bigapplesauce | call me up day or night, free drinks and bad advice [closed]

Current Location: Greenwich Village and elsewhere
Current Music: September 12th

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call me up day or night, free drinks and bad advice [closed]

For those who missed it, Iman's magical prosthetic is out of commission and she's havin a rough time. TW for denial, dysphoria, and some internalized ableism.

This is fine.

She starts every day this way. Waking up, looking at the ceiling, remembering through dull ache and a gradual loosening of dreams where she was still whole that her arm is gone. Not quite gone, not literally missing, still hanging there limply because it's easier to fake it and she gets enough stares already. Reminding herself of the subtle changes in her own weight distribution, how she must hold herself, the effort that goes into things like rolling out of bed and showering and dressing. And she says: this is fine.

First order of business is checking her phone. A real one now, now that she can no longer use her arm for this purpose, or for opening doors, or for punching holes through walls if need be, or reshaping glass, or anything. She is normal. She is less than normal.

What time is it even.

Some texts, she doesn't check them now. The clock tells her she has managed to sleep until 2pm. Fucking fantastic.

Okay well by the time she gets showered and caffeinated and presentable, it'll be happy hour.

Who's she gonna drink with. Rush? Sounds amazing, actually, but how long will it take him to get back around to wanting to fix her unfixable fucking arm? Fuck that.

She punches in a text to Greta.

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"Oh that's good," says Iman very seriously before dropping into a cackle of her own. "I bet your pies are amazing. I KNOW they are." Man she could really fuckin go for some pie right about now.

"It is pretty strange," she agrees. "So's mine. But they both operate under a logic that I get. Yours is just..." She waves her hand, smiling vaguely up at Greta, enjoying the cute little leg pats, before turning her head away.

"Can I have my phooone?" she asks, pointing toward the endtable. "I gotta text someone. Right now. S'very important."

Sure, sweetie.

Greta grins at the compliment, then shrugs. "Magic," she says, as if that's explanation enough. Well, it's the only explanation she can really offer. Back home, it was just something to be borne, like the weather - or combatted, if at all possible. If it tended to leave their bakery alone, she imagines it was because the neighbor's house was far more interesting. But magic, generally speaking, wasn't all that outlandish.

Iman's arm is far more astonishing. Was. Is? Will be.

"Of course, dear," she says absently, getting to her feet and then pausing a moment to steady herself before heading for the end table and retrieving the phone. "Are you hungry?" she asks as she passes it down to Iman. Before her friend can even answer, she decides, "We should eat something. You sit tight and I'll see what I can find."

"Ooh, okay," says Iman contentedly as Greta wanders off to the kitchen. She engages with her phone for a while, giggling to herself periodically as Rush struggles to maintain his Rush-ian (Russian?? that merits another cackle) cold distance in her drunken wake. Texting is pretty hard already, and harder with one hand, but with enough focus she finds she can manage.

"Can we have pie?" she asks hopefully, pausing her text conversation to loll her head back, gazing at the upside-down Greta in the kitchen.

Whoever Iman's texting, she seems to be having a grand time over there, and Greta smiles to herself as she... what is she doing over here? After a moment of intense contemplation of the wall above the stove, she remembers: getting food, that's right. Because she wanted Iman to try the coconut flour bread. The loaf that didn't fall apart. Yes. She'll like it, won't she? Greta hopes she'll like it. She just wants Iman to be happy all the time, like she is now, sprawled and giggling on the floor.

She registers a few gentle clunks and the sound of a drawer sliding shut, and is vaguely startled when she looks down and sees she's fetched out the bread knife and a cutting board. Oh! It's the thing, the Rift Thing! She glances back to see if Iman saw it just as her friend asks about pie - apparently not - and she blinks a few times, thrown. Does she even have pie? Better check for that, first.

"Let me see," she says, puttering over to the fridge. It's been a day or so since she made any pie, but as luck would have it, there's still a slice of strawberry-rhubarb left. It's a bit too small to split, but that's all right. "You can have pie!" she announces triumphantly, pulling out the little dish. She sets it on the counter, and then leans against the fridge for a moment, thinking.

"I was going to tell you something." She peers down at Iman for a moment, eyes narrowed pensively, before it comes back to her. "Oh! I did the Rift Thing, I think! Just a moment ago." She points at the cutting board by way of explanation.

"Rift Thing?" Iman leans her head back again, staring for uncomprehendingly for a moment. "Oh! Your power!" She tries to roll over but succeeds only in getting stuck halfway. Stupid useless arm. She puts her phone on the floor so she can stab at the keyboard with greater precision and also take another drink. "That's awesome! Did it work cause you're..." She trails off, distracted by Rush's increasingly wrongthinking texts, and makes an annoyed grunt as she tries to explain the situation properly to him, she can't just come out and tell Greta she loves her jeeeez.

"...drunk?" she finishes eventually, looking back up.

Greta arches an eyebrow as Iman lapses back into texting mid-sentence. A moment later, her friend lets out a huff of frustration. She's about to ask if everything is all right over there when Iman finally finishes her question, and then she wrinkles her nose. Drunk. Certainly not. She's just pleasantly tipsy, is all.

"I got distracted," she explains with a vague flap of her hand. After a moment's further consideration, she elaborates, "I knew what I wanted to do, I just wasn't thinking about it. But then my hands did it anyway." She gives said hands a slightly dubious look, as if she's not sure they can be trusted. Granted, it's not as if her Rift Power has ever led to her doing anything she didn't want to do. Unless you count hitting the pigeon, which certainly wasn't intentional... but then, it did give that awful man something to think about, which was what she wanted, so perhaps it evens out.

Iman's set for a snack, but she's not going to ask her friend to split what little pie there is left. She can have some of the bread, and then it'll be there for Iman to try. "Maybe it'll happen again," she says as she wanders back over to the cutting board. She intends to focus a bit more this time, though - at least while she has a knife in her hand.

"I seeeeee," says Iman, most of her attention back on her phone as Rush continues to be a butt. Once she's replied to him she looks back up. "We'll have to see if other people can actually trigger distraction intentionally or if no one can be paying attention," she muses. "That'd be really interesting."

She flops back down, fiddling with her phone. She clicks her tongue. Rush keeps insisting she come clean with Greta which is preposterous obviously, and clearly the answer is to drink more. "You want me to make you another drink?"

"Oh," Greta says, rather startled by the thought of everyone's distraction being part of it. Granted, she's been too preoccupied each time it's happened to judge how much anyone else was paying attention, but she's guessing quite a few eyes were on her when she hit that poor bird. Not that anyone would have predicted her smacking a pigeon into someone's face, of course.

And how could they even begin to test it without at least someone paying attention to what's going on? Distracting her on purpose seems more doable. Not that she's necessarily looking forward to that.

"Well, just don't try to distract me when I've a knife in my hand," she says, giving said knife a waggle for emphasis before she starts cutting a few slices off the loaf.

Another drink might not be the best idea, and she doesn't want Iman troubling herself in the least on her account. But it's not the worst idea, either - she could always just drink it slowly, make it last - and Iman will have to get up shortly if she wants her pie, anyway. "If you're already making one for yourself, I'll have one, too," she decides. In the meantime, she's going to try toasting this bread. Then the butter will get nice and melty when she spreads it on, and she can sprinkle cinnamon and sugar on top.

"Mmmm'okay!" says Iman gamely, shifting and flopping awkwardly around like a beached fish as she forces herself upright. This isn't so bad! She can do this! Yeah!!!

She staggers to the kitchen holding her drink and Greta's empty glass in one hand, gently nudging her phone along on the floor as it continues to chirp with Rush's helpful fucking advice nuggets.

"Don't touch it I got it," she says, setting the glasses down and folding over on herself to recover the phone. She studies his nonsense for a while before punching out another response, then pockets it and looks up at Greta. "Okay, what're we doin? PIE!" She grins excitedly as she notices the piece of pie. "Is that for me?? Gretaaaa, you got pie for me!" She slumps forward and wraps her arm around Greta's shoulders.

Greta's a bit too focused on getting her bread into the toaster to notice the amount of awkward effort Iman has to put into picking herself up. Instead, when she finally does turn to watch her friend make her way over to the kitchen, she's impressed by how deftly she's carrying both glasses in one hand. Since she so clearly has things under control, Greta doesn't object when she insists she can fetch her own phone. Besides, they're having a good time, and she doesn't want to sour the mood by babying her friend when it's not necessary.

And she's rewarded with an enthusiastic - if perhaps a little undeserved - hug. Greta returns the gesture with a giggle. "It's for you, but I hardly got it," she says, because that makes it sound as if she's put a certain amount of effort into it, as if she'd swiftly made a whole pie while Iman was distracted with her phone. "It was already in the, er," she falters, then frowns over Iman's shoulder at the fridge. Loosening her hold with one arm so she can flap her hand at it, she continues, "the thing whose name I can't remember. Cold box thing. Fridge! That's the one!"

Well, that was silly. She has another giggle at her own expense. "Anyway," she says once she's recovered, "it should still taste just fine, even though I didn't make it today. And it's all for you." She turns to kiss Iman's hair with an extravagant 'mwah!' then releases her as the toaster pops.

"Ooh! And that's for me," she explains with a conspiratorial air as she toddles over to finish preparing the bread. "Though you can try some, too," she adds. "It's the coconut flour."

Iman practically squeals when Greta kisses her hair, oh gosh - as if to remind her of her earthly business her phone chirps again from her pocket. Shut UP Rush. He's an excellent cockblock and that's probably why she texted him in the first place if she's being honest with herself.

"I wanna try that for sure," she says, then flounces over to the counter to prepare new drinks. Not so careful and measured this time, just a splash of this and that, and they're all set. Drinkmaking gets so much easier as time goes on.

She slumps down at the table and sets her phone gingerly beside her before digging into her pie.

It takes about as long for her to butter the toast and sprinkle it with some cinnamon and sugar as it does for Iman to prepare the new drinks and settle herself at the table. Greta joins her there a moment later, setting down her plate within Iman's reach, an implicit invitation to try the bread whenever she likes.

As she tucks into her own slice of toast, she watches for Iman's reaction to the pie. It's impossible not to enjoy watching someone else enjoy something you made, and she props her chin on her hand and grins. It seems a few days in the fridge hasn't done it any harm. "How's the pie?" she asks anyway, because verbal confirmation is always nice.

"It's wonderful," says Iman with an air of duh and a cocked eyebrow at Greta. "Just like you."

Okay girl slow your roll. She distracts herself with eating until the pie is gone, and she washes it down with more vodka and cranberry juice, letting out a stiff gasp afterward.

"Gonna try some coconut bread," she says in a drunken little sing-song, reaching out tentatively, though she doesn't quite want to just take off Greta's plate. That would be a thing a COUPLE does. On a DATE. This is not a date. Nope.

Her grin widens, then turns to a guffaw as the compliment takes a turn. "Wonderful!" she repeats, incredulous, around a mouthful of toast - it's sheer luck that she doesn't spew crumbs everywhere. She makes herself swallow, then giggles. "I'm not sure about that. My pie doesn't even turn into live birds."

She takes a measured sip of her own concoction. It might be stronger than the last one. At this point, it's sort of hard to tell. She plans on taking it slow, either way; one of them ought to at least be in somewhat decent shape, and Iman is more in need of some fun.

When Iman starts to go for the bread, Greta gives the plate a little nudge. "That's the idea," she sing-songs back in the same key. She's not entirely sure why her friend seems hesitant to just take a piece, so she lifts it off the plate herself. "Here," she says, and she honestly means to just pass it like a normal person, but she somehow misjudges the distance and comes perilously close to thrusting it right into Iman's nose. "Oh no!" she gasps out, equally mortified and amused. "I'm so sorry! Did I hit you?" She keels over the table with a thoroughly embarrassed cackle, burying her face in the crook of one arm while the other lists a little, bread still technically on offer.

Iman takes the offered piece of bread while laughing uproariously, waving off Greta's adorable mortification. "I am tougher than I LOOK," she says with a big grin, and takes a bite. "This is good!" she decrees with her mouth full. "I mean obviously." She pauses to answer another text with a little snort, then goes back to chewing thoughtfully.

"Turned out pretty good I think," she says appraisingly. "I mean, as far as I can tell. I don't get home baked bread too much." She smiles broadly, an implicit display of gratitude for the opportunity.

"It was an accident!" she insists between giggles. The whole thing is both more embarrassing and more hilarious than it has any right to be, and her vague awareness of that fact only makes her laugh harder. By the time she's able to shove herself upright, she has to sheepishly wipe a few tears of mirth away. Honestly. She should probably get a glass of water or something.

She props her head against the heel of her hand and smiles down at the table. "Well, you can always get some here," she says. It's partly a standing invitation, and partly a statement of fact. Store-bought bread might keep longer, but in her opinion, it's not as good as what she can make, herself.

Then, with an amused glance at Iman's phone, "Who on earth are you talking to?"

"Rush," she says idly. "I'm interrupting very important science with my drunken shenanigans." She smirks, keeping the phone under her hand with an impressively nonchalant air. "I gotta get him drunk one of these days. I bet he's a great drunk."

Actually there's pretty decent odds he'd be an incredibly sad drunk, but no point wondering about that now. She clicks her phone off and goes back to eating the bread. "Did you ever do much drinking back home?" she asks curiously. "I mean, like... what did you and your... um, what did you guys do for fun?"

This might be a sensitive question, and she half-regrets asking it, but after so much shared experience and so many feelings had she still feels like she doesn't know that much about Greta's past, and this is the sensible time to ask, while they're both less inhibited.

She wonders if the interrupted science is anything to do with Iman's arm - if there's anything else it could be, given how determined Rush was to fix it. But she also doesn't want to ask, especially if Iman views it as interruptible. This doesn't seem the time for anything serious, or any topic as potentially fraught as her friend's recent loss.

Her own losses are less recent, but Iman's questions still pierce through the placid warmth of her buzz like a stone dropped into a bog. A faint, dull ache rises in her chest, and she drops her gaze to the table, smile fading. She knows Iman didn't mean to hurt her - the way she stumblingly avoided the word 'husband' is telling enough - but for a few moments, she resents the questions, anyway. As if she wants to think about the fun she used to have, as if those memories aren't a greater torment than memories of the silly arguments they got into or the assorted frustrations of running a shop and raising a child - both of which left little time for fun, anyway - with a husband who was far more comfortable with the former than the latter.

She doesn't want to be angry with Iman. Maybe she just meant it... generally. She's from such a different time, after all. It's just curiosity. There's nothing wrong with that.

Greta pulls in a breath, then lets it out with a hum. "Not much," she admits, still looking down at the table, "especially after the baby. But when we were younger, we'd... go out." She shrugs. "Walk around the Village, visit the Inn - the ground floor was basically a pub, and it was a good place to get news from outside the Village. Or get a drink, though it was just ale, nothing like this." She tilts her head towards her glass. There was more to the pub than just news, of course - there was music, and dancing, things she'd rather not recollect in any kind of detail right now.

"But running a shop took up most of our time," she says instead. The daily grind, she doesn't miss so much. She tries for a wry smile. "I'm afraid we were rather boring, compared to..." she trails off and makes a vague gesture meant to encompass everything around her: this city, this century, even Iman herself.

Her face falls and she sits up a little straighter. Greta's trying to hide it, but the change in her demeanor is too clear; she's been hurt, and Iman can barely even track her response, she's so desperate to make things right as quick as she can. She hurt Greta, this is terrible, she must fix this immediately.

"I'm sorry," she says, setting the bread down and reaching out for Greta's hand. "I didn't mean to - that was really stupid of me, I shouldn't have asked that. I was just... I let curiosity get the better of me and I didn't think, I... I'm sorry, Greta." She chews her lip, seeking out Greta's eyes. "Are you okay?"

Oh, dear. Iman knows she's hurt, and she didn't want that. It shouldn't even be this painful, really. She's been here for well over a month, now, long enough that an innocent question about home shouldn't upset her, especially coming from such a dear friend.

But a month is a long time to be presumed dead. And every day she spends here widens the gulf between herself and her old life, and one day it will be so wide that even taming the Rift won't be enough to bridge it. She might return home only to find that it isn't hers anymore.

Iman was supposed to get her out of here, and now, with her arm as it is, she can't. And that hurts Iman more than it hurts her, she knows that, and she refuses to even--even begin to imply that her friend is some sort of disappointment, or that she hasn't held up her end of a bargain, or that she'd be worth more if her arm was working. But how can she explain herself without that ugly implication lurking beneath the surface of everything she says? How can she tell Iman her journey home might have an expiration date without pressuring her to meet it?

She sees Iman's hand reaching for her out of the corner of her eye. Meeting her friend's gaze is still beyond her, but she takes her hand without hesitation, squeezing gently. She's not angry or upset with her, and Iman has to know that, she has to. "It's not your fault," she insists. Why can't her voice just be steady? She huffs out an impatient, self-recriminating sigh and stares down at the table, willing herself to pull it together. "I'll be fine, I just..." ugh. She leans her forehead against her hand and shuts her eyes, running her thumb over Iman's knuckles in an absurd parody of reassurance. "It's not your fault," she says again.

They were having such a good time, and now she's ruining it. This is awful.

"Hey." Iman scoots her chair closer awkwardly, pinioning herself on Greta's hand until she's close enough to lean in, offering bodily support if it's wanted. "It's okay." She presses her forehead briefly to Greta's shoulder. "Look, you don't have to talk about it, but you can, too. If you want to. That's what this is about, yeah? That's what I'm here for. You can talk to me about anything you want. You know that, right?"

She wishes she had both hands, she wishes more than anything she could reach out to stroke Greta's back or her hair, something more than just being a hand to grip onto. But that's what she has, and it'll have to be enough.

She could talk about it, but that doesn't mean she should. Not if there's no way to explain herself without making her friend sound like a failure. But where else can she even go with this? If she shuts Iman out, her friend won't know what she's trying to protect her from: she'll just know she's been shut out, after everything she's done and what a good friend she's been.

Greta's on the verge of tears, she can feel it. One good rattle will send her there, no matter how hard she tries to hold on; another foregone conclusion. She leans against Iman, as if taking everything she's offering will counteract what follows instead of just making it a more grievous betrayal. What can she say? How can she make this as little about her friend as possible?

She takes an unsteady breath or two, then opens her eyes and turns her head to look at Iman. There's nothing but concern in her friend's eyes, no suspicion, no smallest hint that she has any inkling where Greta's headed, and oh, here come the tears. Wonderful. Greta turns her face back toward the table, pressing her lips together tightly, but she can't hold it back, she can only distill it into something about home, and him. As if Iman wasn't supposed to get her there.

"He won't wait for me." She pulls in a deep breath and sits on it for a moment, not allowing it to become a sob. Not for--for long."

Oh.

She feels it like a stone, deep in her gut. It unravels so clearly: that she promised to get Greta home, and now she can't do that, and how Greta must think this sounds, like an indictment, when of course Greta would never blame her for this (and Iman is good enough at blaming herself).

How long has she been harboring this?

And why, she almost asks, why wouldn't he, but that wouldn't help, and anyway she's smart enough to work it out. It's a different time, isn't it, average life expectancy wouldn't have been much beyond, what, 40? 50? Shit happens and people moved on, probably. But Greta is... Greta, why wouldn't anyone wait for her, how could anyone just-

"Oh, sweetheart," she murmurs, she lets go of Greta's hand and wraps her arm around her instead, pulling her in, leaning her forehead against Greta's temple. "I'm so sorry."

This is appalling, this is unforgivable, this mess she's become, this weight she's dropping on someone who has more than enough to bear already. As if her own little tragedy is more important than anyone else's, as if everyone here hasn't suffered a loss. But it can't be unsaid, and when Iman pulls her hand free, Greta thinks: well, I probably deserve it.

But she isn't being abandoned. Instead, Iman puts her arm around her and pulls her close, and apologizes, and she'd be mortified if Iman's tone was guilt-ridden. It's not, though. It's sympathetic - the apology you give when you're both in a rotten situation and you both know there's nothing to be done about it, but with no implicit blame or fault laid at anyone's feet. She knows Greta isn't blaming her, and the relief is enough to start her sobbing in earnest, one hand over her face and the other wavering blindly for a few moments before finding Iman's hand where it's curled around her waist.

It's a minute or two before she can speak, or do anything but slump against her friend, weary and heartsick. "I wouldn't... want him to," she haltingly admits once her breathing has steadied. She wipes her cheeks, then lets her hand drop into her lap with a sigh. "I couldn't wish that on him, if I'm to be here for... a while. He's already lost so much. He shouldn't have to--to raise our son alone." All true things, but that doesn't make it any easier to bear the thought of her world moving on without her.

It happens. It happens all the time. It just wasn't supposed to happen to them.

She sighs and rocks Greta gently, biting her lip to keep from tears herself; she doesn't cry easily, but she's drunk and it's been a rough time, and she can't bear to see Greta in pain like this. When Greta finally settles a little and starts speaking again, Iman lets her hand stray to Greta's head, stroking her hair a little.

"You can say that all you want," she says, "and you can believe it, too, but that doesn't make it easier. It's okay to hurt over this."

She feels like she's feeding back advice that has been fed to her. Well, maybe Greta will be more receptive than she is.

There's no solution she can offer - she can't say she'll get her back, even if she still could do that it would be a false hope, crueler to force optimism than to allow her to accept this wound as part of her reality.

A really repulsive part of her, buried somewhere deep down, is almost relieved.

Disgusting. She represses a shudder and forces herself up. "Come on," she says. "Let's have a lie down. I'm gonna play you some nice music."

call me up day or night, free drinks and bad advice [closed]

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