Who: Fever, Helena, and those threading with them What:January non-event things. When: All month. Where: Across the isle. Warning(s): To be noted in threads individually
"You don't have to do a single thing to 'live up' to it, don't you know that? You have that name because you're my family. That's all the reason I need to call you a Clayton." He pokes the tip of her nose, making his point firmly.
It's his look that does it, and how close to the surface all her emotions have been. She had once told Degas that she couldn't cry, that she felt simply incapable, no matter what she did. But now it wells up, making her eyes shine, and though the motions are unfamiliar, the emotions are known to all.
It is no simple, elegant tear falling, but a sob that escapes her, her hand going to her mouth to stop her from making more noise - there's still other people in this house - even as her eyes burn with unshed tears. The release of feeling is welcome, but does the mechanical action have to feel like nothing else can get done? It's almost enough to make one wish for fifty more years of averting it.
This is a man who has comforted his children through tough days at school and first heartbreaks and pets dying. He knows how to hold his daughter while she cries, how to rub her back and tell her it's alright, to let it all out.
Somewhere that she won't feel like at any moment someone's going to comment. Zivia might wander back, or Mulcahy, and she's going to feel embarrassed to know that they saw, so she forces herself to swallow noise and tears and - oh, that's remarkably difficult to do when it can actually come out.
She can hold it together long enough to get outside, breathing in the crisp air to try and steady herself. She can keep it together. Don't cry on his birthday. Even if ultimately it comes from a place of happiness, of relief, he shouldn't need to comfort her through it on a day when she wants him to feel cared about.
Deep breaths. And maybe don't look at him. It still all threatens to boil over again.
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Giving herself a birthday, a name - all things to anchor her in her skin. To grow roots, and let them gain strength.
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Pulling back just a little, she uses her thumb to wipe the teartracks from his face.
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She ends up touching their foreheads together, her eyes briefly closing.
"And may I do enough to live up to the name you've bestowed upon me."
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"Don't make me start to shed tears, now. Else it'll feel too much like you're giving me a present on your birthday."
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He takes a small step back, looking at her like a proud father.
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It is no simple, elegant tear falling, but a sob that escapes her, her hand going to her mouth to stop her from making more noise - there's still other people in this house - even as her eyes burn with unshed tears. The release of feeling is welcome, but does the mechanical action have to feel like nothing else can get done? It's almost enough to make one wish for fifty more years of averting it.
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Somewhere that she won't feel like at any moment someone's going to comment. Zivia might wander back, or Mulcahy, and she's going to feel embarrassed to know that they saw, so she forces herself to swallow noise and tears and - oh, that's remarkably difficult to do when it can actually come out.
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Deep breaths. And maybe don't look at him. It still all threatens to boil over again.