London After Midnight
DISCLAIMER: Eh. I tried to get into Woody's head, I really did, but ... okay, I didn't, lol. I've never played Woody before and I've never had the desire to, so unless I encounter some really funky shrooms between now and the end of this fic, you won't see a Woody-centric chapter. This particular chapter is brief, but I'll make up for it by writing the next one post-haste and updating both at the same time.
MANY THANKS: Thank you Aesear for visiting this dark and dusty little corner of I really wish you would update Taking Off the Mask, I thought it was wonderful and it was you and TheNewMoo who finally made me not so blatantly terrified to post a J&N fic up here. Eternal thanks to Watson1 for all your much appreciated comments. I'm not worthy! To answer your question, yes I have an extremely good grasp of English dialects as I'm a total and complete Anglophile and I have been writing nonstop British characters for the past five years (or is it more? God I can't remember) - Whose Line is it Anyway?, the Beatles and co. (lots of Liverpool there), plus many original characters... and this past year I've played Bug (among others, including a very hardcore and steady Jordan) on several CJ RPGs, and now the loveable huggable Nigel. I have a terrible weakness for Brits. Bugger all, let me stop babbling and start writing! :) Many many thanks to everyone.
Chapter Three
"An Intruder"
Nigel
It's always the way.
This is always just the way for Jordan and I. Right when we're beginning to have an honest-to-goodness conversation, just when she's about to open up to me, to trust me, to let me in for even just a handful of precious, far-too-short moments, something comes along to interrupt us.
I remember she and I in my office - was it an entire year ago already? Bloody hell, time slips through the fingers like sand, doesn't it? I remember it as though it were an hour ago, and my cheeks fill up with blood and my heart fills up with shame and deep mortification at the very thought. She and I in my office, and I had just matched her phantom print to the prints found in the car where Carl Jeffers' body was discovered. She asked me to keep it a secret and I knew that I couldn't, and I told her why. Told her that I had a breaking point even though I cared for her, that no one cared for her more than I. I told her just enough without telling her everything, every sordid, desperate detail. I was close to it. I was dangerously close, as close as I've ever come in the past ten years. She was slipping into it again, into the paranoia and the depression and the brutal, masochistic obsession of her mother's murder, and the last time that happened she was almost dumped off a rooftop. I didn't want to see it happen again and I would have told her anything, I would have told her everything just to get her to stop, to think clearly, to come back to us, to me. I asked her whose print the phantom was and I never thought she'd actually tell me. I never thought she'd open up to me so much, let me in when she never had before, shed light where she had always kept me locked away in the dark. My words had stunned her, it seemed, so much so that her guards came crumbling down before her and in that instant, in that instant when she told me it was her brother who had murdered that policeman, I saw more of her than I had ever seen and it was terrifying, and it was beautiful. I was under a spell and just as I opened my mouth to confess what I had been keeping inside for so long, Dr. Macy showed up and caused my testicles to bunch up in fear as though I had sat in a bucket of ice water.
Much the same happens tonight - with the exception of the retreat of my nether regions, because I am completely and totally used to Woodrow Hoyt breaking up the party by now. He barely acknowledges me, brushing past with a mumbled, "What's up, Nige?" or some other such greeting, headed straight for Jordan and the spot on the couch I sat in not two minutes ago. He sits utterly without invitation, and I'm both mildly appalled and severely jealous of his assumption and his courage. I would leave right now were I not still so awestruck by the entire entrance.
Didn't even think to bloody ask if he was interrupting something. But no, of course he wasn't. Through the eyes of everyone but myself, there is simply nothing to interrupt when it comes to Jordan and I. Not ever, and to think so would be outlandish and stupid. I don't know what it is that amuses Bug about my feelings for Jordan. The same thing that makes Woodrow Hoyt believe I'm no competition, I suppose. I just wish I could figure out what that is.
I'm still standing in the doorway. It's unlike me, really. I need permission to enter a room but I always seem to know when I'm not wanted. I guess it's that I just don't feel like an imposition yet; we were in the middle of something and Jordan did not want me to go. I'll leave when she asks and not a moment sooner.
Our eyes meet over the spikey top of Woody's head and I do sense an ounce or two of guilt in those large hazel orbs - it floods me instantly and helplessly with warmth, and the illusion that she does actually care for me, and whether or not my feelings are hurt. Seconds later I know I'm being foolish, reading too much into things as I so often do. She only feels bad that we were interrupted, and that she is not going to turn Woodrow Hoyt away.
"Jordan, are you okay?" It's miraculous how one can lose one's chipper Wisconsin accent after just three years of living in a different state. I don't suppose I'll ever lose my accent, if it hasn't happened already. And isn't that just like me, sticking out like a sore thumb when others can so effortlessly blend into the majority. "Jeez, I thought he was going to pull you right over the ledge back there. You almost let him, too. For Christ's sakes, Jordan, what were you thinking?"
My heart leaps up nearly into my throat and my mind races with terrible imagery. Exactly what the bloody hell happened tonight? The words are on my tongue before I stop myself, remembering I shouldn't even still be loitering around in this room, and that this isn't my private conversation with Jordan anymore, it's somebody else's. An intruder, I underline the phrase quite clearly in my mind with some bitterness, my jealousy beginning to wash over my usual lighthearted demeanor and turning me melancholy. Why was it Woody that got to be there with her tonight? Why is it Woody that always gets to play the hero? Is it always going to be this way, Woody the gun-toting cop and I the killer-pervert, lurking in the shadows?
I catch myself in that, and in the physical representation of my analogy, and all at once it shocks and shames me and I know I've overstayed my welcome here. I slip out without a word, without even clearing my throat to announce my departure. The last thing I want right now is to be noticed, and I doubt that she even would anyway.