I said I'm fine

[Jay Carpenter]

((This thread is meant to take place the morning of "We dont want to anger morven" ))


Jay said it again before she could even ask. “I’m fine.”

He always said it first—cutting her off at the pass, like it was a script they both memorized. But Natalie never looked at him with pity. Not once. Her gaze was something else entirely. Grim determination. Like she believed if she stared hard enough, if she willed it strongly enough, she could patch the fractures together and force him back into sanity.

"I’m not insane", he told himself, looking in the bathroom mirror. "Just had a moment."

"A moment? Hell, Rasputin had a moment. What you had was Chernobyl with a side of sarin gas."

"It wasn’t a meltdown", he argued with himself. "Just... a weak spot. Brittle. Tape it up. Duct tape. Good as new." He grimaced as the razor knicked a chunk out of his jaw. 

"Yeah? All the duct tape in the world won’t glue back together what you broke, dude."

"Yeah, well—fuck you."

"Fuck you."

He tapped the razor against the edge of the sink. Too hard. The plastic handle snapped and the blade went skittering across the tile with a sound like teeth breaking.

He gripped the counter. Hung his head. Breathed deep. Tried to shut the screaming part of his brain down—the part that ran reruns of the worst nights on full volume.

This was how mornings went now. Cold. Regimented. Fractured. A battle before the sun even cleared the horizon.

In the kitchen, he fastened his uniform jacket between bites of toast and mouthfuls of coffee. He eyed the bourbon bottle on the top shelf and, for a second, actually pictured it. A splash in the mug. Liquid courage. Liquid forgetfulness. 

But no. Not today. Not yet.

“I’ll be at the Garden today,” he said when Natalie entered. She was barefoot, wrapped in a robe she never seemed to realize made her look like home.

He hadn’t left since Jared’s wedding. Just stayed. Moved in like fog. They hadn’t talked about it, hadn’t needed to. She never asked questions, and he never offered more than the daily itinerary—where he was headed, what he thought he’d do. A performance of normalcy, and she never called him out on how much it all smelled like bullshit.

Adrian had gone quiet after their last encounter. Eerily quiet. Jay told himself that meant he’d finally given up. Whatever fantasy he’d been entertaining, whatever plan had involved Jay being part of it. So far, no search parties. No demands. Not even a text.

Until they noticed he wasn’t showing up for that particular duty, he was going to do exactly what he wanted. Even if it wasn’t anything at all.

“Supposed to meet some ambassador or diplomat or somebody,” he muttered, rinsing his mug and leaving it in the sink like a breadcrumb trail back to his version of stability.

He passed her on the way out. “Talk to you later. Be good.”

And then, soft, almost automatic, he kissed her cheek.

Like he was still the man she thought he was.

[Natalie Grey]

If Jay noticed the sterility of the apartment, the fact Natalie had apparently been living out of a suitcase, or the way she didn’t seem to know where anything actually was, he gave no sign. She’d never spent much time here, less now the renovations made the Belizna estate habitable, and when she did it was more often the sofa she fell asleep on rather than in her own bed. She wasn’t even sure she’d ever actually used the kitchen for anything more than brewing coffee before now. As such her life and habits had shifted dramatically since Emily and Jared’s wedding, but despite that it was with no conscious effort on Natalie’s part to be there. Home had never been a thing constructed out of walls.

Jay was skating atop the edge of normality without ever really engaging in the world around him. Whatever else floated about in his subconscious he’d clearly taken her words to heart, and literally, but he hadn’t landed anywhere stable enough to make the epiphany anything more than a holding pattern. They hadn’t discussed his moving in, and initially she’d been relieved he didn’t seem to plan on simply disappearing again. She wasn’t entirely sure that was a fear which would ever fade. But the domesticity was like scar tissue; the kind of pretense she knew had to snap eventually. He would cut and run when the reality set in: the endless march of indistinguishable humdrum days, the disconnect from the people around him. She knew that because it was a life he’d run from before.

She was an early riser, but certainly not a morning person, and didn’t interfere in his regimented routines while she saw to her own. The coexistence would have been pleasant in other circumstances; at times it felt natural in a way she couldn't quite put her finger on, like a heartbeat thread between them. At other times it was a little like living with a ghost who liked to share its itinerary. Whether he ever did the things he said he was going to do she was never sure, but he came back each night, and never in the kind of state he’d been in when she met him in the park. Jay didn’t share his pain, and she didn't give voice to the demons they shared their life with, no matter how poorly concealed they were. Her resolve was iron; there was little he could have done to shake her – he’d already tried that once, and failed, despite the harm she’d never admit to him he’d caused her. But Edward’s words to her stuck nonetheless, about him being a soldier first. She wondered if she was enough.

That morning when he kissed her cheek like some stepford suburbia, her brow rose though. Had it been a self aware irony it would have amused her, but he was a thousand miles away, and she wasn’t even sure he saw the look she gave him. She could pretend; she spent her life doing it, in various forms. But there was a point at which pretending was no longer self-preservation but just a slower death. She was never usually reticent with the sharpness of her tongue, but for now it was a void she let him linger in; not from kindness or pity, but because she wasn’t sure he knew how to live without it.