Jill's just as quiet, hands tucked away in her pockets to keep warm. The closer they get to his place, the heavier her heart gets.
She hurts, with him, but she doesn't want him to go. Living apart like this is wrong, isn't it? Even Torgal knows. There was to be some way to get back what they had, or figure out...
Jill sighs aloud and brushes the thoughts away. No. It's just her broken heart desperate for something that is long gone. They will never be what they were.
But she'll be less unkind, she thinks. In honor of what they did have.
He’s resolute in the cold, hardly noticing it despite not having a coat. He glances at her when she sighs, barred from putting an arm around her, and then looks ahead of them again.
When they get to the foot of the building, he stops, and says, quietly: “I can manage from here, thank you.”
Jill leaves, and goes back to her new normal. She tries to tire Torgal out over the days to little success: the wolf sometimes seems even more restless now, sniffing around the seat where Clive sat or the side of the bed he slept on. By the time they're to meet for their weekly exchange, Jill is tired. She already has a cup of coffee in hand when she reaches the park, and she even picked up one for Clive, too. No harm in that.
She waits. People pass her sitting on the bench. She waits some more. It's not like him to be late. She waits a little longer, finishing her coffee. His is beginning to get cold.
She thinks about that little head wound. She hasn't heard from him since. He seemed fine, walking back to his room, but...
The worry gets the better of her and she walks the short distance to his building. She thinks she remembers how to get to his room. Up and down a hall, and she knocks with her free hand on the door.
He's been sleeping a lot this week. Without Torgal there, it's easier to catch up on all the hours he's lost, and hunting is less appealing in deep snow, anyway. Sleeping is nicer than being awake, anyway, being aware of the burdens on his heart.
Now, Clive awakes with a start. He blinks through the semi-darkened room –– he's got a towel draped over the window, but it's not big enough to block it all out –– and tries to think of who would call on him, who even knows he's here. One person. What day is it?
Fuck.
He scrambles up. It takes a moment, his foot tangled in his blanket, and he knocks over a half-empty bottle of water in the process. He grabs at a t-shirt discarded on the floor, draped over one of the many shattered and heavily chewed pieces of wood that used to be his loft bed, and he yanks it on. He can't find his pants, so boxers will have to do. He rushes to the door, unchaining it in a hurry. When he opens it, he opens it half a foot only, his body blocking the gap.
"Jill, I'm sorry," he says immediately, the apology heavy and sincere on his voice. "I overslept."
That's a lot of commotion behind the door. Not dead, at least, and Jill merely stands there and stares at the sight of Clive in the cracked door. He looks awful. His hair seems longer, and his beard most definitely is getting out of hand. She opens her mouth to say something, but Torgal is pushing past her legs and trying to wedge the door open with his big head. He wants in.
"... are you all right?" She asks, concerned rather than irritated. It'd be easy. But her heart has softened towards him since he last wept against her neck, and she still offers him the cold paper cup of coffee. This could still be him feeling unwell from that injury. "Here. I got you a coffee."
"Just tired," he says, by way of an excuse, and he takes the coffee mechanically. Where his bangs part, the wound is more or less clean, the stitches crusted into the dark scab. "Thank you."
And then Torgal decides he's not going to wait, his maw making contact with Clive's thighs to shove his way through. Discomfort flits over Clive's face, torn between the shame of revealing the place to Jill and the embarrassment of trying to hide something obviously damning. Could he survive it and clean up before next time? Would she think the worst of what he might be hiding from her?
Torgal decides for him, pushing on through. Clive doesn't need to stop the door from opening the whole way –– it catches on the mattress on the floor. Torgal immediately sets about nosing around for wherever he left that monster femur, and he finds it tucked amongst bags of collected takeout containers. The wolf makes himself at home on the mattress with his bone, pinning it between his massive paws, directly over an existing stain. Well, Clive thinks, at least it's not on his laundry, which is piled on the couch in two mounds: rumpled and dirty, and meticulously folded from the wash-and-fold. One is rapidly overtaking the other.
And she thought the place looked sorry when she first saw it. Jill doesn't need to step in to see that it's hardly a place to live. Torgal doesn't seem to mind, but she can't imagine him pacing and whining in such a cramped place. No wonder Clive was so exhausted. No wonder it made him slow and clumsy.
There's no hiding the pinch of concern in Jill's brow. Oh, there's also a sense of relief: if he's been with other people, it certainly hasn't been here. And by the look of him, she doesn't know if anyone else has taken him home for the night, either.
Good. Not that it's any of her business, of course.
Just like his living conditions aren't any of her business. He had it good, before. An apartment with her, where she liked to take care of the meals and handle the laundry. Enough space for Torgal to sprawl out without getting his slobber on the bed. And it's so dark she wants to pull that cloth covering the window.
And yet. She can't let this just be.
"Clive..." She looks at him with a frown. "Forget company. You deserve to live better than this."
He sighs, turning his head away from her frown to look at Torgal, who is happily gnawing a fresh layer of spit and viscera into his bed. There's nothing to be done about that; Clive fully intends to sleep there again tonight. He finally looks back at Jill, gesturing to the remainders of his loft bed.
"Torgal didn't like being left here alone while I was at the ball. Once I haul that out, it'll look fine."
Torgal hasn't even been here the past week, but Clive's reluctant to admit he just hasn't cared about the rest.
"I've lived in much worse," he adds, like this is supposed to be reassuring. "He's fed and you're cared for, that's what matters."
The ball. Jill can't help the scrunch of her nose at mention of that night. She would happily pretend like it never happened. She steps further into the room to crouch down and pat Torgal's head as his teeth scrape against bone. The only indication that he notices Jill at all is the wag of his tail.
"I know you have," she says quietly. "Just as I know you are always your last priority. It doesn't make it acceptable."
She rests her hands on her knees and looks up at Clive. She doesn't have anywhere to be today, which is why she tells herself she's being so generous.
He feels his skin crawl, knowing every minute she spends in here is an opportunity to notice more. He wants to argue: he's not sleeping in literal shit, he's not taking food directly from the floor to his mouth with dirty fingers, he's not anticipating getting kicked in the ribs by some asshole who didn't like having had to look at him. It's fine, as long as no one sees it. But having her move through this filthy space fills him with shame; how he could bear her helping him clean it is unfathomable.
"I don't want to interrupt the rest of your day," he says, and he gets to work right there, as though he could spend a minute moving shattered wooden beams against the wall and suddenly prove it's acceptable. See how there's now a single place to stand that isn't on the mattress or obstructing the door?
"It's just been a bad week." A bad month. "I'll take some time today, I promise."
Jill watches him with that same frown. They've had a lot of bad weeks, lately.
"It will feel like less of a bad week if we work together and get this done now. It'll be faster with two pairs of hands," she tells him, and he knows that much at least is true. She may not be able to haul out the larger slabs of gnawed wood, but she can clean up splinters and take out the garbage and tidy the rest.
She sighs softly.
"Please, Clive. Let me help you with this one thing."
How can he disappoint her, again and again, by not only living this way, but by denying her the one thing she's asking for? He looks at his room, at how little of the floor is visible. Everything seems greasy, and there's a fine layer of fur on every surface.
"Only if you don't have other plans," he relents.
Privately, he vows that she won't have to lift a finger in her own space. How he'll accomplish that, he's not yet sure, but he'll find a way.
"I don't," she promises. "My only plan for the day was to hand off Torgal to you."
Now, that's led her here. And if she can do a good deed, help him not live in a den of... broken wood and wolf fur, she'll be glad for it.
"Let's start with some sunlight."
She gets up to free the window. Her skirts brush against a tower of take out containers, and they topple over. She can't move without bumping into one thing or another. How does he stand it in here, when he's twice her size?
"You're not making it worse," he says, with only the vaguest trace of humour. He closes the door to the hall now that she's not making a swift, screaming exit, and it both hides his shame from passersby and makes the slightest bit more room.
Adding more light is definitely going to throw the level of chaos into view, but he decides to ignore it, instead focusing on digging out a trash bag from his tiny kitchenette.
"I had some thought to get a roommate and live somewhere bigger but I don't think anyone would want to live with Torgal."
At that, Torgal does cast a glance Clive's way. Does he understand what was said? Unlikely, given the lazy wag of his tail before he goes back to getting the marrow out of that bone.
Light really doesn't help the room much, but at least she can see if she's about to step on a dust bunny. She carefully picks her way over to Clive, hand extended for the bag. She wants to ask him how he could live like this, but she suspects his answer would just be him repeating that he's lived in worse.
She's not here to shame him over this.
"I've been meaning to bring this up," she says slowly, carefully. "You needn't spend your hard earned coin on me. You could afford somewhere nicer if you weren't paying for us both."
She's more than capable of providing for herself. Besides, they're no longer together. He should do as he pleases with his money, not feel obligated to care for her.
He thinks on the three chapters of Jill's life, the part where she was raised to be a bride and the part where she was a weapon of war and the part where she accompanied him in rebellion, and he does not think he can send her out to find work so easily. What she needs is time to heal and relax, and enjoy herself, and he does not find himself moved to think otherwise.
"I don't want you to worry about money," he says, handing her the bag. "Just as you don't want me to live in squalor. Perhaps we just call it even there."
As much as she would love to say it to his face, spit out a I am no longer your responsibility, it's too hypocritical even for her. She worried over his injury, insisted he was fed and well before seeing him home, and now she's cleaning his room because she can't stand the thought of him living like this.
She bites her tongue and starts filling the bag with the containers at her feet. It's still not quite fair, the arrangement. She'll think of something more to do.
"Well... should you change your mind, you won't hear a complaint from me. I would understand."
"I'll remember that," he promises, and he will, but he cannot imagine a world in which he needs to call upon her for anything like that. He's committed, in that sense, even if he can't provide anything else.
The frames from his loft bed will take a number of trips to take down, but for now he stacks them upright in the corner. His laundry bag was pinned under some of them, and he tosses that onto the pile of dirty laundry.
At least Clive has left no crumbs in his takeout containers. Jill expects to touch something unpleasant at some point, but they're all clean. They're not ones to waste food.
"Were any of these places particularly good...?" She pauses to read the name on one of the containers.
He probably shouldn't. They don't need to be getting one another food, even if she did bring him a coffee and it's becoming very apparent that, while he can feed himself, he was so happy eating a simple sandwich.
"Have you found anything else interesting?"
Small talk stings when she'd been looking forward to discovering new things together.
"I wouldn't say interesting," he says, "but it's fine."
Truthfully, he's been eating at the same places over and over again, because they are on the exact route he takes to get home, or because it's served at the same bars he frequents.
Speaking of coffee, he fetches his from the counter to take a swig.
"A few things," she says, shoving more containers into the bag. She can at least see the light at the end of the tunnel. "That winter market is huge. Every time I stop by, I find something new."
And so often she wishes she could turn around and show him something, but he's not there.
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She hurts, with him, but she doesn't want him to go. Living apart like this is wrong, isn't it? Even Torgal knows. There was to be some way to get back what they had, or figure out...
Jill sighs aloud and brushes the thoughts away. No. It's just her broken heart desperate for something that is long gone. They will never be what they were.
But she'll be less unkind, she thinks. In honor of what they did have.
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When they get to the foot of the building, he stops, and says, quietly: “I can manage from here, thank you.”
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Instead, she faces him and keeps her feet planted to the sidewalk.
"I'll see you at the park, then."
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“I’ll see you then. Take care, Jill, and thank you again.”
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She waits. People pass her sitting on the bench. She waits some more. It's not like him to be late. She waits a little longer, finishing her coffee. His is beginning to get cold.
She thinks about that little head wound. She hasn't heard from him since. He seemed fine, walking back to his room, but...
The worry gets the better of her and she walks the short distance to his building. She thinks she remembers how to get to his room. Up and down a hall, and she knocks with her free hand on the door.
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Now, Clive awakes with a start. He blinks through the semi-darkened room –– he's got a towel draped over the window, but it's not big enough to block it all out –– and tries to think of who would call on him, who even knows he's here. One person. What day is it?
Fuck.
He scrambles up. It takes a moment, his foot tangled in his blanket, and he knocks over a half-empty bottle of water in the process. He grabs at a t-shirt discarded on the floor, draped over one of the many shattered and heavily chewed pieces of wood that used to be his loft bed, and he yanks it on. He can't find his pants, so boxers will have to do. He rushes to the door, unchaining it in a hurry. When he opens it, he opens it half a foot only, his body blocking the gap.
"Jill, I'm sorry," he says immediately, the apology heavy and sincere on his voice. "I overslept."
He hasn't bothered shaving for days.
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"... are you all right?" She asks, concerned rather than irritated. It'd be easy. But her heart has softened towards him since he last wept against her neck, and she still offers him the cold paper cup of coffee. This could still be him feeling unwell from that injury. "Here. I got you a coffee."
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And then Torgal decides he's not going to wait, his maw making contact with Clive's thighs to shove his way through. Discomfort flits over Clive's face, torn between the shame of revealing the place to Jill and the embarrassment of trying to hide something obviously damning. Could he survive it and clean up before next time? Would she think the worst of what he might be hiding from her?
Torgal decides for him, pushing on through. Clive doesn't need to stop the door from opening the whole way –– it catches on the mattress on the floor. Torgal immediately sets about nosing around for wherever he left that monster femur, and he finds it tucked amongst bags of collected takeout containers. The wolf makes himself at home on the mattress with his bone, pinning it between his massive paws, directly over an existing stain. Well, Clive thinks, at least it's not on his laundry, which is piled on the couch in two mounds: rumpled and dirty, and meticulously folded from the wash-and-fold. One is rapidly overtaking the other.
Clive looks at Jill and smiles tensely.
"I don't usually have company."
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There's no hiding the pinch of concern in Jill's brow. Oh, there's also a sense of relief: if he's been with other people, it certainly hasn't been here. And by the look of him, she doesn't know if anyone else has taken him home for the night, either.
Good. Not that it's any of her business, of course.
Just like his living conditions aren't any of her business. He had it good, before. An apartment with her, where she liked to take care of the meals and handle the laundry. Enough space for Torgal to sprawl out without getting his slobber on the bed. And it's so dark she wants to pull that cloth covering the window.
And yet. She can't let this just be.
"Clive..." She looks at him with a frown. "Forget company. You deserve to live better than this."
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"Torgal didn't like being left here alone while I was at the ball. Once I haul that out, it'll look fine."
Torgal hasn't even been here the past week, but Clive's reluctant to admit he just hasn't cared about the rest.
"I've lived in much worse," he adds, like this is supposed to be reassuring. "He's fed and you're cared for, that's what matters."
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"I know you have," she says quietly. "Just as I know you are always your last priority. It doesn't make it acceptable."
She rests her hands on her knees and looks up at Clive. She doesn't have anywhere to be today, which is why she tells herself she's being so generous.
"I'll help you."
Like, right now.
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"I don't want to interrupt the rest of your day," he says, and he gets to work right there, as though he could spend a minute moving shattered wooden beams against the wall and suddenly prove it's acceptable. See how there's now a single place to stand that isn't on the mattress or obstructing the door?
"It's just been a bad week." A bad month. "I'll take some time today, I promise."
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"It will feel like less of a bad week if we work together and get this done now. It'll be faster with two pairs of hands," she tells him, and he knows that much at least is true. She may not be able to haul out the larger slabs of gnawed wood, but she can clean up splinters and take out the garbage and tidy the rest.
She sighs softly.
"Please, Clive. Let me help you with this one thing."
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"Only if you don't have other plans," he relents.
Privately, he vows that she won't have to lift a finger in her own space. How he'll accomplish that, he's not yet sure, but he'll find a way.
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Now, that's led her here. And if she can do a good deed, help him not live in a den of... broken wood and wolf fur, she'll be glad for it.
"Let's start with some sunlight."
She gets up to free the window. Her skirts brush against a tower of take out containers, and they topple over. She can't move without bumping into one thing or another. How does he stand it in here, when he's twice her size?
"Sorry."
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Adding more light is definitely going to throw the level of chaos into view, but he decides to ignore it, instead focusing on digging out a trash bag from his tiny kitchenette.
"I had some thought to get a roommate and live somewhere bigger but I don't think anyone would want to live with Torgal."
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Light really doesn't help the room much, but at least she can see if she's about to step on a dust bunny. She carefully picks her way over to Clive, hand extended for the bag. She wants to ask him how he could live like this, but she suspects his answer would just be him repeating that he's lived in worse.
She's not here to shame him over this.
"I've been meaning to bring this up," she says slowly, carefully. "You needn't spend your hard earned coin on me. You could afford somewhere nicer if you weren't paying for us both."
She's more than capable of providing for herself. Besides, they're no longer together. He should do as he pleases with his money, not feel obligated to care for her.
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"I don't want you to worry about money," he says, handing her the bag. "Just as you don't want me to live in squalor. Perhaps we just call it even there."
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She bites her tongue and starts filling the bag with the containers at her feet. It's still not quite fair, the arrangement. She'll think of something more to do.
"Well... should you change your mind, you won't hear a complaint from me. I would understand."
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The frames from his loft bed will take a number of trips to take down, but for now he stacks them upright in the corner. His laundry bag was pinned under some of them, and he tosses that onto the pile of dirty laundry.
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"Were any of these places particularly good...?" She pauses to read the name on one of the containers.
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"Oh," he says. "That was something called pad-tie. Noodles in some sort of nut sauce. I'll bring you some next time I get it."
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He probably shouldn't. They don't need to be getting one another food, even if she did bring him a coffee and it's becoming very apparent that, while he can feed himself, he was so happy eating a simple sandwich.
"Have you found anything else interesting?"
Small talk stings when she'd been looking forward to discovering new things together.
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Truthfully, he's been eating at the same places over and over again, because they are on the exact route he takes to get home, or because it's served at the same bars he frequents.
Speaking of coffee, he fetches his from the counter to take a swig.
"Have you?"
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And so often she wishes she could turn around and show him something, but he's not there.
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that should happen lmao it would be funny
she gets spotted out with clive and then he comes home to a destroyed couch
flawless plans
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