Margot Beauford (lostpages) wrote in the_colony, @ 2011-03-17 22:52:00 |
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Entry tags: | ^ week 35, margot bouchard |
Week 35: Thursday night
Characters: Margot Bouchard and Brian Halstead (NPC)
Location: A winery/B&B somewhere in northern California
Summery: Margot confronts Brian about his erratic and violent behavior. Things don't go well.
“What the hell were you thinking?!” The upset in Margot’s voice made it crack a little, tight with anxiety, confusion, and no lack of subtle fear for what had just happened. She slammed the door to their room shut behind her, but kept her back to it, watching him.
He was wired. Frayed at the edges and sparking dangerously, she’d seen Brian like this before, but never to an extreme that lead to him actually hitting someone. None of them were strangers to violence nowadays, but it had never crossed lines between them. Now Jason and Maurice (along with Maurice’s girlfriend, Michelle) were nursing the same sort of anger somewhere in the winery, as well as the same scrapes and bruises Brian now sported. All because... why? Because Jason smiled at her? Because Maurice helped her carry a crate up from the cellar?
“What was I thinking?” Brian shouted incredulously and spun on his heel to face her, pacing toward Margot until there was merely a foot of space between them. He licked at the cut on his lip and glowered down at her, a sheen of sweat covering his reddened face. “So all of this is my fuckin’ fault?”
His tension was infectious, and directly related to the diminishing space between them: by the time he stopped, Margot’s body was stiff. An added rigidity shot down her spine at his question, and she furrowed her brows, looking like a pissed-off porcupine. “Alright... explain how it isn’t?”
“If you weren’t always out there--” Brian poked her in the chest. “Flaunting yourself like a whore in front of a half-dozen horny, lonely men! I seen the way you look at them, and they look at you. You’re fuckin’ asking for it.” He practically growled. He was exaggerative by nature, but somehow over the years the exaggeration in his words mutated into his very thoughts, making him paranoid.
Margot swayed back a half step, struck dumb and gaping for a breath as the words tried their best to make sense in her head. The spot where he jammed his finger blared hot, like it would bruise, but she wasn’t concentrating on that. Words like whore and asking for it were stuck on loop in her head. “...flaunting myself?! Do you even hear what you sound like?” Margot’s dark, narrowed gaze was having trouble escaping the laser points he casted down. Suddenly she just couldn’t stand being so close to him, and tried to duck around his shoulder to head towards the bed, but Brian caught her by the arms and pushed her back against the door.
He nearly stumbled over her in his haste, quickly recovering his clumsiness as he shoved her harshly into the pretty, carved wooden paneling. “Don’t,” Brian spit, his voice growing ever darker, “walk away when I’m talking to you.”
Tension became sharp alarm when he grabbed her, then exploded into full blown shock when the wall broke her momentum. Breath stopped in her chest and forced her heart into her throat. For the first few slamming heartbeats, Margot lost the ability to speak--she couldn’t even blink: she was caged by his arms on each side of her shoulders, but more so by the rancid tone in his voice. She teetered between fear and anger, all laced with a panic that was sharpening by the second--the tightness was evident in her voice.
“Okay... okay, just...calm down for a second--”
“I’m perfectly calm,” Brian hissed and jolted her. He could sense the panic in her --see the fear in her eyes-- but instead of easing back he only fed off of it.
Margot startled again, swallowing hard around her own breath and the sting spreading from her shoulder blades. She didn’t like this--where this was going, and a rock hard tension set in her jaw. “No, you’re not! Look at yourself!” Her chin lifted in a staunch show of the little flare of anger that bubbled under her fear. “You can’t just fly off the fuckin’ handle every time you think someone looks at me funny!”
“At least one of us gives a shit!” His grip eased slightly and he finally stopping glaring at her, only to squeeze his eyes shut. “You don’t see the lust in their eyes?! You’re either retarded or you like their eyes all over you because you’re a slut.” Brian opened his eyes again. This time he stared over her left shoulder and waited for her to pick one of those two options.
Adding insult to injury only stoked the burn that stuck to the back of her ribs like battery acid. Margot’s face tightened, twisted in scorn, and her hands buried themselves in his shoulders, pushing back. “You are seeing things--there are no looks and I’m no fucking slut!”
“Then you must be retarded,” he countered, actually letting her push him away, if only a little. Brian put his hands out to the sides, daring her to touch him again, but she didn’t take that bait. Only folded her arms coldly beneath her breasts and glared daggers at him.
“If anyone here’s ‘retarded’, Brian, its the one who throws down against the people who watch his fuckin’ back.” Her arms dropped sharply, gesturing at him--Margot always talked with her hands, and they about flew when she was agitated. “We can’t do that, Baby--don’t you see that?”
She might have been better off shoving him, or punching her in the chest. While it might of aggravated him, it wouldn’t have pushed him over the edge. Instead, her words cut into him. First, the insult she threw back in his face and then her intelligent argument, that he couldn’t seem to counter right away because it was faultless. A red hot burning sensation started at the center of his chest and bled into his hands and ears and before he knew it, Brian was swinging his arm upward. The back of his hand swiped hard against Margot’s face in a way that he could feel the points of his knuckles dragging across her cheek bone in one quick, fluid, regrettable motion.
Heat and pain exploded under her cheek and bounced around in Margot’s skull--she reeled back with the momentum, and was just barely able to catch herself from stumbling to the floor when the wall half-broke her fall. Immediately, her hand was over the white-hot tingle on the side of her face. He hit me! was the only solid thought in her head, besides the blood rushing, deafening in her ears, mixing with the sound of her own breath. Her eyes were already watery and sharp as volcanic glass when they snapped back up. She was shaking, swallowed by utter disbelief and betrayal--all tied together by fear.
When her eyes met Brian’s again, he appeared to be just as disbelieving. He stared at her wild-eyed and unmoving, like he had frozen himself just a few seconds too late and he knew he couldn’t go back and fix it. The anger had vanished from him completely, leaving him startled and almost helpless. He’d hit women before. Twice. But they were so much different than Margot; stupid, loose women.
“Christ, baby.” His face twisted in anguish and he reached for her, hesitant to touch her like she might shatter and crumble into a hundred pieces. “I’m sorry. Fuck!” Brian recoiled and grabbed at his own hair. “Why’d you make me do that?”
She was too shocked to speak at first: like him, frozen in place against the carved mahogany, with one hand pressed and cold compared to the throbbing ache beneath it. Her answer to him was the first deep breath she could muster, tainted with her voice in a sob that wouldn’t come. Margot couldn’t think straight, yet--only latched on to phrases repeated in Brian’s voice: ...why’d you make me...
“C’mere,” he said quietly. This time he was gentle when he grabbed her shoulders and pulled her into an embrace, pressing her head to his shoulder. Even Brian’s eyes were glassy and sorrowful. “I’m so sorry.”
She heard the change in his tone, saw the shift from malicious to repentant on his face and in his eyes, and it all just added to the sea of confusion. Never in her life--never had anyone laid a hand on her in such a way: even in the violent chaos that had become their world, Margot had maintained that particular innocence. When it was stripped away, it left her vulnerable and helpless--and the gentleness in his touch was still familiar. The soft, lulling tones: the genuine remorse: even if tainted, in her rocked state of mind, it’s all she had to hold on to.
Margot didn’t fight him, only let herself be held like a stiff rag-doll against his shoulder: emotion swirling behind her eyes, stinging them further. She was utterly lost.