#pages stick together: chatzy

[mayaparker]

Pages Stick Together;

Maya, @scarlettxruby & @rydenbolt try to deal with the aftermath of the grocery store misadventure.

In a sudden unceremonious instant, the underwater world disappeared. It was replaced the grocery store that they all knew. Maya collapsed to the floor, sobbing. She couldn’t do this anymore. It was too much. She wasn’t enough. Between these pockets and the cult and everything else, she wasn’t strong enough. She muttered as much to herself, head in her hands.

The world suddenly shifted again, and Ruby was left with a terrible ringing in her ears that left whining and trembling. But then she was in the grocery store again, still a wolf, still covered in blood and gore and dripping seawater. And with all her things in Ephram’s bag. Not that the wolf herself remembered that. But Ruby would once she changed back. The smells were different here, and one drew Ruby’s attention more than the others. She padded towards Maya where the witch sat on the floor. Ruby was a sight, and probably terrifying to look at for anyone that didn’t know her, but she wuffled Maya’s hair before licking the splattered blood off the witch’s face. Alright. Is Alright, she tried to say, Safe now.

Perhaps the only person who looked somewhat disappointed to be back in the good ol’ hopefully monster-free reality was Ryden. Usually, coming back meant it’s difficult to return to what you came back from. If that made any sense… Letting his bones and nails come back to their rightful, human place, the blood and gore he was covered with was still a proof of the bloodbath he’d been through. A family of four pushing along the aisle looked at the bunch of them funny before moving on. Ryden spat out a mouthful of bile and nasty taste, slipping down to the floor to sit, back against the shelf. “Fuckin’ hell…”

Maya didn’t stop crying as Ruby tried to comfort her. The fur was enough to let her know that was who it was. She didn’t know where everyone else was. She didn’t spare a thought to anyone else who might’ve been in the grocery store. They all had to look an awful sight. “But we’re not,” she argued hopelessly with the wolf, “Between this and that fucking cult and…” she brought her head up long enough to make eye contact with Ryden. Even this bone deep exhaustion wasn’t enough to betray his secret. Instead she shook her head, “I’m fucking exhausted and I can’t sleep anymore.”

Ruby understood Maya when she spoke now. It had taken practice, and patience, but with every shift it got just a tiny bit easier. There was no reason for her to stay as she was, other than she’d be buck ass naked without her clothes once she shifted back. But what Maya said was more important than anyone getting a peek at Ruby’s tits. So she let herself shift back, scrubbing a hand over her blood mouth and spitting much as Ryden had. “No one is gonna hurt you. I won’t let them.” She looked at Ryden, then back at Maya. “Does he know?” About the cult. It was hardly the time or the place for such a conversation, but when was a good time?

Ryden looked up from where he’d been staring down at, not much of anything readable in his expression. He reached up and plucked a couple of bottles of cherry cola off the lower shelves. One he’d let roll off towards Maya and the other he’d opened up and chugged on himself. Water would be better but it was stacked up elsewhere and he didn’t feel much like moving just yet. He watched Maya crumble and sob but reacted little to it it all. He reached out to quietly pick up another bottle of cherry cola for Ruby now that she had shifted.

Ruby caught the drink with a nod of thanks and sucked it down. She needed it, else she’d start to crash. Sinking back on her rear, Ruby sat between the two others, looking like she’d been on a week long bender instead of an hour or two in a pocket verse.

Maya looked up again only as something hit her leg. She managed a watery smile and a nod at Ryden as she picked it up. A half hearted laugh bubbled out of her at Ruby’s question. “No, I fucking lied. I didn’t call anyone that night,” she replied. She opened the bottle and brought it to her lips. She should probably worry about how they looked. Ruby was completely naked, giving Mrs. Peterson more than an eyeful over by the bananas. Her own shoulder was still bleeding and Ryden was coated in blood and viscera. But she couldn’t bring herself to care.

A tiny part of Ruby had said Maya wasn’t going to call anyone that night. But she trusted her friend. Though it seemed as if she’d been wrong to do so. At least on that particular occasion. “Jesus Christ, Maya…” Ruby sighed. “Some wolf cult fucks…” she said, turning to Ryden, “tried to roofie us a couple of weeks back. Then just about two weeks ago, two of their members showed up at my fuckin’ house. They didn’t do nothin’, and they havne’t come back, but I think they were lookin’ for Maya.” She glanced at her friend. “I’ve had Bri lookin’ out for you, by the way.” Since they were tellin’ the truth and all.

Ryden tended to stay out of conversations he didn’t understand. And right now, he had no fucking clue what the two of them were talking about. When they wanted, they would explain. Until then, he sat in quiet cluelessness, taking his shirt off to hand it over to Ruby to wear. Most people would get swallowed up by any shirt Ryden wore, even the skinny kind, and Ruby was definitely tiny enough to have it reach at least past her buttocks. “Two… weeks ago?” Ryden asked. He had met up with Maya two weeks ago. She was far from looking shaken like she’d been roofied. But then again, neither Ryden nor Maya and Ruby seemed to have figured out yet that he’d been gone for over a month.

“Ruby, it’s fine,” Maya snapped, “I told you it’s fine.” It was not fine. She was far from fine. “Besides, it’s not like it would’ve mattered. He hasn’t texted me back in weeks anyway,” she replied. Maya pulled herself to her feet. Her survival instinct was resurfacing again. She swallowed. “I can fucking take care of myself, okay?” her voice was sharp like a claw’s edge. “I’m fine.” It was an obvious and poor lie. Maya looked between the two of them and shook her head. “I should’ve just stayed in fucking New York,” she said, “Made everybody here’s lives better.”

“God, yer full of shit,” Ryden stated, matter-of-factly, in his usual no sugar-coating it way that applied to everyone, no matter how much he cared for them. “And I’ve fuckin texted ya three days ago, wha'choo talkin’ about? Why ya actin’ like yer tha bomb when yer obviously going through shit ya can’t handle? S'wrong with ya?”

“Stop,” Ruby said, a bit sharper than she normally was with her friend. But it was only because she was concerned. She’d seen how Maya had just stopped moving back in that fucked version of this world. How she simply hadn’t had anything left. What would happen to her here?? Where the threat wouldn’t go away when you crossed some magical boundary line. “Maybe a bit more than a month? Less than two?” Ruby clarified for Ryden. She was awful when it came to timeframes. “Yeah, I know you can take care of yourself. But sometimes you can’t.” She made a small gesture of agreement as Ryden said the same thing in his own way, which was straight up and to the point. Maybe Maya would listen to him if not Ruby. “New York? You think that’s better? You think Carson gives a shit about who you are or what you want?” Ruby huffed. “He asks a lotta personal questions about you to someone he’s never met before." She snatched Ryden’s shirt over her head with a mumbled thanks. "And by the way,” she said to Maya, “You don’t get to decide if you make people’s lives better or not. Thats for them to decide.“

"Can someone go grab me a magazine or somethin’?” Ryden asked absently as he stood up, coming up to Maya. “Stand still, cupcake.” He said, without any room left for argument, ang gently rolled her sleeve up to reveal the gash beneath. He hissed under his breath. “And a bandage maybe?? Ruby?”

Maya looked over to Ryden. “Ryden, I haven’t heard from you in weeks. I thought you were pissed at me, honestly. It’s been /weeks/.” Hurt flickered across her expression as she considered that the time simply hadn’t mattered to him. But that hurt was gone too fast for anyone who didn’t know her well to see. She whipped back around to Ruby. “Wouldn’t you?” she asked, “If someone you cared about disappeared and you didn’t see them for almost three years wouldn’t you grab onto any information you could about them?” She flinched, surprised when Ryden spoke directly next to her. At least she stood still though. But she couldn’t bring her gaze up to meet Ryden’s. “I’m fine,” she tried to argue, “Like you said, I can handle shit.”

“No, I said you CAN’T handle shit, yer a mess right now. face it and let us take care of ya, geez,” Ryden mumbled, something akin to annoyance bubbling in him though not quite. It was too mixed up with concern to be mere annoyance at Maya’s refusal to cooperate. “And I’m tellin’ ya, it’s been three days! I’ll show ya my phone when I find it.” Maybe she missed that text. But it was a convo that went on for an hour and ended up with them saying goodnight. And it couldn’t be that she’d missed all of the texts they exchanged this past month - she had been RESPONDING to them regularly. “What’s today? What date?” He asked absently, looking over the shelves to find something to use as bandage on Maya’s wound for now. They’d have to go to another aisle, it seems.

“Of course I would,” she said to Maya. “But the things he asked me were… strange, Maya. The whole mood was… strange. Like he was happy you were happy, but… disappointed that you weren’t happy in the way he wanted you to be?” Ruby sighed. “I don’t know. It was just fuckin’ off to me.” When Ryden asked for things for Maya’s wound, Ruby nodded, needing a second anyway as she got up and padded through the store to the medical supplies. She ignore the strange looks from the few people inside, and took a moment to dash the tears from her face - and give the other two a few minutes alone - before padding back over.

“Wouldn’t you?” Maya asked again. At the moment, it was too much for her to consider that her friendship with Carson wasn’t exactly as she’d imagined it. As Ruby wandered off, she finally looked up at Ryden, concern etched in her features. It was hardly the preferable method, but Maya’s concern brought her slowly out of her momentary despair. “It’s the end of August,” she replied. She remembered their last proper conversation. She’d looked over it a few times, trying to figure out where she might’ve pissed him off. “Ouch, fuck,” she flinched as his fingers glanced over the wound in her shoulder. It was deeper than she’d realized.

“End of August, huh…” Ryden hummed, peering at her wound as he checked it out and waited for Ruby to come back with medical supplies. “Okay, yeah. Maybe it’s been a month…” He mumbled. He’d have to figure this one out later. First things first - not have Maya bleed out through the gash on her. "Who’s that Carson dude again?“ he asked.

Ruby knelt back down and held out the supplies, waiting to help as she could. They’d pretty much taken this aisle as their own, and no one else had bothered them.

Maya snapped, "Yeah, maybe it’s been a fucking month.” She couldn’t be too mad though. Not when she knew that sometimes dealing with things meant dealing with them later. Maya looked away from Ryden again. “Carson was my best friend for five years when I lived in New York. I thought he and Ruby would get on, but I guess not.”

“We did get on,” Ruby said, taking out some gauze. “I didn’t say he was a douchebag outright, just that I got a weird vibe from the guy.”

Ryden took Maya snapping at him as if it was nothing he cared to respond to. Instead, he took what Ruby could find and at least managed to tie the wound over to stop the bleeding. “Uh-huh. He not the one who roofied ya? It was a… werewolf cult? He part of it?”

Ruby glanced up at Maya, waiting to see what she would say about the incident before she added her own two cents if needed.

Maya pulled her arm away from Ryden as he tied a makeshift bandage around her shoulder. “Fuck you. I thought you hated me. Or worse that you were fucking dead,” she said and had to wipe an angry tear from her cheek. “And no, Carson never roofied me. It was some fucking cult, I don’t know. I’m fine obviously. No tinfoil hat or whatever. So nothing to fucking worry about.”

“We went to this party,” Ruby added. “At this old house in the woods. Her coworker invited us,” Ruby said, gesturing to Maya. “Pretty legit other than the creepy old house. About an hour in, sis here starts actin’ weird as fuck… figures out before I do that someone slipped her something somehow, and when we tried to leave these assholes tried to stop us. So we crawled out the bathroom window. They came after us before we got the car, but i locked her drugged ass inside and made sure that bitch who tried to stop me knew better.”

“Sure,” Ryden answered simply to Maya’s rage, shoving his hands into his pockets. “I’ll go git sumone to call ambulance, take ya to the doctor’s. If you don’t go, I’ll find you and fucking murder ya meself. You go home, dress and shower.” He reached down to pinch Ruby’s chin affectionately. Then he turned away to leave.

Maya shook her head. “No,” she reached out and grabbed at Ryden’s arm, “No, you don’t get to fucking walk away right now. Where the fuck were you?” She knew it was probably useless. If he was determined to leave, then he was determined to leave. But Maya couldn’t help, but try. “And I don’t need a doctor,” she appealed to Ruby, “I’ve had worse.”

“Shut up,” Ruby said to Maya. “I’ll make sure she gets to the doc,” she told Ryden, leaning into his hand just a bit with an equal show of affection.

“Well, ya never had ME, when ya don’t fuckin’ listen to what I tell ya to do.” Ryden squeezed through gritted teeth but he stopped when Maya grabbed his arm. “Now, git outta yer head for a second, learn t'back off when people kindly ask ya to and mind that yer fuckin’ friend, who was there for ya back then, is naked, dirty and also maybe hurt. So take care of yerself so ya can take care of other people too. I ain’t tellin’ ya shit when yer too fucked up to listen, so git sorted and then we’ll talk.” He said sternly, then looked down at Ruby and nodded gratefully. “Now let go, I don’t want t'have to push you away, literally and figuratively.”

Maya had to give Ryden that. She let go, almost as a recoil. She blinked twice. Right, she needed to be strong. She knew that. She had to be okay. Ruby needed her help. “I’m sorry,” Maya replied in a voice barely above a whisper. She shook her head, trying to clear it. Nothing had happened yet. At least not that hadn’t happened to anyone else. She was overreacting again. “Fine,” she said, throat suddenly dry, “A doctor. But it doesn’t hurt that bad, really…well, it might be shock. I might be in shock.”

“Mmm.” Ryden hummed, shoulders relaxing now that Maya was responsive again. He’d definitely come out a bit too strong on this. But that was the only way he knew. “I’ll check in on ya both a bit later.” He promised, turning to leave again. They’d both just have to find a way to trust him that he’s not leaving them here because of something not important.

Ruby hated to be upset with the people she loved. She hated conflict. Because all it had done for her in the past was get her in trouble, and make people dislike her. It had lost her more than it had evver gained. But she knew now that sometimes you had to tell people the hard truth. The ones that really gave a shit would still be there at the end of the day, regardless. Ryden seemed like he’d learned that a long time before Ruby had, as he laid it out for Maya. Ruby smiled at him as he gave her a nod, and started to gather what little things they had left laying around. She’d put them on the department’s tab later. “It’s shock. Trust me,” Ruby said to Maya. She’d had enough injuries in her life, even before coming here, to know that.

Maya only nodded. She didn’t know what else to do. She didn’t think that Ryden had left for a month for anything that was trivial. In fact, that was what scared her most. She was absolutely terrified that he would walk off to face whatever was following him alone and not come back at all. “You better,” she informed Ryden’s retreating back. She turned to Ruby. “I’m going to be pissed at you. Later when I’m not in shock and you have pants again. You’ve both got enough shit to deal with. There’s still no use adding Carson and those teens on top of it.”

“That’s alright. I don’t care. You’d do the same thing for me if it had been Aedan sittin’ here with us and me sittin’ where you are bein’ stubborn and bleedin’ everywhere.” Ruby stood, reaching down to help Maya up. “I’m not worried about Carson. He’s 3000 miles a way. Those wolves’re here.”

“You wouldn’t have been such a fucking idiot,” Maya argued. She let Ruby help her up thought. Exhaustion settled atop her bones. “I want to go home,” she said, “Can we please go home?”

“You act like you don’t even know me,” Ruby huffed. “I would’ve so been an idiot.” She looped an arm around Maya’s waist. “Yes, we can go home. After you see the doctor.”