Heavy Talks

Who: Kaysen and Isaac
When: afternoon
Where: mostly in the van

It was Saturday, and Isaac felt like he owed his sister some time. Like ... big time. She hadn't said much about her breakup with Chance, something that he hadn't really pushed. He knew that breakups sucked, and he knew how dramatic Kaysen was. He didn't have anything going on that afternoon, as the band practice had been postponed, so he decided to sister-nap her and do something. Coming out of his room, Isaac finished pulling a long-sleeved shirt down over his head and banged on her door. "Hey!" he called through it, grinning a little and already expecting to get yelled at.

Kaysen was in there, doing some homework on her bed though really, that was a loose description. Mostly she had her history book open, and she was doodling on her notebook as opposed to say, reading the words in the book and taking any notes which had been her goal. She was distracted, and she really didn't give a shit about whatever happened to some dudes way back in the day that no one really cared about in the first place. When the bang came on her door, she was happy for it, and grinned, even if she snapped out a response that sounded annoyed. "Oh my god, what the fuck do you want?!" she called. "And what're you trying to do, break the door down?"

"If I wanted to break the door down, I'd do this!" he said, and ran himself bodily into the door. Not hard enough to do any damage, but enough to make noise. He grabbed the knob and twisted it, then banged through it. He dropped into a wide-legged stance and pointed a finger-gun quickly to the left and then to the right. Then at Kaysen. "This is a bust! We've had reports of illegal amounts of 'mopey teenage girl' coming from this place, and the jig is up! Reach for the sky, toots! M'takin' you into custody." He managed not to grin like an idiot, but it was really hard.

Kaysen was entirely amused, and it was hard for her not to just burst out laughing, but she managed. She couldn't do that! What she could do was launch a pillow at his head, whiffing her round yinyang pillow as she dropped down on the opposite side of the bed. "You'll never take me alive!" she called.

"Bullshit! You're just making it harder on yourself!" Isaac cried, letting the pillow just bounce off. He launched himself up onto the bed and bounced, nearly fell on top of her, but caught himself. "C'mon, girlie, the faster you give up, the lighter your sentence will be!" He reached down to where she was and started to tickle her madly, laughing now.

Well one thing she couldn't stand up to was tickling, so she burst into laughter, squirming. The commotion was enough to send Edison out from his usual haunt beneath her bed, and he made a hasty retreat out of the room. "Traitor!" she called after the feline, as she batted at her brother's hands. "Okay okay I give!!" she said, through more peals of laughter.

That was probably the most awesome thing about being a big brother. Getting torture and delightedness in the same go. He stopped tickling her, laughing breathlessly himself. "Okay, ready to hear your sentencing now? You are hereby condemned to go to the mall with your lame older brother, and pick something awesome out for him to buy you to make up for being lame. Which he can never really do, since he's your big brother, but still. A for effort, all that shit," he told her.

Kaysen looked up at him with a shrewd eye squint, as if trying to judge if he was for real or not. "....oh fine." she huffed, as if this were something horrible, and she was just agreeing to get him off of her back. In reality, she was up for spending a little brother time. It wasn't like they'd ever hung out a ton or anything, but it had been a while since they'd actually done that. She was guessing it was due to the having significant others of it all. If she even still had one. She pushed herself back up to her feet, and crossed her arms. "What's my budget? Because you have got a lot of lame to make up for." she warned.

He rolled onto his back on her bed, tucking one hand under his head and eyeing her back, one lid squinted. "Fifty bucks? Is that enough lame?" he asked. Without waiting for an answer, he rolled off of the bed back to the side he'd started from and stood up. "If it's not, we can negotiate in the car. C'mon, there's a CD I want, and you've got to cash in." He grabbed her arm and tugged on her insistently, whether she was actually ready to go or not. Girls always had to prepare for that shit or something.

"God, I'm coming, I'm coming. Lay off, gestapo." she said, getting her arm back, but still amused. And she didn't think she'd spend fifty bucks, but a new cd would be cool. She could be down with that. The car situation she didn't think she needed, but that was mostly because she didn't so much have friends to take riding around anywhere, and there was little place to go in the first place. He was much more the type who needed it. Then she wondered if like, he used it for he and his woman to--wow was she ever stopping that thought before it got anywhere. Because ew.

Isaac was already heading out the door. And dodging around Edison, who had been peeking around the corner to see if the commotion was over yet. He patted his pockets, mentally checking off wallet, keys, and cell phone, then thundered down the stairs in front of her. She was coming, and that was enough. Maybe he'd get her talking a bit, see what was up in Kaysen Land. It was always a lot easier to accomplish when they were both out of the house somewhere. The threat of overhearing parents was ever-present.

She took the stairs two at a time, also eager to ditch the homestead. She grabbed her coat on the way out, and pulled it on over her hoodie, which she kind of just took to wearing even more often than before. Even at home, where she knew the spell didn't even count, because no one there wanted to be mean to her. But still, it just made her feel better. It was like a stupid security blanket, only she could wear it and decorate it with random patches. When they got into the car, she buckled her belt then looked at her brother. "So...anything interesting been up lately?" she asked. "...other than like, doing your girlfriend, I don't wanna know that."

Isaac laughed as he turned the engine over and let it start to warm up. "Gosh Yakbutter, that just leaves me with nothin' interesting left," he said, looking over at her with a grin. "Everything's the same-old same-old except for doing the missus, y'know." He reached over to knuckle her in the shoulder and turned the heat on in a hopeful effort to get the car warm. "Nothing, really. Getting used to the ghosts, having band practice, that kind of thing. You? Besides burning down buildings at school." He looked at her sideways with a little smirk.

She ducked her head at that, and couldn't help but look guilty, shifty eyed, and like she wanted to disappear all at the same time. "...I didn't--" she started, going to say she hadn't done it on purpose. but she had, hadn't she. Yes sir, she had. She'd done that shit because she'd been that upset. Because she'd wanted to destroy something. So...she had. And then the fuckers just built a new one that was better than the last one. Though the weird meshy windscreen thing was still fucked. "...okay I did it on purpose." she muttered.

He hadn't really meant to bring up a sore spot; he'd been more amused by the news -- and acted just as flabbergasted as the girl who told him that someone would set fire to the building -- than anything. It wasn't as though she'd hurt anybody, after all. Or maybe he was just getting more cynical or something. "It's cool, I don't care," he said, in case she thought he did or something. The car had warmed up just enough, and he put it in reverse to back it out of the driveway. "What else has been up?" he asked, giving her an open table.

Kaysen was still ducked down in her seat, and she didn't say anything for a moment, arms crossed over her chest as she curled in on herself a bit. she kept quiet, then finally snapped. "Jesus, don't you even want to know why I did something that messed up?!" she said, exasperated.

"I'm assuming it was because you and Chance were mid-breakup," he said, glancing over at her and not really reacting to the mini-outburst. Oh yes, he heard things constantly that she didn't tell him. "Which was totally not how I wanted to broach the 'hey sis, how are you doing really really?' topic, so ... my bad there, sorry. I just meant to say I wasn't pissed about it or anything." Well that was a great start, he was real proud of that one.

Well, at least her brother was more than used to her random bouts of irrationality. That was helpful. So was what he said, really, it eased a little of the flare up of heat through her system, the immediate flash of ire. "...oh." she mumbled. "I...right." Okay so she was an asshole. "Good you aren't pissed. I knew it wasn't gonna go anywhere." she said, unnecessarily, since she didn't figure Isaac would even think she would do something like that.

He didn't, which had been why he wasn't pissed about it. Isaac knew she had more control than that. Or had faith that she did, anyway. "Yeah I know," he told her anyway, in case she needed assurance of that. He drove toward the mall, glancing over at her again. "So ... want to tell me what happened exactly? Or should I leave it?" Because that was a possibility too. He didn't want to, he wanted to know, but he'd come to try to respect her boundaries and not butt in as much as he actually wanted to. With her doing that whole growing up thing.

She didn't know. She knew there was the Huge Ginormous Thing that she hadn't told him, and she really still hated the shit out of that. But she just...she knew he was going to have a reaction that was Bad. Like, way bad. Like, so totally bad that she couldn't hack it, and while Thom could give her calm advice and shit, her brother? Was more an action-guy. Like a go kick someone's ass dude. So really....yeah. Just yeah. "I dunno. I just...I dunno." she mumbled, knowing she should probably give more than that. "I don't even know if we are together or not. like, we weren't, but it was a 'break' but I dunno. I haven't...and I dunno." Coherency failure.

Her stumbling around was actually more worrisome than a burned-down building. There was no cursing Chance's name, no death threats, not even any four letter words. Isaac looked over at her again, a line between his eyebrows. "I'm taking it this wasn't your decision?" he asked, keeping calm for the moment. He knew how relationships went, right? And she'd just been giggling with him a few minutes ago, so she couldn't be absolutely devastated. Right?

She shrugged one shoulder unhelpfully. Was it? She'd...understood. But yeah, she guessed it wasn't. Not for really, anyhow. More like she got it, and it was her fault. Because she couldn't let anything go, and...yeah. For real. Whatever. She couldn't actually explain that though, so she left it at the shrug for an answer.

That wasn't a good enough answer for Isaac. Well, it said plenty, but he didn't like it. "So do I get to go introduce his teeth to the back of his skull now?" he asked, only halfway lightly. Because even if he was supposed to stay out of it, he didn't like his sister being hurt. Which she obviously was, because she wasn't talking about it. Kaysen talked. About everything. At length. With great verve.

She shook her head, it was immediate, and exaggerated. "No, you don't, he didn't--it's not his fault!" she said, immediately going in for defending the guy. Even if she had her own issues with him, and she still sometimes thought he was a complete coward, or just wanted to avoid things or whatever, that didn't mean that it wasn't really all coming down on their heads because she couldn't let things go.

Isaac grumbled a little. The dickwad had made his baby sister unhappy -- like he'd been thinking from the beginning! -- and that was enough fault for a punch in the face. In his opinion anyway. But he wouldn't go do anything unless she wanted him to. He was silent for a moment, watching the road. "So it's a break," he said, picking that out of all the mumbling she'd done. "That you're not happy having."

She was sullenly silent for a moment, staring at the heat vent and she reached out to adjust it. It was fucking cold in there. Then she rolled her eyes at herself, busted out Kurt's lighter, and warmed the car up her way. Or, that was the plan at least. She concentrated, and with as upset as she was feeling at the time, it was an easy sort of push. Unfortunately she did it a little too hard, and it went from cold to like, sweaty-hot in a very short amount of time. Shit. She flicked the lighter closed and cracked a window. "srry." she mumbled. It took her a minute to say anything more. "I don't know where we're at. I didn't want to break up or anything, but I get why he did it. He's...got reasons, or whatever. I guess. I just...I dunno. I don't know much of anything anymore, I think." she admitted. "...isn't dating sposta be easy? Like you and your woman never seem to have problems." she pointed out. It always works out in the movies.

He glanced over at the flame as it flared up a bit uneasily. He trusted her, but ... fire in a close space. And then there he was wanting to take his jacket off all of the sudden. Isaac cracked his window too. He had to chuckle a bit at her question, though. "We never seem to have problems," he said with emphasis on the right word. "Don't forget, I've dated a whole lot, and not many of them ended really well." He glanced over at her. "Some people make it look easy, but it's not. You've just gotta decide if the good is worth the not-good. 'Cause there's always some of it, with everybody. That's just people trying to entwine their lives and personalities. It's hard." Especially if one was emotional, as he knew his sister was. To put it mildly.

Kaysen didn't look terribly convinced. "Oh yeah, well what's miss perfect's not-good to deal with?" she asked skeptically. Maybe she didn't see it, but her brother seemed like he'd hit happy-mode or whatever and that seemed like it was a done deal. She didn't ever see him in a tizzy about shit or anything, anyways.

Isaac shot her a Look. "She's not 'miss perfect', Kay, that's not fair," he said. To his knowledge, Peyton had never said or done anything untoward to her, even before they'd gotten together. "She's kind of ... fatalistic, I guess. She's scared and seems kind of ... I don't know, there's just stuff. It's not huge stuff, but there's stuff, okay?" He wasn't exactly comfortable bringing up the stuff he worried about regarding his girlfriend with his sister. He was always the one who handled his own problems.

Kaysen didn't say anything for a few moments, still harboring bruised feelings towards Peyton for the whole being ignored thing. It had been ages ago, yeah, but Kaysen was a girl who remembered things. And since then...well, she hadn't really seen the girl at all. All she did know was she didn't see her brother hardly at all anymore. So, unfair or not, that was how she felt about it. She also didn't really think Isaac had anything to share there. 'Stuff', well that didn't exactly hold up against 'Chance is living with a known murderer, and won't do anything about it'. She was still sunk low in her seat, ducking down and generally being Kaysen at him. "Do you ever fight?" she asked, after too long a pause, and she reached out to shut her window again before it got too cold in there.

He hesitated. 'Fight' to her was probably vastly different than 'fight' to him. But even then, he and Peyton didn't really do that. They more just ... talked about things. Sometimes those things were unpleasant. "Not ... really," he said after the pause, going for honesty. "I mean, we never get into yelling fights or anything, we just ... talk shit out, y'know?" He kind of didn't like where this conversation was going, the comparisons she was obviously making. "But everybody's different, and that's just us. You know me, I'm a zen motherfucker most of the time." He recovered from things quickly, at least, unless that thing was somebody fucking with his family. Or closest friends.

Sighing heavily, Kaysen went pretty much where someone like her was bound to go. With the opinion that her brother--who she'd always had a kind of special brand of hero-worship for in the first place--was just fine, and dandy, and nothing bad ever happened in his relationship, and she just sucked. But then that came in with the idea that it was her fault, too. It was just something she couldn't quite shake. In the end she spoke, voice dull. Though it had lost any accusatory edge. "So, you don't fight, you just talk things out, and the worst you can say about her is she worries." she nutshelled.

"Kaysen, you can't make comparisons like that," he said, sighing himself. "Stop it, okay? My relationship is not your relationship, nor is it some golden perfection to strive for or whatever. Believe me, I've had plenty of girls I got into screaming fights with." Even though there really hadn't been plenty ... just a few. Still, he was trying to make her feel better. "You've gotta go through the shitty ones to find a good one, and maybe that's just ... what's happening with you. It's not gonna sync up amazingly the first round. You're young. Hell I'm young, this thing with Peyton might fall apart under me, who knows?"

She wasn't so much buying it, even if she was listening. She was under the impression that he didn't get it. But she also got that he was trying. So she didn't say the things that went through her head, because they were totally stupid and unhelpful. "Yeah, but Isaac, people like you. If you and Peyton broke up, there'd be another girl around in two seconds. No one likes me. In fact, people pretty much hate me by default. Chance? That's...he's it." she told him, because it's what she viewed as the truth. It was incredibly teenage-girl-everything-is-the-end-of-the-world of her, but she didn't see it that way. To her, it was just realism.

Isaac bit the inside of his cheek. That was her problem, that constant negative attitude. Sure, some things sucked, but she made more of them suck with the way she was always looking at shit. However, it wouldn't do him any good to put it to her in those terms. "You don't know that for sure," he said instead, not putting the exasperation he felt in there. It'd just piss her off. "Chance liked you, and you didn't want to give him a shot for a long time, right? Who knows who else likes you and is just ... too scared to do anything about it?" He glanced over at her, hoping she'd pick up on what he was really laying down.

In her oblivious sort of way, she didn't. "Yeah, magic people coming out of the woodwork who don't hate me on sight?" Kaysen asked sarcastically. "Wow, why didn't I ever think about that! I'm sure they're everywhere, and I just haven't noticed. Right. I really think, by now, if anyone actually gave a shit? They would have said something. Or, like, not called me a skank fucking whore every time I pass them in the hallways." Which was her perspective. Nevermind she almost had maybe new friends. Maybe. She was still jury-out on that shit. And Charlie had left.

"Not everybody does that to you," he said with just a touch of impatience. "A lot of people do, yeah, and they're fucking retards, but not everyone. You've had some friends, and hell ... before he was really stubborn about it, you would've though Chance was the same way, right?" Isaac was really hoping she'd get his point. "Kaysen ... I love you, you know that, but you don't give people a chance. I'm not talking about the doucherockets, I'm talking about normal people. You just kind of assume everyone's going to be a dick to you. You're hard to walk up to and chat with, y'know? Guys ... they're pussies, they really are, girls make them nervous. Especially girls who seem pissed off already."

"Isaac, any time in the past where I've tried that, it's just bit me in the ass! You think I like being this way? This is me, defending myself, because no one else is going to do it. Like in middle school, after you got to be a freshman and weren't around anymore, you know what people would do? They'd like, send in decoys. People who'd like, work at being my friend for like a few days, get me to think maybe they were cool, and then they'd dump all over me. Post up notes I'd written, or start spreading everything I might have confided in anyone. And that shit hasn't changed, it's just got more re-fucking-fined. So no. Ya know you say not the douches, but that's pretty much everyone. Everyone but you, and maybe Thom sometimes, and Chance sometimes, and Charlie's fucking gone, and she was the only chick I ever talked to who could even try to get me, and--" she broke off, upsetting herself, and she was feeling overheated again. "You don't get what it's like, Isaac, and I know you're trynna be a good brother and like, help me and shit but it's just...not like you think it is. You don't hear it because people don't say that shit around you. You know how I know if you're in a hall? Because the whispers die down, then stop, then kick right back up again when you've passed. It's like a really fucked up, audio version of 'the wave'."

His jaw set, an anger that didn't really have any direction rising at just hearing that shit. He knew that -- and similarly awful things -- happened, it just always pissed him off fresh to hear it. He also knew that Kaysen added to her own torment by the way she acted. Fed the flames, so to speak, but he was her big brother, and in his world she never deserved any of what she actually got. "I'm sorry," he said quietly after a minute. "I know it's shit." And he honestly wished he could beat enough faces to make it stop completely. But there were always those fuckers ... "It won't be that way forever. High school ... it ends, people get distracted, some of them actually mature. Don't count yourself out of society for all eternity, is what I'm saying." Or what he was deciding to stick to saying.

She occasionally wished she could like, go away to college or something and find some magical new life where people didn't hate her for no reason. But then she thought that people had hated her for no reason when they'd moved here. So, would it just follow her? Would she still just be Kaysen, superfreak? Plus there was the fire thing. Which made her a freak by default. In the end, she wanted to kind of just give Isaac something, even if she wasn't sure she believed it. "I hope so." she answered. "...didn't mean to bring you down." she added, because he'd been in a good mood before this shit started.

Why was everyone so concerned with his mood lately? Like he was upset with people for talking about their issues or some shit. But that was an irrelevant question, and Isaac shook his head. "Don't worry about it," he said, still not sounding ecstatic. There was just no way that he could see to convince her. He was her big brother, he loved her, and he of course wanted her to feel better, but he didn't think she would see through that to the truth of the matter. It would just take more stubborn people who actually saw a girl worth knowing under all that anger. He'd just have to hold out for them and then rub it all 'I told you do' style in her face. He took a deep breath and let it out in a woosh. "I just don't want you to feel like shit all the time, is all. 'Cause you're not."

"I know." she said. "And I don't. Not all the time." she added, which was the truth. She wondered if she just projected that or something. "Mostly just in school." Because that was truth too. School was hell on her. "Sometimes I think about dropping out." she added, saying it for the first time out loud, testing the waters with a reaction from Isaac, which she was figuring wasn't going to go down so well. But, she could ask, right? Right. Or, less ask and more say, and then figure out what to do from there.

He shot her an immediate Look that said plenty about his opinion on that. "No," he said flatly, just in case she didn't catch that. They'd made it to the mall and he parked the van, leaving it on for the heat but twisting to look at her. "Not unless you homeschool. No way in hell are you just dropping out, you're too damn smart for that." But homeschooling? He could maybe get behind that, if it made her happier. As long as she didn't stay totally isolated. Which he was willing to work to make sure didn't happen.

She made a face. "Homeschooled kids are always weird." she complained. That, coming from Kaysen. "And plenty of people drop out. I'm sixteen, I can get my GED later." she said, kind of pulling that out of her ass. She'd considered the idea, but not fully. It wasn't something she'd contemplated too hard or looked into. "It's not like school does anything more than crush my will to live and whittle away at my already nonexistent self esteem or anything." she mumbled.

"It gives you an education that will open doors for you later that a GED will not," he said flatly, and had an internal moment of horror where he heard his dad's voice clear as day in his own. Isaac didn't let that slip, though, because he knew he was absolutely right. "Plenty of people drop out, but they're stupid people, and you're not. So ... it's school or homeschool, either way, you're graduation for real."

"And what am I gonna do later in life anyways?" she asked, huffing. "I mean...I like, take pictures and stuff, but I kinda sorta haven't been for a while, cuz I've been...busy..." Meaning she'd got a boyfriend, and that kind of took presedence over everything else ever. Unfortunately now she didn't even know anymore. Maybe she should pick her camera back up. Hm. "....actually I should do that again." she added aloud. Which had nothing to do with Isaac and his point. "Fine I'll stay in school or whatever. I just...hate it."

"You're gonna do whatever you want, with a camera or not," he said, though he was a bit encouraged. Huffy Kaysen was better and easier to deal with than various other flavors of Kaysen. "And then you're gonna make a fortune and support my lazy, couch-potato ass." He grinned at her a bit, trying it out, then reached over to pinch her arm. "But in the meantime, shut up and come on. You've got my money to spend, and I'm gonna make you have a good time doing it."

She smiled back at him for a moment. "Oh fine, we can get back to the burning a hole in your wallet thing." she said, as if this was horrible, but it wasn't. She was glad to get off the subject, and well, she could forget about shit for a while with this whole hanging with Isaac in a nice, non-heavy-talk kind of manner. Sounded like a plan to her.