dahlia is a total (kayo) wrote in repose, @ 2017-04-08 19:34:00 |
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Entry tags: | *log, dahlia haight, holly robinson |
[The Bus Station: Dahlia & Holly]
Who: Dahlia & Holly
What: A pick up, in a pickup.
Where: The bus station → the diner.
When: Fuzzy recent, post-plot.
Warnings/Rating: Swears, growls, awkward.
Holly wasn’t good with soft-open for a pick-up that wasn’t a pick up. Sitting around bus-stops, waiting for someone to show? So not a new experience, she had that part down. Waiting for somebody who didn’t want to ditch to the john for a hand-job, that was a world of new experience. She could ditch if it wasn’t totally okay. She had the money for a ticket back, even if the chick with the gym paid her way out here. Her money was stuffed in her shoe, the leg with the torn hole at the knee in her fishnets, and it was enough for a week maybe, if she stretched and by the end she was waiting around bus-stops for somebody else.
But this bus-stop didn’t look like it got a whole lot of business. This was nowheresville, capital N, or so the chick with the gym had said. She had said a lot of things but Holly was kind of counting on some of them holding out. So that meant back to the city to make a little cash which was a teensy problem, and she wasn’t going to be making cash for a while unless it was the kind of john who got hot for split-lips and black eyes, which was another.
She was clean, which was an up on before the chick with the gym. Okay, the skirt was three inches past day and into night, and the shirt so didn’t need a blood stain even if she had soaked it through, but she’d tried to yank her socks over her knees and her coat was duffle, stolen from the Army & Navy some other city a few weeks back and looked totally kosher. And if this woman was so not legit? She probably had stuff to lift and she could figure out not-the-city later.
It was an actual pickup, for the pick up. Some hideous robin egg blue truck rusting from the undercarriage up loudly rattled down Main, toward the bus stop on the edge of town. Dahlia stewed inside the cab. Stormed all fucking day 'round the gym. Got a call earlier from her mentor. Told her when a bus was getting into town. Told her to fetch a girl off that bus. Told her to watch out for her. Not a favor. Not a request. All she got was the kid was in some sort of shit, and it weren't safe for her to stay out in the Capital. Why? Fuck if she knew.
So, naturally, trouble.
Fucking bleeding heart. Woman couldn't resist picking up a stray. Wasn't her first. Dahlia, she was the only one her mentor kept. Unless you counted the dogs, and no offense to the handsome boy lounging across the seat behind her, but that weren't real flattering.
It weren't 'bout money. That weren't the issue, even though it kinda was. Her mentor threw dollars at problems 'til they were fixed, like money always did. Didn't say shit 'bout compensation over the phone, but she knew a check would quietly show up in her mail, and she would tear it up on fucking principle. It weren't the lodgings. Even though it kinda was. The girl needed somewhere to stay--temporary, just 'til she found her footing, promise--and after years of living outta that tiny tin can of a trailer? The loft in the engine house was supposed to be hers.
No, the real issue was that her mentor just expected her to turn her life into running a fucking halfway house. This was some kind of test, like it always fucking was.
As the truck rolled up, Dahlia studied the girl for a second through the windscreen. Noted that shiner, and that military generic, ill-fitting coat. And yeah, she had an inkling. Spent enough time 'round sex workers to know what that looked like. Seen a face like that in a mirror enough times to know. Had a coat like that, once. A very long time ago. Wiping hand over mouth, Dahlia sighed heavy and swore quiet. Then she leaned over passenger side and popped the handle, 'cause the damn thing didn't open from the outside no more. Stuck out a leg, and edged the door open with her boot.
First impressions were everything, right? Dahlia had hers fucking nailed. Dressed real simple, sleeves pushed up, all ink and brawn beneath. Scarred knuckles, crooked nose, expression set into a flat line. Chewing gum, mint, like she didn't give a shit. Even seated, she loomed, damned tall and broad and built like, well, the heavyweight fighter she was. She looked decidedly not small town. Which was the entire fucking point.
One hand on the wheel, she twisted and propped her other over the back of the bench seat. Her voice was rust and rattle, flat and dry. "Holly, yeah?" she growled. Gum cracked between teeth. "Get in."
So there had been phone calls. Holly knew there had been phone calls, or she wouldn’t be hanging around a bus-stop in Nowheresville at all. The chick with the gym had looked like she’d scraped street-rats out of corners for years, so she hadn’t followed the logical conclusion to being dumped on someone else. Holly? Was blissfully unaware or she would have booked it back to the city. This was a free pass, but if it turned out to have a price-tag? She could get gone.
She looked up from the toes of her boots to the open door of the truck, as casual as a girl could make it when the truck had been there for a hot five seconds while whoever was in checked what was outside it. And this woman? Could manage the mob. She looked like nobody had kicked the crap out of her in years if they ever had. Nothing, she was giving Holly nothing to work with. Not an inch of expression to say what she was thinking. But it wasn’t a slammed door and a nope.
She could work with this. If it wasn’t totally legit? She’d memorized the bus-times, waiting. She flashed a smile, reckless and casual and she nudged a hand between her legs to fish out a flat-looking backpack. Smushed, and it had hardly anything in it and the backpack itself was trashed, but she still had it and that was the point.
“Holly. You have a name?” The ‘in’ part took effort. The truck was tall and she was not, and the ribs taped beneath the jacket and the neon shirt underneath weren’t screamingly in favor of truck. Suck it up, buttercup and she was in and plopped onto the bench seat, and she leaned enough to yank the door closed behind her like it was nothing. “Hi.”
The truck cab was clean enough, plaid wool blanket thrown over the back seat. Smelled like sandalwood and diesel and a little bit of dog. There was curious snuffling behind passenger side, as the guileless face of a pitbull popped up over the back of the seat and stuck his wet nose in the girl's ear. Probably trying to figure out why the stranger smelled of Other Mom. Dahlia thought about making him sit but, whatever, kid was gonna have to get used to him. Besides. Hiro was a lot friendlier than she was.
"S'Dahlia," she replied, 'round gum. Jerked her chin toward the pitbull. "And that's Hiro." And that was it. To be fair, she didn't really seem the type for hello. Didn't seem the type for a name like that, either, even if her namesake were etched violently into the skin of her arms. For a while, there was nothing but the snap of wintergreen and rumble of the engine. And the grating of gears, as she shifted the truck with a grind-and-crank, and let it roll backwards into the street.
She had questions. Christ, did she ever. But she didn't ask. Nah. Not yet. Dahlia sat comfortably with a girl and her shiner as somebody who was real buddy-buddy with violence would. She mulled her options, instead. Part of her wanted to just dump the kid in front of the motel in town, see ya, and never look back. Only a small part. Really. But she was cycling through everything that didn't involve her, and that was an exceedingly short list. From the bus station, the main stretch of the town unfurled before them, real quiet at this time. Picturesque. Or what-fucking-ever. Dahlia never saw the appeal.
Man. What time was it, anyway? At the stoplight by the highway, she leaned forward to pull phone out of back pocket, and checked the cracked screen. "You eat dinner yet?" she asked, idly scrubbing fingers through her mess of hair. Didn't ask if she was hungry. Not the point. Basic shit like regular meals once used to be the only way she could tell the difference between feeling homeless and feeling human. Plus, hey, food: the only time where awkward silence was sorta acceptable.
She wasn’t a dog person. Screw her, but she wasn’t a dog person. Dogs? Stalked junk-yards, were taken around the alleys at night, dogs were so a sign that you should book it or at least make whatever you were around for shorter. So she didn’t exactly let the dog lick her so much as she hadn’t noticed it was there, and then she noticed the smell and the dog at the same precise second. Hiro.
“Dahlia’s a good name.” It was a good name, original. Nobody else was going to get named Dahlia and take it away from her, it wasn’t a name that got shared because original thinkers in orphanages? Were on a premium. Good names had nothing to do with resemblances and Holly wasn’t scared of the woman wreathed in tattoos at the wheel, because she was a woman and because she’d shown up and thrown out a door. Trust? No, but fear? Put that in the no column too.
She wiggled a hand into the pocket of the duffle-coat carefully and extracted her own phone. A little beat-up, a little stolen but we can’t have nice things without them on someone else’s phone-plan and most super rich kids were super dumb, too. It was temporary, until the plan got shut off by a concerned parent or whatever, but it worked in the interim and the messages were blank, the way they were yesterday and the day before. Holly’s face? Totally blank at that point.
“Dinner?” She cocked her head, “I could eat.”
Oh, Hiro knew. Animals like him had that weird sixth sense where they could tell when a person weren't fond of their type, and it just made them all the more determined. The pitbull looked at the girl with his big doggy grin, tongue lolling. They were gonna be best friends, it said. And Hiro? He was real patient. He'd wait 'til she came 'round.
Dahlia just grunted, noncommittal. Her given name was a dumb name, but one she learned to make her own. Weren't getting into that one now, though. Questions, as well. Those could wait 'til at least some coffee.
Instead of heading into town, the truck pulled a u-turn at the light, 'round the way and into the little lot outside of the diner across the road. Dahlia wrenched the driver side window up 'til it was just enough for the pup to stick his head through and enjoy the spring night air. She got out, slammed the door and started walking, spitting gum into the gravel. She twirled keys 'round a finger. She didn't look back. She expected the kid to follow. If the girl decided to bolt now, well, her fucking loss. Food at this diner was pretty alright.
Like every diner in podunk Americana, the door dinged. The place was pretty empty at this hour--too late for the dinner hour, too soon for the second shift rush. Dahlia steered toward a booth. Sidled in and noticed two trucker types at the counter watching them--or, really, looking at the girl and her black eye. Something in her expression shifted as she stared back, openly hostile, do not cross.
"Get whatever you want, kid. S'on me." Dahlia flipped her pre-set mug over, and made eye contact with at the waitress down the aisle. "And to thank me, you can start by tellin' me how you met my mentor."
What she wanted? Was pancakes. The kind that got served in diners like this all over, dripping butter and soaked in syrup in the hours between it being early enough to catch the post-work crowd and late enough for the curb-crawlers, crammed in with the guy on point to watch them that night outside. That? Holly could handle. And she was so a cat person. The men at the counter looked like her old clientele and she could handle a little looking, she wasn’t gonna break.
Holly flipped out the plastic menu into a sprawl on the sticky table and she shrugged out of the heavy jacket. The air in here? Was warm and fugged with coffee and with burned fat and if you were looking for familiarity in new places? A diner was an awesome place to start. Dahlia glared at the men and then looked for the waitress and the dinner conversation, Holly could tell, would not be that hot if she kept this thing up.
She shrugged out of the duffle coat with difficulty as the warm air sank in, neon orange washed to paper-thin underneath over hot pink and only a tiny bit of the stain still sticking around. The shirt was a good shirt, and she didn’t want it to be a dead shirt. Mentor? Points for the chick in the gym. Holly turned her own cup over, and smiled at the waitress who showed in poly-cotton blend and a look of permanent tiredness.
“A burger, with the fries, and can you put cheese on that? Go wild, with the cheese,” she instructed as she folded the menu back up and shoved it behind the napkin dispenser. Free meals? Were generally temporary and her stomach had been empty through the ride on the bus. Coffee splashed into both cups and she wrapped her hands, both around the cup showing off chipped-purple nails.
“She didn’t give you the play-by-play?” Checking first.
Maybe the girl weren't bothered much, but the difference between city and small town was that people here were fucking nosy. City didn't give a shit. Small town felt entitled to everybody's secrets. And give small town an inch, they'll take a mile. That look? That was preventative. People would see the girl 'round the scary woman with the tattoos, and they would think twice about hassling. After the bar and the commune, Dahlia did, after all, have a certain reputation 'round here.
The waitress stopped by, and she did her best to soften her look. Which is to say, Dahlia had a chronic case of RBF, but she managed to not look quite so much like she was ready to bite someone's head off. "Corned beef hash. Scrambled eggs. Double the side of bacon." Didn't need a menu to order. Always got like, one of the same three plates. Was it convenience? Or was it a comfort thing? Who the fuck knew.
Once the waitress left for the kitchen, Dahlia propped her boots up on the bench across from her, next to the girl, and leaned back a little, eyeing the girl over the rim of the mug. "She's, uh. A little need to know," she replied, then sipped scalding coffee. Her mentor was even less chatty than she was. Woman could stonewall a whole conversation with just a look. If the kid wondered where Dahlia got it from, well, weren’t that hard to guess.
"Told me you were in some sort of shit, though." Her gaze drifted to that faded stain on the girl's shirt for a second, then back up. "And that I'm officially responsible if that shit follows you here. So, talk."
Talk. Like that, straight out of the gate, with the background buzz of a couple of truckers trying really hard to watch the woman in the booth. Small towns were scoring low on the sheet up against big cities so far.
“You could at least try not going in dry,” had Dahlia even read the menu? Maybe she was glued to this place, although it looked a teensy bit out of the way to be convenient to anyone but truckers. But Holly could get behind comfort habits, the kind that didn’t leave you open to getting killed. She drank more of her coffee, because sat on a bus with a shit suspension and taped ribs, along with a fat lump of dread in her belly for a familiar face getting on the ride, wasn’t conducive to napping.
A little need-to-know. Given Dahlia’s mentor had given her a big fat nothing, beyond ’it’s safe’, and it wasn’t a line from another working girl so she had guessed Dahlia wasn’t in the game, a little need-to-know, totally fair. “So I’m the one who works out what you need to know.” Holly assessed Dahlia over the sugar-shaker, cocked eyebrow, lifted chin, showing off the shiner to the audience who could have copped a feel if they got any closer from their bar-stools at the counter.
“I’ll be out of your hair, I promise.” Just? Long enough to figure out the working thing when she could stay off the radar of the guy who’d worked her over. Holly’s face wasn’t all that good at masking anything. It was a Jersey thing, and she’d lost out on that piece of birthright. Now? There was a glint of ‘back the fuck off’ behind twitchy. She so didn’t want to get back on the bus tonight.
Jesus. It really was like looking into a mirror with her teenage self. The same attitude, the same hair-trigger flight, the same perpetual black eye. Smaller Dahlia had maybe been more feral, wild and vicious. But this was close enough for time travel.
"No shit," Dahlia sighed into her mug after her promise. "Look, this ain't a roomie interview. You an' me both know this is temporary. But how you wanna do temporary is up to you.” She drank more coffee, because lord, she was gonna need it. “Run, if you wanna. Go back to the city. Take your chances. I'll make you a map of all the best underpasses to squat under as a partin' gift. Or stay. There's food and hot water and a couch to sleep on while those ribs of yours heal up." Yeah, she could tell. She was familiar enough with busted ribs to note the slight strain in every breath. "Not for free. I'm gonna put you to work 'til you figure out what's next." And if she really wanted to fall back on her old career? She had an in with the local madame. It weren't the worst, 'round here. Better than tricking it out the city, for sure.
"But s'your choice, kid," Dahlia added, looking into her mug. "You got 'til the bill gets here to tell me to not drop your ass back off at the station. I ain't gonna make you choose shit, but I ain't wastin' any more time than that." Her mentor be damned. Glaring at the men at the counter again, she rolled her eyes as she put her feet down, leaning forward over the table. Her voice weren't real loud to begin with, more a low growl, but she dropped it further, away from prying ears. "And if you wanna stay, the least selfish fuckin' shit you could do is clue me in a little. Whether you like it or not, I'm fuckin' involved now." Then she leaned back again, put her boots back up, and waited. The waitress was incoming with plates, but she waited.
Involved did a whole lot better when it could plead ignorance. Holly knew that, and even hot shit in boots and wreathed in tattoos didn’t stand up to much with a guy with a tyre-iron and a professional interest in seeing body parts break. She didn’t believe she’d dragged it home to Dahlia, she wasn’t that important. If she’d been important? Nobody would have trashed the merch hard enough to piss off whoever was making money off of it.
She debated. Sitting there with her burger in front of her and the offer on the table which was going to cost. Sitting there, Holly didn’t know if money would get her an out from whatever this chick wanted to do with her in the downtime, but she doubted it. This was the look from the chick with the gym and she hadn’t been big on financial incentives either.
“I screwed up someone else’s pitch,” she said finally, digging into the burger as nonchalantly as if she hadn’t flinched from a diagnosis from the booth-seat across, “On the wrong patch and not with the right people.” It was a lot more complicated than that, but: “It won’t follow me here.” This was podunk America and the Capital didn’t reach in that far. Or at least, so the chick with the gym said.
“I don’t want to go back to the station.” And that was defiant, Holly shook her hair back from her face, wild-messy black and don’t-care written all over if the bill came and she was dumped on her ass back there. “I’ll get out of your hair in a couple days, tops.”
Dahlia didn't believe that was the whole story, nah, but it was enough. Enough to know to keep one eye out for any heavy-brow mongrels wandering 'round outside the engine house. She weren't gonna press for more. For now. Like she knew the girl was trying to keep her ignorant to protect her. Cute, really.
She sat back up, arms folded 'round her plate like a barrier. Dahlia wolfed down hash and eggs like she expected them to disappear at any minute. Old habit, really. She chewed, and listened. She didn't reply for a while. A couple days. It took a helluva lot longer than a couple days to settle, and she knew that shit from experience. Girl like this wasn't gonna settle easy. Maybe she didn't want to. Maybe in a couple days, she'd be back on a bus to another town, another city, and somebody else's problem. But she knew what just one day felt like when life was transient. Every day survived and scraped by was an era. So translated to real time, maybe a couple of days weren't wrong.
Her gaze went a little distant, soft. She remembered being the one sitting 'cross the table once, all feral and flighty. She remembered her mentor offering her a bed for as long as she needed, and herself spitting out the same harried promise. A few days turned into six years. A few days turned into a life off the street. She didn't know how this would work out. She really hoped it didn't mean putting this kid up for the next several years. Christ, no. But now she understood what the test was. This was totally payback. For the first time all night, Dahlia smiled like a secret.
"Al'ight," she said, finally. And that was that. She set the fork down, wiping her lower lip with her thumb. "Then stay. The couch is yours tonight." Tomorrow, she'd take the kid a few towns over, get her some second-hand clothes and toiletries. The day after that, well, who fucking knew. One day at a time. "And it's yours 'til you don't need it no more. The fine print is, I don't give a fuck what you do in your free time, but don't bring it back to my place. No booze, no drugs. No visitors."
Dahlia hefted her mug again. "'Til you figure out somethin' better, you can pay me back by workin' the front desk at my gym a li’l. Ain't no heavy labor. Just make sure people swipe in and fold the towels and shit." She quirked a crooked smile from over the rim of her mug. "Hope you're a mornin' person, though. Gym opens at six."