Participants:
Scene Title | Devoured In Its Hate |
---|---|
Synopsis | Odessa meets with Calvin to question him about what's to come, and gets the only answer that really matters. — To her. |
Date | April 18, 2011 |
Purgatory
Don't be a drag just be a queen
Don't be a drag just be a queen
Don't be a drag just —
DROP IT LOW GIRL
DROP IT DROP IT LOW GIRL
DROP IT DROP IT LOW GIRL
Body on body packed like eels in a bucket roll with the shift in beat, bass throb fisting air out of diaphragms the same way it reverberates dust away from scuffed flooring and shabby walls. Purgatory is a shithole by any measure and that is why people come here, the sweet stink of marijuana thick on the sidewalk beneath flickering neon and blacked out windows. A rickety spiral staircase leads down to the dance floor and the worn down elbow of a full bar, everything cramped, claustrophobic and washed into filthy obscurity under a cycling strobe filter of whites and black-lit blues that keeps the music's pulse.
There's a touch of warmer light at the bar in the back corner by necessity — important to see what you're doing, there — and that's where Calvin has taken up residence with an unfamiliar fellow in a mesh shirt who may, upon closer inspection… have his hand in his lap. Calvin's laughing, anyway, teeth flashed white and mane freshly maintenanced and trimmed into a (slightly) cleaner (or at least more practical) bristle about his shoulders. At a distance, he looks healthy, wealthy and fine. Emphasis on the fine.
Three years ago, places like this churned Odessa's stomach. Two years later, she developed an appreciation for what they offer. An escape, anonymity, a place to score the next hit. Now, it feels suffocating. The smoke outside is cloying, and choking, and she wishes desperately that she could employ her old tricks to find what she's looking for, and make her way through the crowd where she wants to be.
Needs to be. Requirement for a stiff drink aside, she's here to see someone. And even above and beyond a desire for answers, Odessa actually has a need to see that Calvin is, in fact, fine. That he sounded it over the phone helped to set her mind somewhat at ease. That he looks it now, here, as much as anyone can in a place like this, uncoils some of the tension from her shoulders.
She looks the part of a shy girl, though shy girls aren't usually seen in leather hot pants and without a bra (thanks for the small tits, anorexia) under layered tanktops, tissue-thin white turning dark grey over basic black. The shyness is in the way Odessa approaches without an attempt to call his name over the music, or reaching out. Establishing contact with only a small, but genuine smile. She's glad to see him.
Maybe not quite as glad as his new friend is.
At closer range, cracks begin to show. Calvin's cheekbones are a presence where they haven't been before, shic lines defined sleek alongside his jaw when her profile catches familiar at his periphery and he turns to look. Makeup distracts from the shadows worn in round the clear cut of his eyes down her person. Down and then up again, with a beat's pause and a grunt that apparently reminds him he should probably — push his hand over the one crawling across his trousers in tandem with a mild, "Excuse us for a moment, won't you?"
The man, whoever he is, complies with a whisper but no argument that's probably to do with his drinks having been bought for him. He trails off into the mix, hotpants and mesh, and blends well enough that he's hard to pick out again seconds later. Purgatory.
His glasses are stacked and pushed out of the way by Calvin with a private grin, amusement at whoever's expense while he makes room and even leans to sweep a hand across the abandoned barstool without looking at her as if to clear it. "What's on your mind?"
Concern is brief, flutter more in her belly than shown by lashes. Odessa knows well the hardships of a life in hiding. She takes the seat now vacated and uses the rung to push herself up the extra couple inches she needs to elevate herself enough to plant a kiss on Calvin's mouth. Brief but heated. See? Happy to see you. Only after that she settle herself down, brushing at the curve of her lip with the pad of her thumb.
"Now that that's out of the way." Preface. "Is it Doctor Mister Calvin Sheridan these days? Certainly not agent anymore. My work days are so utterly dull without your presence." More flippant than it should be. Than the tense line of her mouth suggests. "What the fuck, Cal'?" Too nonplussed to be an accusation.
Calvin's down for makeouts because he usually is, however truncated, no lean necessary on his part, though he does manage enough of a pass of his tongue free hand to confirm that she isn't wearing a bra in there, somehow. The grin he's wearing after she parts is a little tingly, perhaps as a result. It's also capable of enduring underlying accusation in the slant of his name. His real. Name. More as a veneer that refuses to be shaken than anything — it finally terminates into more of a grimace on his way to turning back into the bar to pick up a freshly clocked shot.
"Time keeps on slipping," he quips quietly and not particularly cleverly on his way to downing what he believes is number three, stout little glass turned over under a roll of his thumb on its way to being clicked back down onto the bar. He watches it all the way down.
Click.
Meanwhile Usher's pounding through the writhe of New York all around and it occurs to him that he would like a cigarette, so he sets to lighting up. "Can I buy you a drink?"
Well, that draws a wince. "Oh, really?" Odessa's lip curls into a faint snarl that's more wounded than anything. "Do not even talk to me about time slipping." You know, because it is slipping. Away from her. Like sand through her fingers, and it's completely infuriating.
She seems to decide that a drink would make things better, however, and so Odessa shrugs, "Sure. Go ahead and pick my poison for me." Her gaze wanders over his face for a few moments while she thinks on her words. And Usher's words, because they're pervasive in that way that over-loud music can be, but really, mostly her own. "I don't care, you know. Bella's all worked up, but… Fuck, I didn't even bat an eye. What does that even say about me?" Fingers rake through the white hair at the back of the woman's head. Something to do with her hands that does not involve picking up where Mesh Shirt left off. Much as she may be tempted.
Maybe after a drink or two. "Would it do me any good to ask why you're here?" And before he can get cute, Odessa lifts her brows, look a touch pointed, "Not here," a finger taps down on the bar they sit at. "Here." Her palm is up in a wider sweeping gesture to encompass the whole of her timeline.
"Two buttery nipples, por favor," Calvin tells the bartender, who's come over to push a glass ash tray neatly in under the rest of his wrist. Just in time to have a start of ash tabbed off into it. Cal in his long black coat and high collar has already tipped well tonight or has in the past. Picking poisons.
He ignores her irritation over time slipping, save to avoid the term in opting for 'buttery' rather than. 'Slippery.'
Anyway.
The shooters arrive in short order and he nudges hers over without actually looking at her, more intent upon his cigarette than anything — prone to lapses in attention the way exhausted (or deliberately ignorant) people often are. "I donno," sounds honest enough, re: what could possibly be wrong with her until his voice drops an exaggerated octave. Insincere. "I'm just here to fix the future. She's the shrink. You look alright to me, creampuff." Cheers, he clicks his glass flatly to hers whether she's ready for it or not.
A cigarette sounds good right now, but they're usually reserved for quiet moments alone, or after sex. It's neither of those right now, but she's hopeful for one of the two at some point in the evening. No real preference for which it is that she manages to get. There's no roll of the eye to the drink order, just a small quirk of scarred lips. Part of her must find it endearing in some fashion. That and she's rather a fan of butterscotch schnapps.
Odessa clinks back and downs the shot, because she has her priorities straight. "…Creampuff? I kind of liked pumpkin, actually." Drink first, and ask questions later. That's the proper order of things, isn't it? "Do you know me from then?" she decides on, as a starter. "I would have figured I'm due for an untimely demise before too long here, but… I've had these dreams. Visions. I don't even know what the fuck." And if they do know each other then, shouldn't this be awkward for him? …No? Maybe that's just something else they have in common.
Are you really going to do this? is not a very nice question to ask someone. It shows on his face, though, in wiry muscle fiber strung taut behind the hollow of his cheek and a surly hood at his brow even after the shot's pitted warm into his belly and he's had a longer drag. Or two. Mood grinding downhill on rims, but of course Bella would tell. Particularly if Odessa told first —
Something hitches at his focus on a delay, brooding distraction broken long enough for him to twitch a queer look sideways after her past the lift and coil of smoke off the end of his — smoke. Their glasses are cleared away and he orders a pair of black russians instead, less whimsical this time. "Dreams?" he wants to know.
Odessa has the grace to look vaguely apologetic. "I can't not ask. You've got to understand. If you were in my position, you'd… You'd want to know." She looks away, frustrated with herself for not having the right words at the ready, and for doing this. "Your m- Bella is my best friend. Like my only friend. And this is complicated?" A finger points back and forth between herself and her… lover. Yeah, this is weird.
She draws in a breath. "Okay, I'll… tell you about my dreams." Fingers wrap around the second drink, but she doesn't bring it up to nurse yet. "There've been two. The first was… I was waiting for a bus, and that douchebag from that political show was there, talking to… I'm assuming you know who Claire Bennet is?" There's only the briefest pause to allow for the confirmation she expects. "But in the shelter was Elisabeth Harrison, that FRONTLINE woman. And there were jets, and an explosion."
Doctor Price makes a sound in the back of her throat, disgusted with herself. "That sounds so much lamer when I try to tell it. There was another one, though! With Ellie Bishop. You remember her, don't you?"
"Complicated?" says Calvin, like he doesn't think so. "I like having sex. You like having sex. We like — having sex together. S'perfectly normal." Even if his voice lifts a touch defensively in pitch towards the end, there. It all strikes him as very straightforward.
The bartender may or may not agree — this is far from the strangest conversation he's heard lifted too loud over the pulse and pound of Pitbull for the third time this evening.
Si e' verdad que tu ere guapa
Yo te voy a poner gozar
and so forth.
Lyrical genius.
His, "Yes," of confirmation for having known Bishop has an air of impatience to it. Whatever his reason for asking in the first place, he seems to have made up his mind about something unrelated to their sexcapades.
"I do like having sex with you," is an easy admission. Perhaps with a bit of unspoken and maybe we can do it again tonight. And also something like a serious contemplation as to how this whole thing is somehow uncomplicated. Odessa shrugs it off and takes a long drink of vodka and coffee liqueur, another favourite combo, really. It earns him a somewhat appraising look. Forgive her for suspecting the man of a little bit of insider knowledge.
But on the scale of things, plying her with favourite drinks really doesn't rate in comparison to all the other things that one could do with such knowledge. "Okay, so, the second dream. I was in an old hospital, and I don't know how I knew, but I knew it was an Institute facility. It was me, and Ellie, and Julie. And Ellie was pregnant, but she didn't know it. I was older. I saw myself in a mirror…" As if she needed to see her reflection to know age. "I mean, all three of us were older. But anyway, I was sneaking them out, to the Ferry. And I… was staying behind."
Of the two dreams, this is the one Odessa finds troubling. "I lost my," heel on the steps because I wear fucking ridiculous shoes, "concentration," that too, "because someone was…" Her lips purse and she lifts her hands to make a round motion in front of her, demonstrative. "It's like a bubble, in a sense? What I can do. And when someone threatens to invade that bubble, I can feel it. It distracted me, and I missed a step. At the landing, there was a woman. Taller than me, I think. I didn't recognise her. Dark hair, strong features. Pretty. Wore a uniform.
"Pointed a gun at me." Which doesn't make Odessa happy in the least, even if it was just a dream. Or hasn't happened yet. Take your pick. "That's when I woke up."
"Well've course you do." Who doesn't? being the reasonable implication there, Calvin spins smoke thin through his sinuses and snuffs the rest of his cigarette out into a tuft of paper and ash. Jesus.
It's hard to tell if he's heard this story before. He doesn't respond to it much, blue eyes wandering cold across the packed dance floor until she gets to that last part and he looks her over again. Rather than speak, he takes a drink, buzz finally dimming some of the tension cinched into crow's feet has no business playing host to.
"What'd you mean…earlier," he asks, more or less out of the blue and at hazy length. "You said she's 'worked up.'"
To say she's a little frustrated by the abrupt change of subject and lack of input would be something of an understatement, but Odessa just closes her eyes and breathes in slowly, then exhales. Remember what it was like being out of your own time, 'Dess. Twice. He should feel lucky he didn't get thrown through time and into the hands of Nazis. She wonders if she's told him that story. Will tell him?
Tense is confusing in time travel. "Bella? She's convinced you don't respect or love her, and she's rather surprised you even exist." A shrug asks can you blame her? Odessa pauses to swallow down more liquor, gaze lidding as she focuses on the warmth that seems to spread through her. It's more than welcome. "I saw the DNA results. Even if we were to suppose for a moment that it wasn't your blood you supplied her with, for the sake of argument, it still matched up for Bella and… Whoever that asshole is she's rejecting me fo-"
Odessa stops and looks up to the dread'ed man next to her, expression somewhat guilty - because she may have just insulted Calvin's father a little bit - but also a little I told you so. Because she did, "Okay, see? This is why it's complicated."
'Surprised,' carries with it a misleadingly positive connotation, so that it might be faulty word choice that has Calvin sinking down on his elbows to rest his face in his folded arms. Out've sight. 'Upset' is the more accurate term, he knows. Too strong to label his own reaction now, but just about right for her whisker bristling and flattened ears.
He sits that way for a time, shoulders hunched under the stiff button of his coat. Thinking, or. Marinating. Less and less of a mind to discuss much of anything. The insult, if he counts it as one, doesn't make him flinch.
Still. It's sheer courtesy that drives him to eventually force a muffled, "Howso?" out through the crook of his arm.
"Oh, Cal'." Odessa winces and at first reaches out to put her hand on his shoulder, but the approach is aborted at the last moment. "I'm sorry. I- Oh God." She buries her face in her hands, mouth just beneath the heels of her palms so as not to muffle her words. "I told her she's wrong. You wouldn't be here if you didn't love her." At least, this is what she's interpreting to be the problem.
"Hey. Hey…" Odessa finds her nerve this time and drops one hand to the bar top and brings the other to the back of Calvin's neck, brushing her fingers over his skin as reassuring as she can muster. "I haven't… I wouldn- I won't. I… couldn't?" All of these preface shag your mum at this point. But as uncomplicated and free spirited as both may claim to be, Odessa just can't quite bring herself to actually say those words. The fragments also go well before do anything to jeopardize your existence. Even if she hears tale that he's prevented it. "I like you. I'm glad you're here."
"I didn't come back for her," isn't meant to sound snappish. It just does, once he's sat himself up again, nose rankled and accent sickled harsh after the implication. "Just did her a fucking favor while I'm here, is all." Lapel straightened with a near unconscious sweep of his left hand, he checks the turn of his collar as well, dignity dusted off with all the care and fuss he'd spare a throw rug before he reaches for his half finished drink.
"You don't have anything to worry about. Everything's going to be fine."
Brows come together in a look that is either made less or more severe by the patch over Odessa's left eye. Depending upon how you feel about eye patches, and whether or not they make a person look ridiculous or imposing. "I'm not worried about anything. Just you. What did I say? If you didn't come back here for her, then what— Who?" She bites her lip, like it might also bite off what she thinks he might be about to say.
"Don't say you're here for the future. You wouldn't have bothered to… To…" Odessa's posture straightens some, "When I went into the past, I fucked it up. What I set out to do. I hesitated." Both hands come up in the hopes of resting on either side of the man's face. Cobalt gaze wide, she advises, "Don't ever hesitate."
Caught, Calvin's taken as if by the scruff of the neck. Stock still and blearily focused, halcyon irises like splintered glass swollen and then dilated in search of contact on an inebriated delay. "I came back to ensure the survival of my species," he says, finally. Too confidently level not to be telling the truth. "I will not hesitate."
A slow smile spreads across Odessa's face after he tells her why he's really here. A very noble goal, she believes. "Good," she breathes out before drawing in to lock lips, with no intent on her part to truncate these makeouts. Do me tacit.
A raggedy breath stinks of embittered relief the same way his coat stinks of hot iron. Acceptance is acceptance, encouragement is encouragement and he's seen very little of either since his arrival in the past. Present.
Sane people are so judgmental.
Less so at Purgatory, granted, where nobody looks twice after the way he's moving against her, devilishly visceral, ruthlessly ignorant of the inherently public nature of this display of affection. There is a fire exit over ——> there, he's noticed. They'll get to it in a moment.
Hopefully.