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[hebeimmortalized]

It's early, most people are still sleeping. But she can't sleep. Her brain turned on at three AM and it won't shut up, so she's in the kitchen, sketching out an abstract image of Paul's face, because why not? The city has let her run into him twice while looking like shit, and she it's not like he's ugly. She's using pinks and purples to draw and shade, and she'd started coffee about twenty minutes ago, even though she rarely drinks it, herself.

She glances up when someone joins her in the kitchen.

She's seen him around, and it's not like they've never talked, but Jillie is feeling a lot more aware of herself, her surroundings, and her awful memory, now that her medication is back to stable levels, and her therapy is going so well. So when she sees Girl's boyfriend, she finds herself trying to remember if they've ever talked about anything important. Like, school, or work, or whatever.

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[boywhoflew]

While never a morning person, Carson liked the quiet mornings at Dee's house. In a weird way it almost reminded him of being back home, the quiet of a suburban street where the loudest thing he had to worry about was the neighbors automatic garage door or his mom's snoring. It also left him the advantage of getting up before Poison, and managing to go about his routine without having to participate in any awkward chit-chat across the coffee maker.

And as much as he loved Dee, a few minutes of quiet and not having her kicking his calves in her sleep.

He was only half awake when he stumbled into the kitchen, the world still blurry around the edges and his hair a mess. Coffee and toast was his main priority, but he woke up a bit more when he saw Jack's sister. They'd only spoken a few times, but Dee had given him a bit of a rundown. He couldn't remember if they'd ever actually been alone before, though.

Scratching at his bedhead, he turned towards the coffee maker. "Morning," he offered.

[hebeimmortalized]

She watches him, and waves her pencil in response. Idly, she turns her sketchbook to a new page and switches out her pink and purple for green and orange. She starts sketching roughly the shape of Carson's shoulders and messy hair, glancing up only once.

After a few minutes, she says, "Hope the coffee is okay. I'm not great at making it."

[boywhoflew]

Carson shrugged, waving a flippant hand before reaching into the cupboard for a fresh mug. "Coffee is coffee," he said as he poured himself a cup. Short of burning the crap out of it somehow, I don't think the margin for error is too big."

A lot of sugar, skip the milk. He settled back against the counter and let the cup warm his hands. Chewing his cheek,he considered where Jillie was bent over her pencils. "Are you normally up this early?"

[hebeimmortalized]

"Not really," she says with a little shrug. She's awful at small talk, but she gives it a try. "Just couldn't sleep, figured I'd do something about it, instead of just lying in bed feeling bitchy that I can't sleep."

She doesn't look up when she answers, still sketching roughly with the orange. She's got the bedhead look of his hair captured pretty well, and moves onto the rumpled way his clothes fit across his shoulders after having been sleeping in them — or maybe they were in a messy pile on the floor because he had sex all night. She doesn't know.

[boywhoflew]

"Yeah," he agreed with a shrug, because he'd been there. Normally that meant last minute revisions of homework, or reviewing a draft for the paper, or just anything to keep his mind busy. Sitting in the quiet with nothing but his thoughts tended to just end in a bad mood.

He sipped his coffee, which was warm but not hot, and he let it sit on his tongue. The bitter sweetness was just about perfect to wake him up. "I've got class later," he said by way of explanation. "If I don't get up before Dee, she might try to convince me to play hookie.'

[hebeimmortalized]

"She can be very persuasive," she agrees. Carson is facing her, now, so she moves to a new corner of the same page and starts to shade and hatch until she has his face and jaw, the line of his throat. She prefers pencils to markers so much.

"Coffee okay?" she prompts, still not really looking up at him.

[boywhoflew]

"She's conniving." He agreed, because she was. At times he wasn't sure if she was actually the manipulator he liked to imagine her to be, or if he had just gone soft enough to let her. He wasn't even sure if he wanted the answer to that.

"Coffee's good." A pointed sip followed the comment to make the point. They were steering dangerously close into the awkward portion of morning small talk, something he wasn't especially fond of, particularly when it involved anyone who could be counted as Dee's family. He allowed a minute to just quietly sip his drink, watching intently as Jillie worked, before a question formed. Eyebrows pinching he arched his neck to try and get a look at what she was doing.

"What's that you're working on?" He asked, though he already had an odd suspicion.

[hebeimmortalized]

"Life," she answers without missing a beat. The judgemental cat joins her at the counter and she reaches over to push him back off. "I like seeing things that move." She switches to a different pencil, to give it a different look. Then she stops and looks up at him. "Specifically, you, if that's actually what you meant." She doesn't look the least bit apologetic for sketching him without his permission. She shades in the hook of his elbow where he's holding his coffee cup.

[boywhoflew]

If he was honest, her initial answer was a bit pretentious, but Carson wasn't really one to talk on that front. He decided to let that one slide for now, and instead watched her with raised eyebrows, resisting the nosy impulse to get a look at her sketch work.

"I'm not sure if I should be flattered or not," he remarked dully, taking a pointed sip of his coffee.

[hebeimmortalized]

"You know how still-life can either look really, really good, or really, really dead?" she asks. "I don't like still-life. I can't get it to look really, really good. I sketch things that are moving because it . . . feels more alive, to me." She switches to a new page and sketches the judgemental cat in purple, where he has evidently decided to perch on the counter near Carson.

[boywhoflew]

Definitely not flattery, then. He suppressed a snort of amusement by taking another drink, and seeing he was already towards the end of his cup turned so that he could refill. "Makes sense, then." He agreed passively, sparing the cat a look as he refilled on coffee and sugar.

"Some people might like the look of a dead still-life," he speculated, catching sugar from the rim of the mug on his thumb. "There are all types. But then again, if it's your art, it doesn't really matter what other people might like. Like with my writing, and not giving a shit if someone doesn't like my opinion."

[hebeimmortalized]

"I'm sure lots of people like dead still-life," she says with a shrug. "But I don't sketch for them. I sketch so the voices in my head shut up for an hour or two." She shrugs, reaching for a new color.

[boywhoflew]

"Heavy," he remarked, with a shade less snark than usual. Dee had told him things, given him just enough to know without having to pry. In a small town like Clover, an illness like schizophrenia seemed like fiction. Something that happened on television and in films but never affected real people.

Sometimes it was disconcerting to think he had been a reluctant part of a collective ignorance.

Chewing his cheek, he wondered if it was too crass to ask, but then decided he didn't really care. If she got mad, he had time to leave before he had to worry about Poison or Jack getting pissed with him. "What's it like?" he asked, honestly curious. "Having the voices, I mean."

[hebeimmortalized]

She looks up at him, eyes narrowed for a moment. Then she holds her hand out. "Hand me a knife out of the butcher block," she says. Her arm is held in such a way that the thick scar on her forearm is easily visible.

[boywhoflew]

He was lifting the mug to his mouth when she made the demand, and he paused with the cup just an inch away. Self preservation would probably red flag that, make him say no and leave the room. But from the bits and pieces he'd heard, she hadn't hurt anyone, and her tone was more challenge than threat.

Setting the mug down on the counter with a pointed clack, he grabbed a steak knife. Sparing a glance at the cat, and at his own feet, he held it out to her, handle first, his fingers gingerly holding the dull side of the blade. "What, forgot your pencil sharpener?" He quipped, because fuck it, he was a dick and he knew it.

[hebeimmortalized]

Jillie would be lying if she said she wasn't surprised he did it. He doesn't know, she reminds herself, that's the point of all this.

"I don't even remember stabbing my mom," she says. She turns the knife over in her hands. Her mind swells up around her as she stares at the metal. She presses the tip into the pad of her finger, just enough to hold, not enough to prick. "Sometimes, I swear I wasn't the one that did it. Like someone else was in the room, y'know? But I must've, because I was the one they inst— ins-ti-tu-tion-alized."

She holds the knife up to the scar on her throat, a peaceful sort of look on her face. The blade rests against the shiny skin, and she takes a breath.

Her eyes close and she frowns, suddenly, drops the knife like it's scalding, almost trips on her way off the stool when she backs away from the counter. The sound of the knife clattering as it lands has the judgemental cat scrabbling out of the room.

"Fuck," she whispers. Her cigarettes are on the counter beside her, but her fingers shake when she grabs for it, sending the pencils skittering. "Don't ever fucking do that again," she says. "Don't ever— don't—" She shakes her head, sharp, fast.

[boywhoflew]

That escalated quickly.

Carson hadn't known what to expect, but it hadn't been that. Feet glued to the floor he watched Jillie caress the knife, in a way that was both frightening and almost tender, and wondered just how badly he had fucked up. Poison and Jack were upstairs, and he didn't know how loud he'd have to yell for them to hear him, or how quickly he could run to make it up to their bedroom. But just as the cogs in his head started spitting him ideas and scenes, it was over. With a willpower he didn't know he had he managed to not flinch when she drops the knife, but he's able to breathe freely for the first time since he handed her the damn thing.

Stupid.

Taking a steady inhale, he reached for his coffee mug. His knuckles were white.

"Maybe we shouldn't bait each other, then." He suggested, taking a careful sip. This wasn't like his mom after too many pills and a bottle of chardonnay. He didn't know the playing field, or how hard he could push before it over the line.

[hebeimmortalized]

Jillie takes several shaky breaths as she lights up a cigarette. She smokes it quickly, burning through it fast enough that it's a wonder she can even taste it. She doesn't say anything during this time, then slowly swallows.

Once her cigarette is down to the filter, she stubs it out and slowly, deliberately, crouches to pick up the knife. She offers it back to Carson in the same way he'd offered it to her, handle first, pinching the flat of the blade near the dull edge.

"It's hard to explain," she says, as if the knife scene hadn't just happened. "It's like. Having a war, inside your head, with all these different soldiers trying to do, or make you do, different things. I'm medicated but it's not a cure." She runs her face with fluttering fingers.