Would you look at the pair of them - all stillness and flat looks that betray more than they're meant to.
"Then I'm sorry not to have met him," he says, punctuating it with a smile that's too toothy and a pointedly raised eyebrow. It feels fractionally artificial, a thing he does with his face because it's what men in close proximity with women who think they know better do. Or is that just the story he's telling her: that he is selectively wolfish, that he cares more about what she thinks of him over a book than some other alternative vulnerability.
(Some weaknesses are easier than others.)
He hooks his elbow back on the window sill. "Mind in which direction you bare those teeth next time, won't you."
It's a small concession to make, one calculated on that story he's decided to tell that what she finally says, hugging all of her books to her chest, is: "He'll be sorry to have missed someone else telling me."
It can come as no shock, probably, that Flint is not the first person to tell Gwen to be more careful. Even on this brief acquaintance - especially. She should listen. She does try to listen. It's just that this is really all her teeth fucking do--
Her crooked, closemouthed smile is a knife palmed inward; "You are all, I think, a bit late with it."
That was almost friendly, if the punchline weren't look what they already did to me.
(Thomas doesn't want to remake her, though. He just wants her to survive throwing herself so headlong into what she makes of herself - for his sake, sometimes, she thinks before she lunges.)
"My name is Gwenaëlle Tavington," her hand on the rickety banister. "I think 'the French cunt' is more common, you can always add 'with the books' for yourself, but that's my name."
Then there's nothing at all similar about her Thomas to--
It's a relief, one that sits on top of everything else as a drop of oil in a cup of water. Remote by design. He doesn't think about it as a balm because it would require considering the thing stung (even if examination might make him more sympathetic to her, to the marks on her wrists and all the reasons why she could be here in a place she can't have chosen that must, at the end of it all, come down to the same reason anyone else is).
He lifts his chin a degree from his post at the widow, half acknowledgement and half something else. Gazing down the length of his nose at her out of habit or practice. It's the look of a man used to standing at the rail of a quarterdeck while sure it's where he belongs.
"James Flint of the Walrus, though I hear Captain is more common."
Her sudden scrutiny, the honest frankness of her immediate assessment - "I imagined you taller," when he is still quite a bit larger than she is, but people talk about Flint as if he's eight feet fucking tall - it is rather of a piece with her apparently inspiring such concern in everyone she meets who isn't trying to kill her. How has she lasted so long with such a mouth; maybe partly because she avoided speaking at all for quite some time.
Still. She tilts her head til, manages to look as if she's finding a frame for him despite not lifting her hands, finally settles on, "No. I see it."
There's a flicker in his face, though it finds its way to the corners of his mouth. That grin still has too many teeth, but it reaches into other parts of his face now even of it doesn't penetrate farther. Something true for some fragmented reason. "Good," he says.
Storytellers, she thinks, satisfied. He knows. And maybe he thinks she won't be as good as him, but that's fine. He can be wrong with everyone else who's ever said she can't do, won't succeed. Look how far she's got. Look how much she's already lived.
If he can do it, she can do it.
"En échange," she says, produces from somewhere tucked on her person a flattened piece of paper, handwritten. She doesn't try to give it to him - and risk having him rebuff it when they're very nearly ending on a positive note? not likely - but lays it flat on the nearest shelf for him to take or leave when he takes his own leave.
It isn't Peletier, but it is a French poem. He will have to have it translated to find out how many human teeth it features; she doesn't linger any longer.
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"Then I'm sorry not to have met him," he says, punctuating it with a smile that's too toothy and a pointedly raised eyebrow. It feels fractionally artificial, a thing he does with his face because it's what men in close proximity with women who think they know better do. Or is that just the story he's telling her: that he is selectively wolfish, that he cares more about what she thinks of him over a book than some other alternative vulnerability.
(Some weaknesses are easier than others.)
He hooks his elbow back on the window sill. "Mind in which direction you bare those teeth next time, won't you."
no subject
It can come as no shock, probably, that Flint is not the first person to tell Gwen to be more careful. Even on this brief acquaintance - especially. She should listen. She does try to listen. It's just that this is really all her teeth fucking do--
Her crooked, closemouthed smile is a knife palmed inward; "You are all, I think, a bit late with it."
That was almost friendly, if the punchline weren't look what they already did to me.
(Thomas doesn't want to remake her, though. He just wants her to survive throwing herself so headlong into what she makes of herself - for his sake, sometimes, she thinks before she lunges.)
"My name is Gwenaëlle Tavington," her hand on the rickety banister. "I think 'the French cunt' is more common, you can always add 'with the books' for yourself, but that's my name."
no subject
It's a relief, one that sits on top of everything else as a drop of oil in a cup of water. Remote by design. He doesn't think about it as a balm because it would require considering the thing stung (even if examination might make him more sympathetic to her, to the marks on her wrists and all the reasons why she could be here in a place she can't have chosen that must, at the end of it all, come down to the same reason anyone else is).
He lifts his chin a degree from his post at the widow, half acknowledgement and half something else. Gazing down the length of his nose at her out of habit or practice. It's the look of a man used to standing at the rail of a quarterdeck while sure it's where he belongs.
"James Flint of the Walrus, though I hear Captain is more common."
But surely that's no surprise.
no subject
Still. She tilts her head til, manages to look as if she's finding a frame for him despite not lifting her hands, finally settles on, "No. I see it."
no subject
What would be the point otherwise.
no subject
If he can do it, she can do it.
"En échange," she says, produces from somewhere tucked on her person a flattened piece of paper, handwritten. She doesn't try to give it to him - and risk having him rebuff it when they're very nearly ending on a positive note? not likely - but lays it flat on the nearest shelf for him to take or leave when he takes his own leave.
It isn't Peletier, but it is a French poem. He will have to have it translated to find out how many human teeth it features; she doesn't linger any longer.