- (sonrisa) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-01-26 18:59:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | black canary, edmond dantes, renly baratheon |
Who: Dell Van Andel, Eleanor Monarch-Sparke, & Sebastian Vance-Price (attack of the compound last names!)
What: A reunion
Where: On the street
When: Before Nell disappeared into Gotham (say, two weeks ago?)
Dell had been an early riser for as long as he could remember. He just never seemed to need that much sleep, which was fine by him. It made for a lot of quiet time, especially on weekends when most of Las Vegas was busy sleeping off one kind of hangover or another. He was new in town but he’d already puzzled out the time schedule the city seemed to keep - which, oddly enough, was similar to many college towns. Today was no different. It was early Saturday morning, maybe nine, and the world around him was dead. Signs were lit and flashing, but the streets were clear. Dell strolled along down the Strip with his hands in the pockets of his nice, long, black peacoat, with its collar turned up. That, along with a Burberry scarf, helped to ward off the winter’s attempt at chilling winds. His hair was messier than usual and he had some serious five o’clock shadow darkening his jaw. He was mostly just walking. He would start a search in earnest for a cab in a few minutes, because he did want to get home sometime today, but for now he was happy to just walk. As he did so, Dell thought on the previous night. He had met a woman at Blue Martini Bar. Her name was Laura. She was an elementary school teacher from out of town - from, if he remembered correctly - Indiana. She was a small town girl, that much Dell could tell from looking at her from across the room. The way she stood with her back to everyone, long black braid hanging down her back, trying to take up as little room as possible. And so, he went over to her, bourbon in hand, to be a good Samaritan and tell her some of the finer places to go around the Strip (not that he actually knew many). Then, of course, one thing led to another, and now he was making his way home from her hotel, rather wishing he had some coffee. Early riser or not, he needed some fucking caffeine. In the meantime, he proceeded to pull a cigarette out of the carton in his coat’s front pocket and stopped in his walking to light the thing, one hand cupped against the wind. Nell and Sebastian had been out far earlier than their norm, on the hunt for a good cup of coffee. Sebastian had landed in Vegas late the previous evening, and had crashed promptly after getting to her suite at the Bellagio. Having only recently gotten over her own jet lag, Nell had let him sleep, eventually falling asleep next to him out of a mixture of boredom and longing. He had woken up raring to go at 4 am, but Nell had talked him into coming back to bed until at least a somewhat decent hour. By the time 8 am rolled around, even she had had her fair share of sleep, and was ready for her daily injection of caffeine to get her through the day. It was nice, being out on the streets so early in the morning. They came across a few groups of eager tourists on the strip outside their hotel, but the sidewalks cleared once they wandered off the main road. It was a rare luxury for either of them to be out at this hour on the right side of the sunrise, and they took the opportunity to revel in the strange calm and each other's company. Huddled together for comfort and warmth, Nell and Sebastian had eyes only for each other as they strolled slowly across the empty - or what should have been empty - sidewalk. The figure in the coat appeared out of nowhere when they turned the corner, and it was Nell's finely honed reflexes that stopped from crashing straight into it. "Oh, I'm sorry." She said automatically, as her shoulder brushed the stranger’s. "I didn't see you there." The flame caught the tip of the cigarette just before the lighter wobbled loosely in Dell’s grip as someone bumped up against him, brushing his shoulder with theirs. He swore lightly under his breath, glad that he hadn’t managed to somehow burn himself or drop anything. He pocketed the lighter and turned halfway on a heel toward the voice as it apologized quickly. A voice that - he recognized - that he didn’t quite believe he was hearing. Even before he saw her face, Dell knew. Eleanor. He felt his heart either plummet in his chest or maybe it leapt. Whatever it was doing, it was uncomfortable and unwanted. His eyes went wide. How and why was this happening? Why was she still in Las Vegas? He hadn’t seen his ex-fiancé in nearly a year - and, honestly, had never expected to see her again. They had no reason to keep in contact. She hated him. And he... Dell felt bad for what he did. He really, really did. In his own way. But remorse and guilt were not emotions to bare to anyone, and he certainly wasn’t about to drop to his knees and beg for forgiveness from the girl in the middle of the street. Weakness wasn’t something Dell dealt with well. The man’s automatic grimace was quashed quick enough and replaced with a slow, only slightly antagonizing smile, his eyes half-lidded. Eleanor stood there in one of her little black hats, with her blond hair, tousled in a way that told him more than he wanted to know, cascading down her shoulders, in a long gray coat and tall dark boots, and she hadn’t changed one bit, it seemed - and on her arm was a man. A man Dell didn’t know. Very European, his hair dark. Handsome in a sort of abstract way. Okay, then. - All of his observations, panic, and then forced nonchalance happened in the span of half a second. Time came back up to speed. Dell sucked on his cigarette for a longer moment, his eyes narrowed on the pair of them. He exhaled, smoke trailing out of the corners of his mouth. "Eleanor, good morning." His smile widened and his voice dripped with Southern sweetness, all the more out of place surrounded by neon signs and vacationing Midwesterners. One eyebrow cocked and Dell’s eyes swivelled to the man. "And...?" It was strange to be back in Las Vegas, but Sebastian had always known he would return at some point or another. Italy might have been home, but it was an awkward place now given what had happened between he and Serena, something that his mother continually reminded him was his fault. It wasn’t that she was disappointed in her own, he believed, but moreso that he had brought this upon himself and now had to deal with the consequences like an adult rather than a child who wanted to run from the issues. But when news came that Nell was returning to Las Vegas, it gave him a reason to escape once again, because who would expect someone to live on a separate continent, an ocean between them and the person they loved? His arm was curled around her waist as they turned the corner, and as Nell steered them out of the way of the stranger, Sebastian automatically pulled her in towards his side, his own apology murmured moments after Nell’s. And it might have remained that way had the stranger not stopped and said her name. It was hard, sometimes, to remember that she had a name other than Nell, but the familiarity of his tone pulled at him. Stilling alongside Nell, Sebastian gave the man a short nod of his head. "Sebastian. Do you know this man, Nell?" he asked, automatically turning his attention towards her, because this interaction all depended on her. If she wanted to talk to him, he’d be civil. If she wanted nothing to do with him, then neither did Sebastian. Nell grew absolutely still as she realized just who that voice belonged to. No. It couldn't be. He was in Atlanta, and she had spent the last year trying to be as far away from him and what happened as possible. She had boxed up and put away everything at long last, and this, now, looking at him. No. She refused to deal with it. She said nothing for a long moment as Sebastian spoke to the man, wishing with all her might to go back in time and cross another street. Anything to not be standing here right now. But it soon dawned on her that all the wishing in the world couldn't get her out of this situation, and that both men were looking at her expectantly for an answer. Her ex who was once again her boyfriend, and her ex-fiancé. Why had she come back to Las Vegas at all? "Yes," she finally said, forcing steel into her voice that she didn't feel. "This is Dell." She bothered with no further explanation. Her eyes took to studying his face and his coat, everything from the unshaven beard to the upturned collar, and the mussed hair that told her the same thing she had been blind to for all her time with him. Nell closed her eyes, pushing away everything that was rising up through her stomach. This Sebastian’s question - ‘Do you know this man, Nell?’ - almost had Dell laughing aloud. Apparently, Eleanor wasn’t allowed to talk to strangers who somehow managed to learn her name. Suppressing the urge to simultaneously roll his eyes and die laughing, the older man looked to Eleanor, his eyebrows raised and biting his lip, waiting for her, all the while noting the short, stiff, little nod from Sebastian and the fact that Eleanor’s face had gone white as a sheet. At least she was just as taken off-guard as he was. The introduction was terse, curt, as if the girl had bitten it off and spat it out. Which was more than he ever would have expected from her, given the circumstances. Ever the gentleman (well, when he wasn’t fucking other people on the side...), Dell held his hand out to Sebastian for a shake. No matter the constricting feeling he felt in his chest, there was no need for this to be anything but civil - or, perhaps it would be better to say - no need for the veil of civility to be ripped away, real or not. Contemporary psychological theory suggested that those who showed emotions such as shame and embarrassment tended to be better liked for their obvious expression of their humanity and/or humility or whatever. Such knowledge wasn’t so much lost on Dell as he just didn’t care. He didn’t need the empathy of others to validate his existence. Another man might have stuttered, blushed, and apologized earnestly, but this one did no such thing. Instead, with the cigarette hanging from his lips, he smiled and waited for Sebastian to either take his hand, ask Eleanor if she knew Dell well enough that shaking his hand would be wise - ‘Can I shake this man’s hand, Nell?’ -, or, perhaps even, if he was as supercilious as he looked, to spurn his girlfriend’s ex-fiancé and refuse the gesture. The older man wasn’t stupid. He knew how interactions like this went down. "Dell." One of the things that Sebastian did not do was pry into Nell’s relationships with other men. The only one that really mattered to him was the one he had with her and all others were history. So he didn’t make note of names and faces, didn’t look in the tabloids to see who she might have been with in the past, and given that, the name ‘Dell’ meant very little to him, other than reminding him of the song ‘The Farmer in the Dell’, and it was that thought, random and strange, that drew a smile to his face. "A pleasure," Sebastian finally said, smooth as silk as he offered his hand to the other man, clasping firmly for a shake. He wasn’t timid, didn’t back down from Dell’s gaze, instead holding it firmly even after they had released hands. He glanced back towards Nell, the closed eyes, the expression on her face that he knew all too well. There was something bad lingering here, and for once, he regretted not knowing more about the gap in their lives together. He shifted the arm around her waist to instead wind around the back of her shoulders, giving her a tight squeeze. Somewhere in the back of her mind, Nell realized that Sebastian didn't know who Dell was. That he had said he had no interest in reading old tabloids to see the life she had been living in his absence, and was honorable enough to keep his word. Of course, the back of her mind was currently being drowned out by a litany of Nope. Get me out of here. No. It took her a moment to realize that Sebastian and Dell were engaging, and nobody was doing any sort of walking away. Shit. Sebastian's arm around her shoulder, though a nice gesture, did absolutely nothing to warm her up. Seeing Dell again had chilled her to the bone in just how unexpected it was, and that was before the sea of unaddressed emotion was factored in. Because, standing there, in the middle of that street, Nell was drowning in it. She knew what would happen next. Her hands would shake, her voice would fall, and words would become impossible to string together. It had happened when Orin had taken her to get those DNA results, it had happened when Sebastian had told her he couldn't be with her, and it was happening again. She needed to get out of here before it did. "We have to go." She said abruptly, not managing the hard edge she had earlier. "Coffee." She swallowed, forcing herself to keep calm and follow her therapist in London's advice. "Bye, Dell." Of course, to say ‘there was something bad lingering here’ was to understate. Like, a lot. Still, it wasn’t hard for Dell to believe the confused look in the other man’s eyes was genuine. It came as no surprise to him that Eleanor hadn’t enlightened her friend Sebastian as to how her last relationship had ended. Direct as she was, the girl held a lot close to her chest - or so she had a year ago. Dell supposed he didn’t actually know anymore. After the brief, firm clasp of the hand, he smiled back at the dark-haired Sebastian, very aware of the way his arm then snaked around Eleanor’s shoulders and squeezed. Dell took the cigarette between the two forefingers of his left hand and said in his bemused way, "Oh, yes. Charmed." But then, before anything else could happen, the wild look in Eleanor’s eyes seemed to intensify as she, in a surprisingly meek voice, declared that she and Sebastian ‘had to go - coffee,’ which, honestly, before now Dell hadn’t known was a verb. Eleanor’s farewell then came out just as clipped as her greeting had. The man ran a hand over his lips, and then, with a smile the very perceptive would recognize as predatory, he raised his eyebrows. "I was actually on my way to ...coffee too," replied Dell lightly, amusing himself greatly. He took a short drag of his cigarette and held a hand out, as if to say, ‘lead the way.’ The look that Sebastian leveled Dell with at his mention that he was also going for coffee might have killed had he the ability. There was no mistaking Nell’s reaction for anything other than what it was: she was not pleased to see this man, and she did not want to be in his company, at least not at the moment. And it was of Sebastian’s opinion that Nell had honestly been through her share of bad situations, and he wasn’t about to let this one linger. "Sorry," he said, his smile tight and not at all warm. "We’re taking coffee together. I just got into town and we need some time together to catch up." It was as polite a way of saying ‘You aren’t invited’ as Sebastian could muster right then. His eyes were all for Nell then, another squeeze of his arm. "Come on. We’ll get some coffee then head back," and his tone said that he had already forgotten Dell’s existence, even though the other man stood only feet away still. Nell was so grateful that Sebastian could read her that she could kiss him, provided her body was fully under her control. Which, right now, of course, it wasn't. She settled for nodding her head and turning away from Dell, looking anywhere but at him. What she needed right now was to go somewhere quiet, to have the panic attack that was waiting to take over. She just needed to get away from here first. Dell was fully aware of the intent of Sebastian’s look, but intent without ability or follow-through meant nothing. He simply smiled lightly in response, waiting for a reaction from Eleanor. She was like a mouse, all wide-eyed and frozen. All she could do was nod in agreement with her boyfriend or whatever. If only she had squeaked. A pity. The man stuck the cigarette back between his teeth and looked on with great amusement. The fact that Sebastian was still being polite (and apologized), even if his words were cold and forced, was both impressive and sad. It left little room for playing. Dell gave a nod of understanding and exhaled. "Of course. Enjoy your coffeeing," he said graciously, rubbing his hands together for warmth, his eyes on Eleanor as she turned away from him. He smiled again, moving his attention to Sebastian, even as the little window of interaction was slammed shut, and even as his heart ran itself ragged in his chest. The pair began their trek away, toward coffee and camaraderie or whatever - toward a safe place for Eleanor to have a meltdown, more likely, and Dell tossed the butt of his cigarette to the ground and crushed it out under his heel. And in a tone that brooked no argument and almost sounded like a promise, he called after them: "I’ll see you around, Eleanor." And with that, he continued along the way he’d been headed. Forget the coffee, though. Right now, more than caffeine, Dell needed a shot or two of whiskey. His hands were shaking as he stuffed them into his pockets. |