Eames (plagiaristic) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-08-12 17:16:00 |
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Entry tags: | mary jane watson, two-face |
Who: Saint and MK
What: Tea! Surprise run ins and running away.
When: Before sads, recently.
Where: Un-designated tea-shop.
Warnings: None!
MK knew that Las Vegas was hot. She had been in the city for a year and a half at this point and had grown accustomed to how sweltering the temperatures could rise. It was the desert, after all. But, goddamn, was it hot during the day lately. Maybe it was the fact that she was vomiting buckets every morning and the faintest smells had her gagging, but she was not liking the summer anymore. It had her retreating into her (now shared with Sebastian of all people) apartment for most of the day, only leaving lighting quick to other air conditioned places, like her AA meetings or baby stores to browse or anyplace else where she could dodge the oppressive heat. The pregnancy, as happy as she told herself it would make her, was already taking its toll. Blistering headaches, weight loss, whacked out hormones. Though she looked much healthier now that she was clean, she didn’t feel that glow that she expected. Nor, did she feel very confident about being clean either. God, some days she wanted to chug down an entire bottle of whisky or do a line, but now there was another life she had to think about. And, she wanted to prove to Adam, prove to everyone that she could be a far better mother than any of them thought. This particular morning had her running errands around town early, before the heat hit and before her headaches and nausea creeped up as well. After taking a meeting with her agent (who was astounded by her recovery, yet wary to get her work), she stopped by the nearest coffee shop to get a large tea. (Coffee, the doctor said, was ixnayed, and oh god, that was sending MK off the edge already.) She didn’t realize until she actually walked inside, ordered, and was waiting for her drink, however, that this was the exact coffeehouse where she had first met Alexander. It had been more than a year since that day, more than a year since she was locked up and tortured for over a week, and though MK couldn’t go a day without reliving some bit of it, she forgot little details like this. The coffeeshop where she met him, the party that drove her into his arms, the burn of hypothermia in her body. Well, forget was a strong word. Fuzzed. They got fuzzed. Of course, it was easier to fuzz things when she was under the influence, but she couldn’t do that now, could she? She swayed on her feet for a second, then leaned against the counter, suddenly wishing she hadn’t left the house at all and thinking maybe she wouldn’t ever again. The barista finally handed her the large passion fruit tea with a concerned quirk of her brow, and MK offered her a small, shaky smile. Okay. She was just going to head home. Forget about all this. Bury it in something like a baby catalogue or whatever. But, as she turned to leave, she spotted a familiar face. “Saint?” she asked incredulously, eyebrows knitted together. How the hell was the world so small? The man in the line for coffee was rumpled; the shirt rolled up to his elbows was a soft chambray blue, worn as though it had been used often and wrinkled as if it had been slept in. Las Vegas was home to glitz, glamor and the wheeling and dealing that went on behind the scenes, the smoky smell of stages and the perfumes of the casino. Saint smelled like developer fluid and mint, clean green layered over with the acridity of something tangibly bitter and he looked like glitter and rhinestones were the furthest thing from him. He wasn’t tall and he had no presence to truly speak of, stage or otherwise, shaggy hair that curled across the collar of his shirt and narrow shoulders beneath the soft blue fabric. He turned his head, his hand reaching forward for a napkin disappeared into his jeans pocket and he smiled, a measured thing that came easily. “MK?” The world wasn’t small, to Saint. He knew it was a vast place, criss-crossed by people who lived much the same way given customs and cultures, who endeavored toward whatever their choices were as best they could. There were wide-open places where people had never been or had been long enough ago that the land had forgotten that it used to be host, and there were places they were crammed. But pleasure faintly evident in the soft brown eyes, not surprise, and Saint didn’t think of small worlds or coincidences, he thought of serendipity instead. “You look good.” She looked like a camera would linger, corona of light flaring at the back of her head, sepias and grayscale; Saint remembered vivid scarlet, faded would-be flames and a producer who’d looked more harried as the day went on and they burned through budget. “Better, even.” He stepped forward; the mug of tea wafted mint, he leaned in to kiss her cheek, drifting sandalwood and fresh air. MK tried her best to bury away the anxious panic that wracked through her body after realizing where she was. A shaky smile and a hard grip to her iced tea, fingers turning white with how hard she curled her fingers around it. She felt it hard to breathe for a second, as she remembered how charming Chris had been as they sat outside that cafe. But, the surprise of seeing Saint eased some of it. At least distracted her long enough to smile again when he said her name. “Living and breathing,” she said, as if so many people didn’t recognize her anyway. Despite the fact that it’d be a few months, at least since she left Passages, where she was in bold, bold headlines, heads turned and stared, wondering what was going on with the paparazzi princess. She kissed his cheek as well, quelling the shake in her body so he wouldn’t notice. “Thanks,” she said with a smile, though she didn’t feel better at all. As long as others thought that, it was okay. “You’re handsome as always.” She reached out to brush light fingers down his arm before retracting. “What the hell are you doing here?” Saint looked thoughtful; he had the kind of eyes that were kind, turned up at the corners but to look at him long was to feel much like having caught oneself staring in a mirror. He had the peculiarity of not even a flicker of the normal, small judgments people made about one another but the sense of curious perception. He caught the greyhound-shiver and his eyes flickered to the whitened grip she had on her cup; she had been a model, she had been thin, she had been high-strung. There had always been drugs on sets for fashion, there always would be. But she did not look exactly the same as she had then, a tension that hung around her, stretched especially thin. The compliment fluttered past him; whilst he was at ease, he did not acknowledge it nor get the particular stiff of people who struggled to take them. Saint had an air of someone who might or might not have been complimented a great deal, but could take or leave them. He smiled, instead. “Working.” He shrugged, the narrow shoulders moved beneath the soft blue shirt. It was a small movement on a man much comprised of them, who was used to being still. She smelled of the mellow fruit of the tea, and of something soft and pretty and artificial, like shampoo and beneath that, something of a tang, too sharp to be usual. An eyebrow raised; she was softer, the cheekbones in her face smoothed over rather than sharp. She didn’t look like diets and knees on cold tiles, but perhaps... Saint didn’t wonder much at it. “Moved. Recently.” His fingers settled on a rough stranded bracelet at his wrist, worn-thin braided leather; it looked like a familiar movement, one all comfort. He tugged it, grinned at her beneath the shaggy hair. “You here? Temporary?” “On photography still?” MK asked as she waved a careless hand towards one of the nearby tables for them to sit. She felt woozy, a little, like a panic attack had just been avoided by a quick swerve of distraction. Which, frankly, it was. But it was also morning sickness threatening her, and she needed to sit down or else lose what little food she could stomach right then and there. “You were always one of my favorites.” Photographers were always hit and miss with MK. They could be her best friends or her worst enemies, but Saint’s disposition always made things easier on set. “I’ve been living here about a year and a half now,” she said as she sat down, placing her cup on the table. “I moved here for work, but I have people here, too. A disturbing amount of people, actually.” She laughed. She had been the type to acquire them, he remembered. They had clustered, bobbing like moths around an ever-steady candle flame climbing higher and higher. He remembered effervescence, smiles that sparkled like champagne, eyes like diamonds behind a camera lens; heels that clicked in unison across the studio floor and a Greek chorus of laughter. People and MK made sense. Saint liked them, he enjoyed the person he sat next to on a plane as much as he enjoyed a person sitting on a bench in the sun but his acquisitions were more fleeting. Postcards, landscapes twisted in odd ways, sketched out on the back of maybe-still-damp paper weren’t familiarity. “Yes,” he said, although he paused as if he weren’t certain of the answer. It was photography, or it would be if the story panned into something less nebulous. He blinked, and she had a look in her eyes as if she had come unmoored, would drift. It looked disturbingly like girls in the studio, just before they fell, and his hand came out, caught her elbow as she sat; a surprisingly strong sprawl of long, tanned fingers. “Photography.” Saint sat like a man used to folding into small spaces, his knees hitched together and his elbows tucked behind his wrists as he leaned on the small table. He was sparse muscle and veins that threaded his wrists like blue cords beneath olive skin; he looked comfortable but Saint always looked comfortable. “Disturbing? How?” He crooked a look at her, all disarming curl of the mouth and calm eyes. Something in MK’s shoulders visibly relaxed as she sat down and tried to convince herself that Alexander wasn’t going to slither out from underneath the table and maim her with a scalpel again. She didn’t like thinking about it, erased the reminders from her life the night Adam broke the recordings of her attack. But, they were always there linger, and there would always be something to trigger the barrage of nighmarishly awful memories. A singular word. The smell of an air conditioner blowing too long. A stitch on her side. The crooked, eyewrinkling smile of a handsome man. It would always follow her until the day she could break away, and she didn’t think that was possible at all. She could pretend, however, in this new life that she was okay. That she was fine, and not just Seattle’s definition of fine. So, she smiled brightly when Saint said he was still working on photography, and she waved a dismissive hand at the disturbing thing. “It’s just--,” MK started but then laughed. That tinkling little laugh that he heard in choruses of models who didn’t know the difference between forced emotions and something real. “I know a shit ton of people here, but from other times in my life. You aren’t the first person I’ve run into here.” That laughter rang like artificial snow and winter shoots in July. It was too bright for girls with a flicker of a flame, even at a coffee shop table that lurched alarmingly to one side when he moved his elbows. Saint caught his mug and hers, and he lifted them just shy of the sloping metal top. He had long fingers, stained just a little around the nails as if he had scrubbed them clean but forgotten the edges. They were carbon and charcoal, gray like clinging shadows. She had subsided, the drawn violin string of her had slithered into soft silk, but the frenetic bubble of her laughter was champagne in glasses, the kind of parties he tried very hard not to get invited to. “The right kind?” The green tea in his mug was pleasant steam, mild coils smoothed over with jasmine. Vegas was insipid heat and sepia-tinged, the dry aridness of a place that survived despite itself. MK was a watercolor painted on rice-paper; she always had been. The edges bled; the paper crumpled. “Or the wrong?” He didn’t sound forced, Saint. He spoke slowly, each word considered, stones lined up in a line. Bigger pictures, stand back and take a look. Elbows on the table, one-two; he rocked it back to steadiness, the thin solidity of his own frame and a smile behind the mug. MK jerked back when the table lurched, as if electrocuted through the metal table and the metal chair she sat on, and some strange sort of panic reverberated through her like a gunshot or a shock. A sharp breath and closed eyes to stave off the bad thoughts later, she shook her head as if she was being entirely silly about the whole thing. There was no reason to freak out, right? Alexander was never coming back. She was safe here. Saint wouldn’t hurt her. He was too sweet, too nice, too normal to even try to hurt her. She took the cup back into her hands with a shaky smile, a little less confident than that tinkling laugh before, and sipped cautiously on her iced tea. Stomach lurching dangerously, threatening what she’d been trying to avoid all day. She thought about his question for a moment, and wasn’t really sure of the answer at the end of it all. Was having Wren, Luke, Adam back in her life the right or wrong thing for her? “They’re all good, old friends,” she said finally. “But it was years since I’d seen them all, and we were all different. Y’know? Different times in our lives and places.” She drummed her fingers against the cup, then sipped again. Bubble still in her stomach reminding her of why she was at odds with Adam at the moment. “Like, my friend Wren for example. We’ve been through so much together when we were kids. And, we’d still kill for each other now. Of course. But, it’s different now.” She sighed, then shrugged. “Vegas is temporary for you? What’s the deal?” Some people were steady as oil paint, layered over one year and then the next. MK was skittered paintbrush and spilled liquid over watercolor, blurred. She jerked, electric limbs and flared nostrils, intake of breath - if he’d taken a picture then, he would have caught her. A study in fear. In something. Saint put his palms flat on the metal table - carefully. He steadied it, put the toe of his boot against the spindly rungs to hold it in place. And he looked at her, finding all the things a camera’s prism would catch, put on paper. She was pale (lovely; but Saint rarely thought of people in terms of pretty or not pretty. They were interesting or they were not and interesting could be pretty or not-pretty. It did not take into consideration, pretty) and she looked as if the electrodes rested beneath her skin, ready to make her twist, jump, turn once again if the wind fanned across them right. “Different,” he gave it consideration. There was no going backward. Saint did not intend to and it held no interest for him, going back was to try and take repossession of what had happened. Moving forward, adventure, change. Difference. He wondered why it was that some sought out old as if old were also safe, as if old did not change with time, patinas smoothed on, glazes cracked, shine worn away. Saint’s smile was safe as warm tea; Wren’s name saw a flare of recognition in his eyes, sharply evident. “I know Wren.” The name was uncommon enough that he thought he did. Wren. Angles and soft, sliding, would-be shadows. A smile that looked as though tears bowed behind it. The sliver of her upper arm that held itself out of the contrast, her chin tucked against her shoulder. Saint thought of memories in pictures; the best always had them. He spread his hands as if to say ‘I don’t know’, he smiled like charm unfurling itself. “Life is temporary. Vegas is a story. You know.” She didn’t. Most didn’t. But they would, if they thought they did. MK’s eyebrows rose high when he admitted to knowing Wren before she spluttered another laugh. “Of course you know Wren.” Of course he did. ‘It’s a Small World’, right? “Of course you do because this world is so fucked-up small.” She didn’t sound malicious about it, mostly amused with a dash of wariness. And, she wondered briefly whether or not he knew anything of Wren’s mistakes or MK’s wreck of a life. “And if Vegas is a story, it’s a real, real screwed up one,” she continued with a little more fatigue, and her stomach twinged a little bit as if to remind her that there should be some light at the end of the tunnel. Or, perhaps that was just a bit of the morning sickness she’d missed earlier in the day. Whatever the case, she swallowed hard and with a shake of her head before taking a slow, slow sip of her tea to soothe the bubbles threatening her. “Where do you know Wren from?” she asked quietly, visibly struggling just a little. Wren was another box that he had placed a story in, careful of delicate edges and fragile pieces. Saint was a photographer first and a journalist second, and he smiled an apology, the shoulders moving beneath the shirt into a more expansive gesture than all that stillness, offered up instead of the main meat of the truth. Saint did not condemn Wren’s way of earning back then; he did not condemn many and struggled with whether he should, even if he could. But it was not his truth to tell, not his story beyond a handful of negatives and a print campaign. He searched for an answer that would suit, and answered the surface question rather than the real one. “Boston,” he said, carefully, but he was looking instead with care and concern, gaze streamed down to a focused point. What Saint remembered of MK was livid, life curled around her wrist like a piece of jewelry to show off - not hesitancy, not the apprehension of a rocking table or the careful tension at the corners of her mouth over a mug of something innocuous as tea. His eyebrows lifted, mild alarm worn like a rumpled shirt. “Are you all right?” and he reached across the table, open palm and long blunted fingers tilted upward, stretched out in worry. She was as pale as a sheet of newsprint, like she would be sick in the next minute, like the story Vegas had to tell of MK was a bad one. He looked toward the door, and he looked at the mug, as if what was in it was to blame. “I’m fine,” she assured him, but didn’t sound very convincing at all. She shrugged off his worry as if he were simply imagining everything going wrong right then and there. “I don’t remember hearing much about Boston,” she mused, drumming her finger against her cup before downing the rest of her iced tea. As if that would assuage the nausea and panic rippling underneath her skin and causing butterflies in her stomach. There was a sudden lurch inside her, eyes downcast for a moment, and she looked briefly worried again before she swallowed hard and looked back up. “Actually, I have to go. I have to--I forgot something.” She offered him a shaky smile before turning to burrow into the purse still slung around her shoulder to pull out a paper and pen. Quickly, she scribbled a series of digits down on the paper. “Call me? I promise we’ll--we have to see each other again. I’m just, it’s just a weird day today. Okay?” She slid the paper across the table then pushed herself to stand, only a little woozy on her feet. “I’m glad you’re here, Saint, even if it’s just for a little.” Saint didn’t think she looked fine. He thought she looked like something was intent on blowing out that flame of hers, white and weak and scared-looking until the bones of her showed and nothing else. But she didn’t want to talk about it and she wasn’t a subject; MK was a flutter of silk on wind and he didn’t want to pin her down and pull apart the fragile fabric. He hoped (strongly; it was there in the small furrow between his eyebrows, the look in his eyes that was as evident as words written over blank page) that wherever it was she wished to run to would be better than the insufficiencies of the small table and the iced tea, and he let her push the paper into his hand without remark. She struggled to stand and he stood immediately, the invective of the movement sudden, quicker than Saint was given to being, blurred lines and the sharpness of an elbow as he put out an arm as though he’d steady her but with the care of someone ready to catch something delicate and old that ought not be touched if it could be helped. “All right,” he said willingly, although the concern underwrote the amiability, as only concern could. “Be careful.” And he smiled at her, as though he could give her care, just like that, by thought alone, and he stood with his hands in his pockets and his own tea gone cool, and watched as she hurried away. The phone number was folded carefully into thirds and tucked into the brown leather wallet. |