"Jeezus, who said I was treating you like a porcelain doll? I'm not, and I won't, I swear!"
Sighing again, he moves her Stetson from his pillow ('his' pillow) to hers, and propping the pillow up against the headboard, he leans back, haphazardly tugging the sheets over him. He folds his arms across his chest.
And sulks a little.
Sometimes it's not just about 'protecting' her from what he's seen. It's about keeping himself from unraveling.
In other words -- keeping it all bottled up inside.
It didn't work with Janet, so what makes him think it'll work with Kate?
"So there was this fire one time," he begins, arms still folded, staring down at the sheets pooled in his lap.
"It was in the basement of an abandoned apartment building. Bad ventilation, the only windows were these little narrow things at street level. Smoke was building up fast, but we had reports that some homeless people were trapped in there. Me and Lou went in. Couldn't see a damn thing, could barely even see the fire itself, the smoke was so thick, but we could feel it. We got to this corner and Lou tripped over someone -- this old guy, dressed in rags. He was pretty much choking to death, so Lou rushed him out, but when I started to follow, I heard this kind of-- crying sound. Not really crying, but sorta-- squeaking. Whatever it was, it was alive, and my first instinct is to never leave anything that's alive behind.
"So I followed the sound-- it was hard to hear over the noise, but it managed to cut through, just enough. And whaddya know, I found a litter of kittens in the bottom drawer of an old dresser. The mom was curled up around 'em, half-alive; the babies, like six or seven of 'em, just newborns. So I just grabbed 'em all and stuffed 'em in my pockets, tucked the mom under my jacket, and hightailed it outta there.
"When I made it outside, that homeless guy was being loaded up into an ambulance -- he was still conscious, so that was good. But now I had all these cats on me and I didn't know what to do with 'em. I got a blanket from the truck and laid the kittens out on the ground, and once the guys on my crew saw what I was doing, they took off their air tanks and started reviving the kittens. I put my own air mask on the mom -- I was still holding her under my jacket. For a second there I thought she wasn't gonna make it. But then she let out a yowl and she squirmed and I felt her claws through my shirt and suddenly I had this little tornado of fur under my coat, and so I dropped her onto the blanket where she sniffed over each of her kittens -- all of which survived, by the way.
"But she peed on my shirt. Couldn't get the stink outta my gear for weeks."
no subject
Sighing again, he moves her Stetson from his pillow ('his' pillow) to hers, and propping the pillow up against the headboard, he leans back, haphazardly tugging the sheets over him. He folds his arms across his chest.
And sulks a little.
Sometimes it's not just about 'protecting' her from what he's seen. It's about keeping himself from unraveling.
In other words -- keeping it all bottled up inside.
It didn't work with Janet, so what makes him think it'll work with Kate?
"So there was this fire one time," he begins, arms still folded, staring down at the sheets pooled in his lap.
"It was in the basement of an abandoned apartment building. Bad ventilation, the only windows were these little narrow things at street level. Smoke was building up fast, but we had reports that some homeless people were trapped in there. Me and Lou went in. Couldn't see a damn thing, could barely even see the fire itself, the smoke was so thick, but we could feel it. We got to this corner and Lou tripped over someone -- this old guy, dressed in rags. He was pretty much choking to death, so Lou rushed him out, but when I started to follow, I heard this kind of-- crying sound. Not really crying, but sorta-- squeaking. Whatever it was, it was alive, and my first instinct is to never leave anything that's alive behind.
"So I followed the sound-- it was hard to hear over the noise, but it managed to cut through, just enough. And whaddya know, I found a litter of kittens in the bottom drawer of an old dresser. The mom was curled up around 'em, half-alive; the babies, like six or seven of 'em, just newborns. So I just grabbed 'em all and stuffed 'em in my pockets, tucked the mom under my jacket, and hightailed it outta there.
"When I made it outside, that homeless guy was being loaded up into an ambulance -- he was still conscious, so that was good. But now I had all these cats on me and I didn't know what to do with 'em. I got a blanket from the truck and laid the kittens out on the ground, and once the guys on my crew saw what I was doing, they took off their air tanks and started reviving the kittens. I put my own air mask on the mom -- I was still holding her under my jacket. For a second there I thought she wasn't gonna make it. But then she let out a yowl and she squirmed and I felt her claws through my shirt and suddenly I had this little tornado of fur under my coat, and so I dropped her onto the blanket where she sniffed over each of her kittens -- all of which survived, by the way.
"But she peed on my shirt. Couldn't get the stink outta my gear for weeks."
Tommy's not sure what the moral of this story is.