maskormenacelogs | don't matter how you do it

Chilton took a moment to squint at the cowboy statuette -- wasn't that a familiar cut of bronze? Wasn't it the one traditionally housed in the Oval Office, if memory served? How interesting, he thought. It was a connotation of power, prestige. Intimidation. Mr. Walker knew how to utilize art as a weapon.

The doctor folded his hands behind his back, his eyes scouring over the book shelf; he startled to see his own work present, the familiar font so dear to his heart. A swell of pride rose against his rib cage, and he could feel a light and pleasant color flood his face. It was a nice feeling, to be known by the powerful. A simultaneously comforting and invigorating feeling, an emotion he almost always craved to know with intimacy. The thought of offering to sign The Methodical Walter White sunk into his frontal lobes -- he rejected it, deeming it presumptuous, then reconsidered: what if Mr. Walker liked initiative? What then, what were his odds for the optimal impression?

His glance fell to the seating arrangement, and a crease finally folded between his eyes. He recognized the sight. His own arrangement of a hard chair and a soft sofa was intended to gauge resistance. Sometimes the indomitable could surprise you, any foreshadow was welcomed. Was this, then, a similar situation? Chilton had been contacted by Mr. Walker's people within a purely business context, and Chilton understood Mr. Walker to be a particularly uncanny businessman. Perhaps uncanny because the man understood human behavior better than his peers?

It was worth consideration. Maybe. Wasn't it? Nevertheless, Chilton denied the couch and opted for one of the reserved seats opposite the desk. He was overthinking this, he reasoned, as he sat in his own silence. It was fashionable to have a sofa in one's office -- after all, he did, proof enough.

Edited 2017-02-10 16:26 (UTC)

A good three or four minutes tick by before the handle turns and the office door bumps inward, heavy wood mounted on brass, to admit a man moving at a brisk pace. The same intern from before leans to close the door quietly after him.

“Doctor Chilton,” he says, warm, rough -- voice all scrub grass and dry wood amidst sleek black furniture and city architecture, “sorry to keep you waiting.”

He’s not a tall man, but Chilton already knew that -- jackrabbit lean and eyes bright as stripped steel wire in a three piece suit, coal black on white. His tie is soot inlaid with silver, pattern on the reserved end of paisley -- shades of grey evocative of the hair he still has on his head. His boots ring out dark against the hardwood as he crosses the office for Frederick’s seat at the desk, just like he owns the place.

At least he’s consistent.

“I would shake,” he turns his right hand out, open, more apology than offer -- but it’s damp, back to toweling itself off against the paper crumpled in his left before Chilton can try to take him up on it anyway.

Edited 2017-02-10 18:03 (UTC)

A slow motion catastrophe, unstoppable and geometrically fated, like a piece of airplane searing down from the sky onto a helpless homestead. You get used to thinking how isolation can protect you, insulate you from your terrors. You take haughty comfort in your own hubris. Chilton felt his heart stop, the rhythmic blood soured in his arteries for those harsh moments.

That voice, his gait.

This man.

"I --" Chilton looked towards the door, his exit. Looked back towards William Walker. No realistic escape. The intern had forsaken him, anyway.

"You." An accusation dry in his mouth, the syllable a tumbleweed across his tongue. Fuck. He should have been more suspicious, he should have questioned the gilded offer of a wealthy, mysterious man. He should have peered beyond his own preening and pride. Chilton had yet to blink.

"This look suits you better," said the doctor, at last recovering his tongue. He did not offer his hand to shake. "Bank robberies? Does crime pay this well?"

He knew the answer to be far much insidious; corporate warfare had rules more opaque than explicit thievery.

Me.

Chilton’s reaction unfolds to Mr. Walker at its own pace, and he takes it in the same way -- leisurely about the process of rounding down into his chair, paper towel wadded between his fingers without particular hurry. He slings it into a bin.

“I suppose that’s a matter of perspective,” he says, on the subject of his dress -- crisp, tailored lines, cut to flatter. Not at all practical for beating the hell out of unsuspecting business partners. Business formality and all, his drawl remains, vowels dragging long before they snag into consonants. “There’s something to be said for honesty in presentation.”

And there’s no second-guessing what the man in black represents, with his hat slanted low and a revolver jutted at his hip.

With him in it, dark horse or no, the sleek design and dark decor of this office has taken on a more sinister aspect. The light’s almost too bright, the city beyond too sharp and too clear, like the windows need tinting. Nowhere to hide.

“Need money to make money. You know that. Can I offer you something to drink?”

William’s already pulling open a bottom drawer.

"You broke into my home. You terrorized me." Him and his little dog, too, but Sam Merlotte's name didn't cross Chilton's lips. He gestured upwards, fingers played towards the bookshelf that housed his novel. "You read my book."

It was flattering. It was deeply flattering. That fact alone, the hard truth of his shortened breath and the flutter beneath his skin, that was what Chilton anchored to his seat. He wouldn't bother with even an feint of escape, he was much too enticed. Tension in his fingers as they gripped the chair arms betrayed his excitement.

"The least you can do is a drink."

What of William Walker was real? If at all anything here? A matter of perspective -- who would question the authenticity of a rising CEO? A fresh American Dream made manifest? And in reaching out to Chilton... Who would doubt the sincerity of a man interested in supporting the mentally ill? Who could scoff at the evidence of a philanthropist seeking to improve his community with his most obvious means?

It sparked a harsh laugh in Chilton's throat. A sound like flint and smoke.

"Oh my god," he said. "How long did it take you to realize your identity was fraudulent? Mr. Walker?"

It was better than what Frederick Chilton could have asked for.

Edited 2017-02-12 07:46 (UTC)

All true. Terrorized might be a strong word, but the man in black doesn’t refute it, eye contact cool at a glance as he draws out a pair of glasses. The decanter is next, unstopped and poured -- a couple of fingers in each before he plants it aside.

He picks up the one glass and places it down within Chilton’s reach before he takes up his own.

Accommodating, while he waits for the good doctor to pry his fingers up off the arms of his seat.

“‘Bout thirty years,” is the honest answer, matter-of-fact, given over to a short silence in absolute security. No deflection, no leer, no humor at all beyond trace knowing for Chilton’s glee creased into crow’s feet. “Give or take.”

It’s the quiet in the space between that feels dangerous -- a none-too-subtle reminder of whose buttons he’s trying to push, here. He finally does smile, just slightly, before he lifts his glass to drink.

"Traumatic."

It's a whisper ghosting over his glass, his teeth millimeters away from clinking a crystal chime. The scent of wealth wafts upwards from the drink -- he didn't have to guess it was fine stuff indeed. Mr. William Walker wanted to impress him, and this was but another layer pressed against Chilton.

He closed his eyes, and knocked back the drink.

"Oh, it must have been traumatic. Commitment -- and you are committed, Mr. Walker, if perhaps not the way I would prefer -- that kind of personal investment is inspired by two major influences. Hope -- of attainment. Or disappointment." His eyes flicked over William's polished, distinguished face. It was like reading obsidian. "Disappointment typically brought on by someone."

As most disappointment was. Chilton played a game of statistics.

"Do you think I am going to disappoint you, Mr. Walker? Is this but the prelude to something worse? Or is your strange commitment to me built on hope?"

Walker listens in more of the same impassive silence, all the time in the world set aside for Chilton to hear himself talk. It’s fascinating in its own way -- like watching an especially self-satisfied mongoose work its way through a network of tunnels after the scent of a snake.

“Couldn’t say.”

He lifts the decanter and repositions it -- slowly, and with deliberate care -- for Chilton to serve himself as he likes. His own glass is still half full, whiskey savoured as he settles back.

“Not outside the binds,” the word bites sharper through his teeth, special emphasis, “of doctor-patient confidentiality.”

Stone cold logic is savoury too.

"That almost sounds like a proposition, William."

The first name, now in his mouth. Intimacy grasped, his smirk sharpening, and his tongue resting against the backs of his teeth. This wasn't going to be a graceful game played, but Chilton didn't mind a little dirt on his back -- not when the prize was well worth it.

"But you've already done your rounds through the psychiatric circuits, haven't you? I believe you said as much." And while Walker was deceptive, he wasn't a liar. The distinction proved crucial. "So you know how it's all done."

In an orthodox manner, he neglects to say. Chilton, of course, was better known for his lack of orthodoxy.

"But -- hypothetically," he said, reaching to finally take the decanter from Walker's grip, quick to generously refill his own glass. "What would your terms be? What is the give and take here?"

“Heard you were looking for investors,” says William, point blank, at ease against the black leather of his chair. His eyes are pale and clear, cut through to the pupil by the afternoon light, no more or less honest than the windows behind him.

“As it happens, I’m looking to invest.”

He polishes off the contents of his glass, and bumps it into a slide across the desk for Chilton to refill for him -- confident that he will.

“My take is your silence.” Just like a Frederick is silent at the end there, contained to a look. “Why don’t you tell me about your research on imPort containment.”

Chilton moved to refill William's glass, the implicit request mechanically responded to as any socialized gentlemen would do -- he paused briefly with his fingers around the foreign glass, the spell broken as he realizes what he's done. The power play he submitted to already. With a grimace, Chilton finished the gesture, practically shoving the whiskey back to William across that same table.

Obedient, but resentfully so. Aware of his own free will, but not non-compliant -- not yet.

"You want your identity to remain secret. Highly suspicious, Mr. Walker."

It was almost a tease. Chilton wouldn't release that information into the world, he wouldn't conflate Wyatt with William in any public manner -- but he could. He could flick his tongue over those two names in the same breath, and he enjoyed the thought of it.

"My imPort Containment Centers." An arched eyebrow accompanied those words. "The idea is to individualize containment to the imPort. You know how we are, with our abilities and uncanny nature. How we do not always succumb to a permanent death. I want more than power neutralizers -- an imPort's mind is more powerful than whatever supernatural abilities he might possess."

He wanted trauma built into those centers. Individualized erosion of the psyche.

Slid or shoved or delicately set, William gets his whiskey back all the same, the rim of his glass tipped with all due courtesy once he’s plucked it up off the desk. He swallows down half of it while he listens, mulling over liquor more than the power Chilton holds over him. The truth lies in his tranquility, exposed in surety of eye contact for someone with clarity enough to see.

What Chilton tells people about his identity isn’t high on his list of concerns at all.

But it seems like it should be, and he’s attentive to the way ol’ Frederick relishes in it, watching to see how well the line runs. Who doesn’t like a good secret.

“You want to break them down from the inside out.”

His interest is ever the most genuine thing about him, approval subdued in a pull at the corner of his mouth, glass forgotten in his hand. Doctor Chilton is even more diabolical than he could have hoped.

Edited (MMMMM) 2017-02-19 07:43 (UTC)

Setting the decanter aside on William's desk, so that he finally might enjoy his own drink again, Chilton held a simmering stare all the while. Eye contact was crucial, it spoke to dominance. And so many of Chilton's relationships cut quick to the marrow of who would be most dominant.

Unsurprisingly, Chilton had a difficult time clawing to that bone first. He took it step by step.

"I do." He didn't blink when he spoke. "Otherwise I'd be wasting time scratching at the varnish. Astounding how many people do not, in fact, devote time to knowing themselves. Fascinating how easy it is to guide one's mechanisms with your own narrative."

Chilton was speaking to psychic driving; he couldn't know that William had ample experience in a more literal process of the same wording.

"So... I want to break them, and you want to watch? Is that it?"

Reflection dulls the scalpel gleam of William’s stare -- draws it inward, distant, while he tries out the taste. Doesn’t take him long to shake his head, dismissive of the idea before it’s had much of a chance to marinate.

Instead he’s back to watching Chilton, rinsing out the thought with a side of whiskey.

“Nah,” he says, and is compelled to ask: “You think this is some kinda -- sexual thing?”

A perplexed crinkle between his brows reads earnest while he flips a slender case out of his jacket, and an ash tray out of a drawer. This may be 2017, but it’s the perpetual fifties 2017.

There aren’t any smoke detectors in here.

“I just want to see you succeed.”

"I have fed that line to patients before. I just want to see you succeed."

Chilton spoke calmly despite the hint of flush coloring his cheekbones; he had not considered such an interpretation to his invitation, and he had not known how he would cope hearing William Walker say the words sexual thing, regardless the context (but especially in this context). It brought a stiffness to his neck, a second coming of thirst for more whiskey.

"It is a good line." But his tongue wasn't halted by his fluster, his words honeyed and smooth and still dripping along. "Similar sentiment I used on your man -- you remember him. Brought him in, right out of the rain. He needed help, the poor thing."

Eyes flashed back at William, his thirst for drink transmuting into a thirst for reaction. The corners of his smirk perked up.

"Teddy. Teddy Flood. Your friend."

“Are you lying to ‘em when you say it?”

It’s awfully polite, as inquiries into ethical practices go -- venom along a razor’s edge behind the veil of how busy he is with his little leather case. Casually, indistinctly dangerous. Something in the way he turns a cigarette up to the side of his lip, or flips the cap over on his lighter. And he hasn’t missed that flush.

There’s only one right answer, and he’s still waiting to hear it when he registers Teddy’s name instead.

Surprise shutters blank through a stay in his light -- he lets his thumb off the flint, and the flame snuffs out before he has a chance to puff. He rolls back through what Chilton’s told him -- about the rain, the help, the poor thing.

A chuckle breaks the tension -- if it could even be called that, nasty and low. He gives the flint another flick, and this time, the ember takes root.

“So you found Theodore.” He sucks in sharply, and funnels smoke aside, cigarette whisked to the tray so he can give Chilton his full attention back. “Any breakthroughs? You ask him about his mother?”

"Oh no, no. His favorite topic of conversation seems to be you, actually. Well -- not in so many words, not your name." Again, focus upon an apparent secret that Chilton savored: the man in black's name. William. "There is significant power in a name, an ability to recall with better detail when we associate specific words. You have power over your Theodore."

Chilton let the implication stand, no need to prod with too hot a poker.

"But I have a feeling he isn't the only one you would prefer power over."

Bolder conversation flicked over his tongue, its sly speed matched only by the sharpness of his smirk. He didn't shift in his seat, he kept his poise marbled and cold. He didn't allow even a twitch of discomfort. William Walker was a man of wealth and taste, he knew the value of appearance -- and its relationship with dominance.

Chilton did not want to appear weak. What he wanted was leverage.

"Would you like to see him?"

“Does it make you feel powerful?”

The man in black lifts and resets his glass to the side, out of the way -- clearing the desk between them of distractions, save for the slow spool of smoke from his ash tray. He studies Frederick through the haze, thumb and forefinger poised over the cigarette in its slow burn for the filter.

Time’s wasting.

“Maybe I would.” He allows for the possibility, with a distinct taint of if/then, chin tucked to his collar. His posture is slouched back, at ease in his throne room, jacket bunched in his recline. The tip of his head rides the borderline of curiosity and an unsettling kind of boredom, like he has his cigarette finger ready over the button for a crocodile pit.

“You gonna keep playing with yourself or are you gonna take my money and sign a fuckin’ contract.”

"Eager for a Faustian handshake, is that it? You would have me playing with you, rather than myself."

Tit for tat. Chilton drew his tongue along his palate, aiming another whiplash word cocked behind a smirk. William's question about feeling powerful had landed, and now Chilton shot for blood. He didn't mind that he was the implied casualty.

"You know why such a generous offer makes me nervous, Mr. Walker, especially when the terms are so intentionally equivocal." But it was tempting, and Chilton couldn't deny the fact. William Walker was tempting -- Chilton had casually diagnosed him that first day they met, when he had kidnapped the doctor. It was a cruel and petty attack, but the more time Chilton spent in William's company, the more he deeply wanted to analyze the man, the more he wanted to know. And getting into business with the man who once called himself Wyatt would ensure that Chilton had time to indulge.

His focus was still the man in black, his obsidian obsession.

"I am tempted," he admitted. "I think you and I might align on perspective. It would be so good for the community as a whole."

Edited 2017-02-24 06:30 (UTC)

“If I have to watch,” says William, who doesn’t have to roll his eyes for the sentiment to dry his voice out -- all cracked leather and old wood. He drags on his cigarette, ash at the end the same chalky grey as the hair he has left.

This time, he doesn’t set it aside, smoke coiling idle past his ear behind the slow vent and eddy of a steadier exhale.

“You want to know what makes me nervous, Frederick?”

Silence invites an answer, but he doesn’t leave the time for one -- lines on lines around the seams furrowed in between his brows, genuine curiosity laced with that same trace venom from before. From the collar up, Chilton’s obsidian obsession is all chalky hide and sheer blue eyes, piercing in like a pair of dissecting pins. Working to pry him open without any part of him reaching past the desk.

“You never answered my question.”

One more long, sizzling drag, and he breaks off eye contact to flick ash into its tray, as deliberate about that process as he is about anything.

“Are you lying when you tell them you want them to succeed.”

"No," he said, a slight downcast of his glance. "Mostly not." An amendment. And while Chilton hadn't outright lied regarding his amendment -- he did, after all, want to thrive as a psychiatrist, and his sterling reputation rested on the healthy laurels of most of his patients -- he nevertheless restrained the nuanced details sulking beneath his surrendered words.

Mostly not. The exceptions remained: those who were psychopathic, mass murderers, serial killers. The unique minds. Those were his to play with however he saw fit. Those were his.

"How I frame success," he continued, reluctantly. William had a magnetic pull to him, and Chilton found it difficult to deny the man his requests entirely. "It might be somewhat of an unorthodox definition."

Some people he reforged into better psychotics, and with some people he refined their brutality into an art form. Improved editions of their nastiest qualities.

Chilton took a deep breath before meeting William's steel gaze.

"Some people succeed best when they are driven to their worst."

Edited 2017-02-25 07:46 (UTC)

The man in black listens to Chilton’s answer -- all of it -- with consideration that permeates grim through crow’s feet and the hard-carved hollows around his mouth. There’s a shrapnel squint to his eyes near the end, testing for a flinch -- probing for cracks in Chilton’s conviction. Or his courage.

In the end he breathes deep, in and out into a sigh, smoke turning idle between his fingers.

“I was married, before I came here.”

Apathy more bitter than anything Chilton’s seen in him to date burns itself off in a flat look.

“You know that?”

No flinch comes -- Chilton knows that the self-proclaimed moral society would condemn the fringe of his perspective, but he laid claim to it. They were wrong, and he could prove it to them; this was the conviction (if not the courage) of a reckless, ambitious man.

"I doubt you are alone in that circumstance," said Chilton, his thoughts on Will. Married, before he was married to April here. "But no, I didn't know. Hadn't noticed a ring strained against those black gloves you tend to wear."

Cool conversation, the sort of aloof tongue that flicked the tip of your tongue against your teeth. Beneath the borderline banter, Chilton's mind raced -- why had he mentioned this? To demonstrate loss? Resilience? Perhaps vengeance? Was married implied either death or divorce. Death implied disease, accident, foul play, or suicide. These variables would have impacted William Walker in different ways, with different outcomes, and Chilton was playing a guessing game.

But the apathy shone through starkly. Resilience, Chilton decided. William wanted him to know his prior state of marriage didn't quake him in any way.

And Chilton reserved the right to his own skepticism.

"What was she like?"

“Ring didn’t make it through.”

Matter-of-fact, William puts his cigarette back to his lip and watches Chilton while he smokes, deep in again, and deep out, paper scorched back nearly to the filter.

He wasn’t wearing it when the porter grabbed him.

The longer he goes without answering that last question, the clearer it is that he never intends to -- minimal effort for maximum therapeutic cock block. Glass clicked sharp on glass is the death knell of whatever potential for discussion there might have been.

He reaches slowly across to reclaim the decanter in the plainest terms possible, and pours himself another round, his grin on the humorless side of a go fuck yourself. No teeth.

Edited 2017-02-26 05:00 (UTC)

"Things tend not to make it through, when you take them off before imPortation." Oh, Chilton has done that dance a few times already. He wasn't about to allow that detail to slide, as if he hadn't experienced the same trauma thrice now.

Probably good that he did slither the retort, given how tombstone quiet William went once Chilton asked the question about the former wife. Whatever thawing rapport they had teased between each other frosted again; Chilton leaned back in his seat, surveying the bitter, lipped smile that William presented to him. A curtain had come down between them.

But a curtain call had never before shut Chilton up, why would it now? The show must go on.

"Which identity had she fallen in love with? The real you, or the fraudulent one?"

'Bout thirty years ago. The math added up.

"Assuming there was ever love blossoming, I mean. And given your apparent socioeconomic status, well, it is quite the assumption."

Billy’s a long time in answering, stubbing his cigarette out into a broken heap, sipping on whiskey like it’s water.

“Has anyone here ever actually killed you?”

He has to wonder -- genuinely -- a spark of curiosity lending a flicker of life to a conversation that otherwise reeks of early departure from the narrative. Observation without participation, contempt buzzy in the slant of William’s regard.

Without waiting for a reply, he pushes to his feet, glass and snappy tie and all -- rounding the corner of his desk to take up a new post, leaning against its near edge to loom within Chilton’s grasp.

Old, bitter, bald, and ringless, he looks out over the vast, empty space of his office rather than size Frederick up directly.

“Is it the -- promise of immortality that makes you so cocky?”

"People have tried. Numerous times."

Chilton didn't get up from his seat, he simply crossed one leg over the other in the most leisure of manners, right before throwing back his glance to William's surveying direction. His very body language was tangible defiance.

"But they never succeeded. No matter the strength of their willpower, nor the ferocity of their methods. I have an uncanny knack for survival, Mr. Walker." He smiled the words. "Always have."

But survival was a costly thing, and Chilton had the scars to prove it -- some of those same scars that William had already seen. He turned his head to an angle, to better keep his out-of-the-corner eye glance dedicated to his host. This was a stand-off. William owned the territory, he had the grit and snarls. But Chilton had already slipped one fingernail under William's skin, and nothing was bound to stop him from peeling back as much as he could.

"You are deflecting. Is it guilt? Over her?"

“You think I’d’ve told you if I gave a shit what you had to say about it?” Liquor’s finally bled in enough to rub through his polish, less care in a verbal backhand than colder forks in his tongue that have come before. The half a smile he pulls at Chilton’s expense is more honest for it, affectionate, almost, in its condescension. “And there you went. Right for the throat.”

We’re all friends, here.

William switches his glass from his right hand to his left, the better to wrangle the decanter round the neck to pour the doctor another finger or two. He sets it in close, so Chilton doesn’t have to lean.

He looks awful comfortable where he’s at.

“I need you alive, Frederick.”

Edited (fx) 2017-02-26 17:55 (UTC)

Chilton looked at the offered, filled glass for a few moments before sparing another glance at William. The threat wasn't even submerged, but the waters it swam in proved murky; Mr. Walker clenched at fistful of emotions as if he prepared for some perpetual fight. Disdain, humor, brutality, condescension, nearly affection. All of it, reasoned Chilton, to bury some agony beneath the waves.

Existential crisis? Loss? Failure?

The possibilities continued to whirlpool through his mind as he reached for the glass, easily now, his eyes still on William.

"I do that, Mr. Walker. I go for the throat," he said, just before taking a polite sip. "It is partly why you continue to pursue my audience."

Audience. Not company. He knew he wasn't seen as equal.

"I simply want to know the man who would want to invest with me."

Use me. Too forward, too bold a phrase -- but that was what Chilton meant.

"Besides, you already know so much about me." A flicked look at his own published novel on that bookshelf. "And you are nevertheless still free to inquire more. If that is your price."

William disagrees at an indistinct grumble, like an old dog, the sound textured by the tar in his throat.

“Familiarity breeds contempt.”

He says as much with conviction -- with the sense of someone who knows, brow furrowed, knee open wide to Chilton so that he’s getting a face full of wang. Close to eye level.

“You ever see the roof of one of these things?” High rises. Skyscrapers. Whatever you want to call it.

This probably isn’t what Chilton meant by inquiring more, but it doesn’t seem to occur to William that he might’ve meant anything else. He gestures to the emerald glitter of one of the other nearby towers with his glass, sour-faced at his next sip.

Feel that fancy whiskey burn.

His stare at William's opened legs lingered a few moments too long; once Chilton became conscious of the impropriety, he finished his drink hastily by means for segue. A show of dominance, thought Chilton. To display in such a manner pulled at the raw nerves of primal confidence. William would flaunt what he need not hide.

That's all it was.

"You're inviting me to the roof? Wait -- does your company rents this entire building?"

He had thought it was the usual handful of floors. Clearly Chilton's personal wealth wisped away beneath the eclipse of William Walker's bounty. While he knew the touch of millions, he had never been (and never would be) a billionaire. Gold didn't measure to platinum.

"I didn't spend much time in the financial district of Baltimore, no."

“Nah,” easy dismissal of the ridiculousness of the idea chased with a brighter-eyed, “not yet,” William leans forward to clasp his free hand firm onto the doctor’s shoulder.

That’s enough dick viewing for now.

The concept of vision vanishes entirely, existence plunged into a nauseating churn of choking heat and smothering darkness. Reality is distilled into sound, and sound into sensation -- vents rattling, phones ringing, the muffle of voices two offices over buzzing through steel and drywall -- vibrations magnified and distorted.

By the time the buzz of office life gives way to open wind and the dull roar of an airplane passing high overhead, the heat’s nearly too much to bear. It scorches inside and out, searing the lungs and spitting steam from William’s glass when the pair of them roll back into existence on the roof.

The man in black shoves Chilton rough for the edge, dress shoes chased by fire.

“How many men do you think I killed before I came here, Frederick?” he wonders, a life time and a setting change later. “Any guesses?”

Nauseated, confused, and terrified -- his swirling state nearly crippled his functional demeanor. Chilton stumbled towards the edge, tripping to the cement, on his hands and knees. He felt like he was going to vomit up bile, but managed to clench tight his jaw and keep everything retained, his priority favoring some appearance of control.

Right on the edge, his fingertips barely touching the stony fringe-work of the roof cusp. At full height, he'd be peering over the ledge.

"Oh," he said. "You're what, sixty-five? Sixty-six? Privileged by wealth and enabled by psychopathy -- at least three dozen victims, I'd say."

Talking helped keep the bile down.

"We're going to do this? The intimidation song and dance?" He tried to rise from his hands, bits of roof gravel stuck to his palms. "Did I say something to upset you?"

“You don’t want to?”

William doesn’t sound convinced, slower to follow along the path of Chilton’s stumble. A few spare cinders flare bright in the wind, skipping across gravel and tar. Through Chilton’s knees, past his fingers as he rises.

“Is it the pathology that gets you hard, or the danger?”

Crunch, crunch. The tail of his suit flaps and his hair feathers, eyes squinted against the cold white sun.

He drinks.

Specifically, he drinks without planting his shoe in Chilton’s rear to force him back down.

"Why do you care?"

Petulant as it may have sounded, Chilton was sincere in his query; why did William care about the inner mechanisms of Chilton's motivation? This went beyond dominance and humiliation. This was akin to inquiring about his relation to Raina, on par with pulling at the cardiac tendrils of Chilton's hopes for his patients. This was personal.

"You have what you need." Money, power, influence. But Chilton was precise when he said need, and not want. The wind whipped at his own hair, even as he cowered. The air was thinner up here, liberated from the fog of mixed intentions and sentient pollution. Truer.

"Keep doing your little trick and I won't have time to bend over, William."

“Just curious.”

The snug fit of his vest keeps his tie pinned in place under his collar, neat as his whiskey against the wind battering his suit. Everything up here is in industrial shades of grey -- the air units and the walkways, brutish architecture against pale blue skies.

“You said I could inquire,” he reminds, sincerity repaid in kind despite the way his drawl snags a little long in his inflection. Same as his pursuit, stalled out well outside of arm’s reach. Chilton’s cowering.

He lets him keep the distance he already has, watching him like a spider caught up under a glass.

“You gonna loose your lunch?” William furrows his brow, concerned-like, plainly ignorant of any other possible implication.

His lips pursed, an eyebrow arched, as Chilton nearly utter the syllables of a pragmatic correction -- but he stopped, before he could utter his true meaning, and his lips broke into a knowing smirk. The sort of slick look that card not if it riled or if it didn't, it was the smile of a secret.

And secrets didn't rust as quickly as dignity tended to.

"You are used to throwing around that language, hmm? But you don't want to back it. Machismo, I suppose." Maybe a dragging to the barn only ended in a split throat. Maybe William Walker drew the line in the sand somewhere. And maybe Chilton could work with that.

"I have been accused of enjoying both a little too much."

Unabashed admittance uttered beneath a pale sun. Chilton rose to his typical posture, making a show of brushing off his tailored cuffs. A sequence had been forged, of William pushing and Chilton caving. Action and consequence. A house of cards built only to be blown over.

"So. Where do you want me to sign?"

“I have standards.” But the man in black doesn’t put much effort into his own defense, low energy as he reels in the slack left between them -- and continues past, with a lift and nudge of one shoe to Chilton’s near ankle. Casual invasion. The brush of the sole leaves a fresh streak of ash behind. If this is a secret, it’s not one that prickles his neck hairs for the doctor to know.

“You’re a little delicate for my taste.”

There’s a heavy door built up out of the gravel the way he’s headed, with a glance back to see if Chilton’s in any kind of shape to keep up.

“Legal team’ll sort all that out,” he says. And then, spoken like a true friend: “We can take the stairs.”

Edited (dont look at meeeeee) 2017-03-01 09:32 (UTC)

Brimstone and smoke -- that's what William walked with. Even in his expensive suit -- perhaps especially in his suit -- he looked a devilish mirage to Chilton. And the banter that eased from between his thin lips, that both humanized him and put Chilton on edge. He remembered devils who were quick with a quip. He maintained a familiarity, a magnetism with them.

But better the archetype you know, wasn't that right?

He was still as William came close, patient as William left his ash as proof. It was all Chilton could do to crack a wry smile of his own, and ease into the script.

"As long as you haven't any plan to toughen me up."

No rendition of My Fair Lady, no scramble as the patsy. As Chilton followed William down the stairs, he did so by his own volition. That's what he told himself, anyway.

don't matter how you do it

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

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

no subject

no subject

no subject