{ fnxyoonbora || “Welcome!” It was often what greeted her customers upon their entrance to her shop-- acknowledgement, coupled with a bright smile and a polite bow. She would then proceed to accommodate as much as she could personally, ask them how they like their meals done, because that’s what Books and Apothecary prided itself in. The day started off like it usually did; and when it looked like nothing would happen out of the ordinary, something did.
She felt a sort of attraction towards the female the moment she entered the establishment. Something egged her towards her, and Woori found herself heading already towards the woman. The usual questions were laid out and asked, but she wanted more time. She wanted to talk with her. And her desperation brought forth a sort of brazenness, that she said, “...this might sound stupid, but-- have we met somewhere? I feel like I know you.”
What: Tristan and Harley smoke a jay in his room and talk about some things.
When: September 6-7, 2014
Where: Tristan's room
Harley sat on the floor of Tristan's room, rolling the joint between her fingers. She was more relaxed than she had been for the last couple of days. Her back rested against the bed and she was happily clad in nothing more than Tristan's t-shirt and her underwear. This is why she had wanted to come back to Beacon Hills so badly. A happy sigh escaped her as she tilted her head back, watching Tristan open the vents to make sure that Damien didn't know what they were doing. Harley squinted slightly as she waited for Tristan to settle down, her fingers running through her tangled hair absentmindedly. "So why are we avoiding Oscar the Grouch?" She said, tossing the question out there casually into the comfortable silence which they had slipped into.
Tristan sat cross legged on his floor, joint haphazardly hanging between his lips as he slid the vents open. Damien had always thrown a fit whenever he smoked in the house, but he had easily and quickly found a fix. For the first time out of any house they've lived in, the vent system actually worked. Usually he would smoke outside, but their California neighbors were incredibly judgmental, and the last thing he wanted were the cops to show -- less because of the weed and more because of the mass amount of weapons hiding in their garage and basement. "I uh --, well that's a long story." His voice was quiet for a moment as he reached into his pocket for his lighter. Carefully, he cupped his hand around the front of the joint, inhaling as he lit. Tristan took a long drag, letting the smoke fill his lungs. He waited until it burned and then exhaled, leaning his head against his bed for a moment. "I was a real fuck up for a while there you know. After Axel died and Kat and I broke up. You're lucky you missed that."
Harley lazily lit her joint with Tristan's lighter, gently pulling it towards her. She sucked with getting those things to work the first time around and he already had his out, so she was merely making good of an opportunity. "Thank goodness we have the whole night then," she mumbled, taking a long drag as she stared up at the ceiling and slowly exhaled. The ache of her muscles was beginning to dissipate already and she found herself taking a languid stretch, sighing softly as she relaxed against the bed. At the mention of Axel, she paused while putting the joint to her lips, the memory of him replacing the ache that her limbs had previously filled. The mention of his previous relationship with Kat stung as well, but not as much as it used to. She remembered when it hurt so much that she believed she'd never be able to forgive Tristan for leading her on. But then life went on and so she moved on -- somewhat -- as well. Placing the joint between her lips, she took another drag, allowing the smoke to fill her lungs. Then she exhaled slowly, saying softly, "Apparently I missed a lot that year..."
Tristan shook his head, lifting himself onto the bed and making himself comfortable. "I wouldn't say you missed all that much. At least, not too much that wasn't worth missing, you know? I can't say anything good happened... because you know, none of it was good." He shifted in his bed again, resting his back against the wall. "After Axel died, Damien left. I don't know if he ever told you that, but yea -- he left for months, and didn't bother to take me with him." Tristan didn't bother to mention his home situation yet, or the fact that his brother leaving meant a lot more than what it sounded like. He didn't want to discuss all that. Harley wanted to know why he was avoiding his brother, and that's what he was going to get to. "My mom was sick, Kat was gone, Axel was dead; and I just felt - I don't know. Have you ever read Hamlet?" He knew the question sounded out of place, but the less he had to say, the better he felt about telling Harley this whole thing. It just, it was too much. He wasn't good at talking about these kinds of things, and he wasn't even sure if he had the words to explain this sort of thing.
Harley rested her arms on the bed, placing her chin on top of them as she listened to him, her eyes resting on his face. "Yeah, I know," she said quietly, pressing her lips together. Harley had adored Axel as though he were her own uncle. But Damien and Tristan had taken to him as sons to a father. The fact that Damien had abandoned Tristan was news to her, though. She had never thought him capable of such an action - especially one that required him to willingly leave his brother. A frown replaced the thoughtful look on her face as she lifted herself onto the bed, sitting next to him to stare at the opposing wall. "Damien left you?" Harley asked, her eyebrows pinching together into a look of concern. What she wanted to say was that she didn't believe it - that maybe Damien was off hunting something that he didn't want to tell Tristan about. She wanted to excuse his actions, to believe it was a lie, but as she looked at Tristan's face she knew that what he said was the truth. The look of concern vanished, morphing into one of confusion as he asked her if she had read Hamlet. "Yeah, I have." She said, taking a drag as she paused briefly. Harley didn't even bother to ask why he wanted to know. Tristan would explain himself soon enough.
Tristan nodded, pulling his joint from his mouth. “Yea, he left. Kept saying he found new cases, but I think he just didn’t want to be around.” He didn’t bother to delve into his feelings on that, knowing that would stir up old feelings he’d already pushed away. “So, you know Hamlet’s whole soliloquy? ‘To be or not to be, that is the question? Where ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles; and by opposing end them? To die, to sleep — no more; and by a sleep, to say we end the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to? ’Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep. To sleep perchance to dream. Aye, there’s the rub, for in that sleep of death, what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause,’?” He took a deep breath, before putting his joint back to his lips. “I was just… I was so hollow and empty, and I just didn’t care. I didn’t have it in me to care anymore, so I’d go out and get fucked up. And I mean, really fucked up. And before I knew it, I had a habit and it was just… it wasn’t good, you know? I was barely sixteen. I was too young to feel that washed up, I still am but, yea.” Tristan took a deep drag, letting the weight of what he just said sink in. If he rushed through this there would be too much room for questions, and he didn’t want questions, he just wanted to be understood.
Harley could tell that he didn't want to pursue the subject of Damien's absence and so she let it go, tucking it away in the corner of her mind as something to pick on later. She placed the joint between her lips and let it hang there, staring at the wall as Tristan quoted Shakespeare to her. It took her a moment to realize that he was quoting it word for word, leaving her somewhat speechless on the matter. Then she realized what he was trying to say and felt her heart drop to the pit of her stomach. Her eyes closed briefly as she rested her head on the wall, understanding hitting her as if it were a physical blow. It made sense now. Everything made sense now. As his words tapered off, she turned her head to look at him, a sad smile lifting the edges of her mouth as she pulled the joint from her lips. "Yeah," she said finally, "I know." That feeling of not wanting to be was something that she understood, but it had come from an experience much different than Tristan's. It was not something that she liked to admit or linger on too long - because if she did, then those feelings would catch up with her. Instead, she laced her fingers with his, kissing his knuckles softly, saying, "I promise you, I know."
Tristan shifted in place, resting his head on top of hers. For a moment he closed his eyes, waiting for the buzz to hit him. He was halfway through an eighth, he knew it was coming any second, he just wanted it sooner. He knew he could already feel the slight disconnect between his head and his body; Harley’s lips on his knuckles not registering until after she was done. He wrapped his arm around her, pulling her close to him. “When Damien got back, he found out, and he wasn’t — he wasn’t mad, you know? He was yelling, but he wasn’t angry. He was scared, and I think I was scared too, but for different reasons.” Tristan knew the high was hitting him, even if he couldn’t quite feel it yet; because it suddenly became a lot easier to spill his guts without any hesitation. “So, I promised him I’d stop. I took my last combination of shit that day and I just - I’ve never looked back, you know? Not once in three years. Never relapsed, never even tried to. I just kept reminding myself that I promised Damien, and that meant more than my own feelings. And it was — it was really fucking hard, you know?” Tristan rubbed at his face with his free hand, gently pressing the palm of his hand against his eye. “So, the day before you leave he basically tells me that he thinks I’m doing drugs again, that it’s ‘only been three years’ he thought I was ‘done with that’.”
Harley took a last drag of her joint, exhaling slowly before setting it aside. She licked her lips, chewing on her bottom lip before answering him hesitantly. "Damien is a worrier, Nemo," Harley remarked gently, watching him rub his face. "He feels responsible for you, which only adds to his anxiety. Don't ever think that he doesn't trust you - it was more of a weakness of judgement than anything. He's susceptible to doubts that feed into his paranoia, y'know? It weakens his judgement in the moment and..." she sucked in a breath, gently tugging his face up so she could look at him. "Keeping secrets from him and giving him half-assed answers as to why you're awake at 4 AM don't exactly help his situation." Harley had never thought to ask why exactly he never told Damien that he was with her till the ungodly hours of the morning. In this moment, the thought of asking him why slipped from between her fingertips and disappeared into the smoke. "You have every right to feel the way you do. I'm not saying you don't. What I'm saying is that maybe you should think about where he's coming from for a moment. He already feels guilty for leaving you once and will feel like it's his fault that you got fucked up for a bit. That guilt will always be there. The fact that he didn't know where you were and you were avoiding giving him straight answers obviously hit a nerve there. He began to jump to conclusions - something which we all have done at one time or another - and basically panicked." She paused, taking a breath as she felt her thoughts swimming around her head. "I think you should forgive him."
Tristan let out a sigh, stretching as he listening to Harley speak. She was right, he knew that. He wouldn’t tell her she wasn’t either; but she was rapid-fire speaking, her sentences slurring in his brain, and he was finding it hard to keep up no matter how much he wanted to. But he managed to stay quiet, stop the ‘wait whats?’ that wanted to force their way past his lips as he killed the last of his joint. “You just said a lot,” he grinned, slumping down onto the bed. “I’ll think about it, okay?” The high had finally hit him full force, and he’d lost all desire to talk about Damien anymore. “What’d you do in Oregon?”
Harley smiled bashfully and giggled as she realized that she'd just word-vomited. As he laid on the bed, she remained sitting up, bending over to give him a quick peck on the cheek. "As long as you forgive him for being...him," she said firmly, snatching the pillow from under his head, hugging it with a laugh. Oregon? Oh, right, Oregon. Chewing on her bottom lip, she gave an noncommittal shrug, her eyes downcast. "I thought Ryder could give me answers but it turned out he needed help more than I did." Once she lifted her eyes to his, she prodded his stomach gently. "What did you do while I was gone?"
Tristan frowned, rolling over in order to look at Harley. “That’s what you left me for?” He was teasing mostly, but he did wish her trip had been more eventful. From his understanding she had left with a purpose, and coming home empty handed was always the worst. “I spent a lot of time at work, and sleeping in my car. I can’t say I did all that much.” For a moment he had forgotten about Aaron entirely, not because the boy had made no impression, but because it was hard to focus on anything and all he could do was desperately grab at the pieces of what had happened. “We should - we should go on a late night Sonic run.”
Harley shrugged once more, more of an 'what can you do' way. "I'm just happy Ryder is okay now. My parents really worry about him and it was really nice to see him again." The trip hadn't been entirely disappointing, but it certainly didn't achieve the results that she had wanted. Pulling her legs to her chest, she rested her chin on her knees, a small pout forming on her face. "If you sleep with Lacie tonight, just know that I will be here, cold and alone. Not really cold so much as alone..." Another giggle escaped her before she was able to stop it, this one lasting longer than the previous one. A thought floated into her mind, whispering something of someone sleeping with someone. But then Harley rubbed her eyes and the thought was gone. Or maybe it wasn't. Maybe she just wanted it gone. "You wanna?"
Tristan offered her a grin, “Why would I sleep in the car? ‘Specially if you’re here? That’s stupid.” He grinned wider when she laughed, glad that they were in much better moods than they were in before. “Mhm,” he nodded. “I could really fuckin’ use a — I just want food.” Tristan laughed, trying to get his thoughts back together. “If we’re gonna go you have to put on pants. Wait, no you don’t we’ll be in the car. I have to…?” Tristan looked down at himself, realizing he was wearing a pair of boxers and a hoodie, another laugh escaping him. “I don’t have to either. So, let’s go.”
Harley laid down next to him, suddenly reluctant to leave the room. Still hugging the pillow to herself, she stayed silent, squinting at Tristan. "You're lucky I want food and only took off some of my clothes." She groused playfully, getting up to hobble to the door. "Or else I would never leave this room and I would never let you leave it either." With that, she tossed her hair over her shoulder, striding out the door without taking a second look back to see if he was up ready as she was.
