Comparing Facial Injuries

Who: Claire and Joshua
When: lunch, post-meeting stuff
Where: MSHS

Joshua couldn't help but be glad that the meeting on the sidelawn was over. It was a good idea, to keep everybody in touch, that was great and all. He just felt ... out of place there, conspicuous with the tape over his nose and his wrist all wrapped up. That and it really fucking sucked to have to an awkward and brief conversation with Dean. Wasn't his fault, in the end, but still. It was weird. In any case, he was relieved when they all split up. He started around the corner of the school building, board tucked up under his arm, sneakers flopping a bit from where he'd pulled the goddamn laces out of them, on his way back to the sidewalk to go home.

Oblivious to any Scooby Gang meeting on the side lawn, Claire was on her back in the grass on the other side of the building, her lunch untouched on a paper bag next to her. One knee was drawn up, her other leg resting on top of it, bouncing a bit, her sandal barely hanging on her toes. She held a book above her with both hands, knowing it was probably a strange, awkward image, but she didn't care. in her warped mind, holding the hardback book with both arms above her that way was like lifting weights, so not only was she reading, but she was exercising too. It made perfect sense to her and that was all she cared about. It was quiet on this side of the building, peaceful and the least likely place she'd get interrupted. She was shifting the book to turn the page with her thumb, attempting to avoid a paper cut when she heard the sound of shoes rounding the building and tilted her head back on the grass to look at the intruder of her space upside down. In that instant, she lost grip of her book and felt a white hot flash of pain as she dropped it on her face and hit her mouth and chin. "Holy Christ," she hissed, rolling onto her side when she tasted the blood on her lip. No paper cut, but hey, a busted lip was just as good.

Joshua didn't really see the girl until there was the movement of the book falling and she cursed. He stopped walking -- lest he run right into her to boot, which was always a possibility -- and made a sympathetic face. Which was a bit marred by the swelling and tape on his nose, but it was still there. "You okay?" he asked, knowing the answer was probably no. That was generally the question he got asked. Crouching down next to her, he pulled some crumpled tissues out of his pocket that looked clean enough, and offered them to her. She looked like she'd taken that book pretty hard.

"I'm fabulous, thanks," Claire told him, though there was no malice in her voice. She was more amused than anything at the moment. She'd found that sometimes it was just best to find pain funny than to show someone else it hurt. Sitting on her knees, she took the offered tissues to wipe at her lip with one hand while lifting her other hand to attempt to untangle the strands of hair from her small, hoop earrings running up her ear. She spared a glance at the guy and got a good look at his face. Both hands stalled for a moment as she took in the bandage on his nose and wrapped up wrist. She tried to smile, but it made her lip hurt. She tugged a hair from her earring and smoothed it down before pulling the tissue from her lip and touching the small cut gingerly with her tongue. "Did you get a book in the face too? Hardbound books to the nose are on the rise, you know. And they can, on rare occasion, be lethal." Jokes. Jokes were good to cover up humiliation.

He smiled a little, even though it kind of hurt to do. Pretty much every facial expression worth it's salt hurt. But it was there anyway. "No, my last fight with a hardback healed already. This was a rock," he said, making a gesture toward his face with his good hand. "Only it was still actually on the ground, so I guess I more assaulted it than the other way 'round." It occurred to him belatedly that he could've told her it was a fistfight, which would have been infinitely less lame, but too late now. "You really gotta be careful with 'em, though, they tend to go for the soft bits. Watch your eyes, y'know." Not that she really looked like she took lots of hits to the face or anything. Accidents happened to everybody. They just plagued him.

"You fell and hurt your nose on a rock... that takes real skill," she replied, sucking on her lip briefly to get rid of the blood. She reached over to grab the Jane Austen book still sprawled on the grass, the pages rustling slightly with the light breeze. She closed it and dropped it next to her lunch before balling up the tissue and shoving it into the paper bag. Touching her mouth, she realized she was going to have a swollen lip for the afternoon. Great. "Did you hurt your wrist from that?" Claire asked, motioning toward the skateboard he was carrying. "I've seen guys around school trying to like... do those moves on metal bars and railings and stuff and then fall and hit their balls pretty hard on them. I think half the population of skateboarders are probably never meant to have kids."

Joshua looked slightly startled for a split second at the balls comment, then laughed. Which he didn't feel like he'd done in a couple of days, at least. Maybe with Sean, while he was smashed, but still. It was strange. Besides hurting, at least. "No, uh ... I'm actually pretty good on that," he said, nodding toward the board as he put it down next to him. "No severe ball-injuries so far. It's walking I have a problem with." And everything else. "Sprained the wrist unsuccessfully trying to avoid the broken nose yesterday. Can't say I've ever busted my lip open reading, though," he added in, and then thought maybe he shouldn't have.

Claire shrugged and shifted to sit back on the grass once her knees began to protest sitting on them. She didn't take offense to it, since he wasn't actually being an asshole about making fun of her like she knew some guys in school would be. "That takes skill too. I have a natural talent for finding the most improbable way of hurting myself and others and taking it to the next level. It's pretty impressive." She eyed him closely for a moment and tried to keep from smirking, seeing as her lip was throbbing. "Almost as impressive as spraining your wrist and breaking your nose all in an attempt to avoid a motionless rock. On the ground. But hey, I hear walking can be pretty tough for people. Were you a late learner, or do your feet just not like you?"

Well see, there's this centuries-old family curse ... "Well they don't, in general," he admitted. "But this was a shoelace malfunction. The rock just happened to break my fall. ... and my face," he amended, looking faintly amused. Awesome that something that had pissed him off to no end the day before could be kind of funny in the face of a cute girl who was currently distracting him for a minute from how much everything sucked ass. Which in fact, he should probably stop indulging in and go on home to wallow some more. It was what he was exceedingly good at, not this. In fact, he'd pretty well proven himself a complete idiot when it came to girls, so ... yeah.

"Shoelace malfunction." She really wanted to laugh then, especially looking down at his shoes and... seeing no shoelaces. Her lips smiled before she could stop and she lifted a hand to her lip where the pain sliced fresh through her. "Dammit... oh well, it was worth it." She pulled the corner of her lip into her mouth to suck off the fresh blood, the laughter muffled a bit in her throat. "I shouldn't laugh... I'm sorry. It's just bizarre that you say you do well on a skateboard, but you're breaking your nose and spraining your wrist because of a rock and your shoelaces. Who would have thought they would be such a dangerous combination. Then again, I've just let Jane Austen bust my lip open, so who am I to judge, right? I get to go back into school looking like a bee stung my lip... which has happened before so maybe no one will notice." She finally realized she really had no clue who this guy was, given she couldn't remember seeing him in school. "Are you new? You don't look familiar to me... or maybe I do know you and your true identity is hidden behind..." She motioned to her nose to mimic all of the bandages on his.

"It's a different kind of talent, yeah," he said with that same little smile. He had a little stab of sympathy as laughing hurt her lip some more, he knew how that was. Joshua chuckled and ran his good hand over the still-growing-in dark stubble on his head, then rubbed it on his jeans and offered it to shake. "You don't know me. I'm Joshua," he introduced himself, glad that the nasally broken-nose sound to his voice combined with his accent didn't make him completely not-understandable. "I don't even go here, I was just ... meeting some friends for lunch." That worked, right? Good enough. He almost told her that he dated Lullaby Draven, as most people and their brothers seemed to know her, but resisted the impulse. For one, he didn't anymore, and for two, he didn't want the almost-inevitable pity, since the rest of the world thought she was dead.

She reached out and shook his hand with the one not currently at her lip probing. "Hi, Joshua. I'm Claire." She really hated introductions. They always felt a bit awkward, even if the conversation prior hadn't been. Deciding to stop poking at her lip, she dropped her hand from her mouth to her lap. "Do you prefer people call you Joshua? You look more like a... Josh to me. Joshua has this choir boy sound to it, and right now you're not so much looking like a choir boy. Not that it's not a good name," Claire added, just in case he was sensitive about things like his name. Some guys were. "Maybe it's the bandages and bruising. Maybe a little bit of the swelling. Though the shoelaces and rock story sort of takes away some of the 'I was in a kick ass fight and got my nose broken' angle... I don't know." She shrugged dismissively and reached down to pick up her water bottle and twist off the cap. "Josh or Joshua? Your call."

"See, that was the story I planned to give people," he said, with a flashed grin that made his nose hurt. "But you caught me off-guard with your own facial injury, I figured you could use knowing that you're not alone." Which was of course just a load of shit, but that was okay. He hesitated for a beat over what she wanted to call him. Sure, some of his mates at home had shortened his name up to Josh, but it wasn't something that many people really did, for some reason. His family never called him that. Lullaby never called him that. Which was really what made the decision. "Josh is fine," he told her with a little smile and a nod. Hell, if she could have people call her Thia, he could change his name too. It was a distancing thing that he felt like he sort of needed. Maybe he could be better as 'Josh'. "I'm no choir boy, so that works for me. Nice t'meet you, Claire."

"Good, because I like Josh better," she stated simply and then grinned. Or well, half-grinned as her lips wouldn't allow a full smile. "Feel free to tell people you've gotten into a fight. It'll help that tough guy persona. You won't have to worry about me telling them the truth as long as you don't tell people I dropped a book on my face. I plan on going back inside and telling people I got into a kick ass fight myself during lunch. But I was so tough that I escaped only with a busted lip while the other guy walked away with a broken nose and sprained wrist." She took a quick drink of her water to hide another smile. "I think really, keeping the truth a secret benefits the both of us."

Joshua narrowed one eye, smirking a bit himself. "I'm not really seeing the benefit to me, if you get to say that you kicked my ass. See, even if I was letting you off easy because you're a girl, I still busted your lip in this story, and I might have other guys coming out of the school to make sure this never heals, yeah? How about you were fighting with somebody else, and I came in to help and ended up with a broken nose?" he suggested. "Hell, it could even be a couple of guys, so that way I haven't like ... saved you or anything. Just distracted one of 'em." This was a completely bullshit conversation, but he was okay with that. Maybe he needed it. To talk with a chick without feeling like he had his hands tied and a boulder on his chest.

Claire squinted a bit as she thought that over and then sighed dramatically. "Fine. We both kicked ass and have the battle scars to prove it. Though, I've got to be careful bragging about that in school. You said you came here to have lunch with friends, and I'm sure they're aware of your rock and shoelace story... unless you've already fibbed to them." Claire arched an eyebrow curiously at that and took another drink of water before scowling. "Actually, the people who know me in school will probably call foul on my story anyway and just assume I ran into a tree or something. Whatever, I'm going with the kick ass story. I like it better. And you're a Josh now. The manly Josh types actually do save girls, so I'll let you save me this once. And then I kicked ass too with your help." She nodded briskly, as if it were final. "Yeah, that works."

He chuckled and rubbed at the back of his neck. Yeah, he'd definitely never been a 'manly Josh type' before. "Hey, if that works for you, works for me. I didn't really tell them anything, left it up to their imaginations, so ... " He trailed off and shrugged. "Brag all you want." Nobody in there but Dean and Charlotte and them really knew who the fuck he was anyway. Which was probably how it should stay. And now he was kind of wishing that he had told her that he'd been in a fight. He was just bad at lying. And his knuckles were fine, so if she was observant, it would've looked like he'd just gotten his ass beat anyway. Not that it didn't, only now it looked like he'd gotten his ass beat with a rock instead of a person. Whatever, too late. And he should probably be going, before he did something to make her retract his new name.

She smiled a bit more and glanced down at her cell phone in the grass next to her untouched lunch. "Shit, I've got to get inside for class," she said with a sigh and began to gather up her things rather clumsily. She looked up at Joshua and smiled a bit again, mindful of her lip. She honestly had no judgments about how he hurt himself. In fact, she was feeling a bit better about herself that she wasn't the only one who would trip on her feet and land just perfectly enough to break something. She'd had her fair share of casts and crutches, though she preferred not to share that much with him. She'd already dropped a damn book on her face in his presence. "Thanks for the talk, Josh. I hope your nose and wrist gets to feeling better soon... maybe I'll catch you around sometime?"

He stayed where he was, not moving to help her, because he'd just make a bigger mess of it all. Joshua smiled faintly back. "Thanks, maybe. I'm around," he said, though he didn't have a whole lot of hope for that. Or that she'd remember him, or even really care to see him again. It was just one of those things that people said. But maybe that was bitter and self-pitying of him. He gave her a little wave. "Take care of your lip, don't eat anything salty today." He knew that pain too, very well. He tended to forget when he busted his lip, he did it so often. He picked up his board again and stood up. "Nice savin' you and everything," he added with a crooked little smile.

"No salt. Right. Uhm, don't get into anymore fights... or y'know, assault anymore rocks either. Eventually I'd like to see what your face looks like when it's a normal color and you don't have bandages covering up most of it." She grinned and managed to get to her feet with her things, only losing balance once but managing to stay upright. "I'll see you later." She walked backwards a few steps before turning, surprisingly, fairly gracefully on her heels to head back toward the front of the school. She was going to be late for English, but that was okay. It was worth it this time.

Joshua watched her go, feeling just slightly weirded out by the entire experience. Not that meeting new people really should've been weird, and he was around the high school during lunch and everything, so there were bound to be girls around. It had just been one of those randomly pleasant conversations that he really didn't expect to have today. Or anymore, period. After a moment he blinked and turned, heading for the sidewalk again. Nice, but he doubted that he would see her again. That was just how his luck ran.