Participants:
| Scene Title | Lamb |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | There was no sex, which leaves prostitute and Sicilian awakening confused and in some intermediate stage of nudity. He doesn't have enough money to buy her, but she solicits his future interest with the intriguing offer of advice, or at least a good line — on why men cheat. |
| Date | February 9, 2009 |
The Happy Dagger — Bebe's Room
By the time Felix leaves for work, the kids are curled up like kittens between dense layers of vivid satin.
Throughout the evening, Teo hadn't levered himself out of his coma except to drink more water, pee like twenty times, ream his teeth with a forefinger covered in what he managed to identify as toothpaste, eat aspirin, and hold a mumbled conversation with the FBI agent chastely installed in his chair. Between incidences, he was still mildly intoxicated and put his feet down with the stealth of a garbage compactor.
The boy from Sicily snores a little, but only a little; stops when prompted. Is also characterized by an irrational fear and sensitivity to the cold, manifest in hoarding not only covers but his bedmate's body heat, too.
By the time real awakening finally finds him, one of his handguns and holster are lying on the floor in a ropey pile of socks, hoodie and jacket and there is a diminutive woman there, with him, her spine in a sleeper's question-mark against his belly, his nose in her hair — not, apparently, pink — and a hand cupping the lamb-footed bleat of her pulse in her throat, one tattooed arm bent double, bicep pillowing her neck.
The first thing he says, hazed, somewhere between scandalized and not, emerges in an addled grunt: "Huh?"
Let's skip the whole story about how a chemically-intoxicated and bodily-used Bebe managed to blissfully skim the walls of the club all the way around to the stairs and back down the hall to the room that she had come to call her own, occupied or otherwise. It helps that she had somehow skillfully managed to escape her precarious hooker heels and traversed the floor barefoot but… that's neither here nor there. Inconsequential.
What matters now is that she's currently curled and enfolded in the ink-bearing arms of a man who actually paid not to sleep with her for the night. She can count how often that's happened on one hand. With one finger. When he murmurs, so does she, unwilling to sacrifice sleep just yet if she can manage to scam just a few more minutes of sweet peace. She rolls over and allows her bare chest to greet his, repositioning her arms so that one can find it's way beneath their shared pillow while the other one's hung around his hips.
Oh, Teo thinks to himself, comfortably hazed from sleep and a residual twinge in his forebrain. When she rolls over, he feels the line of Bebe's throat bob under his fingers which curl, reflexively, not to awaken her but to test the smooth skin enough for the feel of small bones to emerge. I—
Cognition shorts out when fragments of sensory perception and recollection seize up and find their places. In the course of one long inhale, he becomes extremely aware of things, neutrally labeled 'things' in lieu of the proper anatomical names for whatever his eyes were sneaking down into the shadowed space between shimmery sheets to find. He blinks his eyes at her sleeping face instead, a furrow taking up residence in his brow, peculiarly pensive, given the circumstances.
This is pretty strange, even by his reckoning of things. This situation. Only when Felix Ivanov.
The tip of her nose draws a light line over the unmarked skin of Teo's chest before she murmurs something slightly accented and incomprehensible and finally flutters open the baby doll brown eyes in order to catch more than a tactile glimpse of the man she's cuddled up against and — oh. Wait. No, hey. Teo =/= Jack. And, for a moment, the world flips upside down until recollection kicks in and she very politely draws her head back in an attempt to put her cheek on the pillow proper instead of nuzzling the inside of his ink-stained bicep.
"Feeling better…?" she asks in a carefully quiet voice.
"S — yep." Coincidentally, he smells better, too, her preferred flavor plus fluoride having long since crisped Teo's breath over after he accidentally left the pain medication tab on his tongue too long. Worse than all the liquor in the world, as far as he's concerned. Vaguely, it had surprised him, her cuddling close until enough consciousness burned through to make him out as more as a Caucasian blur.
He has no way of knowing, but there's the vague notion, suspicion, that he should have been someone else. Makes two of them, maybe. Ever one to reciprocate mannerly gestures, he pulls his arm back, extricates it from her raised head, ceding Bebe her silken cushion. He rests his own shaven skull on his arm and swivels his gaze above the line of her ear. "You have any idea what time I'm supposed to be out of here?"
Smelling better than, well, bleach and alcohol (and potentially puke) goes a pretty long way in the Lil' Whorphan Bebe<tm> book of Things That Suck Significantly Less Than Others. However, instead of a reply, Teo's borrowed brown-eyed girl makes a series of slightly obscene grunts and groans as she rolls from side to supine and stretches her legs out stiff until her toes curl beneath the covers. Only after she's done working the initial subduing weight of slumber from her limbs does she wonder with a small, sleepy smile, "Is that a trick question? You're paying by the hour."
In an attempt to divine a more specific answer, Bebe abruptly mounts the man in her bed but… not like that. Or, at least, not quite like that. Almost. But, not really. It's only for the sake of being allowed a better vantage of the bedside table which is, interestingly, completely devoid of a clock or any other time-telling device. Huh. Instead, the whore opens up a little drawer — filled with condoms, no kidding — and shoves her hand all the way into the back in order to retrieve a decidedly expensive little timepiece. But, wait… did we mention she's still all sorts of topless? Let's bring that up again. Enjoy the view. Sure, she's not as bountifully blessed as some of the other women than dance downstairs but… she's still got boobs. And they qualify unquestionably in the 'nice' category.
Oh, and by the way? It's 8:17 on a Monday morning. That's what her watch says. She shows it to Teo and then asks from atop the man's chest, "How long will you let me keep you?" An odd turn of the question, really, since it's more a matter of how long he's willing to keep her.
More a matter of whether he's willing, but there are a few caveats, troubling ones, which Teo smiles through anyway because he's smiling up at a young woman in all her generous nudity and artful — he thinks, assumes it's artful — coyness. It is with utmost regret that he points out a Fact that is probably corroborated by the simplicity of his clothing and shaven head: "I don't have much money.
"Cop boy's paying by the hour. Don't know how many he paid for. And I don't want to beat up your bouncers to get away. Or—" banned, he was about to say, but doesn't. Quintessential thug, isn't he? Could pass for one, despite there's something carefully, constrainedly playful about the rough physicality of him. He digs his feet into the mattress, pushes himself up, along its sleek surface, carrying her along with him, in order to prop muscled shoulders further up against mountainous pillows and the head of the bed. The better to see with. Not the clock. He fucks a lot of people who don't have tits.
He likes these. More grotesque proportions tend to imply a lack of sensitivity, and he's just a little more generous than the next self-absorbed mantard who comes here to bury his thing and other ugliness in nubile girl-flesh. "Besides, I haven't had sex with a prostitute in years. Not since I found out about ground rule number two. You know." He assumes she does, but clarification comes anyway, with a crooked grin. "'Don't come.' Intellectually," the thug says, Intellectually, "I get it. But what the fuck?"
"You don't beat up the bouncers around here," Bebe declares somewhat balefully, both tone and expression suggesting that she's speaking only the truth as she knows it and not attempting to dole out a bare-breasted threat. There is an unspoken implication of a much darker 'or else' lost in there somewhere, however.
But, instead of becoming ensnared in a logistical debate regarding who her chaste consort can or cannot kick the shit out of, she focuses on something slightly more philosophical in nature while her soft fingertips quietly trace the unfamiliar patterns of Teo's ink-impregnated arms. "It's not so much 'Don't come.' as it is 'Don't come inside.'" See how semantics are suddenly important? "Safety first." Thus the small arsenal of condoms harbored in that little dresser drawer, right? "Besides, I don't know where you've been. And, if a guy's patronizing a whorehouse, that suggests maybe a little something worth knowing about a his proclivity for putting his penis in things he isn't particularly well-acquainted with…" Did Bebe just become astoundingly well-spoken for a whore or what? How old did she say she was again??
Semantics aren't. Their sudden divergence in understanding, however, is. Teo marches an eyebrow up his forehead, mildly incredulous if not outright aggravated at the pretty lie, before his expression smooths out to quizzical bemusement. He's had friends who turn tricks. Girls. It's probably different for men who whore, he's aware, but female anatomy and psychology lend themselves to different procedures in his recollection.
The distraction of the tiny, candy-colored stones of her fingernails on his arms is neither unwelcome nor warranted surfeit attention. "That you're not supposed to come," he clarifies, propping his head up on a rough hand — mostly to occupy the unwarranted flex of fingers that long to reciprocate. Restlessness catching like a little fire. "It annoyed the fuck out of me, remembering all the girls who faked it. That's grade-A bullshit, right there.
"Humiliates my tiny pride," he concludes, after a moment, expression and tone softening to something oddly whimsical. She's a funny one. They're both funny ones. Astoundingly well-spoken for— whatever they're selling themselves as. Abruptly, then, he sits up, a black-marked arm snaking out to snare the white swan's neck of her hip before she falls far.
Oh. OH! Haha. She, uh, yeah… see? She's new. Maybe not shiny new but still new enough that a blush actually begins to bleed onto Bebe's baby doll cheeks when her mistaken comprehension of the question is gently emphasized by Teo's charmingly subtle clarification. She looks legitimately embarrassed. So much for being clever; she just lost the game. However, his abrupt repositioning places her nose to nose and gives her the opportunity to reclaim some of her suddenly shed 'professional' face when she dares to place a pretty palm against the crotch of his pants as punctuation to a coyly prepared whisper that gets relayed at half a breath's measure from her lips to his. "Doesn't feel tiny to me…"
It isn't bound to stay that size, either, if Teo continues on this particular train of thought. He can't quite get himself to jump off of it, though. Ends up hanging off those metal bars, one foot dangling into whistling wind, and his eyes squinting against the passing roar of unadulteratedly gorgeous scenery, the wheel and click of other processes so automatic and familiar to him they could carry themselves forward without another single synapse of higher brain functions.
It'd be easy to go with it. He doesn't, quite yet. Lets himself hang off on the edge of some extravagant departure, breathing in the delightful smell of her and the feel of her, all milk-white and lamb-skinned, her voice like spun sugar to match. The blush had been a nice touch. "So what does happen to boys who can't pay?" he asks, squinting one lucent, ice-pale eye shut. He peers up, quizzically, out of the other.
"They don't get to play," she says, sounding sweet but matter-of-fact, even as her lips insist on lingering so close to his as if she needed her to breathe for him. As if on cue, there's a buzzing beep that comes from the intercom located somewhere in the room and a woman's voice announces, "Time's up. Romeo's gotta go, Bebe." This news is received with the putting on of a frown while big brown eyes slowly make their way from chin to brow in order to properly relay her apology as she inaudibly mouths the word 'sorry'. It's the closest thing to a kiss that he's apt to get without more bucks to buy a banging.
It's with some reluctance that Bebe withdraws — it just might seem like forever, too, with time called — but she eventually makes her dismount and allows Teo the space to reclaim the clothes belonging to him that had been abandoned on her floor the night before. Meanwhile, she climbs back beneath the previously discarded covers and strikes a supine pose that leaves her bare breasts exposed. Something for the road.
It's what happens when you don't have a day job and too many scruples to suck money out of Phoenix's treasury to buy hookers. Really. Terrorism must mean a certain degree of amorality to someone out there, but here's Teo, sighing like a deprived child, his cheeks puffing out around the slow escape of empty air. He throws one foot off the edge of the mattress, finds the carpeted floor with bare toes. It's a lazy, seesaw of motion, peeling himself off the satin. He fails entirely to not look.
'Sorry.' Some part of him almost believes she is. He looks like fun: he's aware of that much.
The next moment, his view is darked out by the thin stretch of cotton weave over his face, sweater coming down over inked muscle with an easy flex of his long frame. "I have to explain myself to somebody soon," his voice emerges blurred by close fabric, before one bright eye emerges out of the collar. Shaven scalp hiccups free, next. "We're trying to fix something. Maybe you could help me out. With your—" he sweeps up his hoodie up off the floor with one arching kick of a foot. Catches it. "Niche experience and personal insight could help me out.
"Why do men cheat?" He glances up again, before sticking his arm into the next layer of clothing, and his head.
The girl curled underneath false silk and faux satin sheets wears a very genuine mask of neutrality as she says, "You tell me." Manchild. Apparently, anything more than single-syllable advice comes at a price that Teo hasn't paid. However, she isn't about to see him out without a hook of hope for what the future might hold and so she offers with arms once again outstretched overhead, "Come back again soon… and we'll talk about it." Talk. That's probably a refreshing change for her usual clientele, eh? Sure, she might be more expensive than a shrink and her advice won't be scientifically sound but, hey, she'll be topless. And that's what counts, right? RIGHT.
There's no science to what Teo is asking. He is smart enough to know that. Which is why he's asking a nineteen-year-old who accidentally blushes instead of anybody with a degree or a visible abundance of cynicism, despite the tacitly ugly nature of the question he's asking. Flipping his hood over his head, he pulls his jacket on, yanking the panels straight with his hands. She would be topless. She could lie. It all works out, in the end. Sonny is easier to convince when he's naked, too, and if the words work then they work.
He grins, crookedly askance at her elaborate arrangement on the covers. Then, slowly, offers his holstered Glock out to her, picking up the hem of his sweater with the other hand. "Help me get this on, please?" It's some grotesque parody of zipping a woman up in her dress, post-coitus. His eyes carry the polite weight of request, even as the balance between hope and indifference teeters behind those pale panes.
Then, agreeably enough, "How much do you cost?"
Behind every no good thug… is the teenaged whore who helped him put his 9mm on that morning. Where would the world be without hookers and hos? Ill-armed, apparently. Teo's gesture is perched precariously on the precipice of charming; almost adorable. Bebe isn't apt to say 'no' at this juncture, though she does put up a little inarticulate fuss about being called out from under the covers and brought to her knees at the edge of the bed.
Her slightly chipped, pink-painted fingertips stumble over the straps of the holster as she takes it in hand and helps Teo tuck in first one arm and then the next like some hopeful housewife helping her husband into his suit jacket before sending him off to the office for the day. Dexterous digits ensure that the man's sweater isn't snagged and that everything lays smooth before she tucks a little kiss behind his right ear and shows off her price tag, "I'm negotiable." She then slowly sinks back down to sit on her feet and watch the young man leave, presumably so that he can see to a busy schedule full of dirty deeds.
 February 8th: All The Answers |
 February 9th: The Offer Still Stands |