...yeah, I know. My little brother wasn't from the same place either. Different story, same ending.
[ Jaime shrugs. He's sad for her, of course, but when he mentions his little brother, he manages to maintain remarkably level. It's not feigned, either. He knows so much about the horrible things that people went back to that Ken is the one person he manages not to be sad about, even if he misses the kid horribly; he knows Ken overcomes all that's been thrown his way and is well and alive where he's from. That's good enough for him. Maybe he's not there with him, but as long as Ken continues to be the survivor he knows he is, then he can rest easy.
A little brother's different from a dad, though. ]
I'm sorry anyway. I didn't drag you over here so I could get you to rehash all this again. Let's just... watch TV.
[ If they keep talking, it will keep spiraling back to unpleasantness. Maybe it's because of who they are and what they share, but Jaime prefers to think of it as something that's just in her mood right now; when you're already struggling, sometimes it's difficult to keep your mind from wandering.
When he turns up the volume, he looks at Ruka, quiet and miserable as she is. He would have hugged anyone else by now, but it's always felt different with her, as though he should wait for an express invitation.
After a moment's deliberation, he wraps his arm around her shoulders anyway, squeezing her shoulder once before letting go. As with their every conversation, there's wiggle room. If she wants to slip away, there's plenty of room, but if she wants to stay... well, that's okay too. And if it feels a little different, it shouldn't. Jaime's done this to a hundred people on this couch before. It's just what being a good friend's about, sometimes. ]
[ She hates getting I'm sorry for things like this, little trenches dug where the wounds already lay, so she doesn't offer verbal condolences either. He hurts, but it's an old hurt. Mentioning the loss doesn't always rebreak the heart, after all, no matter how fragile she feels now, and Jaime... well, he's not the one falling to pieces over dog collars and photographs, is he? With his apology, she shrugs her shoulders, noncommittal. Another time and it wouldn't be so bad. It isn't his fault. But without being guided to talk about anything else, she doesn't know what to say.
Touch takes her by surprise. Not in a startling, jolting way, not in a way that makes her freeze up, or tense — not that she could get much more tense than she is anyway. But it is a surprise, enough that even that simple squeeze forces her to exhale, to try pushing some of that tension out. It's been a long time since casual affection has been common for her; she can name and count the culprits on one hand, from arriving in this world, and years before besides. Maybe it doesn't feel different to Jaime, but it does to Ruka — nobody treats her like this. It's always all or nothing. Rua with his formerly mirrored proportions, the shape of a hug that hasn't changed in ten years; Karkat with their complete absence of boundaries, smoothing hands across each other's backs and combing hair and murmuring through the worst of the darkness; Eridan, whose easy strength and careless treatment always felt like being smothered, being crushed; not even the other Jaime, who'd been this age when she'd lost him, but she'd still been so much younger, and smaller, so easy to fold up and hide away under layers of coat and flannel.
It doesn't remind her of any of them.
He'll feel the residual tremor through her arm, where his hand rests against her shoulder, but it fades, and she doesn't pull away. Instead, she tilts, and sinks, filling up that residual space between them on the couch so her head can find his shoulder — and maybe it's selfish, when he's still in his work clothes, so there's no barrier between the heart on his lack-of-sleeve and where she rests her head, but she's allowed to be selfish once in a while, isn't she? It's an anchor. It's shore. ]
What do you usually watch? [ It comes after delay, quiet. ] I don't even have a TV at my place.
[ It's not touch that Jaime's tentative about - it's causing discomfort to other people. The moment Ruka relaxes, the fact that Jaime relaxes too is tangible even to those without empathic abilities, shoulders settling and hand resting firmly against her shoulder with, perhaps, unearned familiarity. Sitting like this has always been comforting for him. He hopes it's comforting for her too. ]
Eh, nothing that interesting. Nature documentaries, the discovery channel, stuff like that. Some dumb reality TV, sometimes. [ And some real TV too when he feels like planting his ass down and doing nothing for five hours straight, but he's not the monster who'll toss someone into the middle of some awful low-budget sci-fi show without the proper context! As BB burrows his way into Ruka's lap, Jaime grabs the remote and switches the channel. ]
Here, this one's all about weird animals. They got a whole section on sloths. Mole rats too.
[ And underneath all of what they'd spoken about, the uncomfortable emotions underlying their conversation, the puzzlement and worry at Ruka's current state, there is one earnest emotion: Jaime really enjoys these funky little critters. ]
What, like Real Cub Scouts of Mecklenburg County? Or Pasta Primadonna?
[ Look, all she knows about reality TV is what gets popular among her fans online and letting herself get curious about their terrible, terrible URL choices. It's always a mistake. Despite the tease, his selections certainly aren't... the worst things he could have chosen. Could have turned out to be an obsessive sports guy, or putting on real crime dramas with extremely sketchy investigative procedure.
Or game shows. They'd be stuck here all week if it went to game shows.
It doesn't seem to matter so much. Her hand settles against BB, idly scratching his ears, and Jaime's comfort and relief settling around her like it's a heavy blanket he's thrown over her shoulders. Sure, there's still worry, too, but it's a reactive feeling; so long as she gives him nothing new to worry about, it recedes.
The outright earnest delight feels very much Jaime, but at the same time... ]
... They're so ugly... [ The wrinkles and the hairlessness on the inevitably high-def picture is... certainly an image... ] ... are they rats or are they moles?
[ Just because she's good with animals doesn't mean she knows jack shit about. Any of them. ]
More like Ice Road Truckers or Mythbusters or Bake-Off. I'll show 'em to you sometime, [ Jaime provides. Bake-Off he'd have to go for reruns (that's the show he and Yusuke watch together, and he's not about to commit the horrible betrayal of watching ahead) but he's pretty sure she'd at least appreciate some of the shows he can dig up. And yeah, maybe he left out the telenovela he's addicted to, but she doesn't need to know about that.
He grins at the screen, amused by her reaction. She's right. They are ugly. It's what makes them so great. ]
They're kind of their own thing. Maybe the scientists who discovered them just ran out of names. [ Then, cheerfully: ] Bet you some cape named themselves after one. The Mole Rat Marauder, or whatever.
I guess that's not surprising. You have things like... "camel spider wasps?" [ Two different things, Ruka. ] It might be too hard to come up with something completely new.
[ It's idle, useless talk, but it's easy — and it's putting Jaime in a much better mood than dealing with her obnoxious little kitchen breakdown did, for obvious reasons. She's still hurt from everything, and she will be for a long time, but... she's always been the type to run away from her problems, hasn't she? And there's no better way to hide from the damage of her own heart than to bury it beneath the stronger feelings of someone else's. It's only temporary, but everything calibrates to it: her breathing steadies, the stress painted over, and the tremulous racing of her heart eases, slows. The fatigue of days and weeks and weeks catching up to her. ]
Just camel spiders, I think. The stupidest name...
[ Jaime leans his head back against the couch. It is idle talk. And Jaime knows he's just distracting her from whatever problems have put her in such a state, that it's no permanent fix, if anything could be - but it's nice, isn't it? Just to talk about nothing for a change?
So what if it's just a little break? That's worth it too. ]
Honestly, I was never really interested in superheroes before I became one. Hey Khaj? Stupidest name. Go.
[ There's a moment's lag, then Jaime lets out a stifled snort of laughter. ]
No way. Really? You're not joking? [ Apparently the answer is no, because Jaime speaks immediately afterwards. ] Arms-Fall-Off-Boy.
[ She doesn't make a sound for it, but she can't help the instinctive reaction — pinching her lips and trembling for laughter — an amusement not completely stolen from Jaime, but it certainly hasn't hurt. She makes a good effort not to betray it when she speaks. ]
Khaji wouldn't lie about this! Not when I'm giving him permission to make fun of someone. Here, Khaj - is there a picture of him in your database?
[ Jaime lifts the hand not currently slung around Ruka's shoulders and lifts it up, the very tips of his fingers moving and becoming covered in that familiar black viscous liquid until it's set enough to project a hologram. It's...
[ It is. A lot to take in. The arm-popping guy. The not-quite-suit fluid that moves across his hand like a living oil slick. The fact that Khaji, apparently, loves making fun of people. But Jaime won't feel her recoil, or tense up against him, but the arm around her shoulder will have to shift some when it's her hand that comes up. Her gloves are still in the kitchen — there's a hesitation in the gesture, when her hand comes into her own view — but it passes, and she brushes her fingers through the hologram itself. ]
Soft light? [ Probably not the reaction he was anticipating. ] Does it only work with still image files?
[ It's not the reaction he'd been expecting, no, but it's certainly not a bad one. He didn't realize he's never done this in front of her before. That, and he didn't expect her to be interested. Most people here have seen such outlandish things that the smaller functions of his suit don't even strike them as odd. ]
Soft light, yeah. We can project pretty much anything that can be projected on a screen. [ With a flick of his hands, the rather grotesque image dissipates, only to be replaced with a Bluetube video - some game review, which is just what he'd been watching last time he pulled the tab up. ] See?
you can call her dumb as a rock it's Okay it's True
[ The moving light distorts over her fingers, and after a moment she pulls her hand away, letting it fall back to rest across her lap-dog. She hums a short note, thoughtful. ]
Where I'm from, originally, most anything that could be a screen was holographic. Phones and TVs and computers, billboards, stuff like that. Most were paired with... motion sensors. Even the ones that weren't hard light, they'd still respond to gesture. No keyboards or mice or... anything like that.
[ She rarely talks about her hometown, and speaks less about the mundanities of it. She doesn't say "where I grew up," or "back home," either, but perhaps that's the less surprising part of it.
[ It occurs to Jaime that this may be the first thing he's heard Ruka willingly divulge about her home. He doesn't want to press too hard and interrupt this fragile peace they've built up between them, the calm that's finally settled over her shoulders after spending so long looking as though she'll bolt out the door, fumbling and frail, but he wants to know. And she's volunteering the information for once. ]
It does sound nice. [ You must miss it, he thinks. But it's possible that she misses the City more. ] I know they have a lot of holographic tech here too, but it's not the same. [ He cants his head to look at her. ] What else did you like about it?
[ She isn't the same restless, energetic sort that Jaime is, even under stress; are her movements are deliberate, and the positions she takes are stable. She remains with her head against his shoulder, posture angled to accommodate the arm around her shoulders, her own arms slack with her hands at rest against the sleeping dogs. There's no more idle fussing or lazy affection; just the slow swell and compress for tired breathing. With the way she's curled, and folded, and — if not relaxed, then at least for how less tense she holds herself, she seems smaller, more delicate. After the fracture of crying not so long ago, it shouldn't seem so surprising, but for all that she always confesses her weaknesses, and calls herself frail, she rarely looks that way. Her rigidity, and her affected indifference, and her deliberate distance — they'd formed a sort of exoskeleton of some quality that's absent now.
She doesn't notice his scrutiny. The gentleness of approach reverberates in every point of contact; it smooths, and quiets, and comforts. ]
The air was cleaner. And bright. Like the good part of summer. [ Her speech drops around the edges of words, the sounds softened. She answers Jaime, but it doesn't seem like she's talking to him — caught up in memory, and fatigue. ] We were so close to the sky, it felt like you could... reach out, and touch the sun. Or the stars...
[ It's a strange feeling, thinking about that old house. That old world, that old life; it's so far away, and so long ago, now. It's strange, too, — after everything that's happened since then, over these past years, and months, and these last weeks, and hours — to feel safe.
[ Jaime's a people pleaser. He cares. And that means, sometimes, his immediate response is to try to smooth things over and make them better, figure out ways to tar up whatever holes he can find, replace them with brighter things. He resists suggesting anything straight off the bat, but he's already thinking of ways to find something a little like it for Ruka, some place cool and clean and bright, just for a while.
He could take her flying somewhere, like he'd taken her before. To some other mountain, maybe. It'd be nice to do it for some reason that isn't unfortunate port-ins or recently suffered traveling. And besides, he loves to fly.
Jaime glances down at her, her expression a little lost. He almost thinks that she'll fall asleep at any moment, and he won't mind if she does; she could probably use the sleep, and his shoulder used to be a popular pillow, not so long ago. He keeps his voice soft and gentle, urging more conversation if she wants to talk, but not demanding it.
Considering the regular timbre of his voice, there's not a huge change. ]
Did you live somewhere with a lot of skyscrapers? Or on a mountain?
[ Self-debate looks to have lost him the open window: there's no answer. The slip into sleep is a quiet, unremarkable thing. No sudden slump for legs falling off the couch, no shifting of weight to dislodge her position. Tension remains. It seems it always does.
The real miracle is that, once asleep, she's asleep — for better or for worse. The comings and goings and the repositioning of dogs won't disturb her, and even Jaime's inevitable restless movement could be endured. It had been troublesome, when she lived with Karkat — he could always tell when rest inevitably made its turn into the net of nightmares, and waking her back out of them could be an ordeal all its own. Here and for now, though, the quiet remains tranquil, TV still droning in the background. It may only be a momentary peace, but that has to count for something. ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I would like to point out this is BEFORE he figured out them dokis
[ Jaime shrugs. He's sad for her, of course, but when he mentions his little brother, he manages to maintain remarkably level. It's not feigned, either. He knows so much about the horrible things that people went back to that Ken is the one person he manages not to be sad about, even if he misses the kid horribly; he knows Ken overcomes all that's been thrown his way and is well and alive where he's from. That's good enough for him. Maybe he's not there with him, but as long as Ken continues to be the survivor he knows he is, then he can rest easy.
A little brother's different from a dad, though. ]
I'm sorry anyway. I didn't drag you over here so I could get you to rehash all this again. Let's just... watch TV.
[ If they keep talking, it will keep spiraling back to unpleasantness. Maybe it's because of who they are and what they share, but Jaime prefers to think of it as something that's just in her mood right now; when you're already struggling, sometimes it's difficult to keep your mind from wandering.
When he turns up the volume, he looks at Ruka, quiet and miserable as she is. He would have hugged anyone else by now, but it's always felt different with her, as though he should wait for an express invitation.
After a moment's deliberation, he wraps his arm around her shoulders anyway, squeezing her shoulder once before letting go. As with their every conversation, there's wiggle room. If she wants to slip away, there's plenty of room, but if she wants to stay... well, that's okay too. And if it feels a little different, it shouldn't. Jaime's done this to a hundred people on this couch before. It's just what being a good friend's about, sometimes. ]
he's HOPELESS (they're both hopeless)
Touch takes her by surprise. Not in a startling, jolting way, not in a way that makes her freeze up, or tense — not that she could get much more tense than she is anyway. But it is a surprise, enough that even that simple squeeze forces her to exhale, to try pushing some of that tension out. It's been a long time since casual affection has been common for her; she can name and count the culprits on one hand, from arriving in this world, and years before besides. Maybe it doesn't feel different to Jaime, but it does to Ruka — nobody treats her like this. It's always all or nothing. Rua with his formerly mirrored proportions, the shape of a hug that hasn't changed in ten years; Karkat with their complete absence of boundaries, smoothing hands across each other's backs and combing hair and murmuring through the worst of the darkness; Eridan, whose easy strength and careless treatment always felt like being smothered, being crushed; not even the other Jaime, who'd been this age when she'd lost him, but she'd still been so much younger, and smaller, so easy to fold up and hide away under layers of coat and flannel.
It doesn't remind her of any of them.
He'll feel the residual tremor through her arm, where his hand rests against her shoulder, but it fades, and she doesn't pull away. Instead, she tilts, and sinks, filling up that residual space between them on the couch so her head can find his shoulder — and maybe it's selfish, when he's still in his work clothes, so there's no barrier between the heart on his lack-of-sleeve and where she rests her head, but she's allowed to be selfish once in a while, isn't she? It's an anchor. It's shore. ]
What do you usually watch? [ It comes after delay, quiet. ] I don't even have a TV at my place.
no subject
Eh, nothing that interesting. Nature documentaries, the discovery channel, stuff like that. Some dumb reality TV, sometimes. [ And some real TV too when he feels like planting his ass down and doing nothing for five hours straight, but he's not the monster who'll toss someone into the middle of some awful low-budget sci-fi show without the proper context! As BB burrows his way into Ruka's lap, Jaime grabs the remote and switches the channel. ]
Here, this one's all about weird animals. They got a whole section on sloths. Mole rats too.
[ And underneath all of what they'd spoken about, the uncomfortable emotions underlying their conversation, the puzzlement and worry at Ruka's current state, there is one earnest emotion: Jaime really enjoys these funky little critters. ]
no subject
[ Look, all she knows about reality TV is what gets popular among her fans online and letting herself get curious about their terrible, terrible URL choices. It's always a mistake. Despite the tease, his selections certainly aren't... the worst things he could have chosen. Could have turned out to be an obsessive sports guy, or putting on real crime dramas with extremely sketchy investigative procedure.
Or game shows. They'd be stuck here all week if it went to game shows.
It doesn't seem to matter so much. Her hand settles against BB, idly scratching his ears, and Jaime's comfort and relief settling around her like it's a heavy blanket he's thrown over her shoulders. Sure, there's still worry, too, but it's a reactive feeling; so long as she gives him nothing new to worry about, it recedes.
The outright earnest delight feels very much Jaime, but at the same time... ]
... They're so ugly... [ The wrinkles and the hairlessness on the inevitably high-def picture is... certainly an image... ] ... are they rats or are they moles?
[ Just because she's good with animals doesn't mean she knows jack shit about. Any of them. ]
no subject
He grins at the screen, amused by her reaction. She's right. They are ugly. It's what makes them so great. ]
They're kind of their own thing. Maybe the scientists who discovered them just ran out of names. [ Then, cheerfully: ] Bet you some cape named themselves after one. The Mole Rat Marauder, or whatever.
no subject
[ It's idle, useless talk, but it's easy — and it's putting Jaime in a much better mood than dealing with her obnoxious little kitchen breakdown did, for obvious reasons. She's still hurt from everything, and she will be for a long time, but... she's always been the type to run away from her problems, hasn't she? And there's no better way to hide from the damage of her own heart than to bury it beneath the stronger feelings of someone else's. It's only temporary, but everything calibrates to it: her breathing steadies, the stress painted over, and the tremulous racing of her heart eases, slows. The fatigue of days and weeks and weeks catching up to her. ]
's the stupidest name you've seen?
no subject
[ Jaime leans his head back against the couch. It is idle talk. And Jaime knows he's just distracting her from whatever problems have put her in such a state, that it's no permanent fix, if anything could be - but it's nice, isn't it? Just to talk about nothing for a change?
So what if it's just a little break? That's worth it too. ]
Honestly, I was never really interested in superheroes before I became one. Hey Khaj? Stupidest name. Go.
[ There's a moment's lag, then Jaime lets out a stifled snort of laughter. ]
No way. Really? You're not joking? [ Apparently the answer is no, because Jaime speaks immediately afterwards. ] Arms-Fall-Off-Boy.
Three guesses as to what his superpower is.
no subject
There's no way that's a real person.
no subject
[ Jaime lifts the hand not currently slung around Ruka's shoulders and lifts it up, the very tips of his fingers moving and becoming covered in that familiar black viscous liquid until it's set enough to project a hologram. It's...
Well. It's exactly what it sounds like. ]
...I probably don't have a leg to stand on when it comes to calling someone else's power gross.
[ But, um. Yuck. ]
#still not dokis
Soft light? [ Probably not the reaction he was anticipating. ] Does it only work with still image files?
listen, he's faster than her!!
Soft light, yeah. We can project pretty much anything that can be projected on a screen. [ With a flick of his hands, the rather grotesque image dissipates, only to be replaced with a Bluetube video - some game review, which is just what he'd been watching last time he pulled the tab up. ] See?
you can call her dumb as a rock it's Okay it's True
Where I'm from, originally, most anything that could be a screen was holographic. Phones and TVs and computers, billboards, stuff like that. Most were paired with... motion sensors. Even the ones that weren't hard light, they'd still respond to gesture. No keyboards or mice or... anything like that.
[ She rarely talks about her hometown, and speaks less about the mundanities of it. She doesn't say "where I grew up," or "back home," either, but perhaps that's the less surprising part of it.
She sounds tired. ]
It was nice.
no subject
[ It occurs to Jaime that this may be the first thing he's heard Ruka willingly divulge about her home. He doesn't want to press too hard and interrupt this fragile peace they've built up between them, the calm that's finally settled over her shoulders after spending so long looking as though she'll bolt out the door, fumbling and frail, but he wants to know. And she's volunteering the information for once. ]
It does sound nice. [ You must miss it, he thinks. But it's possible that she misses the City more. ] I know they have a lot of holographic tech here too, but it's not the same. [ He cants his head to look at her. ] What else did you like about it?
no subject
She doesn't notice his scrutiny. The gentleness of approach reverberates in every point of contact; it smooths, and quiets, and comforts. ]
The air was cleaner. And bright. Like the good part of summer. [ Her speech drops around the edges of words, the sounds softened. She answers Jaime, but it doesn't seem like she's talking to him — caught up in memory, and fatigue. ] We were so close to the sky, it felt like you could... reach out, and touch the sun. Or the stars...
[ It's a strange feeling, thinking about that old house. That old world, that old life; it's so far away, and so long ago, now. It's strange, too, — after everything that's happened since then, over these past years, and months, and these last weeks, and hours — to feel safe.
She can't remember the last time. ]
no subject
He could take her flying somewhere, like he'd taken her before. To some other mountain, maybe. It'd be nice to do it for some reason that isn't unfortunate port-ins or recently suffered traveling. And besides, he loves to fly.
Jaime glances down at her, her expression a little lost. He almost thinks that she'll fall asleep at any moment, and he won't mind if she does; she could probably use the sleep, and his shoulder used to be a popular pillow, not so long ago. He keeps his voice soft and gentle, urging more conversation if she wants to talk, but not demanding it.
Considering the regular timbre of his voice, there's not a huge change. ]
Did you live somewhere with a lot of skyscrapers? Or on a mountain?
no subject
The real miracle is that, once asleep, she's asleep — for better or for worse. The comings and goings and the repositioning of dogs won't disturb her, and even Jaime's inevitable restless movement could be endured. It had been troublesome, when she lived with Karkat — he could always tell when rest inevitably made its turn into the net of nightmares, and waking her back out of them could be an ordeal all its own. Here and for now, though, the quiet remains tranquil, TV still droning in the background. It may only be a momentary peace, but that has to count for something. ]