Rebels & Mutineers is set in modern day New Orleans, Louisiana. R&M is fueled by player's plots and group input.
Supernatural people have always had their place in society, hidden in plain sight or locked away for their own protection. New Orleans, a haven for the strange and mysterious and a magnet for the supernatural.
Established: Oct. 27th, 2018 Recently Updated Posts && Recently Updated Threads
05.11.19
As the community reels from the untimely death of Lucia Lovelle, life has to move on. Primrose readies for the annual Prom celebration! Keep your eye out for a event board and have fun!
02.27.19
It's not too late to vote for February's OTM winners! The winners for January, keep an eye out on your messages for your winner's graphics for your signature. Already voted? Make sure you check out the Mardi Gras event board! Party up, have a good time, and enjoy!
Astor put on his jacket and glanced up the stairs. He had asked Eppie to help him do the Christmas shopping for the kids, but he also asked for her help before the whole - situation. He ran his fingers through his blonde hair and sat on one of the overstuffed and overly abused couches in the living room.
He kissed her.
He kissed Eppie and this time there was no cockblocking pyro to keep him from doing it. What made it almost worse was how half of the student population of Phalanx stood around while it happened, what was even worse than any of that was how badly he wanted to do it again. He wrangled his hands, trying to figure out how he was going to spend the rest of the day with Eppie without talking about the damn mistletoe kiss. They had a long list of gifts, pajamas, and mugs that he wanted to get them, and he really could use the help. Even if it was to tell him how to reign things in when all he would want to go all out and spoil the phalanx kids more and more.
"Hey Epp? You still coming?" He called towards where the bedrooms were. They hadn't really talked since the kiss in her classroom and if he hadn't been sure that she was going to slap him with a sexual harassment before, he was positive one was coming his way now. Everything that he created with Phalanx was just going to down away cause he couldn't keep his hands off a beautiful English teacher. He grabbed the keys to the phalanx van from next to the door and waited for Euphemia to join him.
I've seen 'em carry family and the steel drum weight of me.
126 posts
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Post by Euphemia Louise Morgan on Dec 22, 2018 6:37:13 GMT
[googlefont="Courgette"]
taking my time, let the world turn
Plenty of things had gone completely wrong the day Eppie had decided to have Phalanx residents decorate the upper floors. It had started with Jae’s unfortunate outfit and had sort of spiraled into a comfortable chaos. The kids had taken the idea and ran with it – and thrown in a few of their own. She couldn’t even remember who had taken out the mistletoe or who had started the teasing, but she certainly remembered the kiss that followed. It had been stalking the edges of her mind ever since, and despite her best efforts, she kept unboxing it and dissecting it. It had meant something – or it had at least felt like it did. She didn’t know which possibility scared her more.
They had made Christmas shopping plans before all of that, though, and she was intent to keep her word. Their life had lately seemed to consist of awkward periods of time of not-exactly-talking, punctuated here and there by amorphous moments of intimacy. Shopping was innocuous enough. There would be crowded stores, plenty of people, and the anonymity of the crowd. Perhaps they could just make it through the afternoon without feeling any sort of lingering, awkward repercussions from the kiss. After all, it had been at the behest of the students, she reminded herself. When she tested that thought, she remembered the day they had decorated stockings and what may or may not have almost happened then. It was enough to make her head spin.
It would be nice for them to get away from Phalanx. A little retail therapy never hurt anyone, after all.
She heard him call from down below and stiffened as she finishing tying her shoes. She had kept him waiting long enough, and she certainly didn’t want him leaving without her. “Yeah, just grabbing my wallet!” Snatching the billfold off the table, she caught sight of herself in the dresser mirror. Much to her chagrin, she couldn’t let the opportunity pass without fussing with her hair, an action she did not want to dissect at the moment. With one final readjustment, she headed down the stairs and gave Astor an almost sheepish smile. "Sorry; I didn't mean to keep you waiting."
Astor leaned forward, cradling his head in his hands. He kissed her. He crossed the line that he always swore to himself he wasn't going to. They found reasons to touch each other, they spent time together, the way that they spoke to each other, the vulnerability and intimacy they shared with each other under the cover of night or when they managed to be alone in the giant house filled with supernatural youth. He heard her walking down the stairs and stood back up, grinning when he saw her beautiful smiling face. He straighten up, adjusting to make sure that his coat looked right and then smiled at Eppie.
"It's all right, I don't mind waiting for you." Ash grimaced internally at the comment and rubbed the back of his neck, "I mean- um- I don't mind waiting for you right now." Weird again. "Not that I wouldn't want to meet with you any other time, cause I will- I mean- fuck." He had never felt more like an awkward teenager than he did in his moment.
"You ready to get out of here?" He asked, fighting the blush that was invading his cheeks. He shuffled awkwardly and dared to look at Euphemia. He wasn't sure how he was going to get through all of this with her. They both cared deeply about the kids and he wanted to make sure that they all had presents to open on Christmas Day. He considered asking Carver to come along to buy the presents, but already had concerns about what kind of influence the rogue with a brogue had over his residents, and he didn't want to add to it.
He wanted to have the time alone with her, even though he worried about what else dumb he might do towards English teacher.
I've seen 'em carry family and the steel drum weight of me.
126 posts
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Post by Euphemia Louise Morgan on Dec 24, 2018 5:47:44 GMT
[googlefont="Courgette"]
taking my time, let the world turn
Eppie descended the stairs with the same uncertainty that she had been carrying with her since the incident in her classroom. She didn’t know what else to call it; it was very unlike her to admit to throwing assumptions onto things, mostly because she knew that usually lead to disappointment of some sort. She could read novels backwards and forwards; she could pull authorial intent from an errant comma or off word choice. But people generally weren’t books, and though she read them just as easily, she reserved judgment as best she could. She was loathe to say something was set in stone and had never been the type to call it like she saw it. It was the human element that threw her off, every single time. She couldn’t cope with it; there were too many moving parts. Of course, that did not prohibit her from reading into every little thing that happened anyway.
He didn’t mind waiting for her? The thought had her brow raising as she tried to dissect it. Her mind filed the comment - and subsequent stuttering - for worry fodder. She could not fully process it at the moment, not without losing her nerve and running back up to her room. She tugged on her purse as he seemed to search for - and fail to find - whatever words he was really looking for. The smile she offered him was shaky. “Don’t worry; I know what you mean,” she lied. She had absolutely no idea what he meant.
“After you,” she told him, sweeping a hand toward the door. He seemed to be having a hard time standing still and couldn’t quite look at her. Her mind was desperate to connect the dots, and she flailed around for quick fixes, for anything that could balm whatever had upset him. It definitely had something to do with the ki- incident, didn’t it? It only made sense; there was nothing else that it could be. It was possible that he regretted it, but if she dwelled on that too long, the panic came up again. She steeled her spine as they made it out to the van. She was not going to dwell on it, not in the slightest. At least, that was what she kept telling herself.
“Do you have an idea of where to start the shopping?” Yes, shopping. She could think about shopping. Shopping was a safe topic. There were quite a lot of residents to shop for, both student and older, and she was determined to get them something nice, something they wanted and needed.
Astor wanted to kiss her again. He hated himself for it, he hated that he just wanted to pull her close again and kiss her. He was going to get Phalanx shut down cause he couldn't keep his damn hands to himself. Ten years of keeping Phalanx open and an environment free for anyone to come and receive an education and training for their abilities, and all of it was about to fall apart because of an English teacher with the greatest butt he had ever seen. He ran his hands over the scruff on his cheeks and knew that this was going to be impossible. He looked around at the ceiling of the living room, looking for any signs of that pesky mistletoe hanging around. Most of the residents were in the room when it happened, and he hadn't even faced his bratty little sister yet.
He didn't even want to think about facing Jae. That was a migraine waiting to happen.
Ash just fixed his jacket and tried to take back all of the words that he spoke. All of the words that were clearly some out of body experience and he was starting to reconsider his stance on Monroeville. Being locked away in a steel cage seemed like a much easier task than getting through a shopping experience with the woman who he had a huge crush on and just wanted to kiss again. Maybe this time without a room full of teenagers cheering them on.
He grinned when he saw her, and fidgeted with the keys in his hand. He stole a look at her, she was possibly more beautiful? Was that possible? It killed him, but he just wanted to take her out on a date, and spend time with her. "Why thank you." He led her out to the dark van and opened the door for her and walked over to the driver's side of the van. He had let Carver use it for local pick ups of residents, and honestly he never knew what condition he was going to find it back in.
"Well I was thinking about pajamas to start, seemed like everyone needs some. I saw Jaxon is still in those pink sushi ones from his first night. Then maybe a gift for each of them? What do you think?"
I've seen 'em carry family and the steel drum weight of me.
126 posts
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Post by Euphemia Louise Morgan on Dec 25, 2018 23:45:01 GMT
[googlefont="Courgette"]
taking my time, let the world turn
Eppie was grateful that the classrooms were getting a break in use for the holidays. Her power had made it rather difficult to be in the room without a certain memory tapping gently on her shoulder. It would fade eventually, she knew, or just fade into the background noise, but she had not been able to stand in the room without feeling the ghost of the kiss. It made things distracting, and though she instinctively knew that no one else was fretting about it, she certainly was, even as she claimed to not be.
She stood to the side as he opened the door for her, a small smile on her face. Few men would ever even think about opening car doors, and he was going out of his way. Ash, it seemed, always went out of his way to do the best for everyone. “Thank you,” she replied as she slid into the seat. She knew that Carver often used it when he was in town, but it didn’t seem to be in too bad condition at that point. She fastened her seatbelt and smiled as he answered her question.
Eppie knew exactly what he was talking about; they were quite the unfortunate pair of pajama pants. “Pajamas sound like a great idea; a few of them could need an upgrade.” Eppie was a meticulous gift-giver and had always thanked her lucky stars that she was an only child and really only had her grandparents to buy for. In Phalanx, however, there were so many students and residents and faculty, and she wanted to get them all something. She had at least met them all in passing, but it was hard to find personalized, meaningful gifts for those she didn’t really know. Some were easy, though. For Ash, for example, she had had her gift in the works since November. It was already wrapped and hidden under her bed, where she hoped it was safe from praying eyes – and noses.
“As far as gift gifts, what are you thinking? I know that Jaxon likes to draw and Aisling too,” she questioned, considering the others in the house as well. Jae and Jude both seemed to have an affinity for Mexican food. Cora for writing, of course, and Asha…she wasn’t quite sure about Asha but she felt a weird need to get her the absolute perfect present. Even if only to help her pardon her English teacher for kissing her brother in front of what felt like the entire school.
Ash searched the van for any signs of reckless driving, or even for blood stains in the grill as he walked from the passenger side to the driver's. He had known Carver for so long, they were both headstrong kids in Monroeville with too much anger, and depended on their fists more than anything else when they were in Monroeville. They practically fought on sight every time they were in the same room, and even as adults it was more of the same. There was a mutual respect though. Ash knew that Carver could handle anything that went at him, because he got through the same hell of Monroeville that Ash did.
He cherished her sweet voice, her kind thank you to him holding open her door made him feel more like a gentleman and less like her pervy boss who didn't know how to keep appropriate boundaries. He slid into his seat, giving one more scan for empty whisky bottles or even a passed out Carver in the backseat. The last thing he needed was a passed out Irishman when he was going to try to do some real damage control over his life and his friendship with Eppie. Not that he could think of a time when a passed out drunk Irishman in his backseat would ever be a positive situation.
"Oh yeah, there's a place not too far away, they have a whole bunch of prints. Should only take about thirty minutes to get to?" he backed the car out of the space and started on the old roads. "I wrote down everyone, here," He said carefully fishing a list out of his pocket, along with his notes about things that they said they wanted, needed, or liked. "Um, go ahead and cross Riven off the list." He hated to have to kick anyone out of Phalanx, but they had so few rules, he had to handle those who broke the rules. She was caught stealing from Aisling, and by the time Astor heard the fight, he was sure that Riven had gotten punishment enough from the dream manipulator. It could have easily have been left at that. Maybe they would have a room change, but that could have been it. It was just Riven's insistence that none of this was her fault due to circumstances in her life. When Ash tried to explain to her that Phalanx was a home for all people, regardless of their upbringing or life circumstances, they were still expected to cohabit with each other.
She refused. He asked her to leave.
"Definitely art supplies for Jaxon, Aisling, and Cam. Maybe new strings for Jude's guitar?" He turned and focused on the road, "Maybe a new journal for Cora?" He tried to get to know all of the residents of Phalanx, but he really did need Eppie there. She knew the kids better than anyone else, and it was one of the things that he loved the most about her.
Not that he loved her.
Or thought about her like that.
Or naked.
Never in his life had he ever been more grateful that Ep couldn't read his thoughts. He had to remember to never hire a telepath. He just couldn't handle it.
I've seen 'em carry family and the steel drum weight of me.
126 posts
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Post by Euphemia Louise Morgan on Dec 27, 2018 2:48:45 GMT
[googlefont="Courgette"]
taking my time, let the world turn
Most of the time Eppie had been at Phalanx, Carver had been away. She had met enough of him to know that Ash’s total inspection of the vehicle was warranted. He was a bit of a wildcard to say the least, and she was still unsure if he was joking or serious half the time. She had decided early on to smile at him and hope for the best, and so far, he had not done anything too outrageous. Of course, she had heard plenty of stories, enough to know that he was capable of quite a bit of mischief.
As much as she enjoyed the Irishman, she was glad that he was not in attendance on this rendezvous. The alone time with Ash frightened her in a good way, and though she was not quite sure how to put that into words, she was thankful to have the chance for it to be just them. No students, no crises, no residents busting in at inopportune times. No, she was happy for it to be just them. If they could just go the day without something going terribly wrong, it would make her feel a lot better about everything. He probably wasn’t even still thinking about the kiss, as far as she knew. He just wanted to have a nice shopping experience, and he chose her because she knew the kids. He probably expected to talk about work or the students; he probably definitely didn’t want to take about the fact that she could still feel the warmth of his hand.
No, no. Today was going to be uneventful; she wasn’t going to do anything dumb.
Thirty minute car ride. Just the two of them. She and her better sense could make it. “Sounds great.” She took the list from him and fished in her own bag for a pen to make notes on the list. She nodded before finding the indicated name. She drew a thin red line over it. “I heard that she was no longer with us at the house.” She barely remembered Riven, were she honest. She seemed to be the type of girl who never made an impression on people, but she was sad to see her go under such awful circumstances. There was a limit to the behavior Phalanx could put up with. It was a hard choice, but someone had to make it. The harmony of the house was paramount. “You can’t help those who don’t want to help themselves,” she assured him with a kind smile. She knew it was hard to lose such vulnerable kids. When the young woman was ready, perhaps she would be back. With a better attitude.
“Art supplies would be great for them. Jude can always need more strings; he plays that guitar so much.” He had been playing that day in her classroom, but she forced herself through that memory. They were going shopping, they were getting away from Phalanx for a bit. She could hold it together. “Cora would love a new journal or some nice pens.” The kids she taught had an even deeper part of her heart, even as she loved all the Phalanx residents. Her students all had their difficulties and their struggles, but there was a certain magic to working with them in the classroom and outside of it. They were kids that were navigating a world so much trickier than hers ever was, and most of them were doing it wonderfully.
She realized that she didn’t have a ready answer to his question, which made her pause for a moment. What did she want? That was always a question she never knew how to answer. There were few things she allowed herself to want in life, and she certainly couldn’t voice them aloud to him. Not then and there. “I don’t think I want or need anything,” she told him instead. “Phalanx has been kind enough to me; I can already never repay you.” She had learned and seen so much in the short half-a-year that had passed.
Carver and Ash had the weirdest relationship he had ever known. He met Carver for the first time the morning after his year long stint in the cage and they fought. They nearly killed each other other something as stupid as the morning gruel at Monroeville and he still hired him. They fought again when they met outside of Monroeville in a Waffle House parking lot and Ash offered him a job. It was a weird relationship, but there was literally no one else in the world who he would trust with something as big as recruiting new Phalanx residents.
There was something about knowing he went through the same bullshit at Monroeville as Ash did, it was enough for him.
Being with Eppie, it was something completely different. Eppie made him feel like he could be a normal person. Have a typical life. Like he wasn't this deranged and violent beast. Euphemia meant the world to him and he knew that things were weird since the kiss. It was especially weird cause he wanted to do it over and over again. He wanted to kiss her again, mistletoe or not. He thought about waking up next to her with the light coming through his window. He thought about all of these things and wanted all of them.
Half an hour drive and then shopping, he would going to have to figure out how to keep his hands to himself.
Ash didn't like how everything with Riven went down, but it had to be done. "Yeah, she was going through Aisling's things. Aisling caught her and apparently has a mean left hook." He never would have thought she was a southpaw, but apparently she rocked Riven's world and he had a feeling that a big part of that was all of her time at Monroeville. "Yeah, I just wish that more could be done." he just wished that she had been willing to try to be part of the house. She refused and things had to be done. He had to protect the majority of his home and the people who he brought in there.
"Doesn't make me feel like less of a monster for asking her to leave."
She was one of the first residents of Phalanx that he had to ask to leave. He reached over and placed his hand on Eppie's knee, squeezing slightly. "Thanks for making me feel better though, and for being here." He was sometimes hopeless with giving gifts, but having Eppie there was helping him get back into the Christmas spirit. "That sounds great, Jae? I have no idea. Honestly outside of condoms and tequila I'm stumped." He took his hand off her knee, putting it back on the wheel.
He had a few ideas about what she could want for Christmas, and he knew that it was a little big, but it was something that she would enjoy and help her get some of the answers that she was looking for. Answers that she wasn't going to get solely from poking around his brain. "Oh trust me, I wouldn't be able to run this place without you." He looked at her, fuck he was in love with her. "You teachers, all of you."
I've seen 'em carry family and the steel drum weight of me.
126 posts
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Post by Euphemia Louise Morgan on Dec 28, 2018 6:49:47 GMT
[googlefont="Courgette"]
taking my time, let the world turn
Eppie watched him instead of the road; she barely noticed the scenery that was passing them by. He had her attention, more of it than she was willing to admit. It was more than just the talk about the school and its residents. She had the sneaking suspicion that he could be reading her out the phonebook, and she would still be focused on him. That was one thread she didn’t want to unravel. Instead, she tried to put her mind solely in work mode, nodding as he spoke about Riven. She would never want to be on the receiving end of a left hook from Aisling. The girl seemed to carry a dark cloud with her, and there was no telling the power that could pack into a punch. She couldn’t blame Aisling for her reaction, not entirely. She knew the girl came from Monroeville and expected a better life at Phalanx. They all deserved one.
“I know you do. You wouldn’t be you if this didn’t affect you, Astor. If you need assurance, though, you know I will always gladly offer it. Don’t let this one instance make you feel that you aren’t doing good, because that’s not true at all.” One unfortunate encounter did not negate his body of work, which far outweighed the bad, but she knew how difficult it was to believe something like that so close to the jump. It wasn’t his fault; he didn’t have to carry that.
She covered the hand that touched her knee with her own. Their casual touches always filled her with warmth, even if now they were chased by the memory of the kiss. Or perhaps even more because of it. She couldn’t decide. “I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. Thank you so much for including me in something so important,” she assured him.
She laughed, not expecting that answer about what he could get Jae. She could think of a few things that Jae would have included on his Christmas list, but tequila and condoms probably topped the skinwalker’s list. “I’m sure he would love that, probably too much.” She had considered looking for soundproofing or a white noise machine for Jae and his room. He kept such strange hours as it was; at the very least, he might able to sleep during the day if he had a night shift. And maybe it would dampen the noise just a little bit.
She smiled at his statement about the necessity of her - and the rest of the teachers, of course. It wasn’t just her he meant; they were part of a team after all. “It’s good to be appreciated, though, and you show us that a lot. Just putting up with some of us shows enough of that,” she laughed. Phalanx was so different from any environment she had ever been in; it barely felt like a job. She had never felt so integrated into a place and had always wanted a big family. She had found so much more than she what she had been looking for at Phalanx.
She twisted a bit in the seat when he removed his hand, laying her head gently against the top of her seat. “And what about you? What do you want? Not something Phalanx needs, just something you want.” The question seemed easy enough, but she knew that, when it was leveled against her, she did not have an easy answer. She knew how much care, attention, and thought he put into Phalanx, but she wanted to know more of him, of everything about him.
Ash had plenty of people in the past who he would offer a space at Phalanx and would be turned down. In his early years he would bring someone into the house and in the middle of the night catch them trying to rob him. The few times that did happen, he would give them small electronics, whatever cash he had, and ask them to leave. This was the first time he had to ask someone to leave in this manner. In the everything was fine, she was settling in, but was trying to steal from her roommate. This was also the first time that Phalanx was large enough to have to require roommates. Part of him wondered if this was all a slippery slope, if the roommate would lead to more problems and if it would just be a better thing to close the doors of Phalanx.
He just couldn’t do it.
He couldn’t close the door to people who needed help.
It wasn’t what Phalanx stood for and it wasn’t what he promised himself when he opened the school. He swore that he would protect everyone who came through those doors and made sure that there was a home for them. He made that promise and as he listened to Eppie’s sweet voice, he knew that it was a promise he would continue to pursue.
“You’re too good to me Ep. I don’t know what I would do without you.” Even the years that he managed Phalanx without her smile and her laughter seemed like a dream. He knew that he did it, he knew that he managed to have a decent home for the kids, but he didn’t feel as complete before she was there. He didn’t feel like he found himself, until the woman who he was certain was his other half showed up for a job interview.
The memory of their kiss was becoming less and less horrifying, less and less embarrassing as his hand rested on her knee and the comfort that the two of them had cultivated over the last six months. They had been close since she started, and that comfort had only manifested in new ways since that fateful night in his office. The night that he replayed in his head over and over since it happened.
A memory that was only trumped by the memory of her lips on his, his hands on her full hips, and the roar of the students in the background completely deafening to the pure bliss of the moment when he realized she was kissing him back.
Jae had such a special place with Ash, he went through this every year. He had been around the kid for the last ten years, pulling him off the streets and into a life at Phalanx. Ash laughed when Eppie agreed that he would love that a little too much, “I’ve honestly been thinking about something a little special for Jae. Something like fixing up the storage above the garage as an apartment for him. Let him get some space away from the rest of the kids.” With all of those night shifts he was working at The Gorgon’s Head, it would be nice to give him his own way in and out of the house.
“You never have to thank me for puttin’ up with you Eppie. You’re-” He shifted lanes on the road as if that would be able to save him from the natural path of that sentence, “You know you mean a lot to me- more than the other teachers. You know that, right?” He didn’t even want to dare to look at her, talking about this while driving was probably the best thing that he could have done to save her from seeing how flushed his face was getting. He wasn’t one to talk a lot about his feelings or emotions, Monroeville beat that out of him.
But he needed her to know that it was her. There was no one else that he would want to be with and that had been lurking in the back of his head for the last six months. Through any hookup he had during that time, anyone who he talked to, it was always supposed to be her.
There was no one else and he wouldn’t want anyone else. It was her.
“Me? What else do I need? I have a home for my family and others to be in. We got hot water and good food-” He looked over at her, smiling at how her dark hair framed her face and how soft and feminine her features were, “I have everything I could ever need in life.” He looked back at the road, knowing they were getting close to the outlet with all of the pajamas that he found online. As much as he would hate to be away from this beautiful moment and as much as he wanted to just tell her what he was feeling, he knew that it was inappropriate.
There was no way she would ever feel the same way about him.
I've seen 'em carry family and the steel drum weight of me.
126 posts
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Post by Euphemia Louise Morgan on Dec 31, 2018 3:57:16 GMT
[googlefont="Courgette"]
taking my time, let the world turn
She smiled a little brighter than she meant to. “Well, you’d have a bunch of essays and papers to grade all by yourself,” she joked, relaxed by the warmth of his hand. “If I hadn’t come to Phalanx this year, I’m sure my life would have been very different, so thank you for taking a chance on me.” She had not expected to sit across the interview table from Ash; she had internally seen Mr. Perona as a kindly, spindly man in his late sixties. The initial shock had made the start of her interview a little rocky, but his presence had been relaxing. She had been more honest and artless in that interview than in any other. In him, that day and every day since, she had found someone who made her want to be vulnerable in a way she had never dared before, and it leaked into her entire life: from her teaching to just their everyday interactions.
But still, there was that small voice that begged her to be prudent, to sift through everything with a magnifying glass. She was not as naïve as she wanted to be. The kiss had been less of an anomaly than she had made it out to be in her head; she wasn’t so delusional that she had failed to recognize that. There had been other times, little other stolen moments. The time in his office before she had made things awkward, when she had felt safe and vulnerable. The time on the living room floor, when he had forgiven her and held her hands like it was the most natural thing in the world. He had leaned in then, too, with no student prompting.
It spelled something that she felt she purposefully couldn’t read.
But as long as she could just throw her hands up and slap a giant question mark on it all, she felt safer. The wallflower life was never satisfying, though, and so she kept her best demure smile, eyes lighting at his proposal for Jae. Eppie loved a project; she loved putting her anxious energy into building something. Units, lessons, plans, bulletin boards. She loved to be useful when she didn’t know what else she could be. “I would love to help with that, if you wanted to go ahead with it. He would probably love a bit of independence.” And she could sleep a little better without having to wonder when he was going to come traipsing into the house. Or who would be accompanying him.
His words brought a bit of color to her cheeks, and for the first time since they entered the car, she couldn’t keep her eyes on him. They slid to the front windshield as she tried to suss out the meaning. Did it even have a deeper meaning? Was he just saying that he valued her as an employee? An employee that he sometimes kissed under the mistletoe? No, no, that way lie danger and something boundless or unnameable. Sometimes that she told herself she was content to dance around. At the end of the day, after all, it was easier to dance around it than to try to name it and be absolutely wrong.
She took in a steadying breath and finally looked back at him, with a faint smile. “You mean a lot to me, too.” There was more she thought she ought to add, but she couldn’t make herself. Already, her tone, usually frank and warm, had dipped into strangely ambivalent, as though she was presenting something he could just as easily kick away from him. It was the giant question mark rearing its ugly head again. Something that was never admitted could never be disappointed.
She tried her best to take back her relaxing posture, but she missed the easy warmth of his hand on her knee. “I suppose that is more than others have in their lifetimes. You’ve secured all of that for your family, too.” Tension eased out of her once more, her smile broadening. She could see the outlet mall on the horizon, and her heart fell a little bit. They would have to leave the confines of the car and go out into the world. Some spell of closeness would be broken by shopping crowds and credit cards. “Are you sure there’s nothing you want?”
As modest as she wanted to be, Ash knew that there was no way he would be able to run Phalanx without all of the help he was given. Everyone always wanted to credit his work, but he was just the one with the name on the house and wrote all of the grants for the money. He wouldn't have been able to accomplish any of the big things without the staff. Even, as much as he loathed to admit it, Carver was incredibly valuable as an employee to him. He would send the TinMan out to speak with some of the families, he would explain what Phalanx was and how to best help their children. Even if he didn't bring the kid back to Phalanx, he was still the only person who Ash would trust to talk with families and give them some hope and understanding about what their kid was going though. Eppie, on the other hand, he wasn't sure if he would be able to get through a single day any more without seeing her.
He had become far too dependent on the English teacher, and he wasn't sure how he was ever going to cope if she wanted to leave. He couldn't even phantom what it would be like if she wanted to date someone. Her even joking about sharing a room with Jae had a visceral reaction in him that he didn't want to explain. He didn't want to have to admit that he was jealous of even a passing comment about her being in bed with someone else because it was all he wanted. He wanted to wake up in the morning next to Euphemia, he wanted to see her dark hair splayed on his pillows, he wanted to pull her closer when her alarm went off and beg for five more minutes of the warmth and happiness.
He wanted a life with her and with every passing second, he wanted it more and more.
The kiss in her classroom, his hand on her knee, the late night talks in his office, he would be an idiot if he tried to claim that he wasn't in love with her. He would be an idiot if he tried to claim that this connection was all in his head or just not real. "Yeah I think so too. He's been with me for so long, I just can't picture the place without him." Even if that wasn't the purpose of Phalanx, he knew that he would miss Jae too much. He could remember walking up to a skinny little kid in an alleyway and talking to him and spending time just getting to know him. There had been so much in the last ten years with him, he almost saw Jae as a younger brother.
She meant the world to him, and the amount of nights he wanted to be with her over anyone else in the world. How much he wanted to be with Euphemia over dark bars and times in dark alleyways. He just wanted to hold Eppie's hand, he wanted to run Phalanx with her and show her what kind of a life he would be able to provide for her. Bigger Christmases, birthdays, and celebrations. Even just quiet nights with a book and each other. He wanted it so much, he didn't even understand what had changed in him.
Though, Eppie hanging onto the back of his bike was another thought that he didn't realize how much he needed until it passed his thoughts.
He would be lying if he said he wasn't smiling a little bigger when she said that he meant a lot to her too. Probably not in any significant way, but he wanted to hold onto it. "You know, as your boss I should be taking a good hard look at all of this. Really figuring out if I'm being appropriate with you, but as a man with eyes, I couldn't care less." He gripped the steering wheel more, knowing that they were playing a dangerous game and he wasn't one to stop it.
He looked over at her when she curled up in the chair and looked at him. What else could he want? Ash looked at the road to check for danger and looked back at her, "There's plenty that I guess I could want. Couple new parts for my bike, for Carver to not be such a pain in my ass, a beautiful woman who looks at me the way you do." He was laying it all out for her and he was really hoping that she was as smart as he knew she was.
I've seen 'em carry family and the steel drum weight of me.
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Post by Euphemia Louise Morgan on Jan 3, 2019 5:08:30 GMT
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taking my time, let the world turn
Eppie wanted the future of Phalanx to be bright and limitless. She had had no idea what to expect when she first took the position, but now, she could never imagine herself anywhere else. The house, its unique challenges, its inhabitants. It was all a part of her life that she would be loathe to give up now. The students and residents felt more like family members: Jude, Cora, Mary Margaret, Asha, Millie, Nellie, and the others. Even the headaches did too. She could not imagine who she would be without having to put up with Jae for half a year already. She smiled at the thought. They all meant so much to her.
But Ash was chief among them, or rather, he was on a different plane. Her feelings for him were more personal, despite what she had told herself over and over again. He was her boss, she told herself, but he was also her friend, a confidante. She didn’t have many of those in her life, and she had less that she wanted to be more with. The prospect frightened her as much as it warmed her. And so she buried it as best she could in polite conversation. “To be fair, I’m not quite sure what he would do without you. He seems to enjoy being at Phalanx too much to let you be rid of him completely.”
She watched the change on his face as she admitted that he meant a lot to her. It seemed lighter and brighter, his smile bigger. Emboldened, she considered his next statement rather carefully, wanting to speak before her courage left its sticking place. “If I’m being quite honest, I would not consider anything you’ve done with me or to me as inappropriate. Well, at least, they weren’t unwarranted. Nor unwelcome.” She tried to keep her voice a bit light and noncommittal, but the meaning of her words was quite clear. Or so she hoped. As much as she couched her words and her intentions, she wanted something to be a little clearer between them. He had not acted with impropriety in the slightest; there was no reason for him to worry about that. Had he mis-stepped too far, he could rest assured that he would have received the back of her hand.
Her cheeks heated once more, but she didn’t look away from him this time. Instead, she studied his face as best she could, as though he were an essay she could double- and triple-check. But humans generally weren’t essays, and she could only be earnest in her expression and fumble for the exact right words. “Well, I can always help you find new parts. As for Carver, though, there’s little helping that, I’m afraid.” She chuckled, if only to allow herself a bit more time to think and to be precise. “On the third thing, I hope you’re not looking to me to help you find one. I don’t think I could let her take you.” There, that was careful enough, she reasoned.
Well, she couldn’t very much deny that. Her cheeks burned, and her heart did a little flutter. The thoughts she had meant to repress reared up again. She had not thought it likely that he noticed the way she looked at him. She had not meant to look at him in any certain way; she had tried to be guarded and cautious. She had tried to not overreach her own impression on him and to assume that he might have thought of in any sort of way near “beautiful.” She could suppress her curiosity of a life with him no longer.
There had been times, when things were quiet, that she imagined that he might have looked at her a certain way, might have spoken in a tone more comfortable than he was with others. She had been content to think these fancies and nothing more. Were they tricks of her own mind, then she need not to consider their implications. But, if she were reading the situation right, they weren’t imagined at all. They had been real. The implications were real; what she had spent so much time denying could be a possibility. Her stomach twisted into a knot as she admitted, just to herself, that she wanted him to look at her like he had in the office that night, then again on the living room floor. She fully and completely wanted his hands back on her hips, her arms around his neck. She wanted it.
“Our destination is, uh, coming up.” The outlets were coming steadily closer, but she didn’t want to break the spell. She had the funny notion that, after they departed the van, everything would somehow revert back, as if time would rewind for the two of them.
His history with Jae Hyun and his history with Carver were two that were completely chaotic in how he came to care for them, but they were so much part of his life. They were his anger and aggression in Monroeville. They were Ash's first attempt at watching out for a kid with serious problems. They were his first attempts at becoming the man sitting in an old van with Euphemia, and they were his first real successes. Carver toughened him up in Monroeville. He could take a punch to the head of solid metal and still come up swinging for another piece of the tin man. Jae taught him all of the things not to say to these kids. All of the times when he would get frustrated or want to give up on Jae, he knew so much more now.
They both drove him up a wall half of the time, but he wouldn't have Phalanx without either of them.
"It's a life that I think we're both too comfortable with." after years of struggle with Jae, he really would do anything for the kid. He grinned as a random memory came back to him. "I ever tell you about Jae's first Halloween? He was, fuck, maybe fourteen? Now, fourteen year olds aren't usually trick or treating but he had been in some shitty spots before Phalanx, so he had been talking about it just non stop. I think he even mapped out the neighborhood and everything. So it's the night before, I still don't know what he wants to dress up as and I go check on him and he's working on this costume in his room. He doesn't want to show me, but he does and it's a green shirt, and brown pants. I have no idea what he wants to be, but he's being really protective over it. I ask, and he says that he wants to be Shaggy from Scooby Doo, but he apparently couldn't get a dog from the pound cause the woman refused to let him borrow one, so he didn't want to go out anymore..." He looked over at her seeing if she could figure out where he was going with the story. "I told him that I couldn't be a brown dog, but I could be a grey wolf for him. He perked right up, started making me a dog collar and I spent the whole night walking around with him and the little shit made me carry the candy basket around for him."
He hadn't thought about that for years. He was sure that there were pictures floating around the house somewhere. Not that he want it to fall into Eppie's delicate fingers, he was pretty sure that he would die of embarrassment if she saw how stupid he looked. A giant apex predator, larger than any wolf in the wild, and he had been reduced to carrying treats for a skinny little shit who he honestly cared for like a little brother. He was jerked from his thoughts when Eppie admitted that she didn't believe anything that had happened between them was inappropriate, which was a weight off his shoulders.
When she said it wasn't unwelcome. He could feel his stomach twist and turn with all of the elation he could muster. "That's- not what I was expecting." He could feel his cheeks flush, and there was something so encouraging that she wasn't dreading time alone with him or even trying to find ways to get away from him. He wanted her to be happy around him and wanted her to look forward to spending time with her.
He grinned when she admitted that there wasn't much helping with Carver involved, "I've known him since I was nineteen years old, I'm well aware of that." He stole a look at her when she mentioned the third thing. "And why would I even want anyone else when you look at me like that." When she looked like that. When they had this thing between them that made him feel like all of the stupid shit he ever did. All of the fights with Carver, all of the mistakes he made with Jae in the beginning, it was all worth it if it brought him to Euphemia looking at him like that.
"There's not one that I could want quite like you, Euphemia." The thought of her with a red ribbon for Christmas was almost too much of a mental image to bear.
He just wanted to keep driving, but the signs were coming up and the densely packed parking lot. Their honesty, their vulnerability, it wasn't going to last outside of the car. He knew that. He also knew that he would want nothing more than to kiss her the second they were out of the car. He pulled into a parking space and turned off the engine, looking over at how stunning she really was. He reached over to brush some of her brown hair behind her ear and grinned at her,
"Ready to throw some elbows against some mean grannies?"