Punk | Joey Ritchie (oioioi) wrote in forgotten_gods, @ 2009-04-30 10:59:00 |
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Entry tags: | punk |
Who: Punk [Narrative]
What: Punk gets angry. Raise your hand if you're surprised.
Where: Masque's kitchen.
When: Early Thursday morning.
Warnings: Naughty words!
Selfish.
Self-centered.
An emotional leech.
Punk gritted his teeth, but his hands remained steady while he chopped through produce for the day's mise en place. He had been furious, was furious, but unless Masque's menu was suddenly to be nothing but aggressively-pounded paillard, there was no point in taking his anger out on the food.
He'd stayed late last night, ensuring that the dinner rush was satisfied and they'd survived an awkward morning of seafood inconsistencies. Once all the good little boys and girls of Masque had gone home, Punk thought about sitting down to write out the week's schedule adjustments. The boss ran a tight ship, though -- no one needed time off, no one wanted a day swapped, so Sous-Chef Ritchie had said fuck it all and went out drinking. "Don't shit where you eat" was the evening's mantra, and he went to other restaurants, old stomping grounds where the chefs knew Punk well enough to send out tiny plates of amuse-bouche and the bartenders kept him good and lubricated. By two in the morning, Punk had gotten drunk with old friends and had screwed a hostess and a rare female grill-man in the same linen closet.
By four he was back at Masque, not sober but nowhere near drunk enough. The cleaning crew had left by then, and Punk had the kitchen to himself and his thoughts. His chef's knife moved faster than it had any right to, and as Punk bent over his work he cursed Goth in every language and dialect he knew.
What fucking right did she have to call him selfish, to call him a leech? He'd been the one to bring the stupid bitch in to the world, and Goth had been the one to attach herself to his throat and start sucking since. She'd lectured him about their roles amongst humanity recently, about how it was their responsibility to give what they could before they burned out.
"Preaching to the fucked-up choir," Punk snarled down at the fish he was removing pinbones from. He'd given Goth the same talk on more than one occasion. To have everything he'd ever told her thrown back in his face with such disgust set his fires blazing. She wanted to play house with a Christian? Fine. Let her. Let her be holier-than-thou, let her be the Morticia Addams Jesus freak she'd always dreamed of. He hadn't been lying when he told Goth that she was dead to him. There were few lines Punk was unwilling to cross, few taboos he didn't gleefully smash right through, but crossing pantheon lines was one of them.
You didn't settle down with the competition. You didn't marry a fucking Christian, you didn't have a Greek's little nympho babies, you just didn't do it. Instead you did your work, did it loud and impressively so that you wouldn't be forgotten so easily.
But that was the problem, wasn't it? Punk set his knife down, cleaned off his hands and braced them against the counter he was working at. His breath rattled out of an old young god's throat, his graying head hung low. Rave had basically said the words no one else had been willing to mention, if not directly. He was dying. He knew it, had known it since the moment he felt Sid take a last drugged breath and had been determined to face it fearlessly ever since. The longer you lived, though, the more attached you grew to life.
And Punk did like life. He liked working in the kitchens, liked the pressure and the noise and the cursing. Even the perfection demanded of them wasn't bad when you got down to it. His music would never be the same, after all. His ideals had turned into other things, merged with other viewpoints until he could no longer readily access them. Piece by piece, what Punk was faded away. It wouldn't have been so frightening had he been a mortal. Instead he'd been graced with power and glory, all of it a brief explosion in the grand scheme of things. Some of the New Gods would always be around... Punk, not so much.
He could live with that, if he was just left alone to play pretend. As Joey, he thought he could befriend the inevitable. As Punk, surrounded by power which wasn't his to touch and gods in every direction, he just couldn't do it.
Staring down at his chef's knife, Punk fought the urge to pick it up and drive it right through one hand. He needed to hurt something right now, even if that something was himself. Goth, unfortunately, wasn't available. Nor was that fucking asshole of an angel she was busy banging. His vision swam, Punk's ever-present anger washing over him until his lanky body was wracked by shudders.
In the end, he put the perfectly deboned lump of fish in the prep fridge, cleaned up after himself, rolled his knives away and went outside to smoke a cigarette. He'd use this to get him through the day. Who needed sleep when you were full of vitriol? Besides, there was work to be done yet.