maskormenacelogs | excuse me, miss, i know it's not funny--

Entry tags:

excuse me, miss, i know it's not funny--

WHO: Gwen Wynne-York + Frederick Chilton.
WHERE: A restaurant, Nonah.
WHEN: Recently.
WHAT: Brunch.
WARNINGS: TBA if necessary.

De Chima doesn't have great dog parks - so says the newly-engaged Dr Chilton - so they don't go to De Chima. Of course, they also don't go to a dog park; Putin takes up only somewhat smug residence underneath their table in the covered outdoor seating of a Nonah restaurant whose front of house staff were not previously aware that this was a dog-friendly establishment. Probably it will go directly back to not being that, when they leave, but in the meantime: even when she isn't trying any more supernaturally hard than she just can't help, Gwen can be difficult to say no to when she's determined, ignoring the no and reasoning with the person trying to deliver the no so pleasantly and patiently that it just makes sense, in the end, to let the world realign itself around her.

He is a very good boy, they'll, like, hardly even know he's there. (Chilton may be having more trouble missing him, with a dog's head roughly the size of a boulder very near his knee.)

In person, she is both diminutive and difficult to miss; bouncy black skirt, mary-jane heels, nude sweater, high pony-tail, the kind of irritatingly uninventive look frequently described as effortless chic when worn by pretty, thin white girls with more money than sense. With the heels she still had to lean up slightly to kiss his cheek when they met (there's no lipstick mark; she's not really wearing lipstick, there's nothing to smear), and it did not seem to occur to her that there are less familiar ways to greet people you haven't actually spoken to off the internet before. Or that other people's personal space does not belong to her when she feels entitled to it.

Seated and wielding a mimosa, when her gaze settles it's with the kind of focus than get slightly uncomfortable if it lingers too long. It's friendly. (Being her friend is sometimes more stressful than the alternatives.)

"I really appreciate you suggesting this," she says, very slowly putting her foot on Putin's tail without pressure to dissuade him from thumping it against the table leg. For real, dude, she had to talk so fast to get you in here. "I think I owe everybody on my social calendar at home extensive apologies, because I'm such a pain the arse about going out but I've been so fucking bored."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The kiss on the cheek surprised him -- welcomed, of course, she was so pretty -- and that action alone immediately invoked a sense of American aristocracy. Urbane, effortless, empowered -- she was everything he personally strove to be. He almost mirrored her action but caught himself amidst the impulse, so that his faux pas seemed only like a head twitch and a crooked, apologetic smile.

"Even more divine in person," he said as he resumed his seat.

Chilton nodded, not missing a beat as he readily agreed with her sentiment. Even her dog (monstrous as it was) behaved to Westminster standards; the weather was pastel and poignant, the view an enviable perspective for people-watching. Without ever explicitly hearing as much, he anticipated that such benign voyeurism was an activity Gwen enjoyed.

"Oh --" The language seemed jarring, given her pristine and perfect image. But Gwen was already beyond reproach in Chilton's book, he wouldn't dare even imply a scolding. It would be nothing short of mortifying to even consider it. "Well. It is perfectly natural to seek our similar elements for your own mental stimulation."

Similar elements. Chilton flattered himself with that one.

"Admittedly some of the population around here can be rather.... Boring." A glance sideways, his implied shade angled. "Or even ancient," said the forty-something year old doctor. "Isn't Count Dooku in his nineties?"

In the upper-class diction of plummy London princess, much of her apparently favourite forms of punctuation never sound quite right; there's a touch of novelty to it, Gwen's occasional casual use of the word cunt softened by perception of the mouth it's coming out of. It's the juxtaposition that she enjoys, as much as the satisfaction one gets from particularly sharp words - she can pull her head in and remember all of the lessons of her Swiss finishing school, but it's more interesting, often, to see what happens when she doesn't.

And there's only so many ways she knows to make friends - the tried and true method of just being herself until the last man standing is stuck with her.

"Serious Business Santa?" Hey speaking of things other people might consider not saying out loud, Gwen. "He looks older than my grandfather, from what I could tell from all the way down here - he's all of about nine feet tall, it's absurd, I come up to like," with a gesture around her elbow-region. "I had a conversation with his chin at the swear in. Although it was someone youngish who was saying to me,"

at this point Gwen arranges her features into a caricature of someone else's annoyance,

"How very dare you call yourself European, how can you even live with yourself, blah blah the Nazis and Vichy France, only my experience is relevant--"

She makes a little noise in the back of her throat, shakes her head - ponytail bouncing - and laughs, sitting back. "I was born in France, raised in Italy, educated in England and Switzerland, speak Russian in some of my homes and I have a German grandfather - I don't know what exactly someone would call me besides European."

A natural disaster that hasn't settled on where it's going to happen?

"Serious..." He didn't echo the entire phrase, his mind kicking in just quickly enough to caution any regretful utterance just off the lick of his tongue. But Chilton detected the (sexualized) insult and took evident glee at Dooku's expense. He share a sidelong glance, as if to imply oh, you sly lovely thing.

"Oh -- well, the audacity." Granted, the subject had slipped away with such aerobatics that Chilton raced to keep up context. "Someone youngish? Surely you must have a name, so we might both scorn such a clearly misinformed individual."

Chilton wanted to be included, and quite badly. The easy dartboard of Dooku's age and height were swiftly abandoned.

He was impressed by her pedigree, as was no doubt to be expected of him. She exuded the sort of culture and elegance he so often envied in Hannibal Lecter -- granted, not a holistically ideal comparison, but even Chilton would admit the man had his graces. Gwen was an improved version of those qualities, and all minus the cannibalism.

He hoped.

"Imagine that someone would dare!" Chilton sipped on his second mimosa, both dazzled and buzzed.

Not the first and probably not the last to be slightly derailed by Gwen's tendency to expect other people to just keep up when her train of thought leaps the tracks - he wins her over a little just by rolling with it so swiftly as he does. In this instance, it's fifty-fifty for her usual view that linear conversation is optional and a lingering irritation with the exchange that inclines her to take advantage of an obviously sympathetic ear -

She's been really fucking good. She got drunk and had a tantrum at the entire network, but she put on her big girl pants and she's dealing with it, she's making the best of the situation, she's trying not to call people crazy to their face because they probably aren't even if they should be, she's working, she walks her goddamn dog and she's trying to manage the connections that she makes. But: it's stupid and unfair and no one gives a fuck how hard it is or how embarrassed she is to realise how much she'd relied on the guaranteed failsafe of call daddy it doesn't matter where you are if you don't like it he'll bring you home no questions asked. He, or - or maybe Hasi, Hasi would listen to her observations and complaints, and probably agree that she's trying super hard, actually, and deserves a bit of credit for that. Hasi might even be proud of her.

Her father's not here. And Hasi's not here, and not Jasper or Wesley or even Cypra, not anyone who she's used to being able to sink her claws into for attention when she gets tired of the inside of her own head, so it's not without some genuine satisfaction that she says, "Eunike," and includes him. "World War II has been over for longer than - probably almost as long as Count Dooku's been alive." Almost, there we are, that sly and lovely thing, they've practically got an in-joke now. "I can be European if I like."

So there. Her drink gets swirled around the glass, then - "Thank you for not minding Putin, I know he's sort of a beast." Well behaved, but fuck off large. "He was a Christmas gift from the only litter of puppies bred from my stepmother's dog before he got the chop." A bit of home that can follow her around under his own power.

The choice of name sparks Chilton into another glance at the dog, but he only nods in response -- his edginess about the canine kept in check behind tightly smiling lips. Putin. Well, he couldn't disagree. Chilton slid his gaze back to Gwen, a sight that he considered to be far prettier.

"No trouble at all."

Not quite a lie, as the dog hadn't been anything of a nuisance really. But the doctor had no doubt that if he uttered even a word to upset her -- well, his problems would double. And while he had no intent to illustrate his cattier nature, Chilton nevertheless found the electric tension in the air to of interest; Gwen wasn't unpleasant, not at all. But she was intense. There was something of an unspoken current running beneath her dazzling smile, the sort of rushing stream that glossed over jagged rocks. The kind of jagged rocks meant for catching bones.

He had a sense for it, he possessed an instinct.

"You aren't planning a bit of revenge on this Eunike, are you?" He asked with a slight smile, as if he were purely joking. In all sincerity, however, Chilton was halfway curious to know if she might say yes. The very idea tickled down his spine, giving a bit of color to his cheeks.

It is entirely probable that there is not a single place in every universe imaginable where Putin Onaritz isn't a silly name in poor taste for a very good boy just doing his best, but it must be said that Gwen has been rather more hyperaware of it since arriving somewhere the cold war is still quite this - relevant. For his part, he lays his head down on the floor when looked at and acts natural. What, little dude, he's so chill.

Gwen, for her part, is immediately diverted by the prospect of paying Eunike further attention - and wrinkles her nose, not shaking her head but tilting her glass in a decisive nuh-uh.

"No," she says, but more musingly than that initial reaction suggests she might; "I've already lost if I give her so much of my energy, and I don't like the idea of saying implicitly that we're on a level to compete. You just can't validate that sort of thing." Some of those jagged rocks are stalagmites, coldness formed patiently over time, callousness wearing costly perfume.

She sips from her glass, leans back slightly, thoughtful with the way her head tilts, something slightly hyper-real about her the longer she's examined, like she's almost slightly oversaturated compared to the world around her. A trick of the light, probably.

"It's an invitation," she says, finally. "Come be in my head! I'll think about you! People are so fucking stupid everywhere you go if you start inviting that sort of thing in you'll never get anything else done."

Edited 2017-04-02 01:12 (UTC)

He blinked at her, assuming a trick of the light -- but when the contrast in her demeanor, the saturation, didn't fade along with the shift of a sunbeam, Chilton gave pause. It was easier to assume an ability (they were imPorts, after all). There had been a couple imPorts with the ability to glamour, others whose influence affected the way that light itself could bend. The answer could be so straightforward, and he wasn't that drunk yet.

Chilton trusted his own eyes.

"A pragmatic take," he said. "You have so much more that requires your attention." She was a socialite, after all, both in her home world and now this one. The emotional investment had to be financed cleverly if she wanted to stay steps ahead of the game she played, he imagined. But Chilton could only imagine; this had never been quite his world, despite his best efforts to make it others. Frederick Chilton had always been on the fringe of the bubble hoping to pop his way in.

"Then let us talk about you." No more talk of Eunike. "What grand things have you already begun?"

When his proposal - let's talk about you - refocuses her attention on him and not wherever she was in her head, the effect lessens, dissipates entirely. In effect, she refocuses, a woman again where a moment ago she'd been illumination on vellum. The twist of her lip is a little thing, wry;

"I don't know if any of it's so grand," she admits, the slight self-deprecation warmer in a quiet way, connoting familiarity that they don't really have enough acquaintance to justify - but he's not wrong, that intensity, like she views the usual rules of engagement as polite suggestions rather than necessarily applying to the way she operates with other people.

(Woman as whirlpool. Get out of the fucking water.)

"I've got my little nest egg, from my jewelry--" a little wistful; none of what she'd sold had been anything deeply meaningful, but they were her fine things and she misses them, misses each small connection to her home she portions out and gives up. "So I've started doing some freelance project management work - charity events, fundraising projects, mostly that sort of thing. I've never been paid for it, before, but I've been the hostess and coordinator for my father's events since before I could legally drink at them."

In Europe. Getting the people she needed to deal with to take a sixteen, seventeen year old seriously had been an uphill climb.

"I don't, mm. It's fucked Daddy off for years, that I have this musical education and I won't go on stage with him, but I'm not much of an exhibitionist in that way. I don't want to go the televised-appearances-and-branding route as, like, a thing. I don't mind a little, or like, to help a friend out for something - I did some stupid yoga show and I told Daenerys that I'd walk for her thing with De Marq if she needs - but I've nothing but admiration for people who can really make a career out of it. I broke it off with one of my exes over all the photographs."

"You do not want yourself made into a commodity," he offered. It was an interpretation of what she said, a reading between the lines, and not necessarily something she might appreciate. But Chilton obeyed his impulses, and just as thunder sounded after a flash of lightning, analysis would follow Chilton's mouth. His interest was only brewing.

"Limiting your accessibility means better control of your image. How people can interact with you." Chilton inclined his head, considering why Gwen would want the avoid exhibition. There was a dehumanizing aspect to it, yes, and perhaps she was all too attuned to that? But along with the dehumanization came a sort of divinity, a celestial coronation. And she rejected it.

But why?

Perhaps she had real power, the prestige of bloodline, the sort of thing that naturally lifted you above the fame seekers.

"A good strategy," he said, looking into his glass. A strategy he himself couldn't afford, but Chilton didn't want to draw attention to that focus. "The mystique can be quite a powerful utility, when weaponized correctly. And denial is perhaps the best methodology."

He looked around for the waiter, seeking a third drink. Gwen had a way of glowing more brightly the longer they talked.

"So you prefer to work in the shadows, with the projects of yours friends. Ever thought about government? Larger corporations?"

A puppeteering role, he thought. Unquestionable control.

Ever since she first got out of that car on the side of the road, clutching her purse and not understanding why she was being released - not understanding why she'd been taken in the first place - illusions have been the gift that comes most naturally to her. So many years of deftly playing to perception, suddenly handed absolute control over it; it's easy. Shadowing her old face over the changes since is easy as breathing, something she can - and must - quite literally do in her sleep. She's not a good liar, if you want something direct, but the smoke and mirrors involved in being in control of how she's looked at, if she's looked at -

"No," she admits, a little wry. She's always thought of a house on a river, a glass of red wine, blank sheets of paper and being needed by nothing and no one -

and she'd be bored witless within a week, but she's never had the breathing room to know it.

After a few moments, shrugging, "At home when there are pictures of me I'm always someone's something, and I don't - it isn't for me to decide how interesting that person, Serhati's former step-daughter or Lode's previous girlfriend, is to people, if they want to see pictures of her or know why she's beside these other people. None of them are here, though, and I'm Gwenaëlle."

Not anybody's anything. Not interesting, except insofar as all of these people are interesting by dint of their arrival - and she has the unprecedented ability to say no. No, she doesn't want to go there. No, she isn't interested in doing that. No, she wouldn't like her picture taken. No, she won't be giving a statement. There are so many of them, if she curates her participation well enough, she can benefit here and there - contribute to the ambitions of people she cares for, and still avoid really standing out, being examined.

"Just Gwenaëlle. No one's anything."

"Not a fear of commitment, I hope?"

Just a tease, he meant very little by it. There was something unfettered about this socialite, something almost untamed in her mannerisms. Chilton considered it entertaining, certainly -- he had long ago developed a taste for the wilder impulses inherent to people. Commitment was the least of the virtues he expected from her.

"I prefer it that way," he said, hurriedly, so as not to leave an aftertaste of a wrong impression. "You need not be anyone's anything."

The sunlight accommodated nicely, and Chilton felt himself ready to ease into a third mimosa -- breakfast was negotiable, but booze never was. Gwen was charitable with the details, the name drops, of people relevant to her -- yet she was able to skirt around any disastrous information, anything that could ever be used against her. He considered it a talent polished by her position in society; a survival skill her environment had forced her to adapt with. Serhati, Lode. Chilton sense a pace of distance between these people and Gwen, as if they were (perhaps beloved but) merely satellites in her orbit.

The real Venus sat before him.

"That was how I felt, as well. Back home."

But he didn't enjoy it, he didn't wear that context proudly.

"What's the point of being anything if you're not everything?"

--sounds lovely, as long as you don't look too closely at the sentiment, a sentiment that is not so much fear or reluctance of commitment as it is the capacity for an obsession that most people will simply never satisfy. She'd commit, but to a degree that is neither healthy nor sane; Gwen expects commitment to mean something very few people are prepared for, breaking hearts in her wake not because she won't stay but because they can't, not how she wants them to.

She brushes it aside, though, before they can really delve into it -

"That's different. That's personal. What we're talking about isn't personal at all. It isn't even real. When they talk about me being Norea Serhati's stepdaughter - first of all, an annulment means legally speaking I never was, because the marriage never existed. In an ecclesiastic and legal sense. But that's not even her real name, that's her stage name. I was never Norea Serhati's anything. I'm Hasi's friend."

She taps open a packet of cigarettes as she speaks, eyebrow rising in silent query - does he mind? Does he want one? but she doesn't lose her steady stream,

"Being everything to one person isn't the same as being nothing to a thousand. I don't care what a hundred thousand people think about me. I don't need to know."

"One might get the idea that such is something of a wounded perspective."

He hedged his words delicately, but his point wasn't dulled: she sounded as if she had been hurt, to him, sometime in the far past. She sounded like she had grown stronger in retort, contrary and elegant, ready to ride her demons rather than submit to their fires. She sounded like a survivor, and he could relate to that.

"We can discuss a different topic, if you wish." An olive branch. "I wouldn't want the discussion to sour our mimosas, after all."

All spoken with a roguish smile. But of course, Chilton was interested in Gwen, and if they wouldn't indulge the marrow of her psychological tendencies now, then he would most certainly find a way to accomplish that later. He could be a highly patient man. He wouldn't rush Gwen's guard, not yet.

He just wanted her to know that he found her to be quite interesting indeed.

I have not battled my demons, she wrote, not so long ago, I have invited them in, I have given them names. Chilton will have a wealth of analysis to be made if he ever gets his hands on her poetry--

She lights her cigarette, smiles through the smoke.

"It's just familiarity breeding contempt," she says, like a verbal shrug. "I've seen it up close and it was nothing to envy. My ex is a fucking trainwreck who can't live his life without an audience - I think it's a very sane perspective to look at him and think, mmm, maybe that doesn't actually look like any fun up close."

And a real shrug, this time, elegant and easy, "I don't begrudge other people doing it, though. Is it something you want?" That's sort of like changing the subject.

"Do I want an audience?" He did, yes, Chilton hungered for a glamour that he had not born into, he wanted the America Dream molded from glitter and starlight. But he restrained his answer with a grin, half cocked, and a tilt of his head. The lump he swallowed was only barely noticeable.

"Now and again, I suppose. I believe I am used to a little stage presence -- therapy can be something of a performance. On both ends."

A significant glance slide from the corners of his eyes, aimed right for Gwen's lovely head. The prelude of his analysis could not be dissuaded entirely, regardless of his metrics as a patient man. Chilton still had needs -- as a head doctor.

"Charitable of you, nevertheless, to not blame others for being seduced."

"That must be why my brother does it," drolly, of therapy as performance, and a violently unkind thing to say when she knows so horrifically intimately the kind of toll a mind can take on itself -

but Gwen is not a girl with a lot of respect for Chilton's profession. Or any. Her patience for and interest in psychiatry is limited to disdainful suspicion, disliking on instinct anything that might enable someone else to see her more clearly than she wishes to be seen - and the concept of needing that kind of help is terrifying, affronting. She isn't that person. She doesn't need that. It irritated her, in a way she would find it hard to explain, when she heard what she persists in thinking of as 'what Marc's mother had done'. Getting him medicated.

Let's just ignore that he's better, now. He's still a prick, can't medicate 'arsehole'.

"But lots of people are into things I'm not. There's room in the world for them and me as well. There's more room for me if they're all over there."

"A highly Chaotic Neutral philosophical stance," he said, unleashing the secret knowledge of his unredeemable inner nerd. Frederick Chilton was a man who had known loneliness quite well. But, as per usual concerning Gwen, his comment wasn't criticism. She delighted him, her perspective, her nonchalance. It was fun, alluring.

Sometimes mesmerizing.

But that wasn't something he'd say aloud, and especially not to her formal company -- could get awkward, perhaps even send the wrong message. He wasn't seeking any unusual drama that Raina might take a keen eye towards, Chilton had already dealt with her wrathful jealousy. She wasn't a Hera figure, who would take her fury out of any perceived rival, oh no. She saved that for Chilton alone.

"Needless to say, I am enjoying this little moment." It was hard to be graceful with gratitude, especially when the gift was company. Hard to avoid the more pathetic tint. Nevertheless, he persisted.

"I really quite like it."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

excuse me, miss, i know it's not funny--

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