[private] once you think you're in you're out.

[subversion]

The room Light leads Matt to is a bar, which has been abandoned every time he's checked it. It's pure curiosity: something a little familiar. Heading to the counter - which is immaculate, as if someone scrubbed it down before walking out - he peeks behind there and steals a bottle of orange juice before looking back to her.

"It was some kind of genocide? Chasing utopia?"

[[OOC: private to stripesandheels.]]

Comments

[stripesandheels.livejournal.com]

A few hundred thousand. I don't know the number at this point. I try not to think about it.

[subversion.livejournal.com]

[At that, his head tips down, and his hair scatters into his face; he mumbles. Some of the seams are splitting inside him.]

No, I didn't do that. I didn't. I mean, why would I ever do that?

[stripesandheels.livejournal.com]

I know. I can tell.

[subversion.livejournal.com]

[He rubs at his eyes; they sting.]

This is so stupid. I should never have known about any of this.

[stripesandheels.livejournal.com]

Light, babe, you shouldn't panic. You know about it, I fucked it.

[Wry self-disgust.]

[subversion.livejournal.com]

[A bit of a tense glare, over his hand, through his hair: don't call me that, you don't know me.]

Was he good?

[Still half-panicked, but just as wry.]

[stripesandheels.livejournal.com]

I know.

[Don't call him that. But she'd rather see him irritated than panicked.]

Best I'd ever had. That's the part that really makes me want to cry.

[subversion.livejournal.com]

Mmm, that hasn't improved my opinion of him.

[It's a weird twist of threat and transferred flattery and sympathy and shame; like so much, he doesn't quite know what to feel. A finger settles across his eyes.]

But, honestly, you don't seem as if you wouldn't get the psychology of it.

[stripesandheels.livejournal.com]

Enlighten me? Because I was expecting to lie back and think of England.

[subversion.livejournal.com]

That's often the attraction, isn't it? As we were saying before. Something you shouldn't want, something bad for you. Dangerous.

[More detached than anything else.]

[stripesandheels.livejournal.com]

Smart, mean, dangerous?

[Yeah, she has a type.]

[subversion.livejournal.com]

Was that how it was?

[Part of him would like to be thought of that way. "Smart" would be a beginning.]

[stripesandheels.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Can we stop talking about it for a bit?

[She's watching him.]

Tell me something about your world, please. The differences.

[subversion.livejournal.com]

Of course we can. I'm sorry.

[He glances back up, meets her eye, looks down again.]

Differences. No Kira. Other than that - it's hard to say, you know? It's just the world.

[stripesandheels.livejournal.com]

Are you trying to be a police officer?

[subversion.livejournal.com]

[Something blinks across his face, some harsh, frozen disbelief that's there and gone again; on the spot, he can't believe she's mentioned it.]

Why would you say that?

[stripesandheels.livejournal.com]

-sorry, I'm going to have a really difficult time remembering what I do and don't know about you.

[subversion.livejournal.com]

[His fingers have tightened around the bottle he's holding, as if crushing it to dust might wake him up.]

No, it's just - that's my father's thing, you know? It's complicated.

[stripesandheels.livejournal.com]

Is it weird that I feel lucky that I don't have parents?

[subversion.livejournal.com]

You don't?

[stripesandheels.livejournal.com]

Well, I didn't bud off someone's shoulder, and I wasn't a tadpole or anything, but yeah. I haven't since I was, you know, knee high to a hobbit.

How's Sayu in your world?

[subversion.livejournal.com]

She's - [dead in a ditch for all I care; he tells himself it firmly] - fine. Doing well.

[With each question, the tension he's hiding creeps out a little further.]

That must have been really difficult, Matt. I'm sorry.

[stripesandheels.livejournal.com]

No. [Easy, unconcerned.]

You forget. I'm trying to get a measure on you, but you just get more irritated the more I ask.

[subversion.livejournal.com]

I'm really not, you know - irritated, that is.

["Frozen" would be a better description: a rabbit in headlights. The hand that's dangling behind the counter starts to cut into itself - tiny scratching motions back and forth. Some of the tension clears back into clarity.]

You want to know what I'm hiding. Whether I'm like the rest of them. But there's not anything I can say that will tell you that.

[stripesandheels.livejournal.com]

I guess I'm trying to work out how scared I should be.