maskormenacelogs | nothing ever absolutely has to happen

Entry tags:

nothing ever absolutely has to happen

WHO: Gwen Wynne-York & Alfie Solomons.
WHERE: His place, Maurtia Falls.
WHEN: Aroundish now, an evening.
WHAT: A spontaneous visit.
WARNINGS: May contain discussion of medical treatments, cancer. Their personalities.

When Alfie answers his door, Gwen holds up a bottle of scotch and a paper bag that smells like it contains food that she more than likely paid for and did not cook. It's hard to tell if these are intended as offerings or as a preemptive protest against having the door closed on her, since she didn't call ahead—

“I was...not in the neighbourhood,” upon reflection, because she definitely can't sell that and isn't going to try to, “I was trying to decide what I wanted for dinner and I thought, you know, it'd be nice to have company, and then I thought, who do I know who almost certainly doesn't have any plans, and I did actually think of a couple of people,”

but Bruce might actually have plans, just not ones that involve socializing or, like, smiling at people,

“but I decided you were my favourite.”

Or the least likely to tell her to fuck off.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Alfie's especially exhausted today. He'd started a new round of chemotherapy that morning, and had decided to spend the rest of the day at home relaxing. When he hears the knock, he almost ignores it and pretends he's not home - but at the last moment, decides to just go ahead and answer it. That'll definitely involve changing out of his bathrobe first, though, so he calls out, "Yeah, give me a moment!"

He'll appear at the door a few minutes later, wearing rumpled sweatpants with his button-up shirt. He wouldn't wear them out onto the street, but they're fine for company. He's also wearing the little black fanny pack that holds his infusion pump, with clear IV-style lines that snake out of it and up his shirt, but even though he knows it's strange-looking he has no plans to explain it unless directly asked about it.

"Very happy to hear you think I'm the sort who never has evening plans," he deadpans, but he does step back to let her in.

“He says, letting me into his house, not having any evening plans—”

It's unmistakable that she clocks the medical accoutrements, hesitates visibly over asking (wants to; has recently demonstrated her general awkwardness about asking after anybody in general and Alfie in particular), and finally settles on:

“I'm not married to drinking this right now if you've got other instructions,” which is considerate, she thinks, and room for him to elaborate or not elaborate as he prefers, “I can neck it later on my own and send someone pictures of my tits.”

Annnnnd she never does stick the landing, but she means well.

"What, this?" Alfie flicks a finger at the fanny pack, shaking his head. "Just makes the drink taste funny. I've been told I can have alcohol in small amounts." He waves her in again, shutting the door behind her if she comes.

"If you're gonna take your shirt off to send people pictures of your tits, do it from the bathroom," he deadpans.

'In small amounts' sounds fake, but that's the thought of someone whose relationship with alcohol has been molded by the normalisation of the drinking problems of everyone around her—

“It's fine,” she says, breezily, “I already took the pictures. Your kitchen's through here, right?”

Not that any of this needs cooking, but: plating, and finding glasses, and cutlery, and the comfortingly mundane things involved in turning up on someone's doorstep and demanding that they put up with you for a bit.

She loses about five inches of height when she steps out of her shoes to leave beside his doorway, politely, and gains a bit of easy comfort in space she is increasingly comfortable presuming her welcome in.

"Just there," he points. There are a few old-fashioned-looking small appliances that he's added in, but for the most part, it's pretty standard for Maurtia Falls imPort kitchens. "Don't expect me to be much help to you, this thing has me knackered. It's putting poison in my blood - poison, right; that's no exaggeration."

“I'm guessing not, like, for a lark.”

Gwen's understanding of medical science and what it entails is sufficiently hazy that she doesn't immediately make the leap from his explanation to chemo; she's never seen someone have that, before, doesn't know how it works or what to expect. She is feeling tentatively around the painfully obvious fact that something significant must be going on, because even ignorant laymen should be able to guess that doctors don't pump poison into their patients unless it's to deal with something worse.

“Sit and be poisoned. I will figure out where you hide your plates and I googled kosher just in case, I don't know how observant you are,” but she's considerate on purpose sometimes, in her way. “Everything's fish, though, I just ordered stuff I like.”

"Nah, don't bother with it," he waves a dismissive hand. It's nice to eat kosher when he can, and he'll shop at kosher stores, but he's not strict about things like separate dishes and utensils - he'll do it himself when he cooks, because it's a part of the natural rhythm of the cooking for him, but he tends not to be bugged when other people don't.

"I asked them if this poison was kosher," he says, settling back down into his chair. "The look on their fucking faces; they thought I was serious."

“You could have been! I've heard some crazy things about religion and medical care, you know.”

Yes, tell us more, noted religious expert Gwen Wynne-York.

(She probably just watched an episode of House with mormons or something once.)

With food plated and glasses of scotch acquired in what she estimates to be a reasonably small amount (it's probably slightly more generous than he had in mind, but she leaves the bottle in his kitchen instead of bringing it with her, so she's doing her best), she puts both in front of him and sits, too. She's made some effort in the food presentation, which is probably just habit; she appears to make some effort in the everything presentation, generally. If she made half as much effort in thinking before she speaks, her life would probably be a lot easier.

“Did you get an answer, or did you put them out of their misery first?”

"They hemmed and hawed, saying they'd look into it, but that it was very, very important to take regardless. I could talk to my rabbi about it, they said; they were sure he'd be supportive. They were very concerned that I'd refuse to take it."

Alfie picks up the food before going for the alcohol, leaning back and settling the plate on his stomach. "Where'd you get this from, then? A restaurant?"

“I can cook, for the record, I just choose not to.”

(Taught by a professional chef, even, she's adequately competent—but she prefers the memories of sitting on the edge of the bench, swinging her feet and listening to him explain what he was doing to the ones where he wasn't there and she was trying to recreate the effects.)

“You weren't going to not take it, right?” after a moment.

"I am in the unique position of being offered medicine that I could never get, at home," he says wryly - and yes, he does see the irony, considering how much he rallies against being here. "Given a new lease on life and all, however temporary. Of course I wasn't gonna not take it."

Under the circumstances, and probably only because she likes him so much, Gwen refrains from commenting on or making a fuss about that particular irony. He knows, she knows, and—as well as she knows him, which she's willing to allow is not as intimately as all that, the smart money says he'd still trade it for home.

Not everyone would, but she thinks: Alfie would. And she can understand it, too.

“Just checking,” she says, poking her fish with her fork, aiming her small and strange smile down at the food instead of up at him, in case he gets any wild ideas about being cared for or thought about by our lady of spoiled indifference.

After a moment, “So, you've done a bunch of crimes, right.” She's pretty sure she witnessed like seven of them, when everyone was remembering things—

Smooth segue. This has the awkwardness of an attempted lead-in.

Edited 2018-01-28 15:18 (UTC)

"Mmmm." That's not an answer, Alfie. He lets it sit as one, though, as he starts digging into the food (which is, of course, delicious; he needs to get the name of the restaurant she picked it up from). "You're asking about at home, or here?" His criminal activity in Maurtia Falls is well-known in some circles, but still, he needs to maintain some level of plausible deniability. Home stuff is fair game, though.

“I mean, wherever. Don't tell me anything I have to pretend to have a moral dilemma about, I hate those.”

She isn't really asking after specifics, though it's fair to say that just as she isn't taking Bruce's secret identity to anyone, she's not about to sell out Alfie's significantly less philanthropic pastimes, either. It might be awkward if she knew something, eventually—she is content, as well, with some plausible deniability.

Probably, that all means she shouldn't do what she's about to do, which is:

“It's just, this thing I was thinking about. That I did.”

Of course, hearing the bit about not provoking moral dilemmas immediately makes him want to do it, just to see what her real, non-jokey reaction would be. He's about to tell her about some of the worst stuff he's ever done, when-- what?

"You committed a crime? Was it an accident?"

“Excuse me,” and the affront is only about fifty percent feigned. She can totally commit crimes, Alfimothy Solomons. See if she can't.

There's a pause.

“It was peer pressure. I was drunk and I thought he was going to shoot me in the face and then he was like, hey baby, let's go rob a bank—he didn't say 'hey baby'. I think, I mean, I was wasted and high on not getting shot.”

That'll kickstart adrenaline in most people.

“And I said I was too drunk to do anything like that, but I was also the right amount of drunk to not want to have someone say I didn't have the stones, so,”

she makes a series of gestures with her fork that don't actually explain anything, whatsoever.

“I was thinking about it the other day. I don't know. I wanted to talk to somebody about it without getting arrested. I totally didn't get caught, though.”

"Well," he says conversationally, careful not to jostle his plate too much as he crosses his hands over his stomach. "That was fucking stupid, wasn't it."

Words of wisdom from Alfie Solomons.

He's not wrong, which is inconvenient in that it means she doesn't immediately have a smart answer for him.

“You didn't tell anyone I can mind control people,” she says, after a moment. It doesn't really pertain to anything except the logical leaps that had led her to think he'd be an appropriate confidant—already a keeper of what she's willing to acknowledge is something somewhat troubling about her, and rather more experienced in the realm of doing crimes.

An effort to apply logic to just trusting him, more than she actually trusted the man in black, in retrospect—

though she'd liked it, that he involved her in things. That he talked to her and took her seriously—she liked the attention. It's that thought that she keeps circling, not entirely comfortable with the implications, contrasting it with the secrets she's recently been entrusted with. The attention she doesn't want to admit she likes, when she keeps coming back and circling it, picking it apart in different conversations with anyone else.

"I didn't, no," he says, eyes still closed. The food is great, but he's exhausted; he needs a short break even just from lifting a fork to and from his mouth.

"This man who took you on a drunken heist adventure, was he an imPort?"

“Yeah. He's gone, now.”

Probably for the best no matter which way it's sliced—she's a little wistful, all the same. “He was responsible for that bum statue Merlotte was so hot and bothered about,” she carries on, in an upbeat tone that mostly disguises the thing her face does when he keeps his eyes closed—normal, probably, right?

He's not well.

She pokes her salmon around her plate, eats some of it.

"Mm. Young? Inexperienced? With new superpowers, most likely, that he was itching to try out?" His reasoning for these guesses is that someone experienced and wise would have picked a better heist partner than a drunk Gwen.

All perfectly reasonable conclusions to make based on the evidence, and the way she laughs (quiet, musical) is knowing. Yeah, that'd make sense, wouldn't it.

“Old,” she says, shaking her head, “like, Methuselah in the face old enough to be your grandfather probably. He never said if the superpowers were from here or from home; I didn't like to ask.” It seems like (to her, at least) sort of a personal question to approach someone with, unprompted; she wouldn't have cared to explain herself, early on.

What with how she'd been lying actively about it, but nevermind that.

“He was like—there's this actor, at home, he's been doing it for like, ever. He's done all the Shakespeare, he's got a knighthood, he's been around the block, all of that, and he takes all kinds of jobs, you know? Like he's done everything and he's bored and he's not so worried about his artistic reputation, he'll do some nonsense for a lark if it sounds fun. I think it was more like that, but like, substantially more violent. He'd been building his company, he worked really hard, he was involved in the import community—I knew him because I did freelance for him, I managed some of his charitable projects. He was a model upstanding citizen. Also, he robbed banks and fucked with people.”

"Mmmm." A thrill-seeker, then. Someone who didn't care about consequences, and likely didn't care much about the reward beyond the rush he got from the robbery. "That sort's dangerous, you know - to themselves, to those around him. That sort never knows when to stop."

He pops his eyes open, finally. On second thought, he'll give her a genuine answer, rather than picking out the most sensational stuff he's done just to shock her. "Yeah, I've committed crimes. Never robbed a bank, though; you've got me there. Mostly I've sold things I shouldn't've been selling without a business license for it. Owned weapons without a firearms certificate - I do not have a firearm certificate, because of my intemperate habits. Shot men with those weapons, or had them shot by other people."

William Walker did not strike her, she concedes in the privacy of her own head, like a man with an off-button. She thinks Alfie's probably right in the same breath as it'd be nice to see him again, and then she lets the segue happen because it's interesting and doesn't require as much self-examination.

He is aware of her feelings about self-examination.

“My godfather got shot once, getting his brother out of the sort of trouble that gets people shot,” she recalls, taking a drink. “He told me about it this one time, it was all gambling and getting in over his idiot head. He'd think the world of you, probably, but he's not a real criminal, he just has this idea in his head of what it'd be like. Whereas Uncle Seven just seems to regard the law as like, a quaint thing that happens to other people and is sometimes useful. You know, you can call the police, but it's probably going to be neater and quieter to just handle things oneself.”

In other words, Septimus is a very wealthy man.

Gambling and getting in over his head. That sounds familiar to Alfie, and he can't quite place why for a moment - it's a hazy, drunken sort of memory.

"Dess...?" he asks, not totally sure if he's remembering right. "That's the one who'd like me?"

“Yeah,” after a brief pause, and less hesitant. “Decimus. Beauchamp. He's my godmother's husband, my godfather's brother.”

She doesn't remember mentioning him, she thinks—has she told this story? Or, and some part of her thinks 'more likely' and then thinks 'what the fuck is my life any more', is it that memory bullshit again, because she's not going to forget the thing with the goat in a hurry. That she didn't remember, exactly, because the memory isn't hers, just like anything containing Decimus Beauchamp is soundly unlikely to be Alfie's.

She takes a very ladylike drink of scotch. Says, “He's a twat,” but fondly.

"Oh, he can't be all that bad," Alfie says lightly, his eyes drifting shut again. "He has good taste, doesn't he."

“You should see his wife,” on that note, because Prisca Beauchamp is a stunner by any measure and to anyone who hasn't seen them at their most scheming and theatrical together it is a bit of a mystery as to how he pulled that one off. It's because, Gwen has realised, they are as bad as each other.

(She loves them both very much.)

"Mm. Describe her to me."

“Tall,” she says, after a moment where she'd considered pointing out that if he opened his eyes she could just show him— “like, five ten, I think? And she wears high heels, so she's over six foot most of the time, I've only ever seen her in heels or bare feet. She probably has shoes to work out in, but you'll never see my aunt Pris out and about in athleisure.”

The way her voice softens with fondness is easy, familial, wistful; she misses her terribly.

“Her hair's—I was going to say it's like mine, but it's more like I wear mine like hers. Hers is long and dark and she has that sort of wave naturally, mine's curly if I leave it to its own devices.” Which: she doesn't. “Hazel eyes. She's more tan, all year round, sort of golden. High cheekbones—always smiling. She was quoted in some article about high flying socialites, like, before I was born, saying how she planned to live in sin with a priest, but she married Uncle Dess and in the announcement about it she said she'd just never been able to find a man of the cloth who could compete. My father nearly got into a fistfight at the wedding with her sister-in-law's husband—I sort of remember but I was all of about four so I think I just assembled memories out of the pictures and how they talk about it—and she pushed Uncle Dess into the champagne fountain to distract everyone. Worked, too.”

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

nothing ever absolutely has to happen

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

what type of food did she bring btw

http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/490585/jewish/Seared-Salmon.htm

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject