Room 505, Tuesday Morning

[thatsamilkshake]

Nice of Fandom to let her survive the weekend, Francine had decided upon listening to last night's radio broadcast, before throwing something else at her. It was sometimes generous like that.

Francine was sometimes generous too. For instance right now she was sticking around her room failing to kill things online, instead of going out and failing to kill things elsewhere.

[OOC: Expecting the Ears for SP of dooom, but also open if you want to deal with her, sure.]

Comments

[thatsamilkshake]

"I don't actually want to hurt them. I just want to...throw shoes at them or something." Francine sighed. "It's not the squirrels anyway, it's people. It bugs me that they'd think those things about you; it bugs me that they'd think you cared that little about me. Or else they didn't think of me at all."

[bigdamndestiny.livejournal.com]

Merlin nodded, holding out a hand for her to join him. "I don't think they know us all that well if that's what they think."

[thatsamilkshake]

Francine pushed her chair back and stood up to take it, using his hand to turn herself around and lean against him, wrapping it around her waist.

"It shouldn't bother me, I guess. I do know you. And the people who matter know me. I just... I'm not real big on trusting guys right now, you know?" That would probably wear off in a disappointingly short time, at least from Katchoo's POV. "So I don't like people thinking I'm dumb for trusting the ones I do."

[bigdamndestiny.livejournal.com]

Merlin hugged her back, chin resting on her shoulder. "I think our... relationships are a bit too complicated to follow."

[thatsamilkshake]

Francine tried for a laugh and more or less succeeded. "There's only four of us; it's not like you need a flow-chart." Yes, she said four. Shut up. Hush. Shut up.

[bigdamndestiny.livejournal.com]

"Four now?" Merlin asked, more amused sounding than alarmed.

[thatsamilkshake]

"...Shut up." But there was a shape burned into her skin that wouldn't let her make the same old argument that ended in 'you're crazy.'

[bigdamndestiny.livejournal.com]

Merlin smiled and kissed her on the forehead. "Feeling better?"

[thatsamilkshake]

"I guess..." Maybe a little more focused, at least. On something besides feeling guilty for setting imaginary squirrels on fire with her brain. It might not be the sanest focus ever. "Do you. I mean. If." Or the most easily verbalized. "Do you want to? With Arthur?"

[bigdamndestiny.livejournal.com]

"No. Yes. It's---complicated."

[thatsamilkshake]

"Ha!" It was the kind of laugh that hurt your throat a little. "When isn't it?" Francine reached up to tangle fingers in her bangs.

"Because of me?" she asked after a moment. Francine Peters, center of the universe, yes.

[bigdamndestiny.livejournal.com]

"Yes. And no again," Merlin replied. "I wouldn't do that to you, and... I'm not certain if--"

He made a face.

"--to a degree, he used sex like Katchoo uses alcohol."

[thatsamilkshake]

You don't want to know the images a slow-to-connect brain can make of a statement like that.

"Run that by me again? Not the me part. I got the me part." For certain to-be-revisited definitions of got.

[bigdamndestiny.livejournal.com]

"He slept with people to--escape things," Merlin replied, looking elsewhere.

[thatsamilkshake]

"That's..." There were a couple hundred words she could end that with, but most of them sounded like her mother's voice, not hers. "Sad. It sounds lonely."

[bigdamndestiny.livejournal.com]

"I don't want to be that for him."

[thatsamilkshake]

That set Francine silent for a moment, partly looking for something to say, and partly just...silent. "Honey, he loves you."

It didn't even - exactly - hurt to say, anymore. There was too little of that in a world without her parents' marriage and with a thing like Darcy Parker, for Francine not to be grateful for it when she saw it.

[bigdamndestiny.livejournal.com]

"And what if that's not enough for him?" Merlin asked, very firm in his focus on what appeared to be bit of lint on his trousers. "He wants to--and he said he would wait for when I was ready, but what if it's not enough?"

[thatsamilkshake]

Just in case she thought she'd get out of this without anything hurting. Francine shifted around to face him and reached for his other hand. "Why would you ever think you're not enough?"

[bigdamndestiny.livejournal.com]

"I'm no prize," Merlin scoffed. "Have you seen my ears? I'm not--like Arthur. Or Morgana. Or you."

Merlin: Fan of the curves.

[thatsamilkshake]

Yeah, Francine would just be eyerolling at that last one. And then at the rest of it, of course.

"Oh my God, you're hideously unattractive! How did I not see that before I slept with you? It was a spell, wasn't it. You put a taste-ruining spell on me."

[bigdamndestiny.livejournal.com]

"You're very--" Merlin tilted his head. "Curvy."

Good child-bearing hips. His mother would be so proud, but wonder when he started fancying girls.

"You were won over by my charm."

[thatsamilkshake]

"Well, that's true." Blink. "...You want to be curvy?"

[bigdamndestiny.livejournal.com]

"What? No! I mean--it works for you. And Arthur is all... muscly. I think I'd rather be muscly."

[thatsamilkshake]

"And I'd rather look like Morgana, but I'm not worried you're going to go off and sleep with her because I don't."