nexus_crossings | Leather and fine wine

The days are getting darker, the air has started to bite. Naturally this means that a certain Winter spirit is starting to brighten. With Hazel's beautiful influence all around him, he's been spurred on to keep busy and ready himself to do an equally (if not better) job. While people may have seen him marching around the Nexus, often with full arms, today he's taking the time to stay in the Nexus to do a little work. Back on his world the weather took a turn into torrential rain. Here, however, it's dry. Cold, blustery, but dry.

Reynard has his trademark leather coat spread out on one of the tables in the Plaza. Two pairs of boots are waiting on the ground, one pair noticeably newer and smaller than the other. His feathered hat rests on one of the chairs, carefully weighted down with a brush. Perhaps it's no surprise then that Reynard is dressed rather lightly then, with his coat all laid out. It's around this table that Reynard moves, brushing and wiping and occasionally taking a sip from a cup. Those who approach will be met with the rich scent of mulled wine and the more cloying smell of whatever he's using to treat the leather.

Finally he pauses for a moment, thinking over his cup before asking, "What is your least desirable quality? What could you stand to improve about yourself?"

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That's a fair point. Josh gives a one shouldered shrug in acknowledgement as he approaches the table. He should give Reynard something they could actually discuss then. It's not as though there's nothing else about Joshua that's detestable.

"I push away the people who care about me the most. That's probably one I could stand to work on."

Green eyes follow Reynard's motions and widen ever so slightly at the sight of the cup. That is his preferred method of feeling better.

"Absolutely."

"That is easier done than people think."

He nods and fishes out a thermos, pouring out hot mulled wine and handing it over to Josh. It won't be the best in the world, but it hits the spot well enough.

"Do you know when you're pushing them away? Do you mean to?"

Josh will take that cup and the hot drink in it with a murmured thanks before he moves to pull up a seat and settle in to watch Reynard work at his coat. Whatever it is he's doing he seems pretty into it so Josh is fine just staying out of the way and enjoying a drink.

Quality of said drinks are not necessary so long as they are still alcoholic.

"Most of the time, yeah. I know that they deserve better and I don't want them to see me like....like how I am. So it's easier to shut folks out. At least if they get mad, they don't see...well. I'd rather be hated than pitied."

Alcoholic is definitely something Reynard's drinks can do.

"What about people who don't mind seeing you 'like you are'? Do you have any of those? People who are content to let you be?"

"Not anymore. There used to be someone. He's...he was. My best friend."

The only person in the whole sick and twisted world who could wait Josh out of his episodes and then talk to him as though nothing had happened once it was all over. When Josh decided to end it all, Chris was the person he most wanted to make hate him. The only one Joshua couldn't stand to let grieve for him.

He'd hurt Chris so badly and still Chris didn't hate him. Of course he didn't. He was a good friend, a much better man than Joshua deserved. But he's gone now. Another closed chapter in a book he'll never re-open.

"There's no one like that here. Everyone sees me how they wish I'd be, or how they think I can be if I just try hard enough. I get...tired. Of trying. Sometimes."

Reynard sips at his wine thoughtfully, mulling over how much Josh says with so few words. The silences aren't uncomfortable for him, so he allows them to sit between the two, giving Josh time to gather his thoughts.

"You're talking about lying for the sake of others…" He eyes Josh and tilts his sympathetic expression his way. "When you don't have the strength to. That's not living, and it won't last. So what happens afterwards? What happens when you don't have the strength to put on an act?"

Lying for the sake of others.

Look, just try not to embarrass us in fornt of the clients, Joshua. Can't you just be normal for a night, Joshua? Hey man, why do you look so down. Drink up! Are you okay Joshua? You alright, Josh?

Even when he thinks he's doing good, they ask. It's not enough and he tries--he pretends. Stretches a thin mask over all of it and smiles, Flirts. Drinks. The things normal guys are supposed to do.

"Well, I apparently wandered around the Nexus like some kind of wraith for a few months." He drinks deep form the cup as if it might hold some kind of key to fixing all of this. A bad habit and one that has only gotten worse in his years alone in the Nexus. "But we both know what the inevitable outcome is. Last time...someone found me. I was taken to hospital."

It's a sorry sight, this man caught between a rock and a hard place. His options all equally horrifying and impossible, and driving it all the desire to be normal, to be considerate.

"If you could fix crazy," he says softly. "How far would you go to do it?"

"If I could fix...?"

If he could make the hallucinations stop. The voices in his head. The dreams and the terrible feeling of being apart from his body, where nothing that happened was happening to Him at all. If he could make that go away, make it so he wasn't so fucked in the head, how far would he take it?

"If you'd have asked me that before I did the shit that ended up with me in the Nexus, I'd have said anything. Now...? It won't bring back my sisters, but it might stop anyone else from being hurt. I should say still anything. But I don't know."

He gives a hollow laugh and finishes his cup.

"I'm so tired these days. I wonder if it would even matter."

True despair. Deep and dark and cold like the Winter night. Talking to Josh, Reynard feels as if he can almost touch it.

He listens patiently and leaves a somber moment of silence. When he speaks, his voice is a warm, low rumble. "Could it be worse?"

Now that's a lesson he's learned from the nightmare up on Blackwood mountain. Josh's gaze stops being quite so distant now. He nods toward Reynard quickly.

"Things can always be worse. For you, for me. They can always get worse. I mean, eventually there has to be a for real 'worst case scenario' but by then we're talking 'heat death of the universe' and that's pretty much the worst for anything that enjoys having mass, bro."

That's a bit pedantic, Reynard thinks. But then, Josh is probably trying to push aside thinking about topics that are just as scary as the thing that haunts him.

"Do you think trying to fix it would make it worse? Or truly unbearable?"

Reynard has the measure of Joshua pretty well. There's many landmines in Joshua's head he tries rather hard to avoid. Understandably to the spirit though, it takes away a bit of the fun in asking. Luckily he's not too hard to coax back on track given the right push.

"Can't see how fixin' it would make it worse. But that's the kicker' innit? I don't know what's wrong with me. No one does." Not even the good doctor Hill was able to sort it out in time to get Josh the help he needed back home. And the one that resides here in the Nexus...well, he's a part of Josh, or at least born of it. His relentless mockery of Josh is inevitable considering how much Joshua hates himself.

"But if I could...I think it would have to be better than this."

Leather and fine wine

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TW: Mentions of Suicide

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