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Post by Nina Fortner on Feb 23, 2018 23:11:50 GMT -5
She liked when he said things like this to her; she didn't think he was doing it to shock, although he could have been. She thought he was just speaking freely because he trusted her. She'd wondered to herself, in private, if this was something they had in common; she weirdly wanted it to be, but she couldn't imagine being with another woman. Though she supposed she didn't exactly know any other women at this point in time; she mostly interacted with Gwen and Meg. And it was sort of embarrassing to try to work herself up to having a more fluid sexuality just because the man she was seeing did.
"Is that your excuse for yourself as well?"
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Post by Silva on Feb 23, 2018 23:13:41 GMT -5
"I am what women like her made me." He couldn't look at her when he said this, but there were lots of other places to look -- the horizon, for example, or down at his own scar-pocked arm where it shone through the water.
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Post by Nina Fortner on Feb 23, 2018 23:16:43 GMT -5
Nina watched him, her heart aching, feeling her anger heighten and then ebb away. She was doomed in this, she should get out while it was still an option - if it even was; he had stalked her here, after all. And yet, how much he was laying himself bare to her. She suspected it had been a while since he'd done this with anyone, and she didn't know why he did it with her. Maybe she was too unimportant for him to guard himself. And maybe this was all a calculated gesture on his part and he wasn't being open with her at all.
"Maybe I'll make you something too," Nina said softly.
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Post by Silva on Feb 23, 2018 23:18:44 GMT -5
It gave him some reassurance that if she had reacted badly to any of this, it would have been only too easy to drown her.
"Something better, I hope," he said brightly, but it was transparently grim brightness -- the broad smile of a skull.
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Post by Nina Fortner on Feb 24, 2018 17:19:54 GMT -5
"I just want to feel that you'll be different now that you've met me. Even though you don't stay."
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Post by Silva on Feb 24, 2018 17:32:30 GMT -5
"All these things leave a mark."
He rubbed a saltwatery hand on his mouth.
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Post by Nina Fortner on Feb 24, 2018 17:34:35 GMT -5
"That doesn't comfort me," said Nina, swimming the distance to him, but not entwining around him like it looked like she would. She swam around him instead, like a curious mermaid. "I wish I could see a glimpse of you on that island."
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Post by Silva on Feb 24, 2018 17:39:41 GMT -5
"Kicking rocks, shooting off guns. Picture me now, only smaller."
She probably couldn't picture it, not if she really strained her imagination to its limits; she and her creep of a brother had never been normal children. He held out his arm like Poseidon surveying his kingdom.
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Post by Nina Fortner on Feb 24, 2018 17:42:05 GMT -5
She smiled wanly, a concession to what she had no idea he was thinking of. After a few more laps near him Nina said quietly, "I don't remember anything before I'm ten years old."
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Post by Silva on Feb 24, 2018 17:48:11 GMT -5
"Why's that?"
Because of the brutally efficient murder of her parents, of course, but he wouldn't preempt her.
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Post by Nina Fortner on Feb 24, 2018 17:49:50 GMT -5
A little white finger tapped a wan forehead in distant memory.
"I'm not ready to talk about it," said Nina with a glamorously sad backstroke.
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Post by Silva on Feb 24, 2018 17:54:57 GMT -5
"Well, it must be for an awfully good reason. Don't trouble yourself, then."
He fell back and let himself float graciously, recalling the sensation of cold water lashing at open wounds. It had been a rubber hose, threaded into a pipe set into the wall -- he remembered that clearly enough, cold water sluicing burning flesh.
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Post by Nina Fortner on Feb 24, 2018 17:57:07 GMT -5
"That's why I like you so much."
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Post by Silva on Feb 24, 2018 17:58:23 GMT -5
"Some part is protecting you. But I won't pry. Have you really never had an oyster?"
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Post by Nina Fortner on Feb 24, 2018 18:00:23 GMT -5
"No, I've never had an oyster," said Nina with a lopsided smile, before feeling that strange sensation on her ankle again too quickly for her to react. Since she was swimming on her back, for her to so suddenly be yanked in the opposite direction and underwater was... understandably against the laws of physics. When Nina resurfaced, she was painfully choking up all of the water she had inhaled in her shock.
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