versusnurture | seventh ♢ private + spam

private, thursday } ben

[She wasn't lying or exaggerating or being overdramatic: she meant what she said. To Ben, and to everyone. She needed time. She did understand, does understand, the differences between there and here. She knows that Ben is on her side.]

[It's just that she needed time to remember the Ben who came before the one who let other people hurt her, the Ben who is kind and doesn't like being called a good person. She remembers him now. And, true to her word, she gets in touch.]

[The video clicks on to reveal her on her bed. Everything is tidied now, a good indication that she is at least stable, if not necessarily stable in a good place. She's holding the teddy bear he gave her, making it kick its little feet.]

I bet you've never carved a pumpkin before.

spam, saturday } nathan

[Abigail doesn't realize she's affected. Not yet. After this, she's going to go hole up in her room and pretend she's invisible until the urge to be super super nice goes away. But for the moment, she's going to do her job.]

[Which, right now, means re-organizing everything that exists in the art room. All the paintbrushes go in cups by order of size. She finds herself thinking fondly and only fondly of Hannibal, for the first time in a month, of the way he keeps things perfectly tidy, and wonders if he would be proud of the work that she's doing here. The oddness of that thought doesn't occur to her.]

[Whenever Nathan shows up for his shift, or she happens to notice him, she gives him one of her brightest and most genuine smiles, the kind she ordinarily saves for the known-as-damaged, for Harvey or Ben or Arkin. For Elena.]

Hi.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[At the warmth in his voice, Abigail ducks her head and smiles. She moves a little closer to him, too, not enough to make him uncomfortable; it's just that she wants to feel the solid protectiveness of him close by, the attention of his posture, the attentiveness of his gaze. She missed him so much. It hurt.]

Constellations. [She says this with some wonder: it's an excellent idea, and she's never considered it. But his question confuses her, and she looks up at him for clarification.]

The carving, you mean?

[Ben lets her come closer without protest; he's okay with proximity without expectation. It's only when he feels like he doesn't understand what it means, or that it might mean something different to someone else than it does to him, that he becomes anxious. He missed her as well, even if he was confident he would not lose her completely. Waiting was hard, not the least because he has spent so much of his life waiting for others to come back to him.]

No. [He holds up the strings of pumpkin guts, trailing off the end of the spoon and over his knuckles.] How much do we remove? What is ideal?

Oh.

[She grins at him. He looks silly, just holding the pumpkin's soft parts like that. Like a friend, but better than a friend. A friend who knows all your awful secrets and holds them in the warmth of his hands with no fear, no flinching.]

As much as possible. The more that stays in, the more quickly it goes bad. And you want it to last a while, so you can look at it for longer.

Acknowledged.

[He feels awkward just sitting there, but she's smiling at him, happy, and that makes him happy too.

He smiles back by dropping his eyes away, turning his head slightly, glancing back up. Away again to his task. Two spoonfuls more of seeds and innards make it into the bowl beside his knee, then he looks up again from craning his neck so he can see better down inside.]

Did you have somewhere in mind to display them?

[She is almost done scooping her own out by now, working more efficiently than him because she's used to this task, able to easily catch up. His question is a good one, and one which she hadn't really considered before now; she just wanted the doing of it, but now that she thinks about it, they ought to be displayed. They're going to be perfect and beautiful, after all. Obviously.]

Maybe the art room? If that's okay. I would say the CES but they might disappear, and someone might accidentally kick them off the deck into space. Like a soccer ball.

[Soccer gourd. These are serious concerns.]

seventh ♢ private + spam

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