xp_logs | Arthur and Jess (backdated) (Reply)

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Arthur brings Jess some reading material while she's in the medlab; he is a delight, which is terrifying.

The medlab was boring. Okay, 'boring' was a significant upgrade from what she remembered of her recent life - adjusting to no longer expecting her mind to give out was a whole thing - but Jess couldn't remember the last time she'd spent this long just sitting around. Sure, she slept a lot, but there was a lot of wakefulness to contend with, and the most she'd been able to fill it with was flipping mindlessly through magazines.

That was what she was doing - an issue of Country Living that she was quickly learning to hate - when she heard a noise at the door, and looked up, brow creasing.

What she was hit first with was the smile as a blonde man with kind eyes poked his head in following the knock. The smile widened as he registered she was awake, its brilliance only growing as he invited himself through the doorframe in response to what he had taken as acknowledge. Arthur Centino's smiles were a lot like radiation, after all. Their effect only increased in proximity.

"Jess, good! I caught you awake. Excellent."

He deposited a fresh stack of magazines on a nearby side table before turning to her with an honest, caring gaze.

Jess recoiled, as far as one could recoil into pillows and a hospital bed. The sheer force of the man's smile - not to mention the intensity of his gaze - made her immediately and viscerally uncomfortable. She had to swallow convulsively, mentally groping for words, before she could manage to spit out a faint, "Who the hell are you?"

He wasn't even phased. In fact, he advanced.

"So. I wasn't sure what you might be interested in these days, so I got a little of everything. Popular Mechanics, Seventeen, Jezebel, Reader's Digest. Plus I got some cozy romance and mysteries. Pumpkin Spice and Not So Much looks nice and light, but so does Probable Paws." Were his eyes shining? Were there literal sparkles?

Jess knew he was speaking English, but the words themselves made no fucking sense. "Probable . . . Paws?" Her voice didn't squeak, that was just incredulity.

She couldn't back up any further, but she managed to press back against the raised back of the hospital bed just a little bit more. The railings were up on the bed, so escape through a painful dive to the floor was going to be difficult, but it wasn't out of the question. She decided to try again; maybe he was looking for a doctor and was just . . . lost. "Who. Are. You."

"Oh!" Hands were brought up quickly to show no ill intent as Arthur backpedaled. "My name is Arthur. We were friends," and he leaned into that word to indicate the possibility one could toss in a 'best' or 'close' or 'good' before then, "when we worked together to help people. Before."

His smile brightened as he reached toward one of the books tentatively. "And this is about a cat who solves crime. This one is also a witch, I think."

"A witch?" Jess's voice wavered uncertainly. She took a calming breath, which did not help. "You're - you're absolutely sure that we were friends?"

"Who but a friend would have been by your bedside all this time?" An honest question. Whatever the answer was, it was Arthur. "We saved the world together at least once. That forms a very tight bond of friendship." This was open to debate on either point.

"I - my bedside? You were at my bedside? Here?" Jessica glanced at the chair beside the bed, wondering how she'd managed to not notice. "Wait, did you say saved the world?"

This garnered a thoughtful bite of the lip and a contemplative look at the ceiling. "Well, don't we all save someone's world everyday by lifting their spirits? Learning to say sorry and meaning it? Grabbing lunch with an old pal who hasn't been returning your texts for years? The other stuff was a lot smaller when you really think about it."

He shrugged. "I have mostly been leaving you things to keep you entertained. Haller suggested not interrupting your healing."

Now she knew where Country Living had come from, at least. It was literally the only thing she felt she knew in the context of this conversation, but it was something. "You know Haller?" she asked, desperately.

"Oh! He's my counselor too."

Too? "He's not my - " Okay, what did that guy count as? Jessica dismissed this question as irrelevant to her current situation. "So you're the one who's been bringing the magazines? Uh - thanks?" Was that what you said to someone who had just placed a cat detective novel next to your cup of ice chips, and might be insane? Yes, Jessica absolutely was not going to aggravate someone so obviously unstable.

"You are welcome!" He absolutely beamed at her. The sparkles danced in the air, but the fact that he was silhouetted against a nearby window had to be the source of that. "Although now that I'm lucky to catch you awake, I can get you something you might actually want to read."

He held up one last book, one not about pumpkin spice or cat detectives, in example. "I tried my best."

The copy of Harriet the Spy wasn't the same beat-up paperback edition as the one Jess kept in a box under her bed, untouched for years, but her face changed visibly upon seeing it anyway - looking at Arthur less like a crazy person than someone deeply and ineffably confusing. Taken aback, she said, "I - that one is - okay. How did you - "

Arthur's gaze traveled to the book in his hand as he considered it carefully. "Huh, he concluded extremely quickly, "That checks out." Harriet's adventures were placed reverently down with the rest of the assorted reading materials. "That happens. I had forgotten that you'd have to get used to it again, but my particular talent involves being lucky."

Jess squinted at him, confused. "You're . . . lucky?"

"Lucky!"

"Are we just going to keep saying that word until it loses all meaning, or could you maybe explain?"

The pleasant smile Arthur had been wearing flattened at its edges, deflating to match his tone. "I have been told that that I influence the quantum strings of probability linking everything in the universe by altering the relationships between objects and events toward what I desire or want."

This was delivered in a flat monotone with the dispassion of over practice.

Then, like wiping the chalkboard clean, that Arthur evaporated into the smiling man who had previously been in the room, "It isn't all that much."

Jessica's eyebrows had climbed a little further up with every word, none of which actually explained anything to her in a meaningful way, but which sounded incredibly complicated. "Yeah, sure," she said, a little faintly. "Sounds, uh, totally normal and not at all batshit insane for a person to be able to do."

She got an honest laugh at this. "I've discovered I can read an object's past by touching it. Probably easier to lead with that."

"Make that two very normal things that anyone would expect to hear about in their daily life." Jess's voice was dry, but at least she wasn't trying to dive off the hospital bed anymore; something about the surreality of Arthur's answer seemed to have calmed her, somehow. "Is that what you do here? Investigate . . . items? Luckily?"

"Yes! It is!" Those three words dripped with happy self-satisfaction. "Well, not here. I work in the city. You haven't fallen into one of those episodes where you've been in a mental institution the entire time. Don't worry."

Now there was a truly horrifying thought that actually hadn't yet occurred to her. "Thanks," she said, slightly strained, "That won't keep me up at night now at all."

"That's all I want! It is important that you feel safe as you recover," he beamed as the sarcasm just whiffed right over him. "Is there anything else I can get for you, or any questions I can answer?"

She pulled herself back from thinking about ways to interrogate Haller about whether she was actually in an institution and this was all an elaborate ruse without seeming like she actually needed to be in one. "I, uh, I don't think so? Unless you'd like to sneak a bottle of whiskey down here." This was added dryly, plausibly deniable, but for the note of hope in her voice. "Thanks for the books, though." Not that she was going to read the detective cat one. Unless she was very bored. Okay, she was going to read it.

This got a chuckle, at least. "I don't even think I'm lucky enough to get away sneaking booze into the med lab. I like your sense of humor."

"Worth a shot," Jess said, just a joke, definitely not serious, nobody could accuse her.

"Ah ha," came accompanied with actual finger guns, "I see what you do there."

In a blessed turn of events, the blonde man had rotated toward being almost out the door. He paused, though. Hovering.

Jess really did try not to ask. But it was impossible. Finally, with an internal sigh and also perhaps an external one, she said, "Okay, what."

From the start of her sigh to the finish, Arthur's expression had gone from cheerfully normal to emotive, puppy dog mode. Were his saucer-big eyes getting a little teary?

"It is just so good to know you are okay, Jessica."

"I - " Jessica was appalled to find that there was a lump in her throat, even though Arthur was clearly saying this about someone she wasn't and couldn't be; she had to swallow against it, something hurting in her chest. "I, um, thanks," she said lamely, not sure what else she could say.