centipede

[verne-cepeda]

[It’s that time of the year. The time of the year that Verne feels completely justified to break the fuck into Jane’s house and settle himself at the end of her bed. Not that he’s particularly been stopped from doing so at any other point in the year. It’s just that now, with his feet tucked up next to hers, he doesn’t feel bad hovering over the sleeping blonde and prodding her awake.

His fingers trace through her hair and poke at her cheeks, shaking and shaking her shoulders until he thinks he see her start to gain consciousness.]

Jane, Jane, Jane, Janey. Wake up, Janey. It’s time.

[He only lets up in his stream of poking, shaking, and pleading to kiss the tip of her nose contentedly.]

We can’t miss the most important day of the year.

[jane-reznor]

Noooooooooo. [The contempt in Jane's voice is obvious, barring on contentious. Her eyes barely opening up at all in the flurry of prods and pokes and strokes through her hair that might have been nice had they not been quick, pared with quick-spoken words in a childlike manner so annoying that she thinks she might be having a fever dream.]

Can't we do the most important day of the year when the sun is fucking out?

[Which is obviously not the point because it's black friday which is done long before the sun reaches its peak over the horizon and kisses the sky golden and blue. Done while it's still dark. Black. Which is probably why it's called black friday and she tiredly doesn't want to realize that she's just now putting that together.

She swats at his attempt at something sweet. Jane, the bitter old man, grumpy over nose kisses.] 

Let me sleep and we'll do whatever you want after.

[verne-cepeda]

[Verne could say yes — should say yes. Because he does — he has a girlfriend, and a not-girlfriend, and a not-boyfriend too. There really are places he ought to be.

But he can feel the pills in her pocket, and if he presses his fingers further, her thigh beneath his fingertips. Only the thin fabric parting his skin, and where he traces tiny circles against hers. There are plenty of rooms in this stranger’s house, and he’s not really sure that either of them would actually be missed if they slipped away for twenty minutes, thirty minutes, an hour.

It could be fun. They could have fun.

And Verne’s really not seeing a downside to it. So he slides his fingers over in her pocket; closer to her inner thigh, and grins.]

They won’t miss me. Yours will live without you. And besides, you seem to be feeling fairly confident yourself.

[His voice is rough at best, but he thinks his eyes hold the spark of mischievousness he’s trying to convey if the statement itself falls through. It won’t though. Because she is her, and he is him, and he’s fucked her into the backseat of her own car before.

Verne knows that they’re both in this, in their own strange ways.]

[jane-reznor]

[Jane didn't come here with friends. Hardly ever does, really, go anywhere with a group of people she could call her own. Which is maybe why the thought of Verne's people lingering around the corner after next settles in the back of her mind like a stack of cards that someone else has shuffled, and then handed over to you.

His friends won't miss him. Except they will -- only a little. Only in short glances around the room and quick realizations of the time and just how much of it has passed since he stumbled off to go get another drink and didn't come back to play.

And hers won't miss her because the only people she considers friends here just sold her drugs and wandered off to get high themselves. So no one she knows would be around to notice the split-second Jane takes to close her eyes while his fingers trace the inside of her thigh. To remember what it feels like without the barrier there between them.

And she backs up, pulling his hand out of her pocket with her own, pulling him back with her, around the corner. Up the stairs, inside the first room whose doorknob jiggles loose and ends up empty. Where it's quiet.

Where they're alone.

It doesn't take long to drop his hands, to put a bit of space between them. To wander away, towards the window. The dresser. The bed.] 

I found the room. You gotta find the drugs.

[verne-cepeda]

Unexpected visitors distract you from your plans? [He asks likes he isn’t guilty of exactly the same thing. Like he doesn’t know that he is that unexpected visitor, and vice versa. And like he is incredibly smug, because wow, he is.

Mystery pills catch his attention too - like a beacon in the midst of her words, speaking to his true interests. What if she was given something different than he was? What if she has more of what he was given? Verne wants to empty her pockets, looking for the next high. But he doesn’t know how to ask for it.

So instead he asks something a lot bigger. Something that comes out so very wrong from how he meant it, though truth be told, he’d have asked it eventually anyways.]

Want to find more of those mystery pills and a room?

[He means for quiet. For uninterrupted banter, and a sense of privacy more than the open room. But the innuendo of it crawls beneath his skin in a way he can’t really ignore, and wouldn’t deny despite his actual intentions.]

[jane-reznor]

Only if they're slurred-word drunk and apparently just full of confidence tonight. [Which, let's face it, is farther from being subtle than she could even bother trying to be right now. When she's had just enough and he's had maybe a bit too much, not that she can really tell. Apart from his monosyllabic noises, at first glance.

But then, the way he tensed up the moment he saw her says that he's sober enough to remember all the implications. Loud party. Dark rooms. Tiny pink pills burning a hole in her pocket that she'd gotten from Ed. A couple extra, when the lights from the party go out and she can open the sun-roof of the car and stare out at the stars, swirling above her head like ocean waves.

She thinks there's something to be said about doing drunks alone -- like the way people talk about drinking alone. But she doesn't really care. Just steps forward, taking his hand in hers, and placing it into the pocket of her dress. Crowd of people be damned.] 

Don't you have friends you need to be getting back to?

[verne-cepeda]

Not quite. [He hums, with surprising ease given his last few lines. An easy that flows too quickly into uneasy, divided words.] Only two.

[And he thinks the grin he forces must look as fake as it feels. Because he knows that when he says two, the blondes in question should be Liara and River. The ones in their comfortable little group. But fuck, he’d be lying if he said he was considering River over Jane at the moment.

He’ll hold it to, if she asks though.

He’ll say he didn’t know she was going to be there — because he didn’t — and so the only blondes he could actually be there for are his friends. He won’t say that his plans can change. That they have.

Or that they don’t really even matter, because wow, his only actual plan was to get fucked up and have a good time.

Which Jane is half ruining.]

And you’re not here for that?

[jane-reznor]

To make out with blonde girls? [It's not exactly an inappropriate question, seeing as how she'd done so not just with River, but his actual girlfriend, as well. Even if she doesn't always one hundred percent know what the other two in his exclusive little club actually amount to for him. Even if they all seem like one big group of togetherness.

All she really knows is that it hadn't been quite a big deal when she'd found herself lip-locked with any of the other three -- until Verne. And that out of all three, Liara was the one that got a title. Liara was the one that he called his own and it was zipped-lips about the two of them -- Verne and Jane -- even though neither of them had ever really agreed to it. Even though neither had said that they should be quiet about it. But she knows that they should.]

I'm always here for that. [And truthfully, she might have been. Until about three minutes ago.] 

Unless I get distracted. Too many drinks. Mystery pills. Unexpected visitors. That sort of thing.

[verne-cepeda]

[Verne doesn’t think it’s fancy. He thinks is probably the exact opposite of fancy; with his throat going bone dry the minute she’s speaking. And it’s not like she has him tongue tied. Verne isn’t the type to trip up around other people. Even the ones he’s wildly attracted to.

But somewhere between his first drink and his second, he had stopped trying to articulate. By his fifth, while not so gone he couldn’t speak, any real effort left had been abandoned.

Now his mind was awash with syllables only half formed, and the wit he usually reserves for the familiar blonde comes out mangled. Maye even too dry.]

Totally. You um, you a friend of the host?

[Verne mostly just counts on it getting easier. Once he’s past the initial rush of desire and surprise — once he remembers with some clarity that Jane is not his girlfriend, Liara is — he’ll pick back up the pieces of himself he’d dropped with his sobriety.]

Because I’m going to be honest, I have no idea whose house this is.

[jane-reznor]

Friend of a friend? Ed's cousin, maybe? [She truly can't remember at this point, despite the fact that she's almost positive that someone around here told her upon entering. Had to have at some point, seeing as how the party bus alternative for transportation was never really her style, and cabs weren't much of an option with a situation like hers.

It's not like everyone here doesn't fucking know that she lives in her car. It's just easier to not make a thing about it. To not have to have the cab or bus or Designated Dan drop you off in some random spot without four walls and a bed in sight. Easier to drive up with your bed in tow and leave whenever you feel you've had enough to wander into some dark lot and sleep of tomorrow's regrets.

That, or get so drunk that they have to drive you "home" anyway, and end up wandering up to Verne's door like the inappropriate idiot she is -- something she'd rather avoid if she could help it.

Which she can, since he's here. Standing in front of her with words like stumbling nothing from lips not wasted, but well on their way. She's seen him like this before.] 

Don't tell me. You're just here to drink other people's beer and make out with blonde girls, right? I mean, you've got your pick of the lot. [Pretty tall ones with lips like cherries that could literally be in any room of the house. Could be right behind her, for all she knows.]

[verne-cepeda]

[His head is pounding, for lack of a better way of putting that. That isn’t the feeling entirely. What it actually seems like is something only half-whole and otherworldly. A lot like River might feel if she were a variation of a headache. Or maybe it’s a normal headache, and whatever that guy handed him an hour ago is really kicking in.

Honestly, Verne isn’t sure.

But he makes his way through the house; hand pressed firm to the wall so as not to lose his way. Tapestries and frames block his fingers, interrupting his path, and he must look like a lost child. But the residence isn’t one of theirs, for once. The home of a friend of a friend of a friend of Nigel’s.

And though he knows he won’t get so lost amongst the hallways that he’d need to leave a trail, it’s grounding in a quiet way just to have the contact at all.

Grounding until he rounds a corner and sees Jane of all people, in the room he didn’t know he was headed towards.

In a brief moment, he wants to walk away. In another, he wants to take her hand and lead her back along the wall to where he knows there’s a staircase  — and spare rooms beyond. He wants to leave the party, he wants to know clearly what it would sound like to have her gasping against his lips in an actual bedroom.

What he settles on, is making a dying noise in the back of his throat, and waving. It’s not a particularly warm gesture. Not one that could be seen as suspicious by Liara, who he reminds himself, could be literally anywhere in the house.]

[jane-reznor]

[Jane has already has more than a couple by the time Ed walks by handing out shots to the group. Not enough that it would send her floating off into the abyss, mind you. But just so much that the tiny tube filled with something blue doesn't even phase her capable of doing any more damage than Mr. Cuervo already has.

And it lines her throat like a thick concoction that could only have been created by a drunk college student who happened to supply most of the refreshments for the night. It's easier, letting it go down and looking around at the room filled mostly with faces she doesn't have to confront on Monday morning. Friends of friends. Familiarity lingers around corners, sure. But it's red splatters on a white canvas and so easy to avoid if she wants to.

Unless it's camouflaged in long jackets -- unkempt facial hair and hazy eyes that say they've probably had more than she has and it's only eleven o'clock. The entire bucket spilled out and covering everything. Completely unavoidable.

Not that she wants to. Or maybe she does, or maybe she knows in her gut that where there's a Verne, there's a gaggle of high boys and girls, all of whom have tasted her teeth on foggier nights than this one.

It's not that she doesn't like them. It's that she does. And wandering away from her pack to the wall he's glued himself to seems inevitable.] 

Fancy meeting you here.

[verne-cepeda]

[He’d laugh — does even, just not as loud as he might have — if he weren’t serious to begin with. Not that piercing his ear and joining a punk band sounds like a necessarily bad plan. It just isn’t the one he’s working on right now. And she makes it so easy, with all of her bite and pointless hardness, to feel affectionate of her.

Easier still to shift, until he’s got his arms wrapped around her waist.

It’s not a new gesture for them. He’s spent weeks now learning how far he can push it. How much contact is comfortable, and how much is honestly too much for the both of them. But even on nights when they close their eyes with a half a foot in between them, they wake up curled closer than before.

Verne doesn’t really see anything wrong with initiating that closeness ahead of time.]

Punk band and earrings later. Trouble now. [But there’s no actual force behind the words. It lingers as a suggestion; an open door. Not one, at that, that she ever has to step foot through. Aimless flirting.

As an afterthought, he asks:] Are you tired? [He thinks the answer is obvious enough for both of them. But he more means on a scale of ‘I could talk for a while’ to ‘sing me to sleep, now.’]

[jane-reznor]

No. [She shakes her head to accompany the lie. It's not like she couldn't keep her eyes open for another minute if she tried. But more that the bed is warm, soft, comfortable. And he's warm, maybe not the softest thing she's had wrapped around her in her day, but definitely something she's grown used to having there when the sun disappears from the sky.

And it's familiar enough that she leans into it, even though her head is still so unbelievably happy resting on the pillow. It's easier here than it was in the bunker. All those cots, and he ended up in hers. And with Molly's green eyes leering over towards them nearly every 20 minutes, it was harder to pretend that resting her head on his chest hadn't become her favorite way to fall asleep.] I mean, well, yeah.

[She misses showers. Knows the only thing that would make a place like this better would be that steamed, clean feeling of slipping between the sheets after one. And maybe it's that or maybe it's the way she can almost image his lips getting lost on the words 'Trouble now' against hers.

So yeah, she is tired. But they're the only people in the world as far as she's concerned. She can stay up. What does she have, like a job interview in the morning?] What are you gonna do, give me a reason to stay up? I do love a good bedtime story.

[verne-cepeda]

[The house is a small one, compared to some of the places they’ve stayed. It doesn’t quite matter, though. Because it’s still got a stock of canned goods, and a first aid kit shoved away in the bathroom cabinet — like whoever had left, had only left with the guarantee of a better offer. It was nice, in short. Even if he no longer knew where they were, or how long it would take to reach Paris from here.

Maybe that doesn’t quite matter, though. It isn’t as if the two of them don’t have all the time in the world. Civilization has more or less ended. It isn’t like they’re on spring break. — Though, pointedly, Verne had never even had a spring vacation to go on. —

They’d discovered shortly after arrival that the couch pulled out into a bed. And while often times that was preferable to sleeping between a dead stranger’s personal sheets, the couch here was positioned beside a sliding glass door. One he’d already busted open just to get through. One someone else could just as easily use. And Verne isn’t a fan of purposefully sleeping in vulnerable places.

Though he’d been spared plenty through stature, he’d occasionally seen people taken out for less than sleeping in the wrong spot. Sometimes, just for fun. So he insists they take the upstairs room.

And Verne is smirking when he settles back onto the bed.]

Softest sheets I’ve felt in a while. We could get up to some trouble here, Janey.

[jane-reznor]

[She'd told him not to break the sliding door open. Because, like, it's the actual real life apocalypse and when people abandon their homes for good, it's not like they go around checking that all the windows are locked of anything.

But they'd been on their feet for a while -- longer than she'd planned on for the day. The sun never seems to set when she thinks its supposed to these days. Like somehow slowly but surely the earth is spinning slower and the sun is burning colder out there 92,960,000 miles away. Bottoming out with sadness because her favorite child is dying, even though she knows she's not supposed to pick favorites. But the little blue-green one was always the smartest and made the funniest little things to show her. Lights up the brightest and feels the most alive.

Or, felt, at least. Jane thinks if she were the sun, she'd probably be bummed that all the lights went out on Earth too. She's bummed enough about it just being one of the tiny inhabitants that could really, really go for some sushi and Netflix right now. 

Still, she has a less than rotting house. An actual bed. Verne. 

Pre D-Day Jane would be absolutely vomiting at how vaguely positive those things feel right now. She knows that. Acknowledges it, breathes it in, and kicks off her shoes and curls herself onto the empty spot next to him.

It doesn't even smell like death in here, and god that is so welcome. Her eyes are closed before she can even look up at him and roll them.] 

Yeah, trouble. Let's start a punk band and I'll pierce your ear in the bathroom. Parent Trap style. You down?

[verne-cepeda]

[Verne rolls his eyes; tempted to snort. Like he could laugh off the situation he himself caused, but he won’t. Won’t because, he caused it. Won’t because it’s her. Won’t because the only things he actually minds about the sound of ‘Duncan’ are the balding and grandfather parts. Middle-aged, he could do. He’s not exactly a teenager himself.

Grandfather is a step too far. So instead Verne shifts his weight; propping against the counter beside her, and crossing his arms loosely. Vaguely he remembers telling Amatra about body language as a kid.

How someone had sat him down to tell him about the world before sending him on his first recruit. He’d been good at it then. Children always had a much easier time convincing adults to believe in their Gods.

'Hands out and open,' the voice tells him. It's an off shade of familiar that Verne is no longer able to place, and in a moment of clarity, he wonders where the person behind it went. He hasn't heard he voice in years. 'If you fold your arms, you're closing yourself off from the person you are talking to. Fold them behind your back, if you must. It creates a picture of openess.'

And yet, Verne isn’t trying to block himself off from Jane here. He’s only creating distance between right and wrong. He stands on ground raised three inches higher. It’s a different view from above.

Which isn’t even a short joke.]

It’s his dedication to the job, you know. Really gets me going.

Of course, don’t let him know you don’t dig it. I think you might really break his heart.

[jane-reznor]

[It's exhausting to pretend she isn't amused by all of it. That him standing in the middle of this private place that feels more like a home than her own apartment is anything but surprising to her. She'd wondered for a few days now how long it would take for him to show up here. At her job. Or at Molly's of all places, though that would take a hell of a lot more explaining. 

Here people get visitors all the time. Significant others come to pick her labmates up for lunch. Their kids come to visit and see the cool things. Proud parents in town for the weekend get a glimpse at the world their children are exploring and just how successful they've gotten at it. She'd brought Amatra here once, but they'd been high and Martin had noticed how weird they were acting.

There's no one else here today. Mostly because Jane had been so busy helping plan Molly's wedding these past couple of weeks that she'd fallen behind on her work -- had to come in on the days when everyone else was off. Somehow she feels like he must know that or else he would have just waited for another time to come stalk in in the lab. But then, that feels a little crazy even for Verne's standards.

She rolls her chair back from the desk, not standing up to meet him, but spinning it so that they're facing one another. And it's weird, seeing him here in this setting. This place of her own.] You should go for it. Give him your number. Ask him out somewhere nice. I mean, I know that must be why you're in the building. Can't think of any other reason you'd be here, right?

[verne-cepeda]

[Verne isn’t, technically speaking, supposed to be there. Verne isn’t, again, technically speaking, supposed to be anywhere. Or maybe he’s everywhere. He doesn’t quite know. It’s a funny sort of feeling that floods the storm shelters in his mind; drenches everything in warm, and wet, and— not real.

Because Verne has been a lot of places that he’s not meant to be. And the lab he’s seen Jane head to, is only one of many, on an overall list.

So he doesn’t really think twice about how he’s not doing his own job. Hasn’t been for weeks now. Or how there’s a holiday two days away, and he’s meant to have brought people in for it. He’s not a hunter, at least. There’s a layer of waxy film set universally between him and them. And if they are both meant to lure people to their deaths, then at least, Verne acts of the kinder base.

It is devotion that has him trailing the blood paths hunters leave in the morning dew. It’s devotion that keeps him pacing the same dying city day in day out; breathing in the stale air, and swallowing it down. To him, it feels like cobwebs growing in his lungs.

Safety is the flame lit in his vanes at the flash of familiar blonde. Not so heavy as his brunette God Head. Like obligation — devotion — might only be temporary, if only he could chase desire far enough off the path.

It’s why he’s here — tripping and stumbling over himself internally, just to watch Jane work. Because she’s flattened grass off a beaten path. A suggestion of something else — new —, that he won’t take. Doesn’t want to take. But wants to see all the same.

Even when she’s made of the same dirt and broken glass that he is. Though he’s aware she would hate the suggestion.]

The receptionist is cute. [Despite that he hasn’t seen one. It’s small talk. It doesn’t need to be true. Only much of what he says to her somehow is.]

[jane-reznor]

[His voice literally scares the living shit out of her. Like somehow the worst thing that Jane could ever imagine happening ever would be Verne somehow figuring out where she goes to do her research and then fucking showing up there. And it makes sense that he would; she never put it past him, following her all the way to somewhere professional and serious. A place where she's supposed to be focused and calm. 

The man had broken into her house at six in the morning, made bacon in his underwear, and made out with her before she got more than three sentences out of her mouth. So hearing his voice ringing through her ears while her eyes trace the patterns along the screen isn't unepected. It's just surprising.

And maybe a little concerning because the last time she'd had anyone in the lab with her, she'd been high as balls and showing unproven stats to the random girl with the big eyes and very little concept for stranger danger.

Though, really, who is Jane to be talking about that topic. Maybe it makes more sense now that Verne hangs around because they've spent so much time together. But he's not her friend. And if the way he pops up everywhere says anything, it's that he's probably more messed up than she likes to let on.

Still, her eyes leave the screen long enough to roll at him.] Yeah, balding middle eastern grandfathers are totally my type too.

I bet he doesn't even follow girls to their place of employment. Total dreamboat, that Mr. Duncan.

[verne-cepeda]

[Verne watches as she exits her apartment. Watches from the bench across the street with an absent stare until the moment that he knows she sees him.

Then he’s sure to stretch his legs out, relax back, and fake his best confused and annoyed face.]

Are you stalking me, Janey?

[jane-reznor]

[Jane doesn't even bother to feign surprise any longer; it's been happening often enough that she's started to rationalize with him to some extent. It isn't as if they've exchanged phone numbers, so how else was he supposed to get ahold of her? Stockholm syndrome or some shit. 

She puts on the fakest of smiles and crosses the street towards him.] 

Oh lucky me. Verne's here to take me on another fucking adventure.

[verne-cepeda]

[Verne shoots her a look somewhere between exasperated and dire. A look that then shifts all too easily into a smile, then a smirk. Like a movie broadcast against his features. About amusement, and adventure. And… honor?

He extends his arm to her, like he’s seen gentlemen on television do. And though a part of him would rather just shove her out the door — something vastly more in character for him to do, really — he can stand being polite.

He’s sober, after all. And while that usually acts more as a form of torture for himself, it also clears up a few behavioral issues he forgets to press upon when drunk or high or fucked. One such issue being societal standards of behavior. He’s not supposed to give a bug’s ass about them, but somewhere along the way, he’d bothered to learn.]

It’s the spirit of the venture, really. Undress or go home.

[Somehow that really doesn’t sound as good a ‘go hard or go home.’]

[jane-reznor]

[She narrows her eyes at him almost immediately. Like, sure, break into my house and kiss me on the forehead, whatever. But lend me your arm to walk me out of the house like we're in Victorian England?

She takes it anyway, along with the brief, calm satisfaction that comes with him being reasonable and not horribly difficult to deal with for once. He's here. She's dressed. Their going shopping. Might as well make the best of it.

So she grabs her keys and heads out the door, if only to just get out of the house, somewhere other than the quiet, dark place where they'd be by themselves. It's not exactly as if that ever really turns out that well for her.] 

Ah, just as classy as I remember you.

[verne-cepeda]

[He’ll take that. And though he doesn’t really think about his actions as he shifts to kiss her forehead and then leave, his face sort of blanches and he thinks about them on the way out of her room. And fuck, fuck, fuck he’s way too sober for everything right now.

But he still wants to go shopping, and he’s not going to lie, that’s a force that overpowers every hesitation he’s got.

So he doesn’t leave. He stands outside her bedroom door waiting patiently, and gives her exactly two minutes of courtesy time before he call in:] If you’re secretly not getting dressed, I will barge in there and make you go in your underwear.

[Because, A) it’s reasonable to assume that since last time she was only wearing underwear, that this time she probably is too. And B) because it’s not like he hasn’t already seen her in her underwear, so he means, it can’t be much more traumatic this time can it? It’s not like he’s going to touch her.]

[jane-reznor]

[Not knowing Verne as well as their familiarity with one another might suggest that she knows him means, well, a lot of different things. One being that she has no idea what normal is for him. Which, in general, wouldn't be a problem, because she doesn't fucking care. That, and it isn't that hard to pin down that normal doesn't really compute with him. What with the breaking in, and the stalking, and the everything that comes out of his mouth.

But normal in his right doesn't really feel like forehead kissing and actually leaving the room when she asks him to. And as he walks out, she feels off-kilter to the point that she actually considers going with him -- if only out of shock. Maybe curiosity, which is what got her into this mess in the first place.

So she does put clothes on, as well as pop into her connected bathroom and brush her teeth and all the basic tiny things that a human has to do before heading off into the world. Because she's going shopping.

With Verne.

The brief second she takes to stop and shake her head at the entirety of her life is one she'll probably look back on and wonder why she didn't just call the police and crawl back into bed.

But she opens the door. And lets her lips slip something she thought she wouldn't bring up.

Fuck it.] Well, if you're not in yours cooking bacon, then fuck being in mine, right?

[verne-cepeda]

Let’s go shopping.

[He doesn’t bother to really directly reply to her. Again? Yes, again, obviously. And though it may be polite to warn her that he really has no intention of stopping, he doesn’t owe her the kindness. In fact, such kindness would be frowned upon in most family affairs. It’s bad enough to be sneaking around for a heathen when his aspect is devotion, but worse to be treating her well.

And this is, by his standards, well.]

Come on, get dressed.

[jane-reznor]

Oh my God, I don't want to go shopping. [The words come out muffled as she lays back down on the bed, pulling the blanket up and over her face, garbling any attempt at communication.] What time is it even? Ugh. [The groan makes her sound like a four-year-old trying to get out of going to school. But she doesn't care. She's tired and he's in her house again and who really wants to go Black Friday shopping, honestly?

Well. Verne. Clearly.

She pulls the blanket down enough to reveal her face.] 

Get out so I can put clothes on.

[verne-cepeda]

[Verne sits, crouched by the head of Jane’s bed. He’d have thought that she’d be more cautious locking her doors after the first time, but apparently it wasn’t so cautious he couldn’t still manage a way in. A grapefruit tucked to his lips, he watches her sleep for all of about 30 seconds before he ruins the peace.

After all, he didn’t come here to be peaceful.]

Jane. Jane. It’s Black Friday, Jane. Jane you can buy shit for what it’s worth today. Jane. Jane let’s go shopping.

[jane-reznor]

[Jane's sleeping patterns hadn't been quite as resting as she might have wanted. And even after the latest bit of breaking and entering, she still managed to fall asleep like a rock the second she got home, and yet wake up feeling like she'd never slept a minute in her life. And after a Thanksgiving with perfect Molly's perfect family, it was one of those out like a light sort of nights.

And, you'd think, that with Verne lurking about almost always, hearing a voice would jarr her right out of her slumber. But instead, she only shifts a little at the noise, as if trying to shoo it away in her mind until she realizes that it's actually there. It's actually there and, of fucking course, it's actually Verne.

She lurches upward, wrapping herself up in the blanket and looking around, bleary-eyed.] 

Are you fucking kidding me? [Her feet kick outward, trying to push him away.] Again? Fucking again?

[verne-cepeda]

[If he weren’t so content to simply breathe her in, Verne might almost laugh at the way her nail rake his flesh — like she thinks it will hurt him just because it makes him bleed. But it doesn’t, and his lips trail away from hers; down to her neck and collar, biting and licking at the soft flesh along the way.

He’s waiting. Just waiting for her to push him back.

He’s not stupid. He knows it’s coming, and that it’s only a matter of when. But if anything, that only motivates him to make the best of the time he’s got while she reciprocates with her own anger.

A period that is short, and shorter still if he — and he does— enjoy it.]

[jane-reznor]

[Hips lips touch her neck and it's like an electric bolt waking her up. Because it isn't kissing, soft and trailing down her skin like he might want to make her feel good. It isn't some guy over to fuck and be fucked. It's Verne. And his teeth are biting down hot, wet bullets straight into her skin as if he could pin her down and make her want him.

And she does, want him. 

That want that lingers beneath the skin to press him down and break something -- it doesn't matter what. But he wants the same. He wants more. He wants everything to the point that her hands grasp at his shirt to feel his tongue against her collar bone quickly before shoving him off of her like it might have started two seconds ago rather than however long it had actually gone on. She shoves him so hard that she wouldn't be surprised if he came off with a piece of her skin dangling in his mouth. And her voice is shaky, breathy, pissed off and flushed and all the things she wants to not be right now.] 

I said not to fucking touch me.

[verne-cepeda]

[It’s sort of like the gods have opened a gateway from their own plane with her words. It takes less than three seconds for her to do the exact opposite, and touch her. Verne turns her, pushes her back against the counter, and lowers his lips to hers without a second thought to the action.

It’s not gentle. Not kind. His lips are harsh against hers until they give way to teeth; biting down perhaps harder than he really needs to on her lower lip until he tastes blood.

But she couldn’t have expected anything different, and he’s waiting for her to push him away.

Mostly he just thinks she can taste the grin on his features.]

[jane-reznor]

[She wants to pull away. To kick him or scream at him or fucking call the police. Anything but have his lips, hot and harsh and trying, pressed to hers. But she doesn't. Doesn't think to pull away immediately, not until after her back hits the counter and his teeth are biting down against her bottom lip like she might be a replacement meal for the one she threw out. Her mouth opens when the skin breaks, when the taste of pennies coats her tongue, her throat letting out the smallest of noises in reaction. Which she knows he just fucking loves, and it makes her stomach turn. 

Makes her fingernails scratch at the skin of his arms and back until they break skin as well. Blood for blood as far as she'd concerned, and she pulls him closer with a breathy haste that only fuels her feelings. Because she fucking hates him. Enough to want to hurt him. And damn if that isn't exactly what she gets to do.

She'll push him away soon. But not until he's worse off than her.]