Shelter - 10.8.2014 [Nate]

Molly

As it turned out, the mystery 'thing' that Lux wanted very much for them to come check out with her was a costume party-- a zombie crawl of sorts.  There was some kind of a music festival, some kind of a charity, awareness raising for some local film community or something along those lines.  Molly hadn't been paying too much mind to those particular details, because the fun they found was more in the gathering than it was in the purpose.

There was face paint and fake blood and red punch with some sort of jello-y situation worked into it to make it look more like gore and guts.  "Tastes like Hawaiian Punch, though," Molly had informed Verna while fetching a cup for both of them, as the woman seemed hesitant and untrusting of the stuff to begin with.  To her credit, Molly had picked up on the wallflower tendencies the other woman had and was making an effort to try and keep her included.  Chattered about nursing and what Verna did as well (Holy shit when do you find the time to sleep?).

Ultimately, though, the clock would peter away further into night until Verna insisted she needed to go home and have some minimal hours of sleep at least.  Molly and Nate used that as a cue to call it a night as well, and since they'd arrived together they left together as well.

She'd finally purchased a car for herself earlier in the year, so she drove them out to Santa Fe earlier that night.  The newer model Volkswagen GTI parked against the curb in front of Nate's house.  She didn't presume that there would be an invitation to come in, so she didn't kill the engine right away.

"Y'know," she said, "that surprise wasn't so awful.  I kind of half-expect that word to come with emotional bruising usually."


Nate

Nate had been distracted all night but anyone who gets to know him could claim that he always seems distracted. He has a lot on his mind and social endeavors pull him away from his work. Got to a point where he was drinking more often than anyone would consider healthy to try and get his mind off of mercenary squads and blown-up buildings and the things he knows lurk in the dead zone where his peripheral vision doesn't offer him safety.

Now he's taking on more responsibility at the newspaper for the way he handled the Dogwood attack in the spring. He's writing a book. The anniversary of Shannon's death is rapidly hurtling at him. It isn't just the dead that had him half-listening and hardly responding all night but the membrane between the world of the living and the world of the dead isn't so thick as most folks would like to believe.

They come to idle at the curb and Nate at first says nothing of it. He doesn't move fast on his best days. Doesn't start to undo his seatbelt until Molly first speaks and by then he's sat back and looking at her through the darkness. A lone porch light shining from his neighbor's house and his own front porch dark.

He frowns and opens his mouth like he's about to speak but he catches himself. Holds onto the expression a moment as he searches for a proper response. He closes his mouth to sigh through his nose. Hard to name what colors his gaze. Regret maybe. His paranoia eclipsed hers once.

"Not everything in the world is out to get you, you know," he says.


Molly

"Mmm," Molly hummed to what Nate said at first, and the sound was grim, resigned, and humored all alike.  She did smile, though, a closed-lipped expression that mirrored the tone in her voice, and chose that moment to kill the engine and take her hands from the steering wheel.  For now the keys stayed in the ignition, but if they were going to chat she wasn't going to leave the car running.

"Well, not everything is out to get you," she agreed, using 'you' as a general rather than a specific.  "But a lot of it can be, and that's the part that keeps sneaking up."

Without reason to hold the steering wheel anymore, Molly's hands came to settle in her lap.  She's known Nate long enough, well enough.  She had no reservations about looking at the man when she spoke with him, didn't nervously trail eyes out the windshield or to the digital numbers in her dash that determined the time (coming up on one in the morning now).

"I'm trying not to let it wreck my calm."

And, as though realizing that she was beginning to usher in metaphorical rain clouds on an otherwise nice night, she smiled again and tipped her head and shrugged one shoulder.  "I haven't started carrying a gun and avoiding nighttime yet, at least."


Nate

Idling is bad for the car. It's bad for its engine and it's bad for the exhaust system. It's bad for the people who live in the houses not far from the road and it's bad for the grass. They've been idling for several seconds and Nate is not normally a forceful person. He has it in him to be but he is a man of long fuse and seemingly boundless patience.

She knows better. She's seen what happens when flame consumes his fuse and he blows up.

This is not a blowup. He just acts without thinking. The car's transmission is in park. He reaches over and twists the ignition key to shut off the engine. Though he has to lean over her to do this he does not turn this into an excuse to stay in her space. Doesn't put a hand on her knee or sling an arm over the back of her seat.

He and Carole have been seeing each other again but how many times has he fucked that up already. Doesn't matter if being around each other is like finding the other half of a broken talisman. He keeps fucking it up.

"Good," he says when he's settled back in his seat. Turning off the ignition isn't an invitation to come in but Nate knows what's going to happen if he invites her in. "You'd be a shit shot anyway."


Molly

Nate had leaned across the center console to turn the car off, but found his way sitting up straight in his own seat again.  Just as Nate didn't leave a hand at her knee or open himself up physically by stretching an arm around the back of her headrest, Molly did nothing of the sort as well.  She just chuckled and nodded her agreement.

"You're probably right.  I can barely hold the gun I have let alone line up a shot.  I've had advice that I should practice, but 'eh..."  She shrugged once more and twisted her fingers together where they rested in her lap.

"I've seen someone take a bullet and hardly flinch.  And he was an alright guy, too.  I can't imagine that using a gun on anything less-than-alright would do much more than just piss it off anyways."

He didn't invite her to come in, but he didn't appear to be in any hurry to get out of the passenger seat either.  There was worry about what might happen if she did come inside, worry that Nate may do something to pull threading from the seams of what he had going with Carole.  Molly was less worried, not thinking about that.  For now the car was a fine safe-haven for conversation and still being just slightly somewhat in the public eye.


Nate

Nathan comes from a family that fails at monogamy. His father cheated on his mother more than once before she threw up her hands and took him to court. She didn't need to have his custodial rights stripped or to move them out to fucking Nebraska but that's what happens when a lengthy divorce case becomes even lengthier because the husband loses his temper and calls the wife an ice-snatched bitch or whatever the fuck it was he said. Nathan only came into court once and that was so the lawyers could ask him a bunch of questions before shunting him back out into the hallway.

Suffice to say it isn't in his blood. Maybe Carole already accepts this. Her boyfriend is a damaged piece of work. He lies to her all the time. She doesn't know what he's hiding but they can only go on for so long before his little gift threatens to upend her life again. It's not the infidelity that Carole has a problem with. It's the weird phone calls at work.

"You don't need a gun," he says. Says it with the authority of someone who was once as familiar with his rifle as he was with anyone else in his life. He spent his entire military career in a combat zone.  His thoughts on necessity versus desire are somewhat skewed.

She knows what the rest of that speech is going to be. She's heard bits of it before. She can see he wants to say it now because for all he's tried Nathan hasn't learned to just let her go on as she's been going on. But he doesn't waste his breath now. Just looks at her for a few seconds and then sighs out a mirthless laugh as he realizes nothing's ever going to change.

"I don't know what you need."


Molly

The speech wasn't an unfamiliar one.  Molly's heard it both in whole and in bits and pieces over the course of her and Nathan's friendship.  She would be safer if she simply extracted herself from the situation entirely and let this underbelly of the world, this World of Darkness, continue to flow like a river that's left her on the shore like a bit of drift wood.

Molly never listened, though.  It was always the same;  she would go a little hard (determined) in her eyes and her lips would press together, but she wouldn't debate him or argue him or explain that he was wrong and her current course needed no correcting.  It tended to die in the water anymore, so Nate didn't even try to get that motor started now.  Molly probably appreciated it.

"You don't have to," she told him when he confessed that he had no idea what she needed with a small shake of her head.  That wasn't his responsibility.  "I would joke that I need a psyche evaluation, but the medical books don't account for the levels of shit that we deal with."  She chose the word 'we' because it felt less self-pitying, because it was helpful to keep in mind that someone else knew these things were real too.

She went quiet for a moment, thoughtful, and when she spoke up again there was a dollop of humor in her voice-- shoehorned in there because she actively wanted to try and lighten the mood.  Hadn't it been a good night, with brain-punch and ice cream and zombie crawls?  Let it be a good night still, that forced humor begged.

"Maybe a suit of armor.  My breastplate could have something really cool on it, like a phoenix."


Nate

"The phoenix doesn't become a phoenix until it rises up out of its own ashes. It has to burn first."
Okay, Nerd. He says it like that's inevitable for her. Like he already knows her story isn't going to end with death. They aren't even through the first act of her story. He goes through his life as if he's waiting for the curtain call. He's tired and he's depressed and he could have plenty to live for if he didn't know what happens after death. It's either oblivion or it's ceaseless torment caused by holding onto something the dead can't take with them.

The shit they have to deal with doesn't let them choose what they'd like to cope with on any given night. He has to deal with the dead whether he seeks them out or not. He is a beacon to them. They come find him. They always have.

Fuck it.

"You wanna come in?"


Molly

It ran in the Amherst family to buck monogamy, whether they went into these habits with full understanding and intention or not.  That wasn't the case with the Toombs family;  Molly didn't speak of them much, but he did know that her parents are still together in their first marriage.  She herself, though, didn't have much of a history of relationships.  The most that would happen is she would go on a couple of dates before simply falling away from whoever she'd been seeing.

Hasn't been in a steady or proclaimed relationship since her college days, and didn't actively pursue or hunt for one either.  There had been more enthusiasm on the topic, more nights that she'd gone out on dates last year.  For the past dozen months, though, it has just seemed better not to get anyone else involved in the spiraling descent she was making into things that mortals had no business being tied up in.

So, while Nate had reasons not to invite her inside, Molly had no motivation to turn the offer down.  Instead, she smiled at him and tugged her keys free of the ignition and tucked them away into her jacket pocket.

"Nerd."  Spot on.  She sounded affectionate with the term, though.  "I do, though."


Nate

This is the first time she's been in the new house. Last time she was at his place he was injured. He healed faster than a man twice his age would have and was back on his feet faster than his doctor would have liked him to be. Working himself hard wasn't going to do any of them any favors and yet stillness and Nathan haven't spoken in some time. Even when he's at home he doesn't give himself over to idle pastimes.

It's a single-story house and if it has a basement the shrubbery conceals the windows that would betray its presence. The porch is dark and so is the house beyond it. Hard to tell from looking at it straight on but once they're inside Molly will realize the only windows in the place are in the front and back of the house.

She calls him a nerd and he smiles the first genuine smile she's seen from him all night. Touched by the term of endearment.

"Alright," he says and lets himself out of the car and hauls his messenger bag with him.

Before they come up the sidewalk Nate casts a glance down the street one way and then the other. No one out here with them. College kids throwing a party down the street but they're quiet aside from errant strains of laughter flitting out of a window. He puts his hand at the small of Molly's back to guide her and there is nothing possessive or forward about it. Maybe he ought to put his hand on her elbow instead of her back but he's more concerned with their surroundings than with what his hand is doing.

Up on the porch he removes his keyring from his jacket pocket. Holds the screen door open with the back of his calf and undoes the locks and waits until Molly has hold of the screen before he cracks open the door. Peers inside before he steps over the threshold. No way to be sure they're alone but he takes his chances. The door whines open and he's the first one in. Holds it open behind her and flicks on a light to reveal a clean yet somewhat cluttered living room. Papers and books everywhere and an empty bottle of diet Sprite sitting on the coffee table.

Through the living room is the kitchen. The backyard lurks dark beyond. Nothing moves in the house and the only door open in the corridor goes to the bathroom. The guest room and bedroom doors are both slightly shut.

He tosses the messenger bag onto the floor before he shuts and locks the door behind him.


Molly

"Your street's nice," Molly commented as they approached the little bungalow that Nate called home.  He was glancing this way and that, checking for shadow-creepers, and Molly did the same but at least appeared to be more invested in scoping out the scoping out the scenery than making sure monsters weren't going to spring on them.  The sound of loud laughter from a party made its way into the air, but from this distance it was hardly offensive.  The 'blip-blip!' that her car made when she locked the doors with the remote was louder, after all.

The touch at her lower back was met with a small stiffening of the muscles about her spine-- Molly didn't have people touching her very often anymore, and was seldom escorted anyplace.  But she knew Nate's fingers were warm and she was safe from them turning to claws or ringing the life out of her neck.  She knew him, and so that initial reaction of stiffness faded away quickly.  Might have even gone unnoticed through the fabric of her coat.

Once the door was unlocked and Nate had made his way over the threshold, Molly released the screen door and followed him in.  She stepped off to the side of the door so he could lock up as he saw fit and looked around while unbuttoning her coat.  "I like my apartment, but you might have the right idea with a house instead."  She grinned and added:  "Probably fewer ghosts in your attic here than at my place."  Because certainly, he remembered the haunting in the apartment above hers.  How was that going for her, anyway?

Nate had been few of words tonight in particular, and Molly had noticed that.  There was no sense in asking him what was wrong or what was eating him, though.  Just as Nate had a good idea of what kept Molly preoccupied and occasionally quiet as she receded into her own mind, Molly likewise had a firm enough understanding of the reasons why Nate may come across as a little despondant.  Instead of prying she was content to let some quiet fill the gaps between them.

When she breaks this particular bout of it, though, she's standing with her coat in her hands instead of on her back and speaks quiet because the house was still and dark and silent save perhaps for pipes or a furnace groaning someplace from within.

"Nate, we've known each other a while, right?  Been through some shit...," She had been looking toward the back of the house, but looked back to Nate when she got to her point.  "I... might need to get something off my chest."


Nate

Once they're inside decorum mandates that he ought to offer her something to drink. It isn't as if he doesn't still have stray unopened bottles of wine or the last vestiges of a six-pack lying around. But they're talking about heady enough things and sobriety suits him. Maybe he was going to offer to make coffee or tea after she mentions the scarcity of the ghosts in this place.

A coat rack waits by the front door. Once he's turned to face Molly he shrugs out of his jacket but doesn't step any further into the house. Other than the wind outside the place seems to be holding its breath.

Nate, we've known each other a while, right?

That's one way to get his attention. Inside the coalescence of electric lighting and shadows draws the scar tissue out of his skin. The fading laceration on his temple hasn't lost its pink hue yet. Like as not the scars on his arms are darkening. The incisions on his chest and midsection from nearly a year ago may well have started fading to white but Molly hasn't seen him with his shirt off in some time.

They have in fact been through some shit. He frowns as she gets to her point but he doesn't take his eyes off of her. Not any longer than it takes to toss his jacket onto a peg and stuff his hands into the pockets of his slacks.

"Sure," he says. "What's up?"


Molly

Had a drink been offered, Molly would have turned down wine or beer that's still hanging in his house.  Perhaps she would offer to take it off his hands if he didn't want it in his fridge anymore, but they didn't get to that point.  Hell, she didn't even give the guy a chance to get out of the entrance of his home and make the offer in the first place.

She took his cue and hung her jacket up on a coat peg as well.  His hands slipped into his pockets, and hers did the same.  On account of how well she filled her jeans out, though, she had to settle for slipping fingers into the snug space of her back pockets instead of jamming them down into the front ones.

"I'm not sleeping really well anymore," she said, and frowned as she figured the best way to present what she was trying to tell him.  Her elbows were pushed out by how she had her arms positioned, and they did so even further when she pushed her hands into her hips and rocked her weight on the flat bottoms of her shoes some.  "I have these terrible dreams but they're not just because of what I spend my time all focused on."  She forced a small, somewhat apologetic smile for him.  "I'm sure the concept of nightmares isn't new to you.

"But I'm dreaming of the end.  Because of something that I've seen.  I think--..."  She sighed and the sound was a frustrated one.  It was pretty clear that she was just working around the best way to spit out her concerns.  One hand left her pocket and brushed at her side swept bangs as she hunted for and found her words by starting another sentence entirely.

"Several weeks ago someone ripped into my mind and showed me some horrific shit.  He called it The Truth, and that truth was some ancient thing coming up to eat the world.  And now it just won't go away."


Nate

The very thought of death terrifies most people. They live their lives as if it's never going to end and when it comes as it comes to everyone they fight it hard as they can and the ones left behind have to carry on knowing that their loved one failed to fight off the one absolute everyone shares.

So far as Nate knows all four of his grandparents are dead. His father is going to die some day. His heart is going to give out on him or cancer is going to get him. His mother is probably going to live to be a hundred fucking years old for how mean she is. For all he knows his sunny vibrant cheerful little sister could die in a train crash or a school shooting tomorrow.

He's seen many of his buddies blown up by explosives or mowed down by enemy fire. Saw a lance corporal's head vaporize when a sniper's shot hit it one day. If he's ever fired his weapon he's said no more about the experience than he has about surviving a ground invasion.

His best friend died in a car crash because she wasn't wearing her seatbelt. Because the fuse on the alarm had blown for how frequently she forgot to hook the damned thing. All he could do was sit there and wait for the firefighters to cut him out and wonder why she wasn't answering him. Shannon never shut the fuck up. Made no sense that she wouldn't make a sound lying on the floor between the two seats as she was.

The concept of nightmares isn't new to him. Neither is the reality of them. But he isn't afraid of dying. At least when he's dead he won't dream anymore.

They're not talking about him. They're talking about what someone did to her. She can see a flash of anger flare up when she speaks of this someone. Of a He.

"This isn't that guy you brought back to your place, was it?" he asks. Because he can't keep track of her contacts anymore.


Molly

That flare of anger didn't go overlooked, and Molly pressed her mouth into the shape of a small smile.  It was nothing worth smiling about;  there was no mirth in the situation and nothing funny about Nate's protective anger.  But still, it was nice to know that someone could become angry for you.  She was touched, similar to how her calling him a 'nerd' had done for him.

"No," she shook her head and glanced aside.  "No, that's--," she almost said 'Jacky', very nearly, her mouth made the shape to begin the 'J', but she thought against it and shook her head.  That was a different monster chewing her up from the inside on out.  And currently he slept very, very deeply in a concrete closet.  "Someone else," she finally explained to finish her thought.

It's true, her contacts were difficult to keep track of.  She had many of them, and they all were risky and questionable people to keep company with in the first place.  That was absolutely how she wound up in this position in the first place, standing in front of Nate in the front of his house telling him about an assault on her sanity.  He knew that.  They both knew that.  Molly's had that conversation with her reflection more times than once before, but there was no correcting her course it seemed.

"The diazepam used to help, but it isn't anymore.  I'm tired, and terrified, because I know there's something under these streets that can kill you just by being near you, and that it's just biding its time before breaking the surface and I don't know what comes after that."  To her credit, Molly's voice wasn't cracking and her eyes didn't have tears in them, but they were wide and did shine with precisely the sentiment she'd just expressed-- exhaustion and fear.

"And I'm sorry.  Because nobody needs to be walking around knowing that, and now you do."


Nate

The difference between cognition and perception is a huge one. Nathan wasn't the one who had someone force himself inside his head and show him what his interpretation of The End looked like. He can no more imagine what that sort of terror tastes like than Molly could imagine what it is like for a normal person to find themselves hunted and fed upon by a vampire.

If it has happened to her in the time since they last told each other as much of their everything as they were comfortable telling Nathan has no idea.

He's never been very good at comforting other people. He is tall and stronger than he looks but he also looks sleep deprived and volatile. Not like someone who's in touch with his own feelings or the hardships of others.

"Y'know," he says, "if we're all gonna die anyway, you might as well enjoy the time you've got left. No point stressing out about something you've got no control over, right?"


Molly

"But what if I could have control over it?"  There's a light of hope there, flickering and weak like a short wick surrounded by a pool of melted wax.  Feeble and small and dim, but still holding out despite that all.

"Not, like, actually controlling it, but--...," and, again, she cut off her own thought and shook her head.  Even chuckled a little, though it was more of an exhale than anything else.  "Well, I was going to say 'learn how to send it away', but it's looking into things that's gotten me here in the first place, huh?"

Nate wasn't the best with comforting people.  It was hard to tell people that it was going to be okay and serve as a soft place for them when he knew better.  He was a person who'd seen plenty in his adult life that many go to the grave without knowing (war, combat, physical attacks and fatal auto accidents), and that's not even mentioning the ever-present whispers and calls for help across the veil that have been around from an even younger and more tender age.  The fact of the matter was, though, that he was the only person with a pulse that she could go to with these concerns.

She didn't expect him to fix these problems for her anyways, and that didn't seem to be what she was asking-- at no point did she sound like she was expecting him to have a solution for her.  She said it herself, she just needed to get it off her chest.

"Y'know, that's what I keep hearing from other people too."  Molly said this with another weak grin and laugh, then turned to look around the home again-- specifically, seeking a place to sit.  She'd suddenly become aware that she and Nate were simply standing in the entry space of his house.  She opted for the sofa and made her way over to it.

"It's more advice I need to learn to take."


Nate

The fact that they're hovering in the entryway hits Molly. He's not used to having company it seems. His sister when she stayed here was more of a second roommate than a guest and whenever Lux comes over she's content to move around the place as if she needs no escort. His mother would have stood in the doorway all day if he hadn't shown her where the table was. He has an island countertop separating the living room from the kitchen but there's a table up against it all the same.

Molly finds her way over to the sofa and Nate flinches like he's just realized how big of a sty his place is. He doesn't apologize for the mess because there's no reason to apologize for the mess. It isn't as if he knew he was going to have company tonight. As Molly pronounces the situation she's in and the advice he just gave her to be something she needs to learn to take he makes a half-assed attempt at clearing off the couch. There are a couple of hardcover books and a legal pad strewn across it.

Once he's transferred these things to the wasteland that is the coffee table Nate drops down onto the couch and blows out a breath.

"Moll," he says, "if investigating this thing makes you feel better..." He gives a slow protracted shrug as he grapples for words. He doesn't want to say it. He says it anyway. "Then..." He locks his eyes onto hers. "I don't know. Do what your gut tells you to do."


Molly

She didn't seem to mind sharing the couch with some books and a legal pad.  Molly simply selected a cushion that they weren't piled up on and called that good enough.  He's right, there's no sense in apologizing for your house being messy when you weren't expecting company.  He lived alone, paid the rent and his taxes like an adult, and as far as Molly was concerned that gave him the right to leave empty Sprite bottles and legal pads of paper wherever he damn well pleased.

All the same, he cleared the space and settled onto the couch beside her.  Molly hooked her elbow on the arm of the couch (to her right) and leaned into it some.  This helped her angle to be facing Nate better without just twisting her neck alone.

His advice surprised her.  Molly's eyebrows went up and, for a moment at least, she was caught off guard enough that the doom around her dissolved temporarily.  "Really?"  She asked-- not asking permission, but more like she wasn't sure for a second if she heard him correctly.  He held eye contact, and she didn't shy from it-- it wasn't in her history to avoid a gaze anyways.

"It does.  Make me feel better.  Things are dark and horrifying, but now that I know they're there understanding them helps me feel... I don't know, like I can watch my steps better.  Kind of like medicine-- if someone didn't start out poking brain matter we would have gone on believing that seizures were caused by demons."  Though now Molly wouldn't be nearly so surprised if someone told her that demon-induced seizures really were a thing.

Her head tipped sideways until she could rest the side of her head on the back of the couch.  Didn't break eye contact when she observed:  "I don't know how you've gone on so long without looking into the lore of Shades...  I'd lose my fucking mind."


Nate

Really?

He nods. It's a reluctant nod and it's obvious that it pains him to tell her to go ahead and do the opposite of what he would do. But he knows her. What he wants for her isn't good for her. To tuck herself into a closed safe place and bolt the door and never know what's beyond it scraping and dragging chains behind it is not a life she was ever going to lead. Not once she got her first glimpse of what lies beyond the door.

And he follows her train of thought up until she says she doesn't know how he's gone so long. He drops his gaze to the empty space between them and casts his eyes away to the dormant television across the room. Nathan doesn't have cable. An Internet router and a gaming console sit on a small stand beneath the wall-mounted unit. It's flanked on either side by bookcases. Framed photographs and memorabilia he's picked up in his travels. Faces in the photographs she won't recognize except for his sister Hannah.

"Yeah, well." He looks back at her. He's never talked to her about this. It stands to reason he's never talked to anyone about this. "I'm not so sure I didn't."


Molly

"You might have."

Molly mused.  Her eyes weren't so wide anymore, and with her head rested she looked more relaxed.  Hadn't cried it out, but just stating what she was struggling with aloud seemed to have taken some of the pressure off.  She moved her elbow off the arm of the couch and rested her right hand in her lap again.  The left arm was previously pinned between her body and the furniture, but she re-situated so her left elbow was the one propped now instead-- against the back of the couch as opposed to the arm.

When she spoke she was soft with her words still, and it was doing a much better job of reflecting in her baby blues as well.

"Doctors would tell you so, if you were honest with them.  They'd lock you right up.  But, again, that's just because their books can't account for what's actually real."

Her right hand moved out of her lap and into the space between them to rest on the cushion, palm up and fingers relaxed-- clearly an invitation to hold hands (how cute).

"I've probably lost mine too by now, anyways."


Nate

And Nathan knows exactly what would happen. It's why he's never said anything to anyone. He knows that when the Marine recruiter asked him if he had any mental health or criminal history whatsoever that they were trying to weed out the crazies. Knew from having two lawyers for parents that the best thing to do was just deny any history of anything until confronted with evidence he had to explain but a 17-year-old with no prior history of conduct disorder or legal trouble can fly through that process without any trouble. He shipped out shortly after graduation and he kept that shit to himself the entire time he was in the service.

Would have kept that shit to himself here too but Molly caught him acting strange one too many times. Reacting to things she couldn't see or hear. By now she knows enough to recognize that he isn't schizophrenic. Fear of drugs has kept him from talking to anyone though.

His eyes tick down to find her hand prone on the couch. He considers it a moment. Then he puts the arm nearest her behind her on the couch. Takes her left hand in his left. He intends to slide his arm around her shoulders.

"I know you've lost yours."


Molly

When fingers touched to hers, Molly loosely wrapped them around the edge of Nate's palm.  Her eyes flickered to the side, just a bit, to catch that his arm was moving to the back of the sofa, but were back to him when the distraction soon passed.

Molly laughed, the sound low and mellow and quiet as she had been since they'd stepped through the doorway.  "It's a charming way to live.  I've adjusted to it."

This was why he was reluctant to invite her inside in the first place.  Molly felt the back of the couch shift as the weight of Nathan's arm slipped further down, nearer to her shoulders.  He could dismiss the approach as amping up for a hug, or maybe even something so bold as to hold her and take another stab at just being comforting.  But Molly had her doubts that was the case.  She and Nate had gone to bed before, though he had been a bit drunk still when that had happened.  His hugs tended to be full-bodied things, firm and bracing and upright.  He wouldn't be slinking his arm for something like that.

She knew he still saw Carole.  She'd felt the twist of guilt before when having a conversation with the pretty blonde policewoman about Nate, when the officer put together that the two may have had a fling.  And yet Molly did nothing to shrug his arm away, and all the same she still light-and-idle ran fingers from the heel of the hand she was holding to the inside of his wrist and back again.

Perhaps Miss Molly was designed to be a mistress after all.  She certainly had the vavoom for it.
"I've learned a lot."  Back on the subject of Shades and their lore, but not specifying outright.  "I could show you?"


Nate

If he had a filthier mind or he thought more highly of himself and his game than he does Nathan could have swerved the conversation back into murkier waters with the in she leaves there.

Drunk as he had been that Sunday afternoon when he came back to her place and kissed her for how scared he was Nathan was not blacked out or impotent with him. Took him a long time to finish but that had nothing to do with Molly. Had to do with his mind racing as he metabolized the alcohol he'd slammed back.

Carole knows nothing about the supernatural and she would have known nothing about Nate's affair with Molly if it weren't for the fact that Nate has left so many questions unanswered that any kind of light gave way to something that could serve as an explanation.

He wants to be of some comfort to Molly before she goes rushing off to what may be her death. All his life the dead have come to him for services for which he has enjoyed no compensation beyond the momentary return of silence. May be he doubts some days whether he's hearing Molly's voice because she's still alive or because the cellphone is a fetter for her. Shades don't feel solid in his arms like this though. He can only see them when they're old and powerful and angry.

His thumb lies over her pulse point and he cradles her right shoulder in his other hand. Maybe he was just trying to hold her. She can feel the depth of his voice in his chest where they rest near each other.
"Show me what?" he asks.


Molly

A noble enough man, Nate refrained from using Molly's statement as a doorway to lay on some charms.  He was once described as a White Knight, and though Nate hated the mouth the title had come from Molly still agreed with it, even if Nate may not himself.  He asked her to clarify instead.
Molly scooted nearer on the couch so her hip and leg were against his, though that was the consequence rather than the goal.  The goal was that she could tuck and lean more effectively into his side.  If the man was going to offer her an arm, she intended to take the comfort that came along with it.  She didn't go quite so far as to rest her head on him yet, though, she still supported that herself.

"What I've found about Shades."  She thought about it for a second, and seemed to only just realize what her prior phrasing could have led in to.  A somewhat sheepish grin pulled harder on one corner of her mouth than the other.  "I left that one wide open, huh?

"It might help you make things easier on yourself.  Maybe even salvage some of your mind, if you were so inclined."


Nate

I left that one wide open, huh?

It takes him a second to replay the conversation in his mind but when he realizes what just happened Nate snorts. The snort leads to light laughter and he moves his hand from her shoulder to her forehead. Like he's feeling for a temperature or trying to tamp down any more thoughts like that.

He is not fighting for his virtue over here. Doesn't matter that he's back to seeing Carole. He has about as much faith in the future of that relationship as he has in anything else in life.

As the conversation continues on Nate smooths hair back from Molly's brow and returns his hand to her upper arm.

"That's a tall fuckin' order," he says of salvaging what's left of his mind. He isn't skeptical. He doesn't have any doubt left to be skeptical. At this point he's just humoring her. Idiot. "Alright. Show me."


Molly

There's no temperature to be found on Molly's forehead, but her bangs were growing out and sweeping them aside wasn't the same futile task that it would be were they trimmed above her eyebrows still.  But they'd already established that she wasn't sick, she'd just lost her fucking mind.  Just like him.

Show me, he invited.  Molly had smiled at the touch to forehead and hair, and the expression lingered even after his hand settled back at her shoulder.

"Good."  Sure, it was likely that he'd agreed just to humor her, but she still seemed glad-- maybe even relieved-- to hear that Nate would be willing to take on some knowledge about the things that plague and pester him.  "I don't have anything with me right now.  I can bring over some really good books sometime.  Or make you a cheat sheet to all things ghost." 

The smile twisted into a bit more of a smirk, and she glanced briefly toward the kitchen, specifically hunting for a clock to find the time.  "Maybe I can quit my job and start making a living on Occult for Dummies books instead."

The hour was one where polite people would excuse themselves and see their way out, but all that waited at home were animals and nightmares and pills.  Nathan was warm, she could find his pulse in his wrist and she knew he wasn't consciously making his heart thump like vampires learned to do to fool their prey.  As much as she could get away with it, up to the point when she'd pick up on passive signs that it was time for her to go, she'd take the shelter he offered.


Nate

Nathan has plenty of quirks that unsettle normal people. The fact that he speaks with a flattened affect is among the chiefest of them but he also has a morbid sense of humor and a ghoulish complexion. It's rare that he seems as if he is entirely present and when the other person does have his undivided attention he looks haunted by something he will never talk about. To learn that the man is a combat veteran and a crime reporter seems an answer enough.

But Molly knows better. His is not a haunting of nightmares or demons or guilt. So far as she can tell he does not live his life regretting his action or lack thereof. He doesn't pick fights when he's drunk and he doesn't dwell on the things he cannot change about his past.

Aside from the one in the bathroom that he kept a t-shirt thrown over Nate did not have mirrors in any of the rooms in his apartment. Later she will learn he has none at all in the house. The only sources of time come from the digital displays of his stove and microwave but she would have to rise to check them. No windows in the bedrooms or the bathroom and she may notice white candles in every room of the house. None of them have been lit.

He had white candles in the old apartment. All of them had charred wicks and were various lengths. They didn't do a damned thing.

Nothing at home for her but animals used to long hours alone and a psyche that would not rest even with pharmaceuticals. He doesn't extract his arm from her shoulders and suggest they look at the time.

He lets her get so far as maybe I can quit my job before he puts his fingertips to her jaw and turns her face towards his and kisses her full on the mouth.

She can't stay here forever but she can stay here tonight. That's the sort of shelter he offers her.