Norman Osborn will always be a (ex_supervill870) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-04-05 16:26:00 |
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Entry tags: | christine daae, phantom |
Who: Neil and Sam
What: Post-masquerade things. (PART 1)
Where: Passages, then Neil's awesome villa.
When: Backdated to after the masquerade.
Warnings/Rating: None.
Sam had no idea how long she sat there, in that darkened hall, head bowed against her bare knees. She was trying not to think, but that wasn’t working for shit, and she really just wanted to get drunk off her ass and finish off what she hadn’t managed to finish on the roof. She was anticipation, nerves and anger, because she really didn’t need some great moment of awareness in the middle of March. The timing sucked. She had to find an apartment, Clarissa was getting on her last nerve, and there were the new-perfect siblings to contend with. Oh, yeah, and the fact that she almost ate some son-of-a-bitch, while her hand was on his cock. Great Friday night.
She tapped her booted feet on the dusty carpet, and she hummed as she closed her eyes against the press of her knees. The song was something the orchestra had been playing the night before, more suited to 1900s Paris than to here and now, but it was soothing all the same. She was actually on pitch - thanks to Christine’s singing lessons - and the song made Christine quiet down in Sam’s mind. Spending the night in the Opera House without actually being there had made Christine vocal and displeased, and Sam wasn’t drunk enough to deal with that right then. She hummed a little louder, and Christine went quiet, even if the longing to go through the nearby door was a bittersweet constant.
She lost track of time, which generally only happened with her artwork, and she didn’t look up until she heard something behind the door. The black wood began to change to the familiar Paris Opera House, and she scooted back against the wall, as if it would give and make room for her or something. It didn’t, and the humming stopped as she watched. She was a mess, blue workman’s shirt open from neck to waist, the skin around her mouth stained with blood, and more of the same down the front of her chest. Her hair was a blood-tipped windblown disaster, and there was something unnaturally hungry in her eyes, lingering maybe, as she waited to see what came out of the fucking door that was the bane of her existence. Masquerade. Paper faces on parade. Like that was really necessary.
Erik was a mess. Even on a good day, his mental state was questionable, and the masquerade had done him no favors. He was inconsolable for hours, lost in his own rage and despair, and try as he might Neil simply couldn’t get through to him. Making contact was a maddeningly slow process, never mind actually holding his attention, but eventually he’d managed to convince the distraught madman to allow him to return to Vegas. Needless to say, Neil wasn’t in the best of moods by that point, and he couldn’t decide if he was angrier at Erik for being so desperate that he ended up with some guy in an alcove or at whoever was behind the masquerade, for giving the poor man beauty only to snatch it away.
He practically burst through the door, in the middle of trying to reassure Erik enough to quiet him down and save himself a bitch of a headache, and he didn’t actually realize he wasn’t alone in the hallway until the door shut behind him and resumed its usual appearance. Neil cut himself off mid-rant and stepped back, startled, not initially recognizing the bloody, wild-looking woman against the wall as Sam. “Hey,” he said carefully, as though speaking to some sort of wild animal. Fantastic. Like he really needed an encounter with a crazy person on top of everything else. “Are you oka--”
That was when he saw past the blood and the strange look in her eyes. “Jesus,” he swore. “Sam? What the hell happened to you?” Neil moved forward, concern replacing his previous caution.
Neil. She relaxed. She wasn’t in the mood for a fight with Liam, and even Aiden tended to give her shit about everything, but Neil could be counted on to tease and joke without pulling her pigtails. She wasn’t sure she could handle pigtail pulling just then, and there was something about Neil that made her feel like shit was going to be alright. It was a stupid reaction, and she could probably lose her feminist card for it, but she felt as young as she was just then, all fake bluster and bravado.
She laughed at his caution, the initial bout of it. “And here I thought I couldn’t scare you,” she said, and it took her a second to realize why he looked concerned. “Oh, yeah, that,” she said, pushing herself to her feet and working the buttons closed on the shirt with the kind of ease that said she really didn’t care who saw what. “Not my blood,” which probably sounded terrible, given the fact that it was all over her mouth. She stopped midway with the buttons, not caring anymore, and she shrugged her shoulders. “What happened,” she repeated, and then she looked over his shoulder at the door. “Wait. If you were in there, does that mean you didn’t have to go through this crap? Because that might just piss me off,” she said, but there was none of her usual bite in it. There was that strange hunger in her eyes, sure, but it wasn’t angry or desperate, which was strange, because she generally had both of those things in excess.
She took a step closer to him, and she looked him over for injuries, like she had every right in the world to do so, and then she looked back up at his face. “I need a cigarette, and about two dozen beers. You’re buying,” she added, and she hadn’t thought as far as the fact that nowhere (even in Vegas) was going to let her in half naked and covered in blood. “Fuck,” she said, dragging fingers through the blood-tangled end of her hair. “And I need her to shut up,” she added, pointing at her head.
“You can’t,” he countered without hesitation, his use of humor practically instinctive despite his concern. Neil might not have known the details, but blood was never a good thing, and he wasn’t ignorant enough to believe that everyone had shacked up with handsome strangers in dark alcoves for the entire night. The fact that it wasn’t her blood was only a small relief, since it meant she wasn’t hurt, yet it still belonged to someone. “Not yours, huh? Someone must’ve pissed you off.” Sam was the kind of woman who was more than capable of taking care of herself, and she was certainly no damsel, but that didn’t change the fact that he was worried about her. Erik’s influence and how he felt about Christine had nothing to do with it. “I knew what was going on, but Erik was the one who was actually at the party. I wish it had been me,” he said grimly, and while he normally managed to hide the struggle of keeping Erik’s reactions under control, some of it slipped through now. It wasn’t easy, dealing with a guy having a breakdown in his own mind.
Neil was amused, of all things, by her once-over, considering she was in far worse condition than he was. “Fine, I’m buying, but you might want to get yourself cleaned up first. It’s a little too early for Halloween.” He’d looked her over about five times and still couldn’t find any sign of injuries, but even that wasn’t enough to convince him. “Come on. Standing around here isn’t going to get us anywhere,” he said. “I don’t expect to get any details out of you until the beer anyway. As for Christine, I wish I could help, but I’m not so good at getting them to shut up.” He was lucky he’d managed to convince Erik to leave, but silencing him was beyond what he had the patience for.
“You can at least pretend it wasn’t me that they pissed off,” she said, because she was just fine pretending it was someone else that had gone all wolfgirl the night before. But it was a lie, and she knew it, and it was pretty fucking obvious she knew it. His comment about wishing it had been him instead of Erik, that made her tip her head curiously. See, Sam had a problem. This whole Alter thing? It was kind of a big blurry line for her, and she knew it. The dividers weren’t as clear as they were for, say, Elias, who seemed to live about five feet removed from Sherlock Holmes’ pompous ass. She wasn’t surprised, then, to hear Neil say he knew what was going on throughout the night, because Christine had known what was going on too. The reactions to the stupid roof had been all hers, and Sam was getting so used to the meshing of everything that it made it hard to define who was saying or seeing what. “What did he do?” she asked, because that comment - about wishing it was him - was telling, and she assumed Erik had hurt someone.
She looked down at herself when he said she should get cleaned up, and she rubbed the back of her hand over her mouth as if she was just remembering the blood there, which maybe she was. “Yeah, right, about that. Change of plans, maybe? I’m guessing you have some ritzy pad with a bathtub and some nice booze on tap. Pony up, and I’ll let you live.” She smiled through the joke, but there was some tension there, because it would have been funnier in a few days, when her mouth didn’t still taste like iron. “But you have to spill too,” she said, pointing a finger at him, then closing her hand around his sleeve and tugging him down the hall. The door got one last, lingering glance as Christine mournfully requested to go in, but this wasn’t the time for that shit. Sam needed a drink, and Christine wouldn’t let her get wasted in Paris. It was pretty evident, that look, because she didn’t look forward again until they’d rounded the corner again and the door had slipped out of sight.
Contrary to what she thought, Neil wasn’t so sure that Sam had been herself during the masquerade. Maybe some part of her had been present, but he knew that the man Erik had become was not who he was, not entirely; it was like a deep-seated desire come to life and manifesting itself in living flesh. “Don’t be too hard on yourself. No one was really themselves last night. Hell, Erik did some things that would probably make Gaston Leroux turn over in his grave,” he quipped, though Erik didn’t didn’t find it particularly amusing. Neil had been a spectator throughout the entire night, unable to exert any semblance of control over what not-Erik did or didn’t do. He wasn’t judgmental, and he really didn’t care if the other man had wanted to get it on with a guy, but the entire night had been like giving a blind man sight only to take it away a few hours later. It was never going to last. When it came down to specifics, though, Neil was reluctant to share, since even on a good day Erik was an intensely private person. “Trust me, you don’t want to know. Christine would flip. Besides, he’s not big on me telling, you know?” It took him a few moments to realize what the sensible assumption would be, and he shook his head. “He didn’t hurt anyone, surprisingly enough,” he added.
Personally, he much preferred his suite over anywhere public after the night he’d had. “Nice guess. Hey, you don’t need to threaten my life to get me to take you back to my place,” he teased, but there was a sort of caution there, an awareness that things weren’t as carefree and light hearted as they might pretend. Neil raised his eyebrows when she said he had to spill, because Erik would be downright impossible to live with if that happened, but he allowed himself to be tugged down the hall and away from the door he’d just come through. On the way down, he called a cab, and he was a regular enough customer with a specific company that it arrived only a few minutes after they stepped out of the hotel. “Ladies first,” he offered gallantly, holding open the cab door and shooting the driver a quick look when he stared a little too long at the bloodstained woman on the sidewalk.
She was surprised at his reluctance, which resulted in a curious look and a quiet huh. “Secrets, huh? Did he recognize the Opera House? Because she did, even if it was me there.” Neil didn’t surprise her often, and she was serious when she constantly ribbed him about being too fucking even-keeled, but she expected him to come right out and tell her what had happened the night before. His comment that Christine would flip didn’t help matters, because Christine was already making a racket in her mind, and Sam wanted to shut her up with as much booze as she could manage. It was a new tactic, but she found it worked pretty well. She was quiet about it until they reached the cab, and she shot the driver back an equally long stare; let it never be said she was scared to stare anybody down, even when she was standing there covered in blood in nothing but boxers and a half-unbuttoned shirt.
She scooted across the cab, the scent of blood immediately mixing with cleaner and leather, and she rubbed her face. “I’d kill for that shower,” she said as Neil settled in next to her, and she turned her face, pressed her cheek against the back of the seat and gave him a genuine smile. “Thanks,” she added, because he didn’t need to help her out, she knew. It’s not like the door connections came with any contracts or requirements, and her horrible interactions with Liam were proof of that. “Would you tell me if it was you?” she asked finally, as the cab began to move. “If it wasn’t him last night. If it was you, would you dish?” she asked curiously. She was feeling chatty, which was probably a bad thing, especially if there was going to be booze involved, but she just couldn’t bring herself to give a shit. She propped her boots on his thigh, and she nudged at him with them. “And if you call me a lady again, I’m going to throw a punch,” she added, but there was a smile there. Ok, maybe she did need that fucking drink after all; she was going soft.
Neil gave an apologetic shrug, but his stance on spilling Erik’s secrets was fairly solid. Sometimes compromises had to be made and promises kept in order to keep the balance and the sanity of at least one of the people currently sharing a single mind. “Yeah, he did, but he wasn’t really focused on it. Whatever weird change happened had too much of an effect on him for that,” he explained. It probably hadn’t helped that part of him had enjoyed being a part of the festivities, rather than stuck in the darkness listening to that which he could never take part in, and there was a reason why Erik had stayed far away from the underground lake even though, after the fact, he was furious that people had gone down there at all. He didn’t bother hiding his smirk when Sam stared down the cab driver, inappropriate attire and bloodstains notwithstanding. It was times like these when he forgot just how young she really was.
Chuckling at the driver’s muttering about the smell of blood, Neil slid across the seat and shut the door in one fluid motion. He felt no particular obligation to help her out, despite sharing a door and headmates who were pretty closely entwined, but rather did so because he genuinely wanted to. When all was said and done, he actually liked Sam. “Don’t mention it. You’d do the same for me, right?” As though he ever intended on being stuck somewhere in boxers and blood, in dire need of a shower. Thankfully Erik had quieted down a bit, though Neil didn’t need to actually hear his thoughts in order to know how he felt, which was another unfortunate side effect he could certainly do without. “If it was me?” He tilted his head back against the seat and thought for a moment. “Yeah, I would. It’d be mine to tell. What happened to Erik isn’t, though, and he’ll throw a fit if I go ahead and talk about it anyway.” Of course, the truth might still come out regardless, but he’d make a real attempt to ensure that he only spilled with Erik’s permission. He laughed when she nudged him, which gave a fair impression of just how seriously he took her threat. “If being called a lady isn’t your thing, then what is?”
“So, basically, he got out and had a good time,” she reasoned, “and now he’s stuck in hell again.” It wasn’t a big stretch to assume maybe he’d look ok for the evening, Erik, and she thought it must suck to go from being alone, to being around a bunch of people, to being alone again. “That sucks,” she offered plainly, compassionately, another push to his thigh accompanying the comment. She didn’t expect him to come clean, and she wasn’t really the kind to push for information. Well, at least not when she was sober. So, she dropped it for then, and she entertained herself by staring down the driver for a minute or two.
His question about doing the same for him got her attention back, and she scoffed. “Yeah, right. If you show up on my doorstep half naked and covered in blood I’ll totally let you hop into my shower, the one that only has cold water, and I’ll give you some cheap domestic afterward.” She smiled, because it was a pretty entertaining visual, imagining him crammed into her tiny shower. She believed him when he said he would tell her if it was his experience, rather than Erik’s, because she pretty much regarded Neil as a strangely open book. She had no clue what made him tick, and she was almost entirely sure the man didn’t have any secrets to speak of, but he was pretty forthcoming about things; she liked that about him.
The laugh wasn’t surprising and she realized that, like Elias, he didn’t actually fall for her rough exterior act, not really. He didn’t get all pissed at her like Liam did, and he didn’t snap like Aiden, and she was starting to think there wasn’t much she could do that would make him lose his shit with her. She wouldn’t admit to liking that aloud, not sober, but she did like it. “Today? I think my “thing” is being a slutty fairy tale.” She batted her eyelashes in an exaggerated manner, and then she laughed an open, throaty laugh. “I am so not a lady, baby. If we’re going with last night being our deepest darkest selves, or something like that, I think it’s pretty telling that I ended up covered in someone else’s blood.” She looked up as the cab slowed, and she whistled lowly. “Well, look where you live.”
“Yeah, that’s basically the long and short of it.” Neil saw no harm in offering vague confirmation, since it wasn’t a stretch to assume that Erik had managed to enjoy himself; he just wasn’t going to elaborate on the specifics of how. Sam’s version of compassion may have been blunt, but it was still there, and he hid a smile at Erik’s surprised stretch of silence afterward; everyone familiar with his story knew that compassion wasn’t something he’d experienced often, in any form. “It does,” he agreed. “It was hell trying to convince him to leave, but being alone down there when he’s like this isn’t healthy. At least out here he can’t cause any damage.” Neil was more worried about what Erik might do himself, honestly, moreso than anyone else, especially since the Opera House was still empty.
He gave a mock-shudder at the mention of a cold water-only shower, never mind the thought of him actually in it, and grinned a second later. “A cold shower and cheap domestic, what more could a guy ask for?” One of the things he liked most about Sam was that she wasn’t conventional, despite the tough-girl thing being mostly an act. Neil had never been one for the boring monotony of repetition and fitting into cookie-cutter expectations. He wasn’t an outright rebel or anything like that, far from it, but he’d always done his own thing despite the opinions of others.
A slutty fairy tale wasn’t exactly what he’d been expecting, and his raised eyebrows said as much. “Which one?” Neil had a hard time imagining her as the princess sort, even at some weird masquerade, and that didn’t really explain where the blood had come from either, unless she’d been the Big Bad Wolf. “I don’t know if we were all our deepest, darkest selves,” he said, thinking of Erik; he’d been the furthest thing from dark. While there had been a wide variety of hotels he could stay in, Neil had admittedly chosen one of the Aria’s sky suites at random. His place had an awesome view, if he said so himself, even if he had more space on his hands than he knew what to do with. “Yeah, it’s not bad,” he shrugged, though his modesty was feigned; he wasn’t going to pretend to be something he wasn’t. Yeah, he was rich, but unlike some he didn’t think that made him better than anyone else. Luckier, maybe, but that was about it. He had one of the villas, and staying there for an indeterminate amount of time hadn’t come cheap. Neil slid out of the cab first, after paying the driver, and waited for Sam to exit before approaching the entrance. The doorman nodded at him as he held open the door, and his cool, blank gaze turned to Sam, offering no hint of what he might have thought of her appearance.
“Hey, rich boy, you could consider it an adventure,” she said, in response to his quip about slumming it. Sam, as a rule, didn’t like rich people - or she hadn’t - but everyone she’d been meeting lately had enough fare for the bus and a steak dinner after, which was more than she could say for herself. And dammit if she didn’t like them all. “Letting me in is a risk, you know. I’ve stolen from worse places than this,” she admitted as the cab stopped. She wasn’t ashamed of it, and it was obvious from the rich Jersey tone of her voice. Wealthy people had stuff she needed, and they could always buy more if she took it. Sam lived with a drug dealer, and she’d done worse than that herself; she wasn’t exactly on the straight-and-narrow.
“Not drunk yet,” she said of baring her soul and telling him who she’d been the night before. And, ok, so maybe she was stalling. But whatever, she was still processing it in her head, and he was talking about not being their deepest darkest selves. She whistled once she walked in the door of the entrance to the Venetian, but she turned her attention back to him almost immediately, after sparing a second to blow the calm doorman a kiss. She laughed as she looked back at Neil, and she shrugged her shoulders, as if she couldn’t help making a scene. It was, rather obviously, a way to beat the doorman to the possible punch of judging her, but she didn’t actually realize that about herself. “So, if it’s not deep, dark selves then what?” she asked, because she thought she had that all figured out.
She tugged on his sleeve as the villa entrances came into view, knowing he had to rent one of those if he lived in the hotel. Everyone on the strip knew about the suites in the big hotels, and she’d been in a few when her roommate had gone to parties to deal, so she knew the walk and she just looked over her shoulder as she tugged him along. “Which one?” she asked, giving a scandalized woman that passed them in the hall a smile that was more reminiscent of the fairy tale girl in red than she knew.
“An adventure,” he repeated, with a fair amount of disbelief that wasn’t entirely genuine. “You and I have different ideas of what that is, Sam.” Neil had never slummed it, unless one counted a few instances when he’d been travelling with friends and money had run out, with no way for him to contact family or get to a bank. Even then, though, it had only been temporary, because he knew once he found someone who spoke English or wandered back to civilization things would be as they were before. He gave her a long look when she admitted that she’d stolen from worse places, but he didn’t tell her to stay in the cab or that maybe going up to his place wasn’t such a good idea after all. “Then it’s a risk I’ll take, I guess,” he shrugged. “Just try not to get caught, and if you’re going to steal from me, do me a favor and keep away from the sentimental stuff. I’ve got enough shit I don’t need that you can take off my hands instead.” Neil didn’t actually believe that she would take anything, but there was always a chance that he might be giving her more credit than she deserved.
He usually tipped everyone around this place too well for them to openly judge whoever he might be with, but not even money could change what people thought beneath their masks of cool, blank nothing. Neil wasn’t the sort of optimist who believed the majority of people could be accepting and nonjudgmental; it was all too rose-colored glasses and fantasy for him, an opinion which Erik’s presence certainly didn’t help. “You’re not so good at the whole subtle thing, are you?” He laughed when she blew the doorman a kiss, not particularly concerned by the attention she might be drawing to them. Even if she was quiet, her appearance would be enough to draw some curious looks. “With Erik, I think it was who he wanted to be. It wasn’t who he really was,” he said thoughtfully, because while Erik might not have been terrible through and through, he was nothing like the beautiful man he’d become for the night.
There was something amusing about the fact that Sam was tugging him along to his villa, but Neil didn’t tug away or attempt to take the lead. “Third on the left,” he said, offering a polite, ‘what-can-you-do’ smile to the scandalized woman as she passed. Normally he didn’t give his neighbours, if they could be called that, anything to gossip about, but he suspected that might change after tonight. He didn’t mind. With all the parties and the drugs and the women people turned blind eyes to, one girl in boxers and blood was hardly shocking. He nudged past her once they reached the door, sliding the key into the lock--twice, as there were two--before it clicked and he pushed open the door. The lights came to life as soon as they stepped inside, illuminating the living room, if it could be called something so plain, and the kitchen beyond, as well as the curved staircase that led up. There was more behind a wall, and the space was certainly far too big for one person. At least ten could have lived there comfortably. “So, do you want the grand tour, or should I trust you enough to find the bathroom on your own?” The door swung shut behind them, the locks clicking into place, as he looked over his shoulder with a teasing grin.