meeting the family | closed

[workingthenumbers]

Who: Numbers, Wrench, and Teddy!
When: Late December, pre-event
Where: The Smiths Household
Open/Closed: Closed!
Applicable Warnings: Will add if necessary!



Following their separation after the fallout shelter, Numbers has spent the last day or so watching Wrench's house across the way. The initial relief of being reunited with his partner had been quickly overshadowed by more questions and a sense of deep dread. There was the fact that he was newly dead. Despite his stubbornness and unwillingness to accept it, it was difficult to think that he had survived after what Malvo had done. And there was also the fact that, for whatever reason, Wrench was suddenly a decade older, worn down by whatever slings and arrows life had battered him with.

He tries not to be obvious about what he's doing--even if he wasn't in Sweetwater, suburbanites have a tendency to gossip when a strange man is watching someone else's house in plain view. At first, he tries watching from the comfort of his house--no, not his house, the house he woke up in--but finds he can't see as well as he likes. So he bundles up and makes his way outside, trying to scope out a better place to peer inside without attracting too much attention.

He leaves out the back door and makes his way through his neighbors backyards, careful to remain behind the picket fences and trees. When he reaches the house Wrench is in, he stops, turns to crane his neck towards the window, and freezes.

He'd just assumed that the house was empty, like his, but there's a woman (?) in the house he doesn't recognize. She has a clear view of Numbers, standing outside in the backyard like a weirdo. God. Maybe if he just stays still, she won't notice him. He tries to obscure himself by shuffling behind a tree, but the movement makes it even more obvious.

Comments

[tedandroses]

Easy, Wrench says, and it both relaxes Teddy and feels strangely like a ...not a letdown, exactly, but an anticlimax, at least. A little like when she'd summoned all her nerve not long before she turned 12, strode out to where her dad was chopping wood in the back (not an idea Teddy'd recommend to most people, in retrospect), and announced that she like-liked girls. He'd took a thoughtful look at her, one long breath in and out, and then he'd just said, Figured that much. You gonna help me stack this, stringbean?.

Is it easy? Is this all it takes?
And if that's all, why is it so fucking hard most of the time?

(Well. Most people don't normally refer to all other people the same way. It's nice, actually; that equalizing effect that ASL has when everyone just gets pointed at, whoever they are. They're not sure it'd fix other things -- like wife or girlfriend, or more complicated: you sure you don't want to go to prom, honey?; the way it's easier for them to get a gig playing indie folk-rock-something than punk. But it's still nice.)

It might as well be easy, anyway. It's better than it being resisted on principle, or any of what they'd been afraid were behind those stares when Numbers and Wrench turned and just looked at them. They can talk about it more later. If they care enough to, if it ever comes up. It hadn't been the point of what was bothering them, really.

Teddy signs OK back, with a small smile and a little nod of gratitude for them not fighting her on this, and continues. She can tell Numbers is schooling back a reaction, though she can't tell quite what, at Friend From Work; and her own mouth curls up at one corner just a little: it was meant to be sass, after all, in a fond way. (He's better at looking impassive than either of them are at looking like they're casual acquaintances.)

When the two of them turn back toward each other, there's a part of her that wants to -- is it still eavesdropping if you're watching? whatever -- if only because she wants to know more signs and she's been picking some things up from context. But they are -- whatever the hell they are, which amounts to closer than your average colleagues, and Numbers did ask for a moment, if not in the politest way possible. And also, she doesn't know what the rules are here. Is signing where someone can see you tantamount to talking loudly enough that someone can hear you? If they were standing where they were, just speaking at normal volume -- in her kitchen, basically -- she'd consider it her business, but then again, they're signing directly to each other and not at a speed she's meant to catch.

Teddy leans back against the console table and glances away politely. Scout has laid down, sort of, in the way she does when she knows she's supposed to be good but would really like to move; she's watching them sign, alert and curious. Teddy wonders if to a dog trained on hand signs, it looks like they're speaking a recognizable but foreign language. Teddy snaps quietly, barely a noise, and Scout picks up her head, thumping her tail, and when Teddy pats their thigh, scrambles up readily to come sit next to them and get petted.

Glancing back up to make sure they haven't missed anything aimed at them, Teddy catches the end of Wrench's fingerspelling and Numbers mouthing SMITH? and can't help a little huff of a laugh. They furrow their brow a little bit as Numbers steps back, lifting their head to watch carefully and nodding as they follow along, thankful if embarrassed about what in sign probably comes across as the equivalent of someone SPEAK...ING...LIIKE THIIIS.

I'm not dead now makes them smile a little.
I see that, she replies, unconsciously mirroring what Numbers had said earlier, and clarifies, You'd look good for dead, with a little laugh.

Bachelor provokes a knit brow: and then she lights up -- a little more than she means to -- when he repeats it and fingerspells, the clarity getting a long up and down oh sort nod. Teddy repeats it for practice. Bachelor. (A lot of signs are references to things and she wonders if there's some implication there that you shave for women, or maybe that married men don't bother? It's the same way she is about learning new words, honestly: she always wants to know where they come from.) She adds a quick, genuine, thank you! I like knowing.

He's turning back to sign something quickly at Wrench, emphatically enough that she can hear the smack of his hands against each other; again Teddy glances away studiously to look at something in the kitchen, but this time it's not quite as long before he turns back.

No joke, she says, and then glances at Wrench with a little shrug, wondering to what extent he means discover or what he already knows, even. There's still a little part of her that isn't sure who she can trust: all she knows about Wrench is what she's been told, after all, and he was already awake when she woke here, with a closet full of tailor-fitting clothes, a wedding band and pictures of her that she wasn't aware for.

And shouldn't it be even more unbelievable than this being 1960 that he's from almost but not quite her own time, and he knows Numbers, but Numbers should be dead ten years ago?

Somehow it isn't: it's grouped in with a sort of general insanity.

Teddy shrugs and sort of gestures at the whole house. They like G-A-S-L-I-G-H-T-I-N-G and C-A-P-I-T-A-L-I-S-M? they offer, with a strychnine grin, and affect a show-off pose so their slightly absurd engagement ring catches the sun and reflects rainbows across the tile, then roll their eyes and shrug, flipping their hand up into a one-handed what sign in a gesture of helplessness. S-A-L-E-S-M-E-N aren't very nice.

I don't know... There are others. New. Married. They add quotes to that one like they did for wife. Teddy presses their lips together, thinking. The ones I met are both on this street... they realize, thinking. Where is your house?

[wwrench]

The impulse to run hasn't escaped Wrench either. Ever since he and Numbers were little kids, it's felt like his greatest defense. Maybe he never managed to get far enough from anything to truly escape. Maybe it never made a real difference in the end. But being able to take to the wind for a little while -- to put some distance between the two of them and everything around them -- Wrench is certain it's what kept them alive as long as it did.

Except out there, Numbers isn't alive anymore. So whatever the fuck this place is and however they ended up here, Wrench isn't so sure he's in a rush to leave it. If they manage to find their way out and their escape resets everything back to the way it was before, that means losing the only person who's ever really mattered a second time, and Wrench isn't sure he can do that. He's not sure he can admit to Numbers that the last ten years have been filled with mostly subsisting. Staying on the run, evading capture. And for what purpose? He doesn't want to admit how many days he couldn't really come up with one.

No, Wrench snaps his fingers shut, not quite sure what he's protesting. No, he doesn't want to tell Numbers how he spent that long, exhausting decade? No, he doesn't think they should find a way out? No, he's failed all his training and has nothing more to report about this place? He blinks, glancing from Numbers back to Teddy and watching his so-called spouse's assessment of their situation.

I woke up here with my gun and my knife. Why would they let us have our weapons, but not our clothes?

[workingthenumbers]

My house is over that way--

Numbers gestures in the house's general direction and continues to sign, but then is cut off by Wrench. He blinks, looking over to him with a slightly startled expression and moves to protest, but then stops. He makes a good point--if they made the effort of bringing them here, why would they allow them to defend themselves?

I also woke up with my gun. And a pocket knife. He frowns, looking unsure. Maybe this is a game? A test? For...whoever is in charge of this place.

He sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose and squeezing his eyes shut for a moment--he doesn't want to see anyone else talk for a bit, just process the whirlwind of thoughts running through his mind. Numbers hates this. He hates sitting idly in one place, not knowing what to do or who to shoot. He opens his eyes again, runs a hand through his hair, then starts to sign again.

What do we do, then? he continues, clearly frustrated. Sit around, twiddling our thumbs? A pause. And I guess you're involved too, now.

He points towards Teddy, still looking annoyed.

[tedandroses]

Teddy's focusing hard on the signing; she knows if the talk gets more complicated she's gonna have to switch back to speaking to fill in, and maybe ask Numbers to, which annoys her. There's no reason that a couple of weeks of crashing back into a language she barely learned a few years ago plus the handful of words she's since practiced or asked how to sign, she should be fluent. But the whole reason she took the class was so that she'd be able to use it. She hates -- and generally simply doesn't tolerate -- not being good at things. It's just worse that it happens to be communication.

Still, at least both Wrench and Numbers are signing slow and clear, even if Teddy feels like an idiot -- it makes it easier not just to recognize the words they do know, but to put together the ones they don't from context. Over where, they're trying to see if he clarifies, because the question is really are they all on the same street, and if they are what does that mean -- but Wrench cuts him off with a decisive no sign.

Teddy furrows their brow; Numbers looks equally startled and then a little annoyed, but they're not sure if he's confused about the same thing or not. Is that firm no in response to what Wrench had quickly signed to him, or about finding anything else out? To Teddy's own question about the street?

She knows woke up; she doesn't know gun or knife but the sign for gun, at least, is pretty self-explanatory. Knife loses her briefly because it looks enough like can't, but the other parts, the flow of the sentence, the and, Numbers agreeing and repeating: she figures it out.

And then he kind of shuts himself down, a little. Teddy can't find it in themself to blame him, even if it is a little like telling everyone to shut up. They've felt that way since they got here, sort of. They catch Wrench's eye and repeat back, hastily, an aside to make sure, You -- both -- have your knife and gun? Right? I don't know all the signs.

They add, thinking by talking, Three of us: three guns, two knives, Scout. It's not bad. They're suddenly and uncomfortably reminded of the effect of hunting ammo on human skull, and they take a breath in. Or...maybe it's very bad. Whatever the hell Teddy had expected when they woke up in a negligee in a strange bed in a strange house with a picture of themselves marrying a tall stranger: it wasn't needing an armory almost immediately. The fact that all three of them do have weapons and experience using them doesn't make them feel secure that it's not going to come back up.

Then Numbers is back and signing. The sign for twiddling your thumbs is more of a mime than anything else, and the expression, filtered through Numbers' annoyance, would have relaxed her nerves if the gist of what he says next didn't kind of piss her off and weirdly sting. Teddy rolls her eyes and spreads her hands with a clear what the fuck am I supposed to do about that shrug.

"Me?" she says aloud, signing at the same time with the attendant facial expression. "You two wanna go, go. I'm not..." she fails to find a word, spoken or signed, and just lifts her hands away and up, frustrated and done.
She shakes her head, crossing her arms across her stomach, dropping her eyes.

"I wasn't exactly fixin'a wake up some man's wife in suburban hell, you know," she says after a moment, still looking at the ground. It's rude of her; she knows it, too. But it's not meant for Wrench. He hasn't been anything but kind: cordial at worst. She doesn't even know why the I guess you're involved feels so bad. She's played house with this guy for less than three weeks and she didn't ask for it: it's reasonable for his colleague or best friend or boyfriend or what the fuck ever to be annoyed they've got a third wheel. Her eyes still sting though, and her accent's slipped further. Traitors.

"Not here to hold anyone back," she adds, roughly.

Something about that tone of voice has troubled Scout, and she stands up restlessly next to Teddy, making a grumble-huff noise that sounds so human that Teddy can't help but exhale a soft sigh-laugh of her own. After a moment's inspection assures her that Teddy herself is not in danger, Scout stretches, dissatisfied, and makes a casual perimeter, tipping her head up as she nears Wrench in a curious, slightly soliciting way that Teddy recognizes as 'wants attention but trying to be cool about it'. Teddy rubs her eyes and looks back up.

I'm sorry, Teddy signs to Wrench, and means it, but it's easier to say if she passes it off as about the dog. She really likes you.