complexfemalecharacter | (no subject)

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alex

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Four days in and it's still all pretty fucked.

Maeve is used to having her own place, somewhere she can go to when she needs to escape the rest of the world, which happens a lot more often than she would admit to out loud. The caravan wasn't much, but it was hers and she'd been able to keep it clean and decorate it the way she wanted. No one else made any noise, she could play whatever music she liked, and maybe her neighbours fought too much, but she'd take Cynthia over a bunch of kids any day.

Right now she's just trying to spend as little time there as possible. They're looking into getting her into school, even though it's close to the end of the year. Maeve wants to get back, she needs to get back, because there's no way in hell she's losing three months and having to spend a whole extra year trying to get her diploma so she can do something more. This should be her last bloody year, she's meant to be graduating, but now time has gotten all fucked up along with dimensions and it's like she's back a year.

But she's not back in school yet and so now, in the middle of the day, she's just out. She's got a shitty and too sweet iced coffee in one hand and she's wearing some clothes one of the workers at the Home had given to her, but the jeans are too big and the shirt is too tight, so she's standing in front of a thrift shop, looking at the offerings through the window.

Tugging at the waist of the jeans, pulling them up higher only for them to slide down and settle on her hips again, Maeve figures it's her best bet. Not like she can afford anything else right now anyway.

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"My boyfriend keeps trying to talk me into going back to college," says Alex, looking down at her boots as she walks. "But I don't know how I feel about that yet."

Maeve can't wait to get into college. The classes have to be more interesting than most of what's offered in secondary school, the professors have to be at least slightly less obnoxious, and she has a feeling, too, that whatever reputation she's carried for the past four years won't follow her there.

But she knows it isn't for everyone.

"You should only go if you want to," she says. "Not because your boyfriend wants you to. But I figure you know that."

"Yeah, I do," says Alex, nodding. Probably the only person who knows that better than Alex is Danny Arlington himself. Still, it doesn't stop him wanting better for her. she guesses he'll always want that. "I'm just...kind of enjoying being here, at the moment. Finding my feet. None of the shit at home following me." Alex's eyes dart, for a moment, following the path of a gray who crosses her path. "Most of it, anyway."

Maeve follows Alex's gaze, but she doesn't see anything, so she only arches an eyebrow curiously and says nothing. People all have their own shit, she knows that as well as anyone, and she doesn't see any reason to pry.

"So is this the place?" she asks as they get close to another thrift shop.

"Yeah, this is it," says Alex, pushing open the door and holding it open so that Maeve can step into the shop ahead of her. "I got this jacket here when I first arrived. These boots too." She pushes her shades up onto the top of her head. "I...didn't get to bring much with me."

"I bought my uniform for the quiz team I was part of back home," Maeve says. "Khakis and yellow button down and a burgundy bow tie, which really isn't my style."

She steps into the shop and begins to pick through the racks, relieved to discover she'll be able to find something here.

"Thanks," she says, looking at Alex. "This is great."

"I was...very naked," she says, smirking. "Thankfully, I turned up in my apartment, not on the street, right?" Alex starts leafing through the rows. She wears a lot of Darlington's stuff these days, but she still wants stuff of her own. She's also in the market for something new for the club.

Maeve wonders how that works, how it's decided who gets to show up where. She would have liked to have not shown up in a shop, her face streaked with tears, but it isn't as if anyone asked what she preferred when she was pulled out of her admittedly messy life.

"Sounds like a rough landing," she says as she pulls out a few shirts she likes the look of, then a pair of black jeans that are cheap and look like she can cut into a good pair of shorts.

"It wasn't even in the top three shitty things that happened to me that week," says Alex, grinning. She pulls a sweater off her shirt, vaguely reminiscent of the black one that she'd loved back in New Haven and holds it up against herself.

Maeve has a pretty good idea of shitty things that happen to people, both those they're responsible for and those they aren't. A lot of shit had been building up for her in the day before coming here.

Talking about Elsie and Erin are not things that she's even remotely prepared to do, though, so she only looks at Alex and says, "Sounds like an even rougher landing, then, if that's not the worst of it all."

"Yeah, well, I'm still here, so it can't have been that bad," she says, draping the sweater over her arm and moving down the racks. "Darlington arriving helped. Guessing you don't have anyone from home here?"

"Nope," she answers, popping her lips on the end of the word, as if she doesn't care at all that she's here alone. As if she hasn't looked at her phone a hundred times while lying in her bed at the Home, hating that little indicator that says her messages to Aimee and Otis have gone undelivered.

"Probably for the best," she says. "Better to get a fresh start without all the stupid high school shit following me."

"Definitely feel you on that," says Alex, picking up a pair of platform silver boots and lifting one foot, fitting the soles together to check the size. "Don't think I'd have wanted anyone from high school." Maybe Mosh wouldn't have been so bad. "There weren't that many from New Haven I'd want to see again, either, honestly."

"Yeah, Moordale's not exactly a hub of cultural activity," she answers as she drapes another few shirts over her arm. The prices are good and the style is exactly what she's looking for. "A lot of small minds, mostly."

She had wanted so badly to get out and now that she's out, she isn't sure what to do.

"Fuck that," says Alex, sitting down in the middle of the floor and starting to unlace her own boots - she's not going to know if these heels will work for work unless she tries them on. "Well, here you can be whatever you want to be, I guess."

Maeve isn't sure that's true either. She's stuck at a bloody orphanage, which she's sure the kids at her new school will be well aware of, some other bullshit for them to try and use against her. And she doesn't anticipate suddenly being open and friendly with everyone she meets. Not when she knows how much most people suck.

So she'll probably still just be Maeve Wiley. Maybe not cockbiter this time, but still poor. Still alone.

"Those boots are cool," she says instead, just as she spots a short black skirt made of corduroy.

"Yeah," says Alex, sticking out one leg, the glitter catching the light. "I wouldn't have worn anything like that at home, but they're good for work. Plus Danny likes them. Not that he'd admit it."

"For work?" Maeve asks, trying to imagine wearing boots like that for longer than five minutes. She doesn't really do heels to begin with, can't imagine walking around in them all day and can't imagine trying to work in them.

But then again, the only job she's ever had was that stupid pretzel place in the mall.

"Yeah," says Alex, and then she weighs it up for a second, whether she gives a shit what Maeve thinks, whether Maeve seems likely to judge her at all. "I dance." She pauses for a second, zipping up the second boot. "Strip."

"Beats trying to walk around in those for eight hours serving burgers or something," Maeve answers, because once it's said, the boots make a lot more sense. She doesn't think she could do it, but she's also read enough feminist literature and rhetoric to understand that sex work of any kind is still work and the policing of it is just another way to police women.

She's sure as hell not going to do that.

"Yeah, it does," says Alex, who's done all kinds of shitty jobs in her life, and likes this one the best, because she's found the balance. Because it makes her feel fucking powerful. "The mone's good, my shifts are flexible, and my boyfriend is almost cool about it." She starts unzipping the boots. "What's not to like, right?"

"Just almost cool?" Maeve asks with a bit of a smirk. That seems like more than most men would manage, really. She tries to imagine Otis or Jackson reacting to the idea of her dancing for other men and it's pretty much laughable. The fact that she's seventeen aside, she knows damn well neither of them would be the sort who were cool with it, even if they thought they would be.

"He's a lot better than he used to be, but he's definitely still working on it," she says, with a smirk. "He's...kind of straight laced. It took him a long time to figure it out for himself. But, you know...we made rules and talked about boundaries and all that boring adult shit." She rolls her eyes. "And now he's sort of cool with it."

Maeve nods and says nothing at first, instead trying on a button down flannel over the shirt she's wearing now. It fits well, especially if she ties it off at the front, and she drapes it over her arm with the other things she's grabbed.

Right now, she's got no interest in a boyfriend of any sort. Not after everything.

"My last boyfriend was pretty straight laced, too," she says. "Athlete, smart, going places. Not really the sort of boy who dates a girl like me."

"Sounds exactly like me and Danny," she says, grinning, picking up a pair of hoop earrings still on their backing card from a fancy place in town and holding them up next to her face, looking at Maeve with a raised eyebrow. "I can never get a straight answer out of him, but I'm pretty sure that, back home, he exclusively dated athletic girls with shiny ponytails called Ashley."