Russ C (greasemonkey) wrote in rooms, @ 2014-08-24 21:05:00 |
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Entry tags: | !marvel comics, *log, louis donovan, russ campbell |
Backdated: parallel narratives Louis D and Russ C
Who: Louis D and Russ C
What: Bailing out from a strip-club/Russ is a messy drunk
When: Waaay backdated. Pre-Crane. Post the latest blow-up with Marina.
Where: A titty-bar in the not-so-nice end of Gotham.
Warnings: Brief mention of surrounds?
Louis had been in a strip club before, and it was as awkward an experience then as it was now. He was dragged there by co-workers who somehow had yet to get the message when he was still a rookie on the force back in Britain. But clubs there and clubs here were horses of an entirely different color.
He was half-blind when he walked in - sunshine outside, dim and dank and thick with the scent of must and booze inside. It took a half a minute for his eyes to adjust, but when he spotted Russ, he became his fixed point in the room. He dodged waitresses trying to seat him and girls strutting by attempting to make enough sustained eye contact to get him to stop. In, then out again. That was the plan.
Truth be told, he was exhausted. After the attack he hadn’t slept much, but in the past month or so things seemed to have improved markedly. He had slept through the night peacefully and begun to feel a sense of quiet that hadn’t been there since Russ had hustled him out of that phone both. He kept that in mind now, that moment of total vulnerability, when coming to pluck Russ away from his drunken intent on a sweet-faced stripper. Everyone had their days where they needed someone to pick them up, get them on their feet, and get them clear of a situation with something resembling their dignity intact. Russ hadn’t asked too many questions when he found Louis naked and bleeding in a phone booth, so he wouldn’t now, either.
All the improvements of the last month had gone out the window again in the last few days. He felt unsettled, uneasy, and the scar at his chest (which never seemed to quite heal) would sometimes pulse with pain or quiet warmth. It wasn’t infected, he didn’t think, and when he considered why it wasn’t mending this long on, his thoughts would skitter away from him. It couldn’t be that important, he reasoned, as he tried to pair why he didn’t think about it much with why he kept thinking about it and came up with a strange gap. There was a numbness about it where there should have been worry, and that must mean it wasn’t too important.
Sleepless or not, unsettled or not, he was still capable of being there for his friends when they needed a hand. It had long been a way he’d defined himself, and that hadn’t changed with the hard won confidence and strength he’d managed to foster over the last few years. He slipped an arm under Russ’s, paid his tab, and hushed at him as he led him out of the strip club. His life might be in a real shambles since they’d all been dropped in this place, but he could still manage this.
Russ was gone. Completely fucking done. He’d walked into the club three beers down and a determination to get himself wasted with the single-fucking-mindedness of a man with enough cash to do it right. By the time Louis entered the club (and he hadn’t even considered Louis might) he was laughter and a lapful of stripper who was doing her damn best to get him to put the rest of the contents of his wallet in the elastic of her underwear. He’d been drinking long enough that the bottles clinked all together as some girl swished past him, blond and hips and sequins and it was the bartender that pointed Russ out as the man who had been there since an hour after opening.
He didn’t ask why, or how. Russ gaped at Louis, and he laughed, because if there was any man alive who didn’t look like he wanted to see tits out in the open, he couldn’t think of a better one and his weight slid onto Louis’s like butter oozing over metal. His feet wouldn’t stand the fuck up and that was a problem, but his tongue wasn’t up to shaping words and he gave up, one arm floppy over Louis’s shoulders and the best he could do was stagger in time.
“Bike,” he said, without urgency or compulsion to explain exactly what it was that this meant: the bike was in the parking lot, he’d ridden drunk enough to make corners interesting and the bike was gonna wait until he was sober enough and he’d shaken off the hangover long enough that he could make it back to a strip-joint that only opened when you were feeling good and stupid. And, “Thanks,” it wasn’t ashamed, because he was inured to shame, too liquored-in to much fuss with shame. But he smiled, teeth and grin and a half-evening of stubble climbing his jaw and the smell of some woman’s cheap perfume clinging, as generously as if he’d invited Louis down to join him. “Friend.” There was a vague patting somewhere in the vicinity of Louis’s shoulder, and he ignored a lot of the hushing and shushing, in favor of a less-than-crisp salute and a “Goodnight, ladies,” called out behind him as thick on the wind as the smell of stale alcohol fumes.