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Post by Nina Fortner on Feb 17, 2018 21:42:20 GMT -5
The conversation with Loki had been wearing eye-opening, endearing even; it made her feel like slightly less of a monster, and more like a normal delinquent, dysfunctional kid - sneaking cigarettes and falling stupidly in love like any other kid. Funny how it took the company of a thousand-year-old Norse god of lying to make her feel like that. It made her feel emboldened enough to confront Adrian when she got in, though she smiled wanly and said, not lying, that she was really anxious to go to bed, and would talk to him in the morning. Adrian relented, released her from a hug eventually, and kissed the top of her head.
But instead she crept upstairs and tapped on Curt's door, pulling her hair anxiously over her shoulder and fingercombing it. It was windswept and tangled with salt air from the ocean, and probably from rolling around on Raoul Silva's bed... and the floor... and being thrown up against the wall.... Guiltily she worked on trying to make it look reasonable, wishing desperately that she'd thought to brush it before coming to knock on Curt's door.
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Post by Dr. Connors on Feb 17, 2018 21:55:21 GMT -5
Curt had taken his glasses off at his desk, letting them rest atop a stack of files and notebooks; when he heard a knock, and one that didn't sound like it belonged to Megan at that, he sprang up without bothering to put them back on. The atmosphere around this place was like a hothouse, or like one of those Italian art films of the 1970s that left Curt with a sense of vague unease the whole way home from the theater. Of course, if it had been Megan it wouldn't be a bad thing -- the woman clearly needed all the consolation and conversation she could get -- but he'd been waiting for her in agony. It had come to feel like a lack, not having Nina there, and under the circumstances that was beyond presumptuous, beyond perverse.
"Come in," he found himself saying even as he fumbled for the door handle.
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Post by Nina Fortner on Feb 17, 2018 22:04:33 GMT -5
Nina tossed her hair over her shoulder, leaving a bunch of strands clinging to her face without realizing it, and came in. She started to pace before she knew what she was doing, entering the room too quickly, turning back to him, face burning, anxious to speak and explain herself, a bunch of garbled words tumbling too quickly from her mouth; then she went silent and paced away from him again.
Too dizzied to wait for an invitation she plunked down hopelessly on the edge of his bed.
"Oh, Curt," she said wretchedly.
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Post by Dr. Connors on Feb 17, 2018 22:11:46 GMT -5
His heart was caught somehow in his chest. Every thought seemed to have escaped from his mind except blind relief.
"Nina," Curt said, feeling stupid as soon as he said it. "Good god, what happened?"
Already he doubted God had much to do with the matter. But Nina was here, so present and so ragged --it was as if he hadn't seen her for years and now here she was.
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Post by Nina Fortner on Feb 17, 2018 22:12:21 GMT -5
She buried her face in her hands and groaned. "Oh, I'm so stupid, I'm so sorry-"
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Post by Dr. Connors on Feb 17, 2018 22:13:49 GMT -5
"Don't, don't--"
Don't apologize, he meant to say, and yet somehow also don't cry.
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Post by Nina Fortner on Feb 17, 2018 22:20:53 GMT -5
Nina took a loud breath, and held it, and with a startlingly, unpleasantly strong resemblance to her father, composed herself. She looked up at Curt with tear streaks on her face, but seemed otherwise more calm than hysterical.
"Well, Raoul tracked the GPS signal on my cell phone to this island."
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Post by Dr. Connors on Feb 17, 2018 22:30:13 GMT -5
"Oh." Instantly that strange, muddled sensation in his body he had taken for relief settled all at once. It plummeted, like lead. "Nina, that's... that's quite serious."
He wanted to kneel beside her, somehow, but it would have looked absurd. In the instant it took him to restore his glasses to his face, he was remembering that night, and her kissing away the marks of his glasses on his face, and in that moment he was ready to die.
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Post by Nina Fortner on Feb 17, 2018 22:31:24 GMT -5
"It is, isn't it? I didn't even notice until telling you just now, what it sounds like."
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Post by Dr. Connors on Feb 17, 2018 22:44:26 GMT -5
What a fix they were in. A personal, romantic, sexual, criminal, professional, and at this rate international fix. Curt shook his head stiffly, resting for a moment with his back to his desk.
"It isn't your fault, Nina, however it happened, but it isn't..." Curt finished weakly. "Good."
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Post by Nina Fortner on Feb 17, 2018 22:50:14 GMT -5
"Oh, Curt," she repeated, plunged back into hopeless despair again. "You know by now that nothing about me is good." Her voice cracked; she hadn't meant it to, she knew she came across inadvertently manipulative this way. She wished so much she could stand and go to him, for him to put his arm around her like - well, like he had just the night before. She'd only just realized he might have really liked her this whole time, and now she had to become aware that she might have been leading him on, too. "And certainly everything about Raoul is very bad."
But I love him. I love him. I love him.
That rang so much in her head that it took her a moment to realize she hadn't said it out loud. Should she? How would Curt take it? Wasn't it better to anger him or hurt him all at once and let him shove her out of his life if he needed to, instead of stay here and play on his emotions with her sob story and her cracking voice? She stared at the floor. She was becoming aware now of a growing headache.
"....and I love him- I love him anyway."
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Post by Dr. Connors on Feb 17, 2018 22:55:53 GMT -5
"Of course. Of course you do." Not bitter or begrudging but very tired and withdrawn. Curt pressed his hand to his face, spanning the bridge of his nose.
There was something in the nightmarish tangle of Veidt family genetics that hard-coded individuals for sexual disaster. It must have, or the two of them would never have come so precipitously close to having intercourse. He couldn't even blame her for any of it, and that was phenomenally difficult to swallow.
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Post by Nina Fortner on Feb 17, 2018 22:57:53 GMT -5
"Curt," she said, her voice breaking again, even though now she was exerting as much willpower as possible to not cry again; tears escaped her eyes, and her lip quivered, but amazingly, she succeeded in not sobbing even once. "Please don't be nice to me. It's easier to take - him being nice to me than you, you don't deserve any of this-"
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Post by Dr. Connors on Feb 17, 2018 23:22:06 GMT -5
"You're young, you're not to blame for any of this. Nina, I could never be angry with you."
Not while her boyfriend, her lover, whoever he was was still alive and breathing, no. Something terrible occurred to him.
"Have you told your father?"
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Post by Nina Fortner on Feb 17, 2018 23:25:48 GMT -5
"He knows, yeah. He's angry, but he's getting over it. I almost wish he hadn't come." She tried to smile, even wanly smile, but her chin dimpled unpleasantly. "I know it's going to repeat itself all over again, isn't it? It's going to be harder to take a second time-"
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