Jules knows Violet is a (ex_haint987) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-09-02 00:09:00 |
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Entry tags: | door: lxg, dorian gray, tate langdon, violet harmon |
Who: Jules & Loren → Violet & Tate + Dorian
What: Moving in
Where: LXG Door
When: Nowish
Warnings/Rating: Dorian is well behaved this time
It wasn't that Jules wouldn't have walked through Dorian's door on his own, but Violet was worried about how he'd react to seeing Loren, and she totally didn't want to waste this opportunity to get a key for a door that wasn't the murder house. No way was she risking a freakout from Jules, and so she showed up at Dorian's door early and in control of the tall, lanky blond boy. This key was super important. What if Tate was right, and all the bad stuff he did was because of the house? Being out of there might change everything. Tate might not kill people anymore, and she might not want to slice into herself anymore. They could live again, and no one would know otherwise. Dorian did it, didn't he? No one knew he wasn't really alive. She could totally do without pop tarts or pizza for that, to feel like she wasn't dead and stuck in a grave.
Violet raised a hand and knocked on Dorian's door, and she waited for him to open it up. She wasn't worried about living with a hedonist. No way. That was totally cool, as long as she could keep him from sleeping with Tate. But she was stronger than she looked, and she wasn't a little girl anymore, and she could totally make this work. It was the most important thing ever, making this work, and she'd do whatever she had to, even remake herself if it was necessary. She wouldn't have thought that before, but things were different now. She wasn't like other girls, and she'd finally accepted that. Jules, somewhere in the back of her mind, thought that was the scariest damn thing the girl'd thought in her entire time in his head.
The heavy oak door seemed forbidding in its deep stain and whorls, and this close the wood itself boasted a too-sweet aroma of dried Chinese poppies and deep daydreams. Beyond the door, the gentle chords of impressionist piano tinkled from the library of Dorian Gray. He played no cohesive piece, instead shifting to and from sliding treble notes, bits and pieces here and there in no particular pattern, light fingers as picky as a butterfly in a field of daisies. At the knock the notes abruptly cut off, leaving a ringing absence, and then there were steps and finally, with a swing on newly-oiled hinges, Dorian himself.
It was very late in the morning, though it seemed later in the heavy gray light, product of the heavy rain as it pounded on the library windows. The sound of it filled the ears, and the dusty, enchanting smile of the library was accentuated by the sooty smell of a coal fire and the red smell of a bottle of wine airing on the mantlepiece. Dorian was wearing a brocade robe the same color as the wine with gold threads, his skin and chest the marble white of the Renaissance masters. His long hair was askew and the sleepy look only increased the general air of innocence that the wealthy assembly of clothes he usually wore smothered. He tipped his head to give “Jules” a bleary look out of one eye under the shield of a fall of brown hair soft as down. It wasn’t possible for Dorian to look tired, but one got the general impression simply from his lack of energy as he settled his bare feet and leaned against the frame of his door. “Look who it is,” he said, blithely.
"No roast, huh?" the lanky blond boy asked, no Southern accent and more than a little teenage attitude in the cock of his head and the expression on his face. "Here," he said, holding up a promised bag full of McDonalds goodness, and then pushing past Dorian and into the door.
The blond boy disappeared as soon as he crossed the threshold, leaving a teenage girl behind that was completely ill-suited to the time and place, but Violet didn't really care. Her parents had sent her to those schools with pleated skirts and cheerleaders and stuff, and she hadn't fit in there either. "You so need to try the fries before they wilt," she suggested of the bag, and she strolled right in, faded jeans and flowery dress to mid-thigh, as if she totally belonged there. It was her new home, wasn't it? She looked around the room - really looked, which she hadn't done the five seconds she'd been there before. "Cool. Totally retro," she said, glancing back at the sleepy man who didn't look much older than her at all.
Dorian’s sleepy gaze widened slightly as Jules advanced toward him, and he stood back for the entry without really thinking about what he was doing, pulling the expertly tailored him of the brocade robe with him. He didn’t recognize the paint on the bag and just gave it a blank look until he visibly remembered the conversation about the roast. His lashes fluttered with surprise, more of the butterfly movement over his face, and then his expression warmed with a smile. “Ah. Hello, my flower. I am glad you like it.” Enjoying the novelty of her appearance, he closed the door behind her and put his hands into the deep thready pockets as he took in her appearance. She looked like a working girl in that ridiculous outfit, except she was too clean for it. “The cook handles the roast, and I am afraid you will have to wait until dinner for it.” He shot a curious look at the bag.
Violet rolled her eyes in a way that was eternally teenager, and she reached back into the white bag with the golden arches and pulled out a french fry, which she held up and out to him. "You're totally into illegal substances. This is just as good. Try it," she insisted. A flower though she might be, Violet had never been a wilting one. She wasn't shy, and she wasn't afraid. She could cry and scream along with the best of them, but she was a total badass in her time, which had driven her parents crazy - that had kinda been the point. "So... Tate. We should talk about him before he gets here." And not because she thought Dorian would have any problems with Tate. No, it was so way far in the opposite direction that it didn't even fit on the map. "He's kinda in recovery, or remission, or sober, kinda."
After the night he’d had, Dorian thought that it was a little early in the morning for food, not that he could feel delicate anymore, but such things were all psychological in nature, he had discovered. Given the choice he probably would not have looked forward to visitors today, and the wispy, faded charm of Violet’s appearance was fading at every roll of the eyes. Sweeping along with his casual elegance, Dorian settled into the leather-bound couch, pulling his robe over his back and waist to smooth it over his lap. Taking a fry and inspecting it, Dorian looked up just in time to raise his eyebrows. “Tate? Here, you said? Recovery from what?” The smile was slightly dangerous.
"The house," she said, watching him. She was curious as to if he was going to eat the fry, or if not eating fries was some weird thing about this time period. She'd read up on things, because she was a voracious eater, but she hadn't found very much on daily things. She had ordered some 1900s House thing from Netflix, but it hadn't come yet, and she didn't want to waste time waiting for it, not when she'd spent way too much effort getting both Dorian and Tate to agree to this. "It's kinda bad, the house we lived in." Which was totally past tense, because now they lived here, with Dorian. She looked up at the ceiling. "How many rooms do you have in this place?"
It was obvious that Dorian had no idea what could be all that bad about a house. Drafty, perhaps? He pondered for a moment, nibbling on the greasy bit, which tasted almost exactly of his old cook’s gravy. “I never counted. Eight or so, perhaps? Four levels, it is a fairly modest home. There is a bedroom on this level you can use, if you do plan to stay.” He looked her over again, one fry still balanced on delicate fingertips. “Nothing like a ladies’ maid, though, perhaps you’ll want to find your own.” Somehow he doubted it, and there was something ironic in the comment. “Was your former residence very small?”
"The house is way huge. It was built in 1922, but it's all messed up, and it makes people crazy," Violet explained, as if houses making people crazy was something real, and not something that sounded she'd made it up. "That's why we want to leave. It makes people bad," she explained, and there was something in her eyes that was way too old for her teenage face. "And if you die there, you can't ever leave. You're stuck there for-like-ever," which was said with great solemnity and even a little bit of over-the-top teenage horror for effect. "Anyway, we wanted to leave, me and Tate. Did you like the fry?" Which was asked, of course, with no segue.
“This is a fry?” Dorian lifted it to examine the last of the goldenrod vegetable, which, he discovered, after further examination, to be potato. More lard than potato. It wasn’t bad, but it didn’t suit him. The salt was potent, though. He wouldn’t mind if there was salt like that at his table. “It is well enough.” Gently he put it down in a bronze tray that typically held cigarette ashes, but was currently clean (Dorian’s new staff was extremely efficient). “Houses in the future make people mad, you say? Haunted?” He was visibly intrigued. “What did this Tate say about your presence here? He sent you to see if these old houses are also mad? This one was erected in 1882, I believe. Somewhere thereabouts.”
At that moment a new knock sounded on the heavy, varnished wood of the door. Born from steady, gun chiseled knuckles that were too broad and swift to be Tate's. The knock radiated with weight and severity because Loren knew about the arrangement of this supposed door transition, and while he doubted the potential.. it was worth a shot. Less violence from Tate's side had to mean less violence in Loren's head, and that was something he'd been dead serious about in his discussion with Sam. A man couldn't live like this, not if he still wanted to be a man. If Loren couldn't forget and he couldn't move on, the only thing left for him would be to become the husk and adopt whatever mad dog vacancy that had ruled him before. Or maybe even that wasn't possible, maybe he'd just be tossed on endless currents of guilt and rage until a bullet split his teeth from his own hand. When did he get so morbid? Fiercely, Loren grimaced before he knocked again. Speak of the Devil, right?
"It's a fry. Try the burger if you don't like it," Violet suggested, already reaching into the bag to hand out a greasy, yellow covered item, when she heard the knock at the door. She smiled, and for a second there was totally a sign of the girl she could have been if life hadn't turned out so twisted. "That's Tate," she explained unnecessarily. "It kinda haunted," she admitted of the murder house, even as she crossed back to the door. "No, Tate is totally cool with living here. We're hoping this new house will make things better. You know, less creepy and stuff," she explained, and she yanked open the door, as if it was her own house, which it kinda was now.
But, of course, it was Loren there, not Tate at all, and one look into his eyes let Violet know that it was Loren and not Tate, and she hesitated for one second, tugging the door closed so it was only a crack, one that Loren was way too big to squeeze through. "You're a total putz," she told him, because she didn't get to talk to Loren very often. "You're totally straight and whatever, which is totally cool, but get a girlfriend or something so he can get over you. I kinda don't want him dating weirdo kinky hitmen just because you're entirely clueless." That said, she opened the door wide, grabbed Loren's arm, and pulled at him.
It wasn't that Loren and Violet did not have plenty of opportunity to talk to one another, it was that Loren decided a long time ago that he had nothing to say to her. This started sometime back when it had been Violet's brilliant plan to have Hannah audition at a strip club. He had no interest in taking in the bigger picture, in getting to know why Violet was the way she was, in mapping out all of the nightmarish events that may have led to Tate turning into Tate. All Loren really wanted was for the teenager traumas to stay on their side of the door, so that him and Jules and whoever else could just exist on the Vegas side without having to worry about the psychopathic, depressing overflow.
Loren wasn't a man that registered most emotions on any visible level. There might have been minor little ticks and tocks that gave him away on a bad day, but he'd never been one to look surprised. Not the way he did for a split second when Violet pried open the door. Loren looked down where she was dead little petite bones in a flowered dress, right before she brought the door almost closed again. He didn't reach out to stop her, and he didn't push at the door to gain entry. This had been her idea, after all. Her words brought out a narrowing of eyes and a flinch that had nothing to do with the insult she started out with. "He's not going to be dating hitmen," Loren explained with a little cant of his head that said there was no room for argument on that. When Violet grabbed at his arm, Loren twisted with a rough jerk loose from her fingers. His eyes were crystal and sea foam warning when he said, "Don't." His attention moved beyond her, into the quiet recesses of polished wood and dark opulence of the library beyond the door. Inherently suspicious even if he didn't have to be, if there was anybody whose survivor potential he didn't have to worry about, it was Violet and Tate. The interior of this house didn't look that much more promising than the murder house did, and Loren gave Violet a brief, accusatory glance before he stepped forward. She better know what she was doing.
Tate's sneakers were accustomed to antique floors, and he moved in alongside Violet. Those abysmal eyes went up to the ceiling with a contemplative tilt of his head all the way back. That mop of dandelion curls free from his face as he took the atmosphere in, all while he dismissively caught the sole of his shoe on the open door's edge somewhere behind him and nudged it closed. He wore olive green corduroys and a maroon thermal that was way too big. One sleeve was bunched way up past his elbow while the other dripped past his fingertips, Nosferatu long. The exposed hand was still bandaged from Loren's side, and Tate pulled at the wrappings as an idle afterthought with his teeth. He'd told Loren a long time ago that if he'd go through the door, the hand would be healed just fine, but the man was stubborn and seemed to think he deserved to suffer like a normal person. Stuffing the bandage into his back pocket, Tate wiggled fingers that were already healing. Then, he glanced down at Violet in sudden confusion. "Why does it smell like french fries?"
It had been a long stream of minutes, deeper than they seemed on the surface, rougher than any few minutes had a right to be. Dorian didn’t bother getting up as Violet did, more preoccupied with wiping his fingers on a handkerchief that he had pulled out of the pocket of his robe, and by the time he could be troubled to lift his head and direct a lazy, hooded gaze toward the door, Loren was already fully framed there. Dorian had no reason to expect to see the man again, and just the sight of him drained what little color remained in his face, leaving a complexion that was less marble and more chalk. He could think of nothing to say, just staring at the man as the heat of memories flickered in his eyes, and then Tate was there.
Dorian’s grip on the bunched material of his robe immediately relaxed. Tate was definitely more his speed, and when he was in the mood for male company he tended to order similar models, though perhaps better-fed and another layer of muscle or two to keep the warmth in. He recovered from the hellish appearance of his murderer in the span of seconds, smoothing down the robe and shifting on the leather couch to settled his chin on his upraised palm. There he cultivated an attitude of rapt interest, and his smile was a smooth motion that never stopped. “You were saying, about your last residence?” he prompted, as if the spontaneous healing was every day.
It was the man's voice that drew Tate's attention away from Violet, as if he only now realized that they were not alone. The migration of his line of sight was fluid, nothing jarred or startled in the expression. Just black pupils that bled nightmares across equally dark irises. There was no doubt that the chiseled elegance was Dorian. While Loren had been mind numbingly unfamiliar with the source, Tate was not. Byron and Keats had always been favored more so than Wilde, but Tate had been a student once. Reading had been taken more seriously than anything else during his school years, with the exception of maybe mass murder. If Loren had been familiar with the story, Tate doubted the man would have warmed up so easily to the idea of visiting this door. It wasn't exactly known for its happy endings. In offhand distraction, Tate dropped his mouth to Violet's hair for a brief, possessive kiss to the top of her head although suspicion clouded his eyes as he wondered just what she'd been saying about their house. There weren't a lot of warm, fuzzy details to share.
"I brought him McDonalds," Violet explained, tipping her head back to look up when Tate moved close and kissed her hair. She hadn't seen him in forever, and it kinda surprised her, the press of lips and closely possessive stance. It was easy to forget how Tate was like that, at least when she was focusing on Tate's involvement with other girls, and the questioning suspicion in Tate's dark, dark eyes was met with a roll of her own. "I was just telling him the house was wicked," she explained, and it wasn't good wicked, her voice said, not anymore, "and that we were looking forward to living here instead," she explained, which was close enough to the truth. "Jules has told him lots of stuff," she explained to Tate, leaning back against him and into the scratch of that too-long shirt. She knew they looked out of place in the room, in the time, but they could totally work on that, right? "We're going to need clothes so people don't look at us weird," she said, and there was a blatant hope there as she looked from Dorian and back up to Tate. She hadn't been outside in a way long time, not beyond the grounds of the murder house, and it was one of the first things she wanted to go; go somewhere there was no house at all, not even this awesome with eight rooms.
Dorian said something in French that neither was supposed to understand, something appropriately archaic about young love. Even though he smiled and his heavy dark lashes framed his gaze clearly, it was clear that the comment was not especially admiring. It wasn’t even a compliment. It was an observation, called from a long way off and from great experience. He decided to smoke, since it always soothed his mind. Dorian was possessed of relatively steady nerves (courtesy of age, not personality) but when they were frayed he reached for whatever was nearest. He pulled open a small wooden drawer in the round side table and fished out his box of cigarettes.
“Clothes, of course. Anything for my guests,” Dorian said, though he was still in his robe and had not troubled himself to stand to welcome them. Most of his attention now seemed to be on his cigarettes, but by and by one flickered to life--absurdly close to his pale skin, not that he noticed--and he returned his eyes to them. Well, actually, to Tate. “We’ll not pass you as servants, your speech would give you away too quickly. Friends, then, from America.” As if this was the farthest barbarism anyone could reach. “I am sure I have clothes for the young man, but we will have to be creative for you, my flower.” His gaze was slow in shifting to Violet’s figure.
Tate's inkblot eyes followed the man in the robe, even as Violet shifted and spoke beside him. His fingers dug up into the back of her dishwater hair, tangling idly close to the root while Dorian lit his cigarette. There was nothing to argue about being labeled as the friends from America. Violet and himself weren't con artists, they couldn't pass for anything other than American. Tate knew that to outsides - and shit, probably to Dorian himself - they were going to seem fucking weird. America was far enough away that it might explain that away. Be creative? Tate's brow creased with rallying attention, and his touch fell away from Violet as he moved forward. A borderline soundless scuff of his sneakers brought him to the french fries. They'd only been calling his name since he'd walked through the door, and Tate scooped three up for a swift bite and a shrug. "You could buy her something." To Tate, that didn't require a lot of creativity.
Violet watched the flame burn way too close to Dorian's skin, and she reached for the matches and cigarette box once he was done with them. She moved close enough to Tate to nudge his shoulder as he stole the fries, and then she climbed into one of the chairs in the room a second later. Her feet pressed into the seat cushion as she balanced on the arm in her denim and flowers, the scent of cherry sweetened patchouli moving with her as she settled and patted one of the cigarettes out of the pink box on her thigh. "Jules totally thinks the pink box is queer," she said with a smile, one that was absolutely devoid of anything like sex or seduction. If there was one thing Violet was missing, it was that. She lit the cigarette, and she took a long drag, her features honest and open as she settled on Tate (love, adoration, hate), and then on Dorian (curiosity, wariness, interest). "I don't mind dresses. They're kinda cool," she said. She was wearing one after all, wasn't she? Even if there was denim beneath it. "Or do I get to be some jade, or one of those epically modern women who refuse to wear corsets and stuff?" she asked, the question indicating that she'd read something on the topic, at least.
Dorian was too polished to look scandalized, but if Michelangel’s carved and picturesque John the Baptist could look mildly bothered, that probably would have been their best bet. Dorian in that robe, with the curl of opium-tinted smoke sliding out of the corner of his mouth, looked somewhat blasphemous just standing there. “Unless you are planning to live somewhere else and entertain for a ha’penny, certainly not.” There was something of a smooth snake’s unsympathetic humor in the comment. “All clothes must be fitted properly, of course. You cannot just frolic about picking things off the windows like daisies.” He glanced at the box. “I do not know what is odd about it,” he said, pouting slightly at what he interpreted to be a criticism of his favorite brand.
Dorian moseyed over to the wall and tugged on a tassled cord. Somewhere in the bowels of the house a bell rang, and he was already sitting again tapping ashes into the bronze bowl by the time a man appeared at the door to the library. He was neither old nor young, clean nor dirty, and he had a bland, focused appearance that reminded one of a starving dog. He did not look like someone to cross and yet he seemed especially absent, as if he was simply part of the scenery. “My guests,” Dorian said, indicating Tate and Violet with a wave of a sculpted pale hand. “From America.” He smiled like a boy with a new toy. “They will be staying for some time. I am sure Miss Violet will be needing a maid, so send out inquiries. And fetch tea.” The neutral man vanished without change of expression.
While it had been some time since Tate had been alive, the era he'd heralded was one that worshipped grunge and suffering over opulence. It was a little difficult for him to take all of this bronze and brocade seriously, even if Violet did seem to be absorbing the idea as a whole. He would have been more at home in the grime of the Victorian gutters than the halls of this house. Tate stood watchful, chewing french fry salt from the crest of his thumb when the new man appeared at the mouth of the library. A servant or butler of some kind, Tate observed him with a black, blank stare until the man turned and left. To Tate, the man's eerie silence likened him to that of the spooks from the old house. The idea was difficult to let go of, and Tate took a step closer to the door in intrigue before the man turned and vanished to the call for tea. Gross, tea.
Violet didn't laugh at being dubbed Miss Violet until the old guy had gone, and then she laughed so hard she fell onto the seat cushion and off the arm of the seat altogether. Laughing and young though she might be, there was still something unsettlingly grown about the girl with the straight hair and pale skin, and it had nothing to do with the fact that she was totally dead. She thought it was kinda interesting, that Dorian never asked how she or Tate had died, and she wondered about it as Tate began to take a few steps after the old guy. "Miss Violet," she said, talking about herself in the third person with a very fake sounding British accent, "has no idea what a ha'penny is, and she's kinda sure you don't mean entertain like in throwing a party," she said, a tip of her head and a cascade of long, fine hair over her shoulder. "But it's cool. I'll figure something out. Looking like a girl might not be way bad now that my folks aren't around to piss off by dressing weird." Because that was Violet's life in a neat little nutshell - acting out to get attention, it was kinda her specialty.
She hopped to her feet, and she walked up behind Tate, who she gravitated toward like some kind of helpless magnet. She pressed a cheek against his back, and she looked over at Dorian. "Thanks for letting us stay. It's way awesome, even if you do kinda look at us like we're new epic pets or something," she said, unoffended.
Dorian waved a hand, slowly seeping it from side to side in the air in front of him. His fingers didn’t move, just attached to his palm as it swayed gently, a leaf in the wind. “It is not a trouble.” Despite this assurance, it was clear in Dorian’s eyes and manner that the moment that either did become a trouble, or worse, boring, Dorian would sweep them out as easily as he had called the butler, as if they were so much dust tracked in from the street. Right now his eyes were bright and interested even under the casual veneer of his attire and lazy attention, but there was no telling how long that might last. “When he returns, Stevens will show you to your rooms.” And without even a farewell, he swept out of the room, trailing brocade and hints of sweet smoke.