I am the Walrus

[russ]

[Yeah, so this sorta sucks... was distracted, so if
anyone wants to join... one can hope it'll get better. XP]


Maybe Saturday was not the best time to be tackling a mall; it didn’t seem to matter where one was in the states, it was always a very busy day to choose to buy a shirt. A droning clamor filled the mall from the crowds and made it easier for Russ to lose himself in the search. Fortunately, Russ was typically the ‘in and out’ sort of guy and wasn’t too fussy about what he wore. But the South was not very forgiving to a guy who usually looked like he just walked out of Abercrombie and Fitch. He had been through the entire mall trying to find something decently casual to wear, but his idea of ‘casual’ seemed very different from a number of the characters strutting around like they were on a ranch. After passing what had to be the third rendition of Al’s Boot Barn, Russ came to a stop before a window display for a clothing store.

In a classic Marlboro Man stance, the mannequin sported Wrangler jeans, brown leather boots, a flannel shirt, and… yeah, there it was, ironically enough: the white Stetson Helena mentioned. Letting out a sigh, Russ paused in front of the shop, and stared up at it with a scrunched up expression. In his blue hoodie and skater shoes, Russell hardly looked at place considering such apparel. He had gone through his share of styles, but cowboy was never one of them. Staring skeptically at the outfit that might make him look like he belonged, Russell did take into account that he hardly had the build for roping cattle. He’d look like he belonged in San Francisco, sooner than the local rodeo, if he tried to pull off anything like that.

Absorbed in his scrutiny of the get up, Russell did not notice anyone approach him. He had already been jostled twice by engrossed groups trying to get around him, despite standing right in front of the glass, and so he did not respond immediately when someone did bring their attention to the dark-haired fellow contemplating the sacrifices that had to be made as consequence of his recent decision to stay put for awhile. Like looking like a little boy, drowning in a cowboy hat. With the monsters that proudly swaggered around here, looking like John Wayne, he feared he would just get sneered at if he dared imitate them.

[Sastre Quicksilver]

Let me go -- I can't breathe.
I drag myself through the debris.
I never felt more alone than on this starry road.

"Don't even think about it, Russ."

Lily stood just behind him, leaning against the rail that separated the upper level from the lower. She was dressed casually, or at least more casually than he had ever seen her, in a simple light blue tank-top and a pair of jeans. Also, she didn't seem to be carrying any weapons, which probably made her appear even more unusual. She had a few bags draped over one arm, while the other was resting upon the railing behind her.

"Trust me, some guys can pull off that look and some guys can't. You can't." She smiled at him, and it was only a little bit patronizing. "Besides, the preppy look works for you." She winked at him, chuckling a bit. After a moment she began walking away, gesturing for him to follow if he wanted to.

"Fancy running into each other here like this, right? What do you suppose the chances are?"

[russ]

Face screwed up with an enormous measure of qualm, the voice inside his head spoke the sense that he knew deep down. Wait… why was the voice inside his head a female? Turning slowly, the expression he fixed the mannequin with was not far off from that he gave to Lily. It was not so much the sight of her that caught him off his guard, as the horrific imagines that suddenly leapt into his head. Wanting to cling to the glass behind him, he pictured the lower level zooming towards him after the trickster lured him in and threw him over the railing. Well, he had the scar to remind him not to trust that smile of hers. If only he had the sense to smile and walk away.

Looking down at his clothes, he wondered if she was complimenting or insulting him. Considering it was Lily? Considering it was Lily, his feet should have really known better than to come up along side her when she encouraged him to join her. At the very least he was careful to leave a little distance between them. Weapon or no. Chick like her was liable to shoot knives out of her fingertips. A silly notion? Russ wasn’t willing to take the chance.

[white]“I don’t really know.”[/white] He said a little awkwardly, his voice riddled with suspicion. [white]“Wouldn’t really expect you to even acknowledge me.”[/white] If it was such a coincidental run in… the ill feeling in the pit of his stomach was trying to make him see sense and run away.

[Sastre Quicksilver]

Seeing him keeping his distance, Lily chuckled a bit.

"Come on, Russ, I'm not going to assault you in the middle of a damn shopping mall." Shaking her head, she grinned at him. "And I don't bit, either, unless you want me to." Winking at him, she laughed softly to herself.

They continued walking, slipping through the crowds of people with no real destination in mind, though after a bit Lily's stomach began to remind her that she hadn't eaten since earlier that morning. Stopping, she waited a second for Russ to catch up. She grinned at him, rolling her eyes at the fact that he seemed so afraid of her.

"Man, I really did a number on your psyche, huh?" she asked, frowning a bit. "I keep on forgetting that you aren't like us... You're just a poor, normal kid aren't you?" She sighed a bit and looked away, absently biting her nails. "Lucky..." she said, under her breath, barely more than a whisper. "Anyway, I'm starving. Care to grab a bit to eat?"

[russ]

There was something terribly unsettling about Lily being, quote unquote, nice to him. He really would like to believe that she wouldn’t attack him in middle of a crowd, but he also paid for the assumption that she wouldn’t attack him when he thought he was being comforting. So Russ could not help but imagine what terrible places her amiability was leading him to now.

He resisted the urge to stop in his tracks when she paused for him to actually look like they were headed somewhere together. The proximity was torture, but he took a deep breath and allowed his lithe frame to enter the danger zone of her reach. He did not want to admit that she was right, but yes, she had in fact made a… lasting impression on him.

His frown matched hers when she assessed that he was ‘normal’ in comparison to her, and the rest of her lot. True, it did occur to him that something was going on with them, but the truth eluded him so successfully that he just thought they were about as insane as his great grandfather had been. Having spent his childhood tuning out the weird things the old man would say, the tales he would spin, it was no wonder he could remain blissfully oblivious to the things she faced.

As much as his nature urged him to be compassionate, even to her, and sociable, Russ was about to decline her invite when his stomach loudly betrayed him and he cleared his throat. [white] “Well, apparently one of us would."[/white] Damn stomach. Eager to satisfy at least one discomfort, he nodded on ahead,[white] “What’s it gonna be?”[/white]

[Sastre Quicksilver]

Lily shrugged.

"Well, the food court's not far from here, and since they have pretty much a little bit of everything, we should be able to find something, right?" With that, she began pushing her way through the crowd again, not really even bothering to see if Russ was following her, but sort of hoping he was.

The truth was, she felt a little bit horrible about what she'd done to him... Well, mostly anyway. He had been an ass that night, at any rate, though maybe taking him down and stabbing him had been a bit much. Oh well, you live and learn, and she'd be sure not to stab him again. Probably. It was just so damn hard to remember what he was, or more to the point, what he wasn't. Any hunter worth his scars would have been able to see that leg sweep coming, and would have at the very least been able to knock the blade from her hand before any damage had been done.

That wasn't Russ, though. He was, as she'd said, just a normal guy. And, honestly, there was something about that that attracted her. With the way her life had been turned on end in the past few days, Lily needed something normal, something that she could count on, for a little while anyway. So, here she was, traipsing around a shopping mall with the guy that she'd physically assaulted just days ago...

The guy she'd followed here earlier, so that she could "accidentally" run into him at just the right moment.

Reaching the food court, Lily turned around grinning as she saw Russ still tagging along behind. Well, she hadn't completely ruined him at any rate. Taking a look around, Lily spotted an empty table, catching Russ' attention and gesturing toward it before heading off to find some food.

If he's actually there when I get back, she thought, I'll be surprised...

[russ]

Apprehension kept Russell trailing behind Lily. It helped that she navigated a crowd with such assertiveness, and it was much easier just to follow along her path, but he probably would still have felt very awkward walking beside her even if she was willing to let him keep up and they were the only people there. He really was just a normal guy, and as such physical assault was not so common and forgettable for him as it was for her. As he saw it, he was inexplicably pursuing a very psychologically unstable woman. If he was not so terrified of her, he might even feel sorry for her. But Lily was unique. Special in the fact that no one had ever intimidated him so much before that he was afraid to feel compassion for them. Caring about her came with a cost she already proved he was ill equipped to pay for more than once.

The loud afternoon chatter grew steadily from the stationary shoppers gathered in the food court as they drew nearer. Russ was actually surprised when Lily spotted a seat so quickly, and instinct instilled in him from trying to find parking at college kicked in. Without a word, he swooped upon the table, losing sight of Lily in the process of sitting down. He scanned the crowd with a futile glance as his stomach lurched persistently with the onset of delicious smells. After a couple minutes, he doubted he could stand it any longer, and there was an Orange Julius beaconing his attention with no line and right next to his table.

Daring to stand up, imagining he could keep an eye on the table while he at least got something to hold him over, a woman with her child was already charging towards him when Russ literally fell back into his chair. “Oh, uh, no. Taken.” Needless to say, after the scowl he got from the frazzled mother and the angry growl of his stomach, a miserable frown had settled onto his face by the time Lily returned.

[sorta assumed she would. XP… and o.o to her following him there.]

[Sastre Quicksilver]

Lily actually laughed when she saw the look on Russ' face upon returning.

"Sure you're still hungry, Russ?" she asked playfully, setting a tray of chinese food down on the table and taking a seat. "You look like you just swallowed a bug or something." Waving him off, she said, "Shoo, go on, get something to eat!" Laughing, Lily dug in to her chinese, nearly inhaling it.

As she ate, Lily let her eyes scan the crowd. It was a habit of hers to be constantly on guard, and even though this looked like a normal crowd of mallrats, you could never be too sure that there wasn't something else lurking around as well. She knew that most people, even some hunters, would think she was overly paranoid, but it was this constant awareness that had saved her life on more than one occasion.

Still, though, she tried to relax and simply enjoy the day. It was hard, but not impossible. Besides, she was loaded with enough hidden weaponry to drop a rhino if it came to that. Well... an undead/vampire/demon/ghost rhino at any rate. That was another thing she'd learned a long time ago: to be sure she was always packing something, no matter what.

Of course, most of these lessons had been learned the hard way, with bitter experience. She'd only had the benefit of a teacher for a couple of years, and barely that. Once he was gone, she'd been forced to fend for herself. She'd become a pretty good hunter, but it had been a long, hard road, and she had the scars to prove it.

Looking up, she watched Russ moving through the crowd. Maybe he was right to be scared of her after all... She wasn't the easiest person to get along with, she knew, and she'd be the first one to admit that she sometimes suffered from extreme mood swings.

Still, she hoped she could make things right.

[russ]

Russell was a fairly even tempered fellow, normally easy to get along with given a person was sane, but when he let himself get hungry he was about as bad as a five-year-old boy. He didn’t have the money to stuff himself like his mother used to do when he was at home, so it was years since Russ felt fully satisfied. What he would do for his mother’s cooking right now. Heaps of freshly caught fish off of Nova Scotia shores; now was decidedly not the time to let himself start getting homesick. His company was not the… compassionate sort from what he had quickly gathered. This was provided she had not just led him here to leave him sitting like a fool while she slipped out of the food court for a laugh.

With this in mind, a good-natured chuckle was far from what he was expecting as his cue to look up. Pathetic expression still planted on his face, he followed her solemnly with his eyes as she sat in front of him. The smell of her food sent his stomach lurching in empty complaint. Needing very little further reminder, Russell practically launched from his seat and took to navigating the crowd. Oblivious to the fact that he was being looked after, Russ thought very little of shoving a kid gently out of his way after nearly tripping over the little guy as he ran about with a Batman action figure sailing over his head in an outstretched arm.

Seemingly giving very little thought to where he ended up, Russ shortly returned with Mongolian BBQ. Sitting down, he opened the steaming Styrofoam to reveal a mound of mixed vegetables, meat, and noodles that the cook had had to fight to fit into the container. Despite just wanting to face-plant into food and start chowing down, Russ took the moment of smoothing out his wooden chopsticks to ask as casual as you please,[white] “So, what’s this about?”[/white] Of course, she would know that it was not at all a casual question, regardless of how easily it slipped off his tongue, finally being graced with a mouthful of noodles.

[Sastre Quicksilver]

Lily watched him for a few moments as she ate, weighing his question in her mind.

There were several ways she could go with this, if she wanted to. She could play dumb, and act like their bumping into each other had, in fact, been an honest to goodness accident. Or, she could just be honest with him, and tell him that she was interested in him and felt a little bit bad about the way she'd been behaving of late. Of course, option number three would be to just avoid the question altogether, and number four would require her to go back into "bitch" mode, which was probably what Russ was expecting.

Well, she didn't want to disappoint, and she really didn't find any of the other options particularly promising, at least not yet.

"Geez, Russ," she said, rolling her eyes. "I don't know, its a mall, and I'm a girl, so what do you think?" Reaching down, she picked up one of her bags from the floor, turning it on end and dumping the contents out on the table between them. "I like to shop. And no, I didn't buy any weapons, or, or... or whatever else you might expect. I bought girlie stuff." It was true, as evinced by the small pile of various styled undergarments and lingerie that sat now upon the table, exposed to the light of day.

Or, rather, to the fluorescent light of the mall's food court.

"So, is that okay with you, Russ? Can I shop here too, or would you rather have me take my business elsewhere, hmm?" She stared at him intently, wondering what his reaction would be.

She hoped he'd stick around, maybe make some snide comment about her choice in colors or styles, but she half-expected him to just get up and walk away.