Participants:
Scene Title | For Now |
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Synopsis | Logan's left to pick up the pieces of a certain tiny tart's broken heart. |
Date | May 23, 2009 |
The Happy Dagger - Bebe's Room
The walls have eyes in the Happy Dagger, almost infamously so, as if to ensure nothing goes on here but what is meant to. Of course, that's hardly ever true, but still. Cameras and their red blinking signs of life can be found in many corners of the brothel. Incidentally, the stairwell that pimp and madame stand in is a blind spot, but that it, as stated, incidental. The hush of their voices also doesn't speak so much of secrecy and nefariousness as it does business.
"Haven't you talked to her?" Logan stands a couple of steps higher, his hand gripping the railing and narrowing his eyes down at the woman who is otherwise almost as tall as he is.
From this vantage point, not so, but that doesn't stop Viv from placing her hands on her hips as she angles a look up at him from the shadowy interior of the staircase, all shade and excess light from the higher and low levels, soft golds and harsher reds. "Mmhm. I'm letting her take it easy for now but I'm not sure how much 'for now' she's gonna need."
He doesn't exactly roll his eyes, but he could. Instead, Logan's gaze travels down, thoughtful for a moment underneath Viv's scrutiny, before they meet eyes again. "Don't you have a job to do or something?"
Her hands come up to fix the lapels of his jacket, smoothing them into place. "So do you," the madame says lightly, before she's drifting back down the staircase, all business in her silken white blouse and pencil skirt, red hair clipped up with a garish piece of jewelry and bangles dripping from her wrists. Once she's gone around the corner, Logan's shoulders bow a little in a show for no one of reluctance, before turning to move upstairs and into the softer light of the brothel's upper levels. Off to see a whore about a whore.
Suicide watch in a brothel might initially seem to be an impossible task to undertake without sacrificing valuable time and, yet, Bebe makes it easy by refusing to leave her room (except for need of the loo). The environment therein has become the darkest corner of the Dagger's depths with only the muddled puddles of ruby and amber seeping in from underneath the door. Bebe has become some sort of forsaken soul; a pathetic little creature that tastes of nothing but tears who can't even be bothered to run a comb through her hair of her own accord.
From time to time, the aforementioned madame of copper coif and a few of the other girls have looked in on her in order to confirm that she is, indeed, still staring at the wall or softly weeping — the muted cacophony of her crying blends in almost unnoticed amoungst all of the other soft keening sounds that echo through the hallway of the Dagger's upper deck — or otherwise sleeping but still breathing. Some even steal a minute to sit on the edge of her bed and stroke her hair or pitch their own unasked for advice in a sisterly fashion before once again finding their way down to the floor.
There's a very fine line between losing the will to live and longing to end one's life; the tiny tart, having previously teetered on the brink of the latter, has now fallen face first into the former. She's just biding her time between this breath and the last.. It's all sorts of pathetic.
Only when the door knob twists around does the man on the other side think to knock. Just twice, lightly, before deciding it's an ultimately useless gesture of decorum, and the door creaks to spill in artificial mood lighting, cut off once more by Logan's lanky frame as he insinuates himself inside, shuts the door after him. He is very much a slice of the brothel brought into Bebe's sanctuary, in a tailored suit, silk shirt and shined shoes, a ring on his finger and cufflinks that have to work to catch what light is in the room.
And doesn't make his way much further than that, still resting a hand on the door handle as he studies her from that distance, and gives a sigh, one vocal enough to carry to her ears. "So what are we to do with you?"
The rhetorical inquiry is met with only a deafening pseudo silence as Bebe declines the opportunity to offer any input on the situation and instead allows the muffled din of those dying young outside of her darkened abode serve as the only reply. The view to be had from just the other side of the door is deceptive. The whore curled up fetal somewhere underneath all of those bed linens is all back and soles; barely moving shoulders and sides disguised by the slope and contour of faux silk sheets.
Logan delays stepping closer, as if deep emotions were catching, but eventually, he has little choice. His footsteps are soft against luxurious carpeting, meandering in direction and pace, until he comes to stand somewhere at the end of Bebe's bed, a hand resting on the bed post as he studies her huddled form, his brow tensed into an expression of consternation. Dressed in black save for the vein of red of his silk tie, he's not quite a shadow ghosting out from the corner, too dark and angular. He knows all about shadows talking about.
But he's not sure about putting broken dolls together again. His former words gone ignored, Logan tries something more direct. "Bebe?"
In lieu of eking out some sort of pathetic verbalization that could only inadequately express the agony of breathing with a broken heart puncturing all of the important pink parts hidden inside of her chest, Bebe slowly rolls her head over on the pillow and looks up at Logan through a pair of glassy eyes that seem to have lost all luster save that stolen from the scant light that creeps in from under the door. She cried herself dry days ago but the rims of her lids are still swollen and red with the effort expended to squeeze out what wetness she can in her mournful waking hours. It's not so much a response as it is an acknowledgement but, whether Logan realizes it or not, it's far more of a reaction than anyone else has earned.
Well she hasn't died. But it seems as though someone has, or may as well have done. For a moment, Logan is as still and silent as she is when she finally looks over at him, as cold and oblivious as a statue of iron, and if there were any reaction forthcoming, it might only be to leave. Short of the gentle hairpettings and words of reassurance some of the women have attempted.
But finally he moves along the bed, towards where her small frame is curled towards the pillow end and taking up only a fraction of the luxurious piece of furniture. "It's a shame when people turn out to be everything you'd expect them to on the worst of days," he says, coming to crouch a little so as to better make eye contact, his gaze cat-like in study and just as removed.
"But this isn't going to work, is it?"
Logan's cold comfort does little to heal Bebe's broken heart. Of course, that wasn't the intention, really, and so perhaps that's why she's inclined to pay his words more mind than any of those spoken soft or sororal against her ear previously. She's heeding him bodily, going so far as to release her death grip on the corners of the pillowcase and square her shoulders down against the mattress so that she might rightly be able to eye him without putting a kink in her neck. "He's gone." Just in case Logan hadn't heard. What she really means, however, is: He left me behind.
"Something's wrong with me," she utters quietly in a perhaps unanticipated and disjointed rejoinder to her previous admission. A default lament of a discarded lover sounds somehow different on the lips of a young woman whose sorrow seems to have altered her biochemistry. Even if Logan doesn't realize it consciously, there's something about Bebe that just doesn't feel right.
Which might be why he's inclined to agree with her, even if he couldn't put it to words, but even Logan can sense that agreeing with her is exactly the wrong thing to do. His elbows rest on bent knees as he studies her, words reduced to murmurs as around them, throughout the building, people are more inclined to vocalise how they're feeling through far less unsubtle means.
"I'm sorry." The words fall flat, but it was an admirable try, and some form of earnestness, or an attempt at such, manages to carry them some of the distance. But no doubt even those who mean it haven't made an effect. "He's gone, but you aren't. You can't just stop."
Stop. Stop in general, stop working, stop living. Just stop. Logan places a hand on the mattress, a contemplative move. It edges a little closer. "Would you believe me if I said things will be better?" An inevitable tug at her biochemistry is an attempt at getting her to see reason, to agree with him, in the form of serotonin mood adjustments, too subtle from this distance to combat the palpable sadness. But it's a nudge.
"No," she says, accompanying her single spoken word with the sort of headshake that appears to be a jostle more than a gesture. "You're an awful liar." It's an observation that might be otherwise off-putting if it weren't for, well, the obvious. A corner of her dry mouth twitches but it's not a smile she's fighting back. There's a gasping sob somewhere in her throat trying to claw its way out. While Logan's subtle attempt to manipulate his whore's mood might superficially appear to be impotent, he has achieved some degree of reception on an emotional level that manifests itself in the first solicitation for human contact that she's made in almost a week. "Will you hold me?"
An eyebrow goes up at that observation, but he doesn't argue. He's only a terrible liar after a while— but supposedly it's been a while. Since the first time he started lying to her. Logan looks almost guarded when she makes that request of him, glancing towards the door as if he could summon in a female to do the holding for him— but his hand at already been reaching out partway.
To find the quick fix. He moves to sit, pulling himself up to rest back against the bed head, beside the pillow, offering out a hand towards her to take. As soon as she does, everything can go back to normal, or so the pimp is assuming. He's calmed people down from hysteria, driven others into panic attacks, and made people so blissful they squirm.
Grief can't be so hard a foe.
Petite fingers and thin limbs momentarily grapple with silk-suited arms as Bebe climbs out from underneath her den of bed linens and clings so desperately to Logan's fine lapels. Her natty head is ducked beneath his chin while she presses her cheek to his chest and assumes a position that might suggest her intention was to confess all of her sadness to the man's armpit instead of his ear. "I don't know what happened," she sniffles, almost instantly thrown into the throes of tears — sticky sobs that don't quite come complete with the torrent of tears you might expect — despite the percolating petrochemicals coursing through her veins that would often equal 'instant happy' for almost everyone else.
She fits nicely against him, but that doesn't mean Logan is comfortable. Still, his arms hesitate and circle around her, a firm and comforting hold for all intents and purposes, and with nothing else to watch from this vantage point, he watches the door. His hand goes up briefly to touch the bird's nest of her hair, smoothes it back and careful not to catch his fingers in the tangles.
At least this isn't as wet as it could be. "Everyone values freedom. Jack is— painfully simple." It's a slow build up, knowing better than to hit her with a wall of endorphins when her mood is so extremely low, when it's not what she desires, but it's a steady build, an artificial mood lift that comes from somewhere gut-deep and warm. Enough to make Logan's eyes catch light that isn't quite there, gaze now angling down to the top of her head. His voice is sweet as he suggests, "You have people who love you here."
The statement Logan makes in regards to Jack's simplicity is anything but arguable and yet Bebe still quietly clings to all good things even in the wake of her (ex?)boyfriend-slash-kidnapper's departure with just as much tenacity as she does her confidant-slash-pimp's fine suit jacket. "You don't know him like I do… did… didn't…" This is true, if only from a Biblical perspective, but the confusion over proper tense betrays the presence of escalating endorphin levels that make the tip of her tongue tingle. Whatever it is that provoked this biochemical change of genetic evolution, it's also dramatically altered her metabolism — the heart of the bound fish beating within her chest runs double time despite her relative immobility, the blue blood in her veins racing to her extremities at excessive speed.
"Do you still fancy me?" she asks, chin momentarily lifted but only in token significance.
The thunder of her heartbeat is something Logan can feel, even through flesh, bone, muscle, clothing, and he's not sure what that means, actually. If he was, he'd be worried that the young woman were about to have a heart attack.
As it stands, it's not a pressing concern, and so he continues to toy with her biochemistry, her moods attempting to be dictated by the simplicities and complexities of neurotransmitters. The hand at her hair drifts down to her throat, a gentle touch there, fingers curling beneath her jaw as if about to urge her to look up, but the nudge never comes. "Of course I do," he says, with a tone that says don't be silly. "Which is why I hate to see you so." And he adds, in idle observation, "You're warm. I wasn't lying, you know."
In truth, she's night to feverish but, just in case Logan wasn't speaking literally… Bebe lifts her pouting lips and allows the expression to fade into something a little more accepting and serene, if only for a moment. There is a pointed moment of hesitation wherein she is obviously disinclined to be any more mobile than she absolutely must and yet there's something still stuck on the tip of her tongue that she can't swallow and therefore must spit out. "Do you…
"Do you think he'll come back?" she asks unabashedly, voice still imbued with the barest hint of a quavering tone. Come back for me, she means.
It's a window of opportunity, flung wide by someone who temporarily wants to feel better. In all of Logan's broken mirror understandings of human nature and social cues, he can recognise this for what it is. "Yes. With time. How could he not?" The lie, this time, is spoken effortlessly, less the caution with which he'd approached the girl in their first few moments, and it's lifted up in swirling euphoria, that familiar high Bebe had become so accustomed to associating with him.
It'll all come crashing down soon enough, when the room is empty and the bed is cold.