Theo Parrish ♠ Lord Byron (alilwicked) wrote in zenithrp, @ 2016-11-02 18:53:00 |
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Entry tags: | #day 055, edwin, theo |
Who: Theo & Edwin.
Where: The billiards room.
When: Around 3 p.m.
Theo ran her hand along the bar as her vision swam over the alcohol selection. Her dad would've been in heaven at that moment, had he been here. Wonder if this would've gotten him to sober up, going through this kind of shit. She had to shake her head no. Nothing was ever going to get Thomas Parrish to sober up. Events like this would only give him more reason to drink, and Theo wanted to be the last person to vindicate her father's addiction.
She grabbed a bottle of Jack and, avoiding the bar area, retired to a sofa near a window. As she plopped down, something poked her gently right in the ass; rolling to one side, Theo plucked out a Polaroid. She hadn't seen one of these things in years. It looked almost like it might have been a crime scene photo, focused as badly as it was on someone's writing, like it was documenting evidence. But as her eyes brought the words to light, a slow grin started to coalesce on her face.
It felt like ages since he’d gotten to suck cock and even longer that he’d pined for this particular cock, God knew why. Perhaps a lifetime, because he’d never craved a connection more than he did right now...
"Oh, you are speaking my language," she said to the photo, leaning back on the cushions to savor the small morsel of pornography she was being offered. Overdramatic, sure, and some repetitive word choice, but even Sade had run out of descriptors eventually. Slowly it dawned on her that this was one of those things that woman Pam had been posting about on the network. Unscrewing the whiskey bottle's cap, she thought about how to best approach the woman to see if she could convince her to show off the rest of the notebook.
She took a deep draught, and then started reading aloud for her own amusement.
"The power trip had his own cock hard and throbbing, protesting the jeans he was wearing... Mm, I'd take a shot for every time she uses the word cock but I probably want to be able to make it back to my room...." Theo helped herself to one anyway, the alcohol warming her belly. She slightly regretted not having lunch, but she would find some way to deal. "Actually, I could do everyone a public service and teach her some synonyms."
Only a couple hours had passed since Edwin had walked in on Lennon laughing over one of the photos of Pam’s stories, and he didn’t expect to encounter another one so quickly, though secretly he may have hoped. He’d been in the kitchen, just getting a drink when he heard something in the billiard room being read, and the little amount that he’d heard sounded so oddly familiar that as he stuck his head in the room, he wondered for a moment if Oliver had given Pam a summary of what they had done, and if this was a story about Oliver and himself.
He never got to ask if it was, though, as he was just as surprised by what he was seeing as he was what he was hearing. He didn’t know the girl sitting on the couch, but she was so covered in tattoos that for a moment, he almost forgot where he was, and was reminded of the many hours he’d spent with friends sitting in tattoo parlours, with people who were more willing to have their ink seen than he was. He blinked a few times as he caught himself staring, then finally let himself into the billiard room, smiling softly at this new girl.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt,” he said, raising a hand to wave. “I heard you reading, and I just let myself in… I’m Edwin. You’re new here.”
"Give the man a prize!" Theo replied with a grin, jabbing a finger from the hand wrapped around the bottleneck toward the man in the doorway. Though everything about her scenario was far too strange, she had alcohol, some badly written porn, a handsome guy had made her breakfast and all in all...this kidnapping thing wasn't all that bad so far. "And you're not interrupting anything, Edwin, unless I'm making you uncomfortable. And if I am, I'd say you're a lightweight when it comes to porn." She took another swig from the bottle. "And if I'm not, you're completely welcome to join me."
Theo held out the bottle by its butt, swirling it in the air a little as though to tempt him. "Oh, and I'm Theo, by the way. I'm usually not this terrible at telling other people about myself, but I have to admit, I'm a little thrown by all of this."
“No, no, you’re absolutely fine, don’t worry about it,” Edwin laughed as he came closer, sitting on the arm of the couch. He waved a hand to refuse the alcohol, which just wasn’t something he was in the mood for right then. “When I first got here, on top of being kidnapped and waking up in Who-The-Fuck-Knows-Where, I didn’t get a shirt or shoes, so yeah, I get being thrown by all this. You seem like you’re taking it alright, though. You’re not crying or beating anyone up, anyway.”
Then he nodded to the photograph she was reading from. “I heard one of these earlier, but it sounded a little tamer than this one does. Who’s this story about?” He wasn’t sure if he wanted it to be him or not. They were funny.
"Mm, someone named Chase and a guy named Lennon. Is there really someone here named Lennon? Like John Lennon?" She glanced toward Edwin with a wry smile. "If there are clones here, I really think I will start crying. The beating up I can't manage, but the crying I could."
Edwin couldn’t help but laugh, wondering how the morning would have gone differently if Lennon had found this story instead of the one that had been sitting in the study. “I could think of worse people to have clones of here. I’m not saying John Lennon would be great, but imagine if we were stuck here with… I don’t know. Hitler’s the obvious answer… Let’s go with Randy Quaid. He’s something frightening.” He smiled and shrugged, not really caring if she agreed or not. “Lennon’s cool, though. He’s an artist, so he’ll probably appreciate all your ink. Which is gorgeous, if you don’t mind me saying.”
"Aw, thanks." Theo dropped the Polaroid into her lap and transferred the whiskey bottle to her other hand so she could extend her right arm out straight for a better view. A cacophony of butterflies and flowers spilled out over her skin. "A lot of it is random. Sometimes at the shop I'd let others experiment a little, but they always had to sketch their stuff first. They were always pretty good about making it fit together." She caught Edwin's eye and winked. "Tattoo 13, five-star rated place on Telegraph if you're ever in Berkeley. You got any?"
“I do, I have seven.” Edwin sat up a little straighter and pulled the front of his shirt up, showing off the biggest of his tattoos, the succubus that took up most of his chest, and giving a small glimpse of the skeleton on his side. “I had a boyfriend that was a tattoo artist, but I’m always open to finding new artists. I’ve been itching to get a new one, but that’s not so easy here. If I’m ever in Berkeley, though…” He grinned. “I guess on the list of downsides to this place, lacking in tattoo places isn’t exactly highest on the list, but still.”
"It's high on my list," Theo replied with a grin, "though I hear there's a craft room somewhere around here. As long as I can sketch, I'm sure I can find a number of ways to keep myself occupied." She leaned forward to examine the work so carefully etched into his skin. "That is gorgeous. I don't know if I would have done the shading quite like that, but she looks hot, and that's all that matters, right? Where did you get it done?" Theo glanced up at Edwin's face again, meeting his gaze.
“Wait, are you a tattoo artist, or just an artist and a tattoo enthusiast?” Edwin asked, catching her eye as she looked up to him again. “Well not just... You know what I mean. But either way, that’s really cool. Maybe they’ll get you a tattoo gun as a reward, eventually. They give us rewards sometimes. Not as often as punishments, but it’s not unheard of.” He frowned, thinking of the impromptu punishment they had given Oliver, but sighed and moved past it. “He did this one in my bedroom, actually,” he said of his tattoo, tracing the lines of the goat’s horns before lowering his shirt again. “He’s worked in a few places around Arizona, though. Does a lot of conventions.”
"Mm, that sounds like fun. I've never done anyone outside of a parlor; I haven't had my license long enough to get that creative, and a mattress just seems like asking for trouble," she replied, leaning back into the seat cushions. She pulled her knees up to her chest, tucking her arms around her legs. "I haven't been outside of California before, though. Only a few Bay Area conventions, so if he's been to the Cow Palace or somewhere nearby, we might've crossed paths. Is that where you're from? Arizona?" She wanted to ask more questions about these so-called 'prizes' and 'punishments;' but her overwhelming curiosity about people took control.
“Yeah, Phoenix. And you’re from the Bay Area?” Edwin smiled, amused at calling it the Bay Area, because there were so many bays that it always sounded silly to him. “That’d be kind of funny, if you crossed paths. I guess it’s possible, but I haven’t really seen much of him since he finished this thing,” he pointed to his chest again, “so I wouldn’t know if he’s been out to your neck of the woods. I’ve always wanted to go. Hopefully that won’t go on the list of Things I’ll Never Get To Do Because I’m Here. I didn’t get to travel all that much, either.”
Theo pursed her lips into a pout. "How long have you been here? I've been told other people have disappeared. I mean, I know some twisted folks but this takes the cake. My hope is we just get brainwashed and put back into our lives. Kind of like alien abduction? I'd like to keep both my kidneys though." She turned the frown upside down, pressing her head back into the pillow more. "Is it really that bad here? I mean...it doesn't seem that bad so far, granted I've only been here two days."
Edwin squinted as he tried to think of exactly how many days he’d been there, but he wasn’t sure he really wanted to know the exact number of days that he’d been away from his life. “I’ve probably been here about half as long as some of the other people here. That’s still around a month… Probably longer, actually? And it’s… It’s not good here, no. It could be worse, because we’re not in a basement with toothpicks under our fingernails or anything like that, but they still pull some really shitty stuff on us. Our captors are not nice people, they just give us a nice house to stay in. And even that isn’t worth much most days.” He shrugged. “I hope they don’t brainwash us. Put us back, yes, but I don’t want to just be missing a chunk of time.” And he didn’t want to forget the people here, either.
She let her gaze flick up to the ceiling, which was just as magnificently decorated as the rest of the room. Shaking her head as her brows rose, she let out a sigh.
"There isn't much I'd be missing if I lost a chunk of time, especially not two days." Hell, I've gone missing for six months before and no one cared. I'm sure there are others here who could say the same. Theo brought her eyes back down to Edwin, the tiniest of smirks pulling at the corner of her mouth. "So what've they done to you? And feel free to give me the juicy details. I don't startle easily. That is, of course, if you're comfortable with it." She shrugged, implying it was entirely his decision.
Edwin took a deep breath, tipping his head back and rubbing his hand over his stubble as he considered her question. There were things that sounded scary that he hadn’t been there for, but did that matter? It still happened here. “Well, they do these challenges sometimes where you’re locked in a room with a few people, and you have endurance activities. Then there was one day where everyone was attached to another person, and dropped in a random spot in town with a riddle to find their key, but if everyone didn’t find their key in time then everyone was punished. Then there was the day that they trapped us in a hurricane and made us all see and hear things… That was a fun one. Oh! Or when they made three people deathly ill because they wanted us to clean the house. That was pretty bad.”
"Wait," Theo said, her face scrunching up in concern. She leaned forward, coming to a sitting position on the couch. "A hurricane? They can control the weather?"
“It’s really hard to say,” Edwin admitted, frowning. “They moved us somewhere else for that one. It’s possible they just put us right in the path of a hurricane, but we couldn’t know. We don’t get The Weather Channel.” He watched Theo, wondering what she thought of all this now. “I know it all sounds crazy and impossible.”
"The weather thing, yeah..." She made a hand-waving gesture, as though to dispel part of what he'd said. "The rest of this, though. People with enough money can do whatever they want. They can get away with all kinds of shit. What you're describing makes me wonder when they're going to get all SAW on everyone, but if some people have been here for a few months and the worst they've done is lock people in a room together..." Theo shrugged. "They need to read more than just Sartre if they think that's going to get under everyone's skin."
She leaned back on the couch cushions, looking up at Edwin with a slightly furrowed brow. "Now when they start asking us to saw off each other's legs, that's when I'll get worried." She vaguely wondered if her talking aloud about her disbelief that this place was as bad as everyone says was going to provoke someone or something into action, but then pushed the thought away. If they needed more creativity, she'd deal with the repercussions of her words later. "Tell me about these 'punishments.' Ten lashes with a wet noodle?" She made a vague gesture toward him, another smirk pulling at her mouth. "I mean, you seem sane enough. Socially-taboo tattoos and homosexuality aside, and even those aren't much for transgressions these days."
Edwin said nothing for a long moment, just looked around the room, up to the most visible of the cameras in the room. Theo's smirk faded. She hadn’t been through any of it yet, so she’d make up her mind on the place once the mind-fuckery started up for her. This wasn’t the torture that she was describing, but it wasn’t good, either. Not to him, anyway.
He arched an eyebrow at the mention of punishments, and wet noodles. “The punishments have all been pretty personal,” he said softly, rubbing his stubble again. “Stuff that they know stings, that they probably shouldn’t know about. It’s… Yeah. Personal stuff.” Again his thoughts went to Oliver and his husband’s ring, and what he’d ended up doing to keep it from happening again. With the talk of tattoos, he wondered if Oliver shouldn’t just get a wedding band tattooed around his finger, when that was possible. Or something nicer.
Theo's mouth made a little 'o,' and she nodded. "Ah, mind games. That's...actually really creepy. I mean, I did notice that my brand of shampoo was in the shower." She mimicked Edwin's silence for a moment, as though considering whether or not she'd reveal something. After a beat, she seemingly decided against it as she shrugged. "My life's pretty fucked as it is. If they were looking for someone to toy with, they really picked the wrong person." She was bluffing, and bluffing hard, but it made her feel better to cover up the anxiety with a hard facade. Anyone who knew her personally would have seen right through it, and for a moment Theo wished she had her brother's jacket. She glanced back at the photo that had started the whole conversation, picking it up.
"So this...this though, was this a mind game? I saw someone named Pam asking for whoever found her notebook to return it." She offered it up to Edwin, as though he needed to scrutinize it closely to see if it was indeed authentic.
“Yeah, maybe, but you’re not the only one here who had a fucked up life. That doesn’t save you here, if just gives them scabs to pick at.” His eyebrows shot up, and he looked at Theo apologetically. “I could definitely have handled that better. Sorry about that. It’s been a weird few days.” He forced a laugh as he rubbed the nape of his neck.
The photo brought a more genuine laugh out of him as he scanned the thing. “I have no idea if this was a punishment or mind game or what, but I appreciate it. It’s funny. Lennon and I had a good laugh over a different one earlier. It was really different. This one’s still great, though.”
Theo shrugged in response. "I get that I'm not some special snowflake. I guess I'm saying I'm curious to see what they come up with. I am, however, disappointed to learn this isn't the status quo. I could get used to being made breakfast, my own room and random smut peppered around the house. But good things never last.
"Which one did you guys find earlier?"
“I didn’t say that, I just mean that being tough might not save you, no matter what kind of snowflake you are.” Edwin shrugged. “But I hope it doesn't get to you too much, once the bad days start again. And I hope you get homemade breakfast in your own room all the time. Having the dream rooms… That part is great.”
He tipped his head back and grinned as he recalled the morning’s story. “It was a fantasy thing, with Lady Pamela learning that her husband had possessed the statue-turned-human Owen. No actual smut in our excerpt, but ample bosoms were mentioned.”
Theo grinned widely. "Lady Pamela? Wait, wait. The statue turned human? Is this some Beauty and the Beast fantasy?"
“I don’t know what it was, but it was funny as hell. More ridiculous than this one, anyway,” Edwin laughed, pointing to the Poloroid, then handing it back to Theo. She accepted it with a grin, shaking her head.
"I think I need to see this. Do you still have the Polaroid?"
Edwin shook his head. “I left it with Lennon, so if he didn’t take it with him, it might still be in the study. And if it’s not still in there, there are enough places in that room to hide photos that maybe we could find another.”
"Sounds like a plan to me. Where is this study?" Theo tucked the Polaroid she'd found into her back pocket as she followed Edwin out of the billiards room and further into the house.