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October 3rd, 2013 10:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cheeerieZeke's birthday in Japan passes, and Claire flies home. Only, after her time there she begins to question what home is.
Just for a brief, brief moment, she wants to fly back to London and call it home. She thinks that if she places herself there, Zeke will follow, and if Zeke follows, then so will Bairn. She will have two of the three most important people in her life back within arms reach, and every chance to lock their happiness down so it can't ever escape them again.
The idea passes almost as quickly as it comes. She buys her ticket back to America, walks through the gates and into the lounges and waits for forty-five minutes until its boarding time. By that point, she's already had three glasses of champagne and has decided that she wants purple tips in her hair.
When she lands, it's in Atlanta. No use denying she hadn't been planning that from the beginning, because she had. Even back in Tokyo she knew she was going to stop here before she went home to Phoenix, no matter where she decided home to be.
She grabs her bag from the baggage claim and calls her brother. He doesn't answer the first three, four times, but on the fifth she gets an answer on the seventh ring; a long, exasperated sigh and a murmur of <i>should have changed my number when I got here</i>.
“Would have found you anyway.”
“Don't doubt it. Where are you?”
“In a bed.”
“Can I have the location of the bed?”
“In a bedroom. Immediately south of a floor lamp, a few degrees north-west of a textbook on Irish legends.”
“Quit being such a shit human and just give me your address, my ears are getting bored with your voice.”
She hears some shuffling and a murmur. He sighs again. She slides her sunglasses down onto her nose and looks up and down the street and decides that if she's going to be negotiating with a shit human, she might as well do it with a decent sized cup of tea and some sort of carbohydrate.
“I'll come get you.”
“How do you even know where I am?”
“Just stepped out of the airport. I heard them announce the 3:05 flight to Maine.”
Claire rolls her eyes. “Text me when you get here.”
“Yeah.”
* * *
It's two hours later and the shit human still hasn't shown. Claire has already shifted from the cafe to the bookstore to the boutique and back again. She's already loaded three John Green books onto the counter because she knows hers are about to fall apart. A copy of <i>The Twelve Ceasers</i> because her dad only has seven. A book about France in 1789 because she liked the way the gun transformed into a flower on the cover.
The store has a small book swap section in the back, too. Old books that have been loved and re-loved. Some that haven't been touched in years.
“Shit human reporting for duty.”
She rolls her eyes but doesn't turn. She buries her arm elbow-deep in the tub of book and pulls out the first thing her fingers grasp – a Muriel Spark novel. She sighs and puts it back, then finally turns to face her brother.
His tan is back. That's the first thing she notices. The sheet his skin had impersonated during their month in London last winter has been shed, and she's sure that there'd be lines where his shirt ends if his arms weren't covered in ink. The ink itself has been added to and touched up, too. The bird at his elbow is gone and five new digits have been added to the Pi chain encircling his left wrist.
“Been shirking your classes for the beach, then?”
He grins and pulls her into his chest. They hug for a good twenty seconds, and Claire comes away smelling nothing but sweat and lotion with a tiny hint of melted hair gel.
“Had lunch?”
“Ate while I was waiting for you. Never turned down a meal, though.”
She pays for her books and makes Bairn carry the paper bag the cashier drops them into. They hail a cab, ride for ten minutes, and when they step out they walk three blocks down and into a street facing directly out into a park, where the sidewalks are lined with tables and the sun is sneaking into every crack it can reach.
Bairn walks them to a bar. They sit in a booth at the front window after ordering a serve of fries, and Bairn eyes her bag as she kicks it under the table. “You're not planning on crashing here, are you?”
Claire rolls her eyes. “No. Wouldn't want to harsh your mellow.”
“Japan, then.”
Claire watches him carefully as he pulls a menu from between the salt and pepper shakers and eyes it over. Bairn has never been one to avoid conversations by reading. Or really, not one to avoid them at all. She's managed to train that bit out of him by always probing and prodding. This one, though, she might have to let be.
She stands and moves for the bar and orders fizzy for both of them. It's only eleven and neither of them have ever had any problem drinking earlier, but she likes to think that fizzy makes things a little less adult-like and serious for them.
When she gets back with the drinks, the fries have arrived and Bairn has opened the window beside the booth and is leaning back with his hands behind his head. She scowls and puts the glasses down, then reaches forward to pull the sunglasses off of his face.
“Who's the shit human?”
“Stop that. What are you, twelve?”
“Try twelve hundred. And then some.”
She sighs and sinks a little lower in the booth. Bairn's hands are still behind his head, but his eyes are on her and a little narrower than she usually sees them when they're being cast in that particular direction.
“He's okay, then?”
“Yeah.”
“Does he still have the toddler curls?”
“He cut them.”
“Good. I've been nagging him for months.”
Claire tilts her head a little. Bairn doesn't look away. They never do when they're assessing each other, it would never really make a difference—a book with no cover is easy to read no matter what position it's in.
“He gave me something to give you.”
“Yeah?”
“You don't get it until you answer my question, though.”
“Play ball.”
Claire pushes his drink toward him. He eyes it as though it could be a little more distilled.
“Do I need to be worried?”
Bairn doesn't answer her immediately. She finds herself in one of the rare moments where his expression becomes uncertain and unreadable to her, and even though it only lasts between flutterings of her lashes, the moment still exists where she's completely terrified.
“No.”
She believes him. She doesn't need to know what it was about, who said what, if anyone was right or wrong—just that she doesn't need to be worried.
Bairn finishes his drink and pushes the glass to the edge of the table. He takes a handful of fries and shoves them into his mouth in a rather ungraceful but entirely <i>him</i> fashion, and she watches as he chews with the most serious of expressions on his face. When his eyes flicker up to hers, the seriousness is broken, and his face splits into a cheeky grin as he chews and swallows.
They leave ten minutes later, and it seems to be silently agreed that she's going back to the airport for the next flight to Phoenix. They hail a cab and cut through the city in silence, their fingers locked in together on the seat between them. When they arrive, Claire steps out onto the curb and Bairn pays and follows her in and through to the terminal gates.
In silence, Claire leaves her bag at her feet and turns to her brother, who's standing a little like a scolded child with his hands tucked into his pockets and his shoulders slumped. She places both palms against his jaw and lifts his gaze to press her lips against his. His hands come out of his pockets and wrap themselves completely around her waist, and during the thirty seconds that pass for their kiss, Claire spills a thousand words from Japan onto his waiting lips.
When she pulls back, Bairn presses his forehead to hers and sighs. “You don't have to worry, Claire,” He murmurs.
“I know,” She answers resignedly. “But he is, and I can't stop that.”
She steps away and slings her bag over her shoulder. Bairn watches her without really seeing her, and by the time she's handed the cash over for her ticket and looks back to him, he's gone.
* * *
Six hours later in the blistering heat of an Atlanta midnight and Bairn still can't rid himself of the taste on his tongue.
It isn't just Claire on there. It's Zeke, too. Uncertainty. Loyalty of the unconditioned kind. A desire to reset and forget like he always knows he can. A desire for firm hips beneath his hands, only he doesn't know whose hips he wants and he doesn't quite think he cares.
He rolls over and sits up on the edge of his bed. Through the wall opposite he can hear Eryc sleeping soundlessly, the occasional breath higher or louder or softer to stand out against the others. He's leaving for California tomorrow and he can never say whether he'll be back in one month or seven.
Hunter is through the wall behind him. Soft snores, quiet mumbles. They had been out drinking together when Claire had called, and when he'd come home, Hunter had already passed out with someone in his bed who had snuck out not even three hours later.
.
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Date: October 3rd, 2013 04:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: October 3rd, 2013 05:30 am (UTC)He needs eight copies of Suetonius.
Also I'm toying with the idea of communication, but I haven't really decided whether I want something like that, because I don't want it to have too much of a ~fantasy~ feel to it. I need it to have a solid, evolutionary feel, as though everything that is possible is possible through evolution and science and is within the laws of physics within this world. Honestly though, either way Bairn and Claire could communicate a thousand words with one point of a finger - they're two books without covers and transparent pages.
I have decided, though, that the nature of what they all are is very intimate. They're more intimate with some rather than others, but Bairn, Zeke and Claire seems to be developing into this non-love triangle, where Bairn and Zeke are there and Claire seems to serve as a stand in, a mediator, a mother, a friend...they're basically this very intimate trio, but somehow not? I have yet to find a way to actually verbally put it, but it seems to come out very well in their actions and words without directly being explained.
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Date: October 3rd, 2013 05:57 am (UTC)threefour copies of Suetonius. (God, how embarrassing is that? :P)I really ADORE the idea that evolution could have left them with the ability to directly transmit thought/memory/feelings via DNA imprints, if they chose to though. Omg, fits of fangirling over here. That's not beyond the realm of possibility into fantasy (some sponges do it I think? Separate cells but that operate with one global memory/though process) and it seems like something that would be relevant to who and what they are. Ahsjdkahdjskahsja.
If you can show it, bb, you don't need to directly explain it. That's what makes you the good writer and E. L. James the talentless hack.
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Date: October 3rd, 2013 05:58 am (UTC)