om_trickshot (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
om_trickshot) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
om_main2015-07-25 08:07 pm
om_trickshot) wrote in om_main2015-07-25 08:07 pm
Rahne, Illyana, Irvine (backdated to July 25)
Illyana suggests Rhane take flirting lessons from Professor Irvine after she develops a crush at the Masquerade. Irvine isn't sure how he earned this title, but he does his best to help.
Illyana waved as she caught sight of Irvine already standing by the lake, then glanced over at Rahne impatiently. "Come on, you said you wanted to do this. Irvine's harmless. I flirt with him all the time."
"I'm not sure I should have said that." Rahne didn't have to be physically pushed, or anything. But she had even dressed defensively, done up in trousers and a voluminous blouse that somewhat obscured her figure.
For a guy who was usually up for anything, even Irvine thought this might end up pretty weird. He just couldn't say no when Illyana asked, because boy did she know how to butter him up. So, there he was, kicking around barefoot at the edge of the lake, wearing loose cargo shorts and a faded (but definitely not vintage) Jim Morrison t-shirt. He looked up when he heard the girls coming, grinned behind his sunglasses, and waved lazily. "Afternoon, ladies."
Illyana, meanwhile, had given Rahne a "don't you dare back out now" look before turning back to Irvine with a smile. "You're the best, you know that right? Have you guys met before? Irvine, this is Rahne - she lives down the hall from me. Rahne, Irvine. He was my dance partner last year." She pouted at him playfully. "He went and graduated, though, which was just evil of him, because now I have to find a new partner and I'll never find one as good." After all, it was a flirting lesson. She might as well give a demo.
"Hullo, Irvine. I'm very pleased t' meet you." She clasped her hands together nervously. He was a rather handsome boy, with an easy demeanor, she could see. Exactly the kind of person to put her on edge.
Irvine didn't have his hat, and Rahne didn't seem inclined to shake hands, so he sketched her a little bow by way of greeting. "Hiya, Miss Rahne. I sure hope you ain't believed everything Yana's told you about me. 'Cause maybe I was her dance partner, but she was the one makin' me look good. Whoever she sweet-talks next year is gonna look twice as good."
"Lies. All lies." Illyana rolled her eyes at Irvine, then grinned. "You see what I mean? He's a natural."
"He--you seem like a very charming boy," Rahne agreed, twisting her hands together.
Rahne looked nervous as hell, and Irvine hated to see such a sweet-looking girl in distress. "Yeah? Thanks for noticin'," he said with a genial grin. "C'mon, you ladies wanna dip your feet in the lake? I won't splash nobody, cross my heart. Yana, though," he added confidentially to Rahne, "Keep an eye on 'er."
It was hot. Rahne glanced up ruefully at the glaring sun. She'd practically bathed in sunscreen before coming out here, but that didn't help with the temperature. She looked back down to Irvine. "She is the type, isn't she?" Rahne joked drily.
Illyana sniffed. "Just for that, I'm not helping with the class." She turned her back on them pointedly, glancing over her shoulder just once to wrinkle her nose at Irvine and smirk, and headed off to go put her feet in the lake.
Irvine rolled his eyes, genially. "She dishes it out, she won't take it," he explained, even though that wasn't completely true. Yana rolled with his teasing pretty well, but there were other ways to flirt that might suit Rahne better. "I get the feeling teasing people ain't really your style, Miss Rahne. Sound about right?"
"I...I'm not sure. I guess I don't, usually." She rubbed her arm. "I was taught to speak with a mild tongue."
"You gotta work what works for you," said Irvine, dragging his foot through the water to make it swirl. "Try to be somebody else, you're gonna get nowhere fast. Bein' kind and honest is... well, it's crazy attractive," he said with a crooked smile.
She turned slightly away, showing him her profile. "Really? It hasn't seemed to impress anyone here much."
Irvine paused in his sloshing around and blinked curiously over at Rahne. "Seriously? Who you been tryin' to impress? Cause they gotta be idiots."
Illyana snorted and leaned back on her hands. "You might want to define honest," she pointed out to Irvine. "That might be a good start." Not that she was an expert on honest, because yeah. Not. But she was pretty sure it didn't mean pissy and judgmental.
Rahne whirled on Yana. "What's that s'posed t' mean?" Considering the source, Rahne suspected that it was some sort of attack on her virtue.
"Just that I'm pretty sure that when he says 'honest', he doesn't mean, 'accuse everyone of all the horrible, scandalous things you've imagined they're up to, even though you don't have any proof'," Illyana retorted.
Rahne blinked at the other girl, stumped. "Illyana...you just walkin' down the street in my home town would be scandalous." Her very existence, her wardrobe, her ultra-blonde hair...those were day-to-day bulk of why Yana was a scandal. That and very little more.
Illyana scowled, and turned her head to appeal to Irvine. "See?"
"Saaay, now, that ain't what she said," Irvine reminded Illyana, appearing just as calm as could be even though he hadn't been able to get a word in edgewise for a second there. "All she said is she comes from someplace different, right? I come from a real little town, and maybe girls wear tiny shorts there, but no guys admit to likin' musical theater, if you know what I mean. Half the guys at school 'd be a scandal where I come from. Y'know?"
Illyana shrugged and turned her attention back to the lake. "Whatever. Everything I do is scandalous, anyway."
Rahne nodded her head eagerly. "It's only a matter of fact, not meant in judgement. Where I come from, skirts are t' be worn below the knee, an' a girl ought t' be quiet and mannerly. You'd be a scandal. That's all I said." Rahne gave a bit of a hopeless look to Irvine. She could feel herself floundering.
Jeez. It sounded like Rahne came from a town even smaller than Irvine's. Sounded as bad as that town in Footloose, even. "She still came to you for advice," Irvine pointed out toward Yana's turned back, but when he looked over to Rhane, he made a small 'cut it out' motion, and hoped she got the hint that he meant to drop the subject before it got any worse. Give Illyana some time to chew on that and chill, maybe.
"So, Miss Rahne, quiet and mannerly, huh? Nothin' wrong with manners, but it's gonna be a little tough for you to talk to somebody you like by bein' quiet," he said with a small smile. "Any guy worth knowin' is gonna want to know what's on your mind."
Rahne kicked a bit at the loosely-packed beach, sending up a slight spray. "That's what's so nice about Phillip. He asks me how I'm doing. And he listens...real quiet."
"Quiet type, is he?" Irvine echoed, returning to somewhat lazily sloshing in the shallows of the lake. "D'you want to get him talkin' more, or keep him listenin'? Or... " He grinned crookedly. "I reckon when you really like somebody, it don't matter too much?"
"Mmhmm. I like it so much. I bet there's no one else in the world so wonderfully perfect." Rahne had been looking at her feet for a while, and she finally made a decision. She kicked off her shoes and walked straight up to the lake. For now, she only let the water lap at her very toes. "I'm tired of being told how to be."
Irvine mentally ran back over everything he'd said so far. Crap. He hadn't been 'telling her how to be', had he? Pretty sure he hadn't. "Well, heck, whatcha need my advice for, then?" he teased warmly, exaggerating his Midwestern flat drawl for comedy.
Toes curling in the muck, Rahne inched further into the water. "I'm not very good at people."
"You seem to be doin' all right," Irvine noted. "Why d'you reckon you're okay talking to me? I'm cute, and I listen." There was an answer that Irvine was pretty sure of, but he wondered if Rahne saw it, too.
Rahne felt her cheeks burning, and she hoped that it just looked like she'd gotten too much sun. "You seem...safe."
"I told you he was," Illyana pointed out, having been listening to the conversation.
"I'm takin' all this as a compliment," laughed Irvine, gesturing to the entire situation. "But y'know, Miss Rahne, you aren't trying to impress me. You aren't worrying about saying the right or wrong thing. That's why it's easy, see? The harder you try to impress your guy, the harder it's gonna get. Believe me -- I trip myself up way more than anybody else."
"So it's hopeless, you're sayin'," she pointed out. "You bein' the expert and still do no better."
Illyana rolled her eyes and looked over at Rahne, exasperated. "No, he's saying to stop trying to impress Phil and just talk to him, genius. If he doesn't like you for you, it's just going to suck anyway." She should know. She got her feet an gave Irvine an apologetic look. "Unless you need me for something, I'm out of here."
Irvine cast Illyana a return glance that was just short of pleading for her to stay, but if she and Rahne were going to be at odds, that wasn't going to help anybody. He gave her an understanding little wave. "I didn't say 'hopeless' even one time," he answered Rahne with the same relaxed ease. "And I surely ain't no expert. The big secret that nobody ever admits is that we're all just stumbling along as best we can. If there was a formula or something that could make the person you like fall in love with you, then everybody'd do it. Right?"
"I suppose so." She waded further into the water, giving herself the pleasure of sloshing all she liked. She was trying her best to ignore Illyana, her back turned to the other girl. "I always thought it would just...happen." Like at the dance, how it had just happened that she was so suddenly swept away.
"Good luck with that." Because yeah, it didn't happen that way, did it? The magical moments were awesome, but they didn't last. Illyana gave Irvine an apologetic look, directed one last glare at Rahne's back, and disappeared.
Sometimes, Irvine thought, it must be real nice to have Illyana's powers and be able to just poof away from somewhere you didn't want to be. No long, weird, walking-away moments. He returned his attention back to Rahne, and smiled crookedly. "Maybe it does for some folks. I d'know. It sounds too easy to say 'just be yourself,' but I figure, you want that person to like you for who you really are, y'know? Your real self. That's who you gotta show 'em."
Rahne clasped her hands together and held them close to her chest--too tense to be a prayer. "My real self? I'm not sure I can." It seemed closed away from even her, closed in a shell where her da had locked it, her manifestation had scrambled it, and John had battered against the door. The God she'd grown up with had been a crushing God. Rahne wished that the God that Jeanne-Marie had told her about would speak to her; he was meant to make her heart unfurl like a rose. "What did I do to make Illyana so angry?"
Irvine rubbed at the back of his neck thoughtfully, trying to decide how to explain this, since she'd asked. "I don't think she was mad. I think she was frustrated and didn't wanna get mad. Y'know how..." he made a helpless gesture with one hand, looking out over the lake.
"You know, sometimes you see something so clear that you know it for truth, but other people don't see the same thing? It gets hard to understand how come they don't see something that's so clear to you. It's hard to keep your patience, yeah? My guess is, Illyana sees a sweet, caring girl called Rahne who could have all kinds'a boyfriends... if she just saw herself that clear," he finished up with a hopefully crooked smile. At least Illyana wasn't around to get on his case if he'd got it wrong.
"But she's wrong. That's wrong." Though it was nice to hear that maybe she looked that way from the outside. "I...they say I grew up in a cult." That was the shortest and actual sweetest way she could describe her horror show childhood. "I don't know how to be with people."
Cocking his head, Irvine said plainly, "You're here with me and you're doin' just fine. What other people say doesn't get to define you. Only you get to do that. What's the story that you wanna tell about you?"
Rahne stood in silence for some time. Wordlessly, she began to wade further into the pond, until she was soaked up to her hips. "I don't know. I think my whole story is a bad story."
Irvine hung back, keeping a close eye on her. The lake was pretty quiet and still on such a warm day, but still, he didn't know if Rahne knew how to swim. And he was no lifeguard. "Then I'm sorry to say it, Miss Rahne, but that's the story you're tellin' even if you don't know it. Makes it tougher on folks who want to like you if you're tellin' them why they shouldn't."
Rahne suddenly felt prickly all over. She stiffened. "Then what am I supposed to do?" she demanded. "I cannae how my life started. Or how it's gone. And I've changed so much to try and fit in at this bloody school. All for naught, I see."
"I didn't say that," Irvine replied, still calm and genial, though he was starting to feel like he was repeating himself. "You can't control where you came from, but you can control how you talk about it, how you talk about you, and how you talk about other people. You got every opportunity in the world here," he said with broad gesture toward the house and grounds, "to be whoever the hell you want. You can be true to yourself without talking yourself down. You can keep what's important from the past and toss whatever you don't like. All you gotta be is what feels right to you, and I gotta say, there ain't nothin' more attractive than that."
"How, tell, does one tell a different story when there is no different story?" She shook her head and, slowly picking her way deeper into the water. It was a far shot from washing in the Jordan, but it would have to do for Rahne. "It would be gauche to pull out gory details. I've been trying, you know. I've been trying to make friends from the good things I know. I can bake, I can knit gifts for people. I wanted to read with Sharon but she moved to New York before we could really start with the bible. And that's all I know, and it's done me little good."
Irvine thought about that for a moment, then said slowly, "There's no guarantees, but if you ain't sure about what you got to say, then ask him about what he's got to say. Now, with Coulson, I understand, he's a little tight-lipped about himself. But you can't go wrong askin' him about his favorites. Movies, food, places to go in town. Most people like talkin' about their own lives. You can't really go wrong with that."
Rahne looked down at the water, and watched its gentle motion. "Perhaps I have been selfish. I should take that advice to heart."
That was about as much progress as Irvine was likely to make, he was pretty sure. Everything he said seemed to make her feel worse, not better, and it was cruel to both of them to go on like that. He gave a lopsided attempt at a smile. "Not selfish. You just haven't practiced yet. C'mon, Miss Rahne, we'll go in and get some tea or somethin' and you can practice askin' me about me," he joked in his lazy cowboy drawl.
The corner of Rahne's mouth twitched up in a tiny smile. "I do make a good pot of tea." She sloshed out of the water and stood dripping on the shore. "Alright, then. Let's go in."
Illyana waved as she caught sight of Irvine already standing by the lake, then glanced over at Rahne impatiently. "Come on, you said you wanted to do this. Irvine's harmless. I flirt with him all the time."
"I'm not sure I should have said that." Rahne didn't have to be physically pushed, or anything. But she had even dressed defensively, done up in trousers and a voluminous blouse that somewhat obscured her figure.
For a guy who was usually up for anything, even Irvine thought this might end up pretty weird. He just couldn't say no when Illyana asked, because boy did she know how to butter him up. So, there he was, kicking around barefoot at the edge of the lake, wearing loose cargo shorts and a faded (but definitely not vintage) Jim Morrison t-shirt. He looked up when he heard the girls coming, grinned behind his sunglasses, and waved lazily. "Afternoon, ladies."
Illyana, meanwhile, had given Rahne a "don't you dare back out now" look before turning back to Irvine with a smile. "You're the best, you know that right? Have you guys met before? Irvine, this is Rahne - she lives down the hall from me. Rahne, Irvine. He was my dance partner last year." She pouted at him playfully. "He went and graduated, though, which was just evil of him, because now I have to find a new partner and I'll never find one as good." After all, it was a flirting lesson. She might as well give a demo.
"Hullo, Irvine. I'm very pleased t' meet you." She clasped her hands together nervously. He was a rather handsome boy, with an easy demeanor, she could see. Exactly the kind of person to put her on edge.
Irvine didn't have his hat, and Rahne didn't seem inclined to shake hands, so he sketched her a little bow by way of greeting. "Hiya, Miss Rahne. I sure hope you ain't believed everything Yana's told you about me. 'Cause maybe I was her dance partner, but she was the one makin' me look good. Whoever she sweet-talks next year is gonna look twice as good."
"Lies. All lies." Illyana rolled her eyes at Irvine, then grinned. "You see what I mean? He's a natural."
"He--you seem like a very charming boy," Rahne agreed, twisting her hands together.
Rahne looked nervous as hell, and Irvine hated to see such a sweet-looking girl in distress. "Yeah? Thanks for noticin'," he said with a genial grin. "C'mon, you ladies wanna dip your feet in the lake? I won't splash nobody, cross my heart. Yana, though," he added confidentially to Rahne, "Keep an eye on 'er."
It was hot. Rahne glanced up ruefully at the glaring sun. She'd practically bathed in sunscreen before coming out here, but that didn't help with the temperature. She looked back down to Irvine. "She is the type, isn't she?" Rahne joked drily.
Illyana sniffed. "Just for that, I'm not helping with the class." She turned her back on them pointedly, glancing over her shoulder just once to wrinkle her nose at Irvine and smirk, and headed off to go put her feet in the lake.
Irvine rolled his eyes, genially. "She dishes it out, she won't take it," he explained, even though that wasn't completely true. Yana rolled with his teasing pretty well, but there were other ways to flirt that might suit Rahne better. "I get the feeling teasing people ain't really your style, Miss Rahne. Sound about right?"
"I...I'm not sure. I guess I don't, usually." She rubbed her arm. "I was taught to speak with a mild tongue."
"You gotta work what works for you," said Irvine, dragging his foot through the water to make it swirl. "Try to be somebody else, you're gonna get nowhere fast. Bein' kind and honest is... well, it's crazy attractive," he said with a crooked smile.
She turned slightly away, showing him her profile. "Really? It hasn't seemed to impress anyone here much."
Irvine paused in his sloshing around and blinked curiously over at Rahne. "Seriously? Who you been tryin' to impress? Cause they gotta be idiots."
Illyana snorted and leaned back on her hands. "You might want to define honest," she pointed out to Irvine. "That might be a good start." Not that she was an expert on honest, because yeah. Not. But she was pretty sure it didn't mean pissy and judgmental.
Rahne whirled on Yana. "What's that s'posed t' mean?" Considering the source, Rahne suspected that it was some sort of attack on her virtue.
"Just that I'm pretty sure that when he says 'honest', he doesn't mean, 'accuse everyone of all the horrible, scandalous things you've imagined they're up to, even though you don't have any proof'," Illyana retorted.
Rahne blinked at the other girl, stumped. "Illyana...you just walkin' down the street in my home town would be scandalous." Her very existence, her wardrobe, her ultra-blonde hair...those were day-to-day bulk of why Yana was a scandal. That and very little more.
Illyana scowled, and turned her head to appeal to Irvine. "See?"
"Saaay, now, that ain't what she said," Irvine reminded Illyana, appearing just as calm as could be even though he hadn't been able to get a word in edgewise for a second there. "All she said is she comes from someplace different, right? I come from a real little town, and maybe girls wear tiny shorts there, but no guys admit to likin' musical theater, if you know what I mean. Half the guys at school 'd be a scandal where I come from. Y'know?"
Illyana shrugged and turned her attention back to the lake. "Whatever. Everything I do is scandalous, anyway."
Rahne nodded her head eagerly. "It's only a matter of fact, not meant in judgement. Where I come from, skirts are t' be worn below the knee, an' a girl ought t' be quiet and mannerly. You'd be a scandal. That's all I said." Rahne gave a bit of a hopeless look to Irvine. She could feel herself floundering.
Jeez. It sounded like Rahne came from a town even smaller than Irvine's. Sounded as bad as that town in Footloose, even. "She still came to you for advice," Irvine pointed out toward Yana's turned back, but when he looked over to Rhane, he made a small 'cut it out' motion, and hoped she got the hint that he meant to drop the subject before it got any worse. Give Illyana some time to chew on that and chill, maybe.
"So, Miss Rahne, quiet and mannerly, huh? Nothin' wrong with manners, but it's gonna be a little tough for you to talk to somebody you like by bein' quiet," he said with a small smile. "Any guy worth knowin' is gonna want to know what's on your mind."
Rahne kicked a bit at the loosely-packed beach, sending up a slight spray. "That's what's so nice about Phillip. He asks me how I'm doing. And he listens...real quiet."
"Quiet type, is he?" Irvine echoed, returning to somewhat lazily sloshing in the shallows of the lake. "D'you want to get him talkin' more, or keep him listenin'? Or... " He grinned crookedly. "I reckon when you really like somebody, it don't matter too much?"
"Mmhmm. I like it so much. I bet there's no one else in the world so wonderfully perfect." Rahne had been looking at her feet for a while, and she finally made a decision. She kicked off her shoes and walked straight up to the lake. For now, she only let the water lap at her very toes. "I'm tired of being told how to be."
Irvine mentally ran back over everything he'd said so far. Crap. He hadn't been 'telling her how to be', had he? Pretty sure he hadn't. "Well, heck, whatcha need my advice for, then?" he teased warmly, exaggerating his Midwestern flat drawl for comedy.
Toes curling in the muck, Rahne inched further into the water. "I'm not very good at people."
"You seem to be doin' all right," Irvine noted. "Why d'you reckon you're okay talking to me? I'm cute, and I listen." There was an answer that Irvine was pretty sure of, but he wondered if Rahne saw it, too.
Rahne felt her cheeks burning, and she hoped that it just looked like she'd gotten too much sun. "You seem...safe."
"I told you he was," Illyana pointed out, having been listening to the conversation.
"I'm takin' all this as a compliment," laughed Irvine, gesturing to the entire situation. "But y'know, Miss Rahne, you aren't trying to impress me. You aren't worrying about saying the right or wrong thing. That's why it's easy, see? The harder you try to impress your guy, the harder it's gonna get. Believe me -- I trip myself up way more than anybody else."
"So it's hopeless, you're sayin'," she pointed out. "You bein' the expert and still do no better."
Illyana rolled her eyes and looked over at Rahne, exasperated. "No, he's saying to stop trying to impress Phil and just talk to him, genius. If he doesn't like you for you, it's just going to suck anyway." She should know. She got her feet an gave Irvine an apologetic look. "Unless you need me for something, I'm out of here."
Irvine cast Illyana a return glance that was just short of pleading for her to stay, but if she and Rahne were going to be at odds, that wasn't going to help anybody. He gave her an understanding little wave. "I didn't say 'hopeless' even one time," he answered Rahne with the same relaxed ease. "And I surely ain't no expert. The big secret that nobody ever admits is that we're all just stumbling along as best we can. If there was a formula or something that could make the person you like fall in love with you, then everybody'd do it. Right?"
"I suppose so." She waded further into the water, giving herself the pleasure of sloshing all she liked. She was trying her best to ignore Illyana, her back turned to the other girl. "I always thought it would just...happen." Like at the dance, how it had just happened that she was so suddenly swept away.
"Good luck with that." Because yeah, it didn't happen that way, did it? The magical moments were awesome, but they didn't last. Illyana gave Irvine an apologetic look, directed one last glare at Rahne's back, and disappeared.
Sometimes, Irvine thought, it must be real nice to have Illyana's powers and be able to just poof away from somewhere you didn't want to be. No long, weird, walking-away moments. He returned his attention back to Rahne, and smiled crookedly. "Maybe it does for some folks. I d'know. It sounds too easy to say 'just be yourself,' but I figure, you want that person to like you for who you really are, y'know? Your real self. That's who you gotta show 'em."
Rahne clasped her hands together and held them close to her chest--too tense to be a prayer. "My real self? I'm not sure I can." It seemed closed away from even her, closed in a shell where her da had locked it, her manifestation had scrambled it, and John had battered against the door. The God she'd grown up with had been a crushing God. Rahne wished that the God that Jeanne-Marie had told her about would speak to her; he was meant to make her heart unfurl like a rose. "What did I do to make Illyana so angry?"
Irvine rubbed at the back of his neck thoughtfully, trying to decide how to explain this, since she'd asked. "I don't think she was mad. I think she was frustrated and didn't wanna get mad. Y'know how..." he made a helpless gesture with one hand, looking out over the lake.
"You know, sometimes you see something so clear that you know it for truth, but other people don't see the same thing? It gets hard to understand how come they don't see something that's so clear to you. It's hard to keep your patience, yeah? My guess is, Illyana sees a sweet, caring girl called Rahne who could have all kinds'a boyfriends... if she just saw herself that clear," he finished up with a hopefully crooked smile. At least Illyana wasn't around to get on his case if he'd got it wrong.
"But she's wrong. That's wrong." Though it was nice to hear that maybe she looked that way from the outside. "I...they say I grew up in a cult." That was the shortest and actual sweetest way she could describe her horror show childhood. "I don't know how to be with people."
Cocking his head, Irvine said plainly, "You're here with me and you're doin' just fine. What other people say doesn't get to define you. Only you get to do that. What's the story that you wanna tell about you?"
Rahne stood in silence for some time. Wordlessly, she began to wade further into the pond, until she was soaked up to her hips. "I don't know. I think my whole story is a bad story."
Irvine hung back, keeping a close eye on her. The lake was pretty quiet and still on such a warm day, but still, he didn't know if Rahne knew how to swim. And he was no lifeguard. "Then I'm sorry to say it, Miss Rahne, but that's the story you're tellin' even if you don't know it. Makes it tougher on folks who want to like you if you're tellin' them why they shouldn't."
Rahne suddenly felt prickly all over. She stiffened. "Then what am I supposed to do?" she demanded. "I cannae how my life started. Or how it's gone. And I've changed so much to try and fit in at this bloody school. All for naught, I see."
"I didn't say that," Irvine replied, still calm and genial, though he was starting to feel like he was repeating himself. "You can't control where you came from, but you can control how you talk about it, how you talk about you, and how you talk about other people. You got every opportunity in the world here," he said with broad gesture toward the house and grounds, "to be whoever the hell you want. You can be true to yourself without talking yourself down. You can keep what's important from the past and toss whatever you don't like. All you gotta be is what feels right to you, and I gotta say, there ain't nothin' more attractive than that."
"How, tell, does one tell a different story when there is no different story?" She shook her head and, slowly picking her way deeper into the water. It was a far shot from washing in the Jordan, but it would have to do for Rahne. "It would be gauche to pull out gory details. I've been trying, you know. I've been trying to make friends from the good things I know. I can bake, I can knit gifts for people. I wanted to read with Sharon but she moved to New York before we could really start with the bible. And that's all I know, and it's done me little good."
Irvine thought about that for a moment, then said slowly, "There's no guarantees, but if you ain't sure about what you got to say, then ask him about what he's got to say. Now, with Coulson, I understand, he's a little tight-lipped about himself. But you can't go wrong askin' him about his favorites. Movies, food, places to go in town. Most people like talkin' about their own lives. You can't really go wrong with that."
Rahne looked down at the water, and watched its gentle motion. "Perhaps I have been selfish. I should take that advice to heart."
That was about as much progress as Irvine was likely to make, he was pretty sure. Everything he said seemed to make her feel worse, not better, and it was cruel to both of them to go on like that. He gave a lopsided attempt at a smile. "Not selfish. You just haven't practiced yet. C'mon, Miss Rahne, we'll go in and get some tea or somethin' and you can practice askin' me about me," he joked in his lazy cowboy drawl.
The corner of Rahne's mouth twitched up in a tiny smile. "I do make a good pot of tea." She sloshed out of the water and stood dripping on the shore. "Alright, then. Let's go in."
no subject
no subject