[closed - Raleigh]

[just_another]

It's quiet. That's the first thing Joel notices as he heads downstairs.

He's been busy working in what's going to be the nursery eventually, although he's sure Spencer would tell him not to strain himself. He's still only working half days at the store as his hand heals, but he's feeling better and he'd called Spencer around noon, letting him know he was going to stay home for the whole day so he could get a head start on the nursery.

By the time he quits for a break, he really notices just how quiet the house is.

His parents have gone home, Spencer is at Crossroads and Raleigh is at the bakery, though he imagines she'll be home soon. It's as good a chance as any for him to actually play some of the music he really likes and so he heads downstairs for the living room, Huxley at his heels, and puts a record on the old turntable he refuses to give up.

The music that blasts out of the speakers is loud and aggressive and extremely technical. It's like mathematics in musical form and Joel wanders out toward the front hall, then stops for a moment, just closing his eyes and letting himself enjoy the music.

Comments

[callmeemily]

Her brows furrowed when he called her out, and her gaze wandered away from him, anywhere but on his face because he wasn't wrong to point out that she was lying; she was, and she didn't even know what to say. She couldn't quite look at him, and Raleigh shook her head when he tried to reassure her, sort of?

"It's- I'm okay," she says quietly, because she doesn't know what else to say. "Sometimes, it's... worse than other days, but today I'm mostly okay." She finally looks up at him, and she hates that she knows her face isn't.. right, it's not really okay. Nobody's ever been so blunt about it, and nobody's ever really seen that proof.

That he can see it like that, it just cements for her that it'll always be that way. "Thanks, though. For... sort of letting me know what my aura looked like, I've kind of wondered, off and on, if it was... okay, or like, if there was deep dark something that I never knew about, you know?" She doesn't mean the way that Joel had... company... for so long, but that the little things that she thought weren't so bad - those things everyone does, like occasionally littering or cutting someone off or not going back to a store when you realised that the clerk missed charging you for something - that they were worse than she thought and not everyone did them.

And, of course, the mess with her mom. So it was good to know.

[just_another]

"You could have asked me," he tells her. "I would have read it for you if I'd known you were curious. I just try not to do it without being specifically requested because it's very... it's extremely personal. It's invasive in a lot of ways. I can see a lot of things about a person that they might normally hide and that doesn't feel very fair to me."

It's gotten harder to avoid it lately, though. He has to learn how to control it better. Sometimes it happens when he's stressed, he just lets go of that thin thread of control and suddenly he can see colours and energies absolutely everywhere. The demon had kept it under control for such a long time while trying to repress it entirely that Joel has never had to learn to control it himself. Not until now.

"And if you ever want me to look again in the future, just let me know," he says. "I won't be taking peeks every now and then on my own if I can help it." Even if someone says he can look once, he doesn't take that as blanket permission. Even Spencer needs to tell him to do it.

[callmeemily]

"I dunno," she says with a shrug. "I guess I just sort of.... I was scared about what you'd find," she admits. "I was scared." She makes a face as she says it, because she honestly really hates that's what she was thinking, that somehow she's got this deep, dark thing inside of herself. She's scared about it, but she doesn't even know how to articulate that fear.

"Whenever you want, just- or you can like- You just don't have to worry if it... slips, okay?" She shrugs once, smiling at him. "Either way, it's pretty good. I mean- ignoring the obvious?" She's got to say it, because... well. Her leg's sort of always a problem.

[just_another]

"It's pretty good," Joel agrees, giving her a smile and there's a sense of relief that comes with her saying it's okay if he slips. Because he's been trying really hard, he's been learning, but it definitely takes time and he hates feeling like he's intruding on someone's personal space like that. It's not the sort of thing people can see or understand unless they can see it themselves, but it's a hugely personal thing, something beyond what he can explain. "But thanks. That makes... that makes it a lot easier. I'm working on it, but it's still a lot of work. I should have been working on it for years, but because of the demon, I just... I had no idea that there was work to be done."

It's the same with his premonitions, though he hasn't had one of those in awhile. There's a lot of work to be done, but he has to wait until he actually has one to even begin to start.

There's a little part of him that sort of hopes he doesn't want one. Not for awhile anyway. There's just so much to do with the baby coming that he isn't sure he has the time to dedicate to learning how to deal with a power like that.

[callmeemily]

"It's got to be weird," she says quietly, and Raleigh leans against the wall, almost perched on the window sill because her leg's hurting the way it usually does. "I mean- Are you.... it's silly to ask if you're okay, but- You know that even with everything, you're still you, right?" She doesn't know if that's actually something he does know - mostly because he's obviously changed, the demon not being in him anymore, he's got new powers and they're bigger and living with a demon, she can't even imagine it.

"I mean- I guess I'm not the right person to say that, but to me, you're still you, one-hundred percent."

[just_another]

"You know, at first it felt... it felt almost lonely," he admits and he hasn't really said that to anyone. Spencer knows, but he tells Spencer everything, and everyone else just knows he used to have something piggybacking on the very part of him who made him who he is and now it's gone. But no one really knows how it had felt to go from having it always there to just being alone.

"Which isn't to say I want it back, not by any means," he adds quickly. "It's just that it had been with me for twelve years. I didn't know it, of course, but it had always been there and then it was suddenly gone and for the first time since I was seventeen, I was completely alone inside my head. It was a strange feeling."