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Post by shinigami on Oct 1, 2008 16:43:35 GMT -8
The short teenager has been mistaken for a freshmeat -- ahem, freshman -- five times today. His unhappiness with this fact has clouded his gaze, and he's moved through the day saying very little. The truth is he's been too shy to talk to the girls who giggle at him, because he's new. He's been too quiet, too distracted, to talk to the guys who're feeling him out, making guy-like overtures of friendship. He's about to pay for that, too.
At least, that's the idea. There are quite a lot of bullies at LVH. Aidan is never the most popular. He's never the biggest outsider. He's the kind of guy that other boys find themselves listening to, even though he's small, or find themselves counting as part of their crew -- Aidan's identity is malleable like that. He also looks like the kind of person, sort've intense, there's an oddness, that you'd pick on.
Which is why Aidan, quietly minding his own business at his own table, gets smacked across the back of the head with a tray. He looks over, meets the eyes of this much larger boy, football playing jock, whose looking down at him as if daring him to do something, anything.
"You should watch where you're going," Aidan says, quietly. But his voice, it thrums with intensity, and he clenches his hand into a fist under the table. The tendons on his arm pop out, but he doesn't make any other move.
Aidan is a pacifist. Damn it. Violence is NOT the answer.
Damn it.
"Maybe you should watch where you're going," the boy says, smirking. Aidan doesn't bother pointing out the fact that, hey, he was sitting down, and if he, the boy, couldn't see UNMOVING objects, he, the boy, was in serious trouble, and he, Aidan, would happily teach him a lesson that...
No. He wouldn't. He turns his attention back to his food. The boy sneers, wanders off, and for the moment Aidan is alone.
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Post by lily tomlinson on Oct 1, 2008 16:54:04 GMT -8
Tabitha was sitting quietly by the windowsill, enjoying a good history book and picking at the food on her lunch tray. She's taken note of Aiden, watched with a frown as one jock began to harass him. Watches him leave and grab a group of equally large jocks to return.
Bullies. She really disliked them. Had her fair share of them, too. And she really can't condone them picking on one of her old kin, even if it was War. He could handle himself, but it was the principle of the matter.
She grabs her lunch tray, places her book in her bag with a sigh and moves to stand in front of the group. Her gaze is disapproving, shadowed by thougtfulness. "Could you guys lay off the new kid," she says, trying to appeal to their logic, "He hasn't done anything to you."
Of course they look at her like she's weird. It's not her place to get in the middle of this. The lead jock just laughs at her, reaching out a hand to knock her tray onto the floor. "Now I'm not one to hit girls, Miss Cleo, but you're really tempting me."
Miss Cleo? They really needed to come up with better insults besides calling her a fake, Jamaican psychic. Oh, well. They all thought her weird enough as it was so she may as well go all out.
Pressing her fingers to her temples, she said with an airy yet ominous voice, "I'm seeing something. I'm seeing a great fight in which you are not the victor. Beware the tiny man or you're doom is upon you!"
Ah, sarcasm. She really loved it.
"That's not even funny, weirdo!"
"But it's the truth!" She stuck her tongue out at him just before he roughly shoved her to the side. She merely shrugged. She'd tried, it was his own downfall now.
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Post by shinigami on Oct 1, 2008 17:13:27 GMT -8
When Tabitha appears out of nowhere, Aidan doesn't smile. He's in the middle of being picked on, after all. Why would he want her to see that? Also, he's trying very hard to contain what his natural urge in this kind've situation is, which is to kick ass, and not bother with names.
But when the lead jock knocks the tray out of Tabitha's hands, Aidan stands up, sort of slow -- there's grace in it. He says, "Hey, y'all. Don't be such douchewads. Thought we were havin' words. Well, actually I thought y'all were gonna eat your lunches, but we were gonna have words."
"You reckon?" one of the satelite jocks says, mocking his accent.
Then: Tabitha pulls her faux psychic schtick. Aidan is too distracted to realize what exactly she said, but his gaze roams between the other boys and Tabitha, and there's concern, something else. He knows. He knows in his bones that there'll be a fight here. He feels it the way sailors feel storms in old injuries. His scarred wrist aches, the scar on his back throbs. He can feel it like love...
"Let's just calm down," he says, and that's when Tabitha gets knocked to the side, and Aidan moves to help her. The jock who struck her makes the mistake of pushing Aidan. Hard. Real, real hard. Aidan falls onto the table. The jock picks him up. The other jocks are already doing teacher damage control, trying to delay the inevitable break up of their fun. Then he gets a fist to the head.
And, yeah. It hurts. It hurts a lot. It hurts a whole hellofa lot.
But what doesn't kill Aidan makes him stronger.
A lot stronger. And faster.
He actually grabs the jock's fist next time it comes down and twists him around. Flips him onto the ground. Somebody punches him in kidney, and his breath wheeezes out. . .
If nothing else, Tabitha's real good at starting fights.
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Post by lily tomlinson on Oct 1, 2008 17:35:03 GMT -8
Tabitha cringed a bit at the violence, but she figured that the guys had it coming to them. They'd started it. They hadn't listened to her warning. If they got beat up, then it was their own fault.
So, though she wasn't a fan of violence, this was a necessery evil and she handled it. By going over to Aiden's previously occupied seat and ignoring it. She even stole the little cake that had been on his lunch tray since her lunch had been demolished. Shh, no one would ever know.
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Post by shinigami on Oct 1, 2008 21:01:43 GMT -8
It was violence, too. And violence begets violence. While Aidan gets the pulp beat out of him --
Do take for a moment to explore that image. A fruit. Say, a plum. And a boot. A heavy boot, steel heel. Coming down on that plum, which was ripe, juicy, easily bruised anyway. The boot coming down on it again and again and again and again. The way the juice would splatter, the way the flesh would warp, the skin would split and shred, exposing the rawness beneath. Imagine that. That? That's totally Aidan, at least at first.
-- there are a couple, maybe a few more, heated arguments that break out. A couple who want to help, then get stopped by others who want to watch the show, and pretty soon they're on their way to making their own show.
War is destruction and destruction is violence and violence is both sweet and right.
In the end, 'cause there is an end, Aidan wipes the back of his hand across his mouth and wipes some blood away from his eye. He should, by all rights, look much worse than he does, but he doesn't look very bad at all. Indeed, he looks Really Damned Good, and the lead jock is on the floor, trying to stand but losing his balance, and the other jocks have scattered, although one is in the trashcan and the other inexplicably decided to stand up to his friends and help Aidan, so he's injured but not too terrible, and --
Well, crap. The principal is on his way over. There are a couple of those other fights still going on, to distract attention, but it's just a matter of time. Aidan sits down, heavily. The entire table shakes. He brushes his arm against Tabitha's by accident, and looks at his tray. He totally notices the absence of his dessert, but he doesn't say anything. He just runs his fingers through his blood-ruddy hair, and his nostrils flare, and his eyelids lower, languid.
"Well, shucks," he says, in his golden honey voice, somethin' brazen beneath. "Hi, Tabitha. Sorry 'bout that."
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Post by lily tomlinson on Oct 1, 2008 21:09:36 GMT -8
Tabitha looks around at the mass chaos, grimaces. She hates violence, but sometimes it just can't be helped. She liked to stay out of these things too.
"Meh," she says over a mouthful of chocolatey goodness. She holds the fork out, offering a bite, "Want some? No. Wait. Hold that thought."
She's just caught sight of the principal headed over. She's been in her fair share of disasters and really doesn't like being faced with the principle. He gives her the creeps.
So she grabs Aide by the shirt sleeve. Takes a moment to gather up his tray and their bags and starts dragging him through the easiest route to the exit. She knows her crowds well. Once she's got him outside, she plops down on a stairwell and sets the tray down.
"Ok, now you can have a bite."
She holds out the fork again, and with her free hand starts rummaging through her bag for the first aid kit. She doesn't like looking at bloody things when she's eating. Why she has a first aid kit in her bag? Well, let's just say she's usually the one getting beat up. Comes with high school, she supposed.
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Post by shinigami on Oct 1, 2008 21:20:08 GMT -8
There's an instant where he resists. And he's strong now. Very strong. Have we mentioned, the boy is strong? At the moment? She might've tugged on an oak tree's sleeve to get it to go. But then he got to his feet, quick; there was give, and Aidan let (?) Tabitha drag him all weasel-quick through the crowd. "Uhm, thanks," he says, shyly, when she offers him a bite of his own cake, once they're safe from authority figures -- for the moment, anyway. And a little awkwardly, he reaches out to take the fork, rubbing his knee absently. He's, honestly, a little ashamed. "Whatcha lookin' for?" Hey, last time she whipped out a random second edition of the exact book he was reading! Who knew what it could be this time -- something magical, maybe. "Are you okay?"
She seemed okay, not all clingy and girly like most girls who'd just gone through what she'd gone through would be, if they weren't lecturing him. He didn't know why he expected a lecture, but he did. His quiet became a measured thing, and after taking a small bite of his own cake, he handed the fork back to Tabitha, or set it on her tray if her hands were still busy, and wrapped his arms around his knees, rested his chin on them, mouth hidden.
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Post by lily tomlinson on Oct 1, 2008 21:26:08 GMT -8
"Aha." Tabitha pulled out a well.... loved kit, and popped it open, rummaging through it for some antiseptic and guaze paper. Even a few band aids. "First aid. The blood, I'm not too fond of."
She leans over and slides a finger under his chin, lifting his face up so she can inspect. She's all clinical coolness, not really paying attention to the fact that this IS War. "This might sting a bit," she warns absently, before dabbing a bit of the antiseptic on the guaze and wiping away some blood. She even leans over and blows it dry too, as if she's done this a million times before. Second nature.
"Why wouldn't I be okay?" she asks as she goes to fix him up more. The question really does confuse. Nothing had happened to her, had it? Nothing out of the ordinary. Well, nothing at all.
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Post by shinigami on Oct 1, 2008 21:50:44 GMT -8
His eyebrows furrow together, dramatic in expression, when Tabitha pulls out that first-aid kit. Mostly, in his family, first aid kits had long since gone the way of the dinosaur. There were some bandaids when he was younger, but his family was large, and his family was rowdy, and they mostly got by on spit and fire. And, in his mom's case, more fighting, because more fighting always made the old wounds better, right? He sighed, slightly, as his thoughts followed their natural course, and of course he looks down.
He looks down, and then she tilts his chin up, and he stares at her the way he stared at her the other night, after she'd given him the book; it's a look full of possibilities, but opaque, a little uncertain, a little too direct.
It's a homey scene. It feels like home. He doesn't flinch, although he does suck in a breath, then wave a hand to bat her away -- irritable.
"Don't bother. That stuff's for -- well, it's not for me. I don't need it. I'll just sleep with a bit of quartz under my pillow, maybe some agate. I heal pretty quick. Eh heh. And, oh." He frowns, again. "Well, you know how... You got... Ah. Uhm. So... Do you get pushed around a lot?"
Quiet. And intense. That focus is without mercy.
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Post by lily tomlinson on Oct 1, 2008 22:00:18 GMT -8
"No need to get so antsy," Tabitha said calmly, swatting his hand away too. "Seriously, the sight of blood makes me queasy. And I haven't finished stealing your cake."
Her mouth quirks up at the corners, and she's trying not to smile. She's trying to be serious, but it's really a hard thing. She couldn't say why though. This was a new experience. She finally gives up, though, and sets her kit off to the side, pulling the tray back into her lap. "Just the cake though, promise."
This time she lets herself smile, and pushes the cheeseburger on the plate towards him. "I recommend flourite if you're looking for healing gems. It helps with pain too. Quicker healing, less scarring. Not saying that you have problems with that, just a recommendation."
She glances down at the cake and stabs the fork in the middle, swirling it around until it's nothing but chunks. Maybe she likes her cake chunky. What of it?
"I'm kind of the outcast here," she said, finally answering his question. She was through with the evasion tactics. They never really worked any way. "Kids don't really like those that are different from them, and I tend to come across as weird to them. I don't really care much, but it never hurts to bring backup." She gestured to the first aid kit with the fork and then took a bite of the cake. "And you? Do you tend to cause mass fighting wherever you go?"
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Post by shinigami on Oct 1, 2008 22:26:21 GMT -8
"I..." Aidan's gaze drops to the floor. He counts the number of cigarette butts, littered on the ground; then he counts the number of dead flies; then he counts the number of stars behind his eyes when he closes them for a second. He looks still; he looks peaceful.
He isn't. Tabitha struck a sore-point, there. He doesn't want to lose his temper, doesn't want to say something he'll regret, and he doesn't want her to go away, either. Aidan bites his lower lip, then lifts his head and smirks sidelong.
"... Think that you were the one startin' the fight back in the lunchroom. I was just participatin'."
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Post by lily tomlinson on Oct 1, 2008 22:37:03 GMT -8
Tabitha gives him a smirk of her own. "I don't know what you're talking about," she says innocently. "I warned them. If they didn't listen, they only had it coming to them. Now normally, I don't condone violence, but there are certain instances where it's regretfully unavoidable. Insert dumb jocks and there's just no stopping it."
She leaned over and nudged him teasingly with her shoulder. "Besides, it's payback for them stealing my clothes from the locker room yesterday during gym."
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Post by shinigami on Oct 1, 2008 22:55:11 GMT -8
He doesn't actually listen very well, either. He starts out okay, paying attention, focused in that intense and thoughtful way that Aidan had; the way that made people think that he understood. That he was on their side. He's a manipulative boy, although he doesn't think of himself that way.
But he starts out okay, listening, paying attention; and then she leans forward and nudges him, and she's wearing this dress, and there's just not much to the dress, and it sort've slipped up her thigh before, and now he was kind've able to see just enough flesh to make him think about seeing more flesh because Aidan?
Aidan was a teenage boy. (And Aidan was War. And War was Lust and War was Love.)
He doesn't budge. Doesn't let himself get nudged away, damn it; he stays. And she even smells ...
Aidan sighs, again, and blushes a little. Hopefully, she didn't catch him -- er, doing what it was he was doing. Quick! Change the subject. His lips are curving, shadow of a smile, hint of devastation. "So I'm just your means of revenge, huh? Your weapon of choice in certain circumstances?"
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Post by lily tomlinson on Oct 1, 2008 23:10:07 GMT -8
Tabitha doesn't notice, not because she doesn't usually notice these things, but more she's preoccupied with other things. Like the cake. She really has this nasty sweet tooth. Loves her chocolates. And makes sure to get every last bit of chocolate off the fork and the little dish it came in.
"Thanks for the cake," she says with satisfaction. giving him a grin, before leaning forward and setting the tray down a couple steps from her. And then she shifts, sweeping hair out of her face and recrossing legs. She's just making herself comfortable, see. As comfortable as one can get in the presence of Ares/Aiden. There's a difference between the two, but she's still trying to process it all.
She shifts to face him, leaning back against the railing as she ponders over an answer to his questions.
"No, no, not really," she says finally. "I was actually trying to stop a fight from happening, but let's face it, who's going to listen to me. I'm more of an observer than a leader. Or a follower. But since it's happened, I can't dwell over it, and may as well find the good in it. Good being that they'll hopefully think twice before bullying. But realistically that's doubtful."
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Post by shinigami on Oct 1, 2008 23:39:59 GMT -8
"Those're the sort've excuses men make to keep from having to take responsibility," Aidan says, and it's easy for him to speak in these sorts've terms. The terms that would, could, become a speech -- inspirational; rousing; passion-stirring.
His voice is soft, but there's something to it -- coarse wool, could draw blood. He bites his lower lip again, and flicks a glance toward Tabitha, and the glance is all darkness and possession, leavened by a little gleam of sympathy.
He gulps, afterwards, because dear god, her legs, and anyway, he's being a dick, and he feels awkward suddenly (again; it isn't really sudden at all), because he knows he can be too intense. That it frightens people.
He can't help it.
"You're right about one thing, though," he says, wistfully. "They're not going to think twice about bullying; they're going to fight a lot in the next week, struggle against one another. It's the smart ones who fight the most, you know..."
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