Aubrey Rois & Briar Rose (pricked) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-05-16 00:11:00 |
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Aubrey’s frown only deepened, caught somewhere between the stranger’s dimples and the pained expression on his handsome, stubbled face. Not quite fooled by the scope of his charm or his affable, easy-going attitude, Aubrey was forced to satisfy himself with a quirked eyebrow and a skeptical smirk. He decided on the spot (in that split-second sort of way that only drunks and children could get away with) that he liked this guy, and that he probably didn’t want to see him go tumbling ass-over-teakettle back down the way he’d come. He’d been about to make some clever remark, the words on the tip of his wine-flavoured tongue when a nearly-agonized grimace cut across the other man’s face and he suddenly looked even closer to collapse. Aubrey took a hesitant step closer and his free hand raised a couple inches from his side, prepared to catch the stranger if needed. And so he was taken aback when his offer of wine was accepted, and his look of half-amusement, half-concern turned to one of clear surprise. This time his eyebrows lifted nearly to his hairline, and his gaze followed the trickle of ruby-red that ran over the man’s chin and spilled onto the golden Triforce. “Looks like you took a wrong turn at the pass, buddy,” he quipped easily, taking the bottle back and downing another gulp for good measure. Then he did a bold thing, reaching out to place a hand against the other man’s elbow and bracing for a possible physical retaliation even as he did it. With the bottle, he pointed at the floor. “Yeah, right. As if you need any help to send you stumbling into a rusty nail. Sit. I’m not in the mood to perform first-aid tonight.” Even if the removal of those aviators had confirmed Aubrey’s suspicions. Yeah, definitely cute. Despite his lineage, Dylan was never one of those people that fell under the fawn-eyed and attentive headline of Cleans Up Nice. It probably had more to due with his parents than any genuine disinterest in appearance. As a child, his mother had gotten some cruel jollies out of the shrinking disapproval that both grandmothers could adopt when Dylan would run onstage - for a kindergarten graduation or prestigious benefit luncheon - while dappled with rainbow chalk dust, streaks of dirt typically reserved for the homeless, and cake frosting down the front of his little tux. To be fair, he'd managed to reign the dishevel in by a few nautical miles. There wasn't playdoh stuck in his hair these days, and he wasn't smeared with frosting when he could help it. There was a slacker appreciation for fashion, however, and a despicable shaving schedule that left him with an almost-permanent cacti prickle. He was the scion of acidtrip artists, so it would be a hell of a time to start believing that beauty was skin deep or anything. "You know first aid?" The question was clearly disbelieving, as if this stranger had just told him that he knew how to quantum leap to the Andromeda galaxy. Dylan just wasn't that good at taking care of himself. For as readily as he ran face-first into chaos, it was a bit unfortunate that he could barely tell the difference between a bandaid and a banana peel. Still, sitting did seem like a good idea. Even if it meant momentarily derailing him from the purpose of hiding behind the hotel door until the pain in his side was somewhat alleviated. At this point, Dylan would have settled for a pounding throb rather than a bone-splintering one. "Good idea, doc.." He sank to the dirty floor with a grimace that screwed his eyes shut and tightened his mouth because it felt like screaming. The fact that he might never get the fuck back up only now began to dawn on him, but the relief that came with resting was too great to ignore. He closed his eyes and rested his head back against the wall of peeling paper patterns. His sigh resembled that of stumbling upon an oasis after forty years in the desert. They made an odd pair, that much was certain as they performed their awkward dance in the narrow hallway. Aubrey, in his tailored Savile Row that managed elegance despite the dust and the slight wrinkle that came from sitting on the floor, brown curls miraculously behaving in direct defiance of the fact that they hadn’t seen a comb in a few days. The strange, battered man with his Triforce shirt worn without an ounce of irony, with his dishevelled appearance and his painstaking deliberation of style that painted a picture of not caring (and there was an artistry in that, as Aubrey knew better than most) and - he caught a glimpse as the other reluctantly sagged to the floor, shirt hem snagging in the process - okay, those were definitely Sailor Moon boxers. Who the hell was this guy? “What, like it’s hard?” He retorted in a put-open tone of affectation that would make any Valley Girl seethe with jealousy, pure Elle Woods indignation as he planted one fist (clenched around the neck of the wine bottle) against his hip. He didn’t let go of the man’s elbow until he was safely settled on the floor, taking the chance to appraise the scrapes and the contusions from close-up. Aubrey couldn’t help but wonder just what sort of scrap had made such a mess of a man both taller and broader than he was, and he thought back to his own past conflicts. Whomever had turned his new drinking buddy into a punching bag, Aubrey certainly didn’t want to encounter them in a dark alley. Hell, he’d even pass on a brightly-lit one. After another swig of wine for no particular reason other than that it had been almost thirty seconds since his last, Aubrey finally retreated a few steps and settled himself back down on the floor across from the punching bag. The bottle (nearer to empty than it was full) was placed on the floor between them as a peace offering, though he hoped it was an unnecessary one. “So exactly what the fuck happened to you?” This bibulous bastard had a poker hand of questions, and it made Dylan close one eye when he stared across the narrow hall. The fact that this man might have been armed had been a very real worry initially.. but now it was kind of forgotten. The drugs were quick with disposal of pesky, useless things like worry and memory. Honestly, it was kind of nice. Even for a guy who didn't put much concern into the multifarious subjects that he really should on a given day. The Mexico thing was even kind of background noise, because Max was out on assignment and out of reach, so what control did he have? He'd always bought enough into the system to faithfully believe that everything would turn out alright. She'd be alright. They didn't need him out there, they needed him here where the information was yet unfledged. The fact that he wasn't at the hotel room batting his homerun way through WPM should have been supplying enough of a guilt trip that turning back around was the only option. But taking a few hours through the door to mask the pain of injury seemed like a damn fine idea for the time being. The fact that he hadn't rushed through the door already was wholly due to the fact that he was still vaguely aware that he'd be unprofessional for doing so. Alcohol would help that.. Dylan edged his way off of the wall just enough to catch the bottle's neck in a fist of noose fingers. Ready for the hanging, he brought it up to his mouth in an ultimatum kind of swig. As a sign of amity and perhaps to prove that he wasn't that sore, Dylan planted his unbottled hand against the floor and leaned on it, extending the wine back to his buddy. "Freak tuna can accident," he murmured. "And what about you. Hemingway?" Smiling, he abandoned the wine bottle on the carpet between them as he leaned once more into the wall. He barely felt the ache in his side now, it was a dull throb that vanished into the undertow of prescription and alcohol collaboration. "Drink in decrepit, lonely places often?" Despite the bizarre severity of the situation - or perhaps, indeed, because of it - he could not suppress the crooked smile that tugged itself into place on his mouth, all wine-flushed lips and straight teeth. Aubrey observed the bleary, one-eyed gaze of the man who sat across from him and managed a drunken-sailor sway even as he was slumped against the wall, and he couldn’t help but be a little impressed. He’d have to request a tutorial on that particular skill at a later date. For the time being he accepted the return of his - Briar’s - bottle, holding it up to the light and giving it a good slosh in his very scientific method of measuring the contents that remained within. “Aren’t they all freakish? The tuna can accidents? It’s a slippery slope from slicing a finger open to getting loaded up with the good drugs in the ER,” he said in a conspiratorial tone, turning the neck of the bottle between his palms, back and forth. He was more or less entertaining himself at this point, or so he thought for the time being. Then came the crack about Hemingway, and that’s when his mouth twisted into a genuine grin. “That’s me,” he said, nodding agreeably as he fished a cigarette case from his inside jacket pocket. One clamped between his lips, the other offered to his new friend in exchange for the compliment, with an easy smile that wouldn’t be offended by a refusal. “‘An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.’ Too bad this isn’t a lonely, decrepit hotel in Cuba or the resemblance would be seriously uncanny.” "Have you ever been to Cuba?" It was said with the tired humor of a man who'd been there a little bit too much, and Dylan waved the offer of a cigarette off because despite the abuse of drugs and alcohol in this moment, he had his health to think about, okay? Not everybody had the luxury of destroying themselves while perfecting their tetris score. Some people had to think about the potential of tomorrow when diving out an open window or leaping from a roof were entirely real possibilities. On that note, he settled back against the wall. It was comfortable only because having a wall of his back meant that he simply had to keep his eyes focused in front of him. There was a sigh and a stretch, the flex of a lime green all-star tied up tight around the ankle. "I'll stick with Burroughs, I think. Nothing is true, everything is permitted." Because what could really stop a person aside from a lack of imagination? The right idea could take you anywhere. Out of a jail cell, out of a bed, out of the galaxy. The fact that Dylan hadn't been to Cuba aside from on assignment didn't mean much. He got to see the underbelly, which was the most delicious aspect of any city. Street tacos, diesel slick gutters, and that sweet metallic kind of taste in the air. Like bullet casings and frozen yogurt. He actually missed it, and maybe that is what attributed to his lopsided, junkyard dog grin of scruffy satisfaction. He hadn't consumed nearly enough wine for anything else. "Besides, I'm sure the resemblance isn't too uncanny." Dylan popped his neck with an anxious tilt of the head, and closed his eyes. The jaw was prickled and his neck was long. "You probably write manifestos on sea lions, not the trials of a man's pride in the natural world." He paused. "Or shit, maybe whales. Maybe you're more Melville." Somewhere between lighting his cigarette and exhaling a stream of grey-white smoke into the air that lingered above their heads, he shot the other the sort of withering look that undoubtedly went best with with a sardonic smile. “Are you going to make me quote Legally Blonde again?” Aubrey wondered aloud with mock sincerity, rubbing one hand over his four-day beard while he perfected the sarcastic arch of his brow. “I’m Canadian, buddy. I’m perfectly free to go frolic on the white beaches of Varadero without my country calling me a traitor - so I guess that’s one thing I’ve got over Jay-Z, huh?” Another flash of greenbrown-bright eyes and a broad smile, and Aubrey couldn’t quite help himself - in one smooth motion, he turned and slid across the floor of the hallway until he was pressed up against the same wall as his new friend. “As long as you’re not going to try to convince me that Burroughs was a Buddhist, because then I might have to punch you and I’m not sure how much impact that would have at the moment - you seem like you’re pretty much up for taking a hit, what with the bruising and all.” Merely inches from the door through which Briar and her stuffy, over-lubricated kingdom awaited him, Aubrey sat cross-legged and set the bottle of wine back down between them. For now - and for once - he would delay the next mouthful of blissful ignorance. “Are you insulting my beard?” He asked, somewhat incredulous and feigning a greater sense of insult at the same time. Sure, he was no Hemingway - but that didn’t mean he couldn’t take offense for fun, right? “Or maybe that’s a compliment. Melville had some fairly badass facial hair, but I’m really not into the whole squared-off look. Unless you’re trying to say that you think it’d be a good look for me, in which case I could maybe consider it.” Another lopsided smile then, before Aubrey ducked his head and focused on his cigarette - lips pursed, inhale, head back, exhale. He pressed his free hand against the worn floor beneath them, fingers splayed against rough planks of wood where the finish had long since worn off and the heads of copper nails rose up. The movement focused him, drew out the swirling sensation in his head and gave him balance, right there on the floor. Continue to part 3 here. |