[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/9qIY4OK.jpeg[/img][/center][img]https://i.imgur.com/JAFb3tJ.jpeg[/img] [center][img]https://i.imgur.com/9qIY4OK.jpeg[/img][/center] [indent][indent][indent][color=#808080][i]Circle of life[/i]. Anissa turned the phrase over once, the way she might finger the edge of a coin before pocketing it. It was a diplomatic answer, and she appreciated that he hadn't tried to express guilt about it or dress it up in philosophy. The murmurs, though…she knew something about that. Except hers came with the cold, so, if anything, murmurs might be too peaceful a word for her. She imagined River waist-deep in the ocean, receiving gentle wisdom from a very sincere mackerel and quietly felt that was unfair. [color=#86a8ad]"I think you underestimate how boring of a man I am."[/color] Anissa glanced over at him. She didn't, actually. The itemized list that followed seemed more like something she could have predicted if she'd thought to guess. It was still a little baffling, if she was honest. The pleased hum that accompanied it especially. Most people had the decency to be at least a little embarrassed about SpaghettiOs, but Ocean Boy over here was not like most people. When she extended the fork, it was reflex more than anything. The kind of thing she did without thinking because it was easy, and easy was her preferred register with him, she was beginning to realize. She liked easy. She liked watching his ears go pink over something small. What she hadn’t accounted for was him leaning in, mouth closing around the offered fry, eyes finding hers for exactly one second before glancing away. Unhurried. Unbothered. Anissa felt her own ears grow warm. [color=#86a8ad]"It's good,"[/color] River said then, chewing with the same thoughtful seriousness he'd applied to the lamb. [color=#86a8ad]"It [i]looks[/i] terrible though."[/color] [color=#5a3e85]"It's an acquired aesthetic,"[/color] she replied, and was privately relieved her voice came out the way it usually did, revealing nothing of the warmth that had crept up her neck. She turned back to her container, spearing another fry with perhaps more focus than the task required. After a while, River broke the silence in a way Anissa hadn’t expected, and she didn't, no [i]couldn't[/i], let his next passing comment settle where he seemed content to leave it. [color=#5a3e85][i]Why do you say that? Because you don't have all the answers?[/i][/color] And then she listened while he laid out his explanation with that same honesty she'd come to expect from him. [color=#86a8ad]"No…"[/color] He sighed, shaking his head slightly. [color=#86a8ad]"Because people don’t like authority? I mean… who wants to listen to a guy they’ve never met bossing them around?"[/color] His head turned slowly to look over at her. His expression wasn’t sad or angry but painted with a solemn sort of acceptance. [color=#86a8ad]"I think that’s why my dad chose me. I was always kind of a loner. So, if I didn’t make any friends, it wouldn’t weigh as heavily on me… in theory."[/color] He shrugged and lightly clapped his hands together, a small, final gesture, as though closing a book he'd finished reading. Anissa stared at him. The poutine sat forgotten in her lap, its gravy growing cool, its cheese curds losing their precious stretch. She stared at this boy—this honest, unguarded boy—who had just explained his father's apparent logic with the same matter-of-fact tone someone might use to discuss the weather. [i]If I didn't make any friends, it wouldn't weigh as heavily on me[/i]. As though loneliness were a feature rather than a bug. As though being chosen for leadership meant being designed for isolation. No wonder she couldn’t help but expatiate, giving him probably more than she’d intended to, and yet the words had their own momentum once they started; Anissa had never been particularly good at stopping herself once something struck her as worth saying or doing, a fact that had gotten her into trouble more times than she could count and would no doubt continue to do so. She watched him sit with it after. That was the thing about River: he didn't rush to fill the silence the way most people did, didn't reach for the nearest comfortable deflection and deploy it before the air could grow heavy. He just... sat. Hands clasped between his knees, eyes somewhere in the middle distance, actually thinking about what she'd said rather than simply waiting for his turn to respond. Anissa found that quietly devastating, though she would not have used that word aloud. [color=#86a8ad]"It's ok, Beauty Queen."[/color] She blinked. Then his hand was on her knee and gone again before she'd fully registered it, withdrawn with a flush that crept from his jaw to his ears as he cleared his throat and looked determinedly elsewhere. Anissa said nothing. Mostly because there was something a little ridiculous about the whole sequence — the gentleness of it, the immediate panic, the way he'd patted her knee like she was the one who'd needed reassuring when she'd been trying to reassure [i]him[/i] — and she wasn't sure she could address any part of it without making it worse for both of them. Especially when her knee was still tingling where his palm had briefly rested, which made no sense given the layers between them. [color=#86a8ad]"It was more of an observation anyway,"[/color] he continued, with the air of someone talking himself down from a ledge. [color=#86a8ad]"I don't need friends or to be liked to do…"[/color] He exhaled, motioning vaguely at everything around them. [color=#86a8ad]"Whatever the fuck it is that my dad wants me to do."[/color] [i]I don't need friends.[/i] Anissa looked at him for a moment. Just a moment. She thought about midnight. About the specific, swimming quality of the last thing she remembered clearly and the inconvenient blankness that followed it. About waking up to coffee already made and two aspirin lined up like small, considerate soldiers and a napkin that was currently sitting in her pocket, folded along its original crease because she hadn't quite been able to leave it behind. She opened her mouth. [color=#5a3e85]"River, that's not—"[/color] He was already standing. Already collecting her container from her hands with that apologetic smile, already telling her to stop eating those, already pointing at the last two girls on the course with his chin. Already [i]moving[/i], and entirely unaware that she'd been about to say something. Entirely unaware that she'd been about to offer some half-built thought about the difference between needing friends and wanting them, about the space between isolation and loneliness, and about the way he'd sat with her words like they mattered and then dismissed his own like they didn't. Anissa closed her mouth. She watched him go and turned the contradiction over once, the way she might a sentence that didn't quite parse. [i]I wanted to stay. I don't need friends.[/i] Both his. Both apparently true at the same time, which meant she couldn't make them fit together no matter which way she arranged them. She wasn't sure what that made her in the space between those two statements, not that she felt unnecessary. Just…unclassified? Her fingers found the folded edge of the napkin in her pocket without meaning to. [color=#5a3e85][i]Circle of life,[/i][/color] she thought, distantly. That was what he'd called it. The way certain things found you, whether you'd gone looking or not. The way sound that wasn't quite sound had a way of arriving regardless of whether you'd extended an invitation. She'd spent years learning to carry things she hadn't asked for. The cold. The voices. The visions that came whether she was ready or not. She hadn’t asked for this either. Whatever [i]this[/i] was. [color=#5a3e85][i]Figure it out later[/i][/color], Anissa decided, which was the only sensible conclusion available to her at present. She picked up Blair's container and made her way over.[/color][/indent][/indent][/indent] [hr][sub][color=9b9b9b][b][i]Location: Arena Interactions: River Mentions: Blair [/i][/b][/color][/sub] [right][sup][color=#5a3e85][b]#5a3e85[/b][/color][color=2e2c2c]...[/color]|[color=2e2c2c]...[/color][url=https://i.postimg.cc/7P1f3XK9/image.jpg][color=9b9b9b][b]outfit[/b][/color][/url][/sup][/right]