InsaneJournal

Tweak says, ""Duh, like a fake ID.""

Vas Captio Mods (vas_captio_mod) wrote in vas_captio_rpg,
@ 2009-06-08 15:47:00

Entry tags:

!complete, day 10, laura moon, location: pharmacy/liquor store, open, remy lebeau

Day 10: Pharmacy/Liquor Store - 1:15pm
Who: OTA
What: Seven point five
When: 1:15pm - 5:00pm
Where: Pharmacy/Liquor Store
Rating: TBA
Status: Active

The sun was shining high in the sky and a gentle breeze stroked the leaves of the trees, making them, along with the severed stub of rope on the clock face from the day previous sway lazily. It was quiet. Perhaps it was too quiet, for the lack of birds chirping or insects buzzing.

All in all, the day was one of the most pleasant as of yet for the bulk of the involuntary residents of Vas Captio, save, of course, the heat. Maybe it was a bit too hot to be entirely comfortable.

It started small, as most things do. Bottles of liquor rattled on shelves. Pills chuttered in the bottles of medication waiting to create prescriptions. Newspaper rustled on the front counter and then all fell quiet.

Then, as if giant feet had decided to play soccer within the store, some of the shelves of liquor and bottles of medicine rocked and fell. The sound of shattering glass was drowned out by the roar of one of the outer walls cracking in half and falling outward into the street. The roof split with the screeching of metal beams, rusted metal bars wrenching free and slicing downward into the shelves that were still upright. Anyone in their path would be knocked down and skewered before being buried beneath falling shelves of breaking liquor bottles or exploding containers of pills or possibly corrosive liquids.

As the rest of the roof came crashing down, anyone inside would be trapped in a near lethal cloud of alcohol and cleaning fluid as it pools on the floor of the store. Any pills that have exploded from the bottles will combine with the mess on the floor and also add to the dangerous concoction which will be as volatile a danger as a leaking gas main to anyone who is in this building.

Vas Captio was still, again, and silent once more.

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ace_of_clubs
2009-06-15 09:59 pm UTC (link)

"Hey," Gambit let the word come out in a slow whine, something that worked well with his accent, nearly dropping the 'y' sound all together, and stretching out the middle vowel into a low, long noise. "Jus' window shoppin', Chere." He assured her in a jovial tone that was quickly followed up by a wink. Remy didn't care that she was rotting, she was a woman, and she'd clearly been beautiful in her day.. and if that water could make her that beautiful again? Well. Then he'd better be pretty damn nice to her, right? If there was any chance that he'd ever be doing anything more than flirting with her.. And since he as planning on getting out of this place tonight? There wasn't ever that chance, really. But the least he could do was be nice to her. What if he didn't get out of here? At least he'd have made a friend, right?

No, it was all in case he ever got to have sex with her.

"Hey, I hear pedophelia is big in some states, non?" Oh, that was just wrong, Cajun. Really, really wrong. But that was his humor, and that was his personality, and you either appreciated it.. or you hated him. His charm, though, usually kept people from hating him. That mutant charm, a bit of power and a lot of skill. It helped him out more than he'd ever know. "Besides, I'm youn' anyway. Good for 'de youngin's, good for 'de cougars." And he'd had his fair share of older women. For a twenty-two year old, Gambit had been around the block with all sorts. All sorts that.. always ended up hating him and trying to kill him, in the end. But that came with the territory. He was always using them as a means to an end, after all. Never because he actually wanted to stay with him, only because he wanted them.. and he wanted something from them. That gold fleck on his heart was small.. but she was right. It was there. Somewhere.

In fact, she was in good company with him. Gambit, after all, was a married man. Married at eighteen to a woman he didn't love, to unite two clans and keep them from war.. of course, he'd ended up killing her brother and being exiled, then having to run for his life from scores of assassins but.. who was counting? A spouse was a spouse, right? He had one. She had one. He'd cheated on his plenty of times.. Granted, never when he'd been living with her. It only happened after that whole killing thing. Very messy. He didn't like to think about it and he was never going back there, so it didn't matter. All that mattered right now, in fact, was the woman he was walking with.

"Not every girl, Chere." He assured her, but he wasn't denying that he hadn't been a charming prince to every girl that he had run into. There'd be no point to it. She knew he was. She knew his type. And she was still talking to him -- that said a lot about her. Or about him. "An' don' worry, gettin' you in 'de sack ain' gon' turn me into a puppy trailin' at your feet, Chere. Sex is jus' 'dat. Sex. Les' bot' people 'gree 'dat it gon' be more 'den 'dat, non?" Well, he certainly was laying it all out there for her, wasn't he? Not something he normally did, but he thought she'd respond well to it. Seemed like she was made from the same mold he was. However, when she mentioned that she wanted a clove, Gambit could only shrug. "Ain' got not'in' to offer you, sorry. If I di', I woul'." Because he'd like to see her wrap her lips around something. Shameful Cajun. At least he wasn't saying that part out loud.

"À propos, parlez-vous le français, mon compagnon non mort?" Ah, there came the question. The one he'd be asking everyone from now on. Since the Insider and he spoke French back and forth to one another. The Insider spoke French, and Remy was determined to find out who it was.. for one reason or another.

[*Translation: By the way, do you speak French, my undead companion?]

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spitandviolets
2009-06-15 10:28 pm UTC (link)

Though it was completely inappropriate for the situation, Laura laughed as well as a dead woman could. It was more of a dark chuckle in her throat, but she actually lifted her hand to cover her mouth. Looking at him, she shook her head. She was falling apart, he was carrying crutches, and here they were walking along like the world hadn't just ended for everyone inside of the glass box. "I'm dead, and even I know that joke was foul. It was so inappropriate. I loved it." She put her hand back in her pocket, rolling her good shoulder. "I remember making jokes about dendronecrophiliacs, or people who liked to have sex with dead trees, all the damn time. My friend Audrey never appreciated them, but Robbie and Shadow always thought they were funny."

That memory seemed hundreds of years ago at this point. It was one that she'd thought was gone, buried forever. Different people seemed to stir different memories in her. L always made her think about how she'd been with Shadow, but Gambit seemed to make her think about the days when she was even younger than that, wild and vibrant and careless. Before Shadow had gone to prison for a robbery she put him up to.

That was it: Laura had a thing for thieves.

While Gambit had cheated many times, Laura had only stepped out on her marriage once, but she had paid dearly for her sin. She'd paid with her life. If only she hadn't had too much to drink. If only she'd not leaned over and put her head in Robbie's lap while he was driving. If only her shoulder hadn't hit the gear shaft. If only that eighteen wheeler hadn't gone completely through the car. If every force in the universe hadn't conspired against her at exactly that moment, maybe she'd be alive still. She'd be alive, she'd have a husband, and she'd be completely uninteresting. Then again, that life was never really a viable option. Gods had gotten involved and mucked everything up. Everything from before Shadow's conception had been set in motion by powers greater than any human being. But what if she'd never gone on that blind date? She'd probably still be whoring in the back of vans in Indiana.

"Er...non, je parle pass le francais." She smirked at him, shaking her head. "I was a travel agent, not a traveler. The farthest I ever got from home in my entire life was Anaheim for a travel agent's conference. Other than that, born, lived, died in Indiana. Eagle Point, at that. Boring. Don't ever bother stopping there if you happen to be passing by. The only French words I know are oui, non, how to say I don't speak French, and how to ask somebody to go to bed with me. Oh, I also know a bunch of swears, but they never felt as good in my mouth as American ones did."

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ace_of_clubs
2009-06-15 10:52 pm UTC (link)

"Vous êtes sans doute une personne intéressante, Chere." The Cajun began his conversation in French again, though knowing full well that she didn't speak French. He'd always liked that, being able to tell women things that they'd never understand. They liked the language, even in the Cajun tongue, and it always got their little heart fluttering. But he just had to be careful about what he'd said.. there was that one girl, who said she knew nothing about French, and she'd asked him to speak French for her, because it sounded sexy. He hadn't known what to say, so he'd said that she wasn't really that pretty, but he was going to sleep with her anyway and take her purse. Turned out: girls lie, too. She spoke French alright, and he certainly didn't get laid (or paid) that evening. But Gambit had never slept with someone for money, not really. He could easily steal it off of them on the street.. it'd just been for fun. And every time he'd been with a woman after his eighteenth birthday, he was technically cheating. He was married and he'd be married for all of his forseeable future.

The Cajun was certainly going to Hell, if for nothing more than adultery.

"You like bein' dea', don' you?" It was a question that came out of the blue.. well. Sort of. He'd come to this deduction after spending this short amount of time with her, because she kept pointing out that she was dead. Kept reminding him. It always came back to that. She had talked about it, had mentioned it again, then had elaborated, let him know several things about death, decay, and the human corpse.. then had talked about it some more. This woman liked that she was dead. And for some reason, it made Gambit smile. He was a mutant. He'd known all his life that he was different. He'd been born with those strange eyes, he hadn't developed them like many mutants.. he'd only developed his powers. But he'd always looked like this. A freak, to most people. He'd never hidden it though, never tried to be normal like the crowd. The only time he'd ever covered his eyes was when he was trying to entice a woman into bed to steal her purse. He didn't want to have to spend twenty minutes charming her, to get her over the curiosity of his eyes. He wanted a quick deal, so sunglasses were in order. But beyond that? He'd never been ashamed. Never hated it. Never wished to be 'normal'. Many mutants he knew wished just that. Wished to look normal. Wished to have no powers. Wished to be able to die. To be like everyone else.

Gambit had never wanted that. He was better, because of what he was. He was perfect the way he was. And Laura, even in her rotting state, seemed somehow proud to be dead.

It was attractive.

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spitandviolets
2009-06-15 11:24 pm UTC (link)

Like being dead. The words echoed in her brain, and she glanced over at him like he was the craziest person in the world. He sure had a few screws loose or something, because he was definitely the only person who thought that Laura actually liked being a person in the past tense.

"I don't want to be dead," she said, kicking a rock. The town looked like crap, and though she could see flickering lights, it was better if she didn't try to help anyone. She'd scare them more than she'd bring them any sort of comfort. "I don't really feel one way or the other about it, liking it or disliking it. I am. And I accept that, because it isn't likely to change any time soon. People aren't prone to coming back from the dead to be what I am. It's even rarer, then, that someone would become undead, like me, and then find some way to become a real, living person again. I'm going to be this way for a long time. I don't want to be, but it's what I have. I deal in truths. I tell people about my being dead because I am unafraid of it, because it is the truth. I believe in the truth because it is all I have left. It's lies and deception that make things so hard for living people. I understood that when I passed through the veil into the light." And that was how it was. Laura was dead, and it was better if people knew it.

"Don't get me wrong. I'm still vain. I still do my makeup, I bathe, I change my clothes, even though I don't have to do any of those things for any reason. I don't introduce myself with 'Hello, I'm Laura, and I'm dead.' That doesn't help anything. I like passing for human. I don't like being called a zombie, which is what most people think when they see me. If someone assumes that I'm just a sickly looking woman, I'm not going to correct them, but I'm not going to lie. I have never claimed to be that. I simply beat around the bush at times for other people's benefit. The living aren't apt to accept things, for the most part, as easily as you do."

She fell silent as they walked, and every now and then her head snapped up. She'd hear something, and she'd worry that it was L. It wasn't. The conversation was good for a distraction. "Where do you come from, then?" It was a simple question, one she'd heard others ask many times, and she didn't usually care or want to fill the silence, but right now the silence was deafening.

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ace_of_clubs
2009-06-15 11:37 pm UTC (link)

"C'est bête. You like bein' dea'." To everything she'd just said. To everything she'd just admitted, that was all the Cajun could say? That was all he could come up with? Yes. He was moving a step to the side and tossing the crutches down, then coming to step in front of her, forcing her to come to a halt or to run into him.

"You like bein' dea'. Dites-moi, wha' woul' you be if you weren' dea', if you weren' like 'dis, Chere? A house wife? Une mère? Someone's mis'ress? Shop girl? Wha' woul' you be? Woul' you be happier? Perhaps non. Perhaps you be.. stuck in some chair wit' wheels. Maybe you be.. jus' ano'ter face. But you ain'. You somet'in' special. You somet'in' more 'den 'de ot'ers, non? If you weren' undea', Chere, you be dea'. Be layin' in a box un'er 'de dir'. You be not'in'. But look at you now. Sure, you fallin' apar' at 'de seams, but you ain' borin'. An' ain' not'in' worse 'den bein' borin', Chere. You terrifyin', but you ma'nif'cen'. Magnifique." The last word was repeated, because he'd butchered it so badly in English that he wasn't sure she'd know what he was saying. But everyone knew that word in French, even children.

But he had, for the time being, pushed her question to be answered later. He wasn't done with this topic.

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spitandviolets
2009-06-15 11:58 pm UTC (link)

What Laura had been searching for her whole life, this random guy was able to sum up in one horribly butchered sentence. There was nothing worse than being boring. Boring was exactly what Laura had been before she'd died. She was a travel agent, Shadow's wife. She was a girl whose mother didn't love her, whose sister didn't want to be friends with her, whose father had died of a heart attack on the toilet when she was young. She'd played dumb just so she didn't have to do work in school, had been enrolled in special ed classes, and she'd regretted all of that later in life. For most of her life, she'd been a bit of a slut, but she had never really minded until her husband was sent to prison. She'd enjoyed sex with lots of people, but she'd never had really good sex. She liked sexy underthings, chili, and strawberry daiquiris because they made her interesting. She was, to be frank, a laundry list. And he had tossed that out there for her to see.

He had, though, mentioned the one thing that she'd never had, the one thing she could never have, even now. Her organs had been taken out for her autopsy and they'd been tossed back in all hodgepodge. Laura would never be a mother. She'd never have children of her own. There was no one, once Shadow and her immediate family was gone, who would remember her. In that respect, she was exactly like everybody else who'd ever walked the earth. Unlike them, she could keep reminding people about herself.

"You're one of the few people who's spoken to me like a real person since I've been dead. That makes me pretty miserable. I was social when I was alive. I liked people, and I liked being with them. I can't do that anymore. Also, you're only the third guy who's checked me out since I've been dead. Like you said, I was beautiful. It used to be a lot more frequent." She paused, smirking at him. "If I was alive, I think I would divorce my husband and just go back to being a slut. I can't seem to get out of my own way when it comes to a good looking guy, so why try to fight it? I should have been born in the days of courtesans and harems and things like that. I think, ultimately, the point of all of this was to tell me that I'm not the marrying kind. Then again, if I hadn't loved Shadow, I'd be in a box, like you said. Though I'd probably be substantially less rotten."

Why was he bothering? The fact that he spoke to her like he cared was unsettling. Nobody was supposed to care about her point of view, about what she thought. She was Laura, the head of the Night Watch, that pale woman who never slept. Nobody here paid her any mind...and that was how she liked to keep it, for the most part. This was different, and she didn't know what to make of it.

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ace_of_clubs
2009-06-16 12:13 am UTC (link)

"C'est la vie." Simply spoken from the red-headed young man who lifted both of his eyebrows in a surprisingly challenging manner. "I am who I am, Chere. You are who who are, non? Even if you ain' anymore." If that made sense to her, then she was on the same wavelength as he was.. if not, then she'd be one of many people who didn't always get Cajun Logic. "If you was alive, you divorce your husban' an' come be mine." That was said rather confidently, as he took a step forward to bring himself too close. Uncomfortably close. Intimately close. "But you ain'. No use cryin' ov'r spill milk, oui? You talkin' 'bou' all 'dese t'in's you done, all 'dese t'in's you coul'a done. Ain' doin' you no good. Ain' doin' 'dat boy yours no good. You screwe' up, non? You dea'. An' you rottin'. Ain' you ain' sleepin' 'roun' no more, 'case t'in's star' fallin' off." He couldn't help the way his mouth twisted up as he said that.

"But how lon' you gon' t'ink 'bou' it? You got 'terni'y, you gon' t'ink 'bou' it 'til ain' not'in' lef' of 'de worl'? C'est ridicule. C'est prodigue. Someone screwe' up an' you stuck here. Here. You here, Chere. Not 'dere. Here. You spen' half 'de time t'inkin' 'bou' now as you spen' t'inkin' 'bou' 'den, an' I bet you get t'in's figure' out here real fas'." He moved an ungloved finger (just two out of five) to poke her in the chest with it, just above her breasts, against her sternum, missing the metal protruding. "Dites-moi donc. Wha's somet'in' you wan' do righ' now? 'Dis minu'e. Don' t'ink har', jus' say wha' come up firs'. Wha' you wan' do, righ' now?"

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spitandviolets
2009-06-16 12:31 am UTC (link)

He did have a point, yet again. She was going to get sick of him having points. Between him and Sarah, Laura would have nothing left to bitch about by the end of the week. Not that she did a whole lot of bitching to begin with. After all, she was dead. She couldn't complain about a whole lot. The weather, maybe, and a whole lot of crap that didn't matter so much anymore, but that was about it. Then again, without those things, she'd be a really boring conversationalist. She wasn't big on the whole gaining life experience thing of late.

"I don't know," she said, shaking her head. She felt the warmth of his fingers. Even if he wasn't feeling particularly warm, he was way warmer than she was. "Well, I do know. I want to find L, and I want to find my Norn water. Because looking like this is just inconvenient. And I'd love to hear what you'd have to say if I wasn't in pieces." She smirked at him slightly. She felt guilty about that almost immediately after she'd said it. She should have stuck with finding L. That sounded less selfish.

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ace_of_clubs
2009-06-16 12:37 am UTC (link)

"D'accord. We fin' your boy. An' maybe when 'dat place ain' gon' make me rotty like you, we go back an' we fin' your wa'er. 'Den, I tell you wha' I t'ink. But if you look 'dis good, all t'in's consi'rin', when you dea'? You gon' have to hol' your boy back, 'cause I'm gon' say some t'in's he ain' gon' like." The Cajun didn't always have the cleanest mouth, and if a pretty woman wanted him to tell her what he thought about her? Well. He certainly wouldn't be clean, and he'd let her know all the things that he wanted to do to her.

But not right now. Interesting as it would be, to sleep with a corpse... not one that was rotting, no matter how pretty her face was. And with that, he was backing off, then dipping to grab the crutches up and beginning their trek again. Another two hundred feet to the gym and their journey would end there. "If he go' hur', he in 'dere, Chere. But you migh' wanna wai' ou'si'e, non?" Lest people.. well.. It just might be better.

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