nighttime strolls (hyper)

@"hyperhurricane"

With their faces inches from one another, Jaya could notice every detail of Terrance's cold - wait, was it getting a bit hotter - no, no those thoughts would have to stay down and under control, or other things would end up going down and Jaya's train of thought was starting to derail. Her legs tensed up and she slid down a bit more, trying to get herself more stable without her arms.

Gravity and physics seemed to have other plans, and she ended up sliding a bit too far, falling onto Terrance's chest, her head nocked in the gap between his left shoulder and his face. Shock filled her expression, and she was thankful that her face fell onto the bed, and not his. If it was onto Terrance she fell, she would have gone out of control - she'd lose control, not go out of control. The thought made her heart beat faster, and the sensation of his brother's own chest beating just a tiny bit faster sent blood rushing to her cheeks, luckily somewhere Terrance couldn't see.

Jaya's breathing grew slow and heavy, attempting to regulate her functions, and mostly not succeeding at it. Considering it made her legs clench even tighter, afraid to let go. No, it was to get a better grip on the situation, not fear.

Her words were careful and slow, strangely out of rhythm, almost slurring."O-kay... the game's like... this. We're going to just... stay like this... whispering - asking, asking I mean - the most personal questions we have to each other, and the first one to clam up and not answer loses. You mentioned... that we're not close or know each other. Let's go change that... okay..? You - you go first, brother."

"Brother" came out of her lips over the course of the longest two seconds Jaya ever experienced in her life, and the word washed her in a strange sense of unease. It was perhaps her disdain and lack of regard for him as a family member, but the thought in the back of her mind only made her more queasy.

What if it wasn't that?

@"hyperhurricane"

Easy enough to answer - the question wasn't particularly difficult. "It's -" she began, but then she almost bit her tongue in hesitation. Why did she hesitate? Why couldn't she say that she hated him - them, she meant - why did she suddenly care enough to choose her words? It was just Terrance, the one she loathed the most in her "family". And yet, this weird unease settled in her chest and refused to leave.

Jaya didn't want Terrance to hate her.

She quickly pushed the thought to the farthest recesses of her mind, trying to pull up spiteful visions and thoughts of this dear brother of hers, dismissing every thought that did not malign and attack Terrance as sarcasm. She was having a very sarcastic train of thought at the moment, it seemed.

Only when the music from her laptop changed from the strings of The Ink Spots to a slow, almost tragic love song did she realize two things. First - she'd been thinking too long and had to answer or she'd lose. Second - she'd chosen the absolute worst time to leave her music playlist on shuffle.

Her heart thumped even faster and her breath grew deeper. Her voice was heavy as she whispered her answer straight into Terrance's ear. Her face faced his, looking at him from the side and then turning the other way, redder than it was meant to be.

"I like being out, okay? I didn't choose to be in this family. Just like none of you chose me, and like no one ever chose me. I don't like it, being all tied up here where only Percy has the patience and ever made the choice to take care of me more than she was ordered to. You never chose me. Never chose me, Terrance..."

Jaya's voice trailed off with a hint of melancholy that she herself caught and stopped. Her emotions now were muddled, confused. She had to get herself back under check with her question.

"My turn. What do you care..? About all of this? About... me?"

@"hyperhurricane"

"Like I said: this family's all I have left to live for, that's why. It's stupid. Virtues? But I don't have anything else and there's nothing for me out there."

Pangs of emotion bit into Jaya's heart, and were her arms free she might have clutched her chest. Someone who was the same at heart... she felt her dislike for him drop a few notches. Shame also crept in, and at the moment she wanted nothing more than to kiss - no, to hug him in apology - to apologize for so steadfastly ruining his efforts. So mixed up were here ideas that she couldn't notice Terrance's own vulnerability.

Everything was a mess of stray thoughts and unwanted emotions wrapped up in the rapid pumping of two dissonant hearts. Jaya's mind was clouded, not knowing how she could possibly make things right or why she even wanted to make things right in the first place. She hated him - for what reason should she extend a hand of peace? Terrance filled her eyes even as she closed them - a sure sign of pure, unadultered dislike. The very thought of him left such a queasy taste in her mouth... taste - enough. Her confusion was bad enough without her going in that direction every few seconds.

"I don't understand why you're the only one that just didn't act like you wanted to fit in. I'm trying but you just keep running away. I just want to know what your deal is. You keep making it hard for anyone to reach out to you it's like... it's like you really just hate everyone else but Percy."

Hearing Terrance answer so earnestly only dug the pain deeper into Jaya's chest. She was making things hard for him - no, for the family, not him - and somehow, she felt guilty. Hellen couldn't make her feel that. Gene couldn't make her feel that. Not even when she was with Percy did she feel this way, so out of control, so guilty and ashamed. With her, Jaya was afraid of disappointment. With Terrance... it was something else she couldn't understand or define that made his words cut so deep.

"I'm sorry," she whispered into the mattress where no one could hear anything but a garbled mumble except for her.

"Do you really hate us that much? Or do you just hate me?"

This was the pivotal question. She could clear her mind with a simple string of words. She just needed to say, no, confirm that there was no love lost between them on her part - or rather, at all, on both their parts, and she'd be done with her unease.

"I don't hate you..."

she whispered, and immediately she went into mental overdrive, trying to get the situation back under control. No. No. No no no no. I hate him! Why can't I say it? It's - why... why?

Then she made the biggest mistake she'd make all night. Or maybe the first of several. She let herself be vulnerable and whispered some more, slowly and carefully, even as inside everything was a chaotic mess.

"I just don't know how to be around you, Terrance. I've been alone and messed up for so long before Percy found me. You don't know how bad it was... I was out on the streets, dying of starvation, dying of the cold, dying of just about everything... you had a family. I had one for a week before I ended up dumped into an orphanage. I was lost without you..."

She paused, her poor choice of words stopping the chaos in her head momentarily, just long enough for her to register that shit shit shit I have to fix that.

"...I mean, without family. I got high, I got drunk, I got hooked. So long passed like that... me, a mess, and only Percy put up with me and tried to help... I don't hate you, Terrance. I hate myself. ...and everyone in this family." Her last sentence was off-beat, discordant with the rest, tacked on as it was in a futile attempt to salvage herself from honesty.

Tears now welled in her eyes, with an accompanying wave of relief that should never have existed. She felt strangely safe in his presence, lying atop her brother and letting everything out. And yet she still couldn't get over her confusion. She couldn't understand anymore whether she truly hated him or not, and she couldn't understand why calling him her brother, even just inside her head, made her chest ache so.

She looked away, not wanting to reveal her weakness any more than she already did. Teary eyes would betray that weakness immediately, and so staring into the wall she asked her question. "Do you actually care for me... or just the family?"

@"hyperhurricane"

Gravity seemed to have upended itself with Terrance's words. She heard him say that he cared for the sake of the family, and though she fully expected it, it still made her chest heavy and her stomach fill with lead. The weight of all that disappointment and bitterness hurt her almost physically, and Jaya wanted nothing more than to cry and disappear into the night. Even the box of cocaine hiding in her back pocket seemed out of the question - there was nothing now in the night save for her, Terrance, and the crushing truth that she held no place in his heart outside of that compartment reserved for dislike. No binding, not even those keeping her tied up at the moment, could weigh her down more than these unintelligible feelings could.

Her face was wet with tears now, eyes forcibly shut as if trying to deny reality, and rendered silent only by her stubborn refusal to show weakness. There was still no clear answer in her head as to why she cared so much, and the repressed thoughts from earlier banged on her mental walls, threatening to break them down.

"It started out like that, I guess. It took a while I guess but after a bit I figured, maybe the family didn't need to be fixed. It was alright the way it is. I never really had to worry. The one who needed help, maybe, was you. But I couldn't do anything because you kept pushing everyone away..."

Jaya's eyes jolted open, springing back to life. With such ease, he snapped her out of her stupor, and she slowly wiped her face on the mattress, trying to hide any trace of her tears. She turned her head and saw that he looked off to the other side, and a small breath of relief escaped from her lips to the back of his neck.

There she lay, face moist, watching her bro - watching Terrance. She couldn't even refer to him as "brother" anymore in her head, muddled as her thoughts were. Everything Terrance said or did - be it those words, or that sigh, or the way he avoided her gaze - weighed heavily on her mind. Terrance, the man who refused to let her have any freedom. Terrance, the man whose every actions and very existence caused her to doubt herself and fall to confusion.

Terrance, the man who simply would not leave her mind and leave her in peace.

The silence between the two grew unbearable, as Jaya waited cautiously, tenuously for a question. Her breathing was hot, heavy, and irregular, her heart pumping blood away from her extremities to places that did not particularly need it at the moment.

In the background was the twanging of guitars and the crackling of vinyl, as the laptop, in the voice of singer Eddy Arnold, belted out what was perhaps the last thing Jaya needed to hear filling in the silence.

"It's a sin, my darling, how I love you
Because I know our love can never be
It's a sin to keep this memory of you
When silence proves that you've forgotten me..."

The words hit her right where it hurt, with the lyrics strangely fitting of the situation. There she was, lying down, stewing in her confused thoughts of Terrance, waiting in silence for a question that may never come from someone who didn't care. The only thing that was off was the talk of love - whatever this twisted thing in her heart was, it wasn't love.

She couldn't take it anymore. The silence was too heavy for her. Remembering her original premise, she pushed herself even harder down on him, transferring all of her weight down to her hips, still interlocked with his. She thought it would make her feel better, doing this - pressuring him, seizing control from the one whose hat it was to have self-control.

With a falsely smug but noticeable shaky voice, she asked, "Aren't you going to ask me a question..? I - that's against the rules... okay, I didn't say, but... aren't you going to ask me? Do - don't you want to know or understand me..? Don't just leave me hanging here, Terrance, please."

It was close. She couldn't deny it anymore, after she whispered that last word straight into his ear. Her strength was gone, taken away by this person she hated so much yet craved the notice of. That brief silence seemed an eternity, an uncomfortable moment stretching out forever filled with nothing but painful realizations. The emotional dam of Jaya was close to breaking, only waiting for the right impact to crack her open.

@"hyperhurricane"

Jaya did not expect such a sudden upheaval, and it clearly showed on her face. Her eyes widened in shock and then quivered in barely-controlledj frustration. She showed weakness and paid dearly for it - she'd lost control, and now Terrance was on top in both senses of the word. There was nothing she could do but laugh in frustration.

She bit her lip. "I - Isn't this just pathetic? See, this is why I act - have to be tough... every single time I let my guard down I end up in trouble. It's so - do you think I want to be so guarded? I don't! I just... I don't know how to stop."

She laughed even more, and were her arms free she would have covered her face to hide her shame, her weakness, and her inexplicably flushed cheeks. Terrance's weight messed up her already messed-up breathing, and it slowed down, as if he was somehow calming her down. Then she bitterly continued, "I think you can tell but I'm nowhere near as tough as I want to be... I'm already about to cry just because you shut up for a bit... guess there's no use trying to hide that now."

"Jaya, what is this family to you? What am I to you?"

The first part of it was a rather easy question, but the second part... she'd been asking herself that all this time. The answer lay down a horribly twisted and convoluted train of thought, and as such, she had no recourse but to be honest. Hell, Terrance's gaze alone made her unwilling to lie for whatever reason, bindings notwithstanding.

She sighed and closed her eyes for a bit longer than a standard blink, and she heaved a sigh of relief when that intense gaze was still there, unconsciously; it was as if somewhere deep down she was glad that he had not suddenly left her. "The family... I'll be honest, the only ones that matter right now is Percy... and you." That hushed, whispered addition she tried to mentally justified as importance from dislike, though she couldn't believe that fully.

"You," she began, "I... I don't know. I tried to think of you as that annoying guy that I hated, but obviously I can't do that right. I tried thinking of you as my brother, but it doesn't sit right either. I don't know, Terrance. I really - I have no idea, Terrance. Terrance."

Jaya found Terrance's name lingering on her lips, and she had to get it off there somehow. She returned that intense gaze with an almost pleading one of her own. "How about me, Terrance? What am I... to you? What do you think of me - now that you've seen the most... honest I've ever been to you?"