T.R. Lansing (darkertides) wrote in remains_rpg, @ 2015-08-03 10:36:00 |
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Entry tags: | # 2018 [08] august, adelaide hawkins, tr lansing |
Who: The Lansings!
Where: Their apartment in the Capitol.
When: Backdated to some time after these texts go out.
What: Robert has some concerns to address. His timing is impeccable, mine is questionable.
Robert was supposed to be at the office. There'd been a strong temptation to ask her to come into the office, so that he could have this conversation with a home court advantage. The office was his domain. Their home was Adelaide's. She'd designed it, and her influence was injected into every nook and cranny. There was no escaping her presence throughout the converted apartment. Just standing in the entry felt like being swallowed by his wife. The office would have been more comfortable for him. A place where he could keep her at arm's length. Remote. Cold. Safe.
But it wasn't safe. Not at all. The office was bugged, on his own orders. It was important to him to keep a record. In a world where people were so unreliable, the record was a salve. It was also a risk he wasn't willing to take with his family. He'd erased the conversation with his assistant about surnames. They'd scrubbed the record.
Now he needed to confront his wife, and the office was not ideal for that. Recording devices aside, he wasn't sure how she'd react. Adelaide was not the sort of woman who intruded on his domain. She didn't make lunchtime visits to his desk, eager to encourage him through his day. While he was at work, she had her own routine. Her own things to do. The herb garden, the baby, myriad other things she filled her time with. They lived separately from one another, keeping what he'd assumed was a healthy distance between them. Even with their recent agreement to talk more, Robert doubted that she'd overlook the oddity of him asking her to visit him at work. It would look suspicious to her, and she might decide to do something risky – stupid – out of fear.
So the office couldn't be the venue for discovery. He had to be more clever than that. Luckily, he knew her routine. For all that he was distant, for all that he'd missed a lot, he wasn't entirely unobservant. Adelaide's pedestal had never been raised so high that he couldn't track her movements to a point. He could determine when she'd be least likely to run away from him, and arrange to come home at that time.
It was an odd feeling, slipping into his own home as quietly as possible while the water was running. Baths being one of the highest luxuries the Capitol could afford. A luxury his wife happened to enjoy, along with many others. He knew where the creaks in the floor were, knew where to step so that he wouldn't be heard over the pipes. The baby would be down for his afternoon nap, offering his mother some time just for herself. There was something ritualistic about drawing a bath. Meditative. Robert felt guilty for interrupting something so private, but he hadn't been able to come up with a better alternative. The bathroom was not bugged, nothing there was ever recorded, and Adelaide couldn't run away from him when she was already in the tub.
There was also the fact that he wanted – needed – her to be vulnerable. Stripped of disguises and defenses, if only in the literal sense. As far as he was concerned, she'd had him flayed open on a dissection table for years, now. It would be a reversal of the power play he enjoyed with her often, wherein he stripped naked while she stayed mostly clothed, powerful and untouchable. A beautiful torment that made even the most perfunctory touch seem like a gift. Even now, it was difficult for him to resent that. She'd done everything asked of her, to the letter. Nothing more, but nothing less. Not really. And hadn't he done everything asked of him?
There had to be an explanation for her deception. Something logical that he hadn't been able to uncover. The man was a brother, not a lover. A murdering drug dealer who couldn't offer herb gardens and baths.
So why hadn't she said something? And why were even more of her clothes missing?
He listened for movements in the bathroom as he moved silently about the apartment, only opening the door after he was certain she was settled.
"It's only me," he says as he steps inside, tone soft and blithe. Why bother addressing the fact that he was not the sort of person who barged in on people while they were in the bathroom? His world had been tipped on its axis, so it was only fair that she be surprised, as well. "We need to talk."