cutting_edgex23 | (no subject)

(no subject)

X slips through the door to her apartment, holding it open so Elle can follow her through.

Then she makes an immediate beeline to her kitchen, pulling fish food out of the freezer and heading over to the fish tank.

Once that is taken care of she will not have any more real responsibilities for at least a few hours.

Unless something horrible happens elsewhere. But it won't.

Probably.

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Elle doesn't know what to say about that.

After another long silence, she uncurls, careful not to knock the glass of water she set aside as she moved, and stepped out onto the floor again. She nods vaguely at X, though her eyes are moving around the apartment. Her steps seem to be in the direction of the bedroom.

X may want to stop her. Elle is not great with privacy.

X does not mind, really. Her bedroom contains her bed with its purple sheets, a closet full of clothes, a white fedora and quilted coat hanging on the back of the door, a small desk and computer set-up, and several large trunks or boxes, stacked on the back wall and covered with a sheet.

And aside from the large piece of purple stained glass that depicts wisteria --

There really is not much else.

Knick-knacks tend to happen to other people.

She'll follow Elle anyway. After a moment or two.

And a window.

Which is the first that hits her in the room, so much that she stops abruptly when she walks in and quickly loses track of how long she stares at it.

When she blinks away, her hands curl briefly at her sides, and she glances over quickly to X behind her as though worried she saw all of that before looking around and just choosing something to go to.

This happens to be the closet. Maybe because she's managed to remember that there may be something familiar there.

X stays silent, too, slipping into past Elle into the room, then turning to watch her as she explores the closet.

She says nothing about Elle's fascination with the window.

That is something that X does not need to ask about, really.

For now.

She had meant to find the suit - so long ago, like reaching out to whoever, whatever she had been then - that she had ordered for X.

Instead, her fingers brush over for something long, and purple.

Elle wasn't really expecting that.

The suit is there, too, just farther back. Along with the neon clothing from Jamie.

"It is for a dance," X says.

"Rose asked."

Elle looks back over to X.

It's clear enough that to her, X may as well have said any number of nonsense words. Rose and a dance and what? She just doesn't know how to put it together.

X looks back silently, trying to figure out what to say.

"Rose is my friend. Susannah's daughter. She is good with guns."

Beat.

"She is in high school."

"A - dance in high school."

She tries to force it into an acknowledging statement, but the last note still hits something closer to a question.

"Yes. Prom."

Beat.

"I think it is important. She talked about it a lot."

"Oh."

That is a word she recognizes.

Not long at all ago, Elle would have been extremely jealous of X in this moment. She doesn't feel that now. Not because she has nothing more to be jealous of, but that once more, what was in her that yearned for even just some things from a normal life had been knocked down and had yet to stand again. It wasn't for her.

There was a reverence to the way Elle's hand moved over the purple fabric. She reached the hanger, and gently pulled it out, holding it up as though trying to imagine X in it.

(It's not easy.)

"Parker and Meg helped me find it," X offers.

"I asked."

She would have had no idea what to do on her own. No idea at all.

"There are dances in movies and in books, but I do not think they are accurate representations."

"I don't know."

She recognizes the word from hearing other people talk about it; students in the high school where she'd picked up a kid once, agents with daughters and sons, advertisements in catalogs - she couldn't begin to say what was 'accurate' and what was not.

Elle looks between X and the dress, and tells her, "It's pretty."

In case X wasn't certain.

"I like purple," X says. Carefully.

"And the noise of the fabric is not very loud."

Beat.

"And it will be easy to cut. If I need to."

These are X's requirements for a prom dress, apparently.

"I don't think there's supposed to be fighting at prom."

Otherwise, it'd seem like something she'd be good at. Elle carefully lowers the top of the dress to let it fall over her arm.

"Do you know how to dance? ... like this?"

She hadn't seemed that keen on it when they were out with Bela.

"I do not think it is difficult," X offers, after a moment.

She is a little bit more awkward than usual.

"I asked."

Beat.

"You have danced before?"

Edited 2009-05-28 00:45 (UTC)

"Yeah."

Her gaze falls to the skirt of the dress. If X is going with Rose -

"I don't know how to do it without a guy."

Are there rules for doing it without a guy?

X frowns.

"Gender is important?"

Beat.

"For dancing."

It does not really make sense. To X.

Elle's dancing experience in this sense pretty much amounts to that time her father taught her.

(... no matter what, it's a fond memory she clings to rather ruthlessly.)

It's enough for her to know - "The guy leads."

"Oh."

X digests that for a few moments.

Then, carefully --

"I am good at following."

That is helpful?

Her glance back up at X is uncertain. Elle's not entirely sure that she's talking about dancing.

"You –" She stops, and turns to hang the dress back up in the closet (perhaps not with the same gentleness she had before, but without damaging it all the same), and then moves over to X.

"If you're the girl, it's..." Elle doesn't ask before taking X's hands; she remembers enough to put one of X's hands on her shoulder and take the other in her own, though it's a few attempts before she's very sure about which should go where.

X does not spare much of a glance for the dress. She is concentrating on what Elle is doing, on where her hands should be going.

"We are both -- "

Beat.

"You are leading?"

Just to check.

If X is going to be that way about it –

"Right now, yeah," Elle answers, distracted as she finally decides on the (correct) placement of X's hands, and moves her own left to X's waist.

"And then he moves her." She demonstrates this by one – extremely careful – step, inevitably pulling X along with her.

"Okay."

X tries to follow along, but without the subsequent steps --

At least she manages to avoid stepping on Elle's toes?

Elle can sense the problem, but - it's been a long time since she was even on the other side of this. For X, she accommodates by taking a few more, very slow steps.

Then: "The - music kind of helps."

The kind for this isn't one she likes too much, but now, without it, she gets the point a little more.