Elise & Harry know that its like father (like_son) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-06-18 12:26:00 |
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Entry tags: | death, harry osborn |
Who: Elise & Iris
What: Wine and kisses and naps
Where: Iris' apartment
When: Before Iris went to stay with Ian.
Warnings: None.
It took Elise the better part of the day to prepare for her outing. This involved several teacups of dark, bitter Wein and numerous costume changes. When she was younger, everything was tight and black. Maybe she was mature now because she liked the pale and flowing things. They made her feel like a ghost, and she smiled while getting dressed because she remembered that as a child, she was always a ghost on Halloween. Even when she got too old to dress up, she was still the ghost. People might have looked at her and not known due to the lack of costume, but Elise knew. That was her little secret. When you're dead, nothing hurts. She'd watched enough PBS documentaries on astral projection and near death experiences to know.
So the dress was long and white, peepshow eyelets down the bodice with a skirt that flowed like a tattered sail. Her Nikon was around her neck, and she had sunglasses on when she caught a cab on the corner. There was a bottle of wine under her arm in the bag with extra film, and in that moment she was lfeeling very Parisian. She longed for une boulangerie. That train of thought was a dangerous one because in no time she was recalling how much she missed the fashion weeks, how out of the game she'd been while plummeting out of sanity. It was enough to make a girl want to try and kill herself all over again, but Elise settled for a less traditional and more inspiring kind of melancholy. Comfort was found with the idea that she'd be back to work by the fall if she found a new agent.
It didn't take her long for the driver to find Iris' new place. Upon arrival, Elise knocked politely. It was really the only mannerful thing that she knew how to do.
Iris, for all her family’s wealth and all the disposable income she could spend if she wished, tended to spend that money on others when she could, and she rarely bought things for herself. Everywhere she had lived since arriving in Las Vegas had come furnished with its own decor, but her new home had not. It meant that while her single room at Anton’s had been almost cluttered with her few possessions and clothes, the new place, with its multiple bedrooms, was far emptier than she knew what to do with.
There were only a few stools near the dividing island between kitchen and living space, and the only other furniture so far was in the bedrooms. One of the guest rooms held a bed and dresser and comfortable armchair, ready for some unnamed but planned-for resident. But the master bedroom only held a wide, king-size bed, covered in high threadcount, cream sheets, too many pillows, and a white comforter. Everything about the bed was soft and inviting, and the room was filled with light, the windows only blocked by sheer panels and the familiar blue scarf carefully draped over the curtain rod. The only other things in the room were her as-yet unpacked boxes and bins that she’d retrieved from the storage Anton had put them into, and those were all stacked in the walk in closet.
At first, Iris sat on her bed to wait for Elise, but then, fingers twisting in the hem of the long shirt she wore, she realized that she was hardly dressed for a visitor. A flurry of digging through boxes found a miraculously unwrinkled dress of a silky knit, and a well-loved cardigan to throw over it. Neither held much of a saturated color, the same grey and slightly-darker grey that she often wore. It was comfortable though, and she pulled on thick, above the knee socks to finish her outfit. It was likely too “warm” to be wearing in Las Vegas, but the temperature in her home was just cool enough to be comfortable in the layers.
Once dressed, she wandered through the space as she continued to wait for Elise, wondering when the other woman would arrive, and every turn brought to light how ill-prepared she was for a real guest. There was even very little in the refrigerator, her grocery delivery service not yet having made the first delivery. She had bottled water and little else, and she thumbed the pages of her journal, wondering if she should reschedule the meeting with Elise, or at least choose a new location. But with the passing of time, she couldn’t be sure that Elise would see it, and they’d already had so many misunderstandings. She didn’t want everything to fall apart more than it already had.
When the knock finally came, Iris attempted to swallow down the nerves that crawled up into her throat, and crossed the apartment to answer the door. The living room behind her was bare, hardwood floors gleaming without the covering of a rug. It took her a moment to look up at Elise, and the smile she offered was faint and uncertain.
“...Hello.”
"Afternoon," Elise beamed before making her way forward for a delicate brush past Iris and into the home. Despite residing in an apartment herself, Elise hated them. Motel rooms felt more personal in some ways, all of those stains in the carpet and gouges in the wood. Elise liked to close her eyes and imagine all of the people who had loved there, and died there. While traveling for the Bazaar, she rarely got to stay in those little, filthy places. It was always the Seasons or the condo of an editor. It'd been such an extended time since she'd traveled that Elise was truly beginning to hate her apartment. Some nights she mused over the firewalls, and whether or not to burn her place down in effigy beneath the whitewash pollution glow of a city's moon. The idea had a mind of its own, and Elise drifted further into the apartment while it took over. It mapped and imagined. She smiled, and it was a little sad, when she turned to glance back at Iris.
"I brought vino," she said with a fresh smile. The illusion was bright, and the darkness that lurked beneath her was undetectable as ever. Part of her hated Lin because he'd gotten past this, but a larger part hated herself. Elise held the bottle out, and her smile wilted as she realized that it might not have been the best of gifts. Considering the lack of detail in this apartment, she might have been better off bringing another scarf.
Iris was suddenly self conscious about the blankness of her rooms, watching as someone other than herself suddenly filled the space. She twisted her fingers together in front of her stomach, the only outward sign of her nerves since her expression was mostly calm. She didn’t know what Elise was thinking, if her new home was acceptable or somehow offensive in its emptiness.
Her own smile was small and not quite steady when Elise offered the wine, and she nodded and stepped forward to take it from Elise’s hands before cradling the bottle close to her body. She hesitated for a long moment, needing to swallow and gather a thought before replying. “Thank you,” she replied, the glass of the bottle pressed heavy against her slim belly. “I don’t drink much. I...” She hesitated again, clearing her throat and feeling somehow very young in Elise’s presence. “I have water. And I... think I saw a corkscrew in one of the drawers. But I have no glasses yet.” The woman standing in her living room deserved more than that, Iris was certain of it, but there was nothing else to offer. “I am ill prepared for guests. I’m sorry.”
Iris' nervousness was solid enough to skate figure eights on, and Elise smiled reassuringly. Through the journals, it would have been all too easy for Elise to brush off this kind of stuttering silence as disinterest in her company. Sensing that she was being perceived as critical of the vast and echoing home, Elise took a content seat on one of the stools located at the kitchen's diving island. She kicked her sandals off, and they clattered with horrible loudness against the wooden floors, with no carpeting to soften the blow. Elise knew how to flatter and charm. Her job dictated that she rub elbows with the bored and self-absorbed. Perhaps it helped that she was just the same, although not nearly as rich. In this moment what helped was likely that she was just a little bit drunk. "We can drink from bottle then."
She reached out to reclaim the wine while hopping off of the stool and moving into the kitchen. The search was on for this corkscrew, and she choked the neck of the bottle in one hand while peeking through cavernous drawers. "Once in Morocco, we had drank all of champagne and only had case of malbec left to us. But no opener," she smiled with some irony while discovering the corkscrew at last. She began to twist its metal into the corked wine. "So we found local man with a.. how do you say.." Blue eyes moved toward the pale ceiling as she searched for the appropriate term, but ultimately settled on, "Big knife. He chopped the tops off of wine bottle like it was somebody's head. We never got all of the glass out, and Michael Kors very nearly cut his tongue off." The cork let loose with a pop and Elise took a sampling taste from the bottle before grinning. "Was fun." She held the bottle out to Iris, "You like wine?"
When Elise sat, it was at least not a rejection of Iris’ new home, and after a moment she took the other stool. Already only in her stocking feet, she tucked her toes behind the rung of the stool and folded her hands in her lap properly. The sound of the sandals hitting the floor made her startle slightly and inhale softly. She dropped her eyes to her hands, but forced herself to look back up at Elise after a moment. Fighting to find words, she only blinked when Elise hopped off the stool.
She listened to the story with wide eyes, watching as Elise moved around the kitchen that she’d barely even stepped foot in yet. The tale seemed unreal, though she knew that there was a showy way to remove the top of a bottle with a sword, of sorts. She’d heard it happen when she still lived in her parents’ home, the dinner parties gone expensive and a little ridiculous at the holidays. The memory of the pop and clatter still echoed in her ears when she thought about it. She didn’t share that memory though, instead fixing her eyes on Elise as the woman expertly eased the cork from the bottle. She was positive that she would never be able to duplicate it if she tried herself. The name in the story meant nothing to her other than a vague familiarity, but she returned Elise’s grin with a small smile of her own.
She accepted the open bottle with both hands, careful to not tip or spill any on herself, nervous at making a scene. She held it close to her face, breathing in. She’d never developed a taste for alcohol of any kind, but was familiar enough with the scent of good wine, thanks to her family. The tang of it flooded her nose and she blinked back over at Elise before drinking. “I don’t drink much. I...” She managed another small smile, self-deprecating as she looked down at the bottle and shook her head. “I’m afraid I get tipsy very quickly.” Even so, she didn’t want to insult Elise by rejecting the gift she’d brought over, so she tipped the bottle up and took a sip. She definitely was not used to it, and it showed by the tiny wince of her eyes, but she forced herself to take another sip before setting the bottle down on the countertop, closer to Elise.
"To get tipsy is what wine is for." Elise collected the bottle with a genuine, and therefore soft, smile. She wound her hands around the glass, enjoying how cool it felt against her fingers. With no shame, Elise lifted the bottle to her cheek for a press, closing her eyes to enjoy the snappy difference in temperature, as slight as it was. The bottle of red had ridden along with her in an air conditioned car, so perhaps that was where the difference lie. Or maybe she was blushing with exuberance. Thoughtfully, Elise took a deep swig from the bottle's mouth.
"People only drink it at dinner and at parties because being drunk makes food enjoyable, and company endurable." Taking another drink, Elise wiped the leaking rubies from the edge of her mouth with an unabashed grin. "Are you glad I am here? I am glad I am here."
Iris allowed herself another small smile, but she looked down hide it. Two sips was not enough to make her bold, but she’d set a bold precedent by inviting Elise over in the first place. “Is that why you brought it over? To make me tipsy?” It could have been flirting, if her voice wasn’t quite so laced through with shyness. She was still smiling though, small though it was, and Elise’s own genuine smile gave her courage. “My parents drink mostly at dinner.” She didn’t want to talk about her parents, but Elise’s hands were still wrapped around the bottle, holding it to her face, and Iris banished the passing wonder of how Elise’s cheek felt.
“I’m glad you’re here.” It seemed like too grand of a confession, delivered to empty rooms that echoed her words back at them. But Elise had already given a confession of her own, even if it was one that Iris had trouble believing. “Are you?” She sounded genuinely surprised that Elise would want to be anywhere near her, but she tried to push down the disbelieving tone of her voice. She looked at her hands yet again, fingers twisted together until they were pale skeleton bones. “I don’t know what to do now that you’re here...”
"We do not have to do anything, Iris." That offering was a laurel branch extended to the other woman's noteworthy anxiousness. Elise did not know shy people. Her circle of friends was small but highlighted in stage marquees and drag queen glitter. She smoked with supermodels, dined with designers, and drank with musicians. The lone exception to the rule was basically Lin, but he was most likely the least shy of all. Elise was accustomed to being the wallflower, the static beauty mystery in shadows and chiffon.. but not now. Pausing, she took another sip of wine.
"We can be simply talk.. if you like?" Hesitantly, Elise glanced up. Iceland eyes peeked with curiosity beneath a fringe of dandelion blonde. Admittedly, this might have been a bad decision. Neither of them were very conversational, not even on good days.
“Talk.” It was a quiet repetition in the space, thoughtful as Iris tried to come up with something to talk about. She’d spent half her childhood listening to people make smalltalk at parties, but it never seemed very genuine, and she’d never learned the skill herself. She rarely talked at all, except to doctors, and since she hadn’t seen Jack in months, it had been too long since she’d even done that. She was well enough aware that the sort of talking she did with the doctors was not the sort that was needed now, and she fell silent again as she obviously searched for a topic. As she thought, she reached out for the bottle of wine again, drawing it carefully out of Elise’s hands with only an unintended brush of fingers against skin. The bottle wobbled, but she lifted it slowly and took another drink. It was too full, too unlike anything she was used to, but even her few sips had begun to warm her throat on down.
“I’m not the best at talking,” she finally admitted, the bottle set on the countertop with a soft rattle and snick of glass on granite. The warmth also loosened her words, starting to free them more readily. “I’m better when I sit to the side. Where people can move on by me if they wish.” It was a strange enough statement, the lilt of a long-known memory in its recitation. She didn’t want Elise to move on by though, not if she was being honest with herself. “I could ask about your dress? It’s very lovely.”
Elise did not reach for the bottle again, but rather crossed her legs at the knee and rested back against the island's edge with an elbow bent and propped like a support beam. The mention of her dress was enough to initiate a glance down the front of her own body where the eyelets marched down her sternum like rows of tiny, see-through soldiers. Her skin was spun honey underneath, but not yet tan for the coming summer. It was beginning to feel like the time to return to the French Riviera. She entertained the idea with a ghosting smile. Elise folded her ringed hands over the white linen of one knee. "You like the dress? You can have it," she offered. This was the manner in which Elise got rid of most things, giving them away. Like all people who were only momentarily tethered to this life, she was always eager to pass off her possessions, even the prized ones. What did these material things matter to her when she was only passing through?
Her thumb caught the dress' pale strap as if she intended to take it off right here, but Elise only smiled and hooked her fingers through the strap as if she was Huckleberry Finn and this was her aww shucks suspender. "Why are you quiet? Your sister is very not quiet."
Iris’ eyes followed Elise’s own glance downward, Iris finally realizing that what she thought was simply a pattern was in fact small holes that showed through skin. Color flushed her own cheeks as she stared for a moment and then pulled her gaze suddenly back up, only to meet Elise’s smile and frank regard. The blush only intensified as she spread her hands out, as if that movement could stop Elise from removing the dress. He breath caught even at the thought of it, and she blinked. “No!” The outburst wasn’t loud, but it was sudden, and Iris bit her lip before continuing. “I didn’t mean for me. It’s lovely on you.” She wasn’t certain what to do with Elise’s tendency to try to give her clothing. She still felt that she wouldn’t be able to do any of the clothes justice.
The question was enough to distract her, and gratefully so. “We’re very different people, she and I. And we weren’t raised in the same family.” It wasn’t the first time that Iris thought about what might have been, had she remained with the family into which she was born.
"Oh," Elise drew the word out with some thought, calculating whether or not that explained everything. She had no siblings to compare against, and she was certainly nothing like her adopted parents. Eventually she was forced to concede to the fact that she probably would have been something less of a gimme-everything brat if she'd had a younger brother or sister. Of course, that meant that Elise was immediately quite glad that she didn't have siblings. Who wanted to live life according to anyone else? It was exactly the reason that relationships had always proved to be a complete waste of time. Free birds can't be caged by compassion.
"I was adopted," she offered. It seemed like baring the more personal aspects of her life was a good way to keep the conversation going, if it would make Iris feel less exposed. Or perhaps it was the wine that would make her talk, and Elise reached out for the bottle. She neglected a swig herself and rather extended the thing to Iris with a beam. "I can never tell the difference between good wine and cheap wine."
"Although.." While musing, she turned the label toward herself while trying to recall just how much it had cost. "This one was quite expensive. This vineyard still demands that barefooted virgin woman crush the wine. Which makes no sense, don't you think promiscuity would make for a better wine?" She pushed the bottle toward Iris like she was passing a glorious torch.
“I was adopted too,” Iris returned, a small offering of her own and more than many people knew about her. For every bit of information that Elise gave, she felt the need to give something of herself, though she was certain that she would run out of interesting things far before Elise did, and she wasn’t entirely certain how to let the other woman just talk. Every time there was a silence between them, she felt the need to fill it with a response of her own.
Talk of wine made Iris’ eyes focus on Elise, and she allowed herself a small smile at the thought of who was and was not qualified to crush wine grapes. She took the bottle as she listened and took another drink, not noticing that Elise hadn’t taken one of her own. “I’m certain that it can’t make that much of a difference. How could grapes know the difference between feet?” Granted, there was a difference between dirty and clean feet, and whoever was stomping should give them a good scrubbing before stepping in, but whether or not someone had been deflowered hardly seemed relevant to winemaking.
Elise laughed, and it was genuine where so many other things with her were not. The laugh was always real because when she got sad, she quite simply did not bother with smiling. At some point when her mind first began to decline, she'd bothered with pretending. These days that kind of falsity was tiring. There was a way she always nearly stared through someone without ever focusing on them. There was that kind of otherworldly perception that was reserved for drug addicts and desperate people of all creeds, a hungry connection to whatever world lie beyond this one. She was never quite there if she wasn't invested in conversation, and even then the conversation needed to be primarily about herself. She was content now though, fascinated by the way that Iris seemed to be blooming into the conversation. It was surely the wine, and that made Elise grin with mischief. Wine had been a good idea.
"Dionysus knows, they're his grapes," Elise clarified with a smirk. As if she were the deity's publicist and authorized to say such things. "What I should have brought is music," she admitted after the thought spilled into her head. Then, with a breath of genius, Elise pulled the iPhone out of her pocket and began swiping fervently, searching for something.
Iris turned just enough that instead of sitting straight on the stool, she was angled slightly toward Elise, her skirt shifting just enough to reveal her sock-covered knees. “But would you think that Dionysus would mind whether feet belong to a virgin or to someone more experienced? It doesn’t seem like a distinction that should matter.” She didn’t notice any sort of distant look from Elise, didn’t notice anything other than the conversation and the way that the wine made her stomach and the backs of her ears warm.
When Elise pulled out the iPhone, Iris actually leaned in a bit to watch. Her own phone was simple, nothing like the complicated technology in Elise’s hand, the size far too small for her to see on a regular basis, when her eyes still gave her troubles on certain days. She tried to follow what Elise was doing, but eventually ended up looking at her face instead, watching and waiting.
"I cannot pretend to understand the mind of drunk gods," she murmured while suppressing a slightly wicked grin at the thought of such things. It was entertaining to imagine at least, and it put a stampede of muses through her head. Prospective photoshoots with the girls' mouths and chins stained red, jeweled horns sprouting from their heads to mimic Pan.
Spanish guitar music finally burst from the phone's inadequate speakers before she set the device aside on the countertop's fine surface just at their matching spines and blond waves. Elise tucked her elbows back against the edge of the bar and let her eyes fall to a memorial closing while the guitar music began to pluck and chime. "Have you ever been to Spain?" The question was dreamy until Elise suddenly sat up a bit more and tucked a leg partially beneath herself in order to face Iris with more conviction as the music picked up.
"In Spain, you have dinner at midnight. It is like France without rules, where there is music and passion everywhere. And the food," she gushed with an exaggerated roll of eyes while slumping back faintly against the dining bar's edge. "It is perfect."
Smiling, she tilted her head to watch Iris through a split fall of dandelion blond bangs. "Everyone dances and nobody hurries.. it is so very beautiful."
Iris liked the way Elise’s expression went distant for a moment, as if she was seeing wonderful things far from an empty series of rooms. She waited silently for the moment to pass, not wanting to interrupt any sort of creativity. But then the music was starting, and Iris sat back a bit in surprise. It wasn’t what she had been expecting, but it was lovely.
“Spain?” She blinked several times at the question that seemed too far from something that anyone should ask her. “No, of course not.” It seemed to her as if it should be obvious. Why would she have ever been to Spain? But then Elise was more focused, telling her about far-away places, and with the taste of the wine still on her tongue, Iris was drawn in. Elise’s expressions were even more captivating than her words, and Iris stared, suddenly wanting to be on the other side of the world, to be shown the sorts of things that she couldn’t even imagine in her own desaturated world.
But then, even with the seductive ease of alcohol and Elise’s voice, reality insinuated itself back into the situation. Iris didn’t stray far from home, wherever that ended up being, and she certainly didn’t cross the globe. But she could still listen to music and to words, and when Elise paused, Iris breathed, captivated. “It sounds lovely.”
Elise smile was wistful, although it faltered momentarily as she began to weigh just how long it had been since she'd traveled abroad for anything but work. Honestly, she couldn't remember much of a time when work hadn't been the case. As the hot up and coming artist, Elise had been rather overbooked for the beginning of her career. Then she'd fallen in love in the States and traveled very little. After that, with the deterioration of her treacherous mind, spontaneous vacations were abolished by her agent with the fear that Elise would take the great leap from some architectural wonder on the other side of the world. The fact that her iron fist agent was now extremely unemployed by the company of Elise was generally enough to keep Elise from venturing out of her apartment all that often. Could she really be trusted to her own devices? She'd never been especially good at self preservation, although she had made it here in one piece. The smile burned brighter once more with that realization. "It is very lovely," she finally agreed.
"One day you will have to come see it with me. You do have passport?"
Iris started to lose her own smile at the slight fading of Elise’s and she wondered if she’d said something wrong. Nearly convinced of it, she was about to apologize when Elise’s expression changed again. She was glad for the return of the smile, something warming in her at the sight of it and bringing back her own. “Would you tell me more about it? Sometime?” Her questions were chased away by the Elise’s next question, though.
“Passport?” The frown that snuck in was more confused than anything else, written clearly across her face. “No. Why would I have a passport?” She felt her throat tighten just a bit, with something that she couldn’t define. “No, I... I don’t travel.” It was difficult to say, as if she was afraid that the very words would disappoint Elise and send her back out the door again.
If Elise seemed suddenly depressed, it was likely because of the weepy widening of her cadmium blue eyes, the undeniable protrusion of an actress' lower lip. "But why for not?" Iris clearly had money, and Elise could not fathom a situation where a person who was wholly capable of escaping their current station would not wish to do so. Didn't Iris get bored? Elise understood that there were people who stayed put because they had family or occupations holding them still. Obviously Iris had Sam, but that was not the same thing as having a spouse or a child. Drawing back slightly, Elise's frown deepened, suddenly overwhelmingly aware of the fact that she really did not know this woman at all. No matter how she'd tried, there was still that veil of shadow in place between them. Admittedly as much of Elise's fault as Iris. Where Iris was nervous secrecy, Elise was the glamorous and bold faced lie.
The continuing frown on Elise’s face made something in the back of Iris’ throat ache with the need to make the other woman smile again, and she pulled a shaky breath. Once again, she began to worry that everything she was saying and doing was wrong, but with the tongue-loosening of the wine, her current solution was to speak instead of hide. “I couldn’t. I can’t. I... when I was younger I was...” No, that would be too much to tell. “I stayed at home. Always. And then I only left home for... less than a year before I--” How could she put it? “Became ill. And I was hospitalized until just recently. I’ve never been able to travel. Not out of the country.” The words spilled out until she stumbled to a stop, pale, nervous fingers pressed to her mouth and her own eyes wide in surprise at all she had revealed in such a short spill of thoughts. “I’ve only ever been three places. Four, now that I live here.” The last thoughts were delivered from behind those fingers.
"But you could travel with me," Elise clarified. The slanted stack of her bones shifted into something better ascribed to disapproving queens. The long line of her neck, the shoulders pinned back. It was the posture she adopted for arguments and situations of umbrage or guilt. The desultory conversation didn't bother her, it seemed entirely obvious to talk about Spain and then offer to take Iris. If the subject matter felt out of place or recondite, Elise was a little too tipsy - and probably too self-absorbed - to notice. Still, despite the wine, she was acruminous. Artists had to be, it was the only thing that kept them afloat on the sea of depression, or drugs, or whatever polar blackness that they brushed their soul upon for that sweet inspiration. Reaching out, Elise caught the woman's small wrists in both hands and tugged them gently down, away from the way in which they hid Iris' mouth and her nervous words.
The thought of traveling was enough to make Iris’ eyes go wide and her hands tremble slightly, and the thought of traveling with Elise was at the same time calming (someone to go with her that would know what they were doing), and terrifying (she still had no idea how to interact with the other woman). It solidified into a strange weightless feeling in her stomach, scared and joyful at the same time. “You would really want that?” It was a difficult thing for her to believe, that Elise would want to spend that sort of time with her, would want to go to another country in her company. Her eyes stayed wide, cloudy blue in their disbelief, when Elise reached out to take her by the wrists. Her gaze shifted down to take in the sight of fingers around her own wrists, when she was so rarely touched by anyone else. She couldn’t pull her eyes away for a long moment, and when she did, she took a shaky breath to attempt to steady her words. Attempted to steady, not that she was very successful.
“I suppose I could get a passport. I think I’m allowed.” Her voice had gone softer after her hands were drawn away, as if in exchange for the barrier no longer being there to block the sound. “I don’t know how to travel though. I...” A few blinks, a desire for and glance toward the bottle of wine. She wasn’t used to the taste, but she knew it made her words easier. “I would need help.”
"Travel is easy," Elise cooed. The polygot with her fingers still clinging to Iris' wrists, making pretty bracelets all the way around to the point where varnished nails of baby pink clashed. "You need only passport and money, everything else can be bought upon landing. You can buy clothes in little boutiques and live out of hotel rooms." Fervently, she pulled Iris' hands down to her lap with a squeeze of affection as she twisted their fingers together like a friendship bracelet balancing upon the pale linen of her knees.
"I would help you," she promised while leaning back in notice of Iris' glance toward the bottle of wine. Elise straightened and released Iris' hands in favor of capturing the wine, and she passed it toward the other woman without a pause in her narrative. "We could tan on Greek beaches and get drunk in French patisseries instead of English pubs." She dropped her cheek down against her own shoulder, thoughtfully watching as the other woman took another drink from the wine. "Make love on Russian snowbanks and develop insomnia for Tokyo nightlife."
The curl of Elise's voice was seductive, as were the pictures she painted. Since regaining her vision, Iris had looked up photos of all the places she'd only read about for years, and she had those images in mind as Elise spoke. She could feel the way her own pulse thrummed under the slim fingers that wrapped her wrists. When her hands were pulled, tugged, squeezed, she gladly accepted the twist of fingers and only glanced down at where they rested in Elise's lap before she spoke. "I have money."
Almost sad that the touch of Elise's fingers vanished, she nonetheless accepted the bottle and took another drink as the words and images continued. She choked slightly, though, and flushed deeply at the suggestion for Russia, and she put the bottle down with a quiet click on the countertop again, cheeks nearly as dark as the liquid inside. "I... I don't know. It all - seems so much." It was a struggle to not lift her hands back to cover her mouth, or even to clench them against her chest, though they did press hard against her own stomach. Her voice shook with her own words, even though they were soft. "I was always meant to stay close to home."
"It is more sad to stay home, I think." Elise shared that suspicion softly, as she stretched an arm out to drape along the little counter. The elbow was bent, and her chinaboned wrist draped the polished edge when her posture buckled like a serpentine jazz model on the early covers of vogue. When Chanel was the be all to end all and flappers were gauche but endured for their charisma, like the German punks that Elise had grown up so early alongside. She was uncertain as to what had inspired this kind of shaky quiet in Iris' life, but Elise did not mind it. She was accustomed to navigating her way around the quiet types, to pushing and pulling the naive subjects of her most recent artistic vision until they gave her just what her demanding shutter-hungry, trigger finger wanted.
She watched her company through heavy-lidded eyelids of smoke powder and cat lines of tarblack. She was listlessly drunk against the countertops edge, and her lean became more severe as the guitar music strummed on, fell silent with pause, and then some new song started a prickling frenzy around them. "You don't get sad here?" She asked the question suddenly, and quite soft. Her gray-blue eyes drifted down to her own hands at the thought. Elise was suddenly, sadly aware (in the way that alcohol could only do) that she might have been the only one.
Iris wished that she had half the ease and sprawl that Elise had. Most often, she tucked in on herself, keeping small and unobtrusive as best as she could. It was a skill to blend in, as much as she could, and it was one that she had practiced since childhood. It was the root of the rest of her, the way she dressed, her hair and the tiny bit of barely-noticeable makeup she wore, the way she spoke and carried herself. It all came from that need to not make a mark on another person’s awareness. But it didn’t mean that she couldn’t be jealous of those that knew how to push their space beyond their own bodies, to shift and move freely and to be noticed. The drape and languid spill of Elise across the counter was seductive in more ways than one, and though she knew she shouldn’t, Iris reached out to press featherlight fingers to the back of one of Elise’s delicate wrists. She pulled her own hand back instantly, as if the touch had been accompanied by a painful burn, like she was afraid of getting caught touching the art in a museum.
She was glad for the question, even if it perhaps pried too close to things she normally chose not to think about. “Here?” Iris’ eyes swept through the rooms she could see, desert sunlight spilling through windows only covered by sheer curtain panels. The wood of the floors glowed with the light, filling the space with that, if not with furniture and knick-knacks. “Here, here?” Hands drawn back to twist tightly in her lap, she gave the space another glance. “It’s only a little empty. And it’s...” It seemed too philosophical, too depressing a thought to voice, but the words slipped out anyway. “Happiness is hard. It’s always a little sad.” The melancholy slipped into her voice then, slow and soft in the way it always was. “Sometimes more than a little. But that’s less about here, and more about myself.”
"I know," Elise eventually said. Her smile was small, a wine bruised twitch with that red stain feathering gently onto the corners of her mouth but concentrated and undeniable at the center of her lower lip, which looked nearly black it was so purple with resveratrol. If anyone understood that it never quite mattered where you went because there you always were, it was Elise. Taiwan and Russia had been fulfilling for awhile, but eventually she always came sinking back to herself. That didn't mean that she was willing to believe that things couldn't change. There had to be somewhere where she could be born again. Some hotel bathtub baptism, some mountain top, some casino, somewhere. While Elise was brave, she was not quite brave enough to go out and find it on her own. The prospect of getting lost, bored, or old was daunting.
"Do you ever see it changing?" The question came with an honest delve into curiosity. It was always the most prominent and genuine aspect of Elise, the wide-eyed wonder that came along for the ride in the pockets of artists. The childlike need to know more. She reached out with fingers faintly tinted from developer chemicals, and she pushed a faint touch along Iris' brow bone and into the dove pale wisps of hair at the woman's temple. If such a thing was distracting, that awareness did not stop Elise. Although she potentially might have forgotten - under the comforting blanket of their shared wine - that she had asked Iris anything at all.
Did Iris ever see it changing? “...it always changes. But there’s always something else behind it to take its place.” She never quite voiced that sort of opinion, knowing that it wasn’t the one that doctors or family or friends wanted to hear. It was pessimistic in the worst way, but it was the truth. At least in her life. And she felt, somehow, that Elise would understand. She was ready to say more, to let the wine pull out the words that were so often hidden.
But then. Then there was a touch. And Iris was so rarely touched by anyone that the contact alone was enough send her back into silence. But the fact that it was an intimate touch, one that had to be delicate simply due to its nature, it made Iris freeze and simply stare. Forgetting anything else she might have said or anything that had been asked. Distracting it was, and in the extreme. Her next blink was slow, light lashes coming together over the blue eyes that had taken on the color of mountain grey fog. Those eyes remained closed for a long moment, just as long as Iris stayed still, held her breath, and when she opened them again, she had no more words than before. No words, but enough liquid courage to raise her own hand and touch tentative fingers to the back of Elise’s wrist.
She'd been rather prepared to drag her hand away again, somehow aware (despite the wein) that she was infringing on personal space. Despite Elise's formidable interest in breaking down walls and capturing the truth in gritty monochrome, she didn't touch a lot of people. After all, there was supposed to be a veil between the living and the nearly dead. Some things were just sacred like that, although it seemed to Elise in that moment impossible not to reach out and touch Iris. She understood that she would likely to have to pay for her fearless spontaneity in some way (perhaps not immediately, but certainly eventually). Very much in the same vein of ambitious Prometheus, who was punished by the gods for all eternity for daring to reach out and steal some fire.
When Iris opened her eyes, Elise smiled. For someone so hell bent on self-destruction, Elise was surprisingly in love with herself. It was a love/hate thing, to be sure.. but perhaps that was where the attraction to Iris stemmed from. Fair hair and ghost eyes, they were blurry copies of one another. Genetic abnormalities that became more prominent after too many cycles through the cloning machine. Just similar enough to be captivating. Compelled by the touch, and anxious by the lapse into silence on both their parts, Elise suddenly pushed forward without invitation or any real warning, to bestow a gentle kiss.
Iris would never have thought herself the sort of goal for a modern-day Prometheus, and in her usual view of the world, no one wanted to reach out to touch, to take. But in her surprise, she returned Elise’s smile, soft and uncertain. That was the end of her own perceived mirroring, not in any way thinking that she and Elise shared more than a very passing similarity. Elise was (much as her siblings always were - and as the new ones were as well) the prettier of the two of them, with the sort of captivating features that drew people in. Iris herself was testament to that.
Iris wasn’t expecting the kiss. Not at all. She was used to silence, and after a pause, she expected the other woman to move away again, not forward. So she was caught with her eyes surprised and open when their mouths met. She breathed in with the shock of it, frozen by years of missing the sort of experience that made kissing second nature. Her fingers were still on Elise’s wrist, twitching and almost slipping away, but the very tips still pressed to the skin there. It took nearly until the kiss was over for her to respond at all, and then it was only the slightest movement of lip against lip. She was scared, but in a way that made her warm and tremble.
The kiss was brief, and possibly the lightest that Elise had ever known. It was not a kiss used as an aperitif to whet coital palettes for things to come, but rather the expedition of a brave fleet across the poached waters of an unknown heaven(or hell). Elise did not consciously instigate the kiss, although once in the deep end of it, she had no choice but to navigate its secrets between the pickled waves of wine. Intimacy, like so many things in her self-attentive arsenal, held fluctuating importance. Two-sides of a Gemini rivalry; dormant or fervent but never quite capable of existing on a plane of mediums or in-betweens. All or nothing; it was pretty much her motto towards everything, including her own life. Elise did not force the kiss or pursue it, although she liked the taste. The sample of tongue in wine, Elise licked the sharp fringe of her front teeth and caught the barest graze of Iris' lip in the process. Then she pulled back, although the distance could be measured in centimeters easily, the inches could be counted on one hand.
"Say you'll come with me.. one day." The words were a whisper, and if Elise had tried to capture Iris' pale gaze in the proximity of their stare, she would have surely gone cross-eyed. So her blue eyes remained unfixed, unfocused, aided by the laziness that came with escaping beyond the caged border of drunkenness.
The kiss was so foreign that all Iris could do was return it, hang on, fall into it. There was lip to lip, such a small hint of teeth, and slip of tongue that made her shiver. That flicker of heat dragged a shiver up her spine, latching itself somewhere between her shoulder blades as she leaned in, trying to keep Elise there even when she pulled away. Her own eyes were closed, not wanting to draw reality back in and end the mared moment of heat. Instead she remained blind and focused on the heat from Elise’s body.
“I will,” Her own reply was a whisper as well, delivered hard on the request from the other woman. “Someday. We can go.” It seemed a rash sort of promise, but she was unable to give any other sort in the moment. Something in her craved it, running away with a woman she barely knew, to see places beyond her dreams. “Yes.”
"Gut," Elise whispered back. The German was deep and unavoidable after she'd gotten to this point in the drinking. The language was interwoven with her tongue on most days, but after enough alcohol or enough anger, it was the only thing that the more animal side of her remembered how to say. The native tongue always came back, and it was spoken everywhere in Europe, so traveling never mattered or helped. Not that she was trying to escape that part of herself.. the reminder came quickly, and there was a deep twinge of guilt that twisted somewhere in her breastbone when the first thought that came skipping to mind was the most unfortunate. Blood was forever, and it was her mother's eyes that stared back from every mirror, why would she ever want to change that?
"Good," she repeated. Softer this time, and English. There was a shift in gravity, and Elise leaned forward just a bit so that she could rest her cheek on Iris' shoulder, a comfortable vantage point for breathing in the other woman's neck.
"Is it late?" The question was bowed with uncertainty, as if she had asked something much more daunting than just an inquiry after the time. In truth, she wanted to know if it was time for her to go.
Even with her lack of German vocabulary, Iris knew what ‘gut’ was, close enough to its English equivalent that it didn’t take a leap to figure out. The word, the translated repetition, made her smile shyly, glad that she’d done something that had received a positive reaction. She thought she may have seen a flicker of something sad, something low, in Elise’s eyes, but then there was a warm cheek pressed to her shoulder, and her attention was stolen away again.
She was afraid that her shoulder was too bony to rest against, that it wasn’t any sort of comfortable, but Elise didn’t shift and didn’t seem to mind, so Iris held still and thought about slipping her fingers between the other woman’s. After a moment of debate, she reached down to touch fingertips to knuckles - not an intertwining, but at least another point of contact. There was a scent that hung about the other woman’s hair, and though Iris couldn’t identify it, she enjoyed it. The question confused her for another moment, and she shook her head, trying not to dislodge their arrangement. “No. It’s... not at all.”
Elise smiled, unearthing comfort in the chiseled bone of Iris' shoulder. The cool valley of Iris' clavicle was a cliffdiver's daydream, and Elise grazed her closed eyelids against the sharp edge of shoulder buried under the soft fabric of Iris' cardigan. She wanted to keep her eyes closed like this and simply exist, barely entwined with Iris in the dark that she'd created for herself with dropped eyelids. The position wasn't very comfortable, as the threat of falling clear from that bar stool was a possibility, but Elise did not seem to mind. Iris smelled soft, clean in a way that had nothing to do with detergent. Fine hair tickled Elise's face, causing her to scrunch her nose, and the unseen smile turned dreamy.
Elise, in contrast, did not smell clean. She smelled of turkish tobacco, of the dried up old flowers that cluttered her lingerie drawer, and of something faintly chemical. It was a cyclone smell, of worlds old and warm meeting worlds crisp and new. "Can we just.. sleep?" The question was breathy, whispered into the soft crook of Iris' neck with breath gone warm from too much alcohol. The words were slow, drunk, and unabashedly honest. Elise was suddenly quite tired.
Iris didn’t know how to handle having Elise leaning against her, the look on her face so laced with subtle bliss that Iris felt the wine in her stomach growing warmer with the heated line of woman against her side. She turned her head just enough to breathe in the unfamiliar, strange smell that lingered in Elise’s hair. Strange, but not off-putting. Far from it, in fact.
“I have beds,” Iris whispered, her voice unable to push itself any louder. “I have two.” She swallowed, unsteadily, and took a shaky breath. “But mine... it’s big. And it’s soft?” She felt too forward, too like she was taking a step she should pull back from, but she pushed on. “We could sleep there...”
"Can we?" Like anything the woman offered sounded like the most delightful time she could imagine, even if it was just a drunken nap in the late afternoon. Elise smiled into the soft burrow of a borrowed shoulder, and five fingers found a languid twist in Iris' halo of gold. Her fingertips walked an imaginary crown through the woman's scalp, thinking of nymph flowers, Christmas ghost garlands, and even bloody Magdalena thorns. She wanted to see Iris in white with glossy blue tears painted down her face, sunbeams and Santeria roses at her back. She wanted to see Iris striped in black, warpaint over the eyes, tangled in rotten spiderweb gauze, dead dinosaur tar dripping(much better than living dinosaur tar, which Elise assumed existed somewhere in the remains of komodo dragons and -- according to that movie about the park -- birds of prey) in gritty monochrome. Another day. Today was for day drinking and stickywarm naps with the air conditioner turned off. She would have to remember to tell Iris to turn it off on their way to bed. How else were they going to pretend they were in Gone With the Wind? Verdammt, who was going to fan them with palmetto fronds?
"Show me," she pleaded. It was a soft, breathy sound that was never truly a plea, but rather a bargaining tool.
Iris nodded, unaware of the artist images weaving through Elise’s brain and thinking only of the large expanse of bed in the master bedroom. She slipped off her stool, a slip of fabric against the tall seat as her skirt caught for just a moment, revealing the top of her thick sock, over the knee and just as pale as the freezeframe flash of thigh. The skirt slipped back down again with the help of gravity, and she stepped silently away from the bar-counter of the kitchen. It was forward, so forward, but she reached out and again laced her fingers with Elise’s, tugging gently until the other woman followed through the empty apartment, past the furnished guest room to pause in the doorway of the master.
The bed was the only piece of furniture in the room, and its piles of pillows, sheets, and comforters spilled over the mattress and onto the floor. It was mountains of bedding, never having been straightened into tidiness upon rising that morning, and the tousled fabric betrayed the uneasy sleep. The boxes of clothing in one corner of the room were easily ignored, and the washed out whiteness of everything else only served to highlight the blue of the scarf. Iris paused in the doorway before moving forward, still holding Elise’s hand as a guide. Far from the heat and humid cling of the south (she’d had enough years of that in the hospital), the bedroom remained cool, combining with the inviting bedding to prompt burrowing and huddling under downy warm mountains. She had no other words for the bedroom, so her whisper came out tentative and uncertain. “Here.”
"Oh, it's lovely. Herrlich, yes?" The mountain of bedding was stacked high as cupcake buttercream. Whipped mascarpone and chantilly lace, vanilla filigree piped over bonewhite cotton. Baby sheep and cumulous clouds. Elise released Iris' hand in exchange for reaching out to the sheets before her, brushing the spread of her grip over the duvet in experimentation. The fabric was cool, and somehow even softer than it looked. Elise pushed some of the bedding back toward the center of the mattress and climbed aboard, dropping her sandals onto the floor in the process. It seemed so backward that blankets could be cool, but the air conditioning had turned the mound of sheets into the most wonderful ice cave. Elise stretched her legs out and laid back, twisting the fine edge of a sheet in her fingers and dragging it up to just under her chin.
"Are you tired? You will join me, ja?" She asked it with blue eyes half-lidded with wine drowsiness of her own.
Iris watched Elise climb into the bed, the shift of sheets and fluffs of bedding around her. There was a sense of reverie, of awe of the bed itself, and Iris smiled, knowing that feeling. It was one of the material things she had placed true thought and cost into, and it showed. “Herrlich?” she repeated, as closely as she could, then softer, “herrlich...” She didn’t know what it meant, but she liked the word in conjunction with her bed.
And then a question that she had been expecting, but that still made her flush softly to hear. An invitation to her own bed. She hesitated, her fingers twisting together, but then, with the soft courage from the wine, she nodded. “Alright. Yes.” A step closer, another, and then she was crawling into her own bed, uncertain quite how to settle in it with another body already there. She found herself laying but holding herself stiff, close to the edge, not wanting to lay too close if that wasn’t what Elise had in mind. Even though the bed was more than large enough for two slim women to comfortably coexist.
"Mhm," Elise murmured to the inquiry on herrlich, all confirmation without ever bothering to translate. She had no tangible concept of how confusing it could be to switch between languages like one simply changed direction. Like many of Elise's so-called talents, it was one born of selfishness. The intrinsic inability to understand another person's discomfort. She trampled people with her energy and her neediness. It had always been that way, and she didn't know how to do anything else. Only other eccentrics could stomach her. She tasted like gauche metal and broken promises to everyone else. Isolation worked for her, though. It bred creativity in the artist.
But right now she wasn't alone, and she intended to make the most of it. While Iris seemed intent to cower along the cliffside of the bed, Elise swept in closer with a long, draping arm. She wrapped herself around Iris, finding warmth under the cool blankets. A cheek against a shoulder, breathing in the comforting scent of cotton and femininity. "Als ob wir Welpen, neit?"
It took only a sweep of that arm to pull Iris in, and she tipped slightly to the side, enough that she was angled toward Elise’s body. It was strange, being so close, but also warm, and the feeling of someone else’s breath, the rise and fall of chest, was soothing in a way she hadn’t had in years. The movement was tentative, touch light, but as Iris closed her eyes, she reached out to lay her hand on Elise’s hip. It wasn’t a hold, or a grasp, but a careful perch of palm along the curve. She kept her eyes closed, not knowing how to look at someone so close up, and whispered. “I don’t speak German...” Though there was a passing thought about puppies through her mind, Iris mostly ignored it. She felt the nervous tension seeping out from her limbs, stolen by the fluff of bedding and soft rhythm of heartbeat and breath.