Dawn walked slowly down the hall of her apartment, eyes locked on to her Blackberry Storm as she tried to arrange her meetings for the next day. She was in Los Angeles working at the top of an accounting firm - numbers, not something that was entirely romantic to her, of course, but they payed the bills well. They also took her the fuck away from New York, as far away as she could possibly get. Away from psychopathic serial killers, away from her sister and her stupidly gorgeous boyfriend, and most importantly, away from Desire.
She glanced up suddenly, flashes of the acid eating through her former boyfriend/lover/friend's face overtaking her vision. She closed her eyes, hard, and then opened them slowly, lowering her phone to put a shaky hand to her chest. Dez. She hadn't seen him in so long. She'd changed her number, changed her last name - done everything she could to distance herself from him. He was FBI, he could find her, but she didn't want.. didn't want to tempt anymore psychopaths to coming looking for her if they suddenly found themselves obsessed with him.
She got to her apartment door and began to tremble uncontrollably. It was half open. She held an unsteady hand on her phone as she pushed the door open slowly, hoping that maybe she just got robbed and there wasn't anyone inside. She was a moron even for doing that much, but something inside in the darkness, barely illuminated by her kitchen overhead stove light, made her squeal in surprise. She immediately attempted to dial 911 on her phone, reaching to slam the door shut and run back down the hall.
It was too late, though. The thing was moving towards her.
The problem that Desiré had in trying to keep track of Dawn to assure her that she was worrying about something that she shouldn't worry about was that he had rules to follow, laws that didn't encourage stalking. Desiré was also a good man, and one that wasn't likely to completely disregard the law. That was a strength most of the time, but it could certainly turn into a weakness pretty damn fast. Trevor didn't have those strengths, or weaknesses. He'd seen her on the street earlier, remembered her from a particularly amazing night in New York before his world went to Hell, and he didn't have a code of conduct telling him that he couldn't stalk her. He HAD been planning on being less creepy, though.
Things change, and once he'd found out where she lived (he'd seen her full name on a credit card slip that he'd swiped just as she'd left her table at lunch, and then hit the phone books and internet), he'd naturally gone there. Who was he to complain about having PERFECT timing and chasing a would-be thief out of the place?
Exactly. He was awesome. It was about damn time he felt awesome again for a little while.
He even managed to feel bad when she realized he was there and freaked, which was a switch for him lately. He'd had a rough time of it, obviously, but that was why he was in LA again and not New York, wasn't it? "WHOA! Hey, Dawn, wait! It's me, it's Trev, remember? We hooked up that night in New York, right after I botched every shot I tried in that pool game against you? Listen, I'm sorry, I swear I wouldn't have just broken in like this, but I caught some other guy doing it and had to kick his ass," he explained quickly, having shoved his booted foot in the door as she struggled to pull it shut, and sticking his fingers out only prompted him yelling 'OW!' as she hit them with something. Ooookay, no delicate appendages outside the door until she registered what he'd said. "I am NOT a threat! Listen!"
"NO, YOU'RE DEAD!" Dawn screamed, trying to pull the door shut. The Mad Hatter was dead - he couldn't come back, couldn't get her, and yet there was someone lunging at her in her home, and who else would stalk her and wait for her like that? He was going to cut her face up like last time, cut her face and Dez wouldn't be there to stop him, and the acid, and those other girls -
She screamed bloody murder, thundering at fingers that peered from the door with her purse. "You're dead, you're DEAD!" she yelled, forgetting about the phone while she had her little "episode". She was melting into a pile of unstable goo that would react to anything in its environment negatively, like some sort of radioactive ore. She kept screaming, and backed against the wall, sliding down to her knees. Her voice became a chant as she tried to tell herself that he was dead, that he was DEAD. She had to be imagining things.
She grabbed up the contents of her purse as the door swung open, frantically scrambling after a bottle of Klonopin as the door opened slowly and Trevor came out, trying to re-iterate his "NOT A THREAT" speech to Dawn. She looked up, pill bottle in hand, eyes brimming with tears. For a moment, she hadn't recognized him at all, but it slowly started to come back into focus as her frantic hyperventilating slowed down. She waved him down to the ground, because she wasn't ready to stand up, and began tearing at the pill bottle to get the lid off of it. She held it out to him.
"Please... take.. that.. off.. I'm... panic... attack... need... inside..." she managed. Her head began to feel light, and the room began to spin. Too much stress for Dawn, evidently, was a bad thing. "Trevor... inside..." she pointed, one hand on her thundering heart. She was still crying, but she was trying to concentrate on not losing consciousness, at least for the moment.
Dead? What? What the hell was she talking about?!
"No, I'm not dead! It's Trev, Trevor Browning, I'm NOT here to hurt you, would you STOP SWINGING YOUR PURSE?!" he shouted, trying to get through to her, since each time he tried to get out there, he got hit. What the hell was going on?
WHOA. She was totally hyperventilating and grabbing for pills, which stopped him in his tracks while he took the picture in front of him in, and he almost didn't get what she was asking him. It took hearing his name, hearing that she recognized him and it was okay, to make him rush into action, and he had that top open in seconds, trying to figure out how many she was supposed to take and finally just offering her a few in the palm of his hand so that she could do what she had to do with them. He waited only until she'd taken some from him to scoop her up off the floor, and he sat her on the kitchen counter while he grabbed a glass from the dish drainer and filled it with water. He'd been careful to set her down where he could reach these things without leaving her, since he was worried she'd pass out and fall off the counter, but he was trying to offer her the water as soon as he hand it.
"Hey, hey, easy. Drink this, and just breathe. Everything's okay," he assured her, not really paying any attention to what he said. It was just whatever sounded good, trying to soothe her into calming down. God, he really hadn't thought he had it in him to comfort someone else. Maybe this was good for him, though. It took his mind off his own problems.
Dawn grabbed two from him, and then put one back, holding one tightly in her palm. Two was her old dose, one was the dose the doctor told her to take now that she wasn't taking it so frequently. In Los Angeles, people were addicted to things like what she had as though they were Pez candies, but Dawn was pretty careful about her dosages, so much that she'd stopped altogether. Until now, of course. She held it tightly as Trevor brought her inside, and then swallowed it as soon as she had water.
She'd begun to calm down the minute he'd carried her into the apartment, but she still put her head in her hands after polishing off the water, trying to recuperate her bearings. After a few moments of breathing slowly and regularly, Dawn looked up at Trevor, mascara staining her eyes and cheeks, and smiled a little sheepishly.
"Guess I gave you a little bit of a shock, huh?" she asked. She sighed, taking his hand from where it rested on the counter, and holding it in her own. "Do you remember the serial killer dubbed the Mad Hatter? It was in New York, not but a year after we hooked up." She paused. "I was his last intended victim. Well, me and Dez - you know, the ex? Anyways... yeah. Still haven't quite shaken the panic attacks. It's not your fault, you didn't know," she said, watching his mouth open in protest.
She hopped off the counter finally, and hugged him before he could react. "You don't know how glad I am to see you," she said, voice strained. Trevor was the person that she could count on to not judge her or put pressure on her or... anything her. Even after the one-night stand, they still talked, even though it was occasionally. A random e-mail. A random voicemail. Basically just to remind one another not to take things too seriously. But then they'd stopped.
"Do I even want to know how you found me? My name's not even the same anymore," she said, frowning as she pulled back from him. Her Klonopin was kicking in; her body felt warm all over, and she lost the urge to freak out most entirely. She moved away from him to her water, and refilled the glass.
Listening to her talk and seeing the way she was fighting to calm down until the medicine kicked in, he realized that he had horribly screwed this one up. They'd kept in touch, but not enough. He hadn't tried hard enough, hadn't put enough effort into calling her back and emailing her back and even making his random calls and emails more frequent. He'd let his own life get in the way of being a good friend/sometimes lover/whatever he was to her, and he knew he'd screwed it up. Big time. He'd come here because he needed someone that wasn't going to put any more pressure or judgment on HIM than he'd put on them, and now here he was thinking that he'd ruined things. He'd ruined them.
God, he ruined a lot.
"I -- jesus christ, Dawn, you should have TOLD me all that shit went down! I'd have been there!" he told her, and he meant it. It didn't matter where in the country he and the GTO had been, they'd have made it back to her in a second. He didn't have many people in the world, basically just his Dad now, and he still couldn't bring himself to spend much time with his father. He'd failed so badly, failed in the one thing his father had told him to do from the time he was old enough to function. He had his Dad, and he had a few random friends spread out across the country, and he was determined not to fail them, too. Now, he'd already failed Dawn, and she was suffering for it. She was taking medication because he'd scared the living hell out of her, but the fact that she was so easily torn down with a scare was what scared him. Of course, given what he'd read about that Mad Hatter guy, he wasn't surprised. He'd looked more deeply into the case, just to be sure that it was really a human, and he'd actually had to interact with that ex of hers. He'd wondered at the time if the man had any idea, but there was no way that Agent Alys could know that the fraud talking to him about the Mad Hatter had banged his ex. If Trevor had known that Dawn was in danger, he'd have stuck around, but Alys was a shifter himself. Trev figured he could handle a human. In the end, he was right, but he hadn't expected Dawn to get caught up in it.
"What? Oh, finding you actually wasn't that hard. You know me, though," he told her dismissively. "I know where and how to look. Besides, LA is my old stomping ground. This city is the only place my Dad stopped for a little while, so it's the closest thing to a hometown I've got."
He wanted to keep her from pulling away from the hug she gave him, but he refrained from doing anything like that, keeping this as concern for her instead of what he wanted and needed. "Dawn, have you been living alone since the Hatter incident?" That couldn't be good for her nerves.
She held up a hand to silence him before he lit into a speech about how she should have told him. "You and Colt seemed to have enough on your plates every time I talked to you, what with the... otherworldly stuff. I didn't want to bother you about it," she said, a small shake of her head indicating to drop it. "And yes, I do know you. I guess 'Green' wasn't a very inventive last name though, was it? Oh well," she muttered.
She stopped and stared at him when he questioned her living arrangement, and frowned a little. No, he wasn't going to drop it, was he? She sighed and took a sip of her water, and then gestured to the living room. "Let's sit down," she said, changing the subject. When they sat, he prompted her again, which elicited a small sigh out of her before she answered. "Yes," she replied, voice firm. "My therapist told me that I should look into a roommate, or even move back home, maybe with Darci, but... " she trailed off.
She set her water down and smoothed the black slacks she wore, and then looked at Trevor seriously. "You know how all your life you're trying to grow up too fast, and then something happens and you're there? Well, I'm not trying to backtrack. I accept it. It happened. I'm not going to bend to my irrational fear that a dead serial killer is coming back. Until today, it's been months since my last panic attack - they have triggers, it's not just random." She paused.
"And I'm not moving back home. Darci is living with that Mr. All American Dominic guy she's been dating, and I'm miserably single. I don't feel like having my legitimate problems with having to be in a relationship put on a plate in front of me every day. She thinks I should get back with Dez anyways, which isn't happening." She paused. "He's the reason that everything is the way it is. My luck ran out, finally. And it was his fault."
She fell silent. She knew, knew that it wasn't fair to say. It nearly broke her heart to say it; she could only imagine what Dez would say if he heard her say that. Actually, he wouldn't say much at all, but he'd hunch his shoulders a little and walk away, which was a definite sign that she'd just knifed him pretty good. She shook her head again, and then looked at Trevor, who had a mixed expression on his face - shock, no doubt, because Dawn wasn't twenty anymore - five years had put a lot of mileage between the personalities she wore.
"Why did you look me up?" she asked him. She focused her green eyes on him, not really relishing the attention being placed all on her. She felt almost as though she were digging into an open wound by asking, because Trevor never just did research without a reason. Of all the women he'd fooled around with, Dawn might have been the most human, and clearly the most observant. Maybe it's what kept him in touch with her.
He did a lot of listening and giving her 'looks' to get his points across, since he wasn't about to interrupt her. Besides, if he didn't talk, he didn't have to deal with the way his voice wanted to crack when she mentioned him and Colt having enough on their plates. It was easier to school his expressions into dealing with her situation than it was to talk too much. He still had to add some comments in, or it wouldn't be like him at all.
"Uh, yeah, 'Green' definitely didn't do the job, but I'll give you credit. There are more 'Dawn Green's than I expected," he admitted, though there obviously hadn't been enough. It hadn't taken long, especially with how focused he became once he was on that particular mission. Distractions were awesome, except when they whirled around and busted you in the ass every few minutes. Mention of her moving back with her sister, which made him think of his brother, blaming Desiré for what had happened made him think of how much it was his fault that Colt was there, and then she had to ask why he looked her up. He'd been listening, and actually would have preferred talking about why she was blaming Dez. It surprised him, considering how unlikely it had always seemed to him that she'd ever blame someone else for something happening to her, but the real kicker was that he felt bad for the guy. He knew how he felt thinking about Colt, and he could imagine how Dez might feel about Dawn. God, he hoped the guy didn't know that she blamed him.
Why'd he look her up? Good question, since he definitely should have gone for someone who wouldn't ask so many questions or notice so much. The problem was, the women who fit into that category were good for quick fucks, and sex hadn't done a damn thing for his problems. Neither had drinking, and he'd tried that until his father just about kicked his ass and then stuck around to babysit him until he stopped going for the liquor. Now, he was stuck using hunting as his vice for forgetting, and that wasn't working, either. Maybe replacing him would do it, but Trev wasn't so sure that he could handle doing that. Not to Colt.
"I--what, you don't believe I'd just look you up for some catching up? We were in the same town, so why not?" he asked, trying to bluff his way out, but just like he'd managed to make her talk about her living arrangement once she'd settled them in the living room, she wasn't letting this go. He was going to have to talk, and he didn't know if that would make the situation better or worse. It certainly made him pause before speaking.
Wonders never cease.
"Dawn, um, Colt's gone. It was...bad. It was really bad. I mean, we both almost...but I, I guess I was just lucky. Not sure if you can really call it lucky, but I'm...here, and that's what everyone's told me," he explained awkwardly, making it a point not to look at her. He couldn't even crack a joke or anything to put on a tough exterior, not about this. Not about Colt, or the way that had gone. He hadn't had nightmares since he was a kid, but now he did. About that, he did, probably just like Dawn and the Hatter. He wanted to try to help her, but how could he help someone else when he couldn't help himself? He felt useless, without his other half, and that was ridiculous because he'd hunted without his brother before. Just...not like this.
If Dawn had known how Trevor was feeling on the inside, she'd have left out that bit about blaming Dez. But how could she have known? Dawn was "lucky", not psychic, and her luck had stopped a few years prior; she'd left it somewhere in New York, in a strange room that she saw every time she closed her eyes. As it was, however, Dawn was going in blind - as usual.
"What?" she whispered, voice punctuating her astonishment without that shrill tone that most women got when they were surprised. No, Dawn's voice had always been a little breathy, and she was usually soft-spoken. When she was shocked or horrified, she'd either scream, or she'd get so quiet you had to strain to hear her. This was one of those times. Hell, she hadn't even heard herself - or, she hadn't heard herself say it, but she knew she said it, and she could feel her vocal chords vibrate as the words formed and left her mouth, hanging in the air like a scythe at her neck.
She sat there, back arched, with her hands clenched together in her lap, waiting for Trevor to say something else. She was trying not to cry, because she'd done enough of that - and obviously he wasn't crying, which meant that he was sacrificing a great deal of self control to remain placid about the bomb-drop, but Dawn was Dawn, and so her chest trembled a little as the first sob escaped her mouth.
She quickly put her hand to cover her mouth, to push the noise back inside, and turned away for a second to try and catch herself. Her chest hurt, like when she ate too fast and then took too big a gulp of water to wash it down, like she was forcing a thousand pounds of emotion through her esophagus and into her stomach. She didn't want to turn back and look at Trevor, because she didn't think she had a right to be upset if he was holding it together. It was utterly counterproductive to her therapy - her doctor would be flipping his shit if he knew she was quite literally bottling her emotions up - but her doctor didn't know how the real world worked.
She turned back to him, eyes wet, but tears not falling. She was physically pushing thoughts out of her mind to repeat that everything was fine over, over, and over again. "I'm sorry for your loss," she said sincerely. Her hands were shaking so badly that she picked up a small pillow and hugged it to her chest.
"If you need somewhere to stay, you can stay here," she said. "I've got extra space." The bedroom adjacent to her own was very small, but livable. The closet was the size of a bookshelf, but there was enough wall space for a dresser, and it already had a full-sized bed in it (that actually swallowed the room). "I know that sounds forward, but I left New York to get away." She paused, studying him with her green eyes.
Slowly, she reached out, taking his hand in her own. "Looks like you did, too."
She had absolutely no idea. None, whatsoever, and that would have been crystal clear to her if she could have seen even as much as his father had. Trevor was excellent at hiding his feelings, especially when he was hurting emotionally, and so others rarely knew if he was upset until he was so far gone that it was threatening his own life and the lives of others. That was where he'd been when his father had knocked him back into shape over the drinking, and all that did was ensure that he was more careful about when he did his drinking. Not before hunts, that was the big rule. His placid, hurt-but-not-crying expression was only as calm as it was because he'd known himself from a very young age that to show more of the fact that he was hurting would show his weakness. He'd taught himself not to show weakness. That inevitably helped in dealing with friends as much as enemies, though Colt had never fallen for it. He'd pretended sometimes, just to let it go and let Trevor deal with whatever was wrong on his own, but he'd nearly always known when Trevor was faking. He was the only one. Trevor could even fool his father. It was just Colt.
He wouldn't have blamed Dawn if she'd cried, even if he didn't really think she understood the extent of the pain that came from losing the person you spent nearly every waking moment with for most of your life. Who could? The relationship that Trevor and Colt had shared was something born of a very strange, unique situation, and he wouldn't have traded it. He'd worked hard to protect Colton all their lives, to ensure his safety and health, and he'd enjoyed it. Look what he'd done with that, though.
"I appreciate the offer, but I dunno. I have a room not too far away, and we have an apartment nearby, but I haven't gone there, yet," he told her, not so certain that he should really stay with her. Besides the fact that it totally wasn't fair of him to disrupt her life, he wasn't really sure that he wanted her to know him at his worst. Coming in after a hunt and trying to piece himself back together (with plenty of stitches and lots of liquor, usually) wasn't a pretty sight, and nothing she needed to be privy to. It hadn't been that long since they'd hooked up, and she'd noticed that he had plenty of scars even then. Now, he was a mess. She had enough problems.
"Believe me, I'll be fine where I am. You really don't need me messing your place up," he told her, cracking a smile this time as he squeezed her hand back. If he appeared confident and sure of his words, pleasant enough to smile, she'd probably feel better. He hadn't actually come to upset her, though she was right about him coming to get away from New York. He'd thought it was a good idea, but LA wasn't looking too great, either. Too many memories. Thus, the distraction.
Her smile wavered a little bit. Dawn knew what it was like to lose the person closest to you -- her mother - well, she didn't want to think about it. "Okay," she said softly. "But if you want to ever just come by and... crash, you can. I don't mind the company," she said.
Dawn didn't try to look any further into what he was saying - not because she didn't care, but because she didn't want him to feel exposed (anymore than he might have already felt). She sat quietly for a moment, unsure of what to say. They seemed to have made an activity of dropping bombs on one another and she didn't quite know where to go from there.
"Come on," she said suddenly. "Let's go grab some food." She stood up, thankful her anti-anxiety stuff had kicked in. She paused, and then looked at Trevor. "If you want any of my meds, let me know. I don't mean that in a bad way, I just... they [ido[/i] help. A little. Same stuff I took when mom -- well, you know." She reached down and gave his hand a very small tug. It surprised her how rough they were - not unpleasantly so, but like a man's. She had met a lot of men here who were more prissy than she was, and it unnerved her.
Finally. A real sort of boy.
Now, he'd turned down the offer to stay with her, but crashing actually didn't sound like a bad idea. He wouldn't mind the company, either, and could probably use it. It wasn't the same as Colt and he didn't think anything would be, but it wasn't his father and the man's expectations. He might not get that mix of concern and 'tough love' that his brother had out of Dawn, but he could have the concern and genuine fondness without the insane expectations. It would give him someone to look out for again, as well. His dad was too adverse to having his son protect him, which annoyed Trevor because the older man sometimes needed it, but it was really because all of the Brownings had that streak. They were protectors, and that was why they'd devoted their lives, and their deaths, to protecting others. That always seemed to be enough for Dad and Colt, but Trevor had always been different. His protective streak had always pulled itself in closer to home, where he'd run himself ragged to keep Dad and Colt safe and completely disregard the consequences for himself. It was what he'd tried to do, it had nearly gotten him killed as well, but it had been useless. A lucky shot took Colt down, while luck was all that kept Trevor alive with the damage he'd taken. Luck.
That was all it boiled down to, but Dawn was wrong. She said her luck ran out, but she was alive and so was her kitty-cat ex-boyfriend. They were both alive, and that was a lucky thing. Trevor wished he could have pulled off the same thing.
Hanging around, watching out for Dawn, would probably be the best thing he could do. He'd keep her safe, so that she wouldn't have to worry about her luck. "Well, I wouldn't mind crashing tonight. I don't want to freak you out, but I wasn't kidding when I said someone broke in and I had to kick his ass. If you don't work tomorrow, I'll fix things so that won't happen again," he promised, and really, he'd do it even if she DID work the following day. He could break in much easier than that guy, and he wasn't going to swipe anything, so he didn't mind doing it. Besides, he didn't think she'd tell him 'no' about making her house safer.
She wasn't kidding when she thought about how rough his hands were, and that he was a 'real sort of boy'. She probably wouldn't like that the more time he spent in the area, just because this sort of boy tended to earn the callouses and the smell of cleaning solution from the guns, but he sure as hell wasn't a priss.
"Food sounds great," he told her, though he waved a hand in a 'no' motion about the pills. That was the last thing he needed, or his father would be coming in and kicking his ass all over again.
Dawn smiled at him warmly. No, she knew Trevor would need his space; it was silly of her to suggest he stay. He was like an alley cat - he went and came as he pleased, and there wouldn't be any housing him. Still, he had offered to stay for the night, and at the notion that someone had actually broken in to her apartment, her stomach did a flip-flop. Her anti-anxiety medication, however, prevented her from reacting much more.
"Good. We can camp out on the couch and eat popcorn and watch cheezy B horror flicks," she said with a grin. She stood up and scooped her purse off of the counter. "Where would you like to go? My treat, since you prevented my TV from walking out of my apartment," she said, heading for the door. "Want to get Chinese? I know a place not far from here that has the best Lo Mein I've ever had. It's so unhealthy you can feel your ass getting bigger with every bite, but Trev, it's so worth it," she promised.
The little sparkle in her green eyes was dull, not as brilliant as it had been before in early years, when she was innocent - but it was still there. Still kicking.
Actually, the alley cat comparison was pretty accurate. Trevor went wherever he pleased, whenever he pleased, usually just wandering. He showed up on the doorsteps of the people he knew fairly randomly, but he was a good alley cat in that they all let him in. Not so many objects thrown in his direction. The 'alley cat' thought was also ironic, considering her ex. Trevor would have laughed over that alone. Seemed Dawn had a thing for the 'cat' type of personality, whether it be literal or figurative.
"That all sounds amazing," he told her with a grin, and he meant it. It wasn't often that he did normal, stupid things like sitting with popcorn and making fun of movies. He loved movies, but he didn't watch enough of them anymore. Life had just taken off on him, and he hadn't really gotten a handle on just how much it had gotten out of control. Now, maybe it was a good idea to stop and take a breath. Dawn was as good of a reason as he'd ever gotten, even if he knew that he couldn't stay. He frankly didn't know if he had it in him to stay put for too long. "Chinese it is."
He could see that she just didn't have the vitality that she once did, whatever it was that made it so obvious. He couldn't have said if he thought she could recover from it, but it did cross his mind that he didn't like it. Something had been taken from her, and he wanted to give it back. Maybe it was just her security and feeling of control over her life. That wasn't really all that uncommon in victims of any violent crime, he'd found, especially something as major as all that. He didn't really blame her for feeling the way she did, but it did make him want to stay in town for awhile. Maybe he could help her get her home into a state that she felt safe, at the very least.
He also wasn't going to disagree with 'her treat'. He should have, since it would have been the polite thing and Colt wasn't there to do it for them, but hunting didn't really pay too well. If he went in with one of the guilds, it would, but he didn't like the way they worked. He didn't want a boss, and he sure as hell didn't want to be obligated to kill a certain thing because someone was paying him to do it. He looked for the ones that nobody was offering cash for a kill, usually because they just didn't benefit anyone to off in a monetary sense, and that was his niche. He just didn't make much at it.
"So, speaking of popcorn, are you a 'butter-lovers' kind of girl, or more 'kettle corn'?" he asked, then considered any other options. "Don't tell me you're one of those that likes the plain, unflavored kind." Ugh, those were gross. Those were the kinds that needed to be DOUSED in real butter. Mmmm, speaking of asses getting bigger with every bite.
"I actually like the buttery kind. I'm not into kettle corn. Popcorn shouldn't be sweet. That's my sister - I think she eats that shit every day," Dawn says, making a disgusted face. She muttered something again about how popcorn and sugar shouldn't ever touch, and then seems to discard the idea and move onto other things.
"We can hit the Redbox on the way back from picking up carry-out, then. They have this movie called My Bloody Valentine, it looks crap-tastic," she informs him, over her shoulder as she moves into the hall. She was pretty doped up and feeling good, which was awesome, because that meant walking would be a blast. Dawn loved jogging on this stuff. It wasn't fair to say she abused her medication, because she only took it when she needed it, but once it kicked in she wouldn't deny trying to enjoy her life a little bit because of the strange, aquarium-effect it gave her.
"I know there will be other stuff in there, too. It's the bottom of the barrel for movies, though I can get new releases there when I don't feel like downloading them. It's like, five minutes and a dollar, or forty-five minutes and a bad German fansub."