Ariadne (building_dreams) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-09-07 21:32:00 |
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Entry tags: | ariadne, arthur |
WHO Cory and Bianca
WHAT Smoothies and bonding
WHEN Recently, before they talked to Joseph
WHERE Bee's place
WARNINGS None!
Bianca was thankful that classes had started, if only for the distraction. This would be her last semester at UNLV and after her bar exam, she could be a lawyer or a social worker. There was a part of her that was terrified of what would happen come December, when all was said and done, because she had no idea what she wanted to do anymore. She didn’t think she could help people, not really. What was passing out food at a soup kitchen? Did it really make a difference in the grand scheme of things? She was good with Rosie, the little girl she’d started looking after recently, but she didn’t know how much longer that would last either. Even Micah, someone she’d started to consider a friend, was telling her that she’d be better off without him. that left her with who? Selina? Bee wasn’t a fool. She knew the thief would never be anything beyond words on a page and that was fine, but was that all there was? Just words on a page from different people? What kind of life was that? “Not one I want to live,” she muttered as she made her way down the grocery aisle. Smoothies, Arthur had said. That was apparently the way to get Cory in the door. She’d gotten a mix of things yesterday, mostly the cold ingredients, but today she wanted to get an assortment of fruit when it was freshest. She didn’t know what Cory might like so she got a little bit of everything and a second blender so she’d be prepared. It was easy to be mad at Ariadne, Arthur, even Eames, but she couldn’t find it in her to be mad at Cory anymore, and it wasn’t even because Arthur had been a jerk. After Becky’s death, it had been easy to blame him for her continued downward spiral. He hadn’t done anything to get her to quit and yet it seemed, near as she could tell, that he wasn’t using or drinking or anything like that. So if he could stop, why couldn’t he have gotten her to stop? Talking to him over the journals without knowing who he was had made her see him in a different light and even though she had reacted poorly to discovering that he was Becky’s boyfriend, the feelings still stayed. He needed help. He needed to move on, maybe even more than she did. Arthur wasn’t doing shit and she’d been wrapped up in herself so much lately that she hadn’t given Cory very much thought. That had been a mistake and now she’d do her best to correct it. Items paid for, Bee made her way back to Turnberry, walking much more slowly than the rest of the nighttime crowd. Eight was kind of late for smoothies, but she had class at ten the next morning and if he needed or wanted to stay and talk, she could sacrifice a few sleep hours. She strolled up to the building, a plastic grocery bag in each hand, just a few minutes past eight and smiled when she saw Cory standing there. Arthur wasn’t completely useless after all. “Cory?” she called, when she was a few feet away, trying to act surprised but also careful to not go over the top with it. “Hey.” The smile she had for him was genuine as she closed the distance between them. “How’ve you been?” Cory turned around to stare at her. He was blinking sleepily, waking up from an empty softness that was wherever he went when he wasn’t fighting Arthur for control. He didn’t know what he was doing here, and he didn’t recognize the voice until he turned to look at Bianca. Arthur dressed neater than Cory did, but he had not gone so far as to slick his hair or force him to wear an oxford button-up. Instead Cory wore a very clean white t-shirt that he hadn’t woned two months ago and new blue jeans. He looked like an unfinished cult member that recently had his memory wiped. His expression was relaxed and blank, his eyes sleepy, and his shoulders without worry. The quiet brown eyes focused on Bianca. It took Cory a moment to get used to being physical. Everything had weight, and breathing took no effort. Arthur was a solid presence somewhere in the back of his mind, but he said nothing, and Cory asked no questions. Almost nothing really bothered Cory. Nothing really sunk in. He tried hard not to care about anything, and if you didn’t care, nothing much hurt. “Oh. Hey... hey, Bianca.” Cory looked again at the building, clearly not sure how he’d gotten there. Again at her, and a slow blink. He took a step toward her. “What’s up? She wasn’t sure how much Arthur had told Cory about Evan going back to jail, but she’d done her homework on it. He deserved to be back behind bars, but what it would mean for Cory, she wasn’t sure. Bee promised herself that she wouldn’t let her own feelings about the man color the conversation with him like it had before. She couldn’t understand it, but she wasn’t going to make things worse, not if he was as bad off as Arthur made it seem. Watching how he reacted to her, it was fairly obvious that he didn’t know where he was or how he’d gotten there. She’d felt like that a few times, after Ariadne borrowed her for a few hours and forgot to put her back where she’d been. How often did Arthur do that to Cory? Bianca couldn’t understand their dynamic, but right now Cory was the priority, particularly after the most recent turn of events. “Hey,” she replied, warm and inviting as she came to a stop in front of him. “Not much. I just needed to get some things on my way home from class. How’ve you been?” Bee asked, not at all put off by the grocery bags in her hands, light as they were. It was hot though, near the 90s, even though it was just after sundown. “Do you want to come inside? We can catch up, if you’d like?” She gestured to the doors to Turnberry as she spoke, indicating that she lived just upstairs. Arthur didn’t tell Cory anything that wouldn’t make him better. Since so far Arthur hadn’t been able to do one thing to help the boy short of walking him around and making sure he got enough vitamins, Arthur kept his mouth shut. So far, anyway. Cory was not stupid, and he could even be astute when he wasn’t blinded by emotion. It was only a matter of time. For now, Cory was resigned to his world. He wanted Evan to be returned so someone could take care of him, but beyond that his needs were very few, and his unhappiness deepset. Unlike Louis, he had no grudge against Bianca. He understood her anger. He agreed with Arthur that Evan needed to be able to understand the hard truths she brought to bear. They weren’t friends, Cory and Bianca, but he felt a kinship with her. Through Becky, he thought. Cory looked at the building, and then nodded. “Okay,” he agreed. “This where you live?” he asked, with mild curiosity, stepping close enough to eye her with the groceries and not thinking to offer his help. He did, however, move forward and pull open the door for her to walk through, enjoying the brief breeze of air conditioning. She wasn’t naive enough to think that Cory was her friend but she wanted to put in the effort, to see where a relationship with him might go. She didn’t know him well enough to know what he needed, when he needed it, but she wanted to. That desire had absolutely nothing to do with Ariadne and everything to do with Becky. Her sister had spent most of her time with the man and maybe Bee would feel a little closer to her through him. He bypassed the rest of her first question in favor of accepting the invitation to come inside, causing Bianca to smile widely. “Yea, tenth floor,” she replied, pleasantly surprised that he opened the door for her and led her through. “Thanks.” Bee led him to the elevator bank, where they were thankfully able to catch a car up right away. There was a couple traveling with them so she kept quiet, watching the red number climb higher and higher until it dinged on the floor they needed. A look at Cory, along with a slight inclination of her head, indicated that it was their stop and she led him down the hall to her door. It took her a minute to jostle the grocery bags and get her key out, but soon enough they were walking into her apartment. The front door opened into a short hallway, with a bathroom on the left and the kitchen on the right, a living area right in front of them and a terrace just beyond that. Everything was neat and tidy, the walls an eggshell white offset by framed prints of some of her favorite modern art pieces. The couch folded out into a bed, a reminder that Mike wasn’t around anymore, and there was a coffee table in front of it, both of which faced a wall-mounted flat screen tv. “Just make yourself at home. I was going to make smoothies. Did you want one? I’ve got a little bit of everything,” Bee offered. “Yeah, okay.” This lukewarm response was about as enthusiastic as Cory got about anything. While smoothies weren’t exactly the golden nectar to draw Cory’s attention, it wasn’t like Arthur could suggest taking the kid out for a real drink. Cory glanced around the apartment only once before shutting the door behind them both. He looked at the white walls and then at the framed print nearest. “It’s kind of a cross between Evan’s place and Arthur’s,” he said, dryly, making a little snort of amusement as he wandered farther in toward the couch. He sat down heavily and his heels made a little kick toward the sky before he spread them out under her coffee table. “Arthur likes those paint blob pictures.” Cory had movie posters in his room. To say Bee was surprised at the lukewarm response would have been just a bit of an understatement. Arthur was useless if he couldn’t even accurately tell her what would cheer him up, but then again, she shouldn’t have been surprised at that. Arthur was useless at just about everything, up to and including his own personal relationships. She pushed it aside though. Cory was the focus, not anyone else. Of course, he turned it right back on them by comparing her place with Evan’s and Arthur’s. She made a mental note to redecorate before retrieving the blender from a cabinet on the far side of the kitchen. “What kind do you want? I have...strawberries, bananas, blueberries, raspberries, watermelon, pineapple...” Bee pawed her way through the bags as she listed them off. She peeked over the counter into the living room where he was sitting and smiled. “Anything strike your fancy?” Cory turned his head slowly. “All those sound good.” It was hard to reach him, hard to sink past the obvious depression that made his limbs heavy and his thoughts absent, but he did actually notice that she was trying, and he wondered why. It was a brief thought, and he re-focused outward. Cory always did that, gravitating toward the people he cared about and attempting to remake them in an effort to forget the emptiness he felt about almost everything else. “You seem like you’re doing okay, huh.” It was a nice place, clean, bright, very Bianca, not at all Becky. That was a good thing for Bianca, Cory guessed, though he wished she wasn’t so blatant about it, somehow. Her eyebrows knit together for a few minutes but the frown only lasted a few seconds at his reply. Didn’t he have an opinion on anything? “I think I’ll go with a classic then, strawberry-banana,” she decided, putting the rest of the fruit away before preparing the ingredients for the blender. Every slice she made resulted in a dull thud against the cutting board, creating a rhythm to the silence that stretched between them. Did it seem like she was doing okay? That was good, at least, because some days she felt like she was barely holding it together. Taking classes and babysitting Rosie went a long way in forcing her to put that stuff in the back of her mind but now that she was in the same room as Cory, faced with his overwhelming lack of care, she realized just how detrimental it would be if she ended up like that. How he was managing to get through, Arthur aside, Bianca had no idea. She wanted to get him out of it though. “Appearances can be deceiving,” she finally settled on replying as she put the strawberries and bananas into the blender. “Some days are better than others, but I think that’s standard for most of us.” Bee carefully measured out the yogurt and poured that into the blender next. “You don’t look so bad yourself.” A small smile graced her lips, almost shy in a way, but then she was adding the sugar and measuring out the ice. “What have you been up to?” Cory didn’t really have an answer for that. “Not... I guess not anything, really.” Cory turned his eyes from the pictures to let them rest on the ceiling, listening to the sound of the chopping and thinking of almost nothing at all for a little while. His hands were loose over his stomach, the palms pressed flat in the strangely starchy white shirt, and his spine was a long curve into the couch. He looked as if he could lie there forever, and he was kind of thinking of doing it. He felt strangely comfortable in Bianca’s house, not worried or anxious, and despite what he’d said about the decor, he didn’t think about Evan or Louis or even Arthur when he was there for the next several minutes. Eventually, however, they interrupted everything. “Are you still mad about the talking-as-me thing, on the journals?” he asked, turning his head on the back of the couch to look at her, cheek pressed into the fabric. He actually did look concerned. She didn’t mind the silence, going so far as to taking her time measuring out the ice so she could let it linger for as long as possible. Cory needed to get out and do things, even if it was for someone else. Maybe, if she asked Mr Shay nicely, she might be able to take Rosie out and invite Cory along. The little girl had a way of making everything bright and cheery. She’d certainly gotten Bee through the hardest days and maybe she could do the same for Cory. When he asked her if she was still mad, she covered the blender and pressed the button, letting the sounds of ice being blended fill the room. It went on for several minutes, until she was sure the smoothies were at the right consistency, before silence filled the apartment again. She was mad at Arthur, as well as annoyed, disappointed, and frustrated. He just wasn’t helping. At least Ariadne had gotten her into therapy and that had actually helped her. Arthur was just taking over and that wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t right. “I’m not mad at you,” Bianca replied honestly as she fetched two glasses and started to fill them. “I’m worried about you and I think he’s...not helping, taking over the way he does.” Diplomacy was something she knew but emotions always made it hard. She didn’t say anything else until she was in the living room too, sitting on the end of the couch, facing him. “Here,” she offered, handing him one of the smoothies before tucking her legs up. “You know that I’m here, right? If you wanted to talk or do something? I know I have classes and babysitting but...I’ll always have time for you if you need it.” The offer was sincere, from the very bottom of her heart. He deserved more than just walking through life as Arthur’s puppet. He just needed to figure that out. When Bianca let the blender take over Cory had taken that as a yes, and he had slumped rather dejectedly down to add that failure to his list of many others. He had learned to accept failure as something common to the general Cory experience of life, and he set himself up for it without even realizing that was what he was doing. In the end Cory found it easier to expect failure rather than work toward success. By the time the blender was silent, Cory had his head tipped back on the couch again and he was staring blankly at the ceiling without any evidence of higher thought. His mouth was relaxed into an empty, half-ajar slash of non-reaction, and it was easy to envision him doing that all day without doing more than blinking. It was disturbing, in its own way. He jerked visibly when she actually spoke, and turned his head to catch her out of the corner of his eye. Sitting up with obvious effort at taking part in the world again, Cory took possession of his smoothie. “Thanks, but there’s not really anything. I mean. I just... don’t feel like doing anything. I’m tired of trying to help people get their stuff together, I’m no good at it. And I’m not really good at anything else,” he said, matter-of-factly. He slurped at the smoothie. “...Arthur is, though. Why not let him do it?” She didn’t like how comfortable he looked, zoned out on her couch. It wasn’t natural and it would only make it harder for him to pull himself out of it. “It’s hard to find motivation,” she agreed, “but I’m confident that you could find something to enjoy. You’re not any less important than Arthur just because he has a better...way of coping with his problems.” Though, privately she thought Arthur’s version of coping was invading Cory’s life. Stop it, Bianca, came Ariadne’s chastisement. They were never going to see eye to eye about the man, but she dropped it for the moment. “I’ll help you find something,” she promised, before taking a sip of her own smoothie. It wasn’t half bad and she smiled. “And I’d like to get to know you. For you, not because you were Becky’s boyfriend and certainly not because you’ve got Arthur for an Alter.” Despite the warmth and sincerity in her voice, Bianca expected the offer to be met with refusal of some kind. She wouldn’t stop trying, because she thought he was worth the effort, but she didn’t expect it to be easy. Cory wrapped both hands around the cup, examined the icy feel of it against his skin, and then shifted his grip somewhat belatedly. The cold tingled, but he felt as divorced from that as everything else. He tasted it, and the tart chill was pleasant sinking a little closer the rest of him, but he found himself drifting almost immediately. The sound of Becky’s name brought him back down to earth with a jarring thud that he felt in the back of his mind. For the first time Cory seemed totally present, absolutely aware. He focused on Bianca’s face. “What for? What’s there to know?” He wasn’t exactly suspicious; Bianca was a sweet person and Cory didn’t think she could lie her way out of a box, but Cory could see no real benefit for her. “Not going to keep a job. No point in moving out. Can’t help anybody. What’s the point?” The effect her sister’s name had on him didn’t go unnoticed and she filed that information away for future use. Manipulating him wasn’t her intention but some gentle persuasion never hurt anyone. “I don’t know. What your favorite color is, favorite book, favorite movie...” She trailed off and shrugged. “Do you like art? Philosophy? History? Comics? What are your parents like? I don’t even think I know how old you are, honestly. There’s more to you than just Arthur, or Evan or Becky,” she continued, doing her best to stay as warm and non-confrontational as possible. She genuinely did believe what she said and she was fully prepared to open up to him. “You don’t have to do everything at once either, Cory. Take small steps, move forward just a little bit at a time and things will fall into place. Why don’t you think you can keep a job? Or that there isn’t a point to moving out?” Bee had to stop herself before she offered him the murphy bed. “There’s always a point. It’s...sometimes it’s hard to see, but you’ll figure it out. I’m sure of it.” She believed in Cory and it was important for him to see that she believed in him. Maybe that was one of the first steps to getting him to believe in himself. That, and Arthur taking more of a back seat in Las Vegas. Cory’s expression was skeptical. When it came down to it, he didn’t know that much about himself, either and none of it sounded interesting to anyone but himself. He took another drink of the smoothie, which was good, unique, something he hadn’t really gotten out for much. He felt okay; whatever Arthur had been doing didn’t seem to have any negative physical effects, and though he wasn’t taking any great pains to move, the lack of energy wasn’t in his limbs. “The stuff I like isn’t real. Comics, TV shows, Star Wars, dumb stuff that doesn’t get you anywhere unless you’re the one selling it.” The influx of questions made him frown. “I don’t have money so I’m not moving out. Even when I had a job I hated it. There’s nothing anywhere else that’s not here, anyway. There’s nothing to figure out.” He looked away. “Can’t you talk about something else?” She had to wonder if it was only what happened to Becky that made him like this, so languid without any sort of direction. For the life of her, she couldn’t remember how Becky had described him and she hadn’t met him when the pair were dating. All she remembered was how much time her older sister spent with him, even when they all knew Bee would only be there for a few days. She didn’t want to push him so far so quickly that he’d stop talking to her and then she wouldn’t have been able to do anything further to help him. She filed away the information about comics, Star Wars, and how he viewed them. “They aren’t dumb,” she insisted gently, but she let it go at that. “We can talk about something else if you want though.” Bee smiled before taking another sip of her smoothie. “Judge Dredd was a comic, wasn’t it? There’s a movie coming out soon, I think and it looks interesting.” She was making an effort, awkward though it was, and she hoped he wouldn’t think too badly of her for it. He didn’t. “It was, yeah. I haven’t read it, though. Don’t know why not. Could be really bad, could be good. Lot of comic book movies these days, makes stuff complicated for the Doors.” Cory was commonly very judgmental of the world around him, simply because his state didn’t much allow for the bright colors of character and events and he stuck to the monochrome of black and white, but he had never spurned an attempt to talk to him about the things he liked best. It just confused him, very much like it had confused him when Becky had first started talking to him. He remembered it the way an addict remembered his first hit, with the same combination of regret and fiery longing. Cory drank some more of the smoothie, looking back at the kitchen and wondering at the idea that someone would make their own. It was an idle thought from an idle mind. He turned back to her with a faintly sheepish smile. “Not like we have to worry about Inception version 2. I hope.” “I could see how it would,” she replied with a nod. “Different versions of things tend to complicate things. I talk to Catwoman, Selina, sometimes, and she balked at the Anne Hathaway version from the most recent movie. It doesn’t help, all the comparing people do between the different media. The comics are different from the movies, but then so are the other movies, aren’t they? It’s been awhile since I saw the earlier Batman movies. With....George Clooney? Is that right?” She vaguely remembered a movie with Alicia Silverstone too, but she figured going with a Batman was probably a better idea. Bee laughed warmly when he gave her that smile. “I don’t even want to know what happened after that movie. Would probably just make things worse all around, depending on how things went.” And that was the honest truth of it. It was better this way, when they could just complicate things themselves and not have to worry about things like that. “I guess we’re lucky it’s not as popular as comics seem to be these days.” The awkwardness started to fade, enough to make her settle more comfortably on the couch and start to relax, sipping her smoothie every so often. “Have you talked to any of the Alters? Ones that aren’t from our door, I mean.” Cory just nodded all the way through the comments about Batman. He hadn’t tried to talk to any of those people, really. First of all, thanks to Arthur he knew they were actual people, and second of all he just couldn’t think of what to say. ‘Hey, love your ears, hope your face isn’t like Clooney’s.’ Or maybe, ‘Hope Bane’s not around to break you in half?’ Not even remotely cool or helpful. He kept hoping that maybe they would say something on the Journals so he could say something useful like ‘good job’ but when it came down to it he probably wouldn’t have the guts to do that. So he talked to Bee about the people on the forums from the comics he knew, and how exciting it was to think that they were real people doing real stuff, but how seriously disturbing, too. She was good at listening even when Cory didn’t have anything interesting to say, and by the time he went home some of the confusion about everything seemed a little easier to handle. |