Event: Target

Riesy raised shiz eyebrow at him, liking the way s/he could catch his light on the piercing, and grinned to show it. "You're fuckin' adorable, you know that?"

S/he jerked her head for him to follow, waving a hand at Lilybeth too as s/he walked off after Doc, the cat, and their fearless leader. "Hey!" S/he called loudly. "Remember that time this Target didn't have a food section? I remember that. Here," s/he grabbed a loaf of bread off an endcap and shoved it into Doc's chest. "Leave a trail of something, in case you get lost in there."

Doc glared at Riesy, but was promptly distracted by Eve's comment.  His scowl went from thunderous to downright terrifying.  "Who?" he asked Eve.

*shakes magic 8ball and waits for the answer*

The member 'Jodie' has done the following action : Dice rolls

---

'd10' : 1

Tanner turned pink, and ducked his head again, not sure what to do with being called adorable, but he yielded to the silent instruction in Riesy’s gesture, following after her. It was probably best not to split up, anyway, and she was headed for the grocery section, and he hadn’t eaten yet.

His stomach growled at the reminder, even if he wasn’t entirely sure they should be eating food from the grocery section- since it hadn’t been there before.

“I remember that too,” he agreed, casting a suspicious look at the expanded space, before his attention caught on neatly stacked boxes of Little Debbie snacks. They hadn’t often had ‘indulgent’ foods in the house, but they’d had Nutty Buddy bars at the start of each school year to go in their lunches. The music swirling around Tanner went melancholy, but he reached out and picked a box up anyway.

It wasn’t like a little bit of gluttony was gonna do much to him, at this point.

"Hey Nutty Buddies!" Riesy reached past Tanner for a box of shiz own. S/he knocked them together in a toasting gesture. "Breakfast of champions. Where's the Mountain Dew?"

Feeling the cagey turn of the music, Riesy looked up at Tanner. "Why the long face, maestro?" S/he tore into shiz box.

Tanner hesitated.  The question seemed light enough, seemed- earnest, enough, but he wasn’t- he’d made a habit of figuring out how to talk without being heard, of figuring out how to be without being seen.  It made him nervous, knowing that Riesy could hear him, knowing how exposed he was even if he didn’t say a word-

-but she’d been amazingly patient, so far, didn’t seem to view him like an enemy or a threat or any of the other things he’d been looked at with disdain and fear and disgust recently for.

“My mom, she used to buy these for us.  When we were kids, at the beginning of the school year.  We’d get to have one in our lunches every day for the first week.  It was- a special treat.”

"Aww, your mom sounds cool as shit," Riesy said through shiz mouthful while they wandered. "We never got treats, we got leftovers when we were going to school. Every single lunch was the same, so we couldn't get mixed up on the way out the door."

When they reached the end of an aisle, s/he followed Isabelle. S/he guessed they were doing pants first.

“She was,” Tanner said, the words awkward and flat and catching, and the music went from melancholy to sad to sharp all in a line. She was, sometimes, she’d been as kind as she knew how to be when raising her family, she’d loved them all, but she’d never seen any of them- or maybe she just hadn’t wanted to look. She had been stern and gentle and distant and difficult, she had dithered over Adam nearly killing people with the same precise degree of concern as she’d shown when Tanner had gotten dragged to the principal’s office for a team prank against the West Haven kids, and she’d put treats in his lunch box and kissed him on the head and read him stories when he was small.

She’d been his mother, and she’d been wrong, and he’d loved her anyway, and she was gone.

“Our lunches were usually the same, too, but mostly because she was using whatever meat Dad brought back from the shop until it was gone,” he added, trying desperately to make his tone normal, to relate to the simple, easy thing.

To put aside the sting of thinking about his mother.

Riesy gasped through shiz nose and jerked away from the sharp scrape of the music across shiz face. "Sorry," s/he muttered. S/he had forgotten the Martin matriarch was dead. S/he grasped at the straw s/he could find in there while Isabelle retreated to the changing room, closely guarded by Lilybeth glaring out at them with the headlamp.

"Uh. Family businesses, huh? Solid comfort or pain in the ass?" S/he licked the chocolate from shiz fingers.

“...Thanks,” Tanner said, not sure what else to say- it wasn’t Riesy’s fault that the thought stung, and she hadn’t been the one to bring it up. He shrugged, trying to convey all of that, trying- he wasn’t sure what he was trying to do. But he lifted his chin and forced a smile that felt more like a grimace, and shook his head.

“Not a fan. Don’t think I’m really cut out for butchery as a lifetime calling, not that I was ever going to have a choice.” Though he guessed he probably would, now- assuming they didn’t all die, assuming the town still existed in a month, assuming there was a future to think about at all.

“Dunno what else I’d do, though. Never had to think about it. What about you?”

Riesy snorted and grinned up at him, not maliciously. "I make people feel like they're losing their goddamn minds, dude. Their grip on reality. There's a reason we live in a hippie commune out in Bumblefuck. No matter what happens, those woods are gonna be my life." S/he turned as Isabelle emerged, then whooped, arms in the air. "Woohoo! Coats!"

At Riesy’s movement, Tanner caught a glimpse of dark lines curling along her hip where her shirt rode up; for a second, it drew all of his attention, the contrast hitting like the drag of velvet over his palms. The unexpectedness of it- and the guilty appeal- left him blinking and scrambling to figure out what she’d actually just said.

“Oh,” he replied, mostly in an effort to give himself a second to think, and forcing his eyes up and away.  “That, uh.  That sounds- limiting?” he managed, hoping that didn’t sound as judgmental to her as it did to him as soon as it actually left his mouth.  “I mean.  Just- choices.  Are nice.  Oh, coats, good,” he added in a rush, cheeks bright red and music mockingly light and fluttery.

S/he shot him a confused look over shiz shoulder, hooking one finger into a belt loop to hitch shiz pants higher to protect the thin skin between them and shiz shirt from the tickles the music was sending over shim. "I mean it's only for a few more years, right? Then the cycle starts over and we get to move around. But it's not really...like there's plenty to do. I'm never bored."

S/he passed the women's coats and waded into the men's section.

Eve just flicked an ear, unable to shrug and walk on all fours. <I don't know his name. He'd never been to my shop before and I didn't stay close enough to him to hear anyone else use it. If we live through this run, I can show you, but it's not a big deal. Barely hurts anymore!>

She stopped in front of a freezer with meats inside, and looked up at Doc in question.

Tanner nearly tripped over his own feet when Riesy adjusted her clothes, hiding the velvet contrast.  Which he should not have been paying attention to, he- this was not the time or place and it was rude to stare and he was going to just.

Think about anything else.

Not difficult, as Riesy’s words brought a sharp sour note out of the music, echoing the immediate tightness in his expression.

“You really think- all this is just... going to go away again?  And if it does, that it’s still just- going to come back?  You think there’s any way to fix any of this, now?”  Because Tanner had heard a lot of things, in the last few days, and a lot more in the months between the meteor storm and the fog going up, and none of it had been optimistic.  He’d heard diatribe after diatribe about how the curses were worse, this time, how they hadn’t stopped when they were supposed to, how even the small mercy of their cyclical nature had been violently disrupted by the selfishness of those who defended the unclean- and even after trying to parse out what had just been bile and blame, it still sounded like something had changed.  That even the people who’d been through it before weren’t sure what was going to happen next.

That even the people in charge weren’t sure how to get the town to the next day, let alone anything further out than that.

He trailed after Riesy into the men’s section, and despite his unease, made an effort to look around; a few of the jackets in brighter colors made him itch just looking at them, and one- orange and green and loud about it- felt like stepping onto hot concrete in summer.  He turned quickly toward a display of black coats, which didn’t feel like much of anything, and rifled through for something in his size.

Anger immediately sparked in Riesy's gut the same way Tanner's doubtful incredulity sparked along the back of shiz neck. S/he immediately disliked it. McGlynns avoided anger almost as much as they avoided fear. S/he found the effort required for keeping it at bay slowed her steps and made shiz arms heavy as s/he raised them to cross under shiz chin on a rack of Oxfords neatly hung according to size and color that jutted out from between the dark overcoats Tanner searched through. It made shim feel dangerous. S/he truly did not like it, and was grateful for the barrier between them.

"Tanner," she rasped, throat tight with it. The sound of shiz own voice raised the hair on shiz arms like static, crackling through the air. How dare he pass judgement on their state when he was new to sharing it. How dare he despair when they were actively combatting the end of the world. How dare he waste their precious time when there was work to be done. S/he searched for words carefully, breathing slow until he looked over, wanting clearness of shiz message more than anything else in the moment, so s/he would not have to come back to feeling this way, hopefully ever.

"I don't have...the comfort. Of your faith," s/he started, thinking maybe the difference in their thinking laid there, "...that tells me I have somewhere...else. Somewhere better, to go. After this." S/he kept her voice low and her pronunciation precise. There was no need to get cutting. Innocence didn't deserve that. "So all of my hopes, all of my family's hopes, have to lie with 'fixing this.' That is why I am out here, with you who doubts, might I add, braving acid lakes and demon bugs and whatever the hell that Thing is down Touble Alley-" s/he raised a single finger off where it rested on shiz arm to point towards their destination, not wanting to fuel the anger with wild motion, "in an effort to secure information that could help. That could fix this. I have to think," s/he threaded the fingers of her other hand through the hangers, holding on past the urge to let the wave break over him like the word did to her, "that it's going to go away and come back and go away again, just like it's always done for us." The prick of tears in shiz nose and sting of them in shiz eyes surprised shim into backing off. S/he shoved off the rack, walking backwards away from him. "Otherwise, I have nothing to hope for, and I shouldn't be out here, I should be back at the high school, with them, while I can be." S/he turned, looking for the red Dickies sign. Practicality and comfort, that was the armor s/he wanted on this trip. Not some nicely structured peacoat that only gave the illusion of decency.

The change in Riesy’s tone, the low rasp, sat bitter as copper pennies on Tanner’s tongue, the taste thick and sudden and threatening. He tensed, heartbeat picking up in an uncomfortable, automatic response to the anger in her voice, however careful it was- he knew how to listen for it, and habit said to fold down, to duck his head and nod along and keep his mouth shut.

To put on a properly contrite mask and be properly self-abasing until the anger went away and he was safely invisible again.

But it was hard to pretend with horns and strings beating a sharp tattoo in his ears, when the lie would be revealed before it was offered by the fact that she could hear it too.

She didn’t yell; she just spoke, sharp and clear, and he thought he should probably appreciate that, did recognize that it had to be an effort, but he was choking on metal and his heart was beating too fast and his hands were shaking from the sting of the one word that had hit cloying-sweet and poisonous, that he couldn’t get out from under.

“Comfort?” he asked, and the word cracked down the middle. “You think my faith is a comfort to me?” He gestured, short and sharp, at the air, at the thin, tense shrill of a single string instrument holding a note far too long- and shook his head, dismissing the thought, dismissing the argument before he could push it any further. She didn’t need to hear it, and he didn’t need to say it, and there was plenty else for him to take umbrage to in all that.

“I’m sorry if I don’t exactly have a lot of reason to believe this gets better,” he hissed, and he really shouldn’t be saying that, either, none of this was Riesy’s fault and he knew better, but his stomach was churning and his head hurt from the noise that would not stop and she wasn’t the only one who was angry. “And I didn’t even know what we were looking for, I didn’t come out here to fix anything, I’m here-”

He broke off, because he didn’t know why he was there. Why he’d let himself get swept along, why he’d followed a group of people he barely recognized out into- all of this. Except that it wasn’t really any safer surrounded by scared, angry, unpredictable people in close quarters, and he’d thought- foolishly, desperately- that maybe he could help, somehow.

That maybe he could be of use. That if there were risks to be shared, maybe one more body would make the difference.

After all, it wasn’t like he had anyone to go home to. Not anymore.

“-I’m here,” he said, because maybe- maybe that ought to be enough. He didn’t have to believe anything to do his best.

S/he turned and leaned back into the pillowy flannels, arms crossed tight to hold the anger in, tasting the warm cider the McGlynn cousins and extended family passed around at bonfires where the zippers pressed into her back and the plaid embraced shim. "Okay," s/he challenged quietly, looking up at him. "So make it worth it. Learn something, from someone who has a lifetime of reasons to believe this gets better. Shit, if not from me then one of the others. I wasn't born yet when the Troubles were active last, but Doc was. Isabelle might have been. They know what our parents know, they know this time is some kind of different. They're not letting it hold them back from getting shit done now."

S/he looked him over again, really looked at him as more of what he said sunk in. S/he smelled the scorched coffee in the dark circles under his eyes and the lines of tension in his shoulders. "Or letting it stop them from making plans for after." S/he shrugged her way into the green and grey plaid s/he had been leaning against, then held out a darker blue one to him, since he hadn't grabbed one of his preppy defense mechanisms.

"You can show me after," Doc said, looking through the freezer.  Although the power had been out for a couple of days, the sheer mass of the frozen food meant that some of the interior layers were thawed but not yet spoiled.  He opened a pack of chicken and another of fish for Eve, then began selecting a pile of large roasts to pack up.

<After...> Eve said absently, staring at the raw meats. She had made some questionable choices the first day or two after her transformation, but those had been fresh kills. She remembered having eaten sushi a couple times, but it had been a long time ago and most of her interaction with fish was in the form of fertilizer for her favorite plants. She was pretty sure frozen fish was the worse of the two, so she set about chewing off small chunks of the chicken breast. She had to assume it would not taste nearly as good with a human tongue, but for now it was delicious, and she ate as much as she could hold.

When she had finished, she sat near where Doc had settled, cleaning her paws and weeping her face with them in a very soothing, rhythmic way. She glanced over at Doc and almost without thinking said < would you have liked this Trouble?>

"Bein' a cat?  Hell yeah," Doc nodded.

Eve flicked an ear. <Even though it would mean you couldn't help other animals, or stop anyone from... you know. Closing their tails in doors. Or talk to anyone ever again, human or animal?>

"Humanity's overrated," Doc grunted.  "Just be taking my place in nature."

<You have a place already,> she said, going back to washing her paws. <Helping little black cats find food, and breaking glass doors and laughing at boys who don't think before they wake the unconscious, panicky shield-popping girl and get knocked on their asses. Surely you had a place before this that wasn't did bad, either?>