InsaneJournal

WHO Brady Morris and Luz Martin, and then Lottie Addens
WHERE BAG House
WHEN Tuesday, Nov. 15th, about 3:30pm
RATING PG-13 to be safe?
SUMMARY Brady and Luz have some things to talk about, LOTTIE SHOWS UP AND SLAYS THE MIGHTY PRIDE BEAST (aka Luz)
STATUS Incomplete




Luz had figured several things out. Mostly that this whole sin thing really sucked and she was glad she had a lock on her bedroom door. Jesus Christ… that had been a day… Luz had not been aware she was capable of such a thing. It was a surprisingly adult sort of day! And night… She didn’t really like thinking about it. That level of constant need had not been good… even if she had learned a lot…

She had also figured out that Gus had stolen her wallet. She had it before she met him, he portaled her, and her wallet was gone. And he had asked about it. There had to be a sin for that. Greed or assholery or something. So she came to collect. No one stole from Luz Martin and got away with it. School was pretty much at a half day. The faculty had a meeting so Luz had gotten out really early and headed right for the BAG house, in a taxi, because she still had a lot of money left over from the horse betting on Friday and she really deserved better than the bus. Brady, she knew, would not be home until around 3:30, which was fine. She got to their apartment, let herself in, and did a brief scan of Gus’ room for her wallet. She didn’t find it, but Gus didn’t seem the type to leave a woman’s wallet laying about in plain sight. Luz would ask Brady to look through Gus’s stuff for it, Luz being afraid of what she might find.

She didn’t play MarioKart while she waited this time, instead she picked up Bilius and sat on the couch with him. He acted like he hated it at first, but soon began to purr on her lap, getting cat fur on her dark blue school blazer, uniform skirt, and even her dark stockings that went up just to her knees. It was colder out, so the socks had to get higher. She liked petting Bilius, he was very cute, and she was a good cat petter. “Yes you are, you are very cute, aren’t you?” she asked him in a cutesy voice. He continued to purr.

And then Luz began to lose circulation in her legs. She picked him up off her lap and set him on the couch, and headed into the sad area that was the BAG kitchen. “You must have treats around here, right?” she asked Bilius. He couldn’t be that fat unless they gave him treats. She opened the cupboards but didn’t find anything that looked cat-suitable. Maybe he was that fat because they gave him human food. She leaned back and thought she could see something up on a top shelf. She couldn’t see what it was, so she carefully climbed up onto the counter, moving some appliances aside and kneeling there to find the… baking soda? “Oh ew…” she said. It was all dusty and spidery and open and smelled rank. It… may have been there longer than BAG. Luz turned around a little bit and managed to sit on the countertop, legs dangling over it. She searched the box for an expiration date. That was… she’d been ten the last time anyone should have used this. “Ew,” she said again and leaned over to set the box in the nearby sink. She had leaned back up when the door opened and Brady walked in.

Brady is proud to say that he has been - as far as he knows - sin-free for at least 48 hours. Of course, he hadn’t really recognized that he was sinning when he was. It just seemed natural to eat and eat and eat because he felt so empty not doing it and he just couldn’t think otherwise for needing to... relieve his, um, “tensions” and then he’d just kind of thought he might be sick or depressed on Sunday when he’d managed to drag himself out onto the couch and then became one with it for many hours. Some of which included “Dora the Explorer,” which was a horrible punishment by any standard, though he did learn how to say, “hello,” in Chinese. Lottie had appeared and come to the rescue, though, and after that, he’d felt so super energetic and productive that he’d managed to get more done with the rest of that afternoon and evening than he could have hoped to do in the entire day normally.

So when Monday was a blissfully average Monday at work, he wasn’t complaining. When Tuesday seemed to herald the same, he again had nothing to really say about it. Sure, it’d given him a lot of time to think about how badly he’d blown things with Luz. A LOT of time. However, at least, everything was normal, and normal is a blessed reprieve. Yup, everything is back to normal. He’s back to being able to bike regularly, the weather is gorgeous in lieu of Thanksgiving (though that’s another thing he doesn’t want to think too deeply about), he’s gotten a fair bit done on the Secret Project he’s been working on. He’s even started on some Christmas gifts. Life is rolling along just as it should once more.

Until he opens his apartment door and turns to see Luz sitting on the counter in her school uniform. With its tall socks and skirt. And his heart kind of does a little jolting dance against his rib cage, and his blood doesn’t seem to know whether to direct up or down. His face does turn very red, though, and well, other things also happen, which require pulling his messenger bag around and holding it protectively in front of him.

Once again, this seems like a kind of Twilight Zone moment, like the morning two weekends ago when she’d woke him up in bed. The voice mail, which has been haunting him for days now, immediately pops straight back into his mind, along with the deluge of all the other little fantasies that the sin had caused him to entertain, and he is feeling so very awkward, he considers just walking right back out and leaving without saying a word. Because he’s pretty sure that this is more of the, ‘Oh, that normally doesn’t happen, but doesn’t mean anything,’ kind of thing than the, ‘Oh, that normally doesn’t happen, and now something dirty is going to go down,’ variety.

Instead, he just sort of turns so that he is not directly facing her anyway, still clutching his bag, and stares pointedly at the floor. “Run out of... uh, sugar back home?” he asks, stumbling over the words. “You can, er, borrow a cup if you like, but.... it’s probably a few years old.” He swallows roughly and proceeds to just... press his bag as closely as humanly possible and not think about the treacherous little, ‘But what if she did take it seriously?’ murmurings his own regularly sinful mind is prodding him with. WWJD? WWJD? That’s what his mom always told him to think in these moments of weakness. Jesus would confess and repent. He clears his throat. “It’s good you’re here. We need to talk, I think.”

Luz did actually swallow hard upon seeing Brady in the flesh again. Sunday had been so intense it was… she sort of had trouble separating the fantasy of that day with the reality standing in front of her. She still sort of wanted to act to the fantasy, and had to remind herself, this was real, and she was the only one here that knew about any of the stuff that had gone through her mind on that day. But it was hard to do. What… had her relationship been like with him before?

“I think Gus stole my wallet,” she said quickly and honestly. “I didn’t know if he’d tell me so I came to get it.” She then realized she was on the countertop and that was probably not normal. She moved a lock of hair behind her ear. “And I wanted to see if you guys had treats for Bilius. I uh, I found a health hazard,” she said and looked to the sink briefly. She looked back at Brady. “I had a half day, at school,” she explained, since he had asked last time she had shown up on a school day.

She narrowed her eyes when he said they had something to talk about. That was… never good. And he looked sort of fidgety. This really wasn’t going to be good. Luz figured, it was either he had caught Jackson for stealing his cellphone and prank calling her, or… Ari had said something. Her heart sank a little. She supposed… it might be weird for her to hang around here still, after Ari had rejected her. “Talk about what?” she asked, thinking about where her keys were in case he wanted his back. She wasn’t going to keep it if he wanted it back, and she certainly wasn’t going to ask to keep it. Luz was too sophisticated to do something so low.

“He does that,” Brady agrees. “His uh, curse or something, I think. First place I look when something small’s gone missing.” Not usually wallets, though. Usually, Gus is able to control himself better than that. Then again, the whole super awesome TV that’s shown up is a little bit questionable. He hasn’t really had time to question it seriously yet, but it is very questionable. Probably one of the sin monsters. It would also explain the 15 pizzas of which there are still leftovers despite his valiant sin-driven efforts to finish them off that night.

“Dunno where he would have put it, though, if he did have it. I usually just ask him, actually. He forgets, but he’ll always hand it over, if you remind him.” Talk about Gus. Gus is normal and safe. He clears his throat softly. “You might want to just leave him a note. His working hours aren’t always very regular. But Bilius’s treats are usually in the fridge, or else he finds a way to get at them, and they’ll be all over the floor.” Which is like buffet time for cat and bugs, and no one wants that.

That’s all the normal niceties, though, and now he begins to chew at his lip, trying to think of something to say or rather, trying to think of how to say what he needs to say. He has to, though. He’s known that since the morning after. He has to, because she deserves for him to be at least honest about it. It’s just very hard, since it probably isn’t going to go well no matter how he phrases things. He clears his throat and leans against the counter. “I was thinking we should talk about Thursday night and... um, you know.” He lowers his chin, hair falling in his face, but he’s still obviously blushing profusely.

“I... never have done anything like that before. I mean, you probably are thinking, ‘Well, how do I know that’s true? I barely even know you,’ or something, and that’s fair.” He pauses, his mouth kind of twitching, but not really looking like it’s going to curve. “I guess I’m just saying that I hope you’ll take my word for it, at least this time, so I can prove I’m not that kinda person.”

Oh, so… not Ari. Luz held her chin up slightly, since they weren’t talking about her being horribly rejected. Good, she’d rather talk about the other thing. Admittedly being pranked like that wasn’t an ego boost either, but Luz hadn’t fallen for it. She knew it was a prank when she listened to it… listened to it several times… and saved it… for evidence.

“I know,” she told him, chin still held up and voice confident. “I’m a smart woman Brady I know you’d never do anything like that. Especially at night when I’m asleep anyway. I figured it out, you see,” she told him. “It had to be the Jackson guy, right? Or someone else of his low character that got your cell phone and some sort of voice mimic magic. Some people have no class,” she said and crossed her leg over her knee away from him, even looking away as if she were shunning someone not present in the room.

“We should do something brilliant to get back at him,” she looked back at Brady. “Something a bit more clever than trying to punch him. We are intelligent people, we can do him one better. As long as we don’t sink to his level, of course.”

Brady looks up, looking almost... horrified as she says she already knows and that it was that idiot Jackson guy and could only have been someone who had a “low character.” That really hurts, actually. A lot. He’s surprised by how much it feels like she’s just punched him straight in the chest. For a moment, he fails to even do so much as collect himself so that he doesn’t look like a puppy that’s just been smacked with a newspaper. Then his eyes slowly lower, followed by lashes. A little of the blood leaves his face, and the bag isn’t quite as necessary anymore. It’s a general feeling of just... deflating. All the embarrassment and humiliation and anxiety gives way to quiet mortification and a stinging sense of rejection. He swallows and slowly nods. “It’s fair to... say it like that,” he agrees very slowly, eyes still lowered. “Calling a woman out of the blue to... talk dirty to her... I mean, you could certainly say it’s objectifying.” He draws his lips between his teeth.

“But it really wasn’t him.” He starts fidgeting. First, it’s playing with some of the buttons on his bag. It shortly thereafter turns to pulling at his jacket, pulling it close around his torso. “Like I said, I’m not really that kinda guy, you know? I’ve never... ever had phone sex, done a late night, uh, booty call? I’ve never been into that stuff, because I’m just... it’s embarrassing, and it goes wrong so easily. Makes you just sound like an idiot. And I’ve never made a pass like that at a girl I wasn’t already dating.” He would like the floor to open up and just eat him like the T-Rex in “Jurassic Park” or something. Would that be okay, Universe? Want to get on that? He sighs softly, blowing his bangs momentarily out of his face. “I feel like, even if I say I was under the influence, that’s not really an excuse, because...” Because it came from somewhere. The desire for her was already there. It just... was amplified beyond what’s socially acceptable. “It’s not that I don’t think you are... um...”

And now he turns red again. “Um... you know. Hot and all.” He clears his throat. “It’s not really that. It’s just that you’re right. It is the kinda thing a guy with a low character would do. It’s like... I dunno. Harassment or something. I can’t even imagine how embarrassed you must’ve felt. I’m glad you thought it was him, but... it wasn’t. It was definitely me.”

For a moment, Luz wondered how Brady could know it was a dirty talk sort of message… or that there was a message… if Jackson had stolen his phone. Maybe Jackson made the call in front of him? Her chin comes down and her eyes widen into a slightly shocked expression as Brady… admitted he had called? That made no sense. But he… but, uh… Oh he seemed to getting everything wrong. Or something… He was an idiot. She didn’t know why she hung out with such an idiot. She looked around the apartment for a moment. They were all idiots, even the cat. Luz really should hang out with more sophisticated people, like Lydia. But she… Luz kept her legs crossed tightly against each other. She liked hanging out with them, even if they were idiots.

She raised her hand and pressed her fingers to her forehead like she had a headache coming on. “Doing it as a prank is low,” she said. “Doing it for real is… was…” She suddenly thought too well of herself to finish that sentence. She had thought it was a prank but that day she hadn’t… cared, if it wasn’t him. It had sounded like him. Now she went red a little. She hadn’t listened to it after that day, a little too afraid to, but, she was certain it’d still be… fine.

She swallowed again. “I wasn’t embarrassed,” she lied, and was still red to sort of prove it. She made sure her posture was good, all sophisticated. “It’s not the first time a man has… said I had nice legs.” She suddenly wished she was still wearing her shoes. She kept looking around at different places, not at him. She looked like she was slowly losing her composure. Sunday was beginning to drift through her mind. Talk about being under the influence, and doing embarrassing things… for hours.

Luz nervously scratched the back of her neck. “There are those sins going around… Sort of make a person… lose control.”

He risks looking at her, and she looks upset. He wonders if she’s going to cry. Maybe it was so demoralizing and disturbing that knowing it wasn’t a prank is making her hate him. Except, what else could he do? He had to fess up. It was him. He was the one who made the call, he was the one who very strongly lusted for her, and letting her think it’s someone else - or want revenge on someone else - who wasn’t involved just isn’t right. If she’s going to be angry, then he deserves it, and she deserves to at least know who she’s angry at. But she doesn’t really sound angry. She just sounds kind of embarrassed and maybe confused.

“They do, and hey, don’t worry. I mean, I already know about... uh, about how you feel and stuff, right? And, you know, he really is a great guy.” Definitely not the kind to let his... id get the better of him and make tipsy, dirty calls to high school girls. God, what is wrong with him? And what is wrong with him that even now, as she continues to sit there on the counter in her skirt and knee socks, he really wants to go over there and kiss her and... Well, things. Maybe he really is a pervert. Years of trying not to be have somehow warped him rather than purified his thoughts. What if he’s even worse than that Jackson guy? The hypocrite usually is worse. Is that what he is? A hypocrite?

“I just wanted to say I’m sorry about it, and you know, if stuff works out with Ari... I mean, could you just... maybe not ever tell him? I don’t mind if you feel mad at me, because, you know, you should be mad when someone breaches your trust, and... It probably is really uncomfortable for you, knowing about... Um, that. Monster thing or no.” He swallows. “But I care about you, and I really don’t want to scare you away, or make you feel uncomfortable being around here, because it’s great having you around, and I’m just, um, gonna stop talking now.”

He really knew nothing. Luz was almost surprised that… hadn’t Ari told them? She had only been avoiding them because it was so embarrassing. But if he didn’t know, well, Luz was not about to be embarrassed now. Or, as it had somehow turned out, feel ashamed for the things the sin had made her think and do. She leaned forward and got a little huffy.

“Being under the control of one of those sins is a perfect reason and explanation and… not guilt having excuse for that sort of things! It isn’t the person’s fault if that weird sin thing latches on to them and makes them spend hours imagining weird kinky stuff in explicit and persuasive detail!” she told him. “You are not at fault for that voicemail anymore than I am at fault for…” whoa she stopped herself there.

She crossed her arms over her chest and leaned back. “We are high class people, Brady McAlister Morris, and I will not have you tarnish my reputation by suggesting that sin thing isn’t responsible for… everything.”

His eyes lower again, expression dropping, going still, as she goes about absolving them for the things that were supposed to be outside their control. Certainly, the quantity was completely unlike him, as well as some of the breadth of his imaginings. Definitely, he isn’t the kind of person who would dream of making a call like that under normal circumstances. Yet at the same time, the lust that was there sprang from a pre-existing seed. The same seedling that has since cracked through its shell and begun to slowly unfurl, making him want her now. Wishing that she did feel the same on any level. Her way of phrasing things is a little weird. For a moment, it warrants a knitting of his brow, a little tilt of his head, as though a brief, “huh,” has passed over him. But even if she did have the same sin before or after he did... He can only imagine who her thoughts were dedicated to, and he wishes he wasn’t such a bad friend that he feels a little gutted about it.

The silence stretches on a fairly long time, before he finally speaks, his voice a little softer than usual. “I’m not really. I’m just a man, Luz.” He shrugs slightly and moves away, starting for his bedroom to throw his bag down (it’s no longer a real problem anymore). He undoes his jacket, sliding out of it, and loosens his tie, pushing the sleeves of his shirt up to return to the kitchen and pull a beer out of the kitchen. He pauses and then takes a second out. His high moral standing is chipping away all the time, so why not? Taking the magnet from the front of the door, he pops the caps on both before sliding one her general direction and taking his own to stand by the buzzer.

“Maybe you’re right. The way people are acting definitely is way out of proportion. I just wonder if... there isn’t something already there that the sins are feeding on. Just seems like it would be a possibility, you know? Maybe that’s why they’re so evil. All the little secrets you’d rather keep to yourself... they just rip them all out for everyone else to see.” He snorts softly, shaking his head, hair falling into his eyes and takes a long, healthy drink of his beer. “I see no reason your reputation would be tarnished anyway, so, you know, no worries.” He pauses, clearing his throat. “A friend of mine is coming by. You might like her.”

She gives a long hard look at the beer he offers over to her. She sort of wants it, it is the adult and sophisticated thing to do, but if she went home drunk or smelling of beer her mother would… have sudden and conveniently timed baby pains just to make Luz feel bad. So she ignored it. She listens and does not, in anyway, realize he is talking about himself. She hears what he says and thinks he is talking about her, whether he knows it or not. She does not like the idea that all of those thoughts were in her head already. About him, and Ari, and Gus, and Daisuke, and Felix, and Colt, and Robert Pattinson, and one of the Jonas Brothers she couldn’t tell which.

She shook her head. “I don’t have secrets like that,” she said, thinking about all of them now and turning red again. “None of my secrets are as…” there were a lot of words but she didn’t want to say any of them. She looked away from him, or, rather, focused on something else and then spoke softly. “One guy at a time, that is my rule,” she said mostly to herself. Any more than that she wouldn’t know what to do with, and her mother’s baby pains would have been real.

Luz looks up at him, surprised that he actually has someone coming over. “Is it Mickey?” she asked. “Because that might be weird, for me, and her…”

Brady blinks as she says things would be awkward for her if it was Mickey. “Why’s that?” he asks, unable to help himself. And what was that about her secrets and one guy at a time? Should he just... pretend not to have heard that? Consider the suspicion that she has experienced that same sin confirmed (if only by wild assumption). That might be more distressing than the fact she’s in love in with his best friend. Yes, that will just be forgotten. There’s only so much bludgeoning his heart can take, after all. La dee da. He didn’t hear any implication that Luz might have been embarrassed about that particular sin and its penchant for particularly impure, polygamous thoughts (which, okay, he does know about, too, but he would never...). He clears his throat softly, quickly taking another drink. “Did you two fight or something?” he asks. They seemed to get on really well before Halloween, after all.

“Anyway, it’s not her. It’s... uh, my ex.” He looks away, almost guiltily, as he admits that. “We’re just friends now, though. Well, not just friends. She’s one of my best friends, but you know what I mean.” Shut up, Brady.

Well, she had sort of pried really far into Mickey’s personal space while under the effects of a very strong lust sin and… there was no way to really explain that and still come out looking good. “No reason, just girl stuff,” she told him, under the impression that men never, ever asked a woman to elaborate on girl stuff.

She did look a little surprised when he mentioned an ex. Well, she knew he probably had one (she would have murdered him if it ended up he was a virgin all of this time) but it seemed weird that she actually existed and was coming over. They talked. Maybe she was coming to scratch his eyes out of tear his hair. …Friendly break-ups rarely made it into tv or movies.

“Your ex?” she asked to clarify, sitting up straight and subconsciously smoothening out her skirt. Maybe she should get off the counter, no, this made her look taller probably, more regal. More like this apartment was more hers than any ex’s. “I will meet your ex,” she said, as if she were, indeed, Queen of the Apartment.

Lottie has been having a hell of a week. Well, a hell of a half-week, anyway. At the start of this business, she had been so excited to have something to do, some responsibility, especially since she’d been about as useless as a dog door in an elephant house during the zombie incursion thing. And she had been contacted by her father - she knows it’s silly, but she kept the letter. It’s folded up neatly in a drawer in her nightstand - but now she is tired. It feels to her like she’s been running around the city non-stop.

The whole business of getting rid of the sin creatures hadn’t been too bad so far, but she’d been after a few of the less scary ones; sloth, gluttony. And lust. Oh, boy. Lust. She wouldn’t be able to look Felix in the eye for the foreseeable future. But now she was on her way to see Brady and that always cheers her up.

When she gets there, she presses on the buzzer until he lets her in and then she tackles the stairs. The stairs up to Brady’s apartment get her everytime - she always has to lean against the wall for moment, even though she is in good shape. No really. Once she’s had time to catch her breath, she knocks sharply.

”C’m’in,” Brady says as the buzzer echoes through the near empty apartment. He glances over at Luz, who apparently has decided she is Alpha Female for today, and snorts just a little. Well, she probably won’t find Lottie too threatening, he thinks. It would be hard to imagine Lottie coming off as a threat to another girl, but what does he know about women? Obviously not that much, given his relationship history to date.

“You’ll like her,” he promises again as he hears the knock at the door, opening it and stepping back with a smile. “Hey, Lottie. You look...” Flustered? She’s probably pretty flustered. She has been charged with the task of setting all this right. He clears his throat. “Come in, have a seat. This is Luz,” he says, gesturing to her with his beer bottle as he shuts the door behind Lottie. “Luz, Lottie. Do you want a beer? Or juice?”

Luz nearly loses her composure when Lottie walks in. Lottie from the flower shop, from the library. Brady’s ex? Luz almost doubts it for a moment. Lottie is too… pretty and sweet. Luz supposed she’d expected Brady’s ex to be some Goth girl, or, like, heavily tattooed artist. But Lottie was… so cute! Brady had better taste than Luz gave him credit for.

“Hi!” Luz said excitedly, her voice almost squeaking. She smiled. “I didn’t know you knew Brady, Lottie.” She believes fully and honestly that Lottie would remember her, because Luz was very hard to forget. She looks at Brady. “We’ve met. I know all about her. Oh…” she looked back at Lottie. “Did I tell you I work for the Oracles? I am Lydia’s personal assistant, very prestigious.”

“I look what?” she asks Brady, pulling him into a quick hug. Probably awful, but that’s only to be expected. She’s been running around like a chicken with it’s head cut off all week. First there was the pride, then the lust - and that had been interesting indeed - and then everyone else had been going a little crazy, too. “Juice would be nice, thanks.”

She follows him in and perches on the couch, pulling her legs up beneath her and tucking the flowing skirt in around her knees. When she catches sight of the teenager sitting on the counter, she grins. “We’ve met before, Brady. Hello again, Luz. It’s nice to see you.” Nothing but sincerity there, it really is nice to see the younger girl again. Lottie likes her; she’s spunky.

Her eyebrows dart up at Luz’s sudden admission. “That’s very impressive,” she replies.

“Like you need a drink,” Brady replies, briefly returning it - relaxing just a little. He thinks he rather needed that. He steps back, snorting a little, mouth quirking. “But you’re in luck. We happen to have apple-cranberry and orange juice today, and they’re new cartons, so... Help yourself. Or well, Luz, do you mind grabbing her one? I’m gonna go find that gem...” he says, watching Lottie go take a seat on the couch. He does pause to give her a weird look. Um, what is that about? Shaking his head, he puts his drink down on the counter next to her abandoned one and heads into his room to root out that gem, temporarily leaving the girls to chat amongst themselves.

Luz watches Lottie as she moves around, choosing to ignore the hug because Luz is so above things like physical contact. This girl is pretty, not as pretty as Luz could be, but reasonably pretty. She was sort of cool though. Maybe she and Luz could hang out and be cool together.

“Yes,” Luz said. “She handpicked me personally to be her assistant. I am at her side everyday at school and then on Saturdays. She depends on my skills very heavily,” Luz explained, her chin held up as she got off the counter and went to the refrigerator. “I’ll give you apple-cranberry because I prefer it so it’s better.”