Sarah Connor is cursed to be ever vigilant (ever_vigilant) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2012-06-20 00:00:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, neena thurman (domino), pete wisdom, romany wisdom |
Oh, wot the feck...?!
Who: Neena Thurman, Pete Wisdom, Romany Wisdom
What: A lesson in why not to keep pistols under your pillow.
When: Directly following this dream narrative, this morning.
Where: Dom’s Apartment.
Warnings: PG-13 For Language, Guns, and... ahem... marital aids.
Status: Complete
It took precisely 5 seconds for Domino to be armed and dangerous, and that's exactly how she liked it. The gun under her pillow found its way into her hands without even thinking, and she was up and on her feet while the darkness from her dreams clung to the waking world and clouded her senses. There had been men in the dreams, 100 different men and none of them had been good men, but the one at the end was the worst, and for all she knew the one she'd woken up next to was him. She didn't know anything anymore. She didn't know anything but the gun in her hands. The safety was off with flick of her thumb and she stumbled backwards a bit as she took aim.
But her need to get as far away from the bed and the dreams and the man outweighed her need to shoot him, and she stumbled backward, trying to find the exit or somewhere safe. Instead, she found a chair, tripped over it, and fell flat on her back. The gun went off, then, bullet boring into the cement over her. The sandpaint chipped away around the point of entry and fell harmlessly around her like snow.
The man in the bed had been having his own very bad dream, so the minute he was awoken by Domino bolting out of bed like a cat lit on fire, he was a little thankful and a whole lot of groggy. All while he had a gun in his hand, grabbed out from under his pillow. If she was up and livewired that much, there had to be an intruder.
His thoughts went to Romany, out on the sofa like the hippy slacker she was...until he noticed that Dom was pointing her gun at him. Pete's eyes widened like he hadn't expected THAT sort of death, and he started to roll back off the opposite side of the bed, just as the she'd stumbled backward and he heard the gunfire. Pete gracelessly landed on the floor in a heap, his gun fired, and the bullet lodged itself harmlessly in the wall.
"Oh, wot the feck...?!"
Romany was busy, her hand between her legs, her vibrator bouncing along happily to the tunes on her mp3 player, when the gunshots went off. She flailed and fell off the couch, "Oh what the 'ell?!"
The first thing that Domino decided to do, at that point, was flick her thumb across the safety. She stared up at the bullet hole on her ceiling, watching as some more white paint flaked down on top of her. That could have gone a lot worse. Pete's voice was in the room somewhere, and she'd never have forgiven herself if she'd shot him. He wasn't the man, and he didn't deserve that. The man was someone else, and probably hadn't actually been in the apartment at all. She struggled a bit with overwhelming terror that was still gripping at her. Terror didn't solve anything. Pete was sitting right there. She didn't want to deal with this shit. Romany was making weird sounds from the other room.
"... there goes my security deposit," she finally managed to mumble.
"Oh no, really, you think?" so said the sarcastic git of a Brit who was still on the floor, using the bed as a really poor excuse for a shield between them. He wasn't sure what was going on, and visions of his mum filled with bullet holes were dancing in the back of his mind, like a really gory puppet show he wished he hadn't been privy to remembering at all. After a long tense moment, he peeked one eye up over the edge of the bed to see if she was herself again. It was just a wild stab in the dark, but he decided maybe to hazard an educated guess by asking, "Bad dream?"
Leaving the vibrator buzzing along to the Bee Gees, Romany fastened her robe as she ran into the bedroom, weilding a very large looking gun, "Wots going on, is this your idea of foreplay?!"
Over on the floor, next to the chair that had toppled over, Dom was still laying sprawled out. She allowed herself one singular selfish tear over the entire thing before clamping down on any emotions in the dream or accompanying them. That dream? Dreams? It had seemed like more than one ... either way, they didn't happen. Nope. And that gun in Romany's hand was ridiculously compensating for something. The accuracy rating on it was impossible and the recoil would break her hand, probably. Dom snerked a bit, but just waved a hand in the air, like she was fine, everything was fine, and there was nothing at all to see here.
"Feck off an' go play on the motorway, Romany! Wait, wot're you doing with that? Put that away. Bugger. I'd ask t'play with it but I don't know where it's been, if it's yours," Pete began snarking, to cover up the fact that he'd had a split second panic of not wanting Domino to be the one killing him, because he could imagine she'd be pretty messed up by it, after the fact. Anyone else was fine.
Maybe not Romany, because she'd attempt to raise him from the dead and he wasn't having that. It was time for crisis control and to grasp hold of the fact maybe his big sis wasn't tucking daisies into gun barrels anymore. "Right, the whole bleedin' neighborhood's likely heard this. Time t'cover up. Dommy, toothpaste those holes up, fast, open the windows, spray your clean smelly stuff. I'm grabbing one of my never-leave-home-without-it dvds and Romany and I are going t'be bad flat dwellers and crank it up. Then it's a noise complaint, not a shooting in progress."
Because his movies had guns and the lack of reloading, just the way he liked it. People could go about, shooting each other, forever.
Romany fired it on a regular basis, she'd have you know, and if you brace yourself you're fine. It was also accurate and intimidating enough for her purposes. She looked between them, then snorted and lowered her gun. She disappeared into the other room to get some incense. She left the vibrator running, for luls.
"Right... toothpaste..." That was great. She could get right into crisis prevention mode, which suited her needs just fine. She picked herself up off the floor and set the chair upright, dusted herself off, and tucked the gun right back under her pillow, where it was safe and could continue to be pointed at the wrong people later on that week. Probably. We hope not. Without a word she headed to her bathroom, and tried not to twitch over the mess in the sink - she could clean it later, when the police weren't likely on their way there this second. The bathroom was entirely white. She decided that she wasn't sure she liked white. Why were all the walls everywhere so white? That was her train of thought, while toothpasting the bullet hole in her wall.
Pete had retrieved his copy of Hard Boiled out of his bag and stalked very swiftly out of the room to try to wrangle with a tv and dvd player. The minute he heard buzzing he gave Romany a look like he was going to strangle her, but there was no time for that. They had to make like they were playing nice until the authorities or the landlord was convinced they were very bad houseguests. Once the movie was on, he cranked the sound, fastforwarded to the first gunshot, and grabbed Romany by the arm so they could sit on the...fine, he wasn't sitting on the couch. Pete let go of her with a glare of massive proportions, hissed 'cut that thing off this instant' under his breath, and sat down on the floor. Then he sprawled out, in boxers and t-shirt, like a 8 year old boy watching saturday morning cartoons. Only his version of which contained nonstop shooting and blood spatter.
It was so loud, it could be felt in the walls and the floor and all the home furnishings.
Romany snerked, and put away the vibrator. But so far, no one was coming to investigate. It was like people just didn't care, or didn't want to be the first person to investigate!
It was a great day to take some painstaking time to plug up a bullethole in your cieling with toothpaste. She was taking care of that while standing on that same dastardly chair which had tripped her, previously. Yes, it was all the chair's fault. Stupid chair, being in the way of her backpeddling like that. And cripes that movie was loud, but it was the perfect cover, too.
"So wot did you do to 'er," Romany asked, while reclining on the couch.
Pete looked like the only things he was missing were some biscuits and a cup of hot coffee, because he was on his stomach, feet on the couch, propped up on his elbows, hair askew and eyes fixed on the telly. He waved one hand for a moment like that particular shooting scene was the shit and she should hush down.
It was soon over though, and he said loud enough to be heard over the nonstop gunfire, "Nothing! We were asleep. We're only friends, you know...I had a bad night. Went out t'see Kitty at a pub. We drank before we fell asleep, that's all, an' she's had a bad dream obviously. They're running rampant." He paused a moment, watching the telly as a bunch of cops were shot. "People here really don't give a squirt if they hear gunshots. Brilliant. This'll just cover it all up nicely then, won't it."
The holes having been taken care of to a level of detail that Domino felt comfortable with, she stood in the middle of her bedroom, and looked around. She still felt sick, but she felt restless. She wanted to get out of this place, it was too small and too white and too... well the living room probably wasn't so neat, actually. She'd been dreading that, but instead she changed her shirt, put on a pair of pants, and inched out of the bedroom a bit.
"Why would yeh see 'er at a pub? Do yeh want the knife twisted?" Romany snorted.
"Yeah, b'cos I'm a masochist." What? He was. But only when it came to all things Kitty Pryde. Everything else fell under the categories of 'I still feel guilt/regret for ___' or 'the less complications and liabilities, the better.' Finally deeming it safe enough to lower the volume down to a more respectable level, he left the tv on and waited to hear a knock on the door. He also noticed Dom trying to tiptoe out of the bedroom, so he began watching that with an odd expression on his face. One that was inquisitive mixed in with a heaping helping of British aloofness. Because it wouldn't do to look too terribly interested in her inching out of her room on high alert, but he was still keeping an eye on her in case she went haywire from whatever she'd dreamed about.
Romany hopped to her feet, and grabbed her mp3 toy, "I'm goin' to shower. You two ducks need t'talk!" And off she went!
Domino watched her depart, toy in hand, and her lips thinned into a line. She didn't want to know, and she wasn't going to think about it. She glanced in the direction of her front door, like she was waiting for cops to arrive or something still, and wasn't sure how to handle that. She wanted some fresh air. She needed to just ... go. Driving, or something. But she didn't want to leave Pete all by himself here. So she eyed him, and tried to sound casual, "No cops yet, eh?"
"No, nothing yet. I'm inclined to say we're safe, or as safe as we can be in a place where guns go off an' no one says a thing." He rolled onto his side, elbow down on the floor, and one hand propping his head up so he could watch her. It wasn't hard for him to notice when someone wanted to bolt. After all, look at his last major relationship. He knows the warning signs by now, but he was going to attempt, at the very least, to get some answers. "Mind telling me wot went on in there, precisely? Or is it too fresh for further details at this juncture."
Meanwhile, Romany was in the shower, cleaning herself up. Like she was going on a date. And there were other things but we'll spare the details.
"...Well whatever it was, it was bad," Dom said, cheerfully. But the cheer sounded completely fake this time, and she was trembling a bit, on top of it. Those were probably the only two indicators that anything was amiss in the land of Domino, but they were signs that Pete was probably aware of. She crossed her arms over her chest and looked around. She couldn't remember if Pete had brought the car keys to he last night, "I'm going to ... well. Let's have a beer and pizza day. That sounds nice. I'll go rent some movies and buy some beer."
Nope, thrown down into the corner of the room, after he'd come through the door, looking like he wanted to shoot himself in the face. Truth be told, he'd entertained doing that more than once last night. The only real stumbling block to that really excellent idea, was that he would've left a big mess that Dom would've had to pour cleanser on and scrub off the walls, and perhaps repaint. He didn't want to be that much of an inconvenience, after all. Furthermore, he had noticed that it looked as though someone had locked her in a cage and beat on it with metal sticks and threatened to hook jumper cables up to it for shits and giggles.
He was sort of replaying seeing his mum's face with a gaping gunshot through her forehead all over again, but he was going to keep telling himself he could deal with that and it was minor, peripheral, something he could shove away and think about, later. "Is that really wot you want t'do? Lay about with the Wisdoms. Have beer an' pizza, an' a movie day?"
"I really want to ..." she sighed, and closed her eyes, "I need some air. This place feels too constricting. It's too small. The walls are too clean." God, she'd built herself that room all over again somehow. What the hell was wrong with her and her life? She wanted to scream and throw things, but that wasn't her. That wasn't how she dealt with things. And Pete had his own problems. She didn't want him dealing with her problems, too. So she shook her head and shrugged it off, or tried to. "I just need out of here. I just ... out. I'm going. Where are the keys."
"Thurman." He said the word like it had an automatic braking device and she'd better heed the fact that the vehicle in motion was coming to an abrupt stop. Right now, he could deal with his problems. Sure, they made him want to leave his brains on the nearest wall after trying to drink himself to death, but that was pretty typical of him, on a day to day basis.
"If you're going somewhere, you're not going alone. We'll go with you, or I'll go with you, if Romany wants t'continue getting off in the shower, which she's probably doing right now, because she's a fucking perverted tart. Don't sit on your couch, cos you'll die a little inside if you knew what she was doing there, too."
Fair warning!
That perverted tart had just discovered the shower was movable.
Loudly.
"... I don't want to..." Dom glanced at the couch and looked like she was about to throw up in her mouth a little bit, "You know what, she can have that couch, I'll just get a new one." At least the shower could be bleached. And then she'd have to live with the smell of bleach everywhere. She used to love the smell of bleach. Well maybe bleach didn't smell quite the same. Why was she sitting here staring forlornly at everything and thinking to herself about bleach? Contrary to ideas some people might have about her, she didn't actually spend 100% of her time cataloguing her cleaning supplies. It was more like 20%. "We can go for a drive. For beer, and beer. And beer."
And beer and beer and beer and beer and beer. Oh...kaaay, Neena. Even yourself is starting to think you sound a little crazy.
"Right. Beer, beer, and more beer."
With a groan, he had to use the arm of the couch - with his fingertips - to stand up. That part was safe, he hoped, because it was where Romany's pillow was. And no way was he even getting near anything of Romany's on the couch now. No way in hell. He was too busy trying not to puke in his own mouth, because of his tart of a sister and the bathroom acoustics. He did, however, draw closer to Dom, and gave her a fierce hugging onto and a back pat, because he could tell she needed it. Maybe it would even be a good way to get her mind into the present rather than...wherever else it was. Pulling away wasn't even an option.
"I'll go with you. We can take Romany and kill her, then dump the body off a ravine. It'll be brilliant. Sound good?"
"Sounds excellent, let's do that." Dom had stiffened instantly at the contact, which was very unusual for her, but the place she'd been in, the way that dream had ended. Whoever that man was. She wanted to find him and shoot him. She relaxed by the time she answered him, though, enough to hug him back. It wasn't like she could pull away from him, because he was hugging her pretty damn tightly, and pulling away was so not an option. "We can clean out her bank account first, and make it look like some kind of mugging."
The shower stopped, and Romany stepped out to dry herself off.
"You're brilliant. Let's do that." He had noticed the tensing up at first and felt a little better that she had relaxed, so maybe her mind was on the present. Or he hoped it was, at least. Pete pulled away and patted both hands lightly down on her shoulders, as though to let her know she'd done a good job. "I'll hop in the shower and hope she didn't leave anything behind, then we can go. You can let Romany prattle on an' on at you in the meantime. It helps sometimes t'get your mind off of shite, because she's stark raving nutters insane. I'll be ready, shortly." And he was off to go get ready. If Romany was hogging the bathroom - if there was only one bathroom - then that door is going to be pounded on.
There was, in fact, only one bathroom.
Just beware the hair clogs. Romany came out, starkers, walked into the living room, and picked out a skirt and blouse. She promptly pulled them on, forgoing anything like knickers.
Shame. She has none.
There was absolutely no comment from the Domino Peanut Gallery about the nakedness, or the skirt and blouse with no knickers. She wasn't wearing any, herself. She'd started picking the place up after Pete had wandered off to get clean, in the sort of way someone starts engaging in mundane activities to deal with stress or grief. She didn't really know Romany well enough to initiate conversation aside from 'that couch is yours now, cheers', so she just waved a bit at her, and got back to picking up.
That's okay. Pete was pretty much certain his sister would initiate any conversation, because that was the way Romany rolled. Meanwhile, he was making a very loud gagging and retching sound, as he went into the bathroom and slammed the door closed and locked it, because there were some things he didn't need to see. Romany naked was one of them. Into the shower he goes, and there's pretty much going to be zero hot water left for Domino, at this rate. Because the Wisdoms are assholes.
Dressed, Romany plopped down onto the couch, "I 'eard something about a pint?"
It was just Domino's luck that today she didn't feel like showering, anyway. She stacked up a pizza box or two, and started picking Romany's clothing up with two fingers, piling it all in one place, "Yes. Beer. I feel better when I say it exactly 8 times, but I'm not indulging myself, because that's just crazy talk." There was a pause where Dom looked around again, still very thin-lipped, and sighed, "I need to get some artwork or something. We're going to kill you on the way there, so you're warned. Also, that couch is now yours. It's not a sex before marriage couch, so you've officially tied the knot with it."
"That's not crazy talk. Seven is a better number, it's lucky." Romany wriggled her fingers, "I know a place with some good art!"
"No, it's either 8 or 10. 7 is an uneven number, it's not lucky,it's just the devil." Dom looked particularly troubled for a moment, and then took a seat on the floor, "You really are the devil, aren't you? He wasn't lying about that. If I were the devil, where would I go to get good art that wasn't cursed somehow?"
"Artsy districts." Romany lit up a cigarette and puffed out some smoke, "Get all kinds o'folks in places like those."
"They'll never find the body in a place like that," Dom said, approvingly. She leaned back against the wall, and oh, there were her car keys. She picked them up off the floor and cradled them against her.
"Jus' make sure yeh cut it up nice and small, an' then stick it in the vegans' stew."
"We can do that." She was half tempted to just get up and head for the car while Pete was in the shower.
Nope, too late, Pete was out of the shower. He, however, had a towel wrapped around his waist and made damn sure the doors were closed before he got dressed. If Domino was going to be making an escape, it was now or never.
It was just kind of a shame that the doors were closed, really.
Pete would probably be angry at her later for it, or maybe he'd understand. Domino wasn't always sure how things were going to go, with him. But she just really needed to be alone. So she got up off the floor and waved at Romany, hoping absently that what she was smoking really was a cigarette, and headed out the door.