milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Well, this is new. And that's OK! New is good. Unexpected is not, particularly, and that's why this particular young man's surprise at finding himself wandering strange corridors has quickly melted to suspicion, and then anger.

He schools himself out of it by the time he finds the stairs. He waits at the bottom of them, perfectly still apart from large, dark eyes that flit over the whole place, taking it all in with no expression on his face. Only the Window gets a second look, and when he's finished his surveillance he walks over to it and stands there, staring in mute wonder, one hand pressed to the glass.

He can investigate the room later. This is more interesting for now.

[OOC: Open all weekend! <3]

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'All right. What'll you give me in return?'

He says this while pulling an old and well-used bong out of the box, but he doesn't know what it is so he just leaves it to one side.

Tess has nothing.

Still, "What you want?"

He turns around with the gin.

'For you to drink two full glasses of this.'

"I know what that is." Maybe not that it's gin specifically, but she knows it's alcohol. It's what Papa drinks and she's not going anywhere near that, ever.

She shakes her head. "Don't need to learn how to hit that bad."

'What have you got against it?'

He says this like it hasn't been obvious almost since he started talking to her.

'One glass then.'

Awww, compromise. The beautiful folly of youth.

She rolls her eyes at him.

"Don't act like you're stupid." He's clever and she can tell.

"This room's boring, can we go somewhere else?"

'Yeah, OK.'

He abandons the gin, but shoves the Game Boy and accessories into his pocket.

'Outside, or upstairs? Or there's kitchens.'

She was going to say they should go upstairs, but then he makes suggestions.

"Outside? There's a outside? Let's go there!" Something she sounds genuinely excited by.

He looks at her funny for a second, then shrugs.

'If you want. It's out the back door.'

He leads the way, again not seeming to care if she follows.

'What's so great about outside?'

Again, Tess follows along, skipping this time.

"There's lot of fun outside! If there trees we climb 'em, maybe chase rabbits or snakes."

Skipping. She's skipping.

Mary and all the Saints, why are girls so stupid?

'Why don't you speak properly?'

Speaking properly is important.

'Don't you go to school?'

It won't be much longer until she learns that herself.

"Course I go to school. They think maybe I need my own classes." Which sounds kind of nice to her.

She catches up to him and stops skipping, walking along beside him now. "You ain't told me your name yet."

'It's James.'

And unimportant, but there it is.

'What do you need your own classes for?'

He sounds bitter as he asks it. English schools in the 1980s are extremely resistant to allowing years to be skipped, or exams taken early, or even extra homework. It's the most frustrating thing in the world, and his boredom at home is rapidly turning to outright fury - that he will not allow himself to express. So yeah, he sounds bitter.

Honestly, she doesn't really know why, but she can take a good guess.

"S'pose I learn faster. They all having trouble with numbers and still reading little kids books. Things for me come easy."

At least at school they do. In the rest of life, maybe not so much.

James's face turns sullen, his lower jaw sticking out ever so slightly to unconsciously embellish his displeasure.

'What's your best subject?'

It's not fair. It's not fair that other people get chances to move on, and he's left to go out of his mind in classes filled with the most pointless people ever to exist.

Tess has no reason to think of the unfairness. Truth be told, it doesn't matter that much to her. Heck, she wasn't even in school until three years ago and she doesn't quite get the fuss about it. She could learn it all in books at home if they'd let her, just like she'd taught herself to read.

"I like science. History can be fun, too." She turns to him and he seems upset, though she's not sure why. He must be smart like her, too. "What yours?"

'Maths.'

But it's not like any of them are hard. You just have to think about them, and the answers are there. How difficult can it be to understand a book, or learn what happened in a battle, or draw a picture? Maths is different, though. Maths is like flying.

He sticks his hands in his pockets, and kicks a stone. He teaches himself all the time, but it'd be nice to get the recognition for being better than everyone else.

'Do you want to go the lake, or in the forest, or what?'

"Math is good," she adds, quickly. She has no idea why, but she wants him to like her. "Use it in science a lot and numbers come easy, right? Bet if you were at my school we'd be having classes together."

She ponders the question for a moment. Lakes are okay, she supposes, but not as fun as the bayou. "Forest. We don't got a real one back home but I bet we can still climb trees."

He glances over to her when she agrees with him about maths, more because of the way she speaks quickly than the words she uses. It surprises him, and he's very rarely surprised even at this age. People don't usually want his approval, or maybe they've just learned it's next to impossible to gain. So this is new, and he finds himself offering a quick smile in response, completely unbidden.

And then he's surprised at his own reaction, and looks away. It's reassuring when the thought comes to him that yes, if they were both in her school then he'd get classes on his own too, but he still thinks he'd be better.

'I've never climbed a tree. What's the point?'

This is not a no - he might be persuaded to try - but it seems a bit of a waste of time.

Another kid is hanging out with her. He's not trying to get her to go away and he's talking to her like an adult would. Of course she wants his approval.

"You get high and can see all over! I also got a tree back home I can read in and I don't have to be inside. Come on!"

She starts running toward the forest, long red curls trailing behind her as she goes.

Her enthusiasm is...odd. But she's running away, and she's all right to talk to, and he doesn't have anywhere more interesting to be anyway. So he takes the Game Boy out of his pocket in case it falls out, and runs after her. Why not?

Outside is where she can be alone and away from Papa. It's where critters run wild and she can chase them or read in her tree for as long as she wants. It's where she catches crawfish for dinner.

Outside is freedom.

As she approaches the trees she slows down, deciding which one would be the best to try to climb. Initially, though, she jumps up and swings from a higher branch, getting her bearings.

James just watches her, though he doesn't look unhappy about it. He wouldn't understand if she tried to explain, because freedom exists for him in his head. He can be free anywhere; all he has to do is cut people away.

She looks like she knows what she's doing with trees though, and seems happy enough about them, so after a while he tries to find a branch to jump up to as well. She's taller than him, so he has to look for something lower.

Being free in her mind is something else entirely and only when she absolutely needs it. Which is more often than she'd like.

Right now she's happy that he's joining in and he doesn't think this is stupid. She pulls herself up to sit on the branch, glancing over at his progress. "You can do it! Then you go for the next one."

He would point out that that's obvious, thanks, but he's busy lifting himself up over a branch. He's a small kid, but very light and lithe and it doesn't take much effort to swing himself up.

'What do you do when you get to the top?'

Ugh, there's a stain on his jeans now. Well, whatever.