was bullshit either, though. "You've earned some living."

"And she knows that I do better with...I don't wanna call 'em orders, but...assignments, maybe?" Kathy said. "Left to my own devices I flail and worry. So now I have an assignment about school and another one about jobs and I can feel like I'm accomplishing something, even if I'm just flitting about." She tucked her hair back behind her ear and brought her hand down to scritch at Ezra's head again. "But she wants me to take time and look for something I love, rather than just stopping at the first thing I don't hate."

Ezra didn't go out of his way to react to teh scritching. But he wasn't turning away from the touch, either.

"She sounds smart."

And like someone Kathy really genuinely needed.

She entirely was. She acknowledged a lot of Kathy's problems that she'd gotten from LA, from being an ex - but really wanted to work on the problems that had started a lot earlier than that.

"Yeah," Kathy agreed. "And living through everything with Mundus means she believes me when I talk about a different world where I turned into a zombie and ate people for a year."

"That's good." He'd wondered about that, yes, but with his state of mind pretty much all of his questions were finding it hard to make their way up to the surface where they would actually be voiced. "Would be bullshit if you had to try and hide everything and still get usable help from it."

She wasn't asking him for questions any more than she was asking him to react to her scritches. She was pretty sure she'd hit her limit of asking Ez for things for awhile.

"Happened with my first therapist," Kathy said. "I spent more time thinking of plausible lies than I did trying anything we talked about. Finally realized that someone who'd just gone through a demon invasion would probably have a more open idea of what was possible."

"It's like why the Coterie has its own doctors, too," Ezra replied after a pause, looking past her up at the ceiling. "It takes far too much effort to try and keep outsiders out of the loop."

Kathy could think of other reasons why they might have wanted doctors loyal to the Coterie and not the typical ethics that regular hospitals had.

"Exactly. She'd trying to get the paperwork through that would get Ronin recognized at a proper service dog so I can take him more places. Like class and stuff. But that might be impossible because his training was interrupted."

Like everything involving the Coterie, it was a little more complicated than that, yes. But these days, keeping their world under the radar was a major concerns.

"And why was that?"

There were two things he could be asking 'why' to. Kathy was going with the easiest to answer.

"Because Mundus through a chunk of pavement onto his street when they were battling," Kathy said quietly. "The whole area around there is a wreck, even now. He managed to escape somehow and lived as a stray for a couple of years before I foun--okay, before he found me."

Ezra frowned, but just barely. "Wait, so are we talking about his... normal, run-of-the-mill basic dog training that got interrupted by this, or...?"

He knew nothing about dogs.

"He was in training to be a service animal. Probably for someone with PTSD, though it's hard to say without his records," Kathy said quietly.

"Okay, so I was on the right track at first." Not that it mattered much, especially with her tone being what it was. "He has you to help now, though."

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