Who: Alak Tarr alak & Belle tinkhatespink What: Considering a Change When: Where: Courtyard of a Shopping Center Rating: General Audiences Warnings: Talk of alien paleness, ridiculously cute people, and likely geekery to the extreme, but seriously? No. I don't think this scene will lead to anything which could scar someone. Status: Complete Upon Posting
~*~
Tanning turned out to be an involved process. There were all types of tanning agents out there as well as different ways to get tanned. Price came into play which wasn't surprising; the length of time the agents could last was surprising to Alak. He'd chosen to go with a discreet salon located in a pleasant little shopping center at the suggestion of one of the dancers at The Need/Want. She was a gorgeous golden color all over -literally all over- yet it looked wholly natural; Alak had been surprised when she'd told him her skin tone was much lighter and she preferred this place where they did airbrushing.
With the way the dancer looked, Alak figured the place should be considered an art studio instead of a salon. He was stymied by the fact it was a small boutique in a shopping center with a hardware store, a vitamin shop, and a second-hand store. Nothing about the place screamed 'High-End Salon Services Here'. Alak hesitated on the sidewalk in front of the salon as he stared at the doors as if they would change if he looked at them long enough, morph into something closer to a place he'd see downtown where starlets got their styles.
Muttering aloud, he asked no one in particular, "Think 'Not an Oompa-Loompa' is enough of a description when I go in?"
~*~
It just so happened that this little, hole-in-the-wall shopping center was home to not one, but two Pokemon Go Gyms. And a handful of Poke-stops, too. AND it wasn’t far from Belle’s place of business, so on her lunch she came over here, set up a folding chair, and played Pokemon Go for half an hour. It killed her phone’s battery, but she could just plug in when she got back to work. So today she was sitting there, taking over the second gym, when she heard some guy muttering to himself.
She looked up and gave a little gasp. Was that the guy? The pale guy with the blue hair? Alak! From Valarnet! Wow! What a small world?
Belle clicked her phone screen off and stood up from the chair. Two steps closer and she’d confirmed it. Yep, the guy. “I might be more specific.” She said, breaking into a grin.
~*~
"Oh, hey! Sorry. I'm not crazy. I'm just trying to work up the nerve to go in."
Tanning wasn't nearly as invasive as some Casti customs were in his Dreams. Alak didn't mind the idea of being in a man-thong while some woman sprayed him down. All he cared about was whether or not people would immediately notice he'd done such a ridiculously cosmetic thing and think---think he was even more weird than he was and he was already weird given he was a freaking alien. The girl looked friendly. She had a set-up which meant she must be a regular around the place for some reason or another.
The phone tipped him off a little as he realized it might be a game spot.
"Sorry if I'm disturbing your gaming. I'm Alak. Not that my name matters, just that I'm trying to appear less weird since you caught me talking to myself outside a salon."
Smooth. He was a real smooth operator. Not. In any universe. Ever.
~*~
"Oh, I'd never presume to judge whether or not a person was crazy. Not when we're all mad here." Belle said, shrugging her shoulders and giving him a smile. This guy seemed to be even more awkward than she was! And that was saying something.
"Alak! So that's how you pronounce it. I'm Belle. I think we talked online." She held a hand out to him. "Y'know... about pirates, and stuff? You sent me that selfie. I should have sent one in response."
~*~
Sending selfies was more of a girl thing than a guy thing, but Alak tended to love goofing around with his equipment. His phone was basically a portable DJ station with all the apps he had as well as his cloud-based software which linked him into his tracks. Some guys played a sport to blow off steam. Alak Tarr sent duck-face photos to women who ran establishments of ill-repute. Belle was a lot more direct than he'd have expected her to be. Confident or maybe just sassy. He wasn't sure how to classify her.
"Hey Belle," Alak agreed, shaking her hand, "I'm that guy, yeah. I went totally white with the hair for a while because of---well, thank you for agreeing I can still rock the blue. I'm currently thinking I'll get some kind of tan going so I can blend more. Just so you know? I don't ask girls to shoot me selfies anymore since I run a podcast and I DJ which can lead to some misunderstandings."
'Misunderstandings' translating to 'nude pics' in the most polite way possible.
"My Dreams have been a little unkind to me in the looks department I guess."
Alak shrugged. He knew he couldn't go back, couldn't change it, but he was lonely. That meant he had to come up with a way to blend more with people so he could have a chance in Hell of meeting a girl who would do more than look at him twice because he came across as a circus freak.
~*~
Belle was one of those people who unlocked her phone and did all kinds of cool shit with it. She hadn’t upgraded the hardware on this model, though she had on the last. Better camera, stronger flash, more memory, etc. But this phone she’d only done the software hacks, so it wasn’t as fancy.
“No no, I really do. Blue’s good.” Belle gave him a smile. “I mean, it’s original. Unique. I like it.” She couldn’t quite put her finger on why she did. Not that it mattered why so much. Just that she did.
“Oh. Those. Yeah. I’ve heard about weird Dreams that bleed over into Real Life? Is that what you mean?” She hadn’t had any herself, and was still learning about all this stuff. “What’s it like?”
~*~
"That's exactly what I mean," Alak agreed, giving Belle a wry grin as he wondered why she hadn't commented on anything other than his hair.
No one was that nice, right?
"I wasn't born an albino so you could say the Dreams bleed over in nasty ways sometimes. For me? I got to slowly feel myself becoming something other than human. Given I'm barely legal to this country courtesy of being born in Russia, the irony wasn't lost on me since I've done so many podcasts about feeling like I was an alien. Now I know what being an alien is really like and I definitely had it much better before. I'm trying to pass for human again. Sorry. Overshare. I do that when I'm nervous. Talk too much."
Alak felt physical pain in his chest from the fact he'd just told a woman who was a virtual stranger to him he was a fucking alien. What was he doing? She was on the Valarnet though so the likelihood of her never getting the Dreams was low. He hadn't heard of anyone who found the network and never got Dreams. It seemed as if the people who found each other in the OC through the site were all experiencing something similar. They were more a family than a social networking site.
~*~
“So, wait, you’re an immigrant, and you Dreamed about being an alien? And then you became one?” Belle asked. These Dreams were becoming more and more weird to her. She hadn’t had any yet, so she didn’t know what they were like. Only that people were freaking out about them left and right, and claiming that things were coming from them. ...like, physical things, real changes in the Real World, coming from the Dreams? Dreams people had?
Then she shook her head, a bit of empathy overcoming her. She could tell that he regretted what he’d just said, and she knew why. It was a confession she didn’t feel like she deserved.
“No no, I’m sorry. Nevermind. Forget I asked.” She waved her hand in the air at him, begging forgiveness while brushing her words out of the air. “It’s none of my business.”
~*~
Girls had been easy for Alak before the Dreams. There was always fun to be had since he'd been exotic, charming, and a guaranteed thrill from what they understood of him based on his stage persona. Alak attributed a lot of his success to a secret he kept in plain sight: his stage persona wasn't a persona at all. He really was the guy they saw out there spinning tracks. Hype guys put out a fantasy to get people to believe in them. Most people working the crowds did.
Alak was unique in he was exactly what he presented to the world.
"It's fine. I'm the one who brought it up. Yeah. So I'm an alien. Pretty sure if I needed medical attention? I wouldn't want to be taken into the nearest ER because I'd probably wind up in Area 51's labs in a personal recreation of 'Alien Autopsy' which is literally the scariest thing in the world to me now. Given my family's business? That's not a good thing. I don't scare easily."
~*~
“Oh. Yeah.” Belle was a little weirded out by the whole ‘dreams becoming real’ business she’d read about on Valarnet. Mostly because she was terrified what that might mean for her. She hadn’t Dreamed anything yet, but from what she’d read? No one had good ones. Why didn’t anyone have a good Dream? Bizarre, right?
“What’s your family’s business?” She asked, more making conversation than being nosey. Belle was kinda shit with people, and didn’t really get things like personal boundaries and inappropriate questions.
~*~
"We're the traditional Russian cliche."
Alak answered easily enough. After announcing he was an alien, any revelation he could make was tame in comparison. Belle hadn't run off screaming. She had to be a decent person for that alone. It was possible he could actually have managed to make a friend. What were the odds of that? He had been striking out lately talking to anyone at all so it was nice to have the possibility of someone to hang out with even on a casual basis. Hell, Alak would settle for someone to text when he was feeling lonely at this stage.
"You know, organized crime. Guns. Drugs. Girls. If it's illegal to traffic it? My father or my mother one has likely done it enough to get richer than Midas. I make my own way because I don't want that life. I do work in a questionable atmosphere with a friend of my family. All her employees set their own limits though. No one's drugged, coerced, or outright forced to do anything they don't want and me? All I do is spin tracks to set the mood. What about you? Your people as sweet as you?"
~*~
Belle blinked at him when he answered her honestly. A guy who ran around in those kinds of circles normally wouldn’t admit to it, would they? Then again, he didn’t seem like a normal guy. There wasn’t anything wrong with that. Belle herself was far from normal.
No one's drugged, coerced, or outright forced… All I do is spin tracks to set the mood… Did he work in a whorehouse or something? Belle listened, curious, then flushed a little. “My people?” She asked, not sure what he meant by that. He’d talked about being an alien.
“My people are from Earth,” she said, almost teasing.
~*~
Her answer startled a laugh out of Alak. It had been so long since he'd laughed at anything. His whole life had shrunk down to trying to fit into a world he'd always wanted to stand out in. Survival was all he'd tried to do for so long he couldn't remember just having fun with someone. All Alak had been able to talk about with people had been how to handle being Casti on Earth where there were no other Casti---unless one counted his mother which he certainly didn't.
Stahma Tarr wasn't Castithan. She was an apex predator and Alak knew better than to get in her way.
"Touche."
Alak brushed his blue and white hair back from his pale, pale face and looked from her to the door of the salon and back again, "Okay. What's your opinion? Should I get a tan so I look like I'm from Earth? Which I am, incidentally. Even in the Dreams, I was born on this planet. My parents weren't but I was so I'm an Earthling through interplanetary naturalization or something."
~*~
He was super duper pale. It was a little distracting. But what was really nice was his laugh. His smile. Belle wasn’t really an expert on these things, but she thought he had a really nice smile. It made Belle smile in return, as she glanced from him to the door and back again as he did.
“...I dunno. Would you feel more comfortable to be tan? But whatever you decide, please don’t touch your hair. It’s absolutely amazing.” She couldn’t help but blush a little at that admission. “I’ve always wanted like, blue hair. Or green hair. Or yellow, or something.”
~*~
"I don't know," Alak admitted, "I don't feel comfortable most of the time now. Too much has changed since I started having Dreams."
He remembered waking up from the first one. It had been almost funny until he'd realized it wasn't fading away. Dreams tended to evaporate the longer a person was awake, instead, Alak had found his becoming more solid in his mind, more as if they were memories than the workings of his unconscious mind. He'd been unable to forget them or push them away. They'd been all he could think about. What kind of world did he live in where his family turned into aliens because of dreams?
Looking at Belle, he said, "I think you could rock a rainbow. I have to be careful to keep mine one color addition at a time. The last time I got a fade? One of the club dancers told every patron who came up to her to go ask me if they could 'taste the rainbow' with me. That was just---incredibly awkward."
~*~
Those dang Dreams. Belle wished she knew what her Dreams were going to be. Of course, she knew that people were miserable, so she felt a little guilty for wanting them to happen to herself so badly. At the same time she couldn’t wait to have her own. She was desperate to know what she was like in her alternate universe. The other version of herself was so elusive and so tantalizing.
“Yeah? You think so?” Belle couldn’t help but grin brightly at his suggestion. Maybe she should do something like that. A rainbow! It sounded so fun. “...taste the rainbow? I don’t get it. Did they think you’d hand out Skittles?” She asked, completely seriously. The double entendre was completely lost on the innocent, young woman.
~*~
Innocence was so out-of-the-ordinary for Alak he couldn't imagine Belle was serious until he looked in her eyes.
"I---something like that. So you think I can choose not to go for the golden glow without scaring off people around me?"
If she didn't get the vulgar reference, there was little chance she'd lie to him. Alak found himself wanting an honest opinion from an unbiased source. He knew Kenya would support him either way he went; his mother had made her choice for herself in her own way as usual. There was no one he could ask with a less biased opinion than a woman he'd only talked to online and this one time in person. Belle was the best shot Alak had at getting someone's real assessment of his appearance before he altered it any further.
~*~
“Well, yeah.” Belle gave the blue-haired man a grin as she said it. It didn’t even occur to her that other people might not feel the same way she did about unusual looking people. But Belle was one of those Comic-Con loving, Science-Fiction obsessed girls who found unique people intriguing. Belle didn’t judge by appearances.
“I think you look amazing as you are. I don’t think you’d look good as an Oompa Loompa. You know what they say about them, right?” She said, though she really didn’t know what anybody said about Oompa Loompas. “But it’s really important how you feel.”
~*~
Alak allowed himself to wonder for a moment how his life might have been different if he'd been raised with the kind of ideals Belle obviously had been. She couldn't come from the kind of life he did while still maintaining such a nice way of looking at the world. Rose-tinted glasses were shattered in worlds the likes of which Alak Tarr had been raised in. He couldn't remember the last time he'd walked out without worrying if he was making the right impression with the outfit he'd chosen for the day.
"Thank you, Belle. I think I'll stick to playing it pale for the moment. I mean, I am pretty fly for a white guy."
He winked at her as he reached into his vest pocket to get a business card, handing it over as he said, "I'm @RaiderRadio on YouTube or there's my contact info. Hit me up on the network sometime or stop by to see me spin if you're feeling up for a really wild night. I do a full set five nights a week at The Need/Want. It's not as bad as people say if you know what you're walking into."
~*~
Belle beamed when he said he was going to stick to being pale. It made her feel good--like she’d helped him with an important decision. And then he pulled out a business card, so she took it from him. “Wow, this is super cool! I had no idea! I’ll definitely check it out.” She wasn’t the type to turn someone down when they offered her things like this. She’d have to check out the Need/Want place to hear him spin. Because that’s what friends do. And Belle was totally now this guy’s friend.
“Hey, it sounds great. I mean, I’m all for new experiences and everything.” She wouldn’t be phased. She’d probably barely register her surroundings at that place. “I should probably get back to work. But thanks for this.” She held up the business card, taking a couple steps backward.
~*~
"No problem. I look forward to seeing you around some more. Take care, Belle."
Alak tossed her a peace sign before heading back to the bus route. He'd go downtown to his favorite record store to see if they'd gotten any new LPs in. There was nothing like a record for sound. Clarity was something people could argue until the cows came home, but Alak would give authenticity the cred over ambient mic noise any day. His greatest dream was to find an original, first pressing of an Elvis. It was out of his price range by too much to think, but he figured not all dreams had to be bad.
He was glad he'd met Belle. At least she'd given him something to think about.