log: marina & russ Who: Marina & Russ What: Russ is a hungover grouch, Marina has coffee. Where: Russ' place. When: Recentlyish, basically timed to a couple weeks after Ford's hotel disappearance. Warnings: Depressing.
The thought occurred to Marina beneath the weight of a full moon. With her ankles kicked up over the rail of her balcony. The balcony, like the apartment it was attached to, was a rat trap space. Cramped concrete with rusted rails that barely suggested an illusion of safety from the third floor. On the industrial side of town, the air smelled awful, but Marina liked the balcony anyway. It was a section of the apartment that was entirely hers and therefore salvageable no matter how metallic or chemical-bitter the air tasted. Besides, she was usually smoking out there anyway with a mouthful of ash or herbs, substance and mood depending.
But the thought, which fluctuated in grandiose and ever-oscillating levels of insulting reasons as to why, was that Russ was avoiding her. Not even avoiding her, but just not bothering her, which she imagined for Russ was basically the same thing. He hadn't come around to see Nathan, and Nathan wouldn't shut up about whatever stupid movie they'd gone to go see together the last time Russ had come around. And Marina knew this whole lying low thing was because of Ford's going missing. If she'd had even a hint of an idea that Russ' distance had to do with a woman or something, she'd have already raised half of hell over it, but instead, with this, she gave him space. She gave him weeks. She enjoyed her life without Russ popping up… at first.
Every drop off at the babysitter, be it for job or drinks with some shady looking bastard that was just her type, Nathan would give her those eyes and want to know why Russ couldn't watch him instead, or Sam, Sam spoke French, and this babysitter only spoke Russian and she smelled like beets, and he hated it there. In the past year, somehow between five and now almost-six, Nathan had grown impressively independent and voiced, and Marina didn't know who to blame for that because it aggravated her and made her so fucking proud at the same time. Marina told Nathan that Russ was busy, and the boy seemed to accept that as an excuse in the varied and magically endless ways that adults could always be busy.. but by the end of the second week, Nathan didn't ask about Russ anymore, and that made it worse somehow.
And so on that night, smoking weed on the balcony at two in the morning, after all that thinking on Russ' vanishing act occurred, a plan was formed. It involved getting four hours of fitful rest before taking Nathan, sleepy-eyed and stretched out in the backseat in his frog pajamas, to the Russian babysitter, and then driving straight over to Russ' place. He didn't live quite across town, it was still the shitty side of Gotham as far as Marina could tell. She grabbed a couple of cinnamon lattes on the way, mostly because it was fucking early even by her standards, but also because she knew that Russ would hate it, but drink it for the convenience of not having to brew anything himself.
It was a few minutes before seven when she stepped up to his front door, and for maybe the first time in her life where Russ was concerned, Marina knocked politely. At first, anyway, but after three minutes of no answer, she used a fist and the toe of her shoe to hit harder. Still nothing, and for the sake of preserving her heels, Marina walked around to the back of the house to find another way in. The back door was locked, but the kitchen window was unlatched, and Marina climbed through from over the sink with a surprising amount of dexterity for this early in the morning. She was nearly dressed for the part of cat burglar too, in black leggings and high heels. Maybe not the oversized gray sweatshirt, but her hair was sleek and Charlie's Angels-esque, she thought. Even more impressive, she didn't knock over the coffees or lose a shoe in the process.. and it was safe to say that Marina was feeling pretty proud of herself by the time she walked through Russ' kitchen and through the little doorway that opened to his living room.
Of course, there he was, unmoving and (if the bottle of liquor sitting on the table nearby was any indication) drunk. The air smelled like stale liquor, and Marina casually took a sip from the recycleable lid of her cinnamon latte as she assessed the situation. The television was on low, and probably had been on awhile judging by the state of things. She wondered exactly how long the state of things had been in this state. Then, with a contemplative sigh, she stepped closer, put the cardboard cups on the table nearby, and lifted her foot so that she could nudge Russ' sleeping shoulder with the toe of her cranberry leather heel, "Don't be dead."
He didn’t think in weeks. The days were stale cigarette ends, one touched to the other to kindle the next without real thought or consideration given to the one prior. They were litter in the same endless, thoughtless way cigarette ends were, stubs marshaled together in an upside down saucer ringed with something oily and yellow on the end table. Hell, he didn’t think in days or hours, they were smeared like fingers run through wet paint obliterates what should - could - be present.
He’d looked at first. Two days, driving every goddamn place he could think of, hunting out bars and some of the places where Gotham got real comfortable with one another and took one another back to cheap motels. He’d figured Ford was pissed, first, gone the way he’d been mad enough to fill the small house with the feeling of it, stale smoke and resentment staining the walls. And then he’d gotten worried: maybe pushing Ford at Louis hadn’t gone down real well, maybe Blake reappearing meant trouble of the kind that came with ambulance rides and broken glass, maybe Ford was just fucking sick of his brother and had moved the hell on.
He’d sat in the hotel under the pleasant glare of a chandelier, counting off doors to try before he’d given the hell up, and sat in the lobby by the malevolently ordinary pay-phone and tried dialing out. There wasn’t a goddamn answer, there was the long tonal sound of dead air and then the placidly mechanical voice of the operator telling him something he’d heard a dozen times already, most of which meant mailing in a check to someone who’d cut them off. Except there was no place to mail, and he’d never come across wanting to find someone who knew Lou before - there was the manager of the stop, but it was twenty years ago and he’d spent most of his time then avoiding the goddamn manager to skip out on rent a little while longer, than calling him up and asking after the residents.
No phone for Ford. Nothing but fucking drifting, out there with a door locked between them. And then - then Russ figured drunk seemed real reasonable to him. It had been a chain of days getting drunk enough to take the edge off and fuzzy up the day some, blur out a little of what it felt like to fuck up and fuck up big. He was real fucking confident for Louis that Sam was on her way back, Sam who wouldn’t ditch, skip out on family but also because the hotel liked to fuck her up more than most -- but Ford, maybe the hotel didn’t have it in for him.
He came to this time with a headache that felt like the flat of a knife had been wedged under both temples in an attempt to pry out what brain matter he had left, like the stuff left in his skull was two sizes too big, and with a neck stiff from falling asleep on his side on a broke-down couch. And the ex-from-hell nudging him with the toe of her shoe.
He reached - the unthinking grasp for an assailant, misjudged, and rolled off the couch to the floor, swearing heavily as he hit carpet.
Hell, even when Russ was sober, Marina had a better reaction time. It was a classic scenario featuring an alley cat and a junkyard dog. The familiar tango of wedging her way into his arms when she wanted to be there, and slipping the fuck out when she didn't. And now, here, with the morning-drunk reach of his hand like to slap the annoyance off a buzzing fly, Marina pulled back an inch, heel still poised up like a one foot balance in heels while sipping coffee was nothing for a girl who'd once wanted to walk wires and fly trapeze while living in Moscow as a kid. Or maybe the heel was still up just so that she could jab him with the pointy end of leather if he swatted out again. Of course, a moment later, he was hitting the floor in a way that looked like it hurt, residual buzz or not. Marina's heel met with the floor again, the soft tap of victory.
"Morning, sweetheart," she said after another cinnamon sip. Although if it was morning, the world was just beginning to realize. The day played catch up with Marina, with gold just beginning to creep up in the sky, edging its way into his windows. She was the dark goddess dripping in gold, and the light sought her for warmth. "Brought you coffee," she said with a point to the other cinnamon latte on the tabletop nearby, and then she hip swinging back into his kitchen to look for something to destroy. "You hungry?" She called before pulling open his fridge door with every expectation of being disappointed by whatever was inside.
Wariness bit in beneath the bruising hangover, like fondling a knife you knew was real fucking sharp. He’d come down on his shoulder, still fucking hurting from a fight that had gone a little too hard and without thinking to look all that good in the aftermath and Russ had one hand clapped over the spot as he rolled from shoulder to back with a grunt. Marina was sweet the way a waitress spat in your eggs and served it with a smile: the sweetness covered up poison that could kill an elephant. His beleaguered brain dug through the years and surrendered up memory of fits pitched after an initial serve as sweet as dulce de leche trickled off a spoon.
He sat up and regarded the coffee on the end-table with trepidation. Russ didn’t buy a lot of coffee, he mistrusted anything that didn’t come from a plastic pot sitting under a drip filter and he liked it strong and silty and black which was a way most coffee places that did cheerful paper cups with plastic lids didn’t think coffee ought to be served. But it was hot and it was wet and he didn’t think Marina would actually poison him. The blue eyes, much bruised beneath with lack of sleep and far too much liquor, squinted over at the cup. He reached, inhaled the warm, milky sweetness belabored by cinnamon, and pulled a face, shoving it to one side.
“No,” he called resentfully in the direction of his own goddamn kitchen. Russ couldn’t remember if there was even food in the fridge. He’d last gone to a market well before the disappearance and sustenance since had been the providence of late-night gas stations and drugstores, picked up along with the cigarettes and beer. There was some cheese, blooming blue and slowly rotting on a very far back shelf. And there was some pickles, in a jar, rattling in the door. But the rest of it was beer and liquor and very little of that. “The fuck are you here for?” He asked the question because he wanted the answer but also because he wanted a cigarette and a cup of proper coffee more than he could think straight.
Marina ignored his foul mood and his questions with a kneeling query into the glowing desert of his fridge. She made a face at the cheese and speculated about the age of the pickles before inspecting the mostly-spent bottle of liquor. The label cured her curiosity. With one hand, she twisted the top off, and upon prying the coffee cup's lid off with her teeth, poured a splash inside with the cinnamon and milk. The taste instantly went from sweet to sharp, and she let the fridge fall closed due to mechanics when she stepped away from holding its door open.
Back in the living room, she noticed the distance Russ put between himself and the coffee she'd brought, and she gave him an amused look from over the plastic rim of her own cup. She remembered in Venice, her mother would point out the traveling Americans based on how they took their coffee. The crooked looks men gave to froth.
She wasn't sure if he was still drunk or on the cusp of a hangover, but either way, she was on better ground. Marina drank from her cup again, and sat on the arm of his couch with skinny legs crossed, black legging over black legging. Her heel dangled idly off her left foot as she fished a pack of cigarettes out of her sweatshirt pocket, hidden amongst the jingle of keys and the weight of a bulky, out-of-date cellphone. Her thumb folded the coffin lid back to expose the white filters of a mostly-full pack, which she held out to him after tucking one into the corner of her own mouth.
"I'm here," spoken around the filter as coffee was set aside, then lighter found and fired. She inhaled, and gave him a shrewd look through the first plume of smoke. "To see how you're doing."
A free cigarette was a free cigarette, and Russ reached out with the reservation of a junkyard dog that knows a meal is a beginning instead of an act in and of itself. The vice clamped around his head squeezed tighter the more he moved, and the sickly residue of the liquor lurched against the sides of his belly like turbulence on an ocean. It was better to stay still, Russ thought, than to move that much. He stayed on the floor, his back to the treacherous couch and lit up with a box of matches on the table’s edge.
The coffee sat sullenly ignored, partly because Russ was uncertain as to what new revolt his stomach would consider the drinking of it would constitute and partly because it smelled sweet and stupid. Real coffee, the thick and viscous, oily black kind that left residue in the bottom of the mug, that felt like it would feel real good about now. He smoked the cigarette in short, resentful puffs and sat with his elbow on his drawn-up knee, watching her. He was looking for the catch, for the hand of cards that were going to get played any second. Marina didn’t play nice and she didn’t visit to inquire about his welfare. Russ imagined no one did much of that: the list of those who would had shrunk to the absent and those who knew better.
He did not speak, he watched instead, the blue eyes much bloodshot and bruised beneath. He didn’t look like he’d been in any big fights, but he’d also not been looking to lose any.
Marina watched him with a kind of separation that the distance between them didn't allow for. She assessed the bruised discoloring of his eye socket with the kind of narrowing that was contemplation and not fury. She looked at him like someone might look over a portrait of one of their once upon a lovers. Gold eyes candid in their swath of black magic mascara smudges. She looked at him like she was interested in the conversation that was happening only in her head. Like picking over his bones served her just fine, sated the curiosity of her carrion birds. The stare narrowed like pulling a string, like she was practising some mental mojo powers that might pry his secrets from him.
It lasted all of three seconds before she slumped back against the edge of the couch, heel kicking higher when she reached to ash on a part of his floor. "I guess my coming here was a waste of time because you're clearly," her hand gestured with cigarette poised between painted fingers, like a prosecutor displaying evidence a through goddamn z, "fucking fine."
Russ moved heavily, like he’d been weighted by all that liquor, sodden with it. The room smelled strongly of stale cigarette smoke beneath the fresh, the acrid smell of stale sweat and lingering booze. It was unpleasant, but it was familiar. Half a dozen years ago, it had been habit. Now he looked at the fall of ash flitter to the carpet, marking it, with only half-hearted interest in whether it did or it didn’t.
“I’m not bringing the kid here,” he said slow, and deliberate as if the words took longer than usual to be shaped, delivered, as if the comportment of tongue and teeth required greater thought than perhaps was usual. “So what does it matter?” Marina cared because of the boy, he supposed, the protectionary boundary extended around Nathan just far enough to clip close to Russ’s own habitat. He hadn’t seen Nathan in a handful of days, it occurred to him, with a sliver of shame. He couldn’t determine whether Marina would see that as a good thing or a failure. She was mad about something, but what she had to be mad about wasn’t real clear.
“Stop staring at me like that,” he said uncomfortably. His skin felt like it prickled, like he could feel the weight of all that looking.
"You're really going to ask me that?" Despite it being worded as a question, Marina's voice didn't give into any form of surprise. If anything, there was a depressing lack of surprise when her eyebrows knit, and her cigarette tilted down from the lipstick feathered edge of her bottom lip. She did stop looking at Russ then, although it sure as hell wasn't because he asked. Briar patch lashes fell closed onto her cheeks, and it was solemn dramatics when Marina shook her head with the kind of exhale that came from severance notices and foreclosure signs. She huffed, as if chastising herself wordlessly for taking the time to come here at all. What does it matter…
Marina pried the plastic lid off of her coffee again, and began to flick her ashes into its recesses, despite having gone through the trouble of doctoring the latte up with borrowed booze. "What does it matter…" She repeated the words as they ran through her head like a rabid hoard. Over and over, and what the fuck. Her stare was molten when it returned to him, tight from over the curls of smoke. "You start demanding shit from me, time from my son, you become a regular presence in my-- in his life, and you think I'm not going to come find out what's up when nobody fucking hears from you for going on two weeks?" The cursing was just filler, adjectival cotton in a silk lined voice. She wasn't angry, or she didn't seem angry(although otherwise stable temperaments had been known to capsize on a fucking dime). Marina just seemed to be in a state of disbelief. No, a state of disappointment. Like, what the hell did he think she was here for, to worsen his hangover? And even if the idea was offensive, Marina immediately hoped that she did.
The headache pressed against his temples like it would tear through his skull if he moved too quickly; Russ wanted a shower and coffee that came black and straight and a smoke before this kind of conversation took place in his goddamn living room. He watched her flick ash into the steamed-milk shit in her coffee cup but the invective was dulled, it was a blunt knife. “So I ain’t been around two weeks,” he shrugged one shoulder as if guilt didn’t yawn, get comfortable and stretch out in the pit of his belly. Had it been two weeks? Fuck. Maybe the kid did deserve better.
“I don’t demand nothing from you,” a climbing note of disbelief accompanied with an achingly familiar scowl. It wasn’t her damn problem, it was the boy and the boy was five - and yeah, okay, when you were that little, time seemed real slow. “I don’t owe you a fucking play by play.”
There was insistence from his end, a swear of the holy cross, squint-eyed hungover piety. A wholesome truth, one that actually wounded the more that she considered it. It didn't matter to him. Not that it fucking would, she supposed in that coinflip moment. It didn't even mattered to Marina that he stayed the fuck gone, or it hadn't until she realized that they were sitting on the same side of a fucked up parent fence. And she didn't love him, but she loved Nathan more than she loved anything. She loved him more than anyone could have ever imagined her loving anything. She loved Nathan more than any of the things that people might have supposed she loved wholly; diamonds and screaming and flamenco jazz. She loved Nathan more than she loved herself, and maybe thats why it hurt when Russ' staying gone hadn't ever hurt very much before. This hurt wasn't like that, it wasn't like five years back and bitching at the moon. This didn't hurt like pride, it hurt like the heart. Which was kind of confusing because Marina had always prided herself on not having one, but it'd been neglected for too long, and it punched back at the sore spot in her chest.
She sucked in a breath, a deep sniff to right herself. And yeah, she did stop staring at him then. After marveling for a full minute, like he was a stranger who'd just peeled back all the lies she'd ever told and showed her the world like it really fucking was. The funny part was that this wasn't even a surprise. She'd always known who and what he was. From Day One, she'd known. But knowing didn't make it suck any less, she supposed it actually bothered her more because it was like believing lies for no reason, no proof. It was like being conned, and Marina raised a slim eyebrow at his wall, reflecting. She didn't say anything. She didn't even want to fight because there was nothing to fight about. There was nothing to salvage, there never had been.
When Marina faced Russ again, it was with a shallow inhale that slumped her shoulders. She looked ready to cry.
He’d rolled himself up to the couch to sit, his belly bitching queasily over so much movement (and argument) first thing. When Russ palmed his hand across his face, rasp of overgrown beard along skin, he wasn’t expecting much of a reaction, hell, he’d figured disappointment would follow him home, glued to his side, he was still waiting for the kid to wake up and realize it along with Marina. But she wasn’t glaring from the corner, she looked like maybe she’d been kicked in the stomach, and he closed his eyes against it because it was foundational, the expectation that she’d be mad instead of sad, it was a bedrock to lean on.
“What do you want?” Russ thought the expectations had shifted like sand instead of stone, edgily uncertain of what exactly she was weepy over now. Part of this whole ‘be a father’ thing had come with the frayed tie of a relationship old enough now that the understanding of how exactly it had worked had frayed along with the rest of it. Russ looked in rude health for the most part, the sour smell of stale alcohol and the bruised fragility was temporary, but the tired wariness was becoming habit.
“Honest to fucking god. What is it you showed up here for?”
She had the doe eyes turned up to full, the wavering blink of lashes threatening to let tears to fall. But there weren't any tears, she wasn't that good. Russ didn't seem too moved by the threat, and Marina wasn't actually going to follow through with waterworks, so there was nothing to do but drop the pathetic look moments after she'd brought it to life. Her mouth hardened, embittered line of dusted rose. Russ really didn't get it, or didn't care to get it, and Marina thought briefly that she might be exaggerating things by being here, exacerbating shit, brewing hurt where none was meant to be. But knowing that she might be wrong had never been enough of a reason to really stop.
What was it she showed up here for? She kicked at him with the heel of her shoe. Not furious, not murderous, but she did catch him in the arm with the edge of her heel. If it was a means of punishment or just a means of making him know she was serious, Marina didn't go for two strikes. She leaned in closer, looking him in the face. "I told you why." It occurred to her then that maybe he thought she actually came by to ask something from him, and so she clarified that real quick. "I don't want anything, I came over here to see what your damn problem is."
He’d had enough or he’d had enough of the floor. Russ rolled upright, unsteady on stiff legs and staggered briefly with one hand extended, fingertips running to the stained arm of the couch. He watched Marina with the faint flicker of interest someone might watch a news broadcast, waiting for something vaguely applicable to them in their sphere of understanding or knowing, something that might quicken given a chance. But there was nothing. More of the same pretend-damp eyes and the thin, mirror-line of her mouth sharpened to acid. Russ looked at her with nascent impatience, and the taste of last night in the back of his mouth and wondered what he was supposed to have done that meant a three ring fucking circus in the living room.
“My damn problem,” the over-pronunciation was distinct, the slurry of poor sleep on a crappy couch conflated with the tinder-box-and-nitrogen flare that was Marina, “Ain’t got anything to do with you. So get the hell out,” he added, after a second’s thought. Russ lurched heavily toward the stairs and the bathroom, oozing fumes like a cheap liquor store.
She watched Russ turn away, and it was like glimpsing the view through a kaleidoscope. Every memory of him turning his back on her pulsed together in a flicker like time could dissolve and fit him into the same hurtful image, layered on top, stenciled by her eyes. Nights where he left her at some bar, bike trailing smoke like a fuck you written in air. Days where coffee cups shattered and records broke, his back, and a slammed door. Her crying(for real, sometimes) and him turning away. There'd never been anything left to say, and she didn't suppose there was anything left to say now either. Time didn't change a damn thing.
It wasn't her pride that was hurt now, or she might have stayed out of spite. She was just done, and she wanted out of this house before her numb resolution flaked away to reveal anger or some new wound. Keys in hand, she got up to leave, she shouted only one thing toward the stairs after him. "His birthday is in a couple weeks, try not to be drunk by then!" Then, taking a page from his playbook, the front door slammed behind Marina on her way out.