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!INBOX // EUDIO.
    ( AUTOMATED MESSAGE ) jem here. leave a message, ta. [ text | email | voicemail | videochat | visit ] |
( AUTOMATED MESSAGE ) jem here. leave a message, ta. [ text | email | voicemail | videochat | visit ] |
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Could always sell it. Or hold onto it all and pass them off at Christmas.
[Or whatever it was they called Christmas here.
The way Freddie cares about people is odd but it's not subtle, either. Jem doesn't think to push the issue. The scowl drops in favour of a look probably best kept away from Freddie altogether or at the very least, never shown this up close. Cautious, worried, empathetic; she drapes an arm over his middle and sets her chin down on his chest. ]
You're not fucked off about his stuff.
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[A vague, noncommital wince of an expression completes that thought. Selling it means revisiting it, thinking about it, and more: passing off pieces of someone Freddie actually gave a shit about to people he doesn't.
The likely outcome is that he'll ignore it, leave the place abandoned until the administration clear it. No decision made on his part.
His arm flattens as she lays down, his head tilted down to look at her.]
No. [He doesn't give a shit about his stuff. And his tone remains as studiedly casual as he adds:] He really could be dead. It was that kind of world.
[But even that's not all the reason. And her talking about Christmas is enough to make him share more of it.]
It's this place. See, at home I'd have had him once and forgotten it. Here you just keep... circling back.
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It must be harder on Freddie, because she thinks he spends so much time trying to keep people at a distance. Safe and out of the way. Convenient. Jem looks up at him with maybe her eyes looking a little bigger given that she's tired, hair not particularly tidy, and wonders if Freddie spends enough time here, might he grow out of this?
She strokes his side in what, at first, might be seen as idle, distracted movements. ] It's okay to say you liked him, too.
[Her smile is small, lips pressed together and the corners pinched. ] Don't know if you noticed, but it's just us here and I'm not gonna start a viral campaign about how Freddie has a heart after all.
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[He drums his fingers over its approximate location. Of course he has. It's reachable only by some strange and circuitous routes, rather than the usual line up of arteries, but it's there. Even he doesn't pretend that.
It's a small movement to lean forward and tip his forehead against hers.]
And he was all right, I suppose. Despite the bloody poetry. [Laying back again, it's a moment before he adds-] The other one's all right, too. So. Waiting for that to explode.
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[Is she joking? It's hard to tell in the dark, with half her grin obscured by shadows. This is seemingly the most positive part of all he's just said, because while her grin lasts, it does shrink in size as she considers all the ways he might self-sabotage himself.
Jem's an expert at it at this point, so. It's a fairly colourful list.]
- It'll explode if you expect it to, Freddie. [so, maybe ... don't. ]
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[Yeah, Freddie has no idea how that happened either, except that he wore a suit well and had a soft underbelly beneath it, put up admirably with demands but wouldn't be walked over.
It's a rare combination that can hold Freddie's attention even half as long as John Buchanan did.
The other John, funnily enough, has matched him. And they hadn't even been fucking.]
And you know that's not true. It's when you stop expecting it. [He has his own expertise on this front.]
Anyway, other John's a grumpy old fuck but he's over here quite a bit, when he's speaking to me. You'll probably meet him. So I'm just telling you, in advance, don't say anything.
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And what am I not meant to be saying? 'Freddie talked about you once. He tries to act cool about it, so that probably means he likes you a lot and respects your general opinions'?
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He doesn't have opinions. He has niggles, irritations and things he's grumpy about.
[As for what she shouldn't say. Maybe it's obvious when he brings a photo up and the man on the screen is not - like 99 percent of the people Freddie brings back to the flat - hip and lithe and on roughly the same rung of the young and beautiful ladder that he occupies.
It's a man who must be comfortably occupying his forties by now and doesn't look especially young for it (though not old for it, either. Middle age spreading the usual places. Hair starting to fade. Wearing a sweatervest.
Freddie's already gritting his teeth for the response.]
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[She's. Not exactly laughing, but she almost is. It's coming, threatening to burst through the grin she directs up at him. ] Freddie, is there something you want to talk about?
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Oh god, the thing is, he does. Jem's shown him a picture of her dad, when she came back. He does. Nothing like Freddie's - with his mop of blond hair and ridiculous moustache that his son couldn't hope to emulate. But he looks. He looks a bit like...
Horror dawns slowly over Freddie's face.]
....Fuck off.
[The phone's snatched back.]
Jesus.
[That's it, he's rolling her off him and vanishing under the covers, crawling down the bed as if to make an escape at the opposite end.]
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Oh no you don't! Get up here, Freddie!
[She goes for the body flop method of flinging her entire body ontop of him to hold him down. A good plan, except where he might suffocate. ]
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I fucked your fucking dad. [Muffled through eiderdown.] Just smother me.
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[But she's still laughing herself to death. This is is incredible and incredible terrible. She shimmies enough to drag the covers down from his face and she beams, like she's won the lottery. Truly this is horrible, but it's hilarious.
She cannot even believe. ] He's wearing a sweater vest, Freddie!
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[He wasn't wearing one. Technicalities. Here, Jem, have the world's loudest groan. Meanwhile Freddie will be closing his eyes as his last defence.]
Against a wall. In an alley. After I pissed him off enough to make him threaten to snap my spine. [No wait, that wasn't the loudest groan. This one is.] I'd do it again.
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Very romantic. Had no idea you liked it rough. [She sort of guessed, but. ] So I mean, how long have you fancied my dad, Freddie?
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I don't like it rough, I just like it. [Truth be told the vanilla fucks outnumber anything else ten to one. Getting kinky with strangers is something idiots do - like Dean - and Freddie rarely fucks friends.
Rarely. Sigh.]
And I don't fancy him. I've known him months. Thought he was straight, or at least saving himself for the day his best friend finally decides the one thing he hasn't thoroughly investigated is John's arse. We'd never...
[Freddie had offered to, before. When John was somewhere dark and he hadn't known how else to fix him. But he'd been turned down.]
He doesn't fuck anyone.
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[There must be a limit everyone has before they eventually succumb to Freddie Baxters unique charm. Jem's known him nearly a year, though, and all she's done is kissed him. And moved in with him. It's all a bit backwards.
Jem's not one to drag a joke out too long, though. After all, why run it to its death now when she can bring it up later at an opportune moment?
So: ] Worried it might get weird, if you do him again?
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[Though theres still a trace of a victor's smile tugging the corners of Freddie's mouth as he says it. That gets coupled with a wince.]
It already is weird. He spent half a week avoiding me then got me a birthday present. [Managing to extract a hand from the duvet, he rubs it across his face.]
See, this is the problem with fucking people you know. Because, once you've done it, it's always there. You're talking about, I don't know, quadratic equations, and the possibility you could just shut up and fuck again's sitting there, waiting to be noticed. And then it becomes this regular... thing. It's weird.
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[This is rich, coming from a girl who over thinks every aspect of her life to the point of self sabotage. But she's also the best person to recognize it, too. Jem knows what it's like to fall for people too easily. Gary, who she had looked up to since she'd been fourteen and who had then made her feel worthwhile. He'd built her up, taken the time to be with her and she'd fallen for it (and him) hook, line, sinker. Cole, who had been dangerous and vulnerable and lovely - who she'd fucked three times, two with Petre there - and who she'd loved so much that thinking of him now makes her chest hurt. He hadn't loved her back, not the way she wanted him to. Petre who is, at his core, evil and ultimately probably terrible for her in the long run. But who is also compassionate, who gives her the attention and the time she needs; who listens and who understands all her worst qualities and enjoys them. She loves Petre enough to do things which, a year ago, would have been utterly unthinkable.
She doesn't know what it's like to fuck casually like Freddie. There's Raven, who is still a dear friend. Who she'd sleep with again and know that it wouldn't be a thing. But it could be if it happened enough times. They're both damaged enough and crave love enough for it.
She watches Freddie very carefully in between that last sentence and the next. ] I don't mean that you're wrong, though. Just that you're thinking about it too much. If we fucked, for example, right now - and if we fucked again, a week later and maybe a few times after that, are you worried one of us would get a dose of the feelings?
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Well, you know when one person gets a dose of anything it spreads like wildfire. That's what they say at the clinic.
[Shifting, he throws the loose side of the duvet over her and rolls her in it, until she's a burrito and he's - loosely - pinning her down.]
How did it happen with Petre, then?
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He tried for months to bone everyone in my old flat, actually. He's not a quitter.
[It had been very, very new for her. It still is in a lot of ways. ] But we were just mates, for a while. First time we did anything I was so hungover I nearly cried at his doorstep. It was really attractive, honestly.
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Rumtila?
[Never 4get.]
So you were just mates, and then you started fucking and now you're planning to elope. [This isn't helping disprove his point, tbh.]
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It's a nice memory, that horrendous walk to Petre's old flat while desperately wanting to lie on the pavement and die. Jem shrugs as much as she can inside her burrito. ] Oh, he'll never marry me. He might melt at the altar. My point is that that wasn't a guaranteed thing. Petre's fucking a million people and he's not in love with them!
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[He ducks away, stretching out on the bed with his elbows on the pillow.]
It happens though, and it happens the other way round - a few fucks then disaster - way more often.
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But Freddie talks himself round and round, talks in honesty and then back pedals enough to make you forget he was honest about he feels at all. She huffs out a sigh, deflating a little. She's lost the thread of where he's trying to get with this, of what he's trying to say. ]
Your a big boy Freddie, falling for somebody isn't going to kill you here.
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