Norman Osborn will always be a (ex_supervill870) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-03-11 23:05:00 |
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Entry tags: | christine daae, persian, phantom, raoul de chagny |
Who: Neil, Aiden, Liam, and Sam
What: Trying to come up with a solution for their Alter problem and failing.
Where: Firefly.
When: ... Recently.
Warnings/Rating: Some childish antics, but nothing serious.
On the grounds that he really didn’t have anything better to do and that alcohol was starting to become part of his daily routine, Aiden had eventually relented and decided to go out drinking with the other three unfortunate souls who were beholden to the same strange door as he was. Firefly wasn’t all that busy when he arrived (early, on the grounds of being the first to show up), so he settled back at the small corner table and perused the drinks menu with a faint sneer. He wasn’t in the mood for anything to eat and they didn’t have much that was appealing on the drinks menu. Oh, sure, there was vodka, and presumably the bar would have everything normally available, but he didn’t feel like ordering standard. He also didn’t know how long he was going to have to wait before the others arrived, so it probably wasn’t a good idea to get completely smashed early on.
As Aiden perused, another part of his mind was turning slowly over the idea of sharing a mind with a fictional character. He’d gone through the door, and much to his surprise hadn’t needed to worry about fitting in because he ceased to exist. Nadir Khan, known only as the Persian in the novel, had taken his place. Aiden hadn’t been pleased with the situation at all, and had made his opinions known - yelling in the locked-off place in the other man’s head, swearing, demanding that door be opened again - to almost no avail. Nadir had immediately set about ignoring him and checking to ensure that the Opera House was still standing, still open, and no longer in any danger of being destroyed. The day spent there wore Aiden down to the point where he almost drank himself unconscious as soon as he was back on his own side of the door.
It was weird. It was, technically, impossible. Aiden didn’t want to think about it, and being forced to address it - especially now that he knew who was lurking in the shadows of his mind - made him angrier than he’d been in a while. Strange, ridiculous, unpleasant, unreal, unnatural. What the hell was he supposed to do? What the hell kind of life change was this? And here he’d been so happy with the bland, boring way his days had been going for the past few years.
With a sigh, Aiden ordered a shot of the infused vodka, just to see if it was at all worth the money. It wasn’t bad, but he grimaced at the first taste anyway. As if he could ever go through a day without being pissed off by every little thing.
Sam was intentionally late, and she was intentionally under-dressed, and she had an intentional chip on her shoulder that was meant to keep anyone from making even one damn comment about the fact that she’d stripped the dye from her hair. She was dressed in army-green cargo pants that were held well below her navel with a thick, black belt, and a snug black tee that bore the WoW Horde insignia on the front. Her boots announced her approach, black and heavy and intentionally loud, and she stopped just short of Aiden’s table. He looked exactly like she remembered from the hotel, even with the limited light there had been in the hallway, and she glanced down as he grimaced.
“Even the drink pisses you off, huh?” she asked, turning around a chair on the opposite side of the quarter table and straddling it (anything to take the attention off the honey blonde hair). Her arms came to rest along the chair back, and she waved over the waitress and asked for a pitcher of whatever was on tap. She wanted a cigarette, and she wondered how long she would be able to go with these three before needing a much needed smoke break. She glanced toward the door, and then she looked back at Aiden. “Think they’ll kick the shit out of each other before the end of the evening?” she asked of Neil and Liam, just as the waitress returned with a pitcher and a wink. Sam grinned, and she poured herself a mug, intentionally letting the froth spill onto the table.
Liam was the third to arrive, late, but not purposefully so. A conference call with his agent had run late, and even though he had made every excuse in the book to try and get away, it was nearly half an hour after his intentioned departure that he was finally out the door and grabbing a cab to the decided-upon locale. So when he finally arrived, he was harried, hair a mess, the long sleeves of his sweater half-covering his hands despite every push he gave them up to his elbows. The jeans he wore were well broken in, threadbare in the knees, his brown boots scuffed and well-loved. “Sorry, a meeting ran late and I-” He broke off as he came to the table, taking in the girl who sat straddling the chair, a bemused expression pulling at his lips.
“This is new,” Liam commented, boldly running his fingers through the back of her hair, the contact lasting only a moment before he dropped to sit between the pair, plucking up the menu and giving it a look over. “I like it,” he added a moment later, giving her a sidelong glance before he sat the menu down and leaned back, glancing over towards Aiden. “Good to see you again. You’re looking grouchy, as usual. It’s good to know some things stay the same.” A crack of a smile and Liam was back to the menu, chewing on his knuckle as he perused.
Neil had no legitimate excuse for being the last one to arrive, unless having a cranky masked man in his head counted as a viable explanation. Which, considering those he was going to meet, it just might be. Erik made it quite clear without using any words at all that he did not approve of this foolish gathering, nor did he enjoy being discussed, which was inevitably going to happen. Neil wasted precious hours attempting to reason with him, making the argument that someone needed to speak in his defense and he actually had to be present for that to happen. What he didn’t vocalize was that it might be nice to be in the company of people who understood, to some degree, what he was going through, and how difficult it could be. Despite his tardiness, Neil arrived looking calm and put-together as though he wasn’t the last addition to their little party. He’d attempted to dress down in jeans and a v-neck shirt, going for casual rather than polished, but he still exuded money. His wealth made the fact that he was so defensive of Erik all the more ironic. Then again, rich wasn’t automatically synonymous with ‘pompous, condescending asshole’.
He approached the table just in time to see Liam run his fingers through Sam’s newly blonde hair, which displeased Erik despite the fact that she wasn’t Christine. Great, he thought, groaning inwardly. This should be fun. “Sorry I’m late,” Neil announced as he dropped into the chair opposite Liam, between Aiden and Sam. He didn’t say a word about Sam’s new hair, and the only sign that he noticed was a quirk of his brows coupled with a smirk that was gone almost as quickly as it appeared. The menu was scanned quickly before he waved over the waitress to order the infused vodka on the rocks with a roguish grin that earned him a laugh in return. “So,” he said, turning back to the others, “you didn’t get started without me, did you?”
“We can only hope to be so entertained,” was all Aiden managed in response to Sam before Liam arrived, one hand suddenly running through Sam’s hair as though the sudden change was free to be examined at will. He snorted slightly, eyes flickering upward, as the man addressed him. Not thirty seconds and already that irritating nature was springing to the fore. Neil’s rather less ingratiating arrival didn’t change anything, although Aiden did take the opportunity to order a second shot of the infused vodka, straight, because if he was going to drink, it was going to burn.
It was a habit that would have earned him some sort of reputation if he ever drank in public.
“No, we’ve just been sitting here, trying to piss each other off.” Aiden pulled his empty shot glass away from the beer froth that was slowly spreading across the table. “Because that’s a wonderful way to start these sorts of things. What exactly are we discussing, anyway? Fictional characters have a tendency to be hard-wired into certain frames of mind, since they were written that way, and I doubt anything we say to try and convince either them or ourselves otherwise is going to have much effect. On anything.” The drinks came, and Aiden immediately downed his shot, grimacing in the sharp afterburn. Two would be enough for the moment, unless he accompanied them with something a little less strong.
Sam didn’t particularly like people randomly touching her, not if she wasn’t planning on sleeping with them in the next, say, 30 minute window. The touch to her hair earned Liam a smack of his hand and, as the other man sat down, a sharp kick to the leg of his chair with her booted foot. “Touch me again, and I’ll castrate you,” she promised. “If you think I’m going to let you pet me like I’m Christine, you have another thing coming.” She downed her beer, and she poured herself a second in an effort to keep from continuing the argument. She glanced over at the apologetic Neil, and she huffed slightly before turning to Aiden, who was gracing them with a lecture on the nature of literary characters. Christine, in her mind, was perfectly quiet, which wasn’t surprising - chicken.
“You’re an expert on fictional characters coming to life in people’s minds?” Sam asked, because the little that she’d seem made her unsure about that entire hard-wiring theory, which she considered crap. “I think they can mature and learn beyond the book, or play, or movie. Whatever. All that stuff has already happened, so anything they do is new, and anything new can be a deviation.” She leaned forward, arms crossed more heavily on the back of the chair. “I’m not saying they don’t want the things they want, but I think we shouldn’t underestimate them or expect them to be unchanging. That would be stupid.” She glared at Liam when she said the word stupid. “Anyway, I want to know if we die. If we go in there, and there’s something horrific and we die, do we really die here? If we get shot, or knocked up, or something. And, more importantly, what if they get stronger and start controlling stuff out here?” she asked.
Liam, who had ordered one of the pear martinis just to be different from the others, gave Sam a look at the smack and then kick to his chair, rolling his eyes before he settled back with his hands folded over his stomach. “Trust me, Sam, I have absolutely no intention of treating you like Raoul would treat Christine. One of you is a lady. The other is... well, she wears boots and threatens castration. Quite different, no mistaking those two.” Looking away from her and across first to Neil, giving him a nod by way of greeting, and then back to Aiden as he spoke on the topic at hand.
“Some things will only be found out by testing. Such as injuries. I don’t volunteer killing anyone just for experiment’s sake. And I would like to think that their control ends at the door, just as ours does. I didn’t sign up to have my life taken over by some fictional character.” Liam pressed his lips together after a moment, then let out a breath as he chuckled. “I do hope no one is listening in on our conversation. They will think this is positively insane and commit the lot of us to the local funny farm.”
“We’re trying to piss each other off already? Great,” Neil said, all too-bright sarcasm as he leaned back in his chair. Personally, Neil didn’t think discussing their fictional characters was going to accomplish anything, but if it made Liam and Sam feel better than he was willing to play along. Aiden seemed to share his opinions, since he didn’t appear thrilled to be here either. He had no intention of allowing Erik to control him or anyone dying on the other side of the door, but all their talk would mean nothing if they couldn’t follow through. He took a deep gulp of his drink when it came, ice clattering against the sides of the glass as let out a muffled laugh at Sam’s threat to castrate Liam. Erik was more subdued than usual, which was common when Neil was out somewhere in public, but he wasn’t completely silent. He didn’t agree with Aiden’s assessment that the fictional characters were ‘hard-wired’, since he thought of himself as very much real rather than a figment of someone else’s imagination.
He thought the truth might be somewhere between Aiden’s theory and Sam’s belief that the characters could grow, and after another gulp of vodka he decided to say as much. “They’re never going to change completely. They’ll still retain the essence of who they are, but their actions might be different. Erik is always going to love music, and he’ll never be completely sane, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to go off and kidnap Christine all over again. He can learn from his mistakes,” he said with a shrug. Whatever else they might think, Erik wasn’t caught in some sort of insanity loop where he’d repeat the same actions over and over. Dying was a valid concern, especially if Raoul decided to keep being an arrogant jerk and tried to take matters into his own hands, but none of them could say with any certainty what might happen. Unless one of them volunteered to jump of a building or shoot themselves in the log, no one could be sure. “Liam has a point,” he said. “We won’t know what happen if they die or get injured on their side of the door unless it actually happens.” Neil called the waitress over and ordered another vodka, this time with no ice. “I don’t think we can pretend they don’t have any influence here. He doesn’t talk to me or anything, but I can feel him. It’s like... I can read his emotions or something. Who knows if they might try for control? We don’t disappear when they’re the ones who take over.” He wasn’t particularly concerned about anyone overhearing them, because he honestly didn’t care, so he just shrugged at that.
“I just read a lot, all right?” Always had, always would. Either way, Aiden shrugged at Liam’s concern about being committed. He’d had his time in the psychiatrist’s office; another few months under the concern of DID wouldn’t be all that bad at this point, with the exception of the cost. “More than half the time the characters are written with a specific goal in mind, and a shittily written specific goal in mind at that. Authors want a specific conclusion and fuck everything in the way of getting there. So, yes, characters tend to stick to certain paths. Growing … ” He sighed. “Whatever. If they can, then I’m wrong. Which is probably for the best in this situation.”
He leaned back and watched them talk, wondering if he should order another drink but already feeling a tinge of a buzz. If he paced his drinking, he could avoid staggering home to wake up with the world’s biggest hangover; all the rest of the times, he drank too much too fast. Aiden chewed on the edge of his second shot glass and considered the idea of influence here. These days, he heard Nadir complaining at him; he heard the man’s insistence that he do this or that differently, or just do something when, overall, Aiden didn’t feel much like doing anything. But the man’s presence had changed some things, like his accuracy and his tendency to drink. So he agreed with that much.
“If they can control us out here,” Aiden said, “then we can control them in there. They try any shit and it comes back on them.” It was a simplistic solution, and somewhat unlike him, but it was at least sensible, for once. And then he went ahead and ordered another shot of vodka, because the taste was growing on him and he was far too sober for the topic at hand.
Sam was too busy glaring at Liam to register the first part of the conversation and, subsequently, kicking Neil’s leg under the table. But by the time they made it around to dying and influence she was back in the game. She’d sock Liam one before the night was out, but she was biding her time; the glare would have to do for now. Anyway, she knew she wasn’t a lady. Why the hell should she be offended? Christine was all hushed breath in her mind, and Sam wished little-miss-mouthy would chirp up for once. At least now it would be useful. “I think it’s different for everyone. She’s really mouthy. Like I want to strangle her mouthy. She wants things all the time, and it’s easier just to let her have them and shut her up,” she explained, lifting a honeyed lock and letting it fall once more. “So, what if they start controlling us all the way? I mean, what if we wake up one morning with them here?” There wasn’t any real answer, and dammit she wanted a smoke. She pulled out her lighter, metal and engraved with delicate and detailed strokes, and she flipped it open and closed as she spoke, her attention turning to Aiden. “So, you’re saying that because Christine was written to be a conflicted damsel, that’s all she can be? Wonderful. Then we’re absolutely going to repeat history again, because that caused everything in the first place.”
“I don’t think we’re going to be rewriting the stories over again, though,” Liam said, ignoring Sam’s glare, though it was difficult because he believed the woman was going to end up burning a hole through him with its intensity. “They’ve already lived that life. Think if you were them. Would you want to repeat the same thing over, again? I’ll speak for Raoul here. He doesn’t want that. And as much of an asshole as he can be, that’s all he’s trying to ensure. Doesn’t go about it the best way, but he’s proceeding forward, that I can say, at least.” Fingers wrapped around the stem of his martini glass after it arrived, and he gestured with this hand, sleeves pushed up towards his elbows but falling constantly back towards his hands. “Suffice to say, I agree with Neil here. It’s just a matter of how much influence we can keep over them. Raoul is... very awake in my thoughts, I’ll confess, even if I sound insane saying as such. It’s turning into something like companionship.” He paused, nearly sloshing his drink over the edges of the glass before he took a long drink, grimacing a moment later. “Oh god, that’s foul.”
And with that, Liam reached over, wrapped his hand around Sam’s mug of beer, and took a long drink before settling it back in front of her, just as though it had belonged to him. “As I was saying. We should test this. The influence we have over them, next time we go through the Door. There is going to be a next time, yes?”
Neil had never paid much attention to the narrative structure of a typical book. He’d done his fair share of reading, mostly back in university, but he’d always preferred reading for enjoyment over analyzing themes and symbols and whatever the hell else his professors had claimed were ‘significant’. All he knew was that Erik didn’t feel like a cardboard cut-out; he was a person, real and living, and while personal growth might not be in his repertoire he wasn’t ruling it out. He supposed it was one of those wait-and-see sort of things, so he sipped his vodka while Aiden gave his opinion. Oh, he’d hear them all out, but in the end he’d be dealing with Erik in his own way. The others, as helpful as they might try to be, simply didn’t know what it was like to have them in their heads. “Exerting our own control might be our best bet to keeping them from doing anything stupid,” he said, shooting an exaggerated frown at Sam when he felt her kick him under the table along with a look that said it was completely unnecessary.
“I feel fortunate. Erik doesn’t want much,” he said, which wasn’t exactly true, but at least he wasn’t terribly demanding unless he was in one of his moods. Most of the time the man was fairly simple. He wanted his music, first and foremost, and he wanted to compose. Other things, like compassion and Christine, were desired but not actually expected. “They won’t control us here unless we let them. So, we don’t let them.” Erik could do his thing once they crossed into Phantom land, but he wasn’t in control here. Besides, Erik hated this modern world. He hated being around people and he hated the superficial nature of the bulk of society. The only thing he might want to do on this side was plan mass murder, but Neil had no intention of letting that happen or voicing that particular possibility aloud. “Look, Erik doesn’t want history to repeat itself any more than Raoul or Christine would. He finally has the Opera House all to himself. He’s not leaving.” The only reason Erik might leave his underground lair was for food, but even then he utilized secret tunnels to go unnoticed. He didn’t want another mob coming after him.
Neil watched Liam take a swig of Sam’s beer with raised eyebrows, suspecting that wasn’t about to go over well. “Sure, there’s going to be a next time,” he said loudly, before glasses or other things could go flying. “Erik won’t let me keep him away forever. We’ll test it out, see what happens, and report the results back. It’ll be our very own experiment.”
Sam had a hard time concentrating on Neil’s words, because all she wanted to do was dump the remaining beer over Liam’s head. She refrained (temporarily). “Christine doesn’t want history to repeat itself either,” she said of the silent woman in her mind. “She wants to move forward, and she’s worried. Listen, as far as she knows she just left that Opera House, which is the only thing she’s known in her life. She’s scared, and she’s lonely, and I’m not going to be able to keep her from being an idiot. There’s a shit sequel, if anyone’s seen the thing, and things go to crap in it. I’m wondering if things aren’t destined to go to crap here.” She didn’t bother saying that Christine would want to go back, no matter how much she tried to appease her with beauty regimes and singing lessons. Once she was done, before anyone could stop her, she picked up her pitcher of beer and dumped the remaining (albeit minimal) contents on Liam’s head. “In case you wanted the rest,” she added, because that shit was just rude, what he’d done.
Aiden was prepared to be the devil’s advocate who demanded they not go back through that door, that they just stay put and forget everything that had happened - even though he was somewhat curious about trying it and seeing just how much influence he could exert, and hell, maybe even explore a world he didn’t think it was possible to ever see - when Liam pulled a dick move and Sam responded with another dick move. He shut his mouth, sighed, and shifted his chair back a little ways from the table. If shit was going to hit the fan, he was only going to be tangentially involved.
“Didn’t you want to set this up?” Aiden asked Liam pointedly. “Why are you trying to get us kicked out? Which goes for you, too,” he said, turning his glare on Sam, because Aiden was the sort to realize that blame could be equally allotted to everyone except him. “Is one of us going to have to sit between you two so you can play nice?” He glanced at the bar, where the barman hadn’t noticed anything but their waitress had, and was moving to get either a towel or a larger waiter to act as a bouncer. “Christ. Look, fine, whatever, maybe I’m talking out of my ass about the inflexibility of fictional characters. This isn’t exactly a situation I have much experience with. Whatever your people want to do, great. Nadir wants to make sure they all go off and live their own lives without murdering each other. And the best way to keep that from happening is to never give them a chance.”
Which meant: don’t go through the door.
Liam listened, as Liam was ought to do, because that was one of the things that he was good at. And, it seemed, pissing Sam off was one of the other things with how things were shaping up. If he was bothered by the dredges of beer that were poured over his head, if Sam was wanting some reaction from it, those expectations were not met. A napkin was grabbed, wiping off his face, and Liam continued on as he had before, even with wet hair and smelling strongly of hops and barley. “I’m not trying to get anyone kicked out. And actually, it was Sam’s idea in the first place. I just initiated.” A pleasant smile pulled at his lips as he dropped the wet napkin onto the table, grabbing another to wipe at the back of his neck, catching the drips of beer that threatened to run down his back.
“You may want to avoid it, Aiden, but going back through the doors? It’s inevitable. We can’t prevent it, but we can try and prepare as best we can. We test our influence over them next time we go through the door. And, heaven forbid, should anyone get hurt, we find out what happens when we come back through. It’ll at least give us something to go off of, yes?” Liam spoke in matter-of-fact Southern tones, managing to keep from sounding rude somehow. “Perhaps we should arrange to go through in pairs that won’t kill one another, so none of us are alone.”
Neil almost asked how Christine could be lonely when she had her dashing Vicomte by her side, spurred on by the vodkas that he continued to order whenever his glass was empty, but Sam emptied the remainder of her beer over Liam’s head before he could and the words became a snort of laughter instead. Unlike Aiden, he wasn’t particularly concerned with being kicked out, and he made no attempt to distance himself from the table. “I call not playing mediator,” he said mildly. “As for the shit sequel, I have no intention of seeing it, and I don’t think I’d recommend anyone else does either. Nothing is destined to happen. They’re not following a set script when we go through the door.” Not going through at all was a definite way to ensure nothing went wrong, of course, but it was easier said than done, and sooner or later Erik would want to return home. After that, it would simply be a matter of time before he pushed hard enough to achieve his goal in one way or another.
Erik and Raoul may have hated one another, but he personally had nothing against Liam. He didn’t know the guy well enough to feel much of anything about him either way. Right now he was making sense, so Neil saw no problems with agreeing. “Liam has a point. Sooner or later we’ll end up going through again, and we’re better off dealing with that and doing what we can to keep ourselves alive and hopefully unharmed.” The idea of pairs, however, didn’t sit right with Erik. He wanted nothing to do with Raoul, of course, and while he didn’t mind Nadir, he preferred to be alone. Neil was the one who decided Erik being anywhere near Christine was a bad idea. He couldn’t predict how the man would react upon seeing her again, and in the interest of keeping Raoul the idiot from causing chaos it was best that they never had to find out. “In Erik’s case, I think being alone is the point,” he said dryly.
Sam was disappointed when Liam didn’t scream like a baby at being doused with beer, but the disappointment passed when the conversation continued. “He started it,” she said, pointing a finger at Liam, her response to Neil’s indication that he didn’t intend to play mediator, and to Aiden’s comment about getting thrown out of places. “Plus, I’m good at getting my ass kicked out of places.” That came with a smile. It was like pulling pigtails on a playground, but Sam had always been the kind of girl to kick the hell out of any boy that tried that crap, and getting older hadn’t changed that about her. She sighed when the conversation continued, and she rubbed her fingers against her eyes as she focused once more. “Well, I’m not arguing about us not going through. I think we all tried that in the first place - well, everyone except Liam - and we all ended up in there anyway.” She had to admit, too, that Neil had a point about going it alone. “Neil would have to go with Aiden, and Liam and I might kill each other before get inside. Listen, I’m going to be blunt here, I don’t have any control over that girl in there. I don’t think any of you have control over your people.” She shrugged, because it wasn’t the most helpful comment, but there it was.
“Which leave us where, exactly?” she asked, fully expecting no one to have an answer for her. “With a Vicomte that wants to actually win, instead of being handed a victory. An Opera Ghost that wants to be a recluse, but still has obsessions. A stupid singer who isn’t sure of jack shit. And Mister Logic.” She turned to Aiden. “Which means, baby, that it’s all on you.” Because, really, he was the only one with an unbiased person in his head. Nadir seemed to like all of them, which made him pivotal; even Christine had realized that much.
For years Aiden had managed to get by on sheer stubborn refusal. It had worked out fairly well for him, if by ‘fairly well’ people were willing to accept that meant that he lived like a recluse in a tiny bookstore and hated almost everything. He wanted to apply that to this - to keep himself and everyone else from going back through those doors - so that nothing else complicated would happen and nobody would wind up dead because fiction was becoming reality. He was even willing to combat his own pressing curiosity and Nadir’s insistence otherwise if it meant keeping things simple. But, in the face of the other three, who had their own (grudgingly acceptable) points and a refusal to really put up with his logic, he realized he was probably going to be overruled, and in that case would have to go through anyway because of Nadir’s pressing influence.
“Sorry, what’s all on me?” Aiden said, not deigning to respond to the continued Sam-Liam argument or the suggestion of the sequel. “Keeping you people alive? Making sure you don’t tear each other apart? He might be willing to put up with that,” and here Aiden jabbed a finger at his skull, “but I’m not. If you’re all absolutely bound and determined to go back through those doors and let these people live out their lives, then you take responsibility of your own. I’m not a babysitter.” Neither was Nadir. Still, there was a feeling of a sigh in his mind, aggrieved and tired of Aiden’s blatant refusal to compromise. He grimaced and slumped in his chair, ordering another shot of vodka when the waitress was within range. “If you’re going to go through again, it’s not like I’m much of a help in the mediation business - whatever I have to say isn’t going to help him out any.”
“We’re not asking you to be a babysitter,” Liam said a moment later, sweeping his hand back through his beer-damp hair and flicking the residual beer in Sam’s direction casually. “But Nadir is at least somewhat neutral, unlike our three problems.” Though from this point, Liam didn’t know what good that would do. Three of them and one neutral party was hardly going to make anything easier. “I’m not sure anymore. I feel as though we’re talking in circles, and I was really hoping we would figure out something more concrete this evening.” The author let out a sigh and sat back in his chair, hands folded over the front of his chest, fingers steepled, thumbs twirling.
“She is,” Neil added helpfully. “I’ll give her that much.” They’d both been kicked out of the theater, but Sam had been the one to instigate that, and he hadn’t been kicked out of anywhere on his own since he was a teenager and that kind of thing seemed like great fun. While he wouldn’t deny the necessity of such a conversation, he was growing tired of the constant circles they seemed to be going in concerning their characters. Go through the door, don’t go through the door. Try to exert control, make the best of it, so on and so forth. Nothing was being accomplished, and he doubted anything could be. “I haven’t tried controlling Erik yet, but Sam has a point. I’m honestly not sure if I could. On the plus side, he can’t control me either.” In terms of going through with Aiden, he did think the man was his best bet, but Erik bristled at the idea. Nadir may not have been an enemy but that hardly meant he would be permitted to see his underground lair. It didn’t seem fair to put sole responsibility on the guy either.
He let Aiden have his say, and listened to Liam’s disappointment. Sam was harder to read, but she probably hadn’t got anything more out of it than he did, and Neil had little else to contribute. “So, the pairs thing is an option. Or we could say the hell with it, go through, and do our best to keep control.” He sighed. “Concrete is easier said than done. There is no perfect answer.”
Sam glared at Liam when he flicked the beer at her, but she didn’t acknowledge it. She too was getting frustrated, and she pushed her hair out of her face. Her chair legs screeched as she pushed away from the table, indicating she intended to stand. “I think we shouldn’t forget that we fucking matter here too. I mean, I get that we’re concentrating on them, but I’m not handing my life over to a scared girl who doesn’t know what she wants. My main goal is getting in and out of there alive, when it’s necessary to go. I think you guys should concentrate on the same thing too. Maybe pairs is a bad idea,” she added, in retrospect. “If we’re not in there at the same time, it’s better. Maybe we stagger it. One day of the week for each of us or something.” It might not work. They might want to see the people they knew, but it was something to try, something that wasn’t a constant circle of dialogue. “We’re all going to defend whoever we’ve got in our minds, though. I think that’s pretty clear.” She stood, and she pulled a pack of cigarettes from her pocket. “I’m going for a smoke, and then I’m going to get drunk. If you guys figure out a better solution, you know where to reach me.”
Aiden sighed. His desire not to repeat any prior actions wasn’t going to go through, that much was for sure - even if he handcuffed himself to the shop, he’d wind up back through that door. The rest of them were planning on it. Everyone’s fictional counterparts were likely champing at the bit to get back through. He nodded gloomily as Liam mentioned talking in circles and Neil brought up that there would be no perfect answer, and gave Sam a wry look as she stood up with cigarettes in hand. His fingers almost unconsciously wrapped around the shot glass the waitress deposited in front of him, but he didn’t drink it just yet.
“Fine,” he said, and with how aggrieved he sounded it was like he’d just agreed to a military truce to avert a third world war. “Either we’ll all die or we’re going to have to start dealing with soap operas that should have ended a hell of a long time ago. Staggering might be a good idea. I doubt any of us really needs to go back through in a great hurry, or very frequently.” Not even if other people demanded it. “We could keep an eye on everybody else tied into this bullshit. I’m sure someone that can access some other door will do something stupid sooner or later, and we’ll figure out what our limits will be.”
And now, Aiden wanted to get drunk, too. But alone, and in the relatively safety and marginal comfort of his shitty loft. He tossed back the shot and grimaced at the bottom of the glass.
“Unless someone else wants to bring something up, I say we split for now.”
Liam listened, shifting to the side onto one hip to pull out his wallet, several bills thrown down to cover the tab for the table. This hadn’t gone how he had wanted, and the four of them seemed to be incompatible on nearly every level. “Splitting up sounds good. The lot of you know how to get hold of me if you need. Maybe this is just something we need to do on our own. And hope the streams don’t cross, or anything like that.” There was something tired in his voice, and he got to his feet, giving the two men a short nod. “I’ll see you around, perhaps.” And then the writer left, giving hardly another look towards Sam before he disappeared into the crowds starting to develop, swallowed up by the people.
“Come on, Sam. No one here is putting our fictional tag-alongs ahead of ourselves,” Neil said, tossing back vodka number... well, at that point he’d lost count. It was the only way to get through the evening, which hadn’t been as disastrous as it could have been, but it certainly hadn’t gone well either. He’d said his piece, as had everyone else, and it was apparent that nothing had been resolved. Honestly, he’d prefer to deal with Erik on his own rather than throw his lot in with some sort of group solution that might not even work. “So, staggering it seems to be our best bet. Great. We could come up with a schedule or something.” There might have been a hint of sarcasm somewhere, but he was genuinely willing to give it a shot. It wasn’t perfect, and it might not work, but what the hell, right?
He returned Liam’s nod before watching the writer depart, and stood a few seconds later. “I’m out of here too. Aiden, Sam,” he said, nodding at each. “Enjoy the rest of your night.” Neil was too buzzed to return back to his suite, and he decided to see what the remaining hours until dawn might have in store.