"Like Adults" [Leland/Birdie]
Jul 9, 2020 0:30:33 GMT -5
Post by goat on Jul 9, 2020 0:30:33 GMT -5
Sometimes, Birdie misses having a job. She knows it’s the insane productivity culture talking, the way the Capitol views District citizens as worthless if they aren’t contributing to wealth they’ll never receive, but still, it gave her something to do. Before this, before everything had happened, she’d worked as a seamstress, tailoring dresses and coats and the like for people who could actually afford it. She could never imagine the luxury of buying a dress and having it cut and stitched to perfectly fit her shape, but she showed up every day to do it.
She’d been fired shortly after her daughter had been reaped. Not showing up to your scheduled shifts for a week will make that happen pretty quick. The skills are still there, bouncing around in her brain, more or less unused. She thinks she’s patched up maybe one skirt in the past few years. Her clothes need repair though, desperately. There are rips in T-shirts, buttons falling off jeans. If she’s going to be a real adult, or try to be, she can’t keep looking like she did when she was sixteen.
In the morning, she wakes up, eats the breakfast that Leland left her, and then pulls all the fucked up clothes out of her dresser. She takes inventory of everything— shit, she’s really let herself go. She knows she should have treated her things better than this, considering how little money she has to replace things. There’s an opportunity to slip into a moment of self hatred, she can feel it creeping at the edges of her mind, but she pushes it aside and goes to get her sewing kit.
Tears are closed, frayed edges are sealed, the things that are too far gone to be fixed are reluctantly shoved into the garbage. She pokes at her stitching and remembers when she used to embroider, but those days feel even farther away. There’s no time for hobbies anymore, not when you have to waste your time dealing with the cruelties of the world.
She can hear Leland making noise downstairs, back from work, but he hasn’t come up to see her, and she’s been too absorbed in her work anyway. As she hangs a mended sweater back in the closet, she notices the smell coming up from downstairs, which means dinner is ready. Having real food to eat for once feels like a way to be cared for.
It’s nice to be cared for.
“Just a sec, babe,” Leland says, as she descends the stairs. She pauses, almost at the last step, and then he turns the corner with two glasses of wine in his hand.
“I— what?” She reaches out and takes the drink, the cool of the glass sending a chill down her arm. “This is—”
It’s too much, I don’t deserve this, you’ve wasted too much on me.
“This is nice. Thank you.”
The words feel strange rolling off her tongue, like they’re somehow in a language she doesn’t speak. Thank you. It’s not that she doesn’t thank people, it’s that she doesn’t always mean it when she does. Sometimes, the words are just the easiest way to quiet a family member with bad advice, or to get a creep at the bar off your back. Thank you, I’ll take this into consideration, could you please fuck off now? Other times, she can’t justify accepting whatever she’s being given when she’s been conditioned to believe that she doesn’t deserve good things. Her instincts always tell her she’s unworthy, tell her to refuse the kindness, to push the person away. Giving thanks to somebody for something, and truly meaning it— it’s just been a while since she’s felt like she could, that’s all.
Leland beams as he tells her about his day— how Arg made a fool of himself yet again, how his mother did what she did best and made herself a pest. Birdie wouldn’t say she hates the woman— not in the way she hates her own mother, at least— but she definitely harbors more than resentment toward her. They’ve never been able to be in the same room without getting into at least one fight. The last time they saw each other, his mother had accused her of being too controlling, telling her that boys will be boys, as if that was some sort of justification for a father not wanting to be one. The fight eventually ended when Birdie threw a flower vase on the kitchen tile and walked back home without her shoes.
She wasn’t proud of it.
He asks her how her day was, fidgeting, like he’s almost unsure if he should ask, or he’s nervous about the answer. “My day was fine. Just fixed up some clothes.” Birdie takes a sip of the wine and relishes the dry, acidic taste. “You should probably tell your mom that she’s a bitch, and that’s why you don’t come by. You know she’s never liked me.”