crysta (not the crow one) (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
beautyfull) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
enodia_gpsl2024-07-08 08:17 am
beautyfull) wrote in enodia_gpsl2024-07-08 08:17 am
Entry tags:
(no subject)
WHO: Crysta Waldinger & Enoch Waldinger
WHEN: June 5, 2014
WHERE: Enoch’s apartment, Stanford
WHAT: Crysta runs away from home (again).
WARNINGS: Allusions to homophobia and bad parenting.
It’s two weeks until Crysta’s sixteenth birthday, and she’s glad she didn’t earn a car as a birthday present this year. If she’d had a car, she would’ve driven to Stanford in the middle of the night, once a wine glass shattering near her ear once again allowed her to feel justified in leaving her mother’s grasp. In the five and a half hour drive, she might have had to introspect, realise it’s all a silly plan, and turn back. In the mad dash to the airport, praying hard that her credit card hadn’t been cancelled, assuring dubious TSA agents that her parents knew exactly where she was, a business class flight where an old lady used her as a pillow, and another taxi, she’s practically spat out onto Stanford’s campus without her ever having to think one thing beyond the next moment. That’s how Crysta prefers it.
It’s only now, at about five in the morning, after all that trouble, that Crysta realises she’s still dressed in the sweatpants she’d been preparing to lounge around in at home this evening. She frowns. Stupid mistake. These are a tell. But it’s fine. It’ll have to do. She gathers up her hair into a ponytail, circling around the yellow scrunchie from her wrist. Cuter. Okay. It’s with the utmost silence that Crysta opens the front door of Enoch’s apartment complex, and then when she’d reached it, his door. She doesn’t hear anyone stirring right away. She tiptoes to his sofa, lies down and closes her eyes. Maybe she can convince him she’s here because she’d missed him when he hadn’t come home for summer holiday. Maybe he’ll believe she’s been here all night.
She smiles, like he could see her even here, mischievous even in faux-sleep. She’s always been a very good actor.
Enoch emerges from his bedroom at 6 a.m., yawning and bleary-eyed despite already having showered and dressed up. He’s deep in his serious academic phase: black jumper over a black Oxford shirt, pressed black slacks, hair neatly styled (with strategic bangs to hide a bit of forehead acne) and a pair of thick-framed glasses sitting on his nose. Somehow the old-fashioned outfit makes Enoch look even younger than his twenty years, like a boy playing dress-up in his grandfather’s closet.
He walks past the sofa without comment, headed right to the kitchen to prepare a morning dose of caffeine. It’s only after the kettle is lit that he sees he’s not alone, and ends up fumbling the mug in his hands. “Fuck!” It shatters on the floor, and Enoch glares at his sister. “What are you doing here?”
Crysta would never admit later how she springs up from sleep at the sound of more breaking glass, a mess of gangly limbs and wide eyes. She should’ve tried harder to stay awake, because now she’s on the back foot again, confused and jumpy.
But she does recover as quickly as she can, sitting leisurely up like she’s exactly where she’s supposed to be. “I have a key.” is the muttered, sullen non-answer he receives. Crysta shakes her long hair loose from its scrunchie, falling into her face. Her grin turns sharp at the sight of his extremely nerdy outfit, which is probably hypocritical, coming from someone in little better than pyjamas, but it’s her only piece of distraction ammunition right now.
“Wait. Oh no?? I would’ve called ahead if I thought you were gonna be at a funeral? Were you like. Close?”
Enoch braces his hands on the kitchen counter and silently counts backwards from ten. Crysta isn’t the first person to tease him for his new affectation, and having learned that logical explanations (point one: a monochrome wardrobe makes it easier to get ready in the mornings) won’t lessen the mockery, he’s ceased justifying himself. But he removes his glasses. Unlike the people in his program, his siblings know perfectly well that Enoch has 20/20 vision, and there’s only so much little sister ridicule he can endure before seven in the morning.
“I’m dressed for work, actually.” He sets the glasses on the counter, his eyes narrowing as he studies Crysta—her sleep clothes, the lack of luggage, and the fact that she hadn’t even texted him before showing up. “Do they know you’re here?”
Crysta kicks her backpack under the couch, as if he could see the evidence that she’d only brought like, a single set of clothing and some toiletries with x-ray eyes. Gavvy had developed superpowers, and she has no doubt Enoch will too. His reaction isn’t something even she can prod any further, and so she looks away for something else to draw attention to. Not much. There aren’t even any messages on her phone. Her parents must not know she’s gone. That’s good, ostensibly. But a wall of strange emotion hits her all the same. She swallows it.
“No.” She admits, matter of fact. “They went to bed.”
Enoch’s fingers itch to check his phone, but their parents likely won’t notice for hours, if they do at all. Last time, it had taken days. He could sell her out—his apartment is too small for both of them, and his schedule too busy to entertain his teenage sister for long—but they both know that he won’t. As flighty and frivolous as Crysta is, she wouldn’t have come all the way to Stanford for no reason.
Do you want to talk about it? He considers the offer for a silent second, then dismisses it. She won’t tell him. If he was Gavin, maybe, but Gavin is all the way across the country at MIT, so Crysta is stuck with her least favourite brother. “The fridge is empty,” Enoch finally says. “If you want food, tell me now so I can order it before I leave.”
“I’m not hungry.” She answers, too quickly, intent on at least being the least demanding houseguest while here. She even hurries to where she knows the broom is in his closet, and begins to sweep up the broken glass without him asking. She knows that’s strange behaviour for her, but she can’t quite sit still.
She’d love to tell him what happened last night. So she can say how she was making out with Coretta Groves in front of a security camera after they’d stolen some sunglasses. It was maybe the dumbest thing she’d ever done, but she’d felt free. Ask if that was wrong or if he’d ever wanted to do something just like it. But he’d laugh at her. Or scoff, disgusted. And then tell Gavvy, so he could do the same, 3000 miles away. So he didn’t need to know right now. And he wouldn’t ask. She should be grateful for that.
“Why don’t you have any food?” She demands, instead. “I can go shopping for you today.”
“Because I calculated the time allotted to various tasks every week, and it’s more efficient to reallocate all hours I used to spend on cooking.” If Enoch could reduce time spent eating to zero, he probably would. His voice has the professorial tone that usually precedes an exhausting and unwanted explanation, but he’s watching Crysta intently instead, logging every action and comparing it to mental notes from the last time she was here.
Something’s off. Too fidgety, too evasive. He wishes she would just stand still and look back at him. He wants to put breakfast in front of her and force her to sit, but nothing will be ready for delivery for hours, and he has a meeting scheduled this morning.
“I can’t stop you from grocery shopping. But I hope you weren’t expecting me to be around for…” Enoch pulls two more mugs out of the cupboard, along with two tea bags. “How long are you staying again?”
That question seems to steady Crysta, even as she throws the mug remains in the trash. She doesn’t have to explain anything to him, because Enoch just wants her gone, too, as soon as possible. That’s a comfort, in its way. She could say anything here, and it wouldn’t matter. And still, the second tea mug on the counter is the kindest thing anyone had done for her all week. Without quite realising, she stops darting around to rest by the counter, something in the base of her nervous system finally remembering it’s in a place of safety.
“Wow. I Just got here.” She protests, for appearance’s sake. “I swear I’ll leave in three days.” She remembers the expressions on her father’s face and then her mother’s, narrowed eyes and sharp sneers. She practically feels the contemptuous puffs of air by her face as they spit out their favourite descriptors of their daughter; failure, disappointment. If her stay here was three days, it’d be a weekend, with the small but non-zero chance of having those faces greet her at the door. So she amends. “Maybe four. Like. Five, max. You won’t know I’m here except I’m making you do literally exactly ONE fun thing because it’s summer now, Knock, did you even notice??”
“Summer courses begin this month and I’m a T.A., so yes, actually.” There’s a strained edge in his voice that has nothing to do with Crysta’s needling. Even putting aside the fact that he’s the same age or younger than most of his students, teaching doesn’t come naturally to Enoch. He broached the topic with Gavin only once, who of course is a natural teacher and beloved by everyone in his program.
He somehow doubts that Crysta’s advice would be any better. (Try not dressing so lame, Knock.) “Three days, five, whatever,” Enoch sighs as he pours water for Crysta’s tea. He places the cup in front of her, along with his Chemex cream and sugar set. “But what if my idea of fun is reading research papers and emailing IRIS about the rifts?”
“I mean, then I’d say you need a dictionary to go with the rest of your big books, because that is NOT the definition like. At all.”
Crysta smiles to herself at the frankly ostentatiously pretentious presentation of cream and sugar. But it’s sugar at all, and real cream instead of almond milk, and she adds them both to her cup. She doesn’t even like tea that much, but the good British kind smells like a home she only half-remembers, and she grasps the mug tightly, just holding it.
“And seriously Knock-Knock, summer courses is like. That moron word. You know?” Crysta knows the word oxymoron. She’s not sure why she pretends she doesn’t, with her slightly vacant expression and airy wave of a hand. “They should NOT be in the same sentence. We should go to one beach. There’ll be hot guys.”
Her dark eyes take up half her wan, sleep-deprived face in their pleading, but it’s sincere. He sounds stressed, and emails to the government does not sound like a way to fix that.
Enoch goes red, not looking up from stirring his tea. He’d come out to his siblings only two months ago—a humiliating confession, when Crysta and Gavin figured themselves out years before he did and can flirt with people like they were born to it. The last time he’d come close to doing anything beyond kissing, the man turned out to own two cats, and the rest of the evening became an unmitigated disaster. Going to a beach for “hot guys” feels like inviting embarrassment.
But they could. Even as Enoch tells himself that he’s too busy and his sister is an intolerable nuisance, his brain reviews his schedule for openings. This weekend is free. And he still doesn’t like the way Crysta looks, so it’s only practical for him to allocate time to observing her, in case there is something to be concerned about.
“If I take you to a beach,” he says, “you can’t bother me for the rest of the time you’re here.”
This is, honestly, much less fight than she’d anticipated from Enoch, and Crysta waits for a second for him to throw in a punchline or final condition. Huh. Maybe he really does want to go to the beach to pick up guys. Or maybe there’s a guy already at the beach? Because Enoch’s totally blushing. Okay. No. She has to play this cool. Crysta smirks over the top of her tea cup.
“Scout’s honour. You won’t even know I’m here. One FULL day. And from there I’ll like. Sit in the little broom closet the whole time and pop out only for sips of water, just like at home.”
Most of this is a lie.
Enoch expected more pushback than this, and doesn’t believe her for a second. “I’m getting a padlock for the closet,” he deadpans. “So I can be certain you’re not touching anything. Until then, stay out of trouble, because I’m meeting with my supervisor and won’t return here even if you’re literally bleeding out on my floor.”
Empty threat. Crysta will do whatever she wants, as she always does, with no consideration to anyone else, but he makes a mental note anyway to wrap things up before noon so they can get lunch. Enoch drinks half of his tea without tasting it, and fetches his blazer (black) and his leather book bag (black). The effect is vaguely comical, like an ill-fitting Halloween costume.
“I’m literally just going to be asleep.” Crysta feels compelled to defend herself, pouting visibly. “I haven’t even slept since…” But the actual time since she hadn’t slept (two nights ago, one because of the Incident, and the other because of the fight with her parents), is moderately concerning and she knows that. So an exaggeration it’ll have to be. “Like. Two weeks ago I think??”
His continued look is a little funny, but comforting, in its way. He looks like the gothiest little professor ever to live, and weirdly small. He should really improve his posture. But that sounds like something their mother would say with pleasure, and so Crysta doesn’t. She does consider the glasses on the counter, and picks them back up to offer them to her brother. “These too. They frame your cheekbones.”
Enoch puts on his glasses. He doesn’t thank her, but there’s a second where it seems like he wants to say something. I know you’re making fun of me. (Why haven’t you been sleeping?) You’d better not text Gavin just to make fun of me. (What did Dad and Mum do?) “Don’t go through my room!” he tosses over his shoulder before walking out.
Crysta watches him go out the door, and lets her shoulders slump only when she hears his car start, all that false bravado falling. She gets up, not bothering to clean her tea mess, and immediately goes to his room under the possible guise of finding a blanket. But she pauses, hand on the door, because for once, gratitude wins over contrariness. He’ll find her under her hoodie, hours later, cold but respectful, sleeping like only someone safe can.
WHEN: June 5, 2014
WHERE: Enoch’s apartment, Stanford
WHAT: Crysta runs away from home (again).
WARNINGS: Allusions to homophobia and bad parenting.
It’s two weeks until Crysta’s sixteenth birthday, and she’s glad she didn’t earn a car as a birthday present this year. If she’d had a car, she would’ve driven to Stanford in the middle of the night, once a wine glass shattering near her ear once again allowed her to feel justified in leaving her mother’s grasp. In the five and a half hour drive, she might have had to introspect, realise it’s all a silly plan, and turn back. In the mad dash to the airport, praying hard that her credit card hadn’t been cancelled, assuring dubious TSA agents that her parents knew exactly where she was, a business class flight where an old lady used her as a pillow, and another taxi, she’s practically spat out onto Stanford’s campus without her ever having to think one thing beyond the next moment. That’s how Crysta prefers it.
It’s only now, at about five in the morning, after all that trouble, that Crysta realises she’s still dressed in the sweatpants she’d been preparing to lounge around in at home this evening. She frowns. Stupid mistake. These are a tell. But it’s fine. It’ll have to do. She gathers up her hair into a ponytail, circling around the yellow scrunchie from her wrist. Cuter. Okay. It’s with the utmost silence that Crysta opens the front door of Enoch’s apartment complex, and then when she’d reached it, his door. She doesn’t hear anyone stirring right away. She tiptoes to his sofa, lies down and closes her eyes. Maybe she can convince him she’s here because she’d missed him when he hadn’t come home for summer holiday. Maybe he’ll believe she’s been here all night.
She smiles, like he could see her even here, mischievous even in faux-sleep. She’s always been a very good actor.
Enoch emerges from his bedroom at 6 a.m., yawning and bleary-eyed despite already having showered and dressed up. He’s deep in his serious academic phase: black jumper over a black Oxford shirt, pressed black slacks, hair neatly styled (with strategic bangs to hide a bit of forehead acne) and a pair of thick-framed glasses sitting on his nose. Somehow the old-fashioned outfit makes Enoch look even younger than his twenty years, like a boy playing dress-up in his grandfather’s closet.
He walks past the sofa without comment, headed right to the kitchen to prepare a morning dose of caffeine. It’s only after the kettle is lit that he sees he’s not alone, and ends up fumbling the mug in his hands. “Fuck!” It shatters on the floor, and Enoch glares at his sister. “What are you doing here?”
Crysta would never admit later how she springs up from sleep at the sound of more breaking glass, a mess of gangly limbs and wide eyes. She should’ve tried harder to stay awake, because now she’s on the back foot again, confused and jumpy.
But she does recover as quickly as she can, sitting leisurely up like she’s exactly where she’s supposed to be. “I have a key.” is the muttered, sullen non-answer he receives. Crysta shakes her long hair loose from its scrunchie, falling into her face. Her grin turns sharp at the sight of his extremely nerdy outfit, which is probably hypocritical, coming from someone in little better than pyjamas, but it’s her only piece of distraction ammunition right now.
“Wait. Oh no?? I would’ve called ahead if I thought you were gonna be at a funeral? Were you like. Close?”
Enoch braces his hands on the kitchen counter and silently counts backwards from ten. Crysta isn’t the first person to tease him for his new affectation, and having learned that logical explanations (point one: a monochrome wardrobe makes it easier to get ready in the mornings) won’t lessen the mockery, he’s ceased justifying himself. But he removes his glasses. Unlike the people in his program, his siblings know perfectly well that Enoch has 20/20 vision, and there’s only so much little sister ridicule he can endure before seven in the morning.
“I’m dressed for work, actually.” He sets the glasses on the counter, his eyes narrowing as he studies Crysta—her sleep clothes, the lack of luggage, and the fact that she hadn’t even texted him before showing up. “Do they know you’re here?”
Crysta kicks her backpack under the couch, as if he could see the evidence that she’d only brought like, a single set of clothing and some toiletries with x-ray eyes. Gavvy had developed superpowers, and she has no doubt Enoch will too. His reaction isn’t something even she can prod any further, and so she looks away for something else to draw attention to. Not much. There aren’t even any messages on her phone. Her parents must not know she’s gone. That’s good, ostensibly. But a wall of strange emotion hits her all the same. She swallows it.
“No.” She admits, matter of fact. “They went to bed.”
Enoch’s fingers itch to check his phone, but their parents likely won’t notice for hours, if they do at all. Last time, it had taken days. He could sell her out—his apartment is too small for both of them, and his schedule too busy to entertain his teenage sister for long—but they both know that he won’t. As flighty and frivolous as Crysta is, she wouldn’t have come all the way to Stanford for no reason.
Do you want to talk about it? He considers the offer for a silent second, then dismisses it. She won’t tell him. If he was Gavin, maybe, but Gavin is all the way across the country at MIT, so Crysta is stuck with her least favourite brother. “The fridge is empty,” Enoch finally says. “If you want food, tell me now so I can order it before I leave.”
“I’m not hungry.” She answers, too quickly, intent on at least being the least demanding houseguest while here. She even hurries to where she knows the broom is in his closet, and begins to sweep up the broken glass without him asking. She knows that’s strange behaviour for her, but she can’t quite sit still.
She’d love to tell him what happened last night. So she can say how she was making out with Coretta Groves in front of a security camera after they’d stolen some sunglasses. It was maybe the dumbest thing she’d ever done, but she’d felt free. Ask if that was wrong or if he’d ever wanted to do something just like it. But he’d laugh at her. Or scoff, disgusted. And then tell Gavvy, so he could do the same, 3000 miles away. So he didn’t need to know right now. And he wouldn’t ask. She should be grateful for that.
“Why don’t you have any food?” She demands, instead. “I can go shopping for you today.”
“Because I calculated the time allotted to various tasks every week, and it’s more efficient to reallocate all hours I used to spend on cooking.” If Enoch could reduce time spent eating to zero, he probably would. His voice has the professorial tone that usually precedes an exhausting and unwanted explanation, but he’s watching Crysta intently instead, logging every action and comparing it to mental notes from the last time she was here.
Something’s off. Too fidgety, too evasive. He wishes she would just stand still and look back at him. He wants to put breakfast in front of her and force her to sit, but nothing will be ready for delivery for hours, and he has a meeting scheduled this morning.
“I can’t stop you from grocery shopping. But I hope you weren’t expecting me to be around for…” Enoch pulls two more mugs out of the cupboard, along with two tea bags. “How long are you staying again?”
That question seems to steady Crysta, even as she throws the mug remains in the trash. She doesn’t have to explain anything to him, because Enoch just wants her gone, too, as soon as possible. That’s a comfort, in its way. She could say anything here, and it wouldn’t matter. And still, the second tea mug on the counter is the kindest thing anyone had done for her all week. Without quite realising, she stops darting around to rest by the counter, something in the base of her nervous system finally remembering it’s in a place of safety.
“Wow. I Just got here.” She protests, for appearance’s sake. “I swear I’ll leave in three days.” She remembers the expressions on her father’s face and then her mother’s, narrowed eyes and sharp sneers. She practically feels the contemptuous puffs of air by her face as they spit out their favourite descriptors of their daughter; failure, disappointment. If her stay here was three days, it’d be a weekend, with the small but non-zero chance of having those faces greet her at the door. So she amends. “Maybe four. Like. Five, max. You won’t know I’m here except I’m making you do literally exactly ONE fun thing because it’s summer now, Knock, did you even notice??”
“Summer courses begin this month and I’m a T.A., so yes, actually.” There’s a strained edge in his voice that has nothing to do with Crysta’s needling. Even putting aside the fact that he’s the same age or younger than most of his students, teaching doesn’t come naturally to Enoch. He broached the topic with Gavin only once, who of course is a natural teacher and beloved by everyone in his program.
He somehow doubts that Crysta’s advice would be any better. (Try not dressing so lame, Knock.) “Three days, five, whatever,” Enoch sighs as he pours water for Crysta’s tea. He places the cup in front of her, along with his Chemex cream and sugar set. “But what if my idea of fun is reading research papers and emailing IRIS about the rifts?”
“I mean, then I’d say you need a dictionary to go with the rest of your big books, because that is NOT the definition like. At all.”
Crysta smiles to herself at the frankly ostentatiously pretentious presentation of cream and sugar. But it’s sugar at all, and real cream instead of almond milk, and she adds them both to her cup. She doesn’t even like tea that much, but the good British kind smells like a home she only half-remembers, and she grasps the mug tightly, just holding it.
“And seriously Knock-Knock, summer courses is like. That moron word. You know?” Crysta knows the word oxymoron. She’s not sure why she pretends she doesn’t, with her slightly vacant expression and airy wave of a hand. “They should NOT be in the same sentence. We should go to one beach. There’ll be hot guys.”
Her dark eyes take up half her wan, sleep-deprived face in their pleading, but it’s sincere. He sounds stressed, and emails to the government does not sound like a way to fix that.
Enoch goes red, not looking up from stirring his tea. He’d come out to his siblings only two months ago—a humiliating confession, when Crysta and Gavin figured themselves out years before he did and can flirt with people like they were born to it. The last time he’d come close to doing anything beyond kissing, the man turned out to own two cats, and the rest of the evening became an unmitigated disaster. Going to a beach for “hot guys” feels like inviting embarrassment.
But they could. Even as Enoch tells himself that he’s too busy and his sister is an intolerable nuisance, his brain reviews his schedule for openings. This weekend is free. And he still doesn’t like the way Crysta looks, so it’s only practical for him to allocate time to observing her, in case there is something to be concerned about.
“If I take you to a beach,” he says, “you can’t bother me for the rest of the time you’re here.”
This is, honestly, much less fight than she’d anticipated from Enoch, and Crysta waits for a second for him to throw in a punchline or final condition. Huh. Maybe he really does want to go to the beach to pick up guys. Or maybe there’s a guy already at the beach? Because Enoch’s totally blushing. Okay. No. She has to play this cool. Crysta smirks over the top of her tea cup.
“Scout’s honour. You won’t even know I’m here. One FULL day. And from there I’ll like. Sit in the little broom closet the whole time and pop out only for sips of water, just like at home.”
Most of this is a lie.
Enoch expected more pushback than this, and doesn’t believe her for a second. “I’m getting a padlock for the closet,” he deadpans. “So I can be certain you’re not touching anything. Until then, stay out of trouble, because I’m meeting with my supervisor and won’t return here even if you’re literally bleeding out on my floor.”
Empty threat. Crysta will do whatever she wants, as she always does, with no consideration to anyone else, but he makes a mental note anyway to wrap things up before noon so they can get lunch. Enoch drinks half of his tea without tasting it, and fetches his blazer (black) and his leather book bag (black). The effect is vaguely comical, like an ill-fitting Halloween costume.
“I’m literally just going to be asleep.” Crysta feels compelled to defend herself, pouting visibly. “I haven’t even slept since…” But the actual time since she hadn’t slept (two nights ago, one because of the Incident, and the other because of the fight with her parents), is moderately concerning and she knows that. So an exaggeration it’ll have to be. “Like. Two weeks ago I think??”
His continued look is a little funny, but comforting, in its way. He looks like the gothiest little professor ever to live, and weirdly small. He should really improve his posture. But that sounds like something their mother would say with pleasure, and so Crysta doesn’t. She does consider the glasses on the counter, and picks them back up to offer them to her brother. “These too. They frame your cheekbones.”
Enoch puts on his glasses. He doesn’t thank her, but there’s a second where it seems like he wants to say something. I know you’re making fun of me. (Why haven’t you been sleeping?) You’d better not text Gavin just to make fun of me. (What did Dad and Mum do?) “Don’t go through my room!” he tosses over his shoulder before walking out.
Crysta watches him go out the door, and lets her shoulders slump only when she hears his car start, all that false bravado falling. She gets up, not bothering to clean her tea mess, and immediately goes to his room under the possible guise of finding a blanket. But she pauses, hand on the door, because for once, gratitude wins over contrariness. He’ll find her under her hoodie, hours later, cold but respectful, sleeping like only someone safe can.