He's been thinking of Joan's sleeping arrangement as scheduled. What it really is, is routine. Part of their day. Comfortably, he retrieves her, they prepare her for sleep, he monitors for a while before going to bed himself, and they wrap up in the morning. He hasn't embellished the process with any concessions, hasn't offered her coffee or let her linger her room overlong, and a pleasant normalcy has seeped into him nonetheless.
He joked with her.
Self-awareness holds him a little rigid, bringing his posture back to the week they started doing this. Upstairs, with her electrodes attached, he takes a seat in the easy chair he moved in for their morning interviews.
Hap rubs his hands together before beginning.
"What I wanted to talk to you about, completing the work... I know the others don't talk to you much anymore, but when they did, they told you about her, didn't they?"
Joan thinks she's getting good at this. She's always had vivid dreams, always been able to lead them to an extent-- Hap calls this lucid dreaming-- and so she seeks out the dead while she sleeps. She focuses while she's asleep, and is able to remember more and more of her dreams, report them back faithfully, without embellishment. It feels like a puzzle, like developing a skill. It feels like the only worthwhile in this uncracked eggshell tightness Hap insists is life.
That, and talking to Hap. She knows he has her here against her will, she knows, but that doesn't make him any less vital, interesting, dynamic. He's the center of the universe, and they both know it.
When he speaks, she no longer pretends she isn't listening. "Yeah," she says. "They talk about her like she was a martyr. Fully canonized, on the spot, three miracles and all."
She rolls her eyes. Saint Prairie sounds insipidly boring to Joan, someone who flinches from gentleness on instinct.
Good. Hap was and is reluctant to say her name. Even in thought, he can't make it sound innocuous. It's barbed in his brain, and it would be on his tongue, too. Maybe Homer and the others told Joan about the power she had over him. He would rather not prove it.
"Only two, that I know of," he says, self-deprecating with noticeable effort. They probably count her escape as the third. He doesn't accept that. Wherever she is, she regrets leaving. If not him, them. Joan included. "The third was a work in progress. They hit a wall, but if you could break through it..."
He gazes intently at her, her potential as sharp as a hook. "I want you to find the fifth Movement."
Joan winces. She doesn't want to. She wants to tell him she doesn't want to, that she's ill suited for this task, that she's a horrible communicator who doesn't get along in groups. She would, if the appeal of him giving her a task didn't outshine her hesitation. It's almost like she's important. It's almost like she has a purpose.
She's so fucking stupid, she could cry. Instead, she stalls. She isn't going to survive, if she lets his light shrivel her up like a raisin.
"And in return for having to fucking network with people who hate your guts, Joan, I'm prepared to give you..." She gives him a significant look.
"They don't have it. Their contacts —" he gestures to her, "your brother, to you — won't give it to them." Scott threw that in his face not long after Prairie abandoned them. When he did, the dejection that sank further into the others eradicated Hap's reflexive suspicion. "But the connection you have to the other side is different. Personal. You could convince him."
As for performing the movements together, that's Hap's responsibility. And they will do it. They'll have no other choice.
The look on her face is one of pure want-- eyes wide, lips slightly parted, like she's tasting the possibility he describes. It's so potent. What if she, stupid ugly Joan Dority, has the key to the universe?
She can barely believe it, except he does, and he's the smartest person who's ever been willing to talk to her.
She's still not letting this opportunity slip. "Let me go outside," she says. "Just for an hour. On a leash if you want. Please."
His jaw tightens in searing disappointment. This afternoon brought about the acute realization of how much of himself he's made available to her. It's unusual, it's inadvisable, and apparently it's insufficient. The insidiousness of their rapport is gentle and quiet. Joan moves fast and loud.
She wilts, but she doesn't let herself wilt all the way. She keeps her eyes on him. "Hap, come on," she grinds out. "I haven't tried to escape since you brought me up here. There have been chances. I haven't taken them."
Her hands are white-knuckled fists on the bed. She lets out a hiss of a sigh, ashamed to have to say this at all. It feels like lowering herself. Everything feels like lowering herself. "I'm worried I'm gonna... do something to myself."
So she's been holding onto that, has she? Hoarding her little pile of instances when she deigned not to make a fool of him. He's been even more generous than he thought.
"How," he demands, unmoving. Unwilling to feel the weight and flex and threat of his own body. He fills his mind with images of the methods he's denied her: hanging from light fixtures that aren't there, wrists torn open with shards of glass that can't break, ceramic pots he's replaced with flimsy plastic. A hurried, violent deluge, that spills over with a flash of contempt.
So it's not about her desires, it's about their expression. Most people would be concerned that she's even thinking about this, but Hap's not most people. This is the price. He doesn't think like normal people do.
"Little things. Breaking my fingers. I could slam my head into the window. I don't wanna die, Hap. But I know if I fall at the right angle, I can shove my nose into my brain. Anybody can do it. It's not my fault people aren't creative."
"That's a myth," he tells her, lacking the resource of will to do so kindly or with any levity.
Hap reaches for his glasses, pulling them off along a hard-pressed sigh. He is mollified, very meagerly, by the fact that she only wants to hurt herself. Not take herself away from him and the study.
His gaze flickers down and is caught by the smudges on his glasses. The tiny, transparent streaks he's been staring right through. "Maybe this was a mistake."
She should feel panic at the idea that he's thinking about-- or genuinely threatening, it's hard to tell with academic types-- to take her above ground privileges away. Maybe her emotions have become dulled like her senses. She jogs in place, tries to keep healthy, but she knows she's atrophying. This is no different. No fear, no dread, no panic. Just a muted disappointment, resignation.
"There are things that aren't a myth." And she doesn't believe him, anyway. "I'm not a squeamish person, Hap, and I'm trying to work with you. Was the other one this nice about being let upstairs? I've never tried to escape up here."
She's heard about that, if only because they never fucking shut up about her down there.
It is his prerogative to measure her against Prairie, and only his. He's shared his work with Joan, his home, his humility. She can't have her. Prairie belongs to him. The concept of her. He had all of her, and he lost her to exactly this. Pathetic hubris.
Thoughtlessly, Hap gets to his feet. She thinks he won't take it all away? That she's too precious? Special? She's wrong.
"Up." Concurrent with the command, he seizes her arm in a vise-like grip. "Get up."
"Hey!" She has an instinctive response to being manhandled, and it's not going along with it. She's not some willowy waif, she's not a saint-to-be. She resists, trying to yank her arm from his grasp. "Use your words!" She struggles against him, oddly stung. She's never required manhandling. She's earned better treatment than this.
The bodies Hap handles have weight, not tension. Subjects haven't had the capacity to fight back in over a decade. He fumbles with her lack of compliance, tightening his hold in a harsh panic. An actual fight would be nasty and crude. (An actual fight, he might lose.)
Hap yanks her to him and then shoves her against the wall to still her. To put a stop to this. Her arms gripped hard in each hand, he crowds her in, chest to chest.
Joan's barely an inch taller than him, by her estimation. When he presses her close, he really gets in her face. It's been months since she's touched another person, and it feels amazing, but not the kind of amazing you can melt into. It gets her blood up. He pushes her, and she pushes back.
She should punch him. She can't bring herself to punch him. She shoves instead, trying to throw him off, her hands on his chest.
"After all your big talk, you just wanna shove me around." If he hits her, she can hit him.
The closest he's come to someone else in as many months as he's known her is walking her up and down the stairs, cleaning her skin, plucking up and swiping back stuck strands of oily hair. Warmth and motion buffet him, unadulterated. Hap's heart gallops in shame and starvation. He's appalled by his behavior before she puts it to words, for once the more eloquent of the two of them. The guilt spirals — up.
"I don't—" He presses in, caging her. His temple rubs against hers. All he wants is for her to stop squirming. He holds, locked against her. He can feel his breath crashing off her skin, and hers pushing her fists into his chest. "I don't."
Joan can smell him with startling clarity, toothpaste and aftershave, and maybe the tiniest bit of salt sweat. She can feel his skull next to hers. He won't hit her, and for once she doesn't care. He smells like a man; in all her dreams, he just smelled like blood.
She does it before she has time to second guess it. It's abysmally stupid, nudging at his brow so she can angle their mouths into a kiss. She sucks his lower lip because she wants to, because she'll never get another chance. He's going to lock her back down in that glass coffin and never let her out again; she's going to die and this is the last time she'll touch anybody ever again.
Stale, caked-on sweat, bulk soap, soybean meal and ground wheat. She smells like all of them. That hammer of a cogent thought swings purposefully wide of the nail in his heart that is Prairie, and breaks something less vital.
The tug on his lip hitches his blood and rips a grunt out of him. Hap steadies himself on her jaw, blanching her pale skin under his thumb and fingers. His brow is balanced against Joan's. His eyes and breath bore into her; he pulls back to free space over which his gaze can stumble. Her mouth, her hair stuck to her neck, her flesh in the ferocity of his grip.
Hap eases it. His hand slides skittishly down the length of her throat before he looks into her eyes again. Simmering. His fingers curl round the back of her neck. He kisses her decisively, his temperance fueled by resentment, his passion by jealousy.
She is, for a moment, terrified. The worst thing he could do isn't to hit her, break a bone or open her skin. He could treat her with gentleness, and he doesn't; she will be grateful for the rest of her short life.
She deepens the kiss, because she doesn't know how not to. This feels like having a purpose, more than sticky tape on her skin or documented dreams. Kissing him feels like she means something, and she drinks it in, her tongue flicking against his. She runs her hand through his hair, because he won't be quick enough to stop her. She doesn't think he'll like it. She doesn't think he'll like anything she ever does genuinely, and suspects he'll hate her for falsehoods. He doesn't really like her at all, and that's comfortable. She'd be disgusted by love, so she kisses his hating mouth instead.
Her hand skitters to his hip, and she fumbles for his fly. He won't like this either.
Hap groans into her mouth. He resolves not to be the man who may or may not have actually made her laugh this afternoon, all the way down in her stone prison. He won't feel any ease with Joan or act with all his knowledge of her. He'll pretend to be ignorant of what can be salvaged from such a wretched, hard woman, and deny her the cloak of worship only he has the privilege to wrap her in. She used to fuck a lot, she said. So they'll fuck.
His hate is freeflowing, overrunning. It can't direct him to do anything. His instincts are blind want. To fist his hand in her hair and bare her throat, and leave her hand to get at his cock while he pulls her pulse onto his tongue and traps it with his teeth.
She whines when he pulls her head back, when his teeth skim her throat. This is good, better than she could have hoped for. He's acting like he wants her, and she appreciates the effort it has to take. If she could thank him without looking weak, she would, but that's impossible.
She finds his cock, jerking it roughly, blindly. Her breath hiccups in her throat. Her free hand grabs at his back, desperate.
A twitch of blood and muscle, hips rolling into her touch. There's a sweetness to her urgency that, with the ruthlessness of a whip crack, strips his desire of compromise. Hap can feel it in her hands. Her honesty.
Her gratitude.
Hap pulls back enough to grab at the hem of her shirt and roll it up. He expects her to release him and raise her arms to help him get it off. The electrodes on her temple will come loose or tumble off; he'll scrape off the rest with blunt nails before palming her breast.
She likes that he reaches for her shirt, likes that he wants to touch her tits. She can always tell that sex is going to be better than average if a guy actually pays attention to her chest. She feels heat pool in her gut when he touches her, and it makes her breath hitch. It would take a massive lack of interest in reading others to miss the fact that her nipples are sensitive.
"Your shirt too," she mumbles against his mouth. Her hand pulls at the fabric, trying to unbutton his shirt one-handed. "Please."
It bothers him that he can't tell if anywhere he touches her is inherently sensitive or if it's down to the contact he's denied her. It bothers him that he won't know unless they do this again and again, which they can't. He won't. He won't.
His thumb circles her nipple, lips catching and missing hers as she tells him what she wants, then makes it into a request. Acquiescing, he takes over her attempt to undress him and quickly pops button after button until his shirt hangs open. Hap likes it when his partners take his clothes off for him but the heat is building too fast. She might catch it at his elbows as he slips it off, shucking it sharply from his wrists.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
"tonight"
He joked with her.
Self-awareness holds him a little rigid, bringing his posture back to the week they started doing this. Upstairs, with her electrodes attached, he takes a seat in the easy chair he moved in for their morning interviews.
Hap rubs his hands together before beginning.
"What I wanted to talk to you about, completing the work... I know the others don't talk to you much anymore, but when they did, they told you about her, didn't they?"
itt 'im not like the other girls'.
That, and talking to Hap. She knows he has her here against her will, she knows, but that doesn't make him any less vital, interesting, dynamic. He's the center of the universe, and they both know it.
When he speaks, she no longer pretends she isn't listening. "Yeah," she says. "They talk about her like she was a martyr. Fully canonized, on the spot, three miracles and all."
She rolls her eyes. Saint Prairie sounds insipidly boring to Joan, someone who flinches from gentleness on instinct.
*who themselves arent like the other girls
"Only two, that I know of," he says, self-deprecating with noticeable effort. They probably count her escape as the third. He doesn't accept that. Wherever she is, she regrets leaving. If not him, them. Joan included. "The third was a work in progress. They hit a wall, but if you could break through it..."
He gazes intently at her, her potential as sharp as a hook. "I want you to find the fifth Movement."
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She's so fucking stupid, she could cry. Instead, she stalls. She isn't going to survive, if she lets his light shrivel her up like a raisin.
"And in return for having to fucking network with people who hate your guts, Joan, I'm prepared to give you..." She gives him a significant look.
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"They don't have it. Their contacts —" he gestures to her, "your brother, to you — won't give it to them." Scott threw that in his face not long after Prairie abandoned them. When he did, the dejection that sank further into the others eradicated Hap's reflexive suspicion. "But the connection you have to the other side is different. Personal. You could convince him."
As for performing the movements together, that's Hap's responsibility. And they will do it. They'll have no other choice.
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She can barely believe it, except he does, and he's the smartest person who's ever been willing to talk to her.
She's still not letting this opportunity slip. "Let me go outside," she says. "Just for an hour. On a leash if you want. Please."
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"No."
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Her hands are white-knuckled fists on the bed. She lets out a hiss of a sigh, ashamed to have to say this at all. It feels like lowering herself. Everything feels like lowering herself. "I'm worried I'm gonna... do something to myself."
cw suicide imagery
"How," he demands, unmoving. Unwilling to feel the weight and flex and threat of his own body. He fills his mind with images of the methods he's denied her: hanging from light fixtures that aren't there, wrists torn open with shards of glass that can't break, ceramic pots he's replaced with flimsy plastic. A hurried, violent deluge, that spills over with a flash of contempt.
cw violence mention, suicidal thoughts, etc.
"Little things. Breaking my fingers. I could slam my head into the window. I don't wanna die, Hap. But I know if I fall at the right angle, I can shove my nose into my brain. Anybody can do it. It's not my fault people aren't creative."
cw him
Hap reaches for his glasses, pulling them off along a hard-pressed sigh. He is mollified, very meagerly, by the fact that she only wants to hurt herself. Not take herself away from him and the study.
His gaze flickers down and is caught by the smudges on his glasses. The tiny, transparent streaks he's been staring right through. "Maybe this was a mistake."
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"There are things that aren't a myth." And she doesn't believe him, anyway. "I'm not a squeamish person, Hap, and I'm trying to work with you. Was the other one this nice about being let upstairs? I've never tried to escape up here."
She's heard about that, if only because they never fucking shut up about her down there.
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Thoughtlessly, Hap gets to his feet. She thinks he won't take it all away? That she's too precious? Special? She's wrong.
"Up." Concurrent with the command, he seizes her arm in a vise-like grip. "Get up."
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Hap yanks her to him and then shoves her against the wall to still her. To put a stop to this. Her arms gripped hard in each hand, he crowds her in, chest to chest.
"That's enough, Joan."
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She should punch him. She can't bring herself to punch him. She shoves instead, trying to throw him off, her hands on his chest.
"After all your big talk, you just wanna shove me around." If he hits her, she can hit him.
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"I don't—" He presses in, caging her. His temple rubs against hers. All he wants is for her to stop squirming. He holds, locked against her. He can feel his breath crashing off her skin, and hers pushing her fists into his chest. "I don't."
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She does it before she has time to second guess it. It's abysmally stupid, nudging at his brow so she can angle their mouths into a kiss. She sucks his lower lip because she wants to, because she'll never get another chance. He's going to lock her back down in that glass coffin and never let her out again; she's going to die and this is the last time she'll touch anybody ever again.
It might as well be a kiss.
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The tug on his lip hitches his blood and rips a grunt out of him. Hap steadies himself on her jaw, blanching her pale skin under his thumb and fingers. His brow is balanced against Joan's. His eyes and breath bore into her; he pulls back to free space over which his gaze can stumble. Her mouth, her hair stuck to her neck, her flesh in the ferocity of his grip.
Hap eases it. His hand slides skittishly down the length of her throat before he looks into her eyes again. Simmering. His fingers curl round the back of her neck. He kisses her decisively, his temperance fueled by resentment, his passion by jealousy.
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She deepens the kiss, because she doesn't know how not to. This feels like having a purpose, more than sticky tape on her skin or documented dreams. Kissing him feels like she means something, and she drinks it in, her tongue flicking against his. She runs her hand through his hair, because he won't be quick enough to stop her. She doesn't think he'll like it. She doesn't think he'll like anything she ever does genuinely, and suspects he'll hate her for falsehoods. He doesn't really like her at all, and that's comfortable. She'd be disgusted by love, so she kisses his hating mouth instead.
Her hand skitters to his hip, and she fumbles for his fly. He won't like this either.
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His hate is freeflowing, overrunning. It can't direct him to do anything. His instincts are blind want. To fist his hand in her hair and bare her throat, and leave her hand to get at his cock while he pulls her pulse onto his tongue and traps it with his teeth.
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She finds his cock, jerking it roughly, blindly. Her breath hiccups in her throat. Her free hand grabs at his back, desperate.
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Her gratitude.
Hap pulls back enough to grab at the hem of her shirt and roll it up. He expects her to release him and raise her arms to help him get it off. The electrodes on her temple will come loose or tumble off; he'll scrape off the rest with blunt nails before palming her breast.
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"Your shirt too," she mumbles against his mouth. Her hand pulls at the fabric, trying to unbutton his shirt one-handed. "Please."
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His thumb circles her nipple, lips catching and missing hers as she tells him what she wants, then makes it into a request. Acquiescing, he takes over her attempt to undress him and quickly pops button after button until his shirt hangs open. Hap likes it when his partners take his clothes off for him but the heat is building too fast. She might catch it at his elbows as he slips it off, shucking it sharply from his wrists.
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cw gore imagery.
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