(no subject)

[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.

Comments

[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.