Who: Ben & Viv When: Just before the party Where: His flat What: Sex, drugs, and rock and roll
Status: Complete, logged Rating: PG
Generally, Ben was not a partier -- per se -- until the weekends, if that. He found the parties of the bored and rich to be a pretentious, tiresome affairs, and the parties of the poor and desperate to be offensive to his aesthetic sensibilities (though he would never admit it). He was also staunchly opposed to celebrating offensive religious events. Especially Easter and the crucifixion. What in the real hell, he asked himself frequently this time of year, generally amusing himself in department stores by asking children if they knew what the holiday was all about.
Parties in the middle of the week also annoyed him because they seemed to assume that people didn't have work in the morning, and he ticked this off on his pretension check-list as well. Still, the Gemini in him wasn't about to pass up a chance to be infinitely social with well-dressed women (we use the word social loosely here, as there was yet a designer dress that could stun his inner asshole). Besides, Vivianne was coming over, and she was pretty and had a smart mouth. Two excellent qualities in another human being, particularly a woman.
At quarter of, he checked his watch, fastened his cufflinks, straightened his tie, and then enjoyed the wait as he typically did -- with a gin and the Wall Street Journal. It was an exciting life.
Vivianne was used to running from things. It was something that came naturally to her, like breathing. If Ben hadn't obnoxiously intervened, she wouldn't have bother to acknowledge the shame in staying at home that night and watching television. It was a Tuesday night, after all, which meant she had to work in the morning. It was barely past her "curfew" and she already longed for her bed.
As she knocked on the door to his apartment, she wondered if she should keep up the sick act. He seemed like the type who'd be afraid of germs--maybe she'd scare him away. When she heard his voice beckoning her inside, she pushed the door open and stepped through it, but not before coughing pathetically into her hand. A pair of heels were dangling in the other.
Normally, Ben wasn't the sort of person who bothered to insist anyone do anything. The first sign of resistance on her part about going to the party would ordinarily have been met by cool indifference and the location of another person to the fill the role of arm ornament. Simple enough. The difference here wasn't readily apparent, and he wasn't the sort of person who searched his soul for answers, leaving this an open question in the air between them, and one he certainly didn't intend to answer. He'd wanted her to go. She was going.
"The dress is hanging in the bedroom," he said, not bothering to either look up or acknowledge her feigned illness. One finger at the edge of his paper pointed to the correct room.
Vivianne rolled her eyes in spite of however thankful she felt. She crossed her arms over her chest and watched him as he read his stupid paper. "Is this how you treat all your women, Benny? Like Julia Roberts? Let's not forget she was a prostitute; which I am not, for the record. Although I do admit to once considering it as a profession."
"You aren't?" He asked, voice lilting in surprise, though he merely turned the page instead of acknowledging whatever indignation she was attempting to have. "Ignore the antibiotics next to the dress, then, I thought you might have gonorrhoea." He glanced up when he noticed she was just watching him instead of moving. "Don't worry about it. I didn't spend money on you, I just kept it off of a size four I axe murdered." With this cheerful embellishment, he straightened out the paper and returned to the Dow Jones industrial average. His fickle sort of generosity wasn't something he liked to acknowledge, and as his roommate and friends had grown fond of heckling him about his mercurial swings between miserliness and extravagance, he'd taken to blatant lying to keep his reputation intact.
Scoffing, Vivianne ran her hand over her face. "I bet you can't even lift an axe," she mumbled under her breath, sounding much more irritated than she was.
"Alright. We'll go. I've decided that we'll go. I'll retreat to your bedroom and put on the dress you stole. We will go and we will stay for a little bit--and when the night is over, we'll both go back to our respective habitats and your dress will be returned to you at a time of my discretion. Rules must be lain, as I don't know you well enough to know if you truly know how to behave yourself."
"Yeah, yeah. You are an independent woman. You are setting the rules. I don't own you, blah blah hurry up."
"You also don't get the last word, Benny. How impolite of you," she said before turning on her heel and disappearing into his bedroom. She couldn't help but smile a little when she saw it--it was a nice dress, much more appropriate than what she originally had in mind. And her favorite color. Once she pulled the dress on and made sure it fit, she found the bathroom after accidentally finding his closet, did her hair and (minimal) makeup, and emerged not long after fully dressed and ready to go.
Setting down the paper, Ben gave her an unsubtle look over (he wasn't going to insult her intelligence by -- no, he just wanted to look, let's be honest). "Looks nice," he said simply, and pulled himself out of his chair, finished his gin, and left the glass on the table. "No residual blood-stains from where I'm standing. Ready?"
She appeared unaffected by his compliment and his joke. As soon as he spoke she had to stifle her laughter. "You have a very nice closet; Jesus, it must have taken you ages to organize it that way."
A twinge of surprise went through him that she'd been into his closet, and he raised an eyebrow in cool assessment. "That isn't where I keep the bodies, Honey, you should know better than to snoop." Whatever trace of embarrassment there was in having an obsessively tidy closet was drowned in pretence, and he shook it completely with innuendo, which was always the easiest way. "If you want to check it out in more detail, you're welcome to come home with me."
Vivianne linked her arm with his. "I'll have forgotten who you are by the end of the night, thank you!"