Here's my final story
It's huge. Required size was 4-5 pages, and 1 1/2 spaced, this was... 14. *coughs*
Circle
"... How long is it to home?" His head aches, the headlights flashing as they pass and the white and yellow blurs remaining steady in the darkness.
"Don't you take the bus? You should know the distance." Lucie breaks off, and honks the horn sharply after a particularly bright set of headlights.
"Backroads are different, that's what the bus takes. This is the state route." Maeryn shifts his glasses and rubs at his eyes.
"You can nap, if you want. Rest up before dealing with Karol. You know your tempers grate even after a normal day. Plus, you were grading tests all day and the fighting should start before you're out of the car." He didn't quite like that his elder brother sounded so amused, but couldn't deny the truth.
"... I would hit you, Luc, but you're driving." But he finds that lever on the side of the seat, closing his eyes as he presses back, reclining the seat.
"Ahh, I'll have to drive you more often." A short laugh from Lucie, and Maeryn shifts the seatbelt so it wasn't cutting oddly. Tucking his glasses into the front of his shirt, settling back into the seat. "Save my poor, poor shoulder from your knuckles."
"... shut up..."
"Duck a little more,-" Lucie said a little too late and Maeryn clipped his head on the edge of the car, knocking his glasses loose. He stopped moving, hands searching. The world became a painfully bright blur without his glasses on, the setting sun not obscured by clouds and all too bright, too warm yet. Shapes of white mixed with the blue and black, green and leather brown, and a pair of peach moved. Thick brown lines came close, and then he saw his brother's hands, moving back as the world darkened to colors and shapes he could make out. "Are you so farsighted that you can't see the car frame? Need help with the buckle?" The first question was amused, the second teasing.
"...nearsighted, not far..." He grumbled, shoving Lucie lightly. His older brother laughed, and Maeryn shifted into the car. "Nearsighted, and photosensitive, if you're going to get detailed."
"Are you wearing your old glasses?" Lucie was in the driver's seat and buckled before Maeryn, despite having to walk around, asking while peering at the frames. The focus and dimness was stolen from his world, and the peach with green shifted. Maeryn shut his eyes against the brightness.
"... Give them back." He found shirt sleeve, shirtfront, seatbelt.
"You are, aren't you." And contact to his nose, the backs of his ears. "It's not good for your sight."
"These are darker." He blinked and shifted the seatbelt. "Less headaches."
"You have that backwards." And his brother corrected the buckle for him. A key turn. Humming and away. "So, why'd you miss the bus?"
"... Tests. Some people still used black ink. Hard to tell what was print for some people's answers." Maeryn rubbed at his head, settling back and absently watching life pass by.
"And this is why you should wear the newer glasses. These are older, everything is fuzzy, isn't it."
"The darkness's better too. Not my only eye problem."
"We'll just have to hit up the eyedoctor sometime this weekend, then. Get some of those clip-on-shades for your new ones."
"Are we there already?" Maeryn blinks against the steadily growing light which had woken him, searching for his glasses. How had they gotten out of his shirt? "... Did Karol set up a sign board to draw us in?"
Lucie swears, words that their mother would have sought to scrub his mouth with soap for, despite his forty years.
Tires screech, and his glasses nearly jab him in the eye. Light fills his vision, smears it, sears it, and then there was darkness. Vile swearing continues from Lucie's mouth, clicking noises from the twisting of the wheel, like it was twisted too far. The scream of tires causing a splitting headache. Maeryn tries to find his glasses, hands searching about the dash, on the floor, between the seats. A hand grasps his shirt, yanking him back into his seat, then shoving his arms back to him.
"Lucie?" A shrieking metal noise, a scream of tires. A crunch of glass and metal, and the bite of seatbelt to his shoulder as he lurched painfully at the sudden stop. Sharpness, crackling noises, darkness everywhere as he hits his seat again, hearing one short pained noise from his older brother.
Bouncing forward again at the shock of the stop, his impact with the seat. Not that there was anywhere for him to go.
-
Karol frowns at the shut door, at the darkness only broken by streetlights outside, no beams of headlights visible, tapping her foot against the floor. Lucie and Maeryn were very late. If it was just Maeryn, she could understand it, would expect him to avoid her by making the visit start late and leaving as soon as he could. But Lucie was driving; she expected at least a call if they had hit traffic. Brothers. They probably ended up sidetracked by food, even though she was cooking dinner.
She turns the heat down on the stove, and with one last irritated glance at the front door, turns on the TV and news for background noise. Nothing interesting. Weather. Like it ever really changed more than looking outside would warn. Karol returns to the kitchen and stirring and testing taste and adjusting the temperature of pots as needed.
"..drivers of both vehicles pronounced dead on the scene, the passenger is being taken to the hospital for urgent care..." Perhaps it was morbid human curiosity, perhaps it was to wonder if Lucie could be seen rubbernecking at the crash, Karol steps from the kitchen and looks at the TV. The car was slightly blue, mostly crunched, the larger mostly green, but still mostly crunched. A guardrail dented with the impact, cupping the cars away from a slight drop off.
She knows that road.
And she knows that too pale, lanky body that was shown - too red, too still - being loaded onto an ambulance.
The kettle she'd put on shrills, but she can't hear it.
-
Maeryn wakes to darkness. This was not surprising, as he couldn't sleep with light in the room because his vision problems. It was familiar, but something else was not. He can't place it.
Getting up is harder than it should be. Had he slept wrong? Caused his limbs and parts of his body he was fairly certain couldn't fall asleep to do so? He feels sluggish and stiff and slow and he can't figure out where his left hand was feeling about. The bed, cloth, blankets. Was it more asleep than the rest of him?
His other arm feels off, and his legs refuse to support him when he tries them. He must have slept in a contorted ball, all of his limbs feeling the tingles of waking.
Cold. The floor is cold, and clean of tomorrow's clothes. He hears the air conditioning. Is it singing to him? He hates that song. Are his ears ringing? No, beeping. High, like ringing. Feeling about, left hand only finding cloth. Where are his glasses? His face feels thick, slow, like a sinus infection or a cold. No runny nose, can't be that, can't be sick. Footsteps as Maeryn tries to get his left arm to work and feels around with his right. He has fairly good night vision, why do the hands under his shoulders surprise him?
Why does everything hurt?
"Mr. Callahane, please get back in bed, you'll hurt yourself more." Female, hands careful but firmly pull him to his feet, sitting him back on the edge of the bed. He doesn't want to sit.
"...lights..? Where are... glasses.." His words aren't working, and his tongue feels slow and throat thick. Maybe he is sick. Why doesn't his hand listen to him like the other did? This was the same cloth, warm. Felt the same. Where is his hand, it shouldn't still be on the bed.
"What about them?" Footsteps move away, he tries to push himself to his feet again but his hand isn't where he wants to move it and he greets the floor once more. His right arm hurts, but he can't feel it with his left because he can't find where the left was. It shouldn't still be on the bed, the cloth was the same, where..
The woman sighed. Frustrated? Returns while he still tries to figure out why he can't get up.
"Please stay in bed unless you need something." She gets him back on the edge, and leaves her hands on his shoulder. He understood the hint, at least, and stays put. "I turned the lights up, have you noticed any change?" The hands leave his shoulder and he feels something on his face move. Bandages...? But everything is still dark. Fingers lightly on his eyes, no bandages there. But dark. He blinks. Still dark.
"The lights are not on." Something else moves, but everything still hurts. His head pounds.
"The lights are on. I'll get the doctor, do you need something?" The lights are on, but he can't see? Distant, why does she sound distant, she is right there...
"Bathroom." Still weaker than he likes. He swallows, repeats. "Need to use... bathroom." She makes a sympathetic noise, pulls something metal over and helps him to his feet. Legs hurts, ribs hurts, shoulder hurts as she pulls his right arm over her shoulders to help him stay upright.
"When you're done, open the door and call. It shouldn't take long for me to return." She leaves him in the bathroom with a metal rolling thing. He uses the rail for balance, finds the toilet with his leg. Struggles not to lose his balance as he uses it. Then stops.
Lights are on. But he can't see anything.
Swallowing hard, he reaches for the walls. Lean on the rail, wallpaper, cord, wallpaper, metal pole, shower, light switch. He flicks it up. Down. Up. Down.
By the time Maeryn flicks it up the third time he can hear the hum of electricity when it was in that direction. But no change in his sight. He sinks back onto the seat, trying to think. Is the wall paper patterned, he couldn't tell.
Why can't he see? He knows he can see, usually it is just all blurry, too bright. Why did it all go?
Why is he even in a hospital? He was going home, no, to Karol's house, but with an attempt to avoid an vocal argument and then-
They were on the highway. Lights. What was it with the lights. Lucie was driving.
"Mr. Calahane-" He scrambles for the door, nearly pitching over and sending pain burning up his side.
"Where is my brother?!" Light, burning light, pain, blackness. Sounds of metal folding the way it shouldn't, screaming all the way. Where was he. "Driver, he was driving, light, where is he, darkness, where is my brother?!"
-
"What are you doing?" Maeryn hears heels, clothing shifting. That smell is... definitely his sister. She had three cats, so many cats. He can smell them from here.
"Go away."He doesn't want to leave the chair. It was comfortable, and warm. Unlike him.
"Have you taken a shower this week?" Heels closer, even strides. Direct strides. No walking into anything for those who can see.
"Yes. Now leave." He shifts in the chair, sinking his head closer to his tucked up knees.
"When." Cloth to cloth, is she crossing her arms? Who cared.
"..... Seven days ago."
"You miss him. I get that. I care too, he was my brother as well. But stop wallowing." Steps again, and he flinches away from the swish of fabric on his chair. Gets to his feet stiffly and quickly and turns about. Wavering for balance, righting himself. How can one be dizzy, black out, when one has no vision to tell if it was close?
"I do not want to! Leave me alone!"
"No! You're only hurting yourself, and the rest of us! Do you think locking yourself away will help anything?!"
"Obviously I haven't locked myself away well enough if you got in, so help yourself out!" he throws his arm to gesture to the door, and immediately grimaces because that hurt. He isn't even sure if he points in the right direction.
"No! If you're not going to take care of yourself, broken arm and all, then you need someone to do it. I'm not leaving."
"I do not need your help!"
"No, you don't want my help. But you haven't bothered washing, moving from this chair even, in the past week, and there's food rotting on the counters. You need my help." He hates that sound to her voice, the 'I'm right, and you know it' tone.
"I do not. Shut up, and go!" he turns to storm off. But coffee tables ruin the intended effect, as Maeryn catches the edge with his shin and tumbles over it. One hand isn't enough to catch him, his dominant hand still in its cast to his chest, not able to be thrown out to halt the fall. He almost swears, but cuts off. His throat tries to close and he blinks to the floor, tries to avoid the burning.
That was the last thing he heard Lucie say. Karol sighs, and he hears her head closer, right the table, even as he just stays lying down. He jerked away from her hands as she tried to pull him to sitting up.
"I do not want your damn pity!" His voice is sharp, but twisted with the pain through his arm, smothered by the tightness to his throat. He hears her make an un-amused noise as he struggles on his own to get up.
"Tell you what." She stops and settles next to him, and her voice came closer. He turns slightly toward her, only barely indicating he is listening."I'll come by once a week." He snorts, to show what he thought of that idea, and with the ease of practice, she ignored him and talked over his grumbles. "Clean up any food you left to rot. In return, you take up a class."
".... What sort of class."
"Braille."
-
If Maeryn had been inside his own house, this book would have been thrown across the room thirty minutes ago. As it is, there are three other people in the room, and he won't indulge that. He aches, his healing bones throb as medication wears off. He is severely frustrated. And someone would not stop humming the most irritating, or out of tune, song he has ever heard. It is bad enough he can't get past the fourth page in what he is very certain was a children's book, he isn't going to start acting like one as well. He should have brought more of the pain medication with him, but he hadn't thought that they would wear off this soon. Now he is whining inside his head.
Does that other one - Henry, who had bad fireworks go off in his hands - find this as irritating as he did? Does the third - he can't quite remember how they went blind - like that song and have no sense of pitch, or is he trying on purpose to set every hair on the back of his neck up in irritation?
Did pain medication wear off faster when someone is stressed? Maeryn runs his fingers over the page as he hears footsteps pass to the far right. Other pages turn. That damn song. It was this one word, this series of bumps under his fingers that elude him. He can't get anything other than a bunch of letters out of it, and he guesses different letters each time. Maeryn did not want to listen to audible books every time he wanted to read.
Reading. He can't do that anymore than he can take a walk in a crowded mall and not step on anyone's toes. While some of those people who read books sound nice, he disagreed with several of their pronunciations. He'd rather not spend time arguing with a voice that wouldn't talk back, anymore than he'd like to spend time tracing fingers over letters that seemed to change as he felt them anew. Listening to someone read a text book would be horribly dull.
He turns the page back and runs his fingers over the series of raised letters on that side. He doesn't recall ever reading this children's book, the words aren't ringing any bells, and doesn't help him figure out what the next could - should - be. It is a rhyming book, that much is clear, aren't most children's books? That means the next sentence would rhyme with this one, and he can use that to figure it out -
"How are you doing?" He manages not to jump at the voice, which was not quite over his shoulder - more over his head. The teacher. He should have heard the footsteps stop to his left as he turned the page.
"Well enough." He puts his hand back on the page. Is he having problems because his dominant hand is still braced to his chest? There had been something about the hand you use for language being better at languages in one of those classes he had taken far too long ago, hadn't there? Something about right brain and left brain and matching your dominant hand for words and the other for images. Then again, it isn't like he was writing anything, just trying to read a silly child's book. The steps move away again, toward the front, and he goes back to scowling at the page. He would give.. something important, if he could just get that train of thought back from before the teacher talked to him. Listening to the same quiet question directed at another does him no good, and in his frustration, a page turn. Paper cut. Dammit all.
Very carefully he closes the book. And very carefully he drops his forehead down onto the cover. Just a tiny thunk. And then another tiny thunk. He listened to footsteps, and wondered if that wives tale trick of sleeping on dictionaries or textbooks would work on Braille and children's stories. Thunk. Thunk. Someone had stopped turning their pages. And his head hurt a little more than it had a few moments ago, so he sits up again.
He should have brought more pain pills. How did you tell migraines from regular headaches when you couldn't tell if light hurt more?
No going home until the time was up, or he finished the stupid child's book. He doesn't want to ask for help. He had already asked for aid once, and found himself unable to do anything even slightly difficult without sight in the room again. Help shoved down his throat. Although, it was fairly easy to simply tell them where to shove their help, wasn't it...
And how does a blind person get a teacher's attention? He debates just shoving the book off the desk. That would create a big enough thunk, wouldn't it? But then he would have to find it again... Maeryn resolves never to leave his house again without the next dose of painkillers. Thinking while in aching pain doesn't work so well for him. Does it work so well for anyone?
None of this was helping. He needs the help, he doesn't want the help. Fine.
"I'm stuck."
-
Maeryn frowns at the sound of the door being unlocked, looking up from the book propped up on his knees. The time was off for his sister to show up; she didn't come on Tuesdays anymore, only Friday evenings, once every two weeks. His adjustment to life without sight over the past year had been satisfactory enough, it seemed, that she would leave him alone for longer.
"You do not usually come this day." He told her, listening as she stops walking, then shifts and shuts the door. More shifting, she was shedding her shoes, stepping out of them and then over toward his seat.
"Your neighbors called. Apparently, they're getting worried with you falling down." He hears her stop once again, her weight shifting slightly in otherwise silence. Maeryn turns back to his book, planning to close his curtains. "Let me see your arm."
"... Must you?" But he shifts the book carefully, and holds up the arm closest to his sister. For a second he toys with the idea of going back to reading, but she grasps his wrist and shifts his sleeve, and he decides against it. He remains facing ahead, listening to her move at his right and inspect his arm.
"What do you think." Her fingers poke him once or twice, and then he winces and hisses as she finds a particularly tender bruise. "You're not doing yourself any favors, not using a cane or one of those walking sticks they taught you to use in those classes."
"I can do well enough without them." Maeryn retorts, twitching his arm in a question of 'may I have it back now'. She doesn't release him.
"You knock into things often enough that your bruises get bruises. Use one something to help you from turning into a walking bruise?"
"I do not require one, remembering where everything is works well enough for me."
"Working 'well enough' isn't the same as 'not needing to pop painkillers when you want to leave the house because you're that sore'. Which you seem to be taking even when you don't leave, given your receipts." He feels some sort of heat rise to his face. Was he embarrassed she was going through his things, or angry that she was?
"You have a point, why do you not get to it quickly." He tugs his arm back from her, finding his bookmark and shutting the book, turning slightly to face her general direction.
"You either need a dog, a girlfriend, or a housemate." Karol states, a slight shifting that sounded mostly of hair-to-clothes, a nod accompanying her words. He blinks once. "Or a boyfriend, if that's what you're interested-" She misreads him on purpose, he knows she does.
"I have no interest in a relationship." Perhaps a little too hard of denial, and he turns away again, frowning slightly once more. "I do not want a dog."
"Then a housemate. I'll get ads ready." Maeryn groaned. He should have said he wanted a dog.
-
It was easy enough to be blunt and sharp and deter most people who sought the upstairs. The few who matched Karol's standards and weren't put off by Maeryn's mannerisms in meeting the first time were shortly introduced to his distaste for helping him through everything, and the sharper comments that were meant to deter further aid unasked for sent them off as well.
So Maeryn was able to remain quite content in his solitary life inside the house.
-
Jason wasn't quite sure what to think could go wrong, but he expected something would. A house with room for rent within ten minute's drive from the high school, the owner wasn't some young woman looking for a man to move in then become a boyfriend, and quiet was the preferred requirement. He was very certain he could fulfill that.
He was even more pleased to find that the woman who had answered the call of interest was the sister of the one who was renting the home, and she set up a time and a place and.. who ever owned this house was not very interested in landscaping. He might have spent longer than was particularly polite staring at the overgrown grass, clover, and various other weeds that counted for a front lawn.
Jason finds himself hoping that the outside of the house isn't a reflection of the inside, and knocks the door. It takes a moment, but there was a pale shape blurrily making its way toward the door through the edge of the side glass, and then some moments where there was nothing but silence and stillness. The door opened a moment after that, and Jason blinked at the lanky man who stares silently straight ahead. Or Jason thought the other man was staring, as white hair fell over his eyes and made it hard to tell exactly what he was looking at.
"You are Jason Cadwell?" The man asks, still facing a little too low.
"Yes, that would be me." Jason shifts his glasses and watches as the man shifts his head so he was facing closer to the level of Jason's face. "That would make you Maeryn, wouldn't it?"
"Unless my sister gave you the wrong address." And thus Maeryn turns back into his house, leaving the door open and carefully walks across clean floors to a chair, moving in lines and sharp turns."Please leave your shoes at the door and shut it after coming in." He pauses after picking up a book that was next to the arm. "Do not move anything." Jason lifts an eyebrow, wondering slightly at that odd, added request, but shrugs when the pale didn't explain it at all.
"Why are you interested?" The question came in the middle of Jason crossing over toward the sitting man, who sits staring ahead. Who was familiar in a way, or simply very striking. White hair and a fine boned frame, very pale white skin - Jason blinks and ducks down to get a good look at the pale man's face. The man didn't so much as blink at this action, his eyes still fixed ahead, staring and very red.
"It's close to my work." Jason mentions, still studying Maeryn's face. As he spoke, the albino man's head turned to orient itself to face a little to the left of him. "None of the houses in this area are for sale, and renting is the next best thing. You have free room, are offering it, why not?"
-
Maeryn was hungry, and after a moment spent stepping side to side, opening cupboards and checking boxes and bags by scent and touch, he resigns himself to cooking. It wasn't as if he didn't know his way around the kitchen. He rarely left the house and knew it rather well because of that. Perhaps he should do something about that, he muses, taking steps to reach the end of the cupboard row, then two backwards.
A turn to the left, one step in front of him, crouching next to the refrigerator and searching inside for eggs and milk carton by touch. He doesn't think he is too much of a pain, settling the pair of eggs on a groove between tiles up past his head. He doesn't have a job, but he still had money from when he did and with that he helped Jason with rent and utilities.
The milk is resting next to the eggs, a step back, and he twists and crouches to feel among bags. Large potatoes, paper crinkling; small potatoes, sprouting potatoes; plastic that was too soft to make much noise, soft onion; large onion, flimsy plastic grocery bag, small onions; he picked one of the smaller of both onions and potatoes and the soft one for disposal. Another turn to the left, two long and one short, cold sink under the fingers of the unoccupied hand and the soft onion left in the smaller side. A thump, roll, plunk. A step to the left, tiles under that hand and then the worn wood of the knife block, no, peeling potatoes came first.
The problem would be finding the job, he thinks, reaching into the drawer and retrieving the peeler, and then the cutting board after. While Jason had mentioned a teacher at the school where he worked who spent very little of her class time speaking with students, much like Maeryn avoided speaking, there was still the fact he'd actually have to deal with people. A pan is located by crouching and turning a little to the left, amid much metal shifting and clattering, and he sets that aside. A knife he finds by feeling over the knife block, carefully searching from the right rather than the top or bottom. He selects one a little thicker than the rest, pulling it out and keeping his right hand at his side until he had the blade to the cutting board, and the food up against the flat. He listens to the knife move through the onion and potato, steadily pushing the layered food under the knife.
It had been three years since he had to deal with a great many people at once, although a great many had really been thirty to forty- he freezes and jerks the knife straight up, moving the hand that had been on the potato horizontally closer to him then up to his mouth. He remains still but for searching for the damage; he can't taste blood just - ah, there is the iron, he had cut himself. He waits a moment longer, then very carefully puts the knife's edge to the cutting board again, his hand well out of the way, and shifts what was left to cut up against the edge to resume. The onion makes him sneeze and he winces at the stinging, but sets the knife aside and moved the slightly damp pieces into the pan. Above the pan was the cupboard with actual cups, a clinking of glass, taking one. Two more steps to the left brings him back to the eggs and milk. Carefully, knock the eggs against the edge of the cup, find the crack with this thumb and press cautiously in. Dump the contents, add the milk until the edge touched the finger inside the cup.
People. And not just the usually rather reasonable, if not at least logical, adult people, but teenagers. Full of hormones and 'I know better than you' feelings. He finds the ham when he returns the milk, and doesn't bother cutting the slices but tore one to pieces and places them in the pan as he put eggshells with the soft onion in the sink. But he missed, by the sounds, and grimaced, dropping to a crouch again to feel for the errant shell pieces and collect them. He doesn't think he held enough shell in his hand for both eggs, but he hadn't caught how much had fallen into the sink by the sounds and so he deposits what he had gathered in the sink.
But that was the problem with any job, really. He'd have to deal with people. Of course, getting there would be a problem as well. He winces slightly as he rinses his hands and replaces the ham despite the sting of his cut fingers. A step to the right and reaching forward, his hands feeling along the metal and finding dials, so he turns one, and grimaced at the feel of a fraction of shell under his foot. The faint hum of electricity warming old coils, listening for anything unusual to the old stove.
He would have to find something close, or at the school where Jason worked. Warmth against his fingers indicated he'd found the right spot on the stove so he replaces his hand with the pan, adding the egg mixed with milk to the ingredients already there. He'd just have to talk to Jason about it.
-
The crash down by the stairs has Jason out of his room, blinking in the late night gloom for the source. The sounds of someone swearing, a familiar voice that didn't normally use that kind of language, causes him to both relax - this wasn't some sort of break in attempt - and tense in worry. Well, he won't need that bat then.
"If you're so clumsy that you can't walk in a straight line without tripping over your own feet, please do not attempt the stairs unless someone's there to help." Jason complains lightly, heading down the steps in question carefully, not wanting to step or land on the fallen man as he skipped steps in his haste to make sure Maeryn wasn't too badly injured by the fall.
"Shut up." Was the grumbled reply, as the albino man searched for the railing and started to pull himself up from the sprawl.
"No no no, falling once a night is enough for you. Stay put." Because he isn't going to listen to that, Jason pushes down on thin shoulders and sits on the step level with him. The pale man stays put with a barely visible wince, forced to accept the aid.
"I am fine." As stiffly stated as ever, but the biology teacher knew now that it was just how the other talked. A bit prickly to keep people from getting too close, while Jason an unwavering smile kept people guessing.
"Oh, yes, completely fine." Jason agrees sarcastically. The trouble with teasing a man who can't see, expressions were meaningless. Of course, that was also a plus side. "That's why you tripped going up the stairs." He finds the light switch and shuts his eyes before turning the light for the staircase on. Maeryn didn't react to the light, but the teacher could now see the starting of bruising to his otherwise uncolored skin. "Did you miss me so much that you had to come up in the middle of the night?"
"You moved the book I was reading." Ah, yes, no use for natural day and night rhythms when one doesn't have a job, and couldn't see the sun. A blind man didn't need light to read, after all.
"I must have forgotten there are two libraries." Which was a little absurd, but it makes these problematic trips up the stairs less frequent. Jason reaches over and thumbs up both eyelids, getting a good look at unfocused, red eyes beneath in the light before Maeryn twitches back, his eyes closing again.
"What was that for?" Maeryn demands. Jason wasn't quite sure how to tell the difference between someone who was blind, and someone who had a concussion, given that the man's pupils wouldn't dilate in any sort of light...
"You're going to get a black eye." He points out, poking the forming bruise. The blind man twitches back, and thunks his head against the wall.
A heavy exhale was Maeryn's indication that hitting his head had hurt, as far as Jason understood him. And given that he'd been living in the blind man's house for over two years, he was fairly confident that he understood that noise.
"All right, let's get you off to bed. Before you decide to walk into walls as well as trip up stairs." Jason didn't know how many he'd fallen down, after all, and while Maeryn's hand reaches up to the railing to pull himself up, the other teacher pulls him up from under the arms.
"I do not require aid," The white haired man grumbles, even as one hand grabs onto Jason's arm once he is on his feet for balance.
"Of course you don't require it, you could make it back to your room on your own." Jason keeps a careful watch on how his blind housemate wobbles a little when he walks him back to his room. "You just might take another hour or so, and walk into a wall, once or thrice. Or with less dignity. on your hands and knees."
"I had thought you would not be the mother-hen sort when I offered you the upstairs of the house." Maeryn grumbles, and the rust-haired teacher tugs the blind man away from the wall of the hall. The white haired's elbow clips the wall, and with a wince, he corrects his path in the hall, avoiding anything else that might trip him up, but still keeping his grip on Jason's arm. "... Did you think on what I had asked?" Yes. After bandaging the man's cut fingers - Maeryn noticed, and bandaged, the first cut, but not the others.
"Hmm.. You are aware that you don't have to cook, aren't you? I doubt your poor fingers will thank you for these continued attempts." Just what could a blind man do at a school? Maeryn had made history his focus, perhaps something with that would work. "I have leftovers you can heat up, or you can snack until I get home, and save yourself the bloodloss."
"... Avoiding the question." The unbandaged hand knocked slightly into Jason's shoulder.
"I would need to talk to the school. Perhaps if you altered curriculum so that you didn't have to assign written homework, things would be eased."
-
Todd watches the teacher, who still hasn't looked up from his computer over in the corner of the classroom. He was really, really washed out looking. Someone should tell him not to wear so much black and grey, with his hair that white and skin that pale. One of the girls next to him giggles to her friend, and the boy couldn't help but sigh as he overheard. No, the teacher couldn't be a vampire from forks. It was sunny out. And he wasn't sparkling. Tardy bell rings, and students don't quiet down, but do take seats. Darn, none of his friends have this class.
Everyone jumps at the sound of a textbook hitting the tile floor with a solid thunk. Looking for the culprit, eyes find the teacher, who is no longer facing his computer and instead looking out over the room.
"The seats you have chosen today are your seats for the rest of the class." He informs them, picking up the book he'd dropped and settling it back on his desk. "Starting with the corner in front of my desk, speak your names clearly." And so the class spoke their names out in order, pausing while he typed and each name down and then stood.
"We will be doing things differently in this class. No handouts." While the pale teacher, Mr. Calahane, explains what their class was expected, a verbal sort of syllabus, Todd listens with half an ear. There was something off about the way the guy was moving. When he clipped himself on the desk, and completely ignored the hands raised, before and after explaining that that wasn't the way to get his attention, someone got a brilliant idea.
Mr. Calahane says absolutely nothing as a paper ball bounced off his head. He simply continues to write, his letters oddly legible for a leftie on a white board, and he pauses when the second ball bounces off his head as he stepped back to the side where he'd started writing the notes. The third time, the same happened. The forth, when he was stepping back after having given time for note taking to complete, was different.
The same spot, yes, but the pale man stepped back, the paper ball flying right past his nose instead of bouncing off his head. The chorus of smothered laughter that would have accompanied a successful hit started, then smothered as he gave the class a blank, unamused look from odd red eyes, and went back to teaching.
The second class was reading assignment. Mr. Calahane sits at his desk, working on something on his own at the computer. And again, the cycle repeated itself. Bounce once, twice, thrice. But again, the fourth broke the pattern, and in both ways.
Mr. Calahane sighed as the ball bounced from his head, but one thin hand snatched it from the air and then threw it back. The startled student didn't react in time to get saved from the paper ball bouncing off his face.
"Yes, I am blind." The man tells them, voice dry. "But that doesn't mean you can mock me this way."
Circle
"... How long is it to home?" His head aches, the headlights flashing as they pass and the white and yellow blurs remaining steady in the darkness.
"Don't you take the bus? You should know the distance." Lucie breaks off, and honks the horn sharply after a particularly bright set of headlights.
"Backroads are different, that's what the bus takes. This is the state route." Maeryn shifts his glasses and rubs at his eyes.
"You can nap, if you want. Rest up before dealing with Karol. You know your tempers grate even after a normal day. Plus, you were grading tests all day and the fighting should start before you're out of the car." He didn't quite like that his elder brother sounded so amused, but couldn't deny the truth.
"... I would hit you, Luc, but you're driving." But he finds that lever on the side of the seat, closing his eyes as he presses back, reclining the seat.
"Ahh, I'll have to drive you more often." A short laugh from Lucie, and Maeryn shifts the seatbelt so it wasn't cutting oddly. Tucking his glasses into the front of his shirt, settling back into the seat. "Save my poor, poor shoulder from your knuckles."
"... shut up..."
"Duck a little more,-" Lucie said a little too late and Maeryn clipped his head on the edge of the car, knocking his glasses loose. He stopped moving, hands searching. The world became a painfully bright blur without his glasses on, the setting sun not obscured by clouds and all too bright, too warm yet. Shapes of white mixed with the blue and black, green and leather brown, and a pair of peach moved. Thick brown lines came close, and then he saw his brother's hands, moving back as the world darkened to colors and shapes he could make out. "Are you so farsighted that you can't see the car frame? Need help with the buckle?" The first question was amused, the second teasing.
"...nearsighted, not far..." He grumbled, shoving Lucie lightly. His older brother laughed, and Maeryn shifted into the car. "Nearsighted, and photosensitive, if you're going to get detailed."
"Are you wearing your old glasses?" Lucie was in the driver's seat and buckled before Maeryn, despite having to walk around, asking while peering at the frames. The focus and dimness was stolen from his world, and the peach with green shifted. Maeryn shut his eyes against the brightness.
"... Give them back." He found shirt sleeve, shirtfront, seatbelt.
"You are, aren't you." And contact to his nose, the backs of his ears. "It's not good for your sight."
"These are darker." He blinked and shifted the seatbelt. "Less headaches."
"You have that backwards." And his brother corrected the buckle for him. A key turn. Humming and away. "So, why'd you miss the bus?"
"... Tests. Some people still used black ink. Hard to tell what was print for some people's answers." Maeryn rubbed at his head, settling back and absently watching life pass by.
"And this is why you should wear the newer glasses. These are older, everything is fuzzy, isn't it."
"The darkness's better too. Not my only eye problem."
"We'll just have to hit up the eyedoctor sometime this weekend, then. Get some of those clip-on-shades for your new ones."
"Are we there already?" Maeryn blinks against the steadily growing light which had woken him, searching for his glasses. How had they gotten out of his shirt? "... Did Karol set up a sign board to draw us in?"
Lucie swears, words that their mother would have sought to scrub his mouth with soap for, despite his forty years.
Tires screech, and his glasses nearly jab him in the eye. Light fills his vision, smears it, sears it, and then there was darkness. Vile swearing continues from Lucie's mouth, clicking noises from the twisting of the wheel, like it was twisted too far. The scream of tires causing a splitting headache. Maeryn tries to find his glasses, hands searching about the dash, on the floor, between the seats. A hand grasps his shirt, yanking him back into his seat, then shoving his arms back to him.
"Lucie?" A shrieking metal noise, a scream of tires. A crunch of glass and metal, and the bite of seatbelt to his shoulder as he lurched painfully at the sudden stop. Sharpness, crackling noises, darkness everywhere as he hits his seat again, hearing one short pained noise from his older brother.
Bouncing forward again at the shock of the stop, his impact with the seat. Not that there was anywhere for him to go.
-
Karol frowns at the shut door, at the darkness only broken by streetlights outside, no beams of headlights visible, tapping her foot against the floor. Lucie and Maeryn were very late. If it was just Maeryn, she could understand it, would expect him to avoid her by making the visit start late and leaving as soon as he could. But Lucie was driving; she expected at least a call if they had hit traffic. Brothers. They probably ended up sidetracked by food, even though she was cooking dinner.
She turns the heat down on the stove, and with one last irritated glance at the front door, turns on the TV and news for background noise. Nothing interesting. Weather. Like it ever really changed more than looking outside would warn. Karol returns to the kitchen and stirring and testing taste and adjusting the temperature of pots as needed.
"..drivers of both vehicles pronounced dead on the scene, the passenger is being taken to the hospital for urgent care..." Perhaps it was morbid human curiosity, perhaps it was to wonder if Lucie could be seen rubbernecking at the crash, Karol steps from the kitchen and looks at the TV. The car was slightly blue, mostly crunched, the larger mostly green, but still mostly crunched. A guardrail dented with the impact, cupping the cars away from a slight drop off.
She knows that road.
And she knows that too pale, lanky body that was shown - too red, too still - being loaded onto an ambulance.
The kettle she'd put on shrills, but she can't hear it.
-
Maeryn wakes to darkness. This was not surprising, as he couldn't sleep with light in the room because his vision problems. It was familiar, but something else was not. He can't place it.
Getting up is harder than it should be. Had he slept wrong? Caused his limbs and parts of his body he was fairly certain couldn't fall asleep to do so? He feels sluggish and stiff and slow and he can't figure out where his left hand was feeling about. The bed, cloth, blankets. Was it more asleep than the rest of him?
His other arm feels off, and his legs refuse to support him when he tries them. He must have slept in a contorted ball, all of his limbs feeling the tingles of waking.
Cold. The floor is cold, and clean of tomorrow's clothes. He hears the air conditioning. Is it singing to him? He hates that song. Are his ears ringing? No, beeping. High, like ringing. Feeling about, left hand only finding cloth. Where are his glasses? His face feels thick, slow, like a sinus infection or a cold. No runny nose, can't be that, can't be sick. Footsteps as Maeryn tries to get his left arm to work and feels around with his right. He has fairly good night vision, why do the hands under his shoulders surprise him?
Why does everything hurt?
"Mr. Callahane, please get back in bed, you'll hurt yourself more." Female, hands careful but firmly pull him to his feet, sitting him back on the edge of the bed. He doesn't want to sit.
"...lights..? Where are... glasses.." His words aren't working, and his tongue feels slow and throat thick. Maybe he is sick. Why doesn't his hand listen to him like the other did? This was the same cloth, warm. Felt the same. Where is his hand, it shouldn't still be on the bed.
"What about them?" Footsteps move away, he tries to push himself to his feet again but his hand isn't where he wants to move it and he greets the floor once more. His right arm hurts, but he can't feel it with his left because he can't find where the left was. It shouldn't still be on the bed, the cloth was the same, where..
The woman sighed. Frustrated? Returns while he still tries to figure out why he can't get up.
"Please stay in bed unless you need something." She gets him back on the edge, and leaves her hands on his shoulder. He understood the hint, at least, and stays put. "I turned the lights up, have you noticed any change?" The hands leave his shoulder and he feels something on his face move. Bandages...? But everything is still dark. Fingers lightly on his eyes, no bandages there. But dark. He blinks. Still dark.
"The lights are not on." Something else moves, but everything still hurts. His head pounds.
"The lights are on. I'll get the doctor, do you need something?" The lights are on, but he can't see? Distant, why does she sound distant, she is right there...
"Bathroom." Still weaker than he likes. He swallows, repeats. "Need to use... bathroom." She makes a sympathetic noise, pulls something metal over and helps him to his feet. Legs hurts, ribs hurts, shoulder hurts as she pulls his right arm over her shoulders to help him stay upright.
"When you're done, open the door and call. It shouldn't take long for me to return." She leaves him in the bathroom with a metal rolling thing. He uses the rail for balance, finds the toilet with his leg. Struggles not to lose his balance as he uses it. Then stops.
Lights are on. But he can't see anything.
Swallowing hard, he reaches for the walls. Lean on the rail, wallpaper, cord, wallpaper, metal pole, shower, light switch. He flicks it up. Down. Up. Down.
By the time Maeryn flicks it up the third time he can hear the hum of electricity when it was in that direction. But no change in his sight. He sinks back onto the seat, trying to think. Is the wall paper patterned, he couldn't tell.
Why can't he see? He knows he can see, usually it is just all blurry, too bright. Why did it all go?
Why is he even in a hospital? He was going home, no, to Karol's house, but with an attempt to avoid an vocal argument and then-
They were on the highway. Lights. What was it with the lights. Lucie was driving.
"Mr. Calahane-" He scrambles for the door, nearly pitching over and sending pain burning up his side.
"Where is my brother?!" Light, burning light, pain, blackness. Sounds of metal folding the way it shouldn't, screaming all the way. Where was he. "Driver, he was driving, light, where is he, darkness, where is my brother?!"
-
"What are you doing?" Maeryn hears heels, clothing shifting. That smell is... definitely his sister. She had three cats, so many cats. He can smell them from here.
"Go away."He doesn't want to leave the chair. It was comfortable, and warm. Unlike him.
"Have you taken a shower this week?" Heels closer, even strides. Direct strides. No walking into anything for those who can see.
"Yes. Now leave." He shifts in the chair, sinking his head closer to his tucked up knees.
"When." Cloth to cloth, is she crossing her arms? Who cared.
"..... Seven days ago."
"You miss him. I get that. I care too, he was my brother as well. But stop wallowing." Steps again, and he flinches away from the swish of fabric on his chair. Gets to his feet stiffly and quickly and turns about. Wavering for balance, righting himself. How can one be dizzy, black out, when one has no vision to tell if it was close?
"I do not want to! Leave me alone!"
"No! You're only hurting yourself, and the rest of us! Do you think locking yourself away will help anything?!"
"Obviously I haven't locked myself away well enough if you got in, so help yourself out!" he throws his arm to gesture to the door, and immediately grimaces because that hurt. He isn't even sure if he points in the right direction.
"No! If you're not going to take care of yourself, broken arm and all, then you need someone to do it. I'm not leaving."
"I do not need your help!"
"No, you don't want my help. But you haven't bothered washing, moving from this chair even, in the past week, and there's food rotting on the counters. You need my help." He hates that sound to her voice, the 'I'm right, and you know it' tone.
"I do not. Shut up, and go!" he turns to storm off. But coffee tables ruin the intended effect, as Maeryn catches the edge with his shin and tumbles over it. One hand isn't enough to catch him, his dominant hand still in its cast to his chest, not able to be thrown out to halt the fall. He almost swears, but cuts off. His throat tries to close and he blinks to the floor, tries to avoid the burning.
That was the last thing he heard Lucie say. Karol sighs, and he hears her head closer, right the table, even as he just stays lying down. He jerked away from her hands as she tried to pull him to sitting up.
"I do not want your damn pity!" His voice is sharp, but twisted with the pain through his arm, smothered by the tightness to his throat. He hears her make an un-amused noise as he struggles on his own to get up.
"Tell you what." She stops and settles next to him, and her voice came closer. He turns slightly toward her, only barely indicating he is listening."I'll come by once a week." He snorts, to show what he thought of that idea, and with the ease of practice, she ignored him and talked over his grumbles. "Clean up any food you left to rot. In return, you take up a class."
".... What sort of class."
"Braille."
-
If Maeryn had been inside his own house, this book would have been thrown across the room thirty minutes ago. As it is, there are three other people in the room, and he won't indulge that. He aches, his healing bones throb as medication wears off. He is severely frustrated. And someone would not stop humming the most irritating, or out of tune, song he has ever heard. It is bad enough he can't get past the fourth page in what he is very certain was a children's book, he isn't going to start acting like one as well. He should have brought more of the pain medication with him, but he hadn't thought that they would wear off this soon. Now he is whining inside his head.
Does that other one - Henry, who had bad fireworks go off in his hands - find this as irritating as he did? Does the third - he can't quite remember how they went blind - like that song and have no sense of pitch, or is he trying on purpose to set every hair on the back of his neck up in irritation?
Did pain medication wear off faster when someone is stressed? Maeryn runs his fingers over the page as he hears footsteps pass to the far right. Other pages turn. That damn song. It was this one word, this series of bumps under his fingers that elude him. He can't get anything other than a bunch of letters out of it, and he guesses different letters each time. Maeryn did not want to listen to audible books every time he wanted to read.
Reading. He can't do that anymore than he can take a walk in a crowded mall and not step on anyone's toes. While some of those people who read books sound nice, he disagreed with several of their pronunciations. He'd rather not spend time arguing with a voice that wouldn't talk back, anymore than he'd like to spend time tracing fingers over letters that seemed to change as he felt them anew. Listening to someone read a text book would be horribly dull.
He turns the page back and runs his fingers over the series of raised letters on that side. He doesn't recall ever reading this children's book, the words aren't ringing any bells, and doesn't help him figure out what the next could - should - be. It is a rhyming book, that much is clear, aren't most children's books? That means the next sentence would rhyme with this one, and he can use that to figure it out -
"How are you doing?" He manages not to jump at the voice, which was not quite over his shoulder - more over his head. The teacher. He should have heard the footsteps stop to his left as he turned the page.
"Well enough." He puts his hand back on the page. Is he having problems because his dominant hand is still braced to his chest? There had been something about the hand you use for language being better at languages in one of those classes he had taken far too long ago, hadn't there? Something about right brain and left brain and matching your dominant hand for words and the other for images. Then again, it isn't like he was writing anything, just trying to read a silly child's book. The steps move away again, toward the front, and he goes back to scowling at the page. He would give.. something important, if he could just get that train of thought back from before the teacher talked to him. Listening to the same quiet question directed at another does him no good, and in his frustration, a page turn. Paper cut. Dammit all.
Very carefully he closes the book. And very carefully he drops his forehead down onto the cover. Just a tiny thunk. And then another tiny thunk. He listened to footsteps, and wondered if that wives tale trick of sleeping on dictionaries or textbooks would work on Braille and children's stories. Thunk. Thunk. Someone had stopped turning their pages. And his head hurt a little more than it had a few moments ago, so he sits up again.
He should have brought more pain pills. How did you tell migraines from regular headaches when you couldn't tell if light hurt more?
No going home until the time was up, or he finished the stupid child's book. He doesn't want to ask for help. He had already asked for aid once, and found himself unable to do anything even slightly difficult without sight in the room again. Help shoved down his throat. Although, it was fairly easy to simply tell them where to shove their help, wasn't it...
And how does a blind person get a teacher's attention? He debates just shoving the book off the desk. That would create a big enough thunk, wouldn't it? But then he would have to find it again... Maeryn resolves never to leave his house again without the next dose of painkillers. Thinking while in aching pain doesn't work so well for him. Does it work so well for anyone?
None of this was helping. He needs the help, he doesn't want the help. Fine.
"I'm stuck."
-
Maeryn frowns at the sound of the door being unlocked, looking up from the book propped up on his knees. The time was off for his sister to show up; she didn't come on Tuesdays anymore, only Friday evenings, once every two weeks. His adjustment to life without sight over the past year had been satisfactory enough, it seemed, that she would leave him alone for longer.
"You do not usually come this day." He told her, listening as she stops walking, then shifts and shuts the door. More shifting, she was shedding her shoes, stepping out of them and then over toward his seat.
"Your neighbors called. Apparently, they're getting worried with you falling down." He hears her stop once again, her weight shifting slightly in otherwise silence. Maeryn turns back to his book, planning to close his curtains. "Let me see your arm."
"... Must you?" But he shifts the book carefully, and holds up the arm closest to his sister. For a second he toys with the idea of going back to reading, but she grasps his wrist and shifts his sleeve, and he decides against it. He remains facing ahead, listening to her move at his right and inspect his arm.
"What do you think." Her fingers poke him once or twice, and then he winces and hisses as she finds a particularly tender bruise. "You're not doing yourself any favors, not using a cane or one of those walking sticks they taught you to use in those classes."
"I can do well enough without them." Maeryn retorts, twitching his arm in a question of 'may I have it back now'. She doesn't release him.
"You knock into things often enough that your bruises get bruises. Use one something to help you from turning into a walking bruise?"
"I do not require one, remembering where everything is works well enough for me."
"Working 'well enough' isn't the same as 'not needing to pop painkillers when you want to leave the house because you're that sore'. Which you seem to be taking even when you don't leave, given your receipts." He feels some sort of heat rise to his face. Was he embarrassed she was going through his things, or angry that she was?
"You have a point, why do you not get to it quickly." He tugs his arm back from her, finding his bookmark and shutting the book, turning slightly to face her general direction.
"You either need a dog, a girlfriend, or a housemate." Karol states, a slight shifting that sounded mostly of hair-to-clothes, a nod accompanying her words. He blinks once. "Or a boyfriend, if that's what you're interested-" She misreads him on purpose, he knows she does.
"I have no interest in a relationship." Perhaps a little too hard of denial, and he turns away again, frowning slightly once more. "I do not want a dog."
"Then a housemate. I'll get ads ready." Maeryn groaned. He should have said he wanted a dog.
-
It was easy enough to be blunt and sharp and deter most people who sought the upstairs. The few who matched Karol's standards and weren't put off by Maeryn's mannerisms in meeting the first time were shortly introduced to his distaste for helping him through everything, and the sharper comments that were meant to deter further aid unasked for sent them off as well.
So Maeryn was able to remain quite content in his solitary life inside the house.
-
Jason wasn't quite sure what to think could go wrong, but he expected something would. A house with room for rent within ten minute's drive from the high school, the owner wasn't some young woman looking for a man to move in then become a boyfriend, and quiet was the preferred requirement. He was very certain he could fulfill that.
He was even more pleased to find that the woman who had answered the call of interest was the sister of the one who was renting the home, and she set up a time and a place and.. who ever owned this house was not very interested in landscaping. He might have spent longer than was particularly polite staring at the overgrown grass, clover, and various other weeds that counted for a front lawn.
Jason finds himself hoping that the outside of the house isn't a reflection of the inside, and knocks the door. It takes a moment, but there was a pale shape blurrily making its way toward the door through the edge of the side glass, and then some moments where there was nothing but silence and stillness. The door opened a moment after that, and Jason blinked at the lanky man who stares silently straight ahead. Or Jason thought the other man was staring, as white hair fell over his eyes and made it hard to tell exactly what he was looking at.
"You are Jason Cadwell?" The man asks, still facing a little too low.
"Yes, that would be me." Jason shifts his glasses and watches as the man shifts his head so he was facing closer to the level of Jason's face. "That would make you Maeryn, wouldn't it?"
"Unless my sister gave you the wrong address." And thus Maeryn turns back into his house, leaving the door open and carefully walks across clean floors to a chair, moving in lines and sharp turns."Please leave your shoes at the door and shut it after coming in." He pauses after picking up a book that was next to the arm. "Do not move anything." Jason lifts an eyebrow, wondering slightly at that odd, added request, but shrugs when the pale didn't explain it at all.
"Why are you interested?" The question came in the middle of Jason crossing over toward the sitting man, who sits staring ahead. Who was familiar in a way, or simply very striking. White hair and a fine boned frame, very pale white skin - Jason blinks and ducks down to get a good look at the pale man's face. The man didn't so much as blink at this action, his eyes still fixed ahead, staring and very red.
"It's close to my work." Jason mentions, still studying Maeryn's face. As he spoke, the albino man's head turned to orient itself to face a little to the left of him. "None of the houses in this area are for sale, and renting is the next best thing. You have free room, are offering it, why not?"
-
Maeryn was hungry, and after a moment spent stepping side to side, opening cupboards and checking boxes and bags by scent and touch, he resigns himself to cooking. It wasn't as if he didn't know his way around the kitchen. He rarely left the house and knew it rather well because of that. Perhaps he should do something about that, he muses, taking steps to reach the end of the cupboard row, then two backwards.
A turn to the left, one step in front of him, crouching next to the refrigerator and searching inside for eggs and milk carton by touch. He doesn't think he is too much of a pain, settling the pair of eggs on a groove between tiles up past his head. He doesn't have a job, but he still had money from when he did and with that he helped Jason with rent and utilities.
The milk is resting next to the eggs, a step back, and he twists and crouches to feel among bags. Large potatoes, paper crinkling; small potatoes, sprouting potatoes; plastic that was too soft to make much noise, soft onion; large onion, flimsy plastic grocery bag, small onions; he picked one of the smaller of both onions and potatoes and the soft one for disposal. Another turn to the left, two long and one short, cold sink under the fingers of the unoccupied hand and the soft onion left in the smaller side. A thump, roll, plunk. A step to the left, tiles under that hand and then the worn wood of the knife block, no, peeling potatoes came first.
The problem would be finding the job, he thinks, reaching into the drawer and retrieving the peeler, and then the cutting board after. While Jason had mentioned a teacher at the school where he worked who spent very little of her class time speaking with students, much like Maeryn avoided speaking, there was still the fact he'd actually have to deal with people. A pan is located by crouching and turning a little to the left, amid much metal shifting and clattering, and he sets that aside. A knife he finds by feeling over the knife block, carefully searching from the right rather than the top or bottom. He selects one a little thicker than the rest, pulling it out and keeping his right hand at his side until he had the blade to the cutting board, and the food up against the flat. He listens to the knife move through the onion and potato, steadily pushing the layered food under the knife.
It had been three years since he had to deal with a great many people at once, although a great many had really been thirty to forty- he freezes and jerks the knife straight up, moving the hand that had been on the potato horizontally closer to him then up to his mouth. He remains still but for searching for the damage; he can't taste blood just - ah, there is the iron, he had cut himself. He waits a moment longer, then very carefully puts the knife's edge to the cutting board again, his hand well out of the way, and shifts what was left to cut up against the edge to resume. The onion makes him sneeze and he winces at the stinging, but sets the knife aside and moved the slightly damp pieces into the pan. Above the pan was the cupboard with actual cups, a clinking of glass, taking one. Two more steps to the left brings him back to the eggs and milk. Carefully, knock the eggs against the edge of the cup, find the crack with this thumb and press cautiously in. Dump the contents, add the milk until the edge touched the finger inside the cup.
People. And not just the usually rather reasonable, if not at least logical, adult people, but teenagers. Full of hormones and 'I know better than you' feelings. He finds the ham when he returns the milk, and doesn't bother cutting the slices but tore one to pieces and places them in the pan as he put eggshells with the soft onion in the sink. But he missed, by the sounds, and grimaced, dropping to a crouch again to feel for the errant shell pieces and collect them. He doesn't think he held enough shell in his hand for both eggs, but he hadn't caught how much had fallen into the sink by the sounds and so he deposits what he had gathered in the sink.
But that was the problem with any job, really. He'd have to deal with people. Of course, getting there would be a problem as well. He winces slightly as he rinses his hands and replaces the ham despite the sting of his cut fingers. A step to the right and reaching forward, his hands feeling along the metal and finding dials, so he turns one, and grimaced at the feel of a fraction of shell under his foot. The faint hum of electricity warming old coils, listening for anything unusual to the old stove.
He would have to find something close, or at the school where Jason worked. Warmth against his fingers indicated he'd found the right spot on the stove so he replaces his hand with the pan, adding the egg mixed with milk to the ingredients already there. He'd just have to talk to Jason about it.
-
The crash down by the stairs has Jason out of his room, blinking in the late night gloom for the source. The sounds of someone swearing, a familiar voice that didn't normally use that kind of language, causes him to both relax - this wasn't some sort of break in attempt - and tense in worry. Well, he won't need that bat then.
"If you're so clumsy that you can't walk in a straight line without tripping over your own feet, please do not attempt the stairs unless someone's there to help." Jason complains lightly, heading down the steps in question carefully, not wanting to step or land on the fallen man as he skipped steps in his haste to make sure Maeryn wasn't too badly injured by the fall.
"Shut up." Was the grumbled reply, as the albino man searched for the railing and started to pull himself up from the sprawl.
"No no no, falling once a night is enough for you. Stay put." Because he isn't going to listen to that, Jason pushes down on thin shoulders and sits on the step level with him. The pale man stays put with a barely visible wince, forced to accept the aid.
"I am fine." As stiffly stated as ever, but the biology teacher knew now that it was just how the other talked. A bit prickly to keep people from getting too close, while Jason an unwavering smile kept people guessing.
"Oh, yes, completely fine." Jason agrees sarcastically. The trouble with teasing a man who can't see, expressions were meaningless. Of course, that was also a plus side. "That's why you tripped going up the stairs." He finds the light switch and shuts his eyes before turning the light for the staircase on. Maeryn didn't react to the light, but the teacher could now see the starting of bruising to his otherwise uncolored skin. "Did you miss me so much that you had to come up in the middle of the night?"
"You moved the book I was reading." Ah, yes, no use for natural day and night rhythms when one doesn't have a job, and couldn't see the sun. A blind man didn't need light to read, after all.
"I must have forgotten there are two libraries." Which was a little absurd, but it makes these problematic trips up the stairs less frequent. Jason reaches over and thumbs up both eyelids, getting a good look at unfocused, red eyes beneath in the light before Maeryn twitches back, his eyes closing again.
"What was that for?" Maeryn demands. Jason wasn't quite sure how to tell the difference between someone who was blind, and someone who had a concussion, given that the man's pupils wouldn't dilate in any sort of light...
"You're going to get a black eye." He points out, poking the forming bruise. The blind man twitches back, and thunks his head against the wall.
A heavy exhale was Maeryn's indication that hitting his head had hurt, as far as Jason understood him. And given that he'd been living in the blind man's house for over two years, he was fairly confident that he understood that noise.
"All right, let's get you off to bed. Before you decide to walk into walls as well as trip up stairs." Jason didn't know how many he'd fallen down, after all, and while Maeryn's hand reaches up to the railing to pull himself up, the other teacher pulls him up from under the arms.
"I do not require aid," The white haired man grumbles, even as one hand grabs onto Jason's arm once he is on his feet for balance.
"Of course you don't require it, you could make it back to your room on your own." Jason keeps a careful watch on how his blind housemate wobbles a little when he walks him back to his room. "You just might take another hour or so, and walk into a wall, once or thrice. Or with less dignity. on your hands and knees."
"I had thought you would not be the mother-hen sort when I offered you the upstairs of the house." Maeryn grumbles, and the rust-haired teacher tugs the blind man away from the wall of the hall. The white haired's elbow clips the wall, and with a wince, he corrects his path in the hall, avoiding anything else that might trip him up, but still keeping his grip on Jason's arm. "... Did you think on what I had asked?" Yes. After bandaging the man's cut fingers - Maeryn noticed, and bandaged, the first cut, but not the others.
"Hmm.. You are aware that you don't have to cook, aren't you? I doubt your poor fingers will thank you for these continued attempts." Just what could a blind man do at a school? Maeryn had made history his focus, perhaps something with that would work. "I have leftovers you can heat up, or you can snack until I get home, and save yourself the bloodloss."
"... Avoiding the question." The unbandaged hand knocked slightly into Jason's shoulder.
"I would need to talk to the school. Perhaps if you altered curriculum so that you didn't have to assign written homework, things would be eased."
-
Todd watches the teacher, who still hasn't looked up from his computer over in the corner of the classroom. He was really, really washed out looking. Someone should tell him not to wear so much black and grey, with his hair that white and skin that pale. One of the girls next to him giggles to her friend, and the boy couldn't help but sigh as he overheard. No, the teacher couldn't be a vampire from forks. It was sunny out. And he wasn't sparkling. Tardy bell rings, and students don't quiet down, but do take seats. Darn, none of his friends have this class.
Everyone jumps at the sound of a textbook hitting the tile floor with a solid thunk. Looking for the culprit, eyes find the teacher, who is no longer facing his computer and instead looking out over the room.
"The seats you have chosen today are your seats for the rest of the class." He informs them, picking up the book he'd dropped and settling it back on his desk. "Starting with the corner in front of my desk, speak your names clearly." And so the class spoke their names out in order, pausing while he typed and each name down and then stood.
"We will be doing things differently in this class. No handouts." While the pale teacher, Mr. Calahane, explains what their class was expected, a verbal sort of syllabus, Todd listens with half an ear. There was something off about the way the guy was moving. When he clipped himself on the desk, and completely ignored the hands raised, before and after explaining that that wasn't the way to get his attention, someone got a brilliant idea.
Mr. Calahane says absolutely nothing as a paper ball bounced off his head. He simply continues to write, his letters oddly legible for a leftie on a white board, and he pauses when the second ball bounces off his head as he stepped back to the side where he'd started writing the notes. The third time, the same happened. The forth, when he was stepping back after having given time for note taking to complete, was different.
The same spot, yes, but the pale man stepped back, the paper ball flying right past his nose instead of bouncing off his head. The chorus of smothered laughter that would have accompanied a successful hit started, then smothered as he gave the class a blank, unamused look from odd red eyes, and went back to teaching.
The second class was reading assignment. Mr. Calahane sits at his desk, working on something on his own at the computer. And again, the cycle repeated itself. Bounce once, twice, thrice. But again, the fourth broke the pattern, and in both ways.
Mr. Calahane sighed as the ball bounced from his head, but one thin hand snatched it from the air and then threw it back. The startled student didn't react in time to get saved from the paper ball bouncing off his face.
"Yes, I am blind." The man tells them, voice dry. "But that doesn't mean you can mock me this way."