Participants:
| Scene Title | On Rekindling Puberty |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Romance is hard difficult har d |
| Date | May 4, 2009 |
Some weeks earlier…
Raquelle calls the day after the first date to leave a message.
Beeeeep - "Ah…hola mi amor…" The greeting is soft and sultry before he just laughs softly, a rumbling sound as he closes a door in the background. "I am at work a bit later today, or would've called. Wanted to say ah…I really enjoyed having you over the other day, and I hope you did too. My girls are convinced you are a werewolf or the King of the Doggies but either way sweetie…they um, they really like you. Wanted to make sure you got home safely…that your girls were okay. To tell you that um…" He trails off with another soft chuckle. "I hope we can do something like it again soon. Just the two of us? It is hard you know…well not like /that/." A pause. "Even though god knows I almost cried when Diana jumped on my lap after you left and did a dance that hit me in the crotch cuz ow, but not that type of crying - I'm babbling but being horny as hell does that to a man, truuuust me darling. You can only play with the joystick so long before you figure out there's something called Playstation 2 out there where all you gotta do is have a magic touch…" A sigh. "Anyhow, it's hard to like figure out if you're feeling one way and somebody is feeling the same or if it is just a chemical attraction and maybe you lost your mind but…I really did have a good time. Call me, hm? Okay, got a perm to rinse out. Byebye sweetiewheatiemuffinpants." Happy laughter echoing the 'nickname' before a whispered. "Goodbye." CLICK.
And then Bolivar leaves a message to reply:
"Trying to understand your metaphors is like trying to navigate a Salvador Dali painting. I want to see you too. I'll make Mexican whenever you can get a sitter. If privacy really matters to you, I can lock my girls up in the bathroom with a bowl of kibble. Don't get raped."
From Raquelle, very simple:
"We'll meet soon, I wouldn't ask you to lock your girls away unless you were comfortable with it. Hangover impending, stay sweet. I like Mexican-ooooh God…okay, gotta go *click*"
Though also, Raquelle's old fashioned in some ways, but hates being stalkerish so as bouquets arrive however, things are just signed with an R:
This bouquet, then then this one, and finally this too.
Bolivar is old-fashioned also but somewhat cantankerous in case you hadn't heard.
Raquelle's doorway is besieged by a whale of a bouquet of stringy-lace orange honeysuckles and slender little pineapple sage flowers. Apart from verifying the absence of inedible or toxifying pesticides, the card also says, 'Stop it. Don't you have kids to feed or some shit?'
His handwriting is very bad.
Thus last if not least—
Morningside Heights — Bolivar's Place
It's v. shiny now.
Corn tortillas and white fish alike prove soft to touch. Were it not for the elasticity of the flour bake and the careful proportioning of sauce to the pressure-cooked meat, and accompanying scallops, shrimp, onions, and whatever else, both probably would have fallen apart with fragility more deplorable than spun sugar or warm milk's skin. There's bound to be a little bit of mess, should one have trouble finding the precise point at which to stop stuffing, lest the contents go ricocheting out of the girdle when one bites down.
It's a very saucy metaphor if you think about it too hard. Bolivar probably hadn't: he may be introverted and, at times, even introspective, but honestly, he'd be in altogether less trouble in general if he actually thought more about the things he does with his hands.
"Diana's teacher sounds like a bitch," Bolivar deduces, intelligently. It is his version of being agreeable: being disagreeable about something that somebody else finds singularly disagreeable. For some reason, he and his date are talking about his date's children. It's supernaturally domestic, the skillet reposing on the stove, dogs asleep in the corners, the salt-crystallized lime wedges in the saucer, tequila, the apartment that stands fresh and quiet in the half-light around them. It does not actually smell like pot. The mismatched furniture— legacy of a divorce settlement— are granted peculiar rhythm and unity by their cleaned colors.
An orange rose arches out of its glass; kind of goes with the champaigne velour of the couch behind it. Over the course of the past forty minutes or so, he and Raquelle somehow made it from sitting politely on opposite ends of the tiny dining table to sharing the same corner of it. One of Bolivar's legs is tossed over the younger man's lap and, in the particular moment that we set our scene, Bolivar is retracting a napkin stained by the runoff residue wiped off Raquelle's wrist.
The thrilling account of Mrs. Dawson's bulging underwear lines and commensurately sour attitude is subject to a grimace of actual sympathy.
The young hairstylist has been a saint, really. In a way. Okay not really…Raquelle Cambria showed up at the agreed upon time, wearing a dark blazer over a mostly unbuttoned black shirt, dark jeans…you know the glam-rock posh look complete with piercings being in and nails glossy black and ever since handing the rose over with a cheeky grin, he's been a gentleman! Really, no picking people up and rushing to bedrooms. No lewd comments (okay, maybe 2. Or 5) and even offering to help with the 'dinner service'.
"Mmhm, she is. She has horrible hair too, yellow straw blond and her roots are always showing. Got pissy because Deedee was like 'Mrs. Dawson, you look like a broom. A fat one.'" A soft fatherly sigh of 'that's my girl' and 'ahhh, kids these days' come together rather well as he flips the wrist that just got cleaned off, fingers reaching out to catch the wrist of the napkin wielding hand with a quirk of an eyebrow.
"The food is um…delicious by the way. I didn't know you cooked." The compliment is soft, thoughtful. Free hand busy toying with the hem of Bolivar's pants. Lalala, think about food lalalalaaaaaaaaa.
One would think that Bolivar would be more tactful more often if he thought tact was important. Maybe he does sometimes: it's hard to tell what had inspired the remarkably long wait between the last date and this one, if one jam-packed with bouquets of every conceivable size and substance.
In short, the hand on his pants doesn't bother him. Actually, he's unobscurely glad that it's there. Life is a lot easier when there are no two ways to interpret the signals being given, and he's been out of the circuit long enough to worry that he's decoding with the wrong key should even the smallest inconsistency reveal itself to his clinically dyslexic eye.
Bolivar isn't glam-rock. He will never be glam-anything. His shirt is blue, buttoned — if not all the way, and his jeans are brackish gray distressed by actual age with red thread tooled up the inseams and out. If one were trying to be unnecessarily symbolic, one might point out that beaten fabric, and black and blue, traces of red suit him as well as Raquelle's polished aesthetic suits him.
The scarred ruin of his left hand ends up hanging a halt, snared by the other man's fingers. Though not entirely an unexpected state of affairs, Bolivar isn't entirely sure what to do with that there. He is, after all, holding a dirty napkin. "A few things," he says. "Me and Gordon Ramsay would probably fucking kill each other with half a chance, but it could be funny.
"I don't cook as well as you can sing. You should probably do something meaningful with that."
[Raquelle(#1215)] Being good with one's hands comes in handy sometimes as he releases that wrist for a brief moment, to snag the napkin with two fingers…tugging a bit before tossing it onto the table and going back to snagging the hand and giving a small tug as he shifts his position in his chair with a soft chuckle. He's always been veddy observant (in certain circumstances, 2 bottles of sake and a joint and he spends time staring at Bubbles the Unicorn dancing on the ceiling before falling asleep…nobody's perfect) but he still takes his time to look Bolivar over, those blue or maybe light grey eyes definitely glinting more towards baby blue this evening though.
"Bah, Gordon's got the accent but you've got the entire package, you'd kick his ass I'm sure. 'Hells Kitchen' would turn into 'Kitchen of Hell' pretty fucking quickly." There's a wry twist of lips as he gives the hand and pants leg another tug, walking two fingers up that leg, pausing only at that statement. The compliment does get a soft smile…
…but the comment about doing meaningful things has his eyes lowering and he just nods slowly. Oh if he only knew, bah if he knew he'd probably not even be here. The mental panic is hidden though by a mask of Raquelleism(tm) "Keep sweet talking me and it'll probably be the first time I have sex on some plates of fajitas." Voice lowering in that way it does when his gift starts peeking around the corner of what is sultry.
You know, Kellyisms do deserve a whole construct and school of -ism unto themselves. The fajitas can have their plates and their space. They're all about putting meat into metaphorical belts; there are far better puns to illustrate and, like, appropriate furniture to do it with. Which takes Bolivar about four seconds to remember, when he's done staring mindlessly at the demurely oblique angle of Raquelle's perfect profile.
"C'mon. I'll show you my room."
The hand that Raquelle had permitted to go free hooks onto the edge of his shirt, knuckles brushing skin and fingers steeling a hold on the hem that isn't exactly strong enough to carry the weight that Bolivar leans into it.
Which is probably why he winds up seesawing closer than he needs to, even as he hop-skips in order to drag his leg off the other man's lap. "With my plastic dinosaurs and video games and bong and I'll bitch about my mom for a few minutes before we rekindle the rest of puberty in all its retarded glory." Bolivar pulls. Pullpullpull. Winds up pulling Raquelle's shirt further ajar if not completely askew, conveniently forgetting that glam-rock vainglory may not actually appreciate damage meted out to its threads. Maybe because he's an asshole, or simply because he wants to see.
Belts, Meat, Doing it…man the puns are just tooo easy in the world of metaphor. However, Raquelle's attention is not on potential food related dirties, oh no, it is on the fact that magic words have been spoken! Eyebrows shoot up and he just grins. "Oho…" Is the eloquent reply to the invitation.
He starts to get to his feet but there's a leg on his lap and a hand in his shirt - then his shirt is halfway tugged off and a button strains to hold the possibly soon to be remnants of black blouseness closed, even if by now it really doesn't matter. He is even helpful with the weeble-woble of a man's leg dragging, skimming fingers up calf and half-way up thigh to ease it off of his lap.
At the end of the day…Raquelle yanks his brain back to reality as he rises to his feet, tugged along by his shirt. A flash of silver exposed though if the shirt ends up off his shoulder, because guess who has piercings. Kelly does! "Mrow…" And damn if he doesn't mimic the sound with an edge of a purr. "As long as my voice doesn't drop again, it is all good."
Bolivar's bedroom is over —> there. There are only two hyphens involved, so the distance ordinarily wouldn't be very far at all, except there is a small progress-impeding problem with the tiny Mexican being attached to Raquelle's… chin. Occasionally, his height— or lack thereof, is an inconvenience.
It works out in the end. The two men gone stumbling in through the doorway that reveals a chamber that does not, in fact, have plastic dinosaurs or video games or bongs anywhere in sight, partly because the video games were outside and he smokes his pot out of joints. Instead, a stash of gun magazines and movies and dog paraphernalia populate the few shelves. He also has another television. Privilege of one who loathes to read.
Bed's a double, not quite a queen. Large enough for a man to wallow in when sprawled out in comfortable solitude, small enough to fit plus one. "Getting these hurt?" Bolivar's eyebrow is arched, peering down the gap between Raquelle's shirt and Raquelle's skin, where his head stopped on its way down. Heeey. Look. Treasure.
There are fish that attach themselves to fishtanks via mouth, and then there are small men with big guns who attach themselves to chins via lips, one is amusing the other causes Raquelle to grope blindly for Mehican buns to try to help boost the other man but by the time he gets a clue that it isn't his sexy chin it is height differences, they are indeed stumbling through a door. Doesn't mean he moves his hands though.
Eyes are quick to scan the room, nose inhaling the scent of the room deeply as his hands move for a brief second so he can shrug out of the blazer and distractedly finish unbuttoning his shirt, one hand returning to find hot cross buns, one a penny…two a plenty, while his other tugs at a waistband.
"Hm? - Ah…oh dios mio, not that much. Well okay, hurt like a bitch but they are worth it. Very much so."
More with the food food metaphors. There are worse things. At least Raquelle isn't saying them out loud this time, which means that Bolivar doesn't have to complain out loud either. Kissing can henceforth occur as soon as he's made the mad scrabble up the unhelpfully tall proportions like a cat climbing up a tree, only the cat-tree thing ends with the limitations of disproportion, insofar as that Raquelle is summarily felled onto the mattress.
It turns out, that Raquelle's revelation is not entirely correct. His chin is pretty great. So's his masochistic taste in jewelry, probably. Anyway, when you're a partially mutilated midget with too many anger issues, you can only be so long holding out in the interest of politeness before, really, irregardless of who's but a notch in what bedpost and self-esteem issues, blah blah, socially acceptable conformist mental hygiene whatever, getting into a pretty young thing's pants has ju—
Bolivar freezes after a moment. In terms of movement, rather than temperature, which seems to have raged off to some level just short of wilting to the touch of the other man's hands. His brow furrows, palpable because of the press of his forehead to Raquelle's temple. There is a drunken butterfly's pelt of eyelashes scissoring a blink. "Was that a gunshot?" he asks.
"Well fu-" Back meets mattress and Raquelle oofs, because apparently is party of interest is part cat. Or maybe spiderman, who knows, he doesn't really care cuz he's scrambling back a bit, rest of the expletive coming out in a quick intake of breath, "-uck." And then more kissing can commence and he is entirely focussed on the task at hand.
His shirt is somehow lost during this entire process and an extremely inappropriate remark or sound is quickly cut-off by the other man freezing up. Which makes his own hands pause in where they were about to grab Un Nightstick Naturale…or something and between pants he nips at Bolivar's earlobe and turns his head ever so slightly to try to hear…
"Only if God is still really pissed at my father giving me the middle name Jesus…" Sure it is pronounced Hay-suus but still. There's a hint of a whine to the low murmur though. "Gun…shot?"
For a few long seconds, nothing interrupts the quiet except for the slow hiss and thunder of trying to breathe quiet enough to hear if there is anything else interrupting the quiet. For those few long seconds, there doesn't appear to be.
Bolivar's eyes stay focused on that empty, middle distance of faraway thought, but he turns his head slightly, presses a kiss to Raquelle Hay-suus Cambria's cheek. There's a brisk, philosophical shrug, and the halves of the younger man's belt clink audibly as he shifts, turns back to the task at hand with no end of deligh—
Crack. This time, accompanied by the shrill note of a scream guttered out on too little air. From above.
"Jesus fucking Christ," Bolivar says, five ravaged fingers clutching across Raquelle's shoulder, laddering down the tattoo of matched angels as he tries to alight the vehicle in a reasonably graceful manner. It doesn't work out very well. He's just short of falling over, his jeans in a pinch, disgruntled and about as insensately angry as God apparently views Himself qualified for.
1. *heartbeat-pant* 2. *heartbeat-pant*… so on, each second seems far longer than a second and each inhale and exhale seems oh so very loud even if they aren't, oh the horror. Or something. Raquelle, however, believes that good things come to those who wait. So wait he does, patiently, chest rising and falling.
Then he blinks at the press of lips against his cheek, murmuring a quiet, "Thank fu-" as his hands start moving again and he shifts to be more accommodating. Only to hear the crack and the scream this time, starting to use a hand to prop himself up, eyebrows raising.
The only problem with this scenario is he starts to sit up about the same time Bolivar is just barely avoiding falling over and he reaches out to grab Bolivar's arm - just in case. "What. In the hell. Was that?" He has to ask, still breathing hard and blinking a bit.
"Some stupid fuckwit is discharging a weapon in my apartment complex and somebody is screaming," Bolivar says, like an extremely cantankerous turtle. Which he sort of is, teetering on the edge of overturning, held by one shoulder and the other foot tapping for purchase along the floor. Purchase eludes him for a moment, annoyingly; he has a feeling he's sticking Raquelle in the kidney with uncomfortable force using his knee, too.
Fortunately, that's alleviated fairly quickly when he scrabbles onto the floor. He looks somewhat less than professional at the moment. Neglected nightstick makes an impression in pocket, his hair a finger-furrowed mess, his shirt gaping around both the scarred and smooth halves of his chest, both, and his fly undone. The lattermost indignity is seen to first, though it does nothing to disguise the formermost one.
Walking is going to be uncomfortable unless he thinks really, really hard about sloppy vagina, though that's rather difficult to do with Raquelle still a sprawl on his bed.
Two seconds later, Bolivar remembers to avert his eyes. A Glock appears out from underneath the mattress, eased into ingress with a yank of his other small hand. "You can uh," he says. The muzzle of the weapon flaps around, either generally indicating his apartment or suggesting that Raquelle wed the 9.
"Oh. Lovely. Awesome timing." Raquelle deadpans with lowered lashes, sarcasm dripping from his words as he huffs a bit then quickly gahs when there's a knee saying hello to his kidney but he releases Bolivar's arm around the same time he finds the floor and he rolls over onto his stomach, pressing himself up and with a click-click and a bit of shoulder-blade rolling, he cracks his back and flumps back against the bed.
Blue eyes watch the other man like a hawk, tongue darting out to lick his lips and he pushes himself up again, closing his eyes and starting to count backwards from like 100 as he rolls back onto his back and with a scrunch of abs sits up eventually. News flash, unless you really hate math? Numbers reeeally do nothing to unpitch Jean tents. Just a little FYI.
It takes him a couple of seconds to note the gun in Bolivar's hand and his feet find the floor and he's starting to stand up, scanning the room for his shirt. "I can uh? I was trying to uh but the afore mentioned fuckwit is making somebody scream thereby making it hard for me to do the same in the good type of way." He gestures emphatically with one hand cuz his other is busy adjusting his crotch, causing a widening of eyes and a grimace. "Where-" His voice cracks a bit/strains and breaks as he clears his throat. "Oh, dear god, okay…where are you going?"
Aaargh. AaaraAARaaargh. Bolivar rolls his eyes up to the ceiling and lets his head fall back for about half a second so that he can envision this— "To do my job," he says, in an uncomfortably loud voice, as he turns around to stomp into his shoes. Sneakers. He doesn't actually break his stride between jamming his feet into the footwear and beginning the militant stomp out of the bedroom and into the hallway. "I'll show you out then.
"This way." You know, in case Raquelle had been too busy getting naked to remember the layout and exit strategy from this part of the cop's humble abode.
He is that, after all: a cop. That is the job that he is going to do. Save lives, calm hysterical women, preserve the peace. Either that, or he'll pistolwhip whoever shot, shove his foot up the posterior of whomever screamed far enough to pull them inside out by the uvula, and then shoot himself in the face. That seems like a really good idea. As far as he can remember, he willed Nina Lou and Logan Rose to Corina, who would find them new masters even if she really doesn't know jack shit about dogs herself.
Raquelle's eyebrow raises a fraction as he finds his shirt first, which is slipped on and left unbuttoned. Then he finds his blazer, which he also shrugs on and he runs his fingers through his hair, tousling it more and with a deep sigh he closes his eyes for a moment and follows after the man. "Shh, it's okay honey really…ah, there's this whole song 'you can't hurry love'." Curse those singing bitches. "Just, it's okay." He tries to be reassuring.
He shoves a hand into a pocket, worrying his bottom lip and idly scratching his still mostly bare chest. "Hey…you get yourself hurt though, doing your job, and I swear to fucking christ I'll find that box of lucky charms sitting somewhere in my pantry and beat you." He doesn't sound like he's joking, really. "And sing every Jackson 5 song I can think of over and over and over again til you miraculously heal…" He continues speaking softly though. "Then hogtie you to a bed for a week and do things to make people up a MA rating sticker on my door…"
Singing bitches is right. Fortunately, Bolivar is far too nice to round on his erstwhile almost-bedmate and add him to the list of those to maim for trying him when he's in this state. He detours through the living room in order to snag a cellphone off the coffee table, motions it flippantly in Raquelle's direction. He has to stretch his fingers to get the doorknob at the same time, but he manages in the end, and wrenches it open with an ill-tempered glance fetched into the hallway. "Promises, promises."
Nobody dying immediately outside. Relatedly, nothing to kick. "I'll be fucking— fine. I'll call backup."
As if summoned by the sudden re-emergence of the usual genre that Bolivar's life takes place in, the dogs awaken, snuffing audibly, their toenails clicking with blunt curiosity as they approach. Nina Lou's shoulder braces up companionably against the side of Raquelle's knee, and Rose's curly-haired head bops his calf. Bolivar frowns at them even as he jabs those three key digits into the phone.
Pushes his dogs back with a toe, and presses Raquelle on outward into the hallway with a small hand square on the left cheek of his rump. Scoot, scoot. It's time to go. "Yep, hi. This is Officer Bolivar Rodriguez-Smith. Shots fired at—" Even Bolivar's most professional, neutral voice is an absurdity of barely-contained temper. It's hard to tell whether that's normal for him, either.
Hint of a smile and a glint in those Baby Blues, Raquelle might be regretting somethings and yet at the same time, regretting nothing. He adjusts his jacket and a nod of his head shows he's relaxed some about Bolivar's personal safety. "Goodie goodie gumdrops."
Such a 'cutesy' response he spares a waggle of fingers and quiet whispered promise of bringing them gifts next time before he's being pushed out the door, ee! Hand on ass, very effective and he wiggles said ass a bit once out and turns around to watch Bolivar from the hallway.
And invisible hat is tipped before he blows a kiss, mouthing 'I'll call you' before sighing and heading on his way. Alas. Poor Little Kelly.