a transmission; seven thatcher.

[secondhand_stars]

Lucy,

Normally, I would say, "How would you like some woman sneaking her hand up your skirt?" But. Well, having met your friend Liv? I do believe that you'd like it very much. Everyone laughs at that story. It's as if it's a universal punchline. Glad to see that you found amusement in it, too.

I have a secret for you today: I don't want to be ruined or broken. My physical ailments (which make me sound so much more debilitated than I am) are enough without additional ones. Perhaps it's not a secret though. I mean, it's only natural for a machine to want to run smoothly with all its joints oiled and bolts tightly screwed in. The tortured artist angle is just as overrated as the starving one. I've been both. I prefer comfort -- even if's a skewed sort as mine is compared to the normal grain of things.

Italy, Morocco, Peru (I've never been to South America), English countryside.. We should go to Ireland and Scotland, too. We should go in the summer when the weather is mild -- so you can escape the heat of the city -- but I'd almost rather go in the Spring when everything is dead and buried in a layer of frost. I think the harsh elements would suit, no? I want to visit India and Asia, as well. All in good time, I suppose. As for how many Seven Thatchers can fit in one VW? One, with his knees pressed up to his chest and tucked beneath his chin.

Thinking of me? Making a mess of your living room and watching old television shows, no doubt. Thinking of you? Ripping apart fabric and stitching by the window. The afternoon sun makes your hair shine hard enough that there's a glare. I leave spots of my sketch of you in it completely without pencil-mark.

Seven

[secondhand_stars]

Lucy,

It's the strangest thing, but on good days, I'm absolutely convinced that you understand me and see me as I really am to some degree. You haven't any problem at all imagining me as some rusty machine. So many people in the world feel like they've got to save and humanize mankind one person at a time. Sometimes I think it's just a noble(-sounding?) way to get another person in bed. Thank you for not trying to save me. I prefer being lost. It makes things more interesting when elements and pieces are found. Since you're still writing and making lists of future locations with me, I assume you think so as well?

I will be picking up a Portuguese language book on the big Island when I go to get stamps for our letters. It should be fairly easy to grasp a basic vocabulary. I already speak Italian and minimal Spanish. The three languages are very similiar. The next time we're together, I'll watch you sketch and give you pointers if you want them. The best advice is to practice constantly. The more you draw, the better control you have and the more willing you are to experiment and try different patterns and shades.

When I draw you, you're always full of more curves than you have now. Everything from your hair to your hips wave. It's as if I'm looking through a pool of water at you. I don't know. I can draw you normally, but I just prefer the blurry image. I miss your mouth. Especially when you draw back your lips to snarl at me. Your teeth look like pearls then.

Normally I'd apologize for the state your letter arrived in. I've been doing several pen and ink drawings. For whatever reason I always end up dipping my fingers in the well when I'm drifting off into some bored plane. The ink smudges are from that. If you look closely enough you'll see the whorls of of my fingerpads. Fingerpads? Is that even a word? You know what I mean.


Seven

[secondhand_stars]

Lucy,

I apologize for not writing back promptly. Things have been very busy and not in the good way like how I was busy in Tokyo or New York. I had a deadline that took up most of my waking hours. The pen and ink drawings took more time and energy than I had anticipated for them. They're done now, but I begin teaching on Monday. I still haven't a clue what I'm supposed to say or do. I have no memory of going to school myself. I learned Spanish by staying on the southern coast there for awhile and knew Italian before that. Knowing one makes learning the other very easy. In addition to Spanish and Italian, I know Dutch, German, French, and English (obviously.) It sounds more impressive than it is. I've just spent a great deal of time in countries that speak one of the above languages. Do you know any languages yourself? Aside from your Portuguese essentials, of course (I am kidding.)

Yes, my hair is still a mess. We're all a mess.

I picture you pretty -- snarling, biting, and full of teeth pretty -- everyday.

Seven

[secondhand_stars]

Lucy,

I am tired. I am weary. I could sleep for a thousand years. A thousand dreams that would awake me. Different colors made of tears. Shiny shiny shiny boots of leather. Whiplash girlchild in the dark. ( Venus in Furs, The Velvet Underground.)

Seven

[secondhand_stars]

The home was a crumbling monument with its rotted support beams and broken staircase. From plaster, wall-paper hung in strips and layers: faded Victorian roses clashed with stripes and dark paisley. He sat upon the scratched bench of a ruined piano. The lid long ago had been sealed over with globs of candlewax and time. In the center of the room, a starry pattern of crystal spread out from a oxidized bronze chandelier. Mermaids and fanciful whorls were all crusted in green and black. It was in this ruined state that everything was at its loveliest.

Upstairs in the glass-encased greenhouse, a jungle had exploded. Vines and other curling, invading plant-life tumbled down crooked stairs and began to seep into windowsills. Seemingly oblivious, Seven fixated on the one lasting thing in the home. Perched upon a dingy wall was a portrait of the pianist. Where everything had dimmed to grayscale, she was all dark waving hair and red silk. Her pale skin, where it peeked from the banner that covered her, fairly glowed. He sighed, elbow angling atop soiled ivory keys. The resulting sound was a broken cacophony. Notes spilled out in a disagreeable grumble.

An inverted Alice in the wrong Wonderland, she trailed along the upstairs level with her fingers dragging along the curled yellow of the wallpaper. It reminded her of a story she read once. Someone drove themselves mad trying to scratch out someone they imagined trapped behind the wallpaper.. later. She'd reference it all later. Tripping past dust-covered artifacts and monuments, she too was something cracked and ruined to behold. Rather than her sleek, svelte affinity for black, the girl wore pearl, or what used to be white. In something half-matrimonial, the chiffon of her dress was in disarray, torn at parts to reveal the petticoat layers beneath. A scant waist was pressed in by the corset top, it's metal shape-wiring warped and twisted, sharply jutting out from the pearl-colored sheen of the top. Tarnished silver draped a jutting collarbone, topped with a diamond pendant that just didn't glimmer. Her hair, a blonde nest, sat in a toppled, side-tipping french twist behind her head, and she clammored noisily down the stairs, in broken shoes that didn't quite seem to fit. The fashion-goddess who was all poise had now turned into a torn up miscreant. A figment of someone else's imagination. Around the stretch of her left wrist, a tattered bandage was tied, splotched with rust colored stains. Old. But not so old. At the foot of the stairs, she pushed past the jungle of plantlife that made her red carpet, and teetered towards the chandelier in the middle of the floor, to crouch down and examine.

Rather than the chirp of trumpets and some starched accent exclaiming her name, she was introduced with the creak of the floor. Beneath her, warped wooden slants groaned painfully. Rather than look to her. He awaited the usual scolding for being so careless with her things. A mad hatter with his tattered suit complete with ratty tails and a pocketwatch with its cracked face strung into his vest, he carried all the ticks and traits. Hat, however, was left atop the waxy layer of the piano lid.

"Darling," he hummed in a low breath. Aristocratic and bored, he was a far cry from the present-day artist. Much younger, less paint-splattered. Fingers dropped off of middle c to scratch absently at his kneecap.

"Daaaarling." She crooned back at him, in something mock-British. Pushing to her feet again, she crossed the creaking, crooked floor, avoidant of warped boards, or obstacles to trip over. With as much grace as she had left in her, an arm reached out to snag the hat that he had left on the piano, plopping it on her head, over the mess of her knotted hair. Makeup was dark and smudged, eyes lined and darkened, mouth perched in a smear of horrifying wine-red.

At the unexpected, but not unfamiliar at all, voice, Seven whipped around to come face-to-face with not the dark-haired pianist, but a fair fashionista. Jaw dropped shamelessly as dark eyes swept over the whirlwind mess of her. Yet, the look wasn't one of simple lust or appreciation. Instead, a complex disappointment flashed out before being quickly shuttered away. He blinked and resumed a neutral, more casual look. "Oh, hi. I --"

Instead of keeping her usual distance, safe and far from imposing, she tripped feet towards him and plopped down impertinently on his lap, all skin and bone, one leg lifted up to kick over the other, her feet poised, toes of shoes pressed against the floor. Hands hooked at the lapels of his jacket for stability, one hand swiping at the dust that had settled on shoulders. "You're always such a mess."

At a loss for words, he instead accommodated her sparse frame with a shift of hips and hands. Palms folded over the line of her back. "Am I? You're one to talk right now." He snickered, mouth breaking out of its solemn line. Reaching up, fingers worked through the tangle of hers. Thumb plucked at a cheek to smear away a sooty trail of eyeliner. "I like it though."

Like mad Ophelia, post-drowning, she was something sucked up and ruined, a clever mess. An underwater thing. "Not who you expected? Shame on you.." She clucked, her tongue ticking against teeth, fingers threading through his rather easily. Palm to palm, her thumb skidded across the ridge of his knuckles, swollen and arthritic before a free hand lifted to comb through his mess of hair. "No you don't. Liar." Shoulders sagged with a huffed out sigh, and she tugged lightly at hair, just to tick his head back a notch.

Invaded by Lucy, he could do little but bend to her will and wants. Neck craned back against the drag of fingers. "I do," he insisted quietly as eyes flickered over her emaciated features decorated in melting China doll makeup.

Canting her head over her shoulder, she took a quick glance at the portrait, that same look of disappointment flashing over a newly animated face. Mouth curled into a quick sneer and she wheeled back around to stare at him. "If you pay as much attention to everything else as you did to that painting, maybe it all wouldn't fall into ruin. This place should be condemned. I feel like Beauty in the castle. In the wing she's forbidden in, where everything that reminded the beast of a life before ugliness is all dusty and rusted over."

The mention of the portrait broke his steady stare. Glancing backwards, he ceased breathing. Instead, oxygen transformed into carbon dioxide and he felt his cheeks begin to flush. Skin throbbed with deprivation, but he insisted as she continued. Words stacked upon his back until a tell-tale crack echoed through the room -- or so he imagined. Only his ears heard the vibrating note. The fairy-tale played out struck a painful chord. With a subtle slide and inching out upon the dull bench, he carelessly lifted up from his slouch and let Lucy fall where she would. Feet angled and stepped around the maze of piano and woman. "Yes. That's about it. I'm a beast."

Removed from his lap and plopped down on the bench, her mouth lifted up into another sneer and stare after him. "You're merry.." A sarcastic scoff, and she leaned in, fingers pressing down on simplistic, childish sounding notes that waverd with flat sound and broken strings. In her room-filling voice, she sang out, something wavering and note-for-note strong, without fancy or adornment. "How should I your true love know, from another one.." Pausing, she peered after him and plucked out the notes, faster and with more enthusiasm. "By her cockle hat and staff, and her sandal shoon.. she is dead and gone, my lord, she is dead and gone.." A fist slammed down on the keys and she pushed up from the bench and pranced after him in a giddy skip, regardless of the strewn disarray, still singing. "At her head a grass-green turf and at her heels a stone.." Hand reached out and clapped him on the shoulder, skidding down his arm to hook at fingers. "Dance with me."

A foul mood brewed on the horizon. Here, his emotions were far more open than elsewhere. Here, there were no layers of scar tissue and stony bedrock resolve to push through. Instead, he was free to snarl over a shoulder at her childish song and audacity. Tempted to rush back over and slam the lid of the piano over her fingers, he refrained. Arms folded across his ribs to keep everything loose and open-ended in. The cracked face of his pocketwatch shattered further. Evading her noisy steps, his efforts were futile. She caught up with him, persistant as a shadow. Her touch scalded and he wrenched away. "No. I don't want to dance." Fingers pried themselves free of Lucy's.

Shaken off, she bore holes in the back of his head with her stare, a heeled foot cracking against the floorboards in an indignant stomp. "I'm a very good dancer!" She shouted after him, a finger striking through the air as though the entire place had offended her.


"And you are being a very rude guest!" He countered evenly. To her violent tidal wave, he was the eye with his calm, paused nature. The intensity, however, was nonetheless matched. Reaching up, a stripe of wallpaper was plucked from a wall. The pattern of ripe grapes and curling vine gave way to a new one covered in the fluttering wings of bluejays.

With a huff of breath, hands hitched up her skirt and she marched towards where a sprawling plant blossomed odd flowers. Dipping down, she plucked up a fistful of them, stalks and all, and tripped back towards him. Rounding in front, her pout was insufferable, something perfected and reddened with color. The fistful of flowers was offered up. "There's rosemary, that's for remembrance. Pray you, love, remember." Picking one from the rest, she lifted it and tucked it into his jacket pocket, palm smoothing over. "You should wear yours with a difference."

The wallpaper section was abandoned for her company and the cluster of weeds in her fists. "How did you get here?" He asked in a quiet, tremoring tone. The sprig of rosemary was clumsily trampled over with calloused fingertips. "Remember me that."

Instead of the violent storm she was used to being, the crackle and spark of electricity died at the almost shout from him. It was like being scolded by one's father, immediately reduced and tremoring, her bottom lip caving, a spring of tears pouring out without much warning. Eyeliner, black and oily, streaked down the moviestar matte finish of her face, and she reached for his wrists, folding his fingers into his palm and guiding thumbs over her cheekbones to smear away the remnants of a fading shudder of a quick snag of her breath.

He watched her strange burst of reaction with an almost clinical eye. Tears were tracked, as was the underlying instability in her bottom lip. Head angled minutely to one side and eyes narrowed in. Against his thumbs, the warm slick of salty-tears mixed with the grit of makeup.

"I don't know, I was just here. I thought you wished me here. I was wrong, though." Hands were let go, and she propped palms on her skinny hips, shoulderblades twitching beneath pale skin. "When someone gives you a present and tries to say they're sorry, you're not supposed to ... oh you're impossible.."

"Oh," he murmured as folded in hands dropped away and slowly unfurled. He shifted from one foot to the next. "Yes. I am. That, I'll apologize for. Come here --" A hand lifted, palm-wise up, and fingers ticked in ever so slightly. Despite the motion, it was he who cut into the distance between them. With his height advantage, he fairly towered over. The dusty tophat settled over blonde hair was lifted and tossed aside. "Rosemary, heaven restores you to life." Fingers dove crookedly into her hair to ruin the haphazard construction of her updo. In subtle clattering sounds, pins and wires were cast down upon the ground carelessly. He unfurled blonde hair like a flag.

A wet sniff was inhaled and she watched as fingers edged her forward. In a clatter of feet, she clicked heels towards him and watched as her hair was completely undone from its folded snarl. Her own hand lifted to pluck out the comb she had slid in, a decorative thing with the stretch of stones at it's end making it something more decorative than useful. In an attempt to assist, her head shook, pins clattering, and blonde hair falling back down, still half pinned up. A hand lifted and coasted down his tattered jacket. Leaning in, she sniffed at the material. Despite all of the dust and plants that decorated the place, he still smelled inherently familiar, like that old book she remembered describing. "I'm sorry.." She crooned, lips pecking at his chin. "No more nursery rhymes."

He grimaced at the slick waxy feel of stained mouth against his skin. The reaction was unexplainable. From the knotted snarls of her hair, fingers unearthed and pinched at her chin. Her face was angled up to the gray light that streamed in, in dappled light from the vine covered window. "Or fairytales," he added.

Thumb swiped across her lips to rub out the shock of red that filled them. The result was a faintly smeared design that ran off-kilter to cupid's bow on one side and a ruddy thumb. Eyes lifted from her to flicker around the parlour that was now falling apart at the seams. He attempted to see the hazards of his home. Instead, every crack and mottled spot was intentional and lovely in its own unexpected way. "Somethings are meant to be broken and condemned, Lucy."

Mouth twisted as he smeared away lipstick, and she was left pink-mouthed and worn. When his attention wavered, her's chased it, eye contact searching after him in order to find what it was he looked at. Instead, she was just supposed to look at all of it. The crumbling look of it all, the fallen chandelier, the useless piano, the unruly weeds. "Oh." She echoed in realization. Head tipped and green eyes slipped into corners, over wallpaper, over layers hiding and then torn away. "I never said I wanted to fix it up, you know. I just made an observation. This place ought to be condemned." Veering off, heels clicked over floorboards and she caught her dress on the sharp edge of something. Rather than meticulously prying it undone, she fisted material and tugged, with a sickening crack of fabric and threads unraveling.

As she wafted away in a mess of taffeta and fraying net, he was left with the distinct feeling that she was little more than a figment of the imagination. Hands lifted to rub into his eyes before they blinked down and widened upon her. She remained as sharp and real as ever.

"I --" He struggled with words. Glancing around the room with a discreet pass of dark eyes, it was as if Seven was fearful of any ears or eyes that might be lurking in the walls. Clearing his throat, attention returned back to her and head inclined. "I am glad to see you," he acknowledged in a conspiratorial whisper that turned up the corners of his mouth. A hand swept through the mess of his hair with its crooked licks and dark spike.

There was something satisfying in hearing such a thing. It stiffened her, straightened her slouched spine and turned the wingspan of her shoulderblades into something delicately posed and statuesque. Wheeling on her heel, she was almost Nike, with one foot touched down, but robbed of her wings.

"Oh, Seven. Sweet boy. Man. I know you are." Right arm stretched out, fingers pointing downwards at the floor, her features indelibly (or so it seemed) softened. "Now, come dance with your awfully rude guest before she comments on how terrible of a host you've been." Her nose snootily lifted into the air, the sprawl of her mouth revealing all pretense for what it was. "I'll keep it a secret, though. The walls will never know."

It was an unintentional and closely corrected jumble of words: boy, man. Nonetheless, his face remained scrunched up in a curious look cut through with the most subtle grain of offense. Though cheeks were still smooth and hair as dark as indelible ink, there was nothing boyish in his tired stance and weary eyes. Her hand was examined for a long moment before he reached up to take it. Head bowed in, in an antiquated nod before feet guided him in. A hand folded neatly into the curve of her waist. Lips swept in the barest trace of affection over her hairline as feet stepped off. She was guided through the silent parlour in a leisurely waltz -- a dance fitting for their formal rags.

"Good," he murmured when reassured. "Eyes and ears in every wall and window." It was a vague elaboration.

With fingers clutching at the skirt of her dress, it was hoisted up and she canted toes behind her ankle, knees crooking in something formal and feminine. A dipping curtsey was executed before feet tripped in, her hand fitting into his palm, and it's opposite still clutching the skirt of her dress. She'd trip with it dusting at her toes. Peeking over his shoulder, she tried to spy the watchmen he spoke of, but saw nothing. Instead, she was led into an easy waltz, her head effortlessly ticking off counts of three, accentuating inaudible downbeats, one big step and then two smaller ones. When his right foot moved forward, her left one swept back. It was nice to be led, sometimes.

"Oh, let them watch. Nervous Nick." She snickered obliviously, green eyes rolling.

There was no music to guide them, but in his head, a childish melody ran. The song was something most often found tucked within the watered-silk folds of a jewelry box. Along the lines of Fur Elise and Swanlake, it was a tumbling, cheerful sound shot through with something oddly sinister. They were the ruined dancers screwed into the top of the jewelry box with their spinning circles and her ruined skirt. Feet stumbled at the alliterative tease. "I -- Pardon, what?" Some anxious knot of tension rose in the back of his throat and flooded out all sound. The only thing that remained was the flush and whirl of blood as heart hammered inside ears.

Blanching, he broke into a subtle sweat. Moisture beaded around hairline and added a silvery highlight to cheeks. "Oh, okay," he mumbled in an attempt to redirect.

She watched him stifle a moment, the hand holding onto her skirt lifting to loosen his tie and allow air in. It was awfully stuffy in there. "I thought it would be less offensive than calling you Nervous Nancy." The knot of his tie slid down another notch or two, and she tapped out a rhythm against his shoulder. She remembered that motion, even if he didn't. It felt familiar, where little else did.

Mouth stretched into a pained smile before cracking altogether at her joke. He hissed out a laugh and allowed her to slide tie low. Fingers lifted from her waist to undo a top button and fan open collar. "Yes, yes I suppose it is."

Fingers lifted up in another fan and daubed at forehead and cheeks. "Do you feel sick? It might be the dust.." Hand fell again to hitch up her skirt as left foot stepped out, avoiding a near-spill. "The skirt of this dress has a mind of it's own. I can't get it to move with me. It goes where it wants. I feel like one of those southern belles, all hoop skirts and parasols."

He reached up to bat away her fingers with the back of his palm as she fluttered and made observation. The notion of appearing debilitated and weak lurked and made him all the more insistent on strength. "I'm fine. I -- I don't have a big skirt to push me about."

Peering down at the tatters of her skirt for a long moment, a flash of inspiration struck down like lightning. He broke out of step and crouched low. As Seven moved to one knee, his body crackled quietly at the joints. "Here. Let me fix it." The skirt, a beautifully antiqued white turned dove-gray, was gathered up into fists. He searched for underlying instability and preexisting gashes in the fabric before savagely ripping layers from their hemlines. With a shriek of sound and unraveling threads, her skirt was ripped away at the knees.

Where some parts of Seven were so atypical, others resonated with something feral and ingrained. His need to stay upright, to dismiss any sign of wavering was something she recognized from other places that remained unspoken. A common trait. Fanning hands out at the waist of her dress as he hunched down, she watched curiously as he gripped fabric and tore it into something cocktail-length and crooked. "Oh, you animal." She gasped teasingly, a hand fanning over her mouth as she stepped back. Pearl shaded shoes were revealed, their fabric fraying, their ankle straps straining to hold on and remain buckled in rusty hooks. Prancing back with free movement, she spun, the skirt fanning out before hands slapped down at her thighs. "Beautiful. You should be the designer."

As she drew in animated gulps of air and surveyed his work, he kept eyes low. The ribbons of gray and scraps of netted material were gathered into his hands. He ran them against palms to catch up the mix of sleek and nubby texture. "Yes. I am an animal. The beast." Words were careless, airy things half-breathed out rather than truly spoken. He rolled a scrap of slippery, dust colored material against his cheek briefly before allowing the shred to slip past his fingers. Slowly, but surely, Seven returned to his feet and began to peel away his coat. The light wool was halved and efficently rolled up with shoulders folded in and collar bundling towards the end of dusty tails. He tossed the bundle upon a creaking velveteen couch. "It's definitely more you," was his final deliberation about the dress. Eyes scanned over its construction in an efficient sweep. "You have wonderful legs that ought to be shown."

She didn't have much to say to that. He may have been the beast, but not in the way that the fairy tale dictated. He kept no one captive. She wasn't sure if he had ever been a prince. At his compliment, she peeked down over the lip of the nonexistent hem of her dress and surveyed the crooked look of them, all pale skin and knobby knees. "Oh, you just like them when they're wrapped around your waist." She fanned a hand in his direction in something painfully cocky, her hip ticking as she settled weight on one, one knee bent lazily. "But they are nice, aren't they? They go all the way to the floor." Clicking heels towards the piano, she pressed palms down on the waxy, dusty top and hoisted herself up, one leg crossing the other in something blues-songstress, without the song and microphone. "Come here and tell me what else is more me."

Seven Thatcher had never been a prince, but he had. A thousand blood transfusions and the failing of his own platelet count couldn't wash away what was inherently blue. Feet away, he grinned bashfully over. A hand smeared through the back of his hair. "I like them that way too, yes." Painfully honest, when he wanted to be, he scarce blinked an eye and voice remained drawn out and leisurely. That calm ease was lost as she perched upon the piano ledge. With all the rivulets of wax and build-up upon the wood, she couldn't possibly do any damage. Nonetheless, he rushed over with arms folding out. As she was plucked from her stance with his palms folding beneath her underarms, a window cracked and the glass inside wooden frame seemingly imploded. "Don't sit on the piano."

Grinning from her spot, she watched him come rushing towards her, glancing behind her as if there was something to run from. Picked off of the piano, legs kicked and she clattered heels against the floor as the window burst. Though it was far enough away, Lucy's arms lifted up to sheild herself from flying pieces of shrapnel that threatened to cut her to pieces. The red-stained rag on her left wrist was already testament to her destructability. When the dust had settled, she whipped a stare to Seven and narrowed eyes. "What was that!?" She shrieked out, confused, and lacking control, two things that Lucy Hart despised. A hand folded over her skirt and she straightened it out behind her with a huff.

The look sent him stumbling back in an echoing series of footfalls. It was so accusing, as if the broken window had been his very own parlor trick. "I -- I didn't do it, Lucy," he murmured. Who could be blamed for it, however, was protected. It was a well known fact -- or at least, as known as any could be about Seven -- that he would defend certain features of his past to the end.

Rather than explain, hands reached out to cup the delicate slope of her jaw in his managled hands. A thumb ticked against her cheek as he bowed in to pucker lips against the pair of her tangled hair. "I'm sorry. I -- Are you frightened? Do you want to leave now?" Questions were nestled into the pale of her hair and at the soft thrum of her temple.

He didn't do it. She hadn't thought he had, but that he knew the source. Nothing was revealed, however, save for his own innocence. Cheek pressed into the hand of her choice, spidery lashes falling low as small dots of affection edged into her hair. "Please.." She scoffed. "It takes more than that to frighten me. I'm not callow, or skittish. Would you like me to leave? Would it be better if I did?" Though leaving left so much to the imagination. Where would she go? What was there but this house, this place, this company in this world? What existed outside? Leaning in, hands clutched at his rumpled shirt and she dragged him in a step, her knee crooking between his own. He towered over, and therefore, it was the most affection she could offer. "If I do, do you come too? Or are you stuck here forever, too, with everything else?"

He didn't answer her questions, if only because he knew she wouldn't care for the answers. Yes, he would like her to leave -- but only for her own safety. Yes, most definitely, it would be better. Yet, he kept her close, reassured of a steely spine as mechanical as his own. Hands slipped off cheeks and back into her hair. He tangled the length of it around a fist. His chin settled upon her crown. "This is my home, Lucy," he answered. Her questions, exactly, were unknown. Rather than hypothesize, he left everything to the known and confirmed. Outside the vine-laced doors and through a garden that was more African jungle than the bulbs and waxy petals that came with visions of the Netherlands, was a virtual unknown.

This was his home. It was clearly not hers, nor was it anything she was familiar with. "People leave their homes all the time. They go out. They visit. They uproot and move to new places." She explained indignantly, as if he didn't already know this. "Oh, God, I can feel it on you. Say it. Just say it. You don't want me here." Fingers clenched around the material of his shirt, white knuckling it, as her face pressed into the slope of his jacket shoulder. "Just say it, and I'm gone. I'll disappear, evaporate, you'll be witness to it, my greatest escape act ever. Straight jackets and a box that fills with water, chains and padlocks, all things I put on myself. I'll be gone. You'll be rid of me. Say it.." A hand lifted up to rake through the mess of his own hair in something deceptively sweet.

Mouth opened to speak, but a phantom hand pressed into his throat. Fumbling with breath and words, Seven gaped and stared down at her. She dared him to banish her, but yet, had never been closer. Not since... "No," he managed. Wrist drew back and he gave her hair a little tug. She was angled back by that small gesture and neck was exposed. There, upon the small pulse of her throat, lips pressed. "You're safe. This isn't real to you." He, was another story. A second windowpane shattered as mouth strayed over pale. Pausing, spine rolled up and shoulders straightened out. "Don't disappear just yet." Hand loosened its grip upon her hair and blonde once against flooded down her back. Seven cleared his throat and took a step back to break apart the crowd of limbs.

It was a wise decision. She would have thrown an unholy fit had he told her to leave. She would have refused. She would have stomped on piano keys until all the windows cracked and the floor gave way and swallowed her up. Head canting back, eyes drooped closed again and she let her knees buckle in something whirlwind and dramatic. Straightening when he pulled up and away, she had managed to ignore the burst of another window. Now, the curiosity killed her, and she glanced over a shoulder as the breeze from outside rushed through and into the room. Don't disappear yet. Keeping her heels canted together, eyes followed him back those steps and she was left with her arms empty, and hands pressed to hips almost impatiently.

"Okay. I won't." She offered quietly.

He sagged in the wide mouth of the doorway that led out from the destroyed room. "Okay," he echoed back as eyes watched her quietly. He was an awful host. Rather than offer her tea or something from the barren holds of his pantry, he stared. No entertainment was provided. No conversation made. Instead, he equally unnerved and sparked curiosity with his silent way. Hands rolled down the front of his vest and his first two fingers fished inside a pocket for his watch. Time stood still here. The suspended hands were briefly glanced at before he returned the tarnished shell into his pocket.

"You want me to stay, yet you count down the minutes you have left to bear me. To stand me. To suffer me." She breathed quietly, staring at the pocketwatch with disdain as she flitted a hand up and turned on heel.

She couldn't sit on the piano, so she chose instead to sit on the weed covered stairs, plopping down on the lower ones, and reaching for the little sprouts of daisies that grew up from between cracks. A fistful were plucked up and settled in her hand, each petal plucked off (without counting off in a girl's game, mind you), and then the yellow center squished into confetti that she dusted off of her skirt with the rest. With that finished, she moved onto the next bunch, trying to unsuccessfully knot them into a chain. "I'd give one to you, but you ruined my last present. You're not to be trusted."

Fingers rolled along the edge of his pocket; never straying, but instead staying with fingertips skidding along metal. Her look was recognized for what it was even if his own gestures were lost in translation. The pocketwatch was fisted again and torn from his pocket. A button from his vest popping off as he ripped chain from it, Seven scowled down at his hand. Metal glimmered there, but never so brightly as when the watch was flung matter-of-factly into wall. Rather than shatter, it lodged inside soft plaster and a stripe of wallpaper fell over it.

"There is no time here. There is nothing for me to count or suffer through. If I wanted you to go, I would have told you to." Hands wiped themselves carefully off upon one another as he side-stepped the chandelier and moved towards the battered staircase. "No, no I'm not to be trusted at all." He agreed wholeheartedly.

No time here. "Well. You have a very interesting home, then, Mister Thatcher. Timeless. Ageless. Old, but.. then again, what isn't."

Her failing daisy chain wilted with her movements and she scowled at it. "A valiant attempt though. It would have been much more exciting if you had shattered it completely. Lobbed it through the window, or.. stomped on it with your foot. Here. Come sit with me, then, if you're so intent on my staying." A hand patted beside her, and she tried to pry creeping weeds away to clear him a spot. "So touchy. I learn something new about you everyday. Here. Let's try again." A daisy was picked between two fingers and she extended it to him, spinning the stem as index and thumb rolled together. The petals twirled on display. "For you."

Lifting her hand gently from where it clawed at stubborn roots to make space for him, he folded it between palms as body slowly lowered down upon the stair-step. Where she could be easily compacted upon them, he sprawled out over several until feet hit the landing. He clucked at her call. He wasn't touchy. If anything, he was agreeable. The lank flower was taken from her. "Thank you," he murmured as yellowed petals were peered at. The wilted stem was folded into the button hole of his vest for safe keeping.

"Tell me something new about you," he requested before mind thought the better of it. Words were a blurt, something closely strung together at the syllables. He widened eyes curiously, as if likewise surprised at himself for asking.

Smoothed over at the acceptance of her present, she peeked eyes in his direction and beamed out a silly smirk before her face drooped at the question. What things were there left to tell? With her present tucked safely away, the rest of the daisies were strewn away to flutter in front of her. Elbows propped on her knees, and she pressed chin into her palm. "Oh.. I don't know. I'm a non-practicing Jew. I went to a Catholic school. I still have the uniform. I have a sister named Lola. I will probably spend the rest of my life pretending the last.. three or four years didn't happen. It will be easy. I will avoid all mention of names and events.." Hands smoothed out her skirt and feet kicked childishly. "I look forward to becoming somewhat more myself again. Don't you?"

A similiarity ran between them like a major artery: pretending chunks of their life weren't there at all. While he disowned all disappointments and utter failures, she did likewise in a way that he knew better, and was far more respectful, than to inquire about. Nodding along, a hand rolled along his jaw and eyes peered up the winding staircase into the leafy, upperportions of the house. The question struck him as curious. Glancing back down, eyes peered quizzically at Lucy. "More myself? Again?" He didn't know which was the stranger element of the question. Abandoning it altogether with a sigh, Seven deflated and smeared palms over the tops of his extended knees.

"No. Not you. Me. More myself. I didn't mean you." She announced in a voice that was more self-absorbed than she intended it to be.

"Oh," he murmured quietly as she clarified. He attempted to think of Lucy as being more of herself than she already was. There was something about the fashionista that was undeniably her own. She bled the geniune -- even if it was cold and steely.

"You can become more yourself too, if you like. I think you're already.. pretty much as yourself as you're going to be. Unflinching, even." Even if everything was vague and unsure, with no specifics. Canting her chin over her shoulder, a brow lifted, and she leaned back, elbows settling on the stair.

"I look forward to seeing you again."

"Oh, do you? Well. You should see me again, then. I hate to wait, it's the absolute worst. Time is agonizing when there's too much. It's what makes people forget. Too much time." A crooked heel lifted up and folded over her ankle, lungs deflating. "And you need to get out of this place as fast as you can. Good God."

"There is no time here," he reiterated for her. Slipping down a step, he unlatched a leg from its loose fold over the other. Experimentally steepling the pale stretch in one hand, opposite fingers strummed over her shin. Her advice was shrugged off. "You would make a wonderful canvas." Hand dropped away to remove a small ink-pen from his pocket. Uncapping top with teeth, he angled back and began to sketch out across skin.

"No. No time here. But somewhere.." She trailed off, willingly stretching out the length of her leg to be dragged towards him as he liked. Elbows provided a nice perch, and she lifted a hand to rake through his hair in something he had mentioned liking, in a place where there was time. And too little of it, for that matter. Fingers combed the sweeping licks and curls back, pinching them in fingers and dragging up before the motion was repeated, scratching at scalp like one would with an affectionate pet. Ink sketched into skin and she only half watched. She didn't know what was more interesting, the movement of his hand and the picture that unfolded, or the intent expression on is face. Either way. "I like you." She admitted coolly, without much fuss, fingers combing out the back of his hair.

What began as a carefully penned circle soon grew tick-marks and an intricate, curling series of hands. A clock was drawn upon the top of her shin just below a knee. Shading and stippling, he worked with his impromptu mediums to the best of their ability.

"The automatist's undoing. The whole world starts unscrewing as time collapses and space warps. You see decay and ruin. I tell you no, no, no, no. You make such an exquisite corpse." Words in a sharp, slanted script were drawn in a circular stream of lettering around the design. Dotting the final phrase with a period punctuation mark, he sighed contentedly and bowed head back into the drag of her fingers. "And you can trace the lines through the raised designs that run across my body. A collage. I'm all sewn up. A montage."

A clock. The plague of time was etched onto her in something semi-permanent. It would wash off with time, she imagined. Time. The time she didn't have here. "Beautiful." She breathed, crooking knee up and extending leg so that she could look more closely, though upside down, at the design.

"You like everything I do," Seven murmured as fingers slid out along the pale stretch of calve muscle before sinking away altogether. His tone lacked any and all arrogance. Instead, it was a direct opinion formed from all previous examinations of his art by her. Everything was beautiful or oddly lovely or brilliant. She was biased perhaps to some degree by like.

"Should I be more critical?" She asked, quietly. She too had been sucked into the idea that someone was listening, or watching, or haunting over them with some presence she couldn't compare to. Fingers continued their dragging and nudging at his head, through hair and across the back of his neck. "We're all sewn up. Everyone. We've all got parts that are.. not quite connected where they should be, or that we lost and found again. You.. that's just all of you, though, isn't it. Everything is secondhand, or.. not really your own. I think it's.." She lifted a shoulder and let it fall again, a thumb scraping against his cheek. "I think it's very you. Montage or not. All the stitching. I don't know what you'd be without it."

"It is all of me. There's not a part of me that hasn't been gutted out or grafted back together. You'll see. Maybe." He folded hands upon the tops of his weathered knees. There, the material ran so thin that he swore he'd be able to rip the material into gashes with any sudden move.

Fingers swept at his hair again, almost maternally, a trait she was trying very hard to shed before it took her over. "Maybe. Maybe. That's your decision." Leaning in another inch or so, mouth pursed and pressed at his cheek, free of the lipstick he had smeared away and worn down. Her hand patted over at his knee, and she folded fingers between his, palm stretching over his hand.

"We're a fine pair of misfits. You'll see." A smirk twisted up onto her mouth and she huffed out a breath. "I'll drive you insane, you know. I'm infuriating. Ask anyone. It's one of my favorite stories to tell. When are you coming back?"

Her hand was folded between his. Palms swallowed hers whole in a mess of skin and the flat white ridges of scar tissue. "Misfits," he repeated in an attempt to reconcile the word. It struck an odd chord. Seven constantly struggled between the want to break away from his strange, disconnected reputation and to embrace every oddity and abnormality inside, out. Rather than tell her that he was perhaps already crazy, head ducked low between the lift of his shoulders and eyes examined the scuffed tops of his shoes. He retained this pose until question sent him glancing back up. Eyes blinked in a wash of dark lashes and blank composure. One palm smoothed out the ridges of her knuckles and across the length of fingers. "I don't know."

[secondhand_stars]

19 years earlier.

Holden sits in front of the television set with a look that I'm more familiar with seeing on the faces of the men in the park who play chess on stone benches. The expression is one of grim resignation to his situation. He isn't discontent so much as worn out from the itches and pangs of his failing body. He squirms, but doesn't complain. I can't look away.

For the past three days, it has been like this. He went to bed one night with three spots on his belly that we thought was from playing in the grass. He woke the next morning covered in tiny blisters and a fever that painted his airplane pajamas to broken skin. For the past three days, I have held my heart in my throat. My eyes burn. I try not to look panicked, but fail sometimes.

"Do you want some orange juice?"

There is a transparency to the skin that is not speckled. He has a strange, floating quality to him that makes me want to sit on him to keep him present. It is time for more liquid paracetamol. His head lolls against my arm in a nod and I brush my fingers lightly over his hair. Sickness leaves a smell that stays with me as I cross the living room.

"Wait!" His voice is little. It croaks. I watch his arms lift weakly. It's a familiar signal. It was his first response to me. Though he is too old in some people's eyes for me to carry, I do so anyway. Dipping down, I wrap him up. His little heart drums against my own chest. He still sits easily on my hip though the rest of him, all limbs and long fingers and toes, dangles.

Inside the kitchen, Lucy stitches tiny seed beads into the front of a scrap of something that will later be a dress or skirt. Her look is one of intense concentration. Pins stick like shiny teeth from her grim set mouth. She looks up at the suctioning sound from the refrigerator. The shake in my hand makes her break away from her work. Abandoning spools of pale thread and her pins, she insists on getting the juice. Her moves are quick and efficient. A shotglass of medicine is dropped into the juice and handed to Holden in a brightly colored plastic cup. He drinks without complaint.

Later, we will lay inside his tiny bed. My attempt is pathetic. I take up the better part of the bed. My feet sprawl over the yarn rug on the floor beneath. He sprawls over my chest like a life raft. His nails scratch into my skin, but it's no substitute. Rosy and fevered, Holden moans and shivers.

"I itch," he says pathetically.

"Don't scratch."

"Seven." The sound is plaintive. He doesn't understand the complicated upheaval of his immune system. The link between cause and effect, cause and effect, is hazy. It is irrelevant. All that matters now is the crawling sensation beneath his skin. He looks up at me and I see my reflection in his glassy eyes. Help, we both say.

Pushing up from my sprawl, I lower him onto the mattress and angle low. I shuffle through the miscellany that now litters the perimeter of the bed. Tiny tops and bouncing balls. A connect-the-dot coloring book. A small bin of plastic dinosaurs. Another box heaping with cars. All of these things were small distractions that now have been left behind. A coffee can full of markers sits atop a yellow sketchbook. Lifting it up, I hand it to Holden and gestured for him to wait. I move without thinking. I am automatic. I am a machine that has been reprogrammed for a new purpose. I cannot cure him, but I can distract him. My shirt hangs over the baseboard of his bed and I hold out my arms. The ugly scar that snakes up the inside of one arm is held face down.

"Show me where you itch."

Holden is hesitant, even as hands wrap around a red marker. He indecisively twists at the plastic cap before I lift my eyebrows at him. I do not ask much of him and doing so now, he has no choice but to follow through. He tentatively presses the point of the marker into the fold of my elbow.

"Good."

Dot by dot, itch by itch, his illness becomes my own. I cannot spare him all the hurts and pains of this world, but in a moment, I realize that I can join him.