Who: Ethan & Crane!Sophie What: Locking up the crazy. Where: Ethan's apartment When: Let's say... recent. Warnings/Rating: Some language.
It was nearly midnight when Sophie came knocking at Ethan’s door. The doormen had been warned against her, of course, and normally, they would have known to stop her. But there was something different about the girl this evening, dressed sedately in black slacks and a grey top, her long brown hair braided up and away from her face; she hardly looked like herself. And it was that which allowed her to slip past the doormen unnoticed, for Sophie Chase simply didn’t look or act as sedately as this woman did. Jonathan Crane might have been wearing the girl called Sophie, but that was where all of that ended. He simply wouldn’t, or perhaps couldn’t, bring himself to act as outlandish as his Vegas-persona was ought to do. Besides, he wasn’t trying to fool anyone in this place. Let them know that the girl wasn’t who she normally was. They weren’t going to get him out of her that easily.
The trip to see Ethan was two-fold. First, it was to assess whether or not the brother would follow through with any of his supposed threats. If it seemed he might, Crane came prepared with a cocktail of ground down prescriptions, courtesy of Sophie’s various illicit habits, that would render the man unconscious and out of it for hours. If he wasn’t, then there would be less trouble for him all around. Second, there were items that he knew Sophie had left behind at Ethan’s apartment. Whether it was due to carelessness or an actual thought to hide some of her collection, Crane was not entirely sure. Either way, there were items that needed to be retrieved, and he could wait no longer. While he felt there was no way that Sophie would be able to fight him back for control over her body, he was not so foolish to believe that his time in Las Vegas was infinite. Sooner or later, something would draw him away, so every minute had to be used to it’s fullest potential.
Stepping back from the door, Sophie rocked back on her heels, a picture of a bored female waiting and little else.
Ethan answered in due time, the creature wearing his sister's skin on the other side was forced to endure a good seven minutes of idle wait. Ethan had a tendency to take his time when it came to people that visited without announcing themselves. It was something that he'd learned from his mother, and perhaps a lingering haughtiness from his father's blood that simply made fucking sense. He'd been extremely(& exhaustingly) overwhelmed with worry over the Sophie situation - of which the people from her side of the door seemed half-fucktarded useless when it came to suggestions. Still, if he had known that it was (not!)Soph on the other side of his front door, Ethan would not have made her wait a second longer than necessary. The wait came from Ethan pulling on some jeans and finding a decent place to rest his fruit punch soda. Nobody called from the other side of the door, and he wasn't expecting anyone.. so if they didn't announce themselves, it was extremely likely that some drunk guest had just wandered to the wrong door and wandered off again.
As it was, when Ethan took a glimpse through his peephole, such was not the case. Immediately, the latches and deadbolts came undone in a dexterous flurry before he yanked the door open. "Sophie!" Sleek visage, meticulous clothes, and braided hair or not.. there was no disguising blood from blood.
Sophie might not have been patient enough to wait the seven minutes that it took Ethan to answer the door, but Jonathan Crane was a very patient man. There were things to think on as he stood there, arms folded over his chest, gaze a little distant as it often grew when his thoughts were anywhere but on the present. It was the sound of the door opening that drew him right back to reveal the familiar (at least to Sophie) form of Ethan Chase. “You sound happy to see me, Ethan,” Sophie said, a smile coming to her lips, something that was more than a little sane, wholly different from the manic energy that filled Sophie to overflowing. “Can I come in?”
It was the fact that she asked that was so heartbreaking. Sophie did not ask for anything, she'd been grown to demand and slam and kick her way through the obstacles of any no. The runaway princess, but still so much of their father shared between them. The demanding, resilient need for something more. Even if they didn't acknowledge it or accept it, the missing ingredient was love.. and they each took to a frantic search of it so differently. Ethan with his.. issues. Sophie with her (as he saw it) histrionic bullshit. But she asked to come in, the only thing that would have made it worse was if she'd somehow said please. No, not her.. this Jonathan Crane. Even her smile was plastic. Veneer waxed over the corpse of something he wasn't sure he recognized. "Yeah.." He'd stalled in all that thinking, and Ethan fell back from the door while trying to push past the absurdity and worry that overtook him in this face-to-face realization. How could they be taken over, how? "Come in.."
There might not have been a ‘please’ in there before, but there certainly was a thank you being said as she stepped through the doorway into Ethan’s apartment. Her steps came without the clack of stilettos against the hard floor, replaced instead by a plain pair of flats that were whisper soft with every step. The look she gave to the apartment was assessing, thorough and lengthy, taking in every detail of the place in a way that Sophie never would have. Finally, she turned, head tilted to the side, as she looked towards Ethan. “I won’t stay long, Ethan. But I left a bag here. Brown, with wooden handles? There’s a shirt in there that I am absolutely dying without. You wouldn’t know where that might be, would you?” Sugar sweet and full of sap, she stood politely instead of ransacking the place like she owned it. Let Ethan call her on her behavior, let him accuse her of what was different. Jonathan Crane wasn’t going to volunteer that information if Ethan didn’t want to talk about it. He’d simply get what he came here for and take that Sophie suit right back to where he came from.
"I probably burned it," he said with as much nonchalance as he could muster while he made his way toward the couch. Was it wise to turn his back on the alien? Ethan had done as much reading on the subject of Crane as his attention deficit mind could muster, but he was confused as to what in the hell a man like that would want with Sophie. He said to get out, but people couldn't breach doors like that and -- snatching his bottle of fruit punch fanta off of the coffee table, Ethan took a seat. "You know, because you're a selfish little bitch that doesn't deserve half of what she has.." Sip. Pushing buttons was his own experiment, as he watched her out of the corner of his eye.. awaiting waterworks or the kicking of shoes, banshee screams.. something familiar.
And none of that came. Instead, Sophie reached up to tuck a stray strand of chocolate brown behind one ear, her smile never wavering as she approached the couch and sat down beside Ethan. “And I’m trying to reform my ways, Ethan. You didn’t burn it, did you? Because that shirt meant a lot to me, and I would really like to get it back.” Her bag was sat down on the floor at her feet, and with that same smile, Sophie reached out to rest a hand on Ethan’s arm. “Please? Just tell me where it’s at, Ethan. I would really appreciate it.” Crane would give him another five minutes to produce, and then he’d have to do something else to spur all of this on.
"It might be in the bedroom," Ethan admitted on an offhand shrug. He'd always been a good liar, it came from years of being the junkie fuck-up son of a billionaire. You learned to lie better than the rest when a jail cell was in the works. So its not really that he didn't sympathize with what it meant to be locked up in a rehab/mental ward, but that didn't give anyone free reign over his sister. Even if she was the one who deserved a mental ward half of the time. "You're free to check," he said with another sip. Ready to follow her bodysnatcher in that direction if investigation came. There was a full sized closet with Sophie's name on it.
Bedroom. It was something, and even if Crane didn’t fully trust Ethan, he didn’t think there was much danger in going to the bedroom to retrieve Sophie’s bag. “You’re a peach, Ethan,” Sophie said, leaning in to press a kiss to Ethan’s cheek before she got up to her feet, slinging her purse over one shoulder. It was with Sophie’s help that he found the bedroom, the door pushed open as she looked around for the bag in question. It had to be in this place, somewhere, and if Sophie’s memory had been correct, there were more than a few little amber bottles in there with their own prizes. Getting his supplies on this side of the door was not nearly as easy as it was in Gotham, but there were ways around every problem. “Do you know where in here it is, Ethan?” Sophie called out in a sweet voice. “I’m not seeing it right off, and I really do need to just grab it and be on my way. Places to go, people to see. You understand, right?”
"Try the closet," he shouted from the living room while getting up and pacing around the coffee table. His only protective gear in this suite was the baseball bat he kept by the door, was that overkill for a bodysnatcher? Gah, he didn't know, and rather took a deep swig of his fruit punch to try and gather some ideas for this mission. Shooting her wasn't going to help. Goddamnit, Playstation was good for nothing when it came to actual life experience! Ultimately arriving in the doorway of his bedroom, casual with his bottle of delicious Fanta, he gestured toward the massive walk-in closet in the corner of the room. "That's where I usually put all of your shit that I plan to burn. Saving it up for New Years, actually. The great Sophie bonfire of 2013." Fakest of fake smiles. Sip. He advanced toward her and the closet, thinking out loud. "Unless the world ends in December, in which case I guess you'll forget all about this." Then, the shove! Cramming his forearm into the back of her neck, Ethan tried to knee and nudge her scrawny body into the opened closet door.
“You do realise you would do better in selling my stuff than burning it, right? Prada and Gucci isn’t cheap, Ethan.” This was said with her back to her brother, stepping towards the closet and tugging the door open with a peer inside. Crane knew what the bag in question looked like, large and obnoxious and likely easy to spot in a man’s closet, but in the darkness of the closet it was hard to see anything. Groping towards the wall, Sophie felt for a light switch, bathing the walk-in in yellow light moments before the arm to the back of her neck pitched her forward. She was a little thing, long limbs and narrow in form, and it gave her very little to really fight back with as she stumbled forward, turning to grab out at Ethan with a decidedly un-Sophie-like curse, those brown eyes dark with fury. “That was a big mistake,” Sophie ground out as she tried to launch herself back towards him, because there was no way in hell Jonathan Crane was allowing himself to be locked in a closet of all places.
"You're a fucking mistake," came with the wittiest of all brotherly comebacks as the demon came back at him with claws and knobby limbs. Ethan kicked out, rarely concerned with hurting his sister in their general scraps, at this point, most bets were off. Most, not all. Even if she was possessed by some comic book villain, he wasn't going to slug her in the face or anything, he was just going to lock her in the closet until she came to her senses. Ethan tried to battle her back with knees and arms, bottle of Fanta carefully raised about his head. "Hey, watch the punch!" Rude.
It was one of his knees that sent her off balance, sprawling backwards on her rear some feet away from the entrance to the closet, leaving her with a sore bottom and a bruise pride. “Family isn’t supposed to do this,” she said petulantly, already working to haul herself back up to her feet to advance on him again, a ball of fury that wouldn’t be stopped easily.
"You're not my family, asshole." It was all Ethan said before he stepped back and kicked the closet door shut in her face as she was on the rise. Thankfully, the punch remained intact and Ethan finished it off with a long swig while he kept his back to the door against her frail, bird-like struggles. The closet didn't exactly lock from the outside because Norman Bates hadn't rented this suite out before him, but there had to be a way. Kicking out with a foot, Ethan caught the leg of a small chair beside the nightstand, he used it to hold some of his stereo speakers up and nothing more. But now the stereo speakers came crashing to the carpeted floor and he dragged the chair closer and wedged it beneath the handle of the closet door, ensuring it stayed closed for now. At least until he could move his bed over to effectively cement the closet closed with real sturdiness. Sinking with his back against the wall beside his closet as the girl's pounding and shouting continued inside the closet, Ethan closed his eyes. This was so fucked up.
When the door slammed shut in her face, Sophie threw herself against the door, trying to push it open, heels digging into the carpeted floor, fists flailing against the wooden structure. Getting trapped like this was not on Crane’s agenda for the day, and the simple fact that he could not find freedom here or there was igniting an anger that he could barely contain. There was a shriek of indignation as Sophie continued to pound on the door. “I swear to everything that is holy, you will regret locking me in here, Ethan Chase!” Crane shouted in Sophie’s higher-pitched, female tones, but even that did little to hide the anger that filled the words. The light in the walk-in was dim, enough to make out what was within and little more, and with one final kick at the door, Sophie stumbled back to sit, her purse dropping to the ground beside her. Crane knew he could wait as long as was needed for that door to open again. He was, after all, patient.