(no subject)

[themidnightson]

The Back Door opens and closes.

Two people leave, one dressed for the weather and one decidedly not.

The snow is still covering the ground except for well worn paths that have turned slushy and gray-brown. But it isn't falling right now. And Edward paused, while the door swung closed, to look across the expanse. Would anything feel far enough here to him? Was it just another distraction from?


Except he could not chance these things;
And he did not trust the Front Door after all the things it had thrown at them.

Comments

[themidnightson]

She'll learn in time it's one of four phrases he rarely says in decades.
It's the second most likely of the four, too. But fewer people know that.



"If it becomes detrimental, perhaps."

[noteful]

"Of course."

A slight smile.

"I'll let you know."

Not that I'd need to.

[themidnightson]

The very edge of his one side of his lips tugged outward and outward.

[noteful]

Meg rests her chin on her gloved hands and looks over at him.

"Well, I wouldn't."

[themidnightson]

"Maybe next time you'll sit down the first time you're invited to, too."

[noteful]

"Maybe.

"Depending on the invitation."

[themidnightson]

"If won't be overt if we're in public and you aren't addressing me yet. "

[noteful]

Because he's been so excessively overt in his actions till now.

Meg nods.

"I know.

"I meant more . . . if you ask nicely, I'll probably say yes."

But it's a woman's prerogative to refuse invitations.

[themidnightson]

It's Meg's prerogative.

"I could attempt to be on my best behavior."

The one he carried about in a box in his head.

[noteful]

"Oh, that might be excessive."

Best behavior is the stuff of formal events and people you don't know well.

[themidnightson]

"Hypothetically, that would be how I spend five days out of every seven already," Edward followed up on her last five words. He means it more wryly than she might take it though.

[noteful]

"Being on your best behavior?

"And not smacking your classmates for making you listen to them read V.C. Andrews books?"

[themidnightson]

Edward snorted with a half roll of his eyes.

They actually read worse things.
And thought monotonously.


"That, as well."


Besides it was being on his best behavior not to snap Mike Newton in half pretty much daily since January, no matter how many times or ways he had pictured doing so.

[noteful]

"Thank you, for telling me," she says.

[themidnightson]

The uncertainty about the repercussions keep him from an easy response. Even pressing himself into a response that might seem easy and at least be polite or at the slimmest a socially responsiveness.

He doesn't ask for grace, or apologize for the lack of privacy either.
All of it, all of it, is simply what it is, who he is.


It's only about three seconds when he finally shifts to look at the field again, quietness more in his tone than in his volume. "All the things this place has wrought."

[noteful]

"'More things in heaven and Earth . . .'" she says, looking out at the diamond again.

She wouldn't be who she is, without the things this place has wrought.

And though the thought occasionally still surprises her, she wouldn't change that.

[themidnightson]

Edward's lips rounded toward a crooked listing.

"You have already forsworn yourself." Dry and tempered teasing.

[noteful]

Meg looks at him, a little puzzled.

"How so?"

[themidnightson]

Edward's lopsided smile stayed, fingers planting in the snow on the bench as he leaned. "You're still speaking and you're now in possession of far more information than is requisite to ravaged madness."

[noteful]

Words, words, words.

[themidnightson]

"At least you appreciate them." Wry.

[noteful]

She loves them. She's fascinated by them.

And she's careful with them.

"I try to."

[themidnightson]

Edward's spent different periods of time in her first two thoughts on them, but he's always in the latter. Maybe far more than he'll ever notice even.

Not that people around him have any problem noticing.

Maybe it's that he makes no effort not to let them when he does things as simple at the moment right here, where he keeps just looking at the field, without choosing to use any.

[noteful]

Nothing wrong with being laconic.

Sometimes, words say more by their absense than they ever could by their presence.

. . . there's a paradox in that somewhere.

[themidnightson]

Edward smirked faintly, with a shake of his head.

"He was trying to give you an out."