how do you want me? [andrew/tune]

I think about maybe apologising to Andrew for how mean I've been to him.

For like, a split-second okay? Because I have been kind of unreasonably cruel today. Stand-offish, biting back - clawing at air, biting down on nothing, finding any excuse to frown. They say don't get attached in this place, so that's what I'm doing. Trying not to get attached.

Emphasis on trying.

But they've both been nothing but kind to me, despite it all. Carly and Andrew both. And it's not like I deserve it, terrible little thing from Twelve. Expendable, inevitably so. Today my nasty demeanor got us what we need to survive for another day - but tomorrow, it might get us killed. Me killed.

And I wouldn't blame them - not really. I'd get sick and tired of me too, eventually. God knows my parents did - thinking about them, staring into the flicks of the fire, suddenly causes my eyes to singe with the threat of tears. Just the heat, I tell myself. Just sitting too close for comfort.

Speaking of - Andrew approaches and I wrap my arms around myself, instinctively protecting... what, exactly, I don't know. But what I do know is I need to keep my walls up around him.

"Cold?"

"No," a half-truth, I was getting a little chilled. "I've been colder."

Another half-truth. I think of winters in Twelve so cold your bones freeze overnight, thawing in the morning light to discover a thinner line of kids walking to school each morning. Lukewarm water boiled over a tiny little stove, the way my skin felt like it radiated when I would gently rest my pink-blue fingers in its depth - thankful I was warm enough to wake.

I'll never feel that sensation ever again. Clinging to life as you slipped into sleep, wondering if you'd live to see the sunrise. And maybe I'm half-mad for it, but I think I'm okay with that fact. Small blessings in this death trap: a warm fire. Good company. Food and drink in my stomach. Heart still beating. Not so different from home, when I think about it.

"Never sat in front of a fireplace before," I confess, eyes steeled on the charred wood in front of us. "Bucket list, I guess."

Her eyebrows furrow as she begrudgingly takes the seat next to him, quietly thankful for the chance to rest. She wants to ask what a jalapeño is, why on earth they'd eat cheese mixed with cream in Eleven, how he could afford such a luxury as meat. Instead she just sits in silence, stretching her hands out to warm them against the fire. Rich boy, huh? She should have known as much.

And it's disappointing to think of how different they are - sunshine and rainclouds, money and dirt, fireplaces and homes made of rotting wood. Tune pulls the green cloak around her shoulders closer, as if to cocoon herself from this sad reality. How she had hoped - deep down - to find something about him to like. A familiarity in him, something shared like she holds with Tex, the thing that made her drop her weapon and spend a half-hour with him by the trees. But Andrew is just as she thought he would be: nothing like her.

So why does she feel so melancholy?

At his question Tune cocks her head to one side, finally daring to glance at him. The light from the crackling fire dances on his face, gold underneath the shadows of dark curly hair. Strange angles of bone, so unlike her moon-shaped circle of a skull. Another difference, add it to the list - she should stop counting, she should, but the list sits there in her head like lead.

"I don't..." she trails off, slightly unsure of herself. How uneasy this feels, facing conversation stripped of the safety net of swear words and blunt replies.

"I guess I never really thought about one," Tune confesses, "until I realised I was going to die. So it's not exactly... well thought-out."

Her nose twitches, thinking hard. A pause, she comes up with an answer that satisfies her.

"Try cream and cheese on a jala.... what did you say?"

Despite herself, she blushes and huffs what could be half of a laugh.

It clicks, suddenly. Who Andrew reminds her of.

Cousin Taz, chattering away on the one arm chair in his living room. Not in the Seam, no - in the nicest part of Twelve a Walker could get to. So optimistic, always, annoyingly so. Tune would scowl and Taz would grin and their nǎinai would cluck at them both - her two grandchildren. She was all either of them had left in terms of grandparents, that one shared connection that linked their freckles and circular faces and warm brown eyes.

"Diào," their grandmother would frown - her nickname for Tune in a long-lost language. "Why the long face, huh? Taz is always smiling - aren't you, sūnzi?"

And Tune would smile - a mirror image of Taz, faux joy for the sake of her grandmother. When she passed away - one of the only elders left in Twelve, outlasting her entire graduating class and all of her friends - Tune went back to scowling. But Taz would keep smiling, "Cheer up Tune!" "Fuck off, Taz!"

Despite her nasty tongue he kept coming back, sitting next to her pre-teen frame below the oak tree in the graveyard. As if she hadn't told him to leave her alone, as if she wasn't wearing the darkest scowl in all of the District. Taz would just sit there, chirping away about nonsense - and eventually her shoulders would relax, her posture unstiffen, her scowl relax. Unphased by Tune and her rage, her grief, her sense of self that always felt too much for everyone else to bear. He was Taz, and she was Tune, as they were. And that was perfectly fine for both of them.

She straightens as her thoughts flow away from tree trunks in Twelve and back to the tavern. Tune's going to miss Taz, that annoying little shit. And, fuck, she's going to miss Andrew too.

"Um..." she begins, trying to think of all the things she would do if she had unlimited time. "Abseil down the Justice Building," there's a start - fingertip to one, two, three fingers as she counts. "Have an actual birthday cake on my birthday," (there's never enough money for extra treats in December) "and..."

She looks at Andrew's face again, lips, glances down - sees how close his hands are to hers. Thinks of all the boys and girls back home she kissed for fun, wild nights and stupid dares. No, her arms cross back over her chest in subconscious defense. Don't say stupid shit like that.

"Really?" her eyebrow raises, looking toward the radio that caught Andrew's attention. "Didn't take you for a sombre ballad kinda guy."