bang bang that awful sound; log : on-going

[adamantined]

When; December 4, 2008; evening
Rating; PG?
Characters; Eden (suicideslowly) & Claire (adamantined)
Summary; Sometimes you just need a little Audrey Hepburn and a few tubs of cookie dough to make it through the holidays. Warning: retarded girls ahead.
Log;

What they don't tell you is that shopping is exhausting. Or maybe they do tell you and you just never listen. It's so insubstantial anyway, hardly anything of importance: you go out, you look at some shoes, you eat a pretzel at Auntie Anne's and then you buy a couple dresses and some shining blue eyeshadow and call it a day. There's ice cream to be picked up on the way back to the apartments, even if it's in the thirties, and some fumble or other because someone's dropped their phone in a puddle while they were laughing. But pretty soon everyone is inside where it's warm and heeled boots can be taken off and sweatshirts can get pulled on underneath knit blankets.

At least here they can. In Texas, the weather is different enough that the blanket at least wouldn't be part of the equation. And she would be sitting at the counter, talking to her mother, and waiting for her father to get home while throwing rolled up wads of note cards at the back of Lyle's head. Instead, Claire has hollowed out a little spot in the corner of Eden's couch with a blanket and a bowl of ice cream. If she looks awkward, she doesn't feel it. In fact she's kind of completely at ease, if not tired. Because what they don't tell you is that shopping is exhausting.

Claire knows they're probably going to broach an awkward conversation or two before she has to go home at eleven, but those can wait until they crop up on their own. Right now, her mind is still stuck on DRESSES as she waits for Eden to put the movie on. "What's this about again?" she asks, through a garbled mouthful of ice cream. "Pants?"

Comments

[adamantined]

Claire toys with the frayed ends of the blanket, feeling a little bad that she's let all that out both on Eden and over Mohinder's head and feeling nothing at all. Why should she feel bad that people know Mohinder is being a tool? Why should she care that he's digging himself deeper and deeper with the people who try and try to care about him?

She doesn't know, so she doesn't care. It's easy to slip back into that gossip girl role, the kind of person she was before Zach and everything else at school made her see things through different glasses.

"I don't know if it's got to do with you entirely," she reassures Eden, and she really isn't sure that's the reason. Some people just get crabby around the holidays. Mohinder is downright vindictive, though, and the last time he had acted that way, she'd told him to shut up. And he did apologize. "I'm sure your conversation had something to do with it, but I'm sure my conversation with him didn't help."

She leans into Eden momentarily, grinning, too, and then says, "I hope he apologizes to you first. Or I might tear him a new one."

[suicideslowly]

Had Eden some insight into Claire's thoughts, she'd explain that it's different. Different when someone's wronged you first, because then it's less a matter of gossip and more a matter of how much you'll really cope with before it's too much and you snap. Sometimes this type of gossip is fine, even necessary, whether as a warning or just to keep one's head screwed on the right way. She doesn't remember much, oh she doesn't remember much, because these are things that Eden's traded away to the deities, but where the memories are gone, the sentiment remains. Where details are hazy, Eden has the records, recounts of how her stepmother pressed and Eden snapped with all of the weight of her DNA behind her.

In these cases, best not to take too much on one's shoulders. It's different than what Jackie did.

"I'm sure that you were just trying to knock some sense into him," Eden laughs, toying with her oversized sweater, shaking her head. "Mohinder tends not to be fond of things like that. Although who knows? Maybe it'll be so much more effective if he was literally knocked here and there a bit. If you do tear him one, you'll have to recount it to me in great detail, you know."

[adamantined]

"I don't know," Claire begins, rolling her neck to look over at Eden with a smug smile. "The last time he was in a weird mood - even though it was different than the one he's in now - I told him to shut up and he shut up, and he apologized the next day."

She looks down at her fingernails, and the bright blue polish is starting to chip so she picks at it a little bit. "I don't really want to talk to him, which kind of puts a lid on the whole tearing him a new one thing." Claire isn't sure how she's going to suffer taking care of Remy in the same apartment that Mohinder lives in, but she can suck it up and play cards with Hiro, who Mohinder's also been something of a jerk to.

[suicideslowly]

"Well, I'm tempted to buy him a pair of socks like he wanted and lace them with itching powder. So I can't say that I've got any moral high ground over you," Eden replies, a hint of amusement in her voice, but it's barely there.

Eden applied nail polish as well, recently. Clear polish. Harder to tell when it chips.

"Don't talk to him if it makes you feel uncomfortable, Claire. Eventually, things will ease up, and he'll come to you like a puppy with its tail between its legs. So many things that you've tolerated for him. His temper, and. Well, he told me about the incident with the gun." She pauses, here, wondering if she's breached a bad topic. "Besides, at least you won't be the only one left with him in the apartment while you're taking care of Remy. At the very least, I think the ducks are always there."

[adamantined]

"I don't know if that would help," Claire says, trying to stay serious, but she's laughing, picturing Mohinder trying to contain himself with his feet itching too much to stand up. "I think that might make him a little more irritable. Besides, if you're going all out, you might as well go big. I'll get Hiro to put it in his pants."

She's not serious. Maybe. Everyone in the world hopes, at least.

"It makes me feel bad not talking to him, but..." She trails off, remembering back so long ago, how Mohinder hadn't been himself, Tavi being there. Claire hadn't been mad or even upset. She had only been concerned for Mohinder. "That wasn't his fault. Something was happening at the time. He wasn't normal."

There's a quiet moment in which Claire takes herself back to that moment, in the apartment. How still everything had been and how afraid she had been only because someone else had known her secret, because it meant that Tavi was in danger. Or had been. She never knew about Sylar anymore. He confused her more than she was willing to admit. "I've been bringing Dinosaur with me," she goes on, softly, "whenever it's just me and Remy. I brought Mr. Muggles once but he peed in the corner and I had to clean it up aaaand I never brought him back because Mohinder already thinks Mr. Muggles hates him enough."