Reina Ignace (mashedmagic) wrote in musingslogs, @ 2011-05-26 09:07:00 |
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Entry tags: | lady of shallot, viola |
Who: Preston and Reina
What: Coffee talk
Where: Starke Industries
When: Last Thursday
Warnings: None
Disgustingly hung over and barely cognizant, Reina schlepped herself into work. Remarkably, she was on time. She wasn’t sure how she was on time, only that she was, and that was the only thing that mattered. No. No, not true. Timeliness and coffee were the only things that mattered, and coffee ranked much higher than timeliness at the moment.
After leaving Shiloh, she had hurried home, pulled on something moderately respectable (though the jury was still out on her dark denim jeans; she hoped no one would come down on her for that dress code violation), and gotten to work as quickly as possible. People said good morning. A few asked how she managed to get home. Most of them she ignored, except for the one’s who pressed her with questions. One of the idiots from HR now sported a very large coffee stain on his pressed white shirt, but she doubted he was about to file a complaint against her. She didn’t care, at the moment, if he did.
She reached her desk, and from her desk, she went to the private kitchen. There, she brewed coffee. Extra strong. Probably far too strong for most people. She didn’t care. If she had to chew her coffee, at the moment, she would.
Word went ‘round the office fairly quickly that Reina was enjoying an unfortunate morning, and as with most office gossip Preston was not amused but rather concerned--partly because he was concerned about everything, and partly because he felt sorry for Reina, since she didn’t seem to have anyone in the city that cared very much for her well-being. Orin Monarch, naturally, didn’t count worth a damn.
He wasn’t planning on scolding her about her attire, as she spent most of the day behind a desk, and it would take quite a lot for Preston to talk about anyone else’s clothing. He was HR’s model employee, and he never put one toe out of line in that respect. He was like Anton’s antidote.
There had been some passing commentary about Preston’s appearance the last couple days, since he obviously wasn’t getting enough sleep, but since he didn’t lose his edge and his performance escalated rather than declined. Preston always looked rather strained, but after his conversation with Anton about the dreams didn’t yield the results he so feared, he looked more lost than anything, and he had barely made it to the last meeting, so distracted was he from life in general. “Good morning,” he said, blinking at Reina, who did look like hell. What a pair they must look.
Her muttered reply of “morning” was half-hearted and lack-luster, and she didn’t look at him for several moments, too busy inhaling the heavy scent of too-strong coffee. She took a sip of it, black, the heat burning her tongue and the roof of her mouth, and she cringed. It tasted like dirt and she probably would have to chew a few mouthfuls. Still, it was exactly what she wanted.
Fortified with one mouthful of coffee, Reina finally turned her attention to Preston. It took a great deal of self-control not to whimper or burst into tears at the sight of him. He really did look like Shiloh, and Shiloh was just another entry on her long list of “things I am using to run away from myself.” The only solace she found was that Preston looked as awful as she felt. And while it didn’t occur to her that the opposite was true, she likely would have found that comforting, too.
“You look terrible,” she said, because it was too early and she hadn’t had enough coffee to manage polite, intelligent conversation. “Long night?”
Preston had coffee, but he also needed a recharge every few hours these days. He didn’t have the prudish taste for it that Eli did, and he’d take what he could get. Preston moved around her with his mug (sensible, blue, without decoration except for the Sparke Industries logo) to fill up. “You’re too kind,” he said dryly, perching at the end of the table in the center of the break room.
He gave her a strange look when she looked at his face, which he thought might mean something. His phone buzzed, and he took it out to glance at it. It was from Shiloh, something about a long night. Preston smiled and started to reply, but that was when he took a drink of the coffee--and spewed it. “Agh!” He stared at the mug. What had she done, added some water to grounds?
“I try,” she mumbled around another sip of bitter, bitter coffee. Her eyes drifted shut. The bite was awful, the taste like dirt, but it was exactly what she wanted. When Preston spit his coffee out, she opened one eye and then the other, a lazy smile on her face. “Sorry,” she said, but she didn’t mean it at all.
Pulling a chair out from the table with her toes, she dropped into it and drew her legs to her chest as she steadily nursed her coffee, taking short sips. Every mouthful was worse - and in some ways better - than the last, biting harder and hitting faster. The caffeine rush would be marvelous; she couldn’t wait for it. “Too strong? I was looking for something with a kick.” Except this didn’t kick as much as it hit like an F-150 slamming into your torso before rocketing you into outer space.
Still hacking, Preston scraped his tongue off with his front teeth and then tipped three-quarters of his mug into the sink. He spat into the drain a second later and then paused to finish the text to Shiloh. He looked up at Reina as he moved back to the percolator to find some hot water to fill up the mug. “It kicks. Congratulations.” He picked up a plastic stirrer stick and sat down at Reina’s table, mug in front of him. He put his phone down next to his plate, and the word “Shiloh” was readable upside down, though the rest of it wasn’t. “Long night?” he asked, innocently.
“It’s meant to,” she replied off-handedly, swirling the liquid in her mug and watching it with only the barest of interest. His question made her flinch visibly; she made no effort to guard her expression as her lips drew down, into a frown, and she looked away from him. “Something like that.” Her voice was quiet, a little guarded. Then she laughed and shook her head. “I’m still in the habit of making stupid decisions sometimes.” But her smile was weak and didn’t reach her eyes.
Preston made a low sound of thought and took a sip of his now manageable coffee. He tapped at his phone, blinking at it through sore eyes as he did so. “Problems with Monarch?” he asked, politely, avoiding staring at her directly in a calming tactic that made the conversation topic more casual than it was. He lifted the mug, pausing in the texting to do so, idly turning the phone over.
A derisive hiss escaped her lips. “You couldn’t pay me enough to make that particular mistake again,” she said, and immediately regretted it for sounding like a whore. Reina sighed, biting down on her lower lip. More gently, she added, “No. I haven’t bothered with him.” Nor he with her, which was fine. She was hazy on the details, but was fairly sure he hadn’t recognized her from their singular meeting. Even if he had, he hadn’t contacted her, which was fine. He had his life and his problems, and she wanted none of them in hers. Her life was problematic enough. She was self-aware enough to recognize that. She’d begun the terrible habit of digging her own grave and, upon realizing it, denying its existence as she dug yet deeper.
Lips pressed in a thin line, Reina turned her gaze toward Preston, hiding her expression with her mug. “Why?”
That was a surprising reaction, but not a bad one. “As long as he’s not bothering you. I wasn’t sure how...” Preston coughed, and it was enough of a smoker’s cough that it was hard to tell if it had been meant as a polite cough or not. “...invested you were.” If Reina’s heart had been involved with Monarch, she’d be worse off than before, and Preston was pleased to hear that she was bouncing out of that experience in shape.
He sent another amused text to Shiloh, and then reflected. Judging from her appearance, Reina was hitting the bars a little hard. Maybe she hadn’t bounced as well as Preston might hope.
“Not,” Reina replied, her tone short and shrewish. That, too, she regretted; snapping at Preston wasn’t a worthwhile effort, and she had no right to do so. She pressed her thumb and index finger each to her closed eyes and rubbed until splashes of color exploded against her eyelids. A rare moment of comprehension slid over her, and she lowered her hand to peer at him from around the rim of her mug. “Please tell me you don’t think I’m going out to forget him.” Because she wasn’t, and she didn’t want him thinking so. She was going out and getting wasted because she could, and it let her run from herself, not anyone else. Monarch wasn’t worth her time. The sex hadn’t even been that good.
“I’m not thinking anything,” Preston said, honestly. He glanced down at the phone screen as he waited for Shiloh to respond, and then looked up to meet her gaze. “I’m glad you’re not troubled about Monarch. Is there anything that is bothering you?” There didn’t have to be. Maybe she just had a really god night and a really bad morning. That happened all the time. Preston would take either answer.
Reina hunched in her chair, withdrawing into herself in a way that clearly said, yes, something was wrong. But she shook her head. “No, I’m fine,” she lied, giving him a faint smile. It was wane and thin, a half-hearted falsehood. For a moment, she considered telling him that, no, she wasn’t alright, that she had a slew of personal problems all of which she precipitated on herself, but she caught herself before she spoke, licking her lips as she assessed whether or not he had noticed. “Just a really strange night.”
Preston slowly lifted his mug, tipping it, and the bleached white ring on the bottom of the ceramic took up most of his expression for a moment. “It has been an odd few days.” Then, carefully, he said, “How so?” He sounded interested now, the false casualty gone, but not eager for a tale of woe. He sounded mild and sympathetic, because that was Preston.
With a quiet laugh, she nodded. “Yeah, it has,” she agreed. Then she shook herself, shifting her gaze to him and then a bit too quickly away. “Oh, you know, just.” Reina waved her hand through the air in a vague sort of gesture. “Things. Stuff.” She chewed on the inside of her lip and wondered if the conversation was turning as awkward for him as it was for her.
Preston’s phone chimed again, and he picked it up. He stared at the screen for several seconds, looked at Reina, and then back down at the screen. Another pause. He blanked the phone’s screen and set it down with exaggerated care next to his plate, and then he put his mug down too. He folded his hands over the cup, and steam curled up gently through his fingers. “What kind of stuff?”
A strange sense of terror clawed its way up her spine, and Reina felt certain that Preston knew. His expression, the care putting the phone down, the question. He knew. And why not? There was no reason his brother wouldn’t tell him. It wasn’t like Shiloh knew that she worked with his brother. Slumping in the chair, she wished the floor would open up and swallow her. But that would be too kind, so of course it didn’t.
“Might have accidentally gone home with the wrong person the other night.” She spoke to her coffee because she couldn’t bear to say it to him. He was judging her, now. She knew it. And he would fire her. She hated her life so much.
“Accidents depends on what you intended to begin with. People have done worse things. Why was the person wrong?” Preston went over various HR documentations in his head and hoped to God he wasn’t breaking one.
Maybe he didn’t know. She turned her gaze to him, her lips quirked at an odd angle. “I don’t know, probably because he’s your brother.” Of course, putting that out in the open didn’t make her feel any better, didn’t make her feel like there was a weight off her shoulders. The truth was a bitch, and every time she told it, she remembered that. And she wondered why she didn’t spend her whole life lying to everyone and herself.
Preston blinked, but only once, and very slowly. Yes, he knew. Two fingers slid the phone a little farther from his elbow. He looked at the ceiling for a moment. “And that’s a problem because we’re related, or because you don’t like him?” Shiloh was having a rough few months, and it didn’t exactly surprise Preston that he was regressing to ridiculous collegiate behavior with young women.
She tensed, angry for no reason at his assumption. He couldn’t know what was going on in her head, and getting angry at him for it was counterproductive. Not that Reina thought this was very productive to begin with. She didn’t take well to the “talking about your feelings” coping method, mostly because she was terrible at talking about her feelings. “It’s a problem because I don’t know him,” she returned. “With the added bonus that I was completely wasted when I went home with him, and I woke up thinking he was you.” She scowled at him, but it was a halfhearted scowl at best.
Preston smiled. It was easy to forget that he was in fact male and he didn’t exactly object to a perception that he would take some girl home, as long as he hadn’t. There was a trace of smugness there that made him look quite a lot like Shiloh. Then he said, “Horrifying. You could get to know him, and then perhaps you wouldn’t have as much trouble?” He was curious to know if she wanted to.
“You have no idea,” she muttered, her scowl deepening at his smug face. Bastard. “You’re obligated to say that. You’re his brother. He could be a womanizing asshole, and you’d still have to say that.” Reina polished off the remains of her coffee, now lukewarm and leaving a nasty after taste in her mouth. She sighed, feeling like she’d done far too much of that lately, and set the mug aside. “But, if we’re being honest, I doubt I’d make a good girlfriend.”
“If he was my brother, and I said ‘get to know him’ and I knew he was a womanizing asshole, that would also solve your problem,” Preston pointed out, politely. He sipped his coffee, which was still hot thanks to his hot water addition. “Why do you say that?”
The question made her flinch just the slightest bit, and Reina hoped he didn’t notice. “I’m just not good girlfriend material,” she said, rummaging through her brain for adequate excuses. “I’m clingy.” She figured she would be; she had wanted for affection enough during her life that to actually have it made her covetous. “And probably smothering. I don’t like getting touchy-feely until I’m plastered.” Casual physical contact made her jumpy, no matter who she was with. It was only when she was wasted that she stopped caring whether an upraised hand was a high five or a slap, and sober she tended to think it would be slap. “I’d be overbearing. And obnoxious. See, bad girlfriend.”
Preston wanted a cigarette. This was not a significant event, so he wasn’t overly irritable about it, but he did lift one thumb to his lips and chew on it a little, a gesture that was not something he indulged in much. “Shiloh can be all those things. You can even tell him I said that, if you want. The point is, you could give it a chance. Unless you don’t like him--or aren’t interested, which is fine.” Preston stared up at the ceiling mildly.
She pressed her lips together and bit down on her tongue lightly. “I don’t know him,” she finally said, rising from her chair to pour herself another cup full of coffee. “So I can’t make any decisions anyway.” As she poured the coffee into her mug, she gave him a fleeting smile. “When I get over my own embarrassment for running out of his apartment in his clothes, maybe I’ll drop him a message on the forums.” It wouldn’t be bad, she figured, to at least have a friend. There was, of course, always the possibility that friendship just wouldn’t work out. But, still, she figured she owed it to the poor man to at least make an effort. Half of the previous night was her fault, anyway.
"I won't mention it again." There certainly wasn't pressure from Preston. He loved his brother, but he wasn't on this earth to get the man laid. He put in his good word and now Reina deserved to be left alone on the matter. "I hope you feel better." He stood as well, pocketing his phone and already making plans to head to his desk to pick up his keys... And then his erstwhile brother.