Posted: Tue Mar 26, 2013 11:50 am
The slight disturbance in the night air when he walked past her open bedroom door; that was all it took to rouse Scarlet from her doze at the foot of her bed, blue eyes snapping open, pupils dilating to accommodate sight in the near darkness.
She was a light sleeper to begin with, never securing more than an hour’s worth of unstable unconsciousness at a time; it was difficult to stay asleep when you could feel the shift of every constellation in the night sky, could hear each individual star rearrange its position, could see in your mind’s eye what every shift and movement signified. But even a precious hour seemed hopelessly unattainable, these past few nights. There was too much disquiet in the room next to hers, just as there was far too much movement in the stars.
Sitting up and throwing her legs over the side of her bed, Scarlet’s bare feet hit the sticky, faux-wooden floorboards as she stood up slowly, soundlessly, afraid to make too much noise, lest the person in the hall realize they’d woken her and take off like a scared alley cat. Long tresses of crimson hair (far brighter than what was natural, courtesy of ammonia and artificial dyes) clung to the back of her neck in the humidity of mid-June, and her tank top and shorts stuck to her shoulder blades and thighs like a second skin, drawing her exposed flesh tight with goosebumps when she threw the covers from her body. What a miserable time of year, to live on the top floor of an apartment building… She had the power to change lives, but she couldn’t do a damn thing about the temperature or the weather; sometimes, she wondered if the stars laughed at her for what she could not control.
Padding out of her bedroom—heel to toe and quietly, like she’d practiced—Scarlet walked the length of the hallway in the dark, stopping when his silhouette came into view against the glow of the light above the kitchen sink. He seemed to be fully dressed, bent over his sneakers as he laced them with frustrated imprecision. Wherever he was going, he wanted out, and fast.
It bothered her far more profoundly than she could ever express.
“It’s 4 AM in my world,” she mentioned casually, quietly, so as not to startle him. “What time is it in yours? Do you musicians exist on a different plane?”
Caspar’s fumbling fingers paused, and in that moment he reminded her very much of a child with their hand caught in the cookie jar before supper. But the brief instant of guilt was short lived, and he straightened up to grab a sweater hanging from the doorknob of the closet. “I can’t sleep,” he mumbled, like it would explain and excuse everything.
Well, it did, and it didn’t.
“Still? You didn’t even have any coffee today.” Scarlet furrowed her eyebrows, and her feet took her forward a few involuntary steps when she realized that he had no intention of changing his plans. The thought of watching him walk out the door was enough to increase her heart rate, double time. “Why don’t we put on a crappy movie, or something? I’m kind of restless, myself; it might but the both of us to sleep.”
“Thanks, but I think I need to go for a walk.”
Scarlet’s throat tightened, and she swallowed against that uncomfortable tension before bringing herself to his side. Bluejeans, socks, the same indie T-shirt he’d worn to his gig earlier that evening… It didn’t look as though he had gone to bed at all. It didn’t look as though he had even tried.
But she knew better than to be up front about her uneasiness, particularly with his moods ignited through particularly short fuses these days. All of a sudden, calm and sensible Caspar Brighton, who had never suffered anything less than eight solid hours of sleep per night for as long as she’d known him, was beginning to lose his temper along with losing sleep, and with no foreseeable cause or reason why.
“I’ll come with you.” Scarlet decided hurriedly on a split second decision, and moved to grab her flats before the words were even out of her mouth. They weren’t the most ideal of footwear for walking any distance, but she feared that she wouldn’t have the time to excavate the clutter of the closet before he took off without her.
But Caspar’s plans, as it turned out, not only neglected to include her, but excluded her purposely. His hand was on her shoulder, pushing her back before she could reach for the dirty blue cotton flats next to the door, and when he sought her gaze, it was not with the usual composure and careful understanding that usually swam in his blue eyes.
“Scarlet; that wasn’t an invitation. It’s not all about you, all the time. I want to be alone for a while, okay? So stop acting like some goddamn overly-paranoid and insecure girlfriend.” He snapped, plunging his hand into the pocket of his jeans to ascertain he had the key to the apartment.
If Scarlet hadn’t been stunned before, she was certainly stunned now; because he’d snapped at her. Snapped! Not once in the five years that she’d known him had Caspar ever lost his patience with her so easily. Not once had he yelled, or reprimanded her unjustly, or so much as hinted that he didn’t want her around. This was a side to him that Scarlet had not realized existed, the ire and unease and sleepless nights that ailed him, of late.
What was most perplexing, however, was the stars: they had not forewarned her of this, and whenever she consulted them, they gave her no answer. No great change in destiny that wouldn’t naturally occur, regardless of how he was feeling, and it left her both reassured and frightened.
Anomalies such as this did not occur out of the blue, and for no reason.
At least Caspar didn’t seem completely unaware of his sour mood and short-tempered demeanor, nor was he unaware of how she absorbed his harsh words, taking the shock into her body and tempering the pain beneath the surface. She could see his features soften in the dim light from the kitchen as he sighed quietly. “Sorry. I just… I don’t know. I’m restless. My head doesn’t feel right, and I need to just get out for a while… Walk it off. You know?”
Scarlet could empathize with the feeling. Her own head never felt as though it were screwed on quite right, especially come nightfall, when the stars were at their brightest. It was like having a million voices talking all at once, competing to be heard over one another, and it could be maddening; yet, more often than not, it made her feel less lonesome.
“Take your cell?” She requested quietly, hugging herself against the humidity that sat on her skin, chilling her in the heat of early summer. “Just in case. Just… be careful.”
“Sure. And I will. You okay? Are you having more visions?”
“Yes—and no. No visions. Just… a gut feeling, I guess.”
“Well, I’ll be careful, then. Don’t you worry yourself, Red.” And before he stepped out the door, Caspar put his hand out, palm flat in the air in the direction of the kitchen counter, where he’d left his phone…
…and the device uplifted and flew into his awaiting fingers, as quickly as two opposing ends of a magnet.
And the door closed quietly behind him, all on its own, when he stepped out and left the artificial red-head by herself in the damp apartment.
Caspar’s telekinesis was not what had drawn her to him, and it was not that compelled her to make him stay; it was his kindness that had been the catalyst.
She’d been nineteen, too skinny, and too desperate to heed the warnings of the stars, but just once. She’d been certain that she’d have gotten away with stealing that necklace from the high-end jewelry store downtown; the owner was hardly ever attentive, and it wasn’t like she was going to waltz in and hold him up for the money in the cash register. The cash she would earn for an emerald that size would easily keep her fed for a couple of months, which would give her plenty of time to dream up her next scheme before she went hungry again. And anyway, if the old man was so concerned over his valuable goods, then he should know to keep them behind glass like every other retailer with half a brain.
Although, while Scarlet was certainly crafty, stealth was not, it would seem, an attribute that applied to her. No sooner had she slipped the seven-hundred dollar necklace into her jacket pocket that the old man called her on it, and threatened to call the police. And all she could do was stand there, pale-faced and in shock, wondering why in all hells she had ignored the warnings of the skylights in the nighttime. All of this could have been avoided…
But then someone was speaking up from behind the old man; a much younger man, perhaps only a few years her senior. He insisted that the shopkeeper had it wrong, that he was wrongly accusing an innocent young girl of a crime that had never taken place. He insisted that the old man had been cleaning the piece of jewelry, had forgotten to replace it on its mannequin, and had jumped to unfair conclusions.
“You can’t just harp on someone because they might look suspicious to you. Go look; I saw you put it down right over there.”
And at some point during his plea in her favor, while the jeweler’s back was turned, the necklace had floated from her pocket—yes, floated—and settled behind the counter, where her unprecedented savior insisted it was.
Sure enough, when the old man went to check and found the precious piece sitting with his tools, his bewilderment was palpable. He hardly had it in him to mumble an apology to Scarlet, who wasn’t listening anyway, as her saviour had his hand on her shoulder and was guiding her out of the shop.
He admonished her, of course. Told her how stealing was unethical and could sorely put the poor jeweler back in his funds, told her how stupid it was to try and walk off with a piece so valuable in broad daylight, told her there were other ways of keeping herself afloat.
“Do you know what would have happened if you were caught? What kinds of charges he’d press? You wouldn’t have to worry about meals or shelter in prison, but even so, I don’t think that’s where you want to be.”
But, with worry and compassion in his soft blue eyes, he also told her that she was too thin, asked her if she was all right, and before she could answer, he insisted that they go sit down for an unhealthy fast-food lunch.
“To hell with saturated fats; you could use them. No offense, but I’m not sure there’s a size of clothing small enough to actually fit you properly. So you can stop making excuses and just say ‘thank you’. My name is Caspar, by the way.”
Anything that was said beyond the hot dogs and French fries they shared had fallen flat on Scarlet’s ears, because her mind was elsewhere, trying to determine a plan. Trying to figure out how she could hold onto this kindness, this person who offered her his kindness. In all the years she’d trudged through life alone, fending for herself, defending herself, and nobody had ever gone to such lengths to stand up for her as Caspar Brighton had. He was genuine, and he was rare.
Just as rare as she was, it seemed. The both of them, with their unnatural and uncanny powers, were misfits, of a sort: he had moved away from an unsupportive family when he was only sixteen years old. She—an orphan, given up at birth—had run away from more foster families than she could count, until Social Services had all together given up on her.
When she carefully questioned how he had helped her in the jeweler’s shop, he had very timidly explained how he had always been able to manipulate objects with his mind, and he begged her not to ever mention it to anyone.
And, in good faith, she confessed that she, too, wasn’t much more ordinary; she told him of her ‘visions’ of the future and destinies that lay ahead, but had enough sense to leave out the fact that she could project her own will onto any destiny that she could read. That was something he (and the rest of the world) was better off not knowing.
And that very night, after exhausting herself for hours rearranging his path in the stars, he became hers. And she kept him.
Scarlet wasn’t sure how long she stood in the darkness, just a few feet from the front door, with her arms crossed and eyes unfocused, trying to parse through what was happening to the young man she had chosen as her guardian.
“It’s not all about you, all the time.” Perhaps that was true, but he wasn’t supposed to be thinking that way. It wasn’t as though she did not let him live his own life; she had worked hard not to get in the way of his passion for music, and his desire to perform. She supported his gigs and the name he had made for himself in the city, attending just enough of them to make him happy, without stalking them and everywhere he went like an obsessed fan girl. He was good; beyond good, his fingers turned a guitar into something magical when he played, and the lyrics to his songs had torn through the hearts of more than just a few young ladies. His ballads were infectious, his stage presence mesmerizing, and his name was big enough that they could survive on his earnings alone. Bars, pubs and clubs all fought to have him on weekend evenings, and even week days, for his name alone could draw a significant crowd to any venue.
But Scarlet would be lying to say she hadn’t had a hand in his success. Not that she’d done much; his talent was all his own, as natural as his kind demeanor and the feelings he embedded in his songs. She had merely seen to laying out events in his favor, just enough to bring him this far. Caspar could carry himself; she was merely a harness to prevent him from falling too hard.
Just like he was the wall that prevented her from falling into danger again. You could only interfere with your own predetermined death so much before you realized it was time to put a preventative strategy into place. And for whatever reason, ever since she had made Caspar part of her life, not once had the stars forewarned her of her impending demise.
Heaving a sigh of frustration, Scarlet moved to the kitchen and mechanically put on a pot of coffee (she was sure she could do it in her sleep, by now). Something was amiss, and there was still some night left to determine what it was.
“ Stop acting like some goddamn overly-paranoid and insecure girlfriend.”
Was that really how she was coming across? It had never been her intention to make Caspar her lover, for a number of reasons. For one, she was not searching for love; all she required was protection and some companionship, and the two of them were little more than roommates and friends. And, for another, love was one thing with which she refused to interfere—in her own case, anyway. If it happened, it happened, and if not, well… You couldn’t miss what you didn’t know.
Caspar, on the other hand, could have had a myriad of different girlfriends over the years. Scarlet had foreseen each and every one of them, and had changed all of their destinies accordingly. After all, were he to fall in love, it would only affect her one way: she would be gone. He couldn’t very well explain to a girlfriend that he was already living with another woman, with whom he had an entirely platonic relationship; who would even believe that?
No, Scarlet needed him to stay in her life, and she needed to do whatever it took to keep him at her side. Even if it meant prematurely severing him from every soul mate he could ever have. Perhaps it made her cruel, and selfish, but she was always able to reason that anyone else in her position would do exactly the same thing. Natural selection and the desire to survive, and all; Darwin himself would understand and approve.
She paced the kitchen floor impatiently as dark coffee gurgled and dripped into the carafe, running her hands through her long hair with the utmost bewilderment. What was happening? Why were these troubles befalling Caspar when she hadn’t read anything of the sort into his ever-changing destiny? Wandering over to the window, her eager hands pushed it upward and open, inviting a cool breeze upon her face which made her shiver. Though it was sometimes difficult to see with the city’s light pollution, the stars still shone brightly above the buildings, and her eyes were well-practiced in picking out appropriate constellations. What is going on? she asked them, opening her mind to their guidance, beseeching their advice. What is befalling him? What is going to happen?
If stars had shoulders to shrug, then she imagined that is what they would be doing. They were silent, each and every one of them; they had no answers.
“Okay—fine.” She growled, speaking aloud in her agitation as she dug her fingernails into the wooden windowsill. The slat of old oak now bore hundreds of small, half-moon shaped indentations from her hands when she was trying her best to concentrate. As helpful as the stars and other celestial bodies could be, they had a penchant for vagueness, and there was nothing more frustrating than an unclear answer. After all, she could not change or interfere with what she did not know and did not understand.
“Is anything amiss?” She asked instead, eyes wide and bright as they skimmed the position of the big dipper, heeded the bright twinkle of Venus and noted the dim outline of Orion’s Belt. “Anything at all—has anything planted itself in the path that Caspar treads?”
The was a pause, where all of the stars seemed to stop twinkling, as if they were thinking. And a moment later, she got her answer.
Yes. Something was amiss; something was throwing stones into Casper’s path. But even the stars could not determine exactly what, or who, it was…
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
golden slumbers kiss your eyes
smiles await you when you rise
------
It was the kind of night that could drive a man to murder, and the chaos began with a scuffle.
The scrape of soles on broken sidewalk sent pebbles of gravel skittering into gutters just as cracked; their feet countered one another in balletic choreography to the soundtrack of throbbing bass that filled the air like the grumblings of a summer storm. The breeze, thick with moisture and smog on a sultry August midnight, vibrated with rage as strong as the pulse of the music rattling the foggy egress windows of the unmarked basement club.
One of the drunk men grunted, fists raised protectively before his pockmarked face, and sidestepped a hastily-thrown punch from his equally-intoxicated opponent. Even his laugh was slurred as he sidestepped another sloppy jab, the dilapidated street pitching to and fro beneath him like a ship on rough seas. He would have laughed if he’d had the presence of mind, but right now it was all he could do to focus on the split-screen target of his foe’s sneering face.
The club was tucked away in a dilapidated neighborhood in Baltimore, surrounded by vacant row houses whose dark windows stared blackly into the night like the villainous eyes of soldiers standing guard. No one knew the name of the litter-packed street anymore; what few indicators remained had been swathed in rust and stickers and paint, the corners standing bare of traffic signage as the city lost interest in the zone. The road itself was more holes than pavement, and the few people who still resided on the surrounding blocks were little more civilized than crack-whores and steely-veined squatters.
The club kept its doors open somehow, squeezing by with pennies left over after the electric bill each month, coaxing through its doors lost tourists and lost souls alike until the place was crammed full of writhing bodies and cigarette smoke. More often than not, their clientele consisted of underage college freshmen from D.C.—frat boys (and their bleached-blonde girlfriends) whose egos were bigger than their biceps, flaunting no more street credit than their privileged, private-school parents. But so went the proverbial food chain—the bartenders conveniently forgot to check identification (could they really afford to deny a customer?), the dealers knew to hook them young, and the prostitutes prowled for a good fuck and an easy buck. It was a frequent stop for patrolling police as well, although the frequency of their visits had decreased drastically in recent months.
More than a few unlucky souls had met their end on those uneven sidewalks outside, and though most of it was related to gang violence—not even a place as humble and ragtag as this was exempt from their wars—there were always a few whose blood was innocent, always a few whose crimson stain on the sidewalk was simply an unfortunate hand dealt by Fate.
Robbie, however, was not thinking about that right now; Fate was the last thing on his mind. He hardly noticed the crowd that had gathered around him, hardly heard their jeers and taunts over the steady thrum of the muffled bass and his own thundering heartbeat in his ears. It was effort enough to remain upright, to ball his fists, to throw out an arm at the man who had made eyes at his girl—he didn’t have time to think about those who had met their end in the very same tracks in the very same scenario.
“Robbie, come on!” pleaded a young woman from the stairwell, her spray tan loaning her a jaundiced look beneath the flickering gold of the street lamp. “Robbie, please.”
She ran forward to him and clung to his arm, her eyes flashing fear as she peered upward at her boyfriend. Robbie, sweat plastering his sandy hair to his brow, shoved her off with a little too much force, sending him staggering one way while she crumpled to the ground in a heap of drunken wails.
“What the fuck, man?” Robbie’s opponent shouted, anger flashing in his cobalt gaze. Without warning, he sprang forward, fist flying through the humid night to collide with Robbie’s nose.
cares you know not, therefore sleep
while over you a watch i keep
------
It played out as though in slow motion. Robbie’s opponent regretted his decision before his hand even brushed his opponent’s skin, but it was too late—the momentum was carrying out his choice whether he liked it or not, and in the blink of an eye his clenched knuckles pummeled the other man’s face.
There was a sickening, audible crunch—one that Alair could feel reverberate from his hand to his shoulder as the nose bone gave way to the force of his blow.
The assaulted young man howled, blood spurting from his nostrils as he struggled to remain on his feet. Alair hissed through his teeth at the sudden ache in his hand, shaking out his fingers as he stepped away and rounded back. This time, when he advanced again, he towered over the fallen Robbie, backlit by the neon PBR sign in the door to the bar and the street light just beyond. Robbie quaked with fear, the lower half of his face stained shining scarlet. It was obvious his nose was broken even in the shadow Alair cast over him, but he felt no trepidation as he advanced, glowering.
The girl had managed to climb to her feet despite her three-inch heels, scrapes to her bare knees, and obvious intoxication, and now she cowered halfway down the basement stairs, watching with mixed emotions as her boyfriend was approached by his attacker. Alair cast her a glance and nodded once, curtly, which she seemed to take as a sign to scurry away. She did so quickly and more or less successfully, disappearing through the club doors at the base of the stairwell in a cloud of escaped smoke.
He shifted his attention back to the bleeding fool at his feet. “What you’re doing to her,” he drawled, leaning over until his face was inches from Robbie’s, “is not okay. Hmm?” He backed up suddenly, swinging his palm against the man’s cheek with a sharp slap. Robbie whimpered, tears now mingling with the blood. Alair smiled crookedly, straightening, planting a hand on his hip.
“Marissa’s my girlfriend,” he protested, struggling to sniffle without inhaling a gush of blood. “I—we—”
“She’s not your girlfriend anymore,” Alair said simply, cracking the knuckles of his sore punching hand. Each joint popped crisply, like crackles of hot lightning through the curtain of humidity.
Robbie flinched with each snap, but his pride—or, more accurately, the booze—refused to let him back down. “Who the fuck do you think you are?” he gurgled, bracing himself on the stairwell’s rusty metal bar as he tried to haul himself upright. Feeling suddenly more confident, he spat at Alair’s feet, splattering droplets of blood on his shoes and meeting his gaze smugly.
Alair sighed impatiently. “Your girlfriend,” he began slowly, enunciating his syllables as though he were speaking to a child, “isn’t meant to die tonight.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Alair gritted his teeth, his hand lashing out to grab Robbie by the collar. He jerked him forward. “You don’t think I saw what you put in her drink?” he growled, eyes flashing poisonously.
“And you think I wanted to kill her?” He laughed, which turned quickly to whimpers as Alair tightened his grasp and shook him once, roughly. “Fuck, man, I just wanted to have some fun tonight. What’s your problem?”
In one swift move, Alair brought his knee to the man’s groin at the same time as he shoved him backwards. Robbie squealed and fell ungracefully backwards, his head striking the concrete. He cursed, and when he reached up to cradle the point of impact, his palm came away as bloodied as the lower half of his face.
Alair almost felt bad at the look of absolute terror that crossed the bleeding young man’s features then, but he was too far gone to stop now. He could feel the rage bubbling over; he could feel that familiar creeping darkness climbing like a monster from the deep recesses of his being. The change overtook him like a black thunderstorm shrouding the sun; his cobalt eyes turned steely gray, his already stony expression hardened to a cold sneer. His posture shifted too—suddenly he seemed taller, meaner—a predatory threat in the heat of the night, advancing towards his prey with footfalls heavy against the gravel.
“I don’t want any trouble,” Robbie stammered, but his voice was hoarse, meek, and worst of all, on deaf ears. He inched backwards along the railing, his broken nose casting a crooked shadow across his face as he passed beneath the sickening cadmium of the stairwell light. “Come on, man, I just wanted to have some fun, come on…please…”
Alair paused, shaking his head. The force within him—that strange, preternatural essence that governed him—had already emerged from the guarded crevasse behind his heart. “Your girlfriend is going to die,” he snarled, furious, taking one long step forward. “She’s going to die because of what you stuck in her drink.”
“But it was just—”
Alair cut him off with another slap. “Your fucking roofies are bad enough,” he snapped blackly, reaching out to tangle his fingers in the trembling man’s hair and draw him painfully upright from the sweat-soaked locks. “But when you go have a cigarette outside your motel room? Yeah?” He gave Robbie a shake. “You don’t know where the fuck you are. Gangbanger fucking cuts you when you don’t give him a light. You’re dead too, fucker, bleeding out right in the puddle of vomit in the hall. And maybe you deserve it, but when her heart stops from your fucking rohypnol, she dies alone in that room. Doesn’t come home, her roommate comes looking for her, gets mugged in an alley and left to rot too, stabbed in the gut. Not a fucking chance.”
With the last word, he punctuated his speech with a merciless punch, swinging into the man’s jaw with all his might and the supernatural strength of the nightmarish fuel that drove him.
It differed from that which fueled his cosmic brother Amrial, the human embodiment of Death; in Alair’s case it was less a separate force than a separate personality, an extension of his anger that maintained, despite the inconveniences it caused him, a distinct order within a vast tapestry of intertwining human fates.
It also only appeared in dreams.
His knuckles collided violently with Robbie’s face, and suddenly the stifling urban night gave way to blinding, cheerful morning. Marissa threw the covers from her sweat-soaked body with a gasp and stifled a terrified shriek, her fingers trembling as the lingering horror of her nightmare slowly ebbed.
Somewhere far away, Alair’s eyes fluttered open—though he’d never slept—to greet the infancy of a cool summer’s dawn. He sat perched atop a city rooftop, knotting his hands together to cradle the back of his head as he reclined against the service shed. His feet were hooked in the rung of a rusty ladder opposite, which squeaked quietly in protest as he unlatched them and sat up a little straighter.
He rolled his shoulders and pressed his chin to his chest, stretching his neck before resurfacing with a grimace. The city was largely still at rest; even from his position far above the streets, the distant buzz of traffic was faint at best. Higher still, the stars daring enough to glitter through the morning smog blinked at him against a backdrop of slowly-brightening blue. He had taken care of his business for the night.
The Sandman, they called him—the stuff of legend, the protagonist of fable, a favorite of myth. He was less a harbinger of sleep than a bringer of dreams, and even that was more fairy tale than reality. His domain was the mind, his playing field the unconscious; he walked the line between hallucination and reality, truth and falsehood, even life and death. He composed dreams and orchestrated nightmares in a vast scheme of possibility and fate. When it came down to it, he guarded those who needed shelter, warned those who were too blind to the destiny written them—a keeper of order and balance, whether he made a personal appearance on those surreal stages or simply manipulated the scenery.
He was not in charge of destinies, per se, but he was their protector—a keeper of philosophies, a curator of ideas, a sculptor of dreams. He had more power than the old stories gave him credit for; more, even, than he quite realized. All he knew was that there were times and places, minds and bodies in which he needed to intervene, to untwist the interlocking strings to smooth the knots in the proverbial tapestry. And something—somewhere—in fact, quite close to here—was happening that did not make sense.
Rising slowly to his feet, he padded silently across the rooftop to the concrete ledge, a few arm lengths from a red-haired young woman who was too distracted to notice his approach. He rested his arms on the ledge, folding his hands over his elbows and waiting a moment to announce his presence with speech. The early breeze tousled his already messy dark locks a she watched her, arching a brow.
“You know,” he commented suddenly, perhaps a little too loudly for the strange quiet of the rooftop, “you’re bringing the phrase ‘staring into space’ to a whole new level.”
sleep, pretty darling, do not cry
and i will sing a lullaby
------
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Scarlet would not have gotten as far as she had in life by giving up every time the nebulous night sky refused to cooperate; she was trying too hard, exerting too much effort in construing meaning in the skylights that burned light years away. Perhaps the seismic vibrations of Caspar’s sudden departure had incited too grand a quake in the skeleton of her security, and she simply wasn’t seeing things as they should be seen.
Or perhaps she was just, as she usually was, dog tired.
Deluging her veins with caffeine was suddenly more seductive an idea than before, and without another thought, the crimson-haired young woman heeded the call of the expensive Cuisinart percolator in the corner if the kitchen counter, and the bag of ground hazelnut flavoured coffee next to it. The smell of roasted filberts and espresso was enough on its own to rouse some of her duller senses, and her long fingers couldn’t scoop the dark powder into the filter fast enough. Fortunately, the task was so well practiced that it did not require particularly attentive concentration, and soon enough the machine was gurgling and steaming dark liquid into the carafe, leaving Scarlet to pace the kitchen in the meantime.
Something is wrong. She tapped her fingers tapped restlessly on her forearm and tugged at her lipring with her teeth, as her bare feet turned circles on the aged linoleum floor. At the back of her mind, she realized that java would do nothing to calm the nerves that the stars’ silence had frayed, but she cared too little for sleep to be concerned. What has changed? What have I done wrong? He’s never hidden from my view; Caspar’s fate has never been blind to me. What was most frustrating was that she had taken such care, watched for deviations in patterns and tampered with astral trajectories whenever something seemed slightly off. She had been diligent enough to keep Caspar Brighton by her side for five years.
So who—or what—was interfering to suddenly turn events away from her favor?
Scarlet was on the carafe like a predator the second the percolator beeped, indicating the completion of a successful brew of coffee. The bitter beverage splashed over the rim of the cheap ceramic mug and onto the counter, over-eager hands failing to carry out so simple a task as pouring coffee with any sort of grace. Resolving to clean it up later, the chemical-redhead swiped the mug with its dark liquid off the counter and had about a quarter of it sipped away by the time she made it back to the window. Caspar never tired of teasing her for her preference to just-below-burning her mouth with any hot beverage, but she’d always found it difficult to stomach anything cooler.
Mild night air caressed her face when Scarlet returned to the widow, cooling the blush that had crept into her cheeks, a result of drinking something hot on a particularly hot night. A cerulean hue was beginning to bleed into the indigo sky; if the stars did not give her an answer now, then she would be helpless to tweak any anomalous divergences in her companion’s path, and tomorrow would be hidden from her. Whatever happened would happen, and she could only hope that it wouldn’t be too late to manipulate things to her favor by the time the stars decided to speak again.
While the stars shut their mouths and were currently turning their backs on her, not all was silent. The sudden baritone of a very human voice startled the young woman such that the mug jerked in her hand, spilling scalding coffee over her fingers. Hissing at the pain, she wiped her tender hand on the bottom of her shirt and cast a vague glower in the direction of a man who she swore had not been there moments ago.
A conflicting mixture of wariness and offense twisted Scarlet’s mouth into a frown, and pride tore her gaze away from the striking blue eyes that mocked her as shamelessly as the stars themselves. “You actually expect me to justify myself to a stranger hanging out on a fucking roof?” She drawled, taking an indignant sip of her scalding coffee. The hot, bitter liquid warmed her throat and countered the temper that rose from her chest and into her throat, colouring her words the same shade of red as her hair.
“Is this a hobby of yours? Creeping around on roofs, peering in peoples’ windows?” Turning her head, she leveled him with a firm but fairly disinterested glare. “Because I’m pretty sure that shit warrants a quick call to the cops.”
((O.o.C omg I hope this is okay I have been so braindead lately. ;__; ILU <3))
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Holding his palms up, he slung a crooked smile across his lips and arched his brows, letting the breeze run its fingers through his dark hair as he waited for her to finish. He gazed across the divide in the buildings, the expression in his ice blue eyes surprisingly thoughtful as the crimson-haired young woman continued her tired threats. It was convenient, he realized, how the level of the neighboring building’s rooftop corresponded almost exactly to the girl’s kitchen window. And though it was complete happenstance to his mind that they should be in such proximity at precisely that point in time, it was too good an opportunity to waste. How often did one run into young women hanging halfway out their high-rise to stare through mid-city smog just before dawn?
“I was asking, not demanding,” he clarified smoothly, unfazed by her obvious irritation. He lifted his shoulders in a quick shrug, clasping his hands together as he rested his bare elbows on the rough concrete ledge. “Call the cops if you want, but it’s not my fault you left your window open at exactly this level.” He smiled again, his gaze flicking back to meet her fiery glare. Her expression only broadened his grin. “Curtains. I’d invest in some curtains if I were you.”
And suddenly—it was a trick he’d learned, walking through consciousness and skating on neurons; a trick of relocation that made doors a silly outdated novelty—he wasn’t on the rooftop anymore; he was behind her, in her kitchen, the aroma of fresh coffee filling his nose as he inhaled. “Not that anyone would want to see in here,” he commented, running his pinky through a puddle of spilled coffee on the countertop. He let the droplet run to the tip of his finger and plummet back to the miniature lake of brown liquid. He wrinkled his nose. “It’s kind of a mess.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
This was, however, the first time she had ever come face to face with some asshole creeper on a fucking roof. An irrational part of her mind was surprised it had taken this long.
“Right—so is that what you’re going to tell the cops? It was my fault because my window was open, I don’t have curtains, and the view of my apartment was in your way?” The young woman sneered and straightened, gripping the ceramic mug so hard that her knuckles turned white. “How about we find out? I’ll give you a head start.”
The threat was hollow; no creeper in their right mind and who valued their own ass would put it on the line just to be cheeky (no pun intended). So when the artificial redhead turned away from the window like she meant to go make good on her promise and ask the police to come make a house call, she’d expected to hear the sounds of that weird son of a bitch making like a tree before he got himself caught; she was certain she wouldn’t be seeing him again, anytime soon.
But the moment Scarlet turned around, her fingers slackened, releasing the coffee mug that shattered in a heap of brown-stained white on the cheap imitation-wood floor, along with that dire certainty from a few seconds ago.
“What the actual fuck.” Oblivious to the mess, she looked over her shoulder at the roof upon which he had just been standing, and then back at dark-haired man with peculiar blue eyes, half-expecting him to be a sleep-deprived, caffeine-overdose induced hallucination.
“How did… But you were just…” Scarlet briefly wondered if her shock was unwarranted; after all, she could manipulate the stars and the destinies tied to them. Caspar could close a door and grab a Coke from the refrigerator with his mind alone. Why was it so strange that this guy could be carry himself by impossible means to another location in a matter of seconds?
Because it’s creepy as all hell, that’s why.
“Who—what the fuck are you?” The words were out of her mouth before she realized the answers didn’t really matter; it was almost dawn, and there was a stranger in her house with abilities that she could not even begin to divine. If he was, in fact, dangerous, then she needed to get him out of there before it became clarified.
Thinking faster than she could reason, the fiery young woman heaved an irritated sigh and closed the distance between them. Before he could react, her quick hand reached up and seized him by the collar of his shirt, a move she had learned during her time on the streets; it brought the taller guys down to her level, and made it more difficult for them to muscle their way out of it. “You know what? I don’t care—I don’t even care, I just want you out of here. Now. I am so not dealing with this kind of shit at this hour of the morning.” Mustering what little upper-body strength she had, she made to drag this irritating stranger towards the front door.
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
The momentary silence that followed her shocked release was prolonged in his mind by the realization that he might actually be frightening her, that he might be perceived as a physical threat rather than the nosy nuisance he actually was. As though the gesture alone would be enough to alleviate any potential concern, Alair offered a soft, apologetic smile—which, of course, did not help at all; if anything, it only succeeded in highlighting the impish gleam in his blue eyes, the wild, wind-mussed hair, and the very obvious fact that he was standing in a puddle of coffee and broken glass in her private apartment.
It could be difficult to discern the line between dream and actuality; the differences were often negligible, and even a soul as practiced as Alair’s could occasionally forget which realm he was inhabiting at any given time. And generally, he could rely on the behaviors of others to clue him in, but this time wasn’t like the others—this time, something felt like a dream, even though he knew beyond any doubt’s shadow it was not.
There was no time to ponder his predicament, because as soon as the words crossed his mind, the redhead had closed the gap between them and knotted her fingers in his shirt collar, tugging his face down to her level. He pursed his lips, instinctively resisting when she began to muscle him backwards and out of the kitchen. “All right, all right!” he sputtered, holding his hands up and giving up the fight. “I’m going. Fine.”
But he didn’t go. He got as far as the door—he had even turned his back to stride away when she threw open the door for his departure—before he turned around, bracing his hands on the door frame and smiling back in at her. Placing his foot in the way of the door to prevent her from slamming it in his face (or on his fingers), he cocked his head to the side before lowering one hand and extending it to her as a gesture of peace. Or, at the very least, a demonstration that he was friendly. A monster, perhaps, but a friendly one when he chose to be.
“I’m the Sandman,” he said by way of introduction, narrowing his eyes. “And you are?”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
So, perhaps he wasn’t so much a danger as he was a creeper, and the young woman had to admit that his creepy factor did not reach his smile There was just something else about that; something on which she chose not to let her thoughts dwell.
“I’m the Sandman.”
“…what?” She hadn’t expected him to answer her questions, mockingly or otherwise. And when he suddenly turned, securing his foot in the door and his hand on the doorframe as he began to spout nonsense about a character in children’s nursery rhymes, she came to the conclusion that this guy was one of two things: either he was batshit crazy, or a horrible, horrible liar.
Scarlet looked at his proffered hand and frowned. Did he honestly think she was going to shake hands with some guy who thought it would be fun to invade her private home, let alone claim he was the freaking Sandman?
“Sandman.” Her tone of voice when she repeated the word revealed her disbelief long before she elaborated with sarcasm. “You’re the Sandman. As in, the fairy that flits around in the night, sprinkling sand into children’s eyes to put them to sleep? Or are you the Sandman that steals children’s eyes to feed to your minions on the moon? Yeah, that’s apparently a thing. Creepy as fuck, huh?”
Even if he was batshit crazy, Scarlet was almost too intrigued by the degree of his insanity or the extent of his lies to bring her bare foot up so it met with his abdomen, giving him a quick shove out the door. So she decided to indulge him, just for a moment longer, if for no other reason than to get some more words in on this whack-job of an intruder. “So where is your pixie dust then, Sandman? And don’t you have a job to do? Imagine all of the children of the world who are still awake, because you’re standing here having a conversation with me—after, you know, trespassing on the property I’m renting.”
Taking a step back, she gave him room to remove himself and close the door behind him. “My name is Scarlet.” She answered his question belatedly as she leveled him with another glare. “Remember it, so you’ll remember not to fuck with me again. Now go back to your moon minions or wherever the hell it is you’re from.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
It pleased him, and his mirth shone in his bright blue eyes like the glittering surface of a summer sea. There was something about her obvious disbelief that made him want to convince her of the ridiculous truth of his words, but he knew better than to argue with a startled girl with eyes like that. Instead, his smirk broadened to a full grin, and he lifted one shoulder in a dismissive half-shrug. “Oh, I’m aware of the stories,” he said, wetting his lips with his tongue. “That must’ve started in one of my dark phases.”
He shook off his teasing with a soft chuckle, stepping back from the door frame. He clasped his hands behind his back to avoid them being crushed with the force he anticipated from her slamming the door in his face—if she did anything less, he really would have been shocked—and wrinkled his nose with further amusement at her quip regarding his trademark powder. “Pixie dust isn’t really my style,” he informed her nonchalantly, although in the back of his mind he was cringing at the term. It would do him no good to argue his point, however; the redheaded young woman was clearly in no mood to stand corrected. In fact, it seemed she was in no mood to stand anything, much less the surprise company of a total stranger in her kitchen. And now her hallway.
“They sleep well enough without me,” he went on, as though it were the most normal thing in the world. “Usually it’s the adults that need me. Children are stubborn. And they’ve got killer imaginations. Jesus, I’ve seen some messed up shit in kids’ dreams. Fucking terrifying shit.” He shook his head, pausing for a moment to study her now that she was obliging him with a few moments of peaceful attention. The expression in her eyes spoke of her irritation, but they also projected volumes of what she thought of his character. It wasn’t the first time someone had regarded him as though he’d lost his mind; he knew that reaction well enough, and as such, he also knew it would be best to take his departure sooner rather than later.
“No fucking. Got it.” With another quick smile, he nodded when she spoke her name, then promptly closed the door before she could hurtle it in his face. It took only a moment for him to return to the neighboring rooftop; quick and smooth as a gust of wind, he was there on the ledge again, arms folded across the rough concrete of the ledge as he peered back into the redhead’s kitchen window. “Are you sure I can’t have a cup?” he called over innocently. “It’s pretty fucking early, Scarlet. Give a guy a break.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
The guy was insane. Those were the thoughts running through Scarlet’s mind before and after she slammed the door in the ’Sandman’s’ face. An accomplished liar herself, she had practiced hiding tells that would betray her words: twitches, fidgets, lack of eye contact, colouring in the cheeks. He hadn’t exhibited anything of the sort, but rather, just the opposite. His composure, his posture, everything about him told her that whatever he was saying, even he believed it to be true.
Kooks on their own were dangerous; kooks that could appear and reappear wherever they pleased… Well, needless to say, there was more need for concern. Because there was no guarantee that locks and bolts and hollow threats would make him stay away.
“Only in my life…” The young woman raked her fingers through her hair and made for the tiny kitchen, gingerly avoiding the mess of coffee and shattered ceramic on the old linoleum tiles; her veins required far more caffeine before she tackled that mess.
Forcing the ’Sandman’ from her thoughts, Scarlet refilled the percolator with water a smoky brown coffee grounds. The gurgling sound of the gradual drip into the carafe was familiar, soothed her frayed nerves like a lullaby.
And then, she made the mistake of returning to the window…
“What the actual fuck…” Her hand shot to her chest; she had never been so close to multiple heart attacks in less than an hour. “You… there is no way that you…” No—been there, done that, bought the T-shirt. There was no point in wasting precious energy doubting what she was seeing, not when it was so plain. Not when her own life as governed by preternatural abnormalities.
A guy on a roof wanted coffee. Well, why the hell not? Might make him go away.
Scarlet pushed away from the window and exhaled slowly, twitching fingers weaving her long locks of ruby hair into a half-assed braid. This was not strange; this was just her life. She would deal with this just as she dealt with every other unfavourable twist of destiny that marred her perfect paths.
When the percolator beeped its job completed, she blindly reached for two mugs in the cupboard above her head, spilling coffee on the counter like some incompetent barista on her first day of work. This isn’t weird; this is just my life.
After a moment or two of carefully measured breaths (an attempt to regain what little composure she had), the young woman picked up both mugs, filled to the brim with the heady, caffeinated beverage, and approached the window. Part of her expected not to find anyone on the roof across from the sill, but it didn’t surprise her in the least to find he hadn’t moved an inch.
Wordlessly, she leaned across to hand him one of the mugs, before taking a sip of her own.
“I hope you don’t mind black; I wasn’t sure how you take it.” She shrugged a shoulder, hoping that if she feigned nonchalance, she would come to believe this wasn’t bothering her so tediously.
Scarlet then took a moment to muster the fire and confidence to back her words, before she met this supposed Sandman’s eyes again. There was nothing unusual about their colour—albeit the blue was striking—though something about them… It was almost as though they sparkled.
“All right… Number one: you don’t scare me.” She quirked a brow, taking another contemplative sip from her mug. “My roommate is telekinetic. So you can teleport or tele-whatever the hell you want, but it’s going to take more than that to freak me out. And number two…” Leaning a little further out the window, she furrowed her eyebrows and tightened her lips. “Who are you really. Honestly. When I say don’t fuck with me, I mean it.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
He drummed his fingertips impatiently on the rough ledge as he watched her prepare more coffee, waiting for her to come back to the window. As averse as she was to his presence, he wasn’t quite done with her yet—happenstance had led, unsurprisingly, to unanswered questions his curiosity would not permit to be left in the balance, and when such feelings struck, well…he had little choice but to satiate his wonderings.
When at last she caught sight of him back at his original post on the neighboring building’s rooftop, he flashed her a charming smile and lifted his fingers in a tiny wave of acknowledgment. Her reaction was understandable, yes, but that did not make her stammers any less amusing to the strange blue-eyed man across the way. She was as much a character as he, and rather than heed her words as the actual threats and warnings they were, he found he couldn’t take her…well, he couldn’t take her seriously. There was something unusual about this young woman, something intriguing. Something that felt almost like a dream.
The Sandman knew better, of course. He was wide awake (not that he really needed to be asleep to walk the land of dreams) and so was she, and now she was making him a cup of coffee at his admittedly presumptuous request. Pursing his lips, he leaned far forward to accept the steaming mug. His fingers embraced the glazed ceramic gently as he brought the rim to his lips, taking an experimental sip of the scalding beverage.
“Cream and sugar is for people who don’t actually want coffee,” he responded after a swallow. “Keeping up appearances and all that crap.” A shrug lifted and dropped his shoulders, his gaze settling on the redhead as she continued her speech. For a moment, he looked offended that she should think he was trying to frighten her, but the look quickly dissolved to a knowing smirk. “You think I was trying to scare you? What kind of bad guy tries to freak girls out by hopping rooftops and asking for coffee? I can think of more effective ways.”
He paused, draining the last of his mug’s steaming contents. “I already told you who I was,” he said nonchalantly, “but my name is Alair. Why are you living with a telekinetic?”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Perhaps she and this stranger of questionable intent did not differ so much in that curiosity was, for both of them, a very compelling motivator.
“Can’t take the heat?” She snorted at the almost dainty way he tested the temperature of the beverage with his lips, and drank an entire mouthful of her own—just to show him up. “Truth is? If it’s not burning my mouth, I can’t really tolerate the stuff, so the percolator is always on maximum heat by default. I usually turn it down for friends, but I wasn’t exactly prepared for company at half past four in the morning… and you’re not exactly a friend.
“And, yes, I know what you told me. And I know that you know exactly what I’m asking.” Putting a name to a face wouldn’t exactly shed any more light on an already muddy and confounding situation; he’d told her he was the Sandman.
And, maybe this guy’s crazy was contagious, because given the very nature of her life, of Caspar’s life and of the two destinies she was determined to keep entwined… Why the hell couldn’t he be the freaking Sandman?
“Alair, huh? An unusual name for an unusual person; sounds kind of French.” Absently flipping the loose braid of crimson hair over her shoulder, Scarlet scrutinized that smug grin that seemed to be a permanent fixture on his face. “So if you’re not a badguy, then does that make you a goodguy? A superhero? Because I think you need some practice, if showing up in someone else’s apartment uninvited is part of your quest to save the world.” And yet, despite the aversive front she put up, the young woman found her mind reviewing its bleak inventory of superheroes and pitting their qualities to this weirdo. The roof upon which he leaned was close enough that she could hand him a mug of coffee, possibly even climb onto it herself, if she was feeling particularly daring. Close enough that she could still make out the vivid blue of his eyes in the dark. Was there a bite from a radioactive spider somewhere on visible skin? If she leaned across and the gap and punched him, would his skin bloody and bruise her knuckles like some man of steel? The latter didn't seem so far off, given the fact he could teleport, and seemed to be almost as impervious to pain of consuming a hot beverage so fast, allowing no time for it to cool.
That odd (and, admittedly, sleep-deprived and giddy) flight of fancy upon which her thoughts began to take off were interrupted from, what she considered, something of an intrusive question. Why the hell did he care who she was living with? “I’m not living with a telekinetic; I am living with a friend who just happens to be telekinetic. Don’t you know it’s rude to label?” With a frown that sent the message she was unimpressed, Scarlet downed the remaining contents of her mug. She could feel the burn of the hot liquid all the way down her throat, and on top of the humidity of the summer evening, it brought a faint blush to her skin. “It’s a symbiotic friendship; he needed someone to share his secret with. And I needed a roommate. What's it to you, anyway?”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
To make matters worse, there was something about her that was terribly enabling. Whether it was her obvious discomfort, her sleep-deprived disbelief, or the fact that she hadn’t hesitated in expressing her suspicions, he couldn’t quite say—probably a combination of all three. It didn’t help her cause that she’d revealed such an interesting fact about her roommate, one that, scalding coffee and the promise of an argument aside, made him want to stay even more fervently.
He cringed as he resurfaced from his mug, the probably-still-boiling black coffee making its way slowly down his throat, inch by burning inch. He puckered his lips in a delayed response to the temperature, the heat hitting him only after he’d downed the entire contents of his cup. “Christ, Scarlet,” he said, the words a hiss through his teeth that he thought surely would manifest in clouds of exhaled steam. “What kind of devil coffee masochist are you?” He swallowed again, as though a coating of his own saliva would cool his smarting esophagus. “I’d say it’s a good roast, but that might just be because you burned half my taste buds off and I can’t really tell the difference anymore.”
A smile lit up his face, and he twisted his lips into a charming smile—well, more of a smirk, really, but that tended to be how his smiles always looked. “Any chance on a refill, sugar?” Extending his arm, the Sandman held the empty cup over the gap in the buildings, his gaze glancing all those stories down to the tiny street below. The sky had brightened just slightly in the east, the hint of a pleasant dawn in the refreshing chill of the gentle breeze. The early morning twilight was a terrible trickster despite her beauty; her demure promises would soon give way to another sweltering noon, but for now Alair was willing to enjoy her meteorological lies while they had the good courtesy to last.
“You could say it’s French,” he responded good-naturedly. Of course, one could just as easily say it wasn’t French, but he kept his lips pressed together as she continued. He raised his brows high onto his forehead, looking amused. “I’ve never really liked the good guys,” he admitted, shrugging. “They’re boring. But so are bad guys, you know? In their own way. I like to pick my battles, pick my sides.”
He watched her as she studied him, more taken by her expression as her eyes wandered over him than by her scrutiny itself. He wondered what she was thinking, what she saw across that arm’s length gap in the concrete structures; he wondered how close she was to taking the mug he’d offered and throwing it right back in his face. But she was speaking again before he could come to any definitive conclusions, and once again he was distracted by discussion of her telekinetic roommate.
“Hey, don’t look at me!” he protested, holding up his hands. “You called him a telekinetic first, okay?” His mock offense dissolved quickly, and he rested his elbows on the ledge again curiously. “Do you really expect no one to ask questions if you threaten someone with your roommate-who-happens-to-be-telekinetic?” He quirked a brow impishly. “So what makes you qualified to keep a secret like that?” he went on, cocking his head to one side. “Is he your boyfriend?”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
“Hey, you asked for the coffee. Can’t say I didn’t warn you.” She shrugged casually, blue eyes darting from his face to the empty coffee mug he was suddenly holding out to her, and back to the obnoxious smile on his smug face once again. “I hope you mean you’re asking for sugar in it this time. Because if you think you’re calling me sugar, you’re not going to like the consequences.”
Though it probably came as just as much a surprise to him as it did to her when she took the mug from his hand and turned on her heel, bringing it inside along with her own. There was enough coffee left in the heated carafe for one more refill, but she dreaded to think of what sort of strain another dose of caffeine would do to her heart at this hour of the morning, with too little sleep under her belt.
“Sounds to me like you’re putting yourself in the category of antihero.” She mused from where she stood at the counter, only a few arms’ lengths away from the window. “No one’s an antihero unless they can’t decide what they want to be. For someone so indecisive, you’re sure adamant in your decision drink coffee on top of a roof instead of move on to your next haunt; aren’t there adults out there who need you and your pixie dust to help them sleep? Maybe I have you to blame for still being awake at this ungodly hour.”
Of course, she was too tired to realize she was only enabling his antics, pouring him the second mug of coffee that he’d requested. Though it had crossed her mind to stir a few heaping spoons of sugar into it… Lucky for him she wasn’t awake enough to be quite so vindictive.
Scarlet returned to the window a moment later and handed the mug back to him, fingertips tinted pink from the cheap, heated ceramic. “I said he happens to be telekinetic, not that he is atelekinetic; there’s a difference, you know. And no, he isn’t my boyfriend.” She wrinkled her nose as though the possibility of having a boyfriend was simply absurd. “If he was my boyfriend, then I would have referred to him as my boyfriend, not my roommate. We’re just friends.”
And that was the truth; Scarlet had never been drawn to Caspar romantically. He was a friend, and a good one, at that, but nothing more (and she was certain he felt he same about her). Fate had intersected their paths, but in a way that was wholly unique.
Because ever since their first encounter, everything that followed had been cast by Scarlet’s hand alone. For Caspar, she was fate.
“Why wouldn’t I be a good candidate to keep a secret? Maybe I am just as qualified as any. Caspar saw fit to trust me enough to tell me; it’s only right that I hold onto it.” And onto him. “Look… why are you here? Is there something you wanted? Other than coffee that you can barely tolerate on your tongue, I mean.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
He concluded his speech with a smirk that was present more often on his face than it was absent. When she handed him his refilled mug across the gap, he cradled it once again in his hands, taking his time before he began to sip the steaming liquid. He nodded knowingly as though to say, Yeah, I learned my lesson, but he kept his lips firmly closed until the beverage had released enough of its heat to the early morning air.
The city below was slowly beginning to stir. The sky had not yet brightened with the light of the new dawn, but the night’s navy was slowly dissolving to cyan just beyond the skyline; in another hour, the sun would streak its celestial canvas with swatches of gold and pink that would at last signal the arrival of the day. Alair was fond of early mornings, the mornings that flitted the line between night and day, the mornings that the majority of the people spent occupying worlds of their own subconscious invention. It was never truly quiet; there was always an energy in the air of impending wakefulness in a city like America’s capital, a constant electric scent to the air that said nighttime was only a mask.
Resurfacing from his thoughts, his gaze flicked back to his new redheaded companion thoughtfully. He took another tentative sip of his coffee before shifting positions slightly and running a hand through the unruly mass of dark locks atop his head. “No need to be so defensive, I’m just curious, is all,” Alair stated plainly, his expression pleasant. “I haven’t met many telekinetics—uh, people who happen to be telekinetic.” He tilted his head to the side. “What’s it like living with someone who can move stuff with their mind? That’s gotta be pretty awesome.”
He wondered briefly if she would throw that back in his face with a quip about his own bizarre ability to relocate, but as he’d already demonstrated that particular trick, he was unconcerned with how she would handle that kind of thing. If she truly was living with someone who could practice telekinesis, then surely she was trustworthy, as she claimed. Not that anyone would believe her if she went spreading stories worthy of tabloid covers in supermarket checkout aisles. Not that anyone could actually catch him, anyway.
“I didn’t say you wouldn’t be or aren’t a good candidate,” he said. “I just meant what makes you a good candidate. But fine, whatever. Not my business, I guess.” Strange he should say that now. He grinned to himself at his own antics, shaking his head slightly before bringing the mug back to his lips. “I was doing business here and I happened to see you, as I said, staring into space. Thought I’d come and say hello, which I guess I haven’t done properly.” He lifted his unoccupied hand in a theatrical wave, wiggling his fingers in front of a crooked smile. “So, hello.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Only it wasn’t normal at all, not even by Scarlet’s loose standards of the word, and she still wasn’t convinced that this cheeky stranger was entirely harmless. Unfortunately, her own quick dose of caffeine hadn’t been enough to jolt her into daytime mode like she had hoped, and as a result her ability to judge character was supremely dulled by the heavy sensation of fatigue. That was the trouble with coffee; sometimes all it awakened was your mind and your spinning thoughts, leaving your body craving that sweet state of utter unconsciousness that you’d hoped to drive away with the caffeinated beverage in the first place.
“Living with someone who happens to be telekinetic is no different than living with someone who happens not to be.” She shrugged her bare shoulders, staring into the blush on the horizon as she cradled her elbows in each hand, no longer able to decipher if she was too warm or too cold. The dampness in the air clung to her skin like a cold sheet, but every time she drew breath into her lungs, the atmosphere felt hot; perhaps another side effect of the coffee. “And if you’re really so damn curious, he confided in me because he ended up using his ability to get me out of trouble once. Kind of hard to deny it at that point.” But the redhead did not elaborate any further, because—like he’d said—it was none of his business.
“Look, when Cas gets back, the last thing he needs is to decipher why I’m talking and offering coffee to a stranger on a rooftop. So I’m going to have to cut this conversation short in favor of getting some semblance of sleep.” Rolling her shoulders back and stretching her arms, she added, “Clearly you’re not doing your job, Sandman; it’s 5AM and I’m still not asleep.”
Scarlet stepped away from the window and turned her back without much of a proper goodbye, pausing only to glance over her shoulder. “Just leave the mug on the window sill if you can reach. If you can’t, well, whatever. It’s not like we don’t have a few dozen spares.”
And with that, she closed the window and drew the blinds, hoping very strongly that he not decide to materialize somewhere in the apartment again. Feeling like an anxious child after watching a horror movie, the young woman sprinted to her bedroom, shut the door and locked it. About the only thing she didn’t do was hide under the covers, and that was only because she suddenly decided it was too warm to bother.
Not to mention she hardly had time to consider it, because once her head hit the pillow and she curled up on her side with her knees to her chest, she was miraculously out like a light.
Scarlet didn’t even hear Caspar return home early that morning, and by the time she woke up, streaks of yellow-white sunbeams danced over her legs and quilt, escaping through the crack between the curtains. Not golden enough to be morning; she must have slept away a good part of the early afternoon.
Groggy and heavy in the limbs, like a hangover without the headache, the young woman sat up with a groan and rubbed her eyes, seriously considering telling the day to screw itself in favor ofresuming her view of the back of her eyelids. Ultimately, it was the melodic strumming and picking of Caspar’s guitar that drew her too her feet and out of her bedroom, towards the small den, where… wait. Was that a second guitar?
“Hey, what time did you even get home last night?” She called to her roommate, rubbing her still heavy eyelids with the back of her hand. Now she remembered why she didn’t allow herself to sleep in… The result was as bad as a hangover. “I didn’t even hear you come in. And how are you making your guitar do…”
Scarlet trailed off when her feet finally paused at the open doorway of the living room. She’d heard two guitars because there were two guitars… And two guitarists.
“Oh, hey—sorry, Red. Did we wake you?” Caspar smiled, looking supremely cheerful and wide awake for someone who must have been functioning on less sleep than even her. he gestured to the person beside him—a man with ink-dark hair and starlit blue eyes—and added, almost as an afterthought, “Oh, and this is Alair. Alair, meet my nocturnal roommate, Scarlet. Don’t ever ask her to make you coffee; it’ll burn your mouth for days.”
((O.o.C: Ugh i hope this is okay i am passing out as i type this x_x))
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
When she dismissed herself and closed the blinds in her wake, he rested his elbows on the ledge and grinned to himself. Laughing under his breath as he stared into the empty coffee mug cradled in his palms, he briefly considered following her again, if for no other reason than to prove his own title and defend the legacy at which she had so vehemently scoffed. But while Alair was certainly a devilish man, he knew where to draw the line. And with a young woman like the one he’d just met, those particular boundaries were not ones to take too lightly.
Obediently, he reached across the gap between the buildings and set his mug on the window ledge. As he pulled back and planted his feet firmly on the rooftop once again, he knew the simple gesture of returning the cup was not a farewell—it was, contrary to the redhead’s every intention, a promise.
And the Sandman, tricky as he could be, always kept his promises.
------
“No, no,” he said, wrinkling his nose at the discordant note that suddenly rang from his new friend’s guitar strings. He reached over to dampen the vibrations by wrapping his fingers around the neck, laughing at Caspar’s mock horrified expression. “We’re in F-major,” he said between chuckles. “Go up, not down.”
Caspar’s feigned disgust quickly dissolved to one of amusement, and he strummed the proper chord progression with a look of smug satisfaction that rivaled Alair’s. When he nodded, the Sandman counted off in four, and together they began to play. They traded off rhythm and solo as though they’d been musical partners for years, and for a moment, Alair forgot about the red-haired young woman snoozing away in the next room. It wasn’t until she appeared, sleep-drunk and groggy, in the doorway that he returned from his acoustic reverie.
Alair finished his run with a final strum, letting the notes ring in the open air with a smile on his lips. He was dressed completely differently than when she’d last seen him. Where his dark hair had been windblown and unruly before, it was now mostly hidden beneath a worn fedora of hunter green tweed. Faded blue jeans, a white t-shirt, and an expensive, tailored ivory vest that was in every way contrary to the rest of his outfit completed the look. But there would be no mistaking the gleam in his eye or the half-smirk he perpetually donned, and he could already see the recognition in her eyes.
“Scarlet,” he repeated cheerfully, sitting up a little straighter and extending his hand over his own polished instrument. This time, perhaps she would complete the unreciprocated handshake from earlier that morning. “Nice to meet you. Cas tells me you make a mean pot of coffee. And I do mean mean.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
“Yo—Scarlet. You alive in there?” Caspar’s eyebrows met in the middle as he regarded his roommate with a mixture of annoyance and concern. “You gonna say something? Or just be weird and stand there like you’re seeing the dead?”
It was only because her sleep-addled brain was still numb with a wash of melatonin that the young woman did, in the end, take a step forward, closing just enough distance between herself and the unwelcome guest to press her palm into his. Her fingers remained loose, however, like she was anticipating the need to suddenly pull away.
Even hung over from sleep as shed was, Scarlet knew better than to trust this guy—Alair.
“Uh… yeah. Hi.” Came her quiet reply, not even bothering to comment on his double-edged remark about her coffee. Her mind was too busy trying to parse through the reasons why this guy, this presumed Sandman, was sitting on her couch, in her apartment, strumming a duet with her roommate. It all felt like an episode right out of the Twilight Zone, and she couldn’t shake the feeling of suspicion and unease that twisted her gut in nauseating directions.
“Jeez, Red. You were right; sleep doesn’t suit you.” Caspar teased, long fingers picking an idle tune on his guitar strings. “There’s coffee in the pot; should still be hot, but I hope you’ll forgive that I didn’t make it ‘Scarlet style’. For the sake of company, of course. Oh, and don’t break any mugs this time? That was one hell of a mess you left for me to clean up.”
The chemical redhead forced herself out of her sleep-induced stupor and rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand, offering a casual shrug to Cas’ playful jab. “Yeah, well, I only expect good company to have good taste, anyway.”
She didn’t bother to elaborate on the vague strike at Alair before heading into the kitchen to grab some of that promised caffeine, leaving her roommate to stare after her in confusion. From around the corner, she picked up on a few key words in his mellow timbre, namely ‘don’t mind her’ in conjunction with ‘that time of the month’, and simply chose to ignore it—and not because it made her angry, but because it unnerved her. If Caspar was cracking those kinds of jokes with someone who (as far as she was aware) he hadn’t known yet for twenty-four hours, then his destiny was far further from her celestial reach than she had thought.
“Hey, what time is your gig tonight at Jimmy’s?” She called, pouring dark coffee into a chipped ceramic mug (that she noticed with a start had been the one she’d given to Alair earlier that morning). “Want me to go and be your biggest fan to get the girls riled up?”
Her question was met with a string of obscenities and the sound of someone scrambling to get their shit together. “Crap! How the hell could I forget? I need to go set up!” Caspar slung his guitar strap off his shoulder and grabbed its case from behind the couch, casting Alair an apologetic look. “Sorry, man, I completely forgot about this gig. But hey, if you’re a night owl, it’s over at midnight; c’mon back here and we can jam some more.”
The young musician barely cast Scarlet a sideways glance as he hurried out the door with his guitar. And though he’d been wrong about it being ‘her time of the month’, it allowed Scarlet the opportunity to unleash her morning-attitude fury on the man who should not be there, in her apartment—again.
“Okay, so, my question to you: what the actual fuck?” She snapped, heading back to the den with her coffee and taking a seat on the arm of the couch. “Please explain to me what you’re doing here, and why you’re suddenly all bff with my roommate.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
If he took notice of her subtle jab at him, he made no indication; he plucked a few more notes before dampening the vibrations with his fingertips and arching a brow. He exchanged glances with Cas as his eyes lit up with the panic of forgetting his gig, and Alair arched his brows. “Don’t worry about it, man, it happens,” he said, laughing a little at the lean man’s poem of profanity that spilled forth from worried lips. “Sounds good. I’ll see you later, then?”
He hummed an improvised melody, his fingers plucking at the guitar strings in a harmonious line that followed Caspar’s exit like a wake on the surface of calm water. He’d always taken a certain comfort in music; there was something so unnatural about it that it came to him with little effort, surrounding him in an embrace contrary to all realities he tried to paint in others’ minds. Life did not come with a soundtrack, after all. And yet people were drawn to chords and notes and pitches; they buried their souls in rhythms and cloaked their lives in song with greater and greater fervor as the centuries blazed forward in a youthful aria.
Alair had not been ignorant of that influence, and as such he had learned to master an opposing force to make it his own—to support himself, of course, and all that he encompassed—but as it turned out, he rather enjoyed it all. And where was the sense in neglecting on his off-hours something he enjoyed? To be the Sandman was to control and invade, and what better method of infiltration than a universal language of pure, unadulterated emotion? He had always taken pleasure in the surreptitious when it came to his duties (his personality, of course, was another story entirely)—but he was good at what he did, and for that he owed a fair share to the art he was currently performing on the sofa of a certain redheaded acquaintance.
He greeted her with a characteristic smirk when she stormed into the room, her eyes flashing fire as she took her perch on the arm of the sofa. Alair pursed his lips, moving his guitar to the side before leaning back leisurely into the embrace of the upholstery. “I think it’s pretty obvious we were having a good time writing some music,” he said matter-of-factly, gnawing at his lower lip. His gaze drifted to her cup of noticeably steaming coffee, and he exhaled a quick chuckle before he continued.
“How was I to know he was your roommate?” he quipped, folding his leg beneath him as he turned to face her. His feigned ignorance was hardly convincing, and he knew it. That did not, however, stop him from goading his new friend further. “What’d you think of our new song?”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
She’d never contemplated the freedom she’d feel to be separate from her security blanket, but in many ways, fear still trumped that freedom. Because now she was alone in her apartment with a very unpredictable man, and while Cas had been around, the dark-haired little-more-than-a-stranger would have been far less likely to pull anything.
Just what that anything might be, Scarlet had no idea. But trusting someone with the ability to teleport did not seem like an idea spawned of a sound mind.
Then again, on the up-side, with her roommate gone for a good handful of hours, she was free to chew this creeper out, using as many colourful words a she pleased, and then haul his ass off the premises… One way, or another.
“Don’t fuck with me; I don’t believe in coincidence, because there’s no such thing. Believe me, I know.” She did not, of course, offer to elaborate, and did not expect him to inquire about the certainty of her statement. No one ever did; it was just one of those comments meant to be accepted and not questioned, the same way when someone asks ‘How are you?’, the expectation is that you come back with ‘Fine’. Even if you are not.
“It’s not even three in the afternoon; how the hell did you meet and bond so fast? You just hook up and decide to write some music or something? I’m sorry, this is all just a little fucking sketchy, for my liking.” But she clearly was not ‘sorry’, by any meaning of the word, and without saying anything more, Scarlet downed her coffee in a few mouthfuls. As if it was alcohol, and not caffeine; as if it was iced tea, and not scalding java.
Without another word, she slid off the arm of the couch and headed into the kitchen again, placing her empty mug on the counter as she was bound for her bedroom to comb the sleep-tangles from her hair and put on something a little more presentable.
Through the walls (for they were paper thin; she could hear Caspar snore in the other room at night, as clearly as though he were right next to her), she added, “Look, I don’t know what your agenda is, but I’d rather in not interfere with my life. And my roommate’s life is my life; I live with the guy. That means, I put up with all the shit that he allows to walk through the door.”
Though it turns out there was little she could ever do about her slightly unruly red hair, the young woman at least pulled on a pair of jeans and a clean T-shirt before returning to the kitchen. And a sudden, risky idea came to her when her elbow knocked over a bottle of Caspar’s prescription pills next to the sink.
The carafe held just enough left-over coffee to fill two small mugs, which she promptly poured, but not before carefully (and quietly) crushing about eight of her roommates tiny blue sedatives with the underside of a spoon, and sprinkling the pharmaceutical powder on the bottom of one of the mugs. She’d seen one of those things bring Caspar down from a mid-night panic attack, so fast and so hard that she’d had to help him to bed; eight should surely knock the consciousness out of this guy, quickly and efficiently.
From what her roommate had told her, they had no taste, but she stirred the powder thoroughly into the beverage just to make sure. The last thing she wanted was to secure a place on the shit-list of someone as unpredictable and enigmatic as that Alair; again, never trust a guy who can teleport.
With any luck, the cops could get there faster than he could relocate himself, through space and time…
“Here; there was half a pot left. Caspar always makes too much, and I don’t like to ever see it go to waste, even if he always manages to make it taste like crap.” Returning to the living room, the chemical red-head handed her unwelcome guest the mug of contaminated coffee, keeping the unlaced beverage for herself. And on that note, she added, “Not my fault if it tastes a little off; the stuff sitting at the bottom of the pot for an hour always tastes extra shitty.”
Once the beverage was handed over, she resumed her spot on the arm of the couch, putting a safe bit of distance between their two bodies. “So… Does he know you teleport into peoples’ homes, uninvited, and then request that they give you coffee?”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
But it seemed that was exactly what she’d expected, and the Sandman wasn’t as surprised as he wanted to be. Contemporary society had a way of ignoring anything that even remotely suggested something contrary to popular belief systems, and most people would rather live on in blissful ignorance than suffer an explanation that might challenge their perception of the world. Alair was in the business of such investigations, however, and he had no intention of taking this redhead lightly, whatever she may have meant and whatever she might say in the future. She’d been open enough about Caspar’s telekinesis, and that alone spoke volumes about her own set of accepted fundamentals—a set that seemed rather unlike any he’d ever encountered before.
Rather than refute her threat, however, he remained silent, pursing his lips bemusedly as she left the room. He remained where he was, reaching over to pluck the top string of his acoustic instrument, watching the length of vibrating chord as it sang its baritone to an otherwise silent room. Her voice from the other room cut through its resonance rather harmoniously, he noted, and he had to take a moment to comprehend her actual words once he’d recovered from the meaningless sounds of the impromptu duet. He smiled to himself and draped his arm across the rest, tapping his fingers against the worn cloth to an inaudible beat.
“There’s no agenda,” he reassured her, although he doubted she believed him. “We met at the Kicking News, the place in Arlington. Old Town. You’ve been there, right? Cas was picking up the rest of his equipment. We got to talking, then to playing, and here I am.” He shrugged, though she wasn’t in the room to witness it. “Whether you want to like it or not, we do make a pretty good duet.” He cleared his throat. “Cas and me. Not you and me,” he added with a knowing laugh. “He’s talented, this telekinetic part-of-your-life roommate. You sure you’re not, y’know, a thing? An item?”
He listened to the sounds coming from the kitchen, imagining with amusement an exasperated Caspar coming home to a broken mug and spilled coffee all over the counter and floor. Scarlet seemed to be faring better this time around, for she soon emerged with two mugs of hot java with no sounds of shattering ceramic in her wake. He accepted her offer with a grateful nod and brought it to his lips, sipping experimentally—he’d learned his lesson, after all.
“It’s fine,” he said dismissively, taking another swallow of the liquid that was perhaps a tad bitter for his taste. “Not as good as yours, but I’ve had worse.” He smiled at her question, tilting his head to one side like an intrigued canine. “It’s not teleporting, really,” he justified between sips. “But no, he doesn’t know about my little, uh, hobby. Are you going to fill him in for me?” He chuckled. “To be fair,” he added, “he hasn’t told me about his telekinesis either.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Of course. This son of a bitch would be the one to break the forth wall and challenge a simple statement that she had presented to people for years, one that had never earned her interrogation before. But if he was allowed to be vague, then so was she.
“And yet, it seems I just did.” She’d said airily, disinterested, and certainly not about to indulge him as she left him alone for a moment. He didn’t deserve to be indulged.
After all, the supposed ‘Sandman’ might have come across as being forthright with her, answering her questions and offering explanations at the drop of a pin. But that didn’t make him honest, and she’d be damned if she believed every word that came out of his mouth.
But with any luck, the lorazepam would take effect soon, perhaps after only a few sips. It was only occurring to her as an afterthought that the dosage in his mug might be lethal (really, she had only grabbed the pills that had tumbled out of the plastic amber container and hadn’t bothered to count). But with the amount of sedative dissolved into his beverage, she doubted he’d get through a quarter of the mug before he was out cold on the couch.
“Kicking News? Of course I’ve been there; I attend almost all of Caspar’s gigs. Especially if he anticipates a tough crowd; it’s my job to start the pandemic of cheering to get them going.” Scarlet furrowed her eyebrows and chewed thoughtfully on the inside of the stud just beneath her lip, staring into her coffee as if the placid, brown surface of the beverage was a magic mirror that would give her all of the answers she sought. “Funny that he didn’t mention you, though. I know most of his buds; it isn’t like him to keep it a secret when he meets someone new.”
But it did strike the young woman as rather curious that it had been after his most recent gig in Arlington—the very gig where he and Alair had supposedly met—that Cas had suddenly developed this insomnia. Sleepless that kept him up almost as late as her, cut his temper short and, of late, had even begun to affect his music. He had no idea why, and not even she could divine a cause or a cure in the stars.
As a result, she hadn’t exactly been a peach to be around, either.
“Yeah, yeah; so you both play guitar. I’m sure that’s very special.” Waving off his comment about duets, she took a sip of her coffee, looking entirely bored except for the fingers of her free hand, which were tapping out a nervous, almost urgent rhythm on the back of the couch’s upholstery. The only clue that suggested she wasn’t as laid back as she was trying to come across (which might or might not have something to do with waiting for this bloke to pass out).
“And haven’t we already had this conversation? No, we are not an item. Do we look like an item? Do you see bad Instagram selfies of the two of us plastered on the walls?”
Not that many a girl hadn’t wanted to be with Caspar; he was kind, good-looking, and talented. And yet, though they were friends, Scarlet had only ever seen fit to keep him at arm’s length, so to speak. As if getting close to him in that way would destroy whatever tenuous link between their destinies that she’d managed to establish. “We’re just friends, ok? Not friends with benefits or any weird shit like that, just friends. Is that so hard to believe?”
Scarlet was filled with an odd sense of satisfaction at his admission that Cas hadn’t, in fact, discussed his telekinesis with this guy. After all, it was rather a sensitive topic for him, and as far as she was aware, she was the only person who knew. “I’d love to fill him in,” she mentioned at last, looking up from her coffee, but not at Alair; rather, at his mug, as if she could will the drug to take effect. Damnit, how long had it been already? Almost ten minutes? One of those things had Cas almost unconscious in under two… Realizing she hadn’t finished her thought, Scarlet was quick to clear her throat. “But if I told him, there’s a chance he won’t believe me. So you do me a favor and never bring up that I told you about his telekinesis, and I’ll keep it under wraps that his new bff is the fucking ‘Sandman’—which, incidentally, I still don’t buy.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Alair shrugged at Scarlet’s bemusement. “There’s probably lots of stuff Caspar doesn’t tell you,” he said, not unkindly. “It hasn’t been that long. It probably just slipped his mind.” The look in the Sandman’s bright blue eyes, however, told another story entirely. It wasn’t that he’d prevented his new friend from telling Scarlet about him, no, but he also hadn’t exactly done much to encourage anything akin to a public announcement of their newfound friendship. It was too early a stage in the game to make any guarantees, and with how tricky the situation was—the mysterious happenings around this young musician were anything but simple—he couldn’t afford to make any mistakes via premature arrogance.
He said nothing in response to her quip about guitar playing; if by living with a musician she hadn’t learned by now that it was rare to find someone with whom one could simply jam—one who was good enough to follow a chord progression and in tune enough to improvise against a partner’s line—then she probably never would. He didn’t bother to launch into a defense; that was clearly what she wanted anyway, and he had no desire to oblige the crankier side of her, the one he didn’t particularly want to mess with (even though he was doing it anyway). Gaze straying to her fingertips, which drummed a fast rhythm on the edge of the couch, he raised an eyebrow and glanced up to her. Something was amiss, but apart from her own insecurities he couldn’t figure out what it was.
“It is a little hard to believe,” he admitted with another shrug, his shoulders rising and falling theatrically. “But okay, okay. I’ll take your word for it. He’s pretty popular with the ladies at his gigs, but he doesn’t seem much into them. Figured it was because he was with you or something and you just didn’t want to admit it.” He downed the last of his coffee, swallowing what felt like a few teaspoons of stray grounds, and cleared his throat. “Man, I gotta teach Cas how to make better coffee. Or you should.”
Making a face, he rose to his feet with a stretch, his empty mug dangling from one hooked finger. “Hard to say if he’d believe you,” Alair said casually. “On one hand, he can move things with his fucking mind, so he’d probably be on board with teleporting. Which it isn’t, really.” He raised a brow. “On the other hand, you’re kind of insane. Maybe I shouldn’t believe you.” At her comment about not buying his admission to being the Sandman, he twisted his lips into a sly grin. “You sure slept well this morning, though, didn’t you? After all that coffee, too.”
He shook his head good-naturedly and took a few steps forward towards the kitchen. “I’m going to get some water. That stuff was fuckin' awful. Should I just put this cup in the sink?”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Apparently, making new friends who claimed to be the Sandman and teleported-only-it-wasn’t-really-teleporting was not consequential enough for the stars to take into account.
Then again, they hadn’t been forthcoming with her lately, in regards to Caspar, which meant only one of two things: she was becoming rusty in her abilities (which made no sense; like any skill, it did not become weaker with practice), or they were simply refusing to bend to her wishes.
Either way, it meant that she was currently not in control of her roommate’s destiny. And now she like this—like Alair—was happening, and more and more she was finding herself at a loss as to what to do.
For all his recurring assumption that she and Caspar were dating was beginning to grate on her nerves, she really couldn’t deny that her lifestyle setup probably did seem a tad suspicious. Not only was she living with a very popular, very attractive and very talented local musician, but she was coming across as fiercely overprotective of him, not unlike some insecure, jealous girlfriend. Of course, she was two of those three things… Just no the ‘girlfriend’ part. But he did not need to know the source of her possessiveness of Cas.
“Yeah, well. This is 2013; two people of the opposite sex living in the same damn apartment doesn’t make them married. Or are things different where Sandmen come from? Is there even a plural? I mean, I assume there has to be, because dude, it’s like 3am somewhere else in the world. A bunch of poor bastards are probably wondering why the hell they can’t fall asleep, if you’re the only one of your kind.”
Were it not for the snarky tone of her voice, lending credence to the suspicion that she was just goading and picking at him, her questions might have come across as genuine. But it was clear as day that she still believed that he was bullshitting her, since she really had no reason to believe that he would see fit to tell her the truth.
She made a last minute decision to pretend she didn’t hear the part where he’d assumed that Caspar simply hadn’t wanted to admit to dating her, figuring it was some sort of trap to lure out her abundance of insecurities. Instead she simply said, “Cas doesn’t feel the need to be dating anyone right now. He’s trying to get ahead in his music career; being tied down in a relationship would only hold him back.” That lie left a bitter taste in her mouth. How many times had Caspar come close to falling for some fangirl? And how many times had she been the one to both help him advance, while simultaneously holding him back?
“Wait—so you claim to be the Sandman, and I am the insane one?” She asked, feeling more offended than what was rational by a remark that was only designed to spark her already short temper. “I’ve got news for you, bud; just because I might find you exhausting doesn’t make you the fucking Sandman.” But she was hung up on that comment for far too long… And it took her mind far too long to process his movements, and why it bothered her that he was heading into the kitchen.
“Shit—wait!”
Scarlet very nearly spilled her own coffee, setting it down on an end table her way to the kitchen, but it was already too late: Caspar’s prescription bottle was still wide open, blue dust lining the surface of the counter, next to the spoon she’d used to crush the pills… And Alair could see it all.
“…well,” she began slowly, backing up to put distance between the two of them—edging closer and closer to the front door. There was no telling how he would react. “This is a little awkward, isn’t it…”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
But every match lay dormant until struck, with friction coaxing to life a brilliant, angry flame that erupted with a snap and a spark. Heat like that had a tendency to ignite without warning, blazing into existence even when it seemed the fuel was low or the surface too pristinely smooth. The Sandman was used to those happenings; when one wanders through the shadowy realm of dreams, one never escapes without being ambushed by a nightmare or two. But the thing about being blindsided was that no matter how often you were caught off-guard, the fact remained that it was a surprise each time nevertheless, and no amount of experience could prepare you for the shock itself.
So when the dark-haired young man with the electric blue eyes strode into the kitchen he’d seen only a handful of hours ago to discover not only clean floors and washed dishes, but an open bottle of prescription pills and blue-gray powder strewn beneath a dull silver spoon, he did not know whether to laugh or scream. The pieces fell together almost instantly—the gritty final swallow of his coffee, the bitter aftertaste on his tongue, Scarlet’s sudden interest in keeping him out of the room—she’d tried to poison him. He froze in place before the scene of her crime, posture rigid, mind in a whir, until finally he sprang into motion and scooped the amber cylinder into his fist.
“Lorazepam,” he read stonily, peering through long lashes to study the label. “What were you—how—why? Fuck!” The words stammered from his lips in a current of incredulity. He was completely dumbfounded, unsure how exactly to proceed since he wasn’t sure whether he wanted to laugh at her or wrap his hands around her throat. “How many did you put in there?” He stepped up to her, his alarm obvious in the flash of his azure gaze. “How many?”
The world began to swim before his eyes, the outdated colors bleeding together like watercolors as his lids began to weigh heavy. Alair staggered forward, his balance giving way to sudden groggy fatigue. His shoulder grazed Scarlet’s as he dropped to his knees and then completely to the floor, the strength draining from his limbs as his breaths began to slow. The last thing he saw was the late afternoon light through the window, blurred and bright as his consciousness faded to the velvet black of an infinite night. It was only a moment before his chest fell in an exhale and failed to rise again, his lungs screaming to the deaf ears of his autonomic nervous system—rendered helpless and paralyzed by the fiery redhead’s surreptitious vendetta.
Meanwhile, in the living space of the modest flat, the real, physical Alair—alive, well, and breathing—plucked out a melody to Caspar Brighton’s upbeat progression…all while his redheaded roommate slumbered on in the neighboring room, succumbing to a bizarre nightmare entirely (or almost entirely) of her own invention.
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Scarlet’s jaw dropped, and for the first time for as long as she could remember, the young woman’s tongue was paralyzed with a loss for words.
There was nothing to be done about the conundrum in which she found herself, and it was her own fault for not thinking it through more carefully before executing such a plan. The evidence was in front of her, and in front of him, as clear as day and simultaneously suffocating. The anger on his face was palpable, blue eyes blazing like the underside of a flame, and the redhead found herself momentarily fearing for her own life.
“Look, I…” She tried again, sifting through layers of reason and irrational thought, as well as a thick blanketing of the sudden onset of guilt that made it difficult to breathe. But no matter how deeply she mined for an excuse, an explanation, anything to save her from the situation in which she currently found herself, there was nothing to be had.
She had poisoned a man—not to kill him, but she had poisoned him, intentionally and without regret. That is, until now.
Swallowing thickly, Scarlet took a staggering step back and shook her head. “I don’t know. Some pills just fell out and I… I didn’t count.” That much was the truth, but it was meaningless because it didn’t change what had happened. It didn’t change what she’d done, or the fact that he’d consumed the drug that she’d crushed into his coffee.
It didn’t change the fact that he was suddenly looking unsteady, falling forward…
“Fuck.” Scarlet caught him around the shoulders, easing the dark-haired man to his knees. “Alair? Don’t do this to me… I’ll call an ambulance, all right?” When she tilted his chin up, trying to meet his eyes, they weren’t even open, and he sounded as though he was struggling for breath. “No. No, no, no, don’t do this. I didn’t realize… I didn’t count them!” She slapped the side of his face, trying to rouse him from a sleep that would not let go: that would sooner take him under.
“Alair, please, open your eyes…” She was frightened, for the first time in a long time, truly, genuinely frightened of what lay ahead. She couldn’t change the fate of a dead man, and she couldn’t conceal homicide: how would she even get the body down flights of stairs? “I’m sorry… I am sorry, okay! I didn’t mean for this to happen! Just… Just open your fucking eyes!”
That was when Scarlet opened her eyes.
The young woman with artificially crimson hair sat straight up in bed, coated in a thin sheen of perspiration from the humid summer morning—or, rather, afternoon, as the clock was flashing 2:36PM. Had she really been asleep for so long…? No wonder her mind had plagued her with such a vivid, fucked up dream. Scarlet might have had her problems, and it wasn’t always obvious as to what she might do or how she might react, but poisoning someone? That was messed up; even for her.
“Cas?” She stumbled out of bed, barely catching her footing in time to make it to the door and wander into the cooler hallway, throwing any care for her dishevelled appearance to the wind, but it was the last of her worries, anyway. Because when a familiar chord progression broke the otherwise silence of the apartment, her heart plummeted to her stomach. And when she turned the corner, she knew precisely what—or, rather, whom—she would see before her eyes registered the familiar blue eyes…
“Oh, hey—sorry, Red. Did we wake you?” The music stopped. Familiar words spilled from the lips of her roommate, and he didn’t wait for her to respond before standing from the couch, turning his guitar around so that it sat between his shoulder blades. “Sorry I don’t have time for formal introductions, I’ve got to bail and get to Jimmy’s to set up for tonight, so in a nut-shell—Scarlet, this is Alair. Alair, this is Scarlet, my roommate. See you both at the gig tonight, I hope?”
Scarlet’s hand shot out of its own free will the second he turned his back, seizing his wrist before she even knew why, or what to say. “Cas…” She began, wondering if there was a way to express how she didn’t want to be left alone with this guy without coming across as clingy or just plain pathetic.
Ultimately, her mind drew a complete blank and she simply let go, meeting his confused, green-eyed gaze. “Scarlet, you look like you just saw the dead. Maybe sleep’s not good for you; keep up the night-owl thing.” He tossed her a teasing sort of smile before leaving her alone in the apartment with potentially the last person with whom she ever wanted to be stranded.
The soft sound of the front door clicking shut actually made her jump.
“…so…” She cleared her throat, watching Alair from where he sat, with his own guitar. “Weird question, but… what are the chances that my mind’s fucking with me, and if I just go back to bed right now, you’ll be gone when I wake up?”
Posted: Wed May 15, 2013 11:30 am
The occurrence was actually rather commonplace, and perhaps he would be disturbed if he weren’t so accustomed to it by now. He was an uninvited guest crashing a delicate soiree, and even when he thought he was being subtle and courteous he often found himself underestimating his intrusion. Death did not play by the same rules in those worlds, after all, and in the case of nightmares he acted more like a bouncer than anything else. The thought of his stately brother Amrial acting as a glorified security guard never failed to put a smile on Alair’s lips, but the Sandman had no ground beneath his feet to hold; it wasn’t his living, breathing life on the line, and as much as it was his duty to be in the minds of his subjects, he was rarely actually welcomed.
He’d died in all kinds of ways. Asphyxiation from drug overdose was actually nothing new, but that didn’t stop it from being a miserable experience. Even as his body lived on safe and sound in the next room, it didn’t make his subconscious presence any happier to be lying on the carpet in Scarlet’s dreams, the life seeping from his collapsed form in a torrent just slow enough to be torturous. The fact that she was actively slapping the side of his face while he lay paralyzed did not make it any easier, either—a dream, despite being exactly that, was still real until wakefulness rescued you from its clutches. For all intents and purposes, he was helpless until that moment came, which was, incidentally, all up to the redhead now.
Distantly, he was flattered by her concern, a little relieved that the murderous impression she’d suddenly carved with her stunt proved to be spur-of-the-moment and not premeditated (although he also realized spontaneity in a sociopath was not exactly a reassuring quality either). A display of guilt was a good sign, however; she clearly didn’t want him to die even if it was only out of worry for her own well-being and peace of mind. If he could have shrugged, he would have. But for now, he could only listen to her stammers as though they were half-sung syllables to the rhythm of his slowing heart.
Relief from his other-worldly death came almost as suddenly as the attack itself had begun, and the real-Alair that sat strumming on the sofa disguised his audible sigh with a drawn-out chord that concluded their jam. “Nice,” Cas commented, nodding his approval to a smiling Sandman. “We should write that down, man.”
Alair, still a little breathless, narrowed his eyes in agreement. “I’m on it,” he said enthusiastically. “Go ahead and get ready for the gig. Should be there.”
As if on cue, Scarlet rounded the corner—only for this take, her face held a pallor that was almost sickly. Cas’s description fit her expression perfectly; she did indeed look like she’d seen the dead, with her sleep-swollen eyes, paleness, and mussed hair. Before she could speak, the musician was headed for the door, dismissing himself in a much less panicked manner than he had just moments ago in Scarlet’s dream.
When he was out the door, Alair folded his hands together and draped them at the waist of his guitar, raising his eyebrows above a smirk. “Nice to meet you, Scarlet,” he drawled, making no mention of her dream-experience. He was dressed differently than she would have seen him then, but he wore the same hat atop his head.
When she went on, he made an effort to look puzzled. “What?” he questioned, furrowing his brow. “What are you talking about? I mean, I’ll leave if you want me to.” He eased to the edge of the sofa, placing his guitar in the hardshell case at his feet. He closed each buckle with a crisp snap, one at a time, until at last he looked up to see her still standing there. “What’s wrong with you? I was invited in this time.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
But… Why had Caspar invited him? What was the real story behind this new friendship?
Scarlet hardly moved an inch as she stood there, staring into space while she contemplated the details of her dream. Unfortunately, dreams (though perhaps it would be more accurate to call them nightmares…) such as these were not uncommon for the young woman. She had always had them, and had always figured they were simply an ill-fated side-effect of her dealings with the stars, and their pull on peoples’ daily lives. She had dreamed up possible futures more than once, typically before a dire turn of events was about to take place. Times when she had not paid as much attention to the stars as she should have, when she had been deaf to their whisperings, and as such revealed their warnings to her subconscious.
Which all made perfect sense, because Caspar’s destiny had been blind to her for weeks now. It was suddenly like a closed book, locked with a key that was not in her possession. But what remained unclear was that, if the stars truly intended to conceal his destiny from her view… Why had she had that dream? Who had triggered such a vivid warning?
“I… I just…” Once again, Scarlet found herself tripping over her tongue, searching for words when there were none. There was always the possibility that it had been nothing more than a fucked up dream, a result of trying to sleep with caffeine in her veins. Of course she’d have dreamed of Alair; he’d startled her, frustrated her, and perplexed her, just moments before she’d closed her eyes and tried to give way to some form of unconsciousness.
There was no reason for him to know what she’d dreamt, and yet, by the tension of the muscles in her face, she didn’t have to see a mirror to know that guilt was written all over it, as conspicuous as if the word were scrawled in indelible marker across her forehead.
Clearing her throat, the redhead ran her fingers through her mussed hair. It was a curious attempt, trying to make oneself relax, forcing the shoulders to lower and the jaw to unclench, and the tightness around the eyes to dissipate. She had no idea how good a job she was doing, but if she was to shake the remnants of the awful dream, she had to at least try and convince herself to chill out and recognize she was in no immediate danger.
She hoped, anyway.
“Sorry. I’m not used to sleeping in or… sleeping a lot. At all. It fucks with my head.” She ran her fingers over her eyes, knowing the lids were swollen and that she probably looked like the very ‘dead’ that Caspar had accused her of seeing. “I had no idea you and Cas were friends… He usually lets me in on his new acquaintances.”
That was only half true; the stars would tell her before he did, and sometimes he chose not to tell her at all. Those were the friendships, the relationships that worried her; she tended to put an end to those ones before they could blossom into something more extreme or out of control.
Angling her body towards the kitchen, she could smell the smoky aroma of coffee; not fresh, but not more than about ten minutes old, aging to a dark roast in the carafe. “I need… I’m going to get coffee. Want any?” She did not wait for his reply before leaving him alone in the living room, and the irony of her request did not occur to her until she saw Caspar’s prescription of lorazepam next to the sink. Scarlet’s stomach dropped and she felt suddenly faint, the imagery of the dream weighing on her mind. “Fuck…” She murmured, her hand moving to the tap so she could splash cold water on her eyes. “The hell is wrong with me today…”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Gone was the characteristic smirk, however. In nonchalance’s stead he wore a very plain expression, betraying little of his indecision and littler still of the anger that bubbled just beneath. He watched her carefully, studying her hardened expression as though reading the fine print of a life-altering contract—because for all he knew, that’s precisely what he was doing. Despite the surrealism, reading a person in a dream was far easier than in reality, but consequences for errors were far more dire. She did seem stricken; the way her mouth was pulled into a tight thin line, she seemed more wary than fiery this time around. And she did, as far as Alair could tell, look a little guilty—hell, more than a little guilty. She looked just as she’d sounded in the dream, begging for him to stay with her, not to die.
Well, he hadn’t died. Here he was. She’d gotten her wish in a roundabout way, but she had another thing coming if she thought he was going to accept this new truth nicely. She’d tried to kill him. Attempted murder wasn’t something to dismiss with a wave and a batted lash. The Sandman knew better than anyone that dreams, even nightmares, always had some basis in reality, and they spoke truths deeper than many cared to admit. That’s what made them so terrifying…it wasn’t always the monsters and the shadows that inspired such paralyzing fear in the minds of the dreamers.
“Maybe the cure would be to sleep more often?” he heard himself suggest, the words leaving his lips before he could stop them. His voice was calm, his tone reasonable, but if Scarlet had known him for longer than the duration of a cup of coffee she would have realized just how startling that would have been. “It’s not good to deprive yourself. Coffee’s not a good substitute.”
He bristled when he offered her a cup of the fateful beverage, but she was already out of the room and into the kitchen before he could respond. Biting his lower lip to keep from lashing out, he rose to his feet and strode quickly to the doorway after her. He smiled, but it was a strange sort of expression, almost sarcastic. “I can get it myself,” he offered, hostility hiding behind cheerfulness. He almost sounded like a normal person, he mused. Whether she would notice the difference from their interactions earlier that morning, he couldn’t say, but he also didn’t particularly care. He wanted her to feel guilty.
Stepping behind her, he made a show of reaching over to slide the amber prescription bottle out of the way. “Don’t want to spill any of those,” he chuckled, tightening the lid before placing it in the corner. “You know, maybe I’ll just have some water. Then I’ll be on my way.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
The longer she dwelled on it, the more it put her on edge, put eggshells under her feet, so she dropped the thought like an apple that she discovered too late housed an earthworm. “Yeah… sleep and I don’t get along very well. Never have, since I was a kid.” Scarlet shrugged her shoulders as she shook water droplets from her hands, forgetting that he was in the other room and could not perceive the gesture. “Weird dreams and all... they never went away. It’s better just to stay awake and deal with the hallucinations inspired by sleep deprivation.”
Why she was telling him all this, offering the vaguest glimpse into a past that she hardly brought up, even to Caspar. It was, in a way, her attempt to come across as friendly. After all, she didhave a conscience (although it wasn’t always evident), and she had just killed the poor bastard in a dream… Was it so strange for her to feel a tad culpable?
She didn’t argue when he offered to get his own coffee, and simply handed him a clean mug from the drying rack in the sink. But she didn’t miss the change in his cadence; not unfriendly, per se but… Far from impressed. As if she had done something to offend him. Had it been the comment about hoping he wouldn’t be there when she woke up again? Alair hadn’t struck her as being the touch sort; he had certainly taken her insults and jibes in stride the other night. Could she have caused him to reach the brink of his tolerance by such a harmless remark (for which, in all fairness, she had apologized).
And to think, she was just starting to wind down, to accept that this guy might be a little eccentric but was otherwise harmless, when he was behind her. And his arm reached for the pill bottle.
“What’re you…” Scarlet’s body stiffened and her heart raced, as snippets of the dream flashed in her mind. He’d fallen to his knees, his eyes had closed, he’d stopped breathing…
Alair moved the pill bottle out of her way—just out of her reach. A simple gesture, with a simple explanation, and yet…
No. There were no coincidences. She knew that for a fact.
“…excuse me?” Wound tight as a spring, she turned to face him, startled to see that he was only inches away. Her mouth opened and closed, struggling for words, but her tongue wouldn’t move; it would have no part in excuses, and it would not ask questions on her part, conveniently removing itself from the situation.
But it didn’t matter; she didn’t need words. She didn’t need to speak, because in searching those electric blue eyes, she felt an eerie wave of understanding pass between them. As if he knew what had her so shaken, and exactly what she was talking about.
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
So she wasn’t wrong in her suspicion of his expression, his sudden shift in demeanor. In a strange way, he was prepared, but for what it was uncertain. It was more that he was on edge, playing a game with such tension that it almost wasn’t for play at all—the anticipation of which filled the room like a noxious gas. He could see it affecting her too; they had both donned roles of feigned reception and friendliness, as though nothing at all had happened, and their acts only served to make larger the elephant in the room. In the kitchen. In the saturated honey-colored pill bottle. The pill bottle that blazed bright in his peripheral vision.
“You should make friends with sleep,” he offered, a little coldly. He took the mug she offered him and turned on the faucet, waiting a moment before filling the ceramic piece to the absolute brim. He brought it to his lips and swallowed, downing half of it before he resurfaced to continue. “Trust me, it makes life easier.”
He would have gone on, but the distraction of the amber plastic threatened to drive him mad. When he moved it, wrapping it in his fist to shove it in the far corner, her gasp told him everything he needed to know—she remembered the dream, and she remembered it well. The way her posture went rigid, the way she froze still as a marble statue, the way her eyes flashed a combination of fear and guilt—it was the effect he’d wanted, but he was not yet satiated. He needed to know why.
When she abruptly turned, he was right there, inches from her, looking down into her stare with eyes that flashed a fiery blue. For a long moment, he said nothing, simply allowed his gaze to bore into hers as though dredging the depths for answers to questions unspoken. But as soon as she spoke again, his expression was all threat, complete with furrowed brows, clenched jaw, and an electric, accusatory glare.
He took a step forward, forcing her back without touching her. After a stretch of burning silence that felt too long and too short at once, he heaved an aggressive sigh exhaled through flared nostrils. “Scarlet,” he said at last, his voice syrupy with venom. “You tried to kill me.” A statement, not a question. “Why?” he demanded, raising his voice a little. “Why the fuck didn’t you just ask me to fucking leave?”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
“Hey, at least it’s self-inflicted insomnia,” She tried to lighten the mood with a more upbeat tone, even dragged the corner of her mouth into a smile. “I’m sure I could sleep if I want to. It’s just more convenient not to.”
The forced cheerfulness of her inflection did nothing to cut through the ice in the air, though, and Alair looked anything but amused. His arctic glare impaled her like the icicles that laced his voice, smooth with a jagged edge, and so very, very cold.
“What’s your problem?” Scarlet found herself staggering backwards, putting distance between the two of them. Her frantic mind attempted to judge just how quickly she could make it to the door if things looked as though they could get ugly (and already, they looked to be on a very unattractive trajectory.
“Scarlet, you tried to kill me.”
Those words halted her, froze her feet to the sticky linoleum floor, paralyzed her legs and her tongue and her stare. But she had… It had just been…
“What…?” It was the only word that her tongue could seem to form, but she was helpless to look away from his accusing blue eyes. What was he talking about? She’d woken up, offered him coffee…
“…oh my god.” The words were murmured more to herself, a thought that found its way to her lips and demanded it be spoken aloud. “But you… How do you know…”
So it truly hadn’t been any coincidence that her dream had mirrored the morning’s events, minute by minute, at least up until she had walked into the kitchen—and instead of staying seated in the living room, he had seen fit to follow.
Had he actually caused the dream? But why? Was this all some form of fucked up test? And moreover, how the fuck had he gotten inside of her head? Scarlet felt heat creep into her cheeks, rivaling the artificial colour of her long hair. Dreams were private, they were intimate, and that he had peered into hers as if he were watching a fucking television drama infuriated her.
Inhaling, the young woman breathed in through her nose to steady herself, placing a hand on the counter in some attempt to reconnect with the earth, get her frightened head out of the clouds and out of the flashbacks of that dream. “Look, I don’t know how the fuck you know what I dreamed,” the fury of her voice was enough to rival that of his own, and she didn’t back down from his stare, “but if you think I’m going to let you bully me—”
In her ire, the hand on the counter had unconsciously begun to curl into a fist. But she wasn’t looking, and hadn’t taken note of the bread knife sitting on the counter, from the sandwich Cas had made earlier that morning. And she didn’t know what was happening until she felt serrated stainless steel bite into the soft flesh of her palm.
Scarlet swore an oath and let go of the sharp object and grabbed the first tea towel she could find, one that was hanging off the oven door, and that was hopefully clean…
Broken mugs, broken skin… What the fuck was this guy, a walking hex?
“Look, I already told you, I get some real fucked up dreams.” She snapped, all of that fear and uncertainty surrendering to anger and frustration. “I always have. I can’t control what happens in them, I can’t control what I do in them half the time. But you want a fucking answer? Then my best guess is that you are creepy as hell, and I was scared as all hell because I didn’t expect to see you, and I didn’t know what you wanted. So apparently, I tried to kill you—explains it, doesn’t excuse it, but it’s a fucking dream!” Her heart hammered against her ribcage as she clutched the tea towel to staunch the bleeding from her hand. “But guess what? For better or worse, you’re alive and well, and I’m the one who’s going to have to figure out how the fuck to wash dishes with one hand for the next week. So as far as I’m concerned, we’re fucking even.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Seeing her scramble away from him, he felt a distant pang of regret, as though perhaps he was going too far in frightening her. Yes, it was his intention to make her feel uncomfortable, and deservedly so—but at the same time, he wasn’t the sort of villain to strike the typical fear in the hearts of his victims. If it weren’t for the panicked, surprised expression on her face, he would have thought her incapable of that kind of terror, and for a moment he considered backing away. But she’d been the one to inspire this; she’d been the one to bring it on. One did not directly threaten the Sandman’s life without some kind of consequence, especially when he’d done nothing to deserve such punishment.
“You are insane,” he went on sourly. “You have to be! Who in their right fucking mind would crush up that many pills and feed them to a guy unprovoked?” By the end of the sentence, his voice was loud. He brought it back down, but sacrificing volume only meant his tone became more poisonous. “Cas invited me in here as a fucking friend, and all you had to do was tell me to leave. You think it’s a better idea to fucking kill me?”
The words sounded so ridiculous coming from his mouth that he bit back an angry, spiteful laugh. The smile on his face, though incredulous in nature, was dangerous nevertheless, and he found himself shaking his head in an effort to make sense of her outlandish actions. Her reaction confused him even further, however, as her fear transitioned rapidly to an ire to rival his own. “You know exactly how I know,” he retorted, his furrowed brow casting dark shadows over his bright blue eyes. He took a step forward, closing the distance just as her fist began to wrap around the knife on the counter. Mistaking it for an upcoming threat, he reached out to wrap his hand around her slender forearm to stop her, but it was too late—a flash of crimson caught his eye, the blade having severed her flesh.
His resolve softened for a moment while she spun to retrieve a towel, but he made no move to help her. When she turned back to face him, he had resumed his seething, his shoulders rising and falling with his rapid breathing. “You don’t know a fucking thing about dreams,” he spat, his own hands balling into fists at his sides. “A dream doesn’t just happen. A dream is born of truth, whether you want to face that truth or not. You control more than you think. If you slept more often, you could practice that.” He gritted his teeth and turned to the side, casting his gaze downward. “But don’t think for a minute that we’re even, Scarlet. Now let me see that hand.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
She was trying—actually trying—to temper her rage. But even though the crimson shade of her hair came from a bottle labeled Poppyfields Red, the saying about redheads having hot tempers apparently ran true, and she couldn’t find it in her to calm down any more than to lower the volume of her voice a few decibels, if for other reason than she didn’t want the neighbours to start complaining.
“Look. You don’t deserve an explanation, as far as I’m concerned, but it’s like this.” Gripping the tea towel more tightly in her injured palm, Scarlet exhaled, as if she were trying to rid her body of the toxin that was anger. It was sickening, the way it made her feel, and yet… It was so characteristic of her.
“Sparing you the details, let’s just say I’ve spent a lot of time on the streets.” The young woman hated that she felt the need to explain herself, but in spite of her white-hot rage, the guilt from her dream continued to linger and weigh on her chest, constricting her ribcage with every breath she took. “Before Cas and I decided to share an apartment, I hung out with the wrong people in all the wrong places. Not good people; the kind that make you think they’re your friend and that they really give two shits about your well-being, but then you find out later—often the hard way—that they have another agenda. And it usually isn’t in your best interests.”
This was doing nothing to temper her anger. Explaining this, thinking about it, recalling her darker days before Caspar had saved her from herself, only inspired pain and anger… More and more anger. The times she’d narrowly avoided getting knifed, getting drugged, her face meeting the sharp peaks of someone’s knuckles because they didn’t like what she said, because they thought she was trying to steal their boyfriend or, more often than not, because they were fucked up on too many illegal substances to even realize what they were doing.
And then there were, of course, all of the times that she hadn’t seen the stars in time, and hadn’t avoided any of the above incidents…
“So you died in a dream. Well buddy, I’ve got news for you: it’s a hell of a lot scarier almost dying when you’re awake.” Scarlet glared. He didn’t know her, didn’t know what caused her to make the decisions that she did, and was demanding she reopen old wounds (while inflicting new ones!) so as to explain. But this experience, these memories, it was all the source behind her over the top reaction.
And the reason why she didn't sleep; who knew what could happen to you while you slept? It was an old rhythm into which she'd fallen years before, one that was just too hard to shake. “And I’m sorry if my primary reaction to some creep showing up in my home, my save haven, kind of makes me go off my rocker. I had no way of knowing if you would leave if I’d asked, and even if you had, it wouldn’t mean anything, because you apparently have a unique means of getting around. But if I’ve learned anything, it’s do or die. And I’m not ready to die yet.”
It made sense, then, what he told her about dreams. If it had been reality, and if she hadn’t had that dream to begin with to shake out of her the insane possibility of killing him… Then there was a very good chance she likely would have.
Fuck it… None of this would even be happening if she could read anything about Caspar’s current life in the bloody stars!
Her eyes narrowed into a gaze of pure suspicion when he asked to see her hand, given the fact he looked as though he would prefer to kill her, and she didn’t comply right away. Instead she took the towel away from the injury, noting with disappointment that there was no way it would ever be white again, and examined the diagonal gash across her palm. She wasn’t squeamish, but the blade had gone deeper than she’d thought, and the laceration resembled something of a still, red river.
“…there are bandages in the cupboard to your right.” She informed him and sighed out through her nose. “Or, you know. Gauze and duct tape. Same difference.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
The irony of his words, of course, was completely lost on him.
“I admit I was a little bit forward this morning,” he said, more weary now than angry. “I shouldn’t have played with you like that. But seriously, Scarlet, the fuck?” He placed a hand on the edge of the countertop, leaning against his knuckles in an attempt to quell the frustrated trembles in his fingertips. “What were you going to do with me, anyway? Because from the sound of it, you didn’t exactly have a plan for when I fucking dropped dead on your carpet.”
He watched as she seemed to withdraw, perhaps trying to calm the rage that had, like his own, boiled over in a burst of angry flame within. She looked as though she had gotten over the groggy aftermath of her late-afternoon slumber, but in the stead of sleepy hazy she wore an expression of absolute hatred. It wasn’t anything he would have described as murderous, but he kept his distance nevertheless and did his best to calculate her movements, as though he could control her limbs like her telekinetic roommate could control inanimate objects. If only. But the Sandman’s power was limited only exclusively to the realm of dreams, and in the here and now he had only his wits to protect him.
Her efforts to calm down were negated by the continuation of her memoir at his prodding, and he almost felt bad for her having to dig up old memories. Almost. But her explanations, however touching they were meant to be, however much she wanted him to feel sorry for her, however much she wanted him to buy those excuses and be on his merry way, did not mean he was going to oblige her sob-story wishes. Instead, his brow furrowed deeper, his refutation manifesting on his tongue before he could think to stop it.
“I’m not ready to die either,” he said icily, “but that’s not your call. None of it is.” He thought of his brother then, of the stormy gleam Alair had witnessed in Amrial’s eyes when he had to spell out that terrible truth on more than one occurrence. Sounds better coming from Amrial, the Sandman thought irritably, fully aware that his elder brother’s dulcet baritone and stalwart tranquility could make a string of curses into a mellifluous poem. But he left it at that, saying nothing further. He knew better than most that some stories were best left untold, or at least under wraps until the appropriate moment arose to reopen those sensitive wounds. And besides, some of his ire had ebbed.
Wordlessly, he reached over to the cupboard to the right and pulled down a package of individually wrapped gauze patches, then retrieved a roll of silver-gray duct tape from the shelf below. Without asking, he reached for her arm, only this time his touch was tender, caring. His blue eyes still held their exasperated gleam, but his gestures were in soft, stark contrast to the hardness in his expression.
Using the discarded towel, he dabbed away the blood pooling in her palm and tossed it back to the countertop, cradling the back of her hand in his. With his unoccupied hand, he unwrapped a swatch of gauze and pressed it promptly to the red line on her flesh, using light pressure from his fingers to dissuade the bleeding. But that wasn’t the only thing he did to alleviate the injury; tapping the reserve of energy inside him—a stockpile of invisible electric substance harnessed from the firing impulses of dreaming neurons—he numbed the afflicted area on her skin with his own design of local anesthesia, freezing her pain firings in their path.
Still saying nothing, he opened another square of gauze and ripped it down the center, wrapping the newly-created strips around her hand beneath her thumb and securing those with small pieces of duct tape.
“Go sit down,” he told her quietly, gesturing to the living room. “I’ll clean this up.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Alair was right, and if she could have been more furious, she would have been.
“A little too forward? You invaded my fucking dream.” The redhead snapped, eyes widening. “I don’t care if you’re the fucking Sandman, you don’t just flip around in other peoples’ dreams because you can! What goes on inside someone’s head is private. It’s a violation of privacy to see what’s happening in there when they’re asleep.”
What aggravated her most of all, above his attitude and the fact he’d trespassed in her dream, was the way he looked at her when she’d tried to explain the nature behind her less-than-sane reaction in the unconscious world of her dreams. He looked at her like he thought she expected pity.
On the contrary, that was the last thing she wanted. Even Caspar had yet to be filled in on the details of her street life because she didn’t want pity, and the only reason she had been up front with Alair was because he had demanded an explanation. That was the only reason.
Well, on top of still feeling a tad guilty, perhaps…
If her hand weren’t injured, she might have extended her arm and slapped him, just for the way he was looking at her. Sure, street life had messed her up a little, but it had also made her strong. She was proud that she’d survived it; it made her feel independent and capable; tough, not soft. She hadn’t wept, in fact, hadn’t shed so much as a single tear since the day Caspar had helped her very narrowly avoid arrest.
That day, she had cried a lot when he wasn’t looking. And not because she was sad, but that she was grateful there were still people in the world who would do things like that for her.
When her unwanted guest retrieved the duct tape and gauze from the cupboard, she held out her opposite hand, expecting him to hand it to her. Instead, he placed it on the counter and reached for her arm.
The reaction ingrained in the fight-or-flight, animal part of her brain was to flinch when someone reached for her, and she did, though not quite in time to be beyond his reach. She startled easily and trusted far less easily; there were even some times when Caspar made her flinch, and she always felt terrible for it, because he would never hurt her.
“I think I can handle it myself.” She murmured, but had a hunch that Alair wasn’t listening (or of he was, that he was ignoring her), because he didn’t let go. How he could clear one extreme and then the other, first advancing on her like he meant to hurt her and then taking her arm so gently because he wanted to help? As confusing as the young woman realized she was, he wasn’t much easier to read.
Sometime between dabbing the blood from her hand and securing the gauze with duct tape (and it came as a surprise to her that he didn’t pass judgement on her less than conventional bandaging methods), the stinging throb of her severed skin came to a halt, like her hand hadn’t been injured at all. Her eyes redirected to his face, wondering if it was something he had done, but he was concentrating on securing the gauze on her hand, and she couldn’t see whatever his eyes might reveal.
She was apt to comply when he told her to go sit down, if for no other reason than because being angry exhausted her, but something stopped her in her tracks halfway, and she paused, but didn’t turn to face him again.
“…I’d have called an ambulance.” Her voice was softer, calmer now. It was the answer to his previous question, what she’d have done after he’d collapsed on the carpet, lifeless, unmoving. “And I’d have to have told them what happened… Because I don’t think I could live with myself knowing I’d killed someone; I’m not exactly cut out for murder...”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
But that wasn’t entirely it, either. He didn’t pity her, he didn’t feel sorry for her, he didn’t even want to know the rest of what she wasn’t saying. But something in her words resonated with him in a way he couldn’t explain, a way that transcended their rage and traversed the millennia to pierce the core of him with its poignancy. What it meant, he couldn’t be sure, but it was there all the same, prompting the sudden shift in manner and easing of his tone. When she flinched from his touch, he loosened his grip just enough to reassure her he meant no harm, retaining his grasp so she wouldn’t pull away and bleed all over the floor again.
He knew she was capable of handling it by herself, but her words fell on deaf ears. He wasn’t ignoring her so much as he was absorbed in his own thoughts, too busy contemplating her revelations and what they implied. When he tied off the gauze and pressed the duct tape to the last piece of bandage, he slowly released her hand and stepped back, avoiding her gaze as he crumpled up the plastic packaging of the makeshift medical supplies. Relieved when she obeyed his command without question, he tossed the remnants towards the garbage can and picked up the bloodied towel to mop up the droplets that had splattered like red fireworks on the shiny white floor.
He hadn’t noticed her pause on her way back to the living room, so when her words interrupted the silence of their argument’s aftermath, he looked up with a start from where he knelt on the linoleum. I would have called an ambulance. The admission conjured a pang of guilt that struck him in the chest. Well…maybe she wasn’t so murderous, then, if she was at least demonstrating some retrospective remorse. He stared at the back of her head, studying the waves of bright red tresses as she continued.
“The thing about dreams,” he said quietly, looking down as he mopped up the rest of the blood on the floor, “is like I said. They all come with a kernel of truth.” He rose to his feet, draping the wet, pink-stained towel over the edge of the sink, and followed her to the living room.
“I wasn’t invading your privacy,” he told her truthfully, seeking her gaze as he lowered himself to the edge of the sofa. “Even I must come from somewhere, some truth. Whatever you want to believe, my intentions weren’t to spy on you. Some part of you conjured me there, and I played the part.” A sigh lifted and dropped his shoulders. “Thanks for not actually murdering me, though. That would have bummed me out.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Shaking her head, she wandered back into the living room and collapsed on the couch, tired all over again from the confrontation. Part of her was reluctant to let him clean up the blood she’d spilled on the floor (ironically, her blood and not his), but he had already insisted, and she had already quietly accepted.
“…so you really are the fucking Sandman.” Her voice was backed by nothing but dumbfounded curiosity; even the profanity sounded as common and placid as any other word (although she spouted enough of it spontaneously that after a while, it did become normalized). “I honestly thought you were the crazy one. I mean, having inhuman abilities is one thing; Caspar can move objects with his mind. But, I mean… the Sandman? What does that even make you? Human? Sorry, this is all just really weird for me… which is saying a lot, coming from someone with a telekinetic housemate.”
He caught her attention when he started to go on about dreams again, namely because they were afflictions that she’d suffered since childhood. Since before her mother had passed away.
“So you really think I’d have killed you?” She wrinkled her nose and stared at a television that wasn’t on, seeing her reflection in the smudged glass. Good thing it was too dark to make out the details; she was fairly certain she looked like crap. “You know that wasn’t the intent, right? I was going to knock you out and call the police on your ass… Which, now that I say it, doesn’t make much sense. But that’s just dream logic for you.”
Shrugging, she looked at him sidelong, contemplating a question that she was eager to ask, since he was probably the only person who could give her an answer.
“So, if you’re the Sandman, and you’re such an expert on dreams… How do I make them stop?” The inquiry had sounded far less ridiculous in her head than it did passing her lips, but it was already out there, so she rolled with it. “I mean, recurring ones, prophetic ones… Ones that leave you feeling exhausted when you wake up. Or too scared to fall asleep.” Scarlet couldn’t say in confidence that she quite trusted him enough with the details, but she imagined he got the gist of it. And anyway, she’d already admitted to being plagued by the shapes and images of her subconscious mind.
“I think I’d have a much less rocky relationship with sleep if I didn’t have to dream. Hell, I think I’d be a much more tolerable person to be around.” The flat grin that graced her face suggested she wasn’t joking, and she self-consciously toyed with the edges of the gauze. “I’m glad I didn’t actually kill you, either. I mean, if you are who you say you are, I figured you’re probably the best person to ask.” And if he could tell her how to stop dreaming, then he’d earn a few more points of respect, in her book.
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Decision-making, too, was another one of those avenues down which waited only confusion and illogic. And what was perhaps the worst of it was that such dilemmas often manifested in dreams and lingered in wakefulness, haunting their dreamers like ghosts from false memories. The deep personal basis for such things was why so many people awoke in the middle of the night half-convinced that the monster they’d escaped was still after them, that what they’d seen was not an unconscious hallucination but rather an actuality captured by remembrance. It made sense that Scarlet should experience some blurring of the two realities, especially considering the similarity in setting and character when she transitioned from nightmare to consciousness.
Alair was no exception to that rule. Practice made it easier to distinguish, of course, as each world carried with it a sense akin to sight or smell that he could identify relatively quickly after centuries of repetition, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t sympathize with Scarlet’s plight. Perhaps he had been a little harsh. She deserved it, surely, but he had never been one to revel in another’s pain or suffering unless there was a distinct purpose. In this bizarre case, he could identify nothing that wasn’t a stretch. Even a simple learning her lesson seemed childish and inappropriate, especially in light of her perfectly logical and un-dreamlike recount of her motives.
“I’m only sometimes the fucking Sandman,” he said, a bit of genuine amusement slipping into his voice this time. He leaned back in the chair, resting his ankle on his knee as he reclined. “Usually I’m just the regular Sandman.” The flicker of a smirk ignited on his features, a signal that the worst of his anger had faded. He interrupted his chuckle by clearing his throat, glancing to the wounded redhead with a new look that was half-serious, half-curious. “It’s really not that interesting. Being the Sandman makes me the Sandman, but yes, a man. Human. With a few quirks. Or perks. Rhyme unintentional.”
He sighed, this time less irritation than exhaustion. Leaning forward, he reached to the coffee table to wrap his fingers around his crystal glass, bringing the small vessel of emerald liquid to his lips. “Good to know you didn’t actually want to kill me,” he commented, looking at her as he took a sip. “Still creepy, though. Seriously, Scarlet. Fucking creepy. Even if one of those human perks of mine is not actually being affected by narcotics.”
He chuckled to himself. “It’s more complicated than you make it sound,” he told her in response to her question. “I need more information. It’s not as easy as waving my hand over your head and telling your subconscious to settle down. Wish it was.” He took another sip of absinthe, contemplating. “What sort of dreams do you have most often?”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
“Is there really a difference between the fucking Sandman and the regular Sandman?” She quipped, curling her fingers around the gauze. “And for the record, Lorazepam isn’t a narcotic. Just a really fucking addictive sedative. I’m not even sure that an overdose would kill you so much as just make you really sick, but let’s not test that theory.” Rolling her shoulders back, she went on: “The doc prescribed them to Cas for really intense stage fright a few years ago—and if you let on that I told you, that, I will kill you—but even a small dose can make you drowsy and lose time. So he never took them; just sucked it up and got over it on his own.” With a little celestial intervention on her part, but she let Caspar attribute all of the credit to his will power. After all, she didn’t do what she did to be revered as some kind of savior.
Despite that this was the perfect opportunity to consult an expert on dreams (who wasn’t some judgmental shrink), the redhead almost found herself regretting having brought it up at all. Because it made her think about them, and thinking about them made her stomach hurt, made her head hurt, and overall made her feel vulnerable and exposed. But the topic was already breached, and if this guy could help her put a few demons to rest… “…in a nut shell? Think of every possible type of dream someone could have. Now, subtract all of the dreams that give you good feelings: I get everything that’s left over.” Chewing thoughtfully on the inside of her lip stud (a habit that she was trying to shake, and failing miserably), Scarlet considered just how much she wanted to tell him. The dreams that shook her the most were the insightful ones, the warnings that caused her to awaken with a start, sweating and nauseated and alarmed. The warnings; that was how she referred to them, because they were warnings, and she had heeded each and every one. They were there for her when the stars were not.
But that was delving a little too deep into territory that she rarely discussed with Caspar, let alone some stranger, so she went with the more obvious side of her subconscious that plagued her. “I dream about things that I don’t want to think about.” She said simply, and in spite of being vague, her words still left her feeling oddly exposed. “Like… flashbacks, I guess. They don’t always end the same way, but they always end badly. Sometimes they’re not flashbacks, just things that could have happened or could still happen, I suppose.”
“You’ve conditioned yourself to think that sleep brings pain.” That was what the shrink had told her, the one and only time she had ever gone to see one. “That’s why you’re getting the dreams. Drink tea, read a good book, associate your bedroom with something other than nightmares.”
He’d written her a prescription and that was the end of the conversation. She’d torn up the slip, threw it in the trash, and never went back—and she never would. Because any asshole who wrote it off as classical conditioning didn’t deserve the expensive leather chair he sat in.
“I try not to sleep for more than three or four hours at a time,” she went on, running her uninjured hand through her hair. “That way when I do, I pretty much just pass the fuck out, and my brain’s too tired to dream shit up. But it’s always a crapshoot; closing my eyes is like opening a door and not knowing if I’m gonna see a monster behind it. Really, it’s a pain in the ass. So,” turning her head, she returned her attention to him, a tad startled to find that he seemed to be listening intently. Paying far more attention to detail than that fucking shrink. “What do you suggest? And...” She furrowed her eyebrows. "What the hell is in that glass, and where the hell did it come from?"
((OoC: omg so sorry this is so rambly, Scarlet has far more issues than I thought.
Also CHECK OUT THE FIRST PAGE FOR SOME TAROT CARD SYMBOLISM ;D I am going to make this a thing later on. XD))
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
But the Sandman’s end by a sedative was a curious notion, and the more he thought about it the more ridiculous his panic had seemed. It made sense that such a poison would not actually affect him, he supposed; he didn’t actually need to sleep, and when he did, it was more an act of selfish indulgence than it was for any practical reason. Slumbering was something he could only bring on himself as a conscious, calculated decision, like choosing to walk or to speak. He did not naturally nod off, and when his physical body became exhausted he only needed to rest or meditate to regain his strength. So why, then, had his dream-presence shuddered to stillness with such terror in his veins?
The answer came as quickly as the question dawned. It was exactly what he’d just told the redhead—his fear was the influence of her own, stemming from the strangeness of the nightmare and the dreamer’s inside realization that everything had gone horribly, terribly wrong. She’d projected her feelings—the horror, the guilt, even the remorse—onto him even as he collapsed to the carpet, which had only made it all the more real for both parties.
He didn’t dwell on the strangeness of that connection longer than he had to; it was something to ponder later, when he wasn’t in the company of the young woman who, however unintentionally, had managed to crawl beneath his dream-skin.
Listening to her symptoms with increasing interest, he sat up a little straighter, placing his glass of emerald drink back on the coffee table. He’d never really been in this position before; it was a stretch enough to counsel someone on their sleep habits, so discussing remedies for dream rituals was more than a little ridiculous. But the Sandman was exactly that if he was nothing else, so it seemed silly to waste a perfectly good opportunity to stretch the muscles of his expertise.
“Everyone dreams things they don’t want to think about,” said Alair, his tone thoughtful rather than accusatory. “But flashbacks…prophetic flashbacks…” He trailed off, gnawing at his lower lip as he considered her predicament. “Huh. Well, waiting until you pass out isn’t a great idea either, because it’s not stopping you from dreaming, it’s just stopping you from remembering it. And that can be pretty fucking scary too. Or, you know, the whole bullshit blissful ignorance thing, whichever way you want to look at it.”
With a small sigh, he leaned back into the folds of the armchair. “To tell you the truth, dreams aren’t usually very accurate at predicting the future, and that’s mostly because the people who dream them kind of suck at it too. But if they’re freaking you out that much, there’s got to be a reason.” He smiled, this time without sarcasm, then furrowed his brows. “Bad experience?” he asked, hoping to prompt some elaboration. “Did you have a dream that came true?”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Well, she didn’t know that for sure, but it’s always what Caspar said. He was such a sucker to push positive energy, though she couldn’t help but guiltily admit that she occasionally enjoyed the energy that heated, superficial dislike pushed through your veins. But only once in a while; after all, people like to dislike.
It came as something of a surprise to her that Alair seemed to be taking her infliction seriously, even if he was the Sandman (which, although the tidbits of proof were undeniable, she was still struggling to believe). She had tried to discuss it with Caspar once, and only once. He had insisted that it had to do with her glaringly unhealthy sleeping habits, recommended taking vitamin supplements, possibly joining a yoga class. Needless to say, she had given up on seeking advice.
Until now, that is.
What was perhaps more surprising, however, was that she was discussing this with him at all. What was it about Alair, this enigmatic man who hung out on rooftops and teleport (only it wasn’t really teleporting, but whatever) on top of peering into dreams, that made her feel… comfortable? Particularly, considering that not fifteen minutes ago she had been half certain that he was ready to attack her…
Ultimately, she brushed it off as a side-effect of his otherwise casual demeanor; not unlike Caspar’s, in fact. Cas’ presence calmed her for that reason; really, now that she thought about it, it was no oddity that he was friends with this guy.
“Huh.” Scarlet twirled a piece of her crimson hair, considering his suggestions and observations given the details she had provided. “I guess I never thought about that… Forgetting dreams, I mean. I don’t usually forget any of them. If they’re jarring enough, sometimes I’ll wake up and not realize that I’m even awake until I walk out of my room and notice that everything’s normal…”
When he decreed that most dreams were not reliable depictions of the future, she chose not to comment, simply because correcting him might spur more questions, and require far more detail to explain. No, not all of her dreams came true; but that was because she actively avoided the disaster after the premonition gave her that kick-in-the-arse heads up.
“Bad experience?” Scarlet raised her eyebrows at him, mimicking his words with incredulity. In all fairness, she had not gone into detail about her less than ideal adolescence, but she haddisclosed that it hadn’t been a happy one. With a sigh that weighed her shoulders, she simply shook her head. “Dude, the ages between thirteen and nineteen were one big, bad experience. You know, just… forget I asked. I’m only being whiny.”
Expertly avoiding his last question, she eyed the strange shamrock-coloured drink that he’d placed upon the table in front of him. Alair still hadn’t answered her question, when she had inquired about its source (there were no drinks of that colour in the apartment, as far as she was aware), but decided that it didn’t matter. She had a headache coming on, possibly from going so long without an unhealthy dose of caffeine, so nipping that in the bud took priority.
“I’m going to go grab a shower so I can feel human again,” the redhead declared, standing from the couch and rolling back her stiff shoulders. “Cas’ gig isn’t for a few hours, but this place is feeling oddly claustrophobic, so I think I’ll grab some caffeine a few blocks down and then just walk over from there. If you want to tag along I’ll buy you a coffee, if you promise not to contemplate revenge for my dream-manslaughter. You’re fucking lucky I’m not Freddie Krueger.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
He knocked back the last of his drink and placed the crystal cup on his folded leg, balancing it against his kneecap beneath the faded denim of his jeans. “That’s the tricky part about them,” he told her matter-of-factly. He knew from experience how slippery those memories could be; they did not easily breach the barrier between sleep and wakefulness, and even if they did make the crossover they were easily lost in the chaos of everyday life and consciousness. “You probably do remember most of them. Some people are better at that than others. But the creepy thing is that…” He paused. “Well, you don’t always know when you don’t remember. You may think you have all the dreams from last night, but there’s no way of knowing if you really do. Which means things can catch you by surprise if you think you’re of the prophetic disposition.”
The absinthe had settled in his stomach now, warming him pleasantly from his chest, and he smiled pleasantly for no other reason than he could. It dissipated quickly when Scarlet responded more harshly than he’d anticipated to his question about her experience, his brow furrowing deep over his blue eyes as he twisted his lips into a concerned scowl. She knew very well that’s not what he meant—he wanted specifics, needed specifics if he were to be of any help at all—but she was already dismissing him before he could attempt to regain her attention. It seemed their session of casual familiarity had ceased.
No matter. He would simply ask her later. Not many people opened up to him as she had begun to. Of course, that was partially because he’d only revealed his identity to a small number of people in his bizarre, immeasurable lifetime, but still his curiosity was piqued. There were always new things to learn about the ever-evolving human mind, especially in a contemporary age of learning and technology and travel and everything else the species had come up with during its relatively short existence. Scarlet seemed to be the key to a lock that guarded a wealth of knowledge he could potentially gain…especially if her dreams were as prophetic as she alluded.
“No revenge, I promise,” the Sandman said, mirth once again returning to his glacier-blue eyes. He held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “I wouldn’t dream of it.” He grinned at his own joke, one he never tired of making, and relocated his glass to a more secure location on the surface of the table.
While Scarlet showered, he got out his guitar again and strummed a few chords, his fingers absentmindedly forming a melody while his mind wandered. The distant drum of the shower droplets finally halted, and when the redhead emerged from the bathroom he stood up, slinging his packed-up instrument over his back. “Ready?” he asked. Then added, stepping towards the door, “Damn, that smells good. That your shampoo?”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
For the moment, at least. And it was enough to put her at ease just enough to clean up and wake up.
Wasting no time, the artificial redhead grabbed some clean clothes from her bedroom and made her way to the shower in no time. Peeling away her pajamas—still damp from the morning heat and being curled up in a bed for so long—was as refreshing as though she were peeling away the stress and anxiety that still clung to her skin, a reminder of her dream, and her unlikely company’s reaction to it.
As it turns out, washing up singlehandedly was quite the challenge, and it took the young woman twice as long to shampoo and rinse her long hair, afraid to get the gauze wet and encourage more blood to seep from the wound that had yet to close. Thinking about how she’d acquired the injury angered her on more than one level; for one, he’d had no right intimidating her the way he had, for something that had largely been beyond her conscious control.
For another, she couldn’t believe she’d been so stupid as to close her fingers around a knife. Either way, it was not an injury that she wanted to have to explain to Cas.
But there was something about hot water that did not allow negativity to stick, and by the time she stepped out of the shower with her skin and hair squeaky clean, she couldn’t recall why she had been aggravated in the first place.
It was another ten minutes dressing and blow drying her long, red hair, before the door to the washroom finally opened, carrying the scent of honey and flowers bleeding into the air like an aromatic cloud. Seeing her unlikely companion make for the front door, she held up a hand. “What’s the rush? Give me five; as a woman I reserve the right to be fashionably late. Though Cas’ gig isn’t for a while yet, anyway.”
Clad in full-length jeans, a sleeveless top and denim vest, it almost looked as though she couldn’t decide whether she felt too warm or too cold. Though in truth, this was simply a style that was uniquely Scarlet; fashionable indecisiveness. The fingerless black glove that she pulled onto her injured hand to cover up and secure the gauze only added to the oddity of the ensemble.
Grabbing for her purse that hung above a mirror in the hallway, she rummaged through the clutter before she found her bottle of foundation, which she applied carefully under her eyes with her little finger to cover the dark circles that seemed to have become permanent. It was one of the only things that made her slightly self-conscious, probably because it was one of the only things that Caspar ever pointed out to her.
“Damn right; everything LUSH smells good.” She replied to his question, an glanced at herself sidelong a few times to make sure the cream had blended well enough. When she was satisfied, her bare feet carried her to the door, where she slipped a pair of silver flats over her cherry red toenails and feet. “Come on; but after this coffee, we are even, got it?”
A creature of habit and routine, Scarlet locked the apartment door, and her feet carried her far more quickly through the halls and down the streets baking under the hot sun than any feet clad in flimsy flats should go, to her frequent haunt; a small hole-in-the-wall coffee house. Private, secluded, and largely underrated.
There was no need to ask him what he wanted, since she was already familiar with how he took his coffee, and instead approached the barista with an order of two medium-sized dark roasts, no cream, no milk, no sugar.
“So…” Handing him the piping hot peace offering, she took a seat in a brightly painted chair at one of the corner tables. The beverage hadn’t been in her head more than ten seconds before it was brought to her lips, scalding or not. “What is it exactly that you… do? I mean, considering you don’t exactly have a nine-to-five job…”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
“LUSH,” he repeated, arching a brow. The way she’d spoken it, it sounded like a brand name. He wasn’t terribly familiar with that kind of thing, but from the way the air had filled with aromas of honey and jasmine, his lack of knowledge was severely detrimental to his well-being. Nodding, he took a few more deep breaths. “Smells good,” he repeated, more to himself this time than to her, making a mental note to investigate. Alair had a tendency to appear disheveled, but his unkempt look was a very calculated, very intentional, very purposeful style—and he was always clean. When you lived through the filthy dark ages and times riddled with plagues, you showered every chance you got just to try and scrub away the memory of the grime.
When at last she was ready to go, he smiled at her as though she hadn’t make him wait at all, and he hoisted his instrument case back over his shoulder. Following her proved to be a more difficult task than he’d anticipated; her pace was quick, her small footsteps rapidly hitting the D.C. pavement as though she were running from him instead of walking with him. For a moment he wondered if he should simply give up trying and keep a block or so of distance between them, but he was far too stubborn; Alair was fit enough to maintain her breakneck speed, after all, and he’d had plenty of rest since they’re early-morning rooftop escapades. He just wished he didn’t feel like he was chasing her.
“Jesus, Scarlet, if you want to fucking ditch me, I keep telling you,” he told her, mock panting as they reached their destination, “all you have to do is tell me to fuck off.” He made his way in the small neighborhood café, weaving through a throng of local pre-dinner patrons and book-high college students. Scarlet’s head of bright red hair made her easy to follow through the crowd—it was a small place—and he took his seat across from her as soon as she brought back the coffee.
“Thanks,” he said genuinely, tucking his guitar case beneath his chair to avoid getting trampled by the hip metropolitan caffeine addicts in attendance. He watched, smiling, as she brought the scalding cup of joe immediately to her lips. “Jesus, I feel like they all know I’m an outsider. I’d have to grow a beard to blend in.”
Chuckling at his own joke, he took a sip of java and settled back in his chair to answer her question. “It’s complicated,” he told her honestly, “and at the same time, it’s just…whatever. Most people’s dreams take care of themselves and I don’t have to do a whole lot. I do whatever I want during the day unless I’m needed somewhere.” Taking another drink, he raised his brows over the rim of his mug and cleared his throat after he swallowed. “Sleeping pills have actually made my job a lot easier, although when shit does go wrong, it goes really wrong. Miracles of modern medicine.” He shook his head. “I’ve gotten pretty good at multitasking, too. I could be in some poor soul’s dream somewhere on the other side of the planet right now as I’m talking to you, and you’d have no way of knowing.” He smirked proudfully. “So what do you do?” he countered. “Being Cas’s groupie can’t be a full-time job even for a night owl.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
And she was buying him coffee—perhaps not an extravagant gesture of kindness, so much as it was an attempt to sooth her bitter guilt that stung from her dream-murder, but what Alair didn’t know was that this wasn’t something that she did for just anyone; or for anyone at all, in fact. Caspar was the only exception because he was the only recipient of her trust, and if she had stopped to think for a moment about why she was not only buying a cup for this guy, but sitting down to drink her own with him, like a couple of friends, then she would have come up with few answers and ample confusion.
“Nah; everyone’s an outsider in their own right… you more than others, maybe, but what they’re going to notice is how much you separate yourself from them. Blend in by not worrying about being an outsider.” Scarlet took another sip of her coffee and wrinkled her nose; not at the beverage, but at him. “Incidentally, a beard wouldn’t suit you. At all. You haven’t got the jaw for it.”
Since it suddenly occurred to her that she might come across as ‘checking him out’, the young woman cleared her throat and put down her beverage to pull her hair over one shoulder, as if she were trying to distract herself from her own thoughts. “I mean, Cas tried it once before. It absolutely bombed; made him itchy, and I think he even lost some fans.”
Alair’s vague recount of what exactly it was that he did capture Scarlet’s attention, and (thankfully) put the former topic to rest. It was simultaneously so easy and so difficult to believe… For all she knew, he could be spouting bullshit. But he had no reason to, and he didn’t come across as someone who would take her for being gullible, so she decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.
“So, you put people to sleep? Interfere with their dreams, give them dreams.... that kind of shit? So does that mean when someone has insomnia, you’re off fucking around somewhere when you should be doing your job?” When you got past the part where it sounded absolutely ludicrous, it actually sounded kind of interesting. There certainly wouldn’t be a dull moment in that employ. “And…wait: you can be in two places simultaneously, teleport—or whatever the fuck it is you do—to wherever you want…” Her eyebrows shot up her forehead, and a cheeky smile poked dimples in her face. “To hell with being the ‘Sandman’—why the fuck aren’t you Santa Claus!”
That jovial smile faltered, however, the moment he used the word ‘groupie’, nearly causing her to choke on her coffee. Covering her mouth with the back of her injured hand, she turned her head and coughed until her windpipe was clear (albeit a tad scalded), and then turned her glare on him. “Whoa—no. I don’t think so. I am not Caspar’s fucking ‘groupie’. That word has a lot of connotations, pal, and I don’t fit the bill for a lot of reasons.” She snapped, a light shade of pink tinting her cheeks. “If anything, I’m his fucking agent; who do you think gets him the gigs at new places? He’s too wrapped up in his guitar and lyrics and sheet music to bother to call around or hand out demos and business cards. Otherwise, what I do is none of your damned business.” Leaning back, in her chair, she nearly picked up her coffee with her injured hand, but thought better of it at the last minute and switched to her right. “Let’s just say I help make ‘dreams come true’, and leave it at that. And before you make a quip about Disney Land, I’m going to warn you that the consequence will be your face meeting the palm of my hand.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
It took more of a conscious effort than he was usually willing to put forth when he could just as easily walk. His teleportation—he scolded himself inwardly for even calling it that—was hardly a parlor trick, and even for someone whose body did not need to sleep it could be very taxing. That said, Alair was rarely one to shy away from such things, and he was very open about the things he could do—probably because the majority of people acted just like the redhead, deeming him mad and discounting every word that left his lips as some bizarre story belonging in the genre of bad fantasy novels.
Bringing the cup to his mouth once again, he took a larger swallow and wrinkled his nose when it was still just a little too hot. Not quite so hot as Scarlet’s brew earlier that morning, he noted with amusement, but still warm enough to scald a sensitive tongue. At her quip about his jaw, he reached up and ran his fingers along his stubbly chin, frowning. “What’s wrong with my jaw?” he demanded, his tone playful but his eyes serious. He twisted his lips and wiggled his mandible side to side experimentally. “I think I’d look damn good in a beard. I’ve had one before. No one died.”
He broke his own seriousness with a chuckle, his blue eyes once again full of sparkling mirth. “This is the second time you’ve brought up ol’ Saint Nick,” he commented, leaning back in his chair and folding his arms across his chest. “Does someone have a crush?” He laughed, obviously teasing, and took another sip of his hot coffee. “I can’t physically be in more place than one, but my…uh, ‘online presence,’ you could say, is a little more omnipresent.” His tongue tripped over the word, and he sputtered, which he turned promptly into chuckle. “It’s not an ideal situation. I can’t focus as well when I don’t go all in, you know? And insomnia…that’s too long an explanation for this place, I think.”
Alair shook his head, his unruly hair bobbing at the gesture. “Calm down, jeez,” he said, “you know I was kidding about the groupie thing. Like I actually thought that! Give me a little credit!” He rolled his eyes. “So you book his gigs and stuff? That’s nice of you. But come on. Gimme more than that. I told you about me, I thought we were over the ‘none-of-your-damn-business’ crap.” With a brow arched high onto his forehead, he studied her, trying to decipher what the hell her weird code-explanation actually meant. “D’you realize how fucking creepy that sounds?” he asked good-naturedly, smiling a crooked smile. He spread his hands and shrugged, indicating himself when he added a sly, “And look who the fuck that’s coming from. So what do you actually do?”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
He could tease all he wanted; clearly, she had the ammunition and the gall to tease right back. Perhaps that was part of what made Scarlet come across as so unapproachable; the artificial redhead could make herself anyone’s equal. To a lot of people, that was a rather intimidating quality, especially one attributed to a slight young woman.
Apparently, Alair was not one of those people. Instead of backing down, he rose to her challenge just as quickly as she rose to his. It made her both respect him more and grow ever warier of him, two feelings that sat uncomfortably adjacent and did not blend well in her gut. So for the moment, she chose to ignore the latter of the two. But just for the moment.
“Ha; way to cop out of owning up to insomnia. Seriously, though, Cas has had it rough for the past two weeks or so. He keeps waking up all frustrated and restless; is it because you’re too busy bumming coffee off people at four in the morning?” She arched an eyebrow, only half-joking this time. Caspar had begun to experience his sleeping difficulties around the same time that she had lost touch with his destiny in the stars… She couldn’t help but wonder if, also around that same time, he had come into contact with Alair.
The groupie comment had smarted just a tad, however, and she allowed herself a moment to sulk and sip her coffee until it was nearly gone before making eye contact again. “Sorry; I’ve just been called a groupie one too many times. It gets really old after a while.” And yet, it never seemed to lose its cutting edge.
“Yes, I book his gigs because his head is far too high up in the clouds to do it himself; someone’s got to bring it back down to earth. But other than that… in all honesty? I’m really not that interesting as far as people go, with or without taking into account what I do.” With a small half-grin, she added, “Hey, if I wasn’t needlessly cryptic about it, I would come across as completelyboring. Trust me, I can’t measure up to seeing into dreams and strange teleportation-like techniques. At least if I sound creepy, well, why the hell not; at least it’s something.” And she left it at that: if even Caspar had no insight into what it was she did, she wasn’t about to drop any more hints to Alair on the topic.
“Oh, and as for the beard;” she added, if for no other reason to change the subject. “There’s nothing wrong with your jaw, but that’s just it. You don’t wear sunglasses if you’ve got nice eyes; you don’t grow a beard if you’ve got a strong jaw—what? So I actually happened to pay attention I art class, when I was still in school. I’ve got a knack for these things.” Glancing at the clock on the far wall, Scarlet stood suddenly and downed the remained of her still-hot coffee in a mouthful. “We’d better get going; the club is a little ways on foot, and I get there early to help Cas set up. You can try to keep up with me, or take the easy way and do whatever it is you do to instantly find yourself elsewhere… You know, for simplicity’s sake, I’m going to just keep calling it teleporting.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Lifting a shoulder in a nonchalant half-shrug, he shifted in his chair and rested his ankle on his opposite knee. “I mean, if I was Santa Claus, there wouldn’t be all those happy-touchy-feely stories about me. You’d hear the ones about moon minions and eating people’s eyeballs and shit. And I sure as hell wouldn’t get my own holiday.” He paused thoughtfully. “But come to think of it, that wouldn’t be so bad.” He tilted his head to one side, imagining his own legend becoming the stuff of greeting cards and cheap holiday merchandise. It was too much, and he broke his pondering expression with another hearty guffaw. “Nah, fuck that shit. This potty mouth can’t be restored anyway. It’s stained for life.”
He downed the rest of his drink and placed the cup dramatically on the table, pretending to flinch in apology when several nearby patrons turned from their laptops to glare at him. “Insomnia’s tough,” he said in follow-up, his expression shifting to one of genuine seriousness. “I’ll tell you about it on the way to the gig. It’s…well, there are a lot of causes.” Truthfully, Alair was not surprised that Caspar was experiencing a bout of sleeplessness; with how much bizarre dream activity had been centered around him of late, it was like a side effect to the Sandman’s drug. But as open as he was, he was not about to share any of that with the redhead sitting opposite him; no, that much was something he kept strictly confidential, like a doctor about a patient. He did, however, make a mental note to investigate—restlessness as Scarlet described could be detrimental on all fronts, on all sides of the dream-equation.
“Yeah, I guess the groupie thing would get old,” he agreed. “From what Cas has told me about his gigs, you must be pretty good at managing for him. He never mentioned you, though.” The Sandman looked up at his present companion curiously, wetting his lips with his tongue. “Maybe he already thinks you’re boring and the whole ‘being cryptic’ thing is just a waste of your energy.” He grinned sarcastically. “So you should just tell me. Come on. No judgments here.”
But it was clear he wasn’t going to get any further with her on that topic, at least not for the time being. When she stood to leave, he followed suit, grinning. “So you think I’ve got a strong jaw?” he said, running his fingers along its line. He made it to the door first, holding it open, and when they were outside he took the liberty to continue.
“Do my finely-chiseled features charm you?” he asked. He waggled his eyebrows, his bright blue eyes narrowing just enough to indicate how he was kidding. “I can keep up with you. Don’t think I can’t." Smiling crookedly, he swept his hand from his shoulder to his side to indicate his body. "Besides, I wouldn’t want to deny you all this.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
But Alair threw her off. He took ‘unpredictable’ to extremes, and despite that she’d offered to buy him a coffee, she couldn’t exactly call the dark-haired, blue-eyed man across from her a friend.
And yet, friend or not, he was suddenly making her laugh—and a genuine one, at that, which sounded very different from her usual sardonic chuckles. That deviation to the topic of Santa Claus had taken a turn of its own, and suddenly the idea of moon minions and eyeballs, and none of it made sense, and none of this made sense, and she was too fucking tired to even care.
“Okay, fair enough,” the young woman conceded when her laughter died down to something more controllable. “It’s probably best for the world to leave Santa to his jurisdiction while you fuck around with peoples’ dreams and sleep habits… Damn, it’s a fucking good thing no one’s listening to any of this.” Sure enough, the handful of other patrons were either deeply engrossed in their own conversations, or were blocking out the world with ear buds and iPods. Fucking hipsters.
Although he probably hadn’t intended, his comment about Caspar never mentioning her cut through Scarlet like a knife. The last time he had said that, she had been dreaming, and therefore had simply dismissed the factoid as a manifestation of her insecurities…
But so what? Why should she care that he never mentioned her? It wasn’t like they were dating; she didn’t do much more than help him set up and secure a gig here and there through word of mouth. And yet, they had been roommates and best friends for years… How could he not mention her, even in passing? Did he think she was boring? Just a waste of time and energy?
“Like I said; that boy’s head never leaves the clouds.” Scarlet wasn’t about to let on just how painfully he’d hit a nerve, and simply shrugged his comment off as they stepped out of the coffee shop, and out into the hot afternoon sun. “He’s a musician; he probably didn’t mention me because he’s egocentric. And I don’t mean that unkindly; it’s just the way he is. I’m not about to take it personally, and I’m not about to stop being cryptic. I applaud you for trying, though.”
And speaking of egocentric…
“Okay, now,” She put up a hand to try and stop his comments in their tracks because she could see where they were going. But she wasn’t quick enough, and she heard herself groan out loud at his horrible attempt to be funny. “You know, I can suddenly see why Cas likes you; you are so fucking over the top that you make him look good. And that is saying something, considering he’s a musician and performer. Anyway; speaking of Caspar…” Deciding to take him up on his offer to clarify the mysteries of insomnia, Scarlet turned her attention to him and his ‘strong jaw’. Fuck; now she would never be able to un-notice it. “Do you know what’s up with him? Or can you find out? His sleeping habits have almost been worse than mine for like, two weeks. And he’s already tried a bunch of shit that hasn’t worked… What could be going on?”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
He traipsed after Scarlet like an obedient puppy, walking at her side. He matched her pace but maintained enough of a distance behind her to indicate her lead, his guitar case thumping rhythmically against his back as they barreled down the cracked sidewalk. They were entering a rough-and-tumble neighborhood to match the rough-and-tumble coffee dive from whence they’d come, with tall narrow homes crammed in neat rows on long blocks. Their unkempt laws and chipped paint added a flavor of run-down nostalgia that was more wistful than threatening, and the Sandman had to remind himself more than once that he was clearly not the brains of this operation. He was not as familiar with the District as he’d like to be, and though he’d certainly been to Jimmy’s, he had never gotten to the place via any…well, usual means.
Alair was oblivious to Scarlet’s pain as they walked; even if she hadn’t been so adept at hiding it, he was too busy trying to scrape together some kind of understandable explanation for insomnia that didn’t reveal the full extent of his meddling. “Insomnia comes in a lot of forms,” he said finally after her prompt. “And honestly, sometimes it is just, like, brain chemistry or whatever. I can usually help, but I can’t always cure it.” A sarcastic smile graced his lips. “Maybe you should just go tell them about your nine-to-five. If it’s as boring as you claim, it oughta knock them right out, right? Maybe I’ll hire you.”
He cleared his throat. “But in all seriousness, Cas…well, I can look into it.” The Sandman twisted his lips, pondering. “Sometimes dreams can really affect a person’s actions. They can give them ideas they didn’t even know they had. Usually, that’s a good thing. Artists make awesome-ass paintings, musicians write screamo and beat the shit out of their drums, all that jazz. You get it. But sometimes those ideas are not so great.” His tone had turned dark. “Blood. Murder plans—oh…” His words halted. “Sorry, that was unintentional. But creepy people can dream pretty creepy things, and sometimes they don’t have the presence of mind to tell those apart from what’s a good idea in reality. You, for example, wouldn’t kill me in real life, even though you dreamt it up. Let’s just say I was lucky, because for a lot of innocent people that’s not the case.”
He paused, letting his words sink in as they took a few twists and turns through a different neighborhood. “Anyway, dreams can…interfere with things.” He hesitated before he elaborated, unsure how the redhead would take it. It was clear how she still didn’t quite believe what he said he was; what was keeping her from laughing in his face now that he was opening up? She would go back to deeming him the crazy creeper. And though he honestly wasn’t bothered by such an accusation, it would disappoint him that his efforts had been wasted…and besides, he couldn’t deny that he was starting to like the redhead’s company.
“Things like…destinies.” He spoke the word almost as though the syllables would summon the devil, and he looked to Scarlet to gauge her reaction. “Some guy dreams he’s gonna kill someone, and then he goes out and does it because of that idea, he’s fucked up a whole freakin’ chain of stuff.” Alair took a breath and went on. “Anyway, sometimes when that whole clusterfuck is getting sorted back out, people who would have somehow been tied to the dead guy have trouble sleeping. Insomnia’s always a symptom of something. And in that case, for example, it’s kind of like a mourning thing, only the person has no idea what they’re grieving for.” He shrugged. “That might be what’s going on with Cas. Not his fault. Not anyone’s fault, really. It just happens sometimes.”
Because no one short of ‘perfect’ would have stepped into her life and hauled her out of the fire like he had, that handful of years past.
“I’ve got news for you; anyone whose hours are nine to five typically do have exceedingly boring jobs.” She said lightly, a hint of a grin on her lips which threatened to extinguish in the shadow of regret that passed over her. Would he ever let the topic drop? She should never have said anything, but then, she hadn’t seen this coming. And although years on the streets of DC had turned her into a practiced and capable liar, it was never so simple as voicing an untruth. Not to someone who asked as many questions as Alair. “The only exception is that I call my own boring-job hours. But anyway, we’re not talking about me.”
Perhaps for the first time since they had met (which, hard as it was to believe, had only been that morning), Scarlet was taking him seriously. He was Caspar’s friend, and if nothing else, they had that in common. He wouldn’t try to pull bullshit on her if their mutual, musical buddy was he topic of conversation. The redhead watched him, took note in the gradually darkening cadence of his voice, how the quirky smile was so unstable on his lips.
And then he spoke a word that made the fine hairs at the back of her neck stand up and halted the breathe in her lungs, mid-exhale: destinies.
“So, you mean… kind of like a butterfly effect sort of thing.” She asked, as if she had no idea what she was talking about. As if she didn’t know exactly what he was talking about. “You think that could be what’s happening to Cas? Will he just… kind of get over it, if that’s the case? I mean, if it’s nothing he can control, and he’s really in some sort of weird period of mourning, that can’t last forever.”
It wasn’t her fault, though… It couldn’t be her fault, because she hadn’t even been able to see Caspar’s destiny for the past couple of weeks, let alone tamper with it. Not only that, but she had never, ever arranged a destiny to lead to the death (at least, not intentionally, but the resulting side-effects remained largely unknown to her, unless she saw reason to investigate). This small revelation absolved her from some irrational guilt that had been festering at the back of her mind, but it didn’t make her worry any less.
Scarlet dragged her fingers through her hair squinted through her eyelashes, chiding herself for forgetting her sunglasses back at the apartment. “Anyway… That sure as hell explains a lot. Though you can rest assured I do not have some weird, latent murderous tendencies or inclinations, thank you. Like I said, I was just reacting; the thought of actually killing someone makes me feel kind of sick.” And yet, none of this really explained some of her own more jarring and perplexing dreams: eerily vivid and detailed in nature, where she was herself, yet she was someone else entirely. Where the world was different, circumstances were different, and seldom was she ever the same person twice. These dreams that caused her to wake up frightened or angry or devastated without really knowing why, and the more important details were faded from her memory three minutes later.
Caspar had recommended she keep a dream journal—which, admittedly, was sound advice. She had considered it, but in the end threw the idea to the wind, because she was unsure as to how much of them she actually wanted to remember.
“But as far as Cas goes… I’m mean, I’m sure he’ll be fine. You know those artsy types and the weird phases they go through. Don’t go digging too deep if it’ll only mess him up more.” Or if it would shed light onto the nature of her ‘nine-to-five’, as he put it, because that was a conversation that she was not inclined to have with the Sandman.
Rounding a corner at the bottom of a hill, they faced a wall of graffiti directly off the sidewalk, with a bright purple door and a painted sign that read Jimmy’s in neon paint. But Scarlet didn’t stop there; she didn’t stop until she reached the back of the stone edifice, which was far less neon than the front. “We go in the back; so long as you’re seen with me, they won’t kick you out for trying to sneak in.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
It was actually an interesting topic of conversation, one he had never actually had with anyone other than his brother. But Amrial, though arguably too smart for his own good, possessed a black-or-white personality that left little room for gray comprise between polar ends. It wasn’t that he was difficult—indeed, talking to the Sandman’s kind-hearted and soft spoken older brother was irritatingly easy—it was just a part of his nature. And it made sense; Death would never be one to compromise on matters of the preternatural, and as such it made it hard to explain the subtle nuances of a very complex, very unpredictable, very-much-gray dreaming world.
Scarlet was faring much better than Amrial ever had, and it inspired Alair to continue with his explanation with even more animation than usual. “That’s really just one part of it,” he went on, his words somewhat rushed in the thrill of the lesson. “It doesn’t have to be anything like a murder. It could be something as seemingly benign as forgetting to brush your teeth in the morning. Like you said. Butterfly effect.” He smiled a little, feeling simultaneously powerful and helpless. The Sandman hung in the balance between righting wrongs and simply letting things play out, forever sprinting back and forth between participant and spectator.
“It won’t last forever, no,” he confirmed, adjusting the guitar case on his back as they turned another corner. “He may feel out of it for awhile, but I’ve never heard of that shit lasting longer than a few months. Sucks, but what can you do?” Alair shrugged, causing his case’s strap to dig into his collar bone again. “There’s probably not a lot I can do to ease his suffering directly, but I’ll look into it. He’ll be fine.” He flashed a reassuring smile at Scarlet, nodding once to reaffirm. “Cas’ll tough it out.”
But while everything he told the redhead was true, what he wasn’t saying was that something was more amiss than usual surrounding the charismatic musician. Alair fully suspected that while a mixed-up chain of events was definitely contributing to his lack of sleep and restlessness, there was something decidedly wrong about all of it. He would investigate, yes, but in a much more involved way than he implied to Scarlet—he had to fix the problem. And that repair was far greater than Caspar Brighton himself; it stemmed to people miles away and oceans over, and Alair had been over patch after patch of mental fixes to get to the place he was now. It was damage control until he could get to the cure—and from the looks of things right now, he was getting close to a breakthrough.
He was knocked from his thoughts by the assault of the neon paint in the setting sunlight, and when he followed Scarlet around to the back of the building he couldn’t quite suppress a grin. “Are you kidding?” he said, feigning offense. He slung his guitar case to his left shoulder, making it more visible. “This thing’s a free ticket inside, red-haired chaperone or no!”
They wove between stacks of amplifiers and disassembled drum sets as soon as they passed the threshold. A flurry of activity surrounded them, and through the chaos Alair spotted Caspar.
“Cas!” he called, holding up a hand as they neared. “What’s up, man? How you feeling?" He clasped hands with the willowy performer and clapped him on the back. "What can we do?”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Without realizing it, she had stumbled onto think ice laced with eggshells and broken glass, and now was as good a time as any to put the topic to rest.
“Maybe you shouldn’t dabble too much, on second thought. Caspar’s kind of sensitive; too much prying might, I don’t know… upset some other delicate balance that’s keeping the fibers of him together.” Scarlet rolled back her shoulders in a Casual shrug, hoping to come across as relatively nonchalant and no more concerned than anyone would be over a friend’s well-being. And she was concerned for Caspar’s well-being, but that was simply thrown into the mix of other extraneous variables, such as her uncanny tie to the stars… “But I think you’re right; he’s soft, and yet at the same time, he’s the most resilient person I know. He’ll come out of it and be no worse for the wear.”
Since the former street urchin had no insight into the motives that the Sandman was choosing not to voice, she simply cast her supernatural companion a hopeful smile over her shoulder. “You need to get a better guitar strap. Unless you’ve got shoulders like a lumberjack—which, I’ve got news for you: you don’t—, that is way too loose.”
Rounding the corner to the back of the club (where the doors were already propped open with an amplifier, anyway), Scarlet made a snarky sound of disbelief at the back of her throat and rolled her eyes. “Honey, I’ve got news for you; you’re not the only one with a guitar. And even if you’re sort of good, it’s not going to be your free ticket to anything.”
Flipping her hair over her shoulder rather dramatically (as if to point out that particular shade of red was, in fact, his ticket inside), Scarlet hoisted herself over the amplifiers instead of simply moving around them, and sauntered over to her musical roommate, offering a simple pat on the shoulder in greeting before moving past him.
“Hey guys,” he smiled, clasping Alair’s hand with a grin. “Dude, I’m glad you could make it. Not quite in crisis mode, but I’m running a little behind because a couple of the guys were short power cords; they’re out picking up some right now. If you wanna know what you can do… Just follow her lead.” He angled his head towards the fiery redhead behind him, who was already scurrying about, barking out orders to anyone who was involved in helping. “Her bark is worse than her bite, I promise; she knows what she’s doing.”
And he wasn’t stretching the truth; Scarlet had been helping Caspar out at his gigs for years, was familiar with all the clubs and pubs and bars around the city and then some, knew what angle the amps had to sit at for optimum sound without deafening the audience, knew the acoustics of every venue. She might not have contributed much to their little household in terms of finances, she certainly helped to make a gig run smoothly.
After a couple of hours of organizing the stage, testing the sound and lights and overall playing the role of ‘queen bitch’ until she was convinced everything was absolutely perfect, the artificial redhead finally stood back, admiring her handiwork as Caspar took the stage and welcomed the already half-full house (the show had already started, and the bouncers were still taking tickets and money and checking ID cards). From then on in, the duration of the show rested on his shoulders; she wanted nothing to do with the stage once the show began.
At least, not while she was sober.
“So; I take it you’ve seen him play before?” Scarlet meandered over to where Alair leaned on the railing of the upper level, which overlooked the ‘pit’ below. Anyone with a drink in their hand wanted to avoid the lower level once the music started to play, unless they wanted their clothes to smell more strongly of beer and tequila in the morning.
And, sure enough, Scarlet was already sipping on a drink, the murky red depths of a caesar in her hand as she leaned her hip up against the railing. “He sounds different in every venue; different tone, different acoustics. But he always sounds good.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
The Sandman was quite impressed by her leadership; it was almost as though she had adopted a new personality along with her title. The guys setting up, some of whom were part of Caspar’s band, obeyed her without question, the stage area exploding with activity as soon as the orders were barked from her lips. He listened to the redhead’s instructions carefully, leaving his guitar case next to the one he recognized as belonging to Cas, and launched immediately into rearranging the amplifiers. Stacking the great speaker behemoths was always one of his favorite tasks. He stood opposite a burly man with tattooed sleeves, and on his count they hoisted one mighty Marshall on top of the other. It was like building a fortress, in a way, a sonic fortress that would encompass the entire room.
By the time they got to testing the microphones and volume levels, the venue was largely filled. The open floor in front of the stage was packed with young people, drinks in hand, laughing and chatting over the interim music blasting from in-house speakers. Alair made his way up to the balcony as one of Caspar’s band mates played a skull-buzzing scale on his bass, and the Sandman peered over the railing to watch as the black-clad roadies scrambled to adjust the balance on the soundboard.
Resting his forearms on the ledge, he gnawed at his lower lip, watching eagerly as more people filed into the standing area. He was glad he’d staked his claim along the balcony rail; the upper level was decidedly less crowded for the moment, and he knew from how Scarlet had arranged the setup that the ideal balance of sound would occur approximately where he stood.
Scarlet joined him as the lights dimmed to signal the beginning of the show, the background music abruptly cutting out to switch over to the band’s sound system. In truth, he was a little surprised the redhead had joined him—not because he was difficult to find, but rather because he wasn’t sure she’d actually enjoyed his company enough to willingly spend the length of a gig together. He smiled his greeting and nodded to the drink in her hand, lifting the glass of emerald liquid in his hand in a gesture of cheers.
“Yeah, I’ve been to a couple of his shows,” he said, raising his voice to carry over the chords that suddenly filled the air. He dipped his chin infinitesimally to the beat, a subconscious reaction to the density of sound. “Sounds good up here. You done good, kid,” he told her teasingly, downing his glass of absinthe in a single swallow. He leaned on the railing again, peering at the writhing sea of audience members below.
“Next drink’s on me,” he offered, taking another sip from a glass suddenly full again. “What’re you having?”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
She could already feel it; his vibe, his energy, his happiness… This was when Caspar was at his best, as well. And although the stage lights were too bright, and the upper level was too dark and he could not see her, she never failed to feel connected to him and his success. It validated her, gave her purpose, made her useful—made her something.
And he had no idea. But that was okay.
“Tch. I did nothing.” She turned to face her dark-haired companion, mid-back pressing against the rust-painted railing while she nursed her drink. It was odd, perhaps, for someone so fiery to wear modesty on her sleeve, but Scarlet did not crave the spotlight, for a lot of reasons. “I just get the opportunity to boss people around; Caspar can make anything sound phenomenal. These older buildings have fucking amazing acoustics, anyway, so you can’t really go wrong.”
Alair’s sudden offer made the redhead raise her eyebrows in surprise. For all her subconscious mind had exhibited cold, murderous tendencies earlier that morning, the Sandman finally seemed ready to forgive and forget (although she still clung to the belief that none of it had really been her fault). “You know, usually when a guy offers to buy me a drink, I run the other way,” she mused before knocking back the rest of her caesar and sitting the empty glass on a vacant table. “But I think I’ll take you up on the offer. And it was a caesar, by the way; you know, vodka, clamato juice, dash of tabasco sauce… Cas makes faces at them because they’re savoury, but I happen to like the extra heat. Don’t tell me you’ve never tried one before…”
Down below, her peripheral vision caught sight of someone moving through the crowd to stand close to the cage and off to the side. Some girl with shiny brunette hair, her movements slow, as if she was mesmerized by the lead singer and guitarist who was belting out one of his sappier songs about ‘dreams coming true in pockets of darkness’ (she had never really understood that lyric, and he had never offered to explain).
Fangirls… She shook her head and angled her body to refocus on Alair again, with… Was that a refill in his hand? Already? The guy cold hold his liquor, apparently…
Her words trailed off as her eyes settled on the glass in his hand, and the beverage it held. Like a liquid shamrock… “Refill already? Wasn’t it, like, two thirds gone a second ago? You should really pace yourself, you know…” But it was a little dark, and she was already a little tipsy, so Scarlet opted not to trust her sense of judgement and let it drop almost as soon as it crossed her mind. Perhaps his glass had been emptier than she remembered. “What is that stuff, anyway? I thought I saw you drinking it earlier, back at the apartment, but then it just… kind of disappeared. I didn’t even know they sold shit like that here.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
But that’s when he did—he struck the opening chord, the acoustic texture of his guitar strings cuing the rest of his band for his foot-stomping opening number. He took the undulating audience in the palm of his hand, coaxing them forward with his pitch-perfect voice and absolute passion. He could have asked any one of those people on the floor for anything, anything at all, and they would have obliged right then and there. He spun melodies like witches spun spells, transfixing those who listened like a well-trained hypnotist.
Alair followed Scarlet’s gaze when she suddenly turned her attention to the raving floor below, spotting the brunette head of hair making her way to the very front of the crowd. Marissa. The name shot through his head like a warning, but he knew better than to take precaution—this had been in the works for quite some time. The dream from the rooftop had been the Sandman’s doing, invading this unsuspecting girl’s subconscious in order to free her from the effects of a second broken chain of events…and to free her from an abusive douchebag of a boyfriend. He’d realized several weeks prior that setting up such a scenario for Marissa Engelbrecht of the Northside District would coincide perfectly with another much-more-tangled situation in the city center—the situation that revolved around the oblivious Caspar Brighton.
“I didn’t offer to buy you a drink,” Alair claimed, wearing his smirk a little more loosely now as a result of his absinthe, “I told you I was buying a drink. Besides, you bought coffee.” He swayed back and forth to the beat tamely, his eyes alternating between the blonde in the front row and the young man with the guitar center stage. “That drink sounds fucking disgusting though. Clamato? Are you fucking serious? I might throw up before I’m even drunk enough to throw up.” He laughed, but his wrinkled nose betrayed his lingering disgust. “Here, try some of this.”
He held out his glass to her, one of the stage lights catching the emerald liquid in a flash of shamrock green. Waiting for her to take it from his grasp, he waggled his eyebrows, then closed one eye in a sly wink as his smirk intensified. “They don’t sell it here, in fact,” he told her, turning back to rest his elbows on the railing. “What do you think? Fucking magical, right?”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Her attention lingered on the brunette below for more time than what was probably necessary. It struck her as odd that the young woman appeared not only to be alone, and (although it was difficult to tell for sure, from that distance) but sort of… wistful? Sad? Scarlet couldn’t find the word, and she didn’t particularly care. Fangirls would be fangirls; Caspar Brighton had plenty of them, was kind to all of them, but touched none of them.
She always made sure of the latter, herself, and although that ability currently seemed beyond her reach, she wasn’t about to delve into some sort of miasma of paranoia. What were the chances he would fall for some random fangirl, anyway? They only ever loved him for his music, anyway.
“Wait—what? You trolling me or something, Sandman” The young woman wrinkled her nose. What kind of douchebag offered to buy a girl a drink and then went back on his word. “Because if you’re going to be a douchebag, then… huh? Okay, you’ve officially confused me. And I know I’m not that drunk yet…”
Where had he gotten a second drink? The guy perplexed her to no end, and yet, her uninjured hand still extended to take the emerald-coloured drink from his hand. “Oh, fuck off—it’s good, okay? Spicy. Some like it hot, and all that jazz.” She rolled her eyes with a grin that she could not suppress, due to the warming, comfortable and sociable side effects of the alcohol in her blood. “Don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it. Jeez, how long have you known Caspar? You’re starting to sound exactly like him.” It hit the redhead then that she, in fact, had not known how long it had been since Alair had first injected his presence into her roommate’s life. Had it only been a few weeks ago, just like he’d indicated in her dream? Around the same time that Caspar’s peaceful sleeps had become as fragile as thin ice in the spring?
“So what is this shit, anyway? And if they don’t sell it here, then where the hell did you get it?” Most people—most normal, sober people—would wait until they had an answer before bringing to their lips a glass of unidentified drink. But tipsy-Scarlet was not quite so quick to be logical, and drunk-Scarlet completely threw logic to the wind. And with the only thing in her stomach aside from the alcohol being the coffee she’d had a few hours ago, she was precariously teetering between those two versions of Scarlet, and as such tasted the bright green liquid with the tip of her tongue as she took an experimental sip.
“What… what even is this shit?” She couldn’t decide if she liked it or hated it; it wasn’t bitter or sweet, not savoury or sour, but its own flavour entirely. It tasted different in her palate than on her tongue, and with every small sip, she discovered that she grew to like it more and more. “Where the fuck do you get it? Oh, who the fuck even cares? It is kind of good. But you still need to try a caesar sometime; they don’t give you hang overs.”
Her glass was empty before she knew it, and her cheeks were tinted a healthy pink as the alcohol opened up blood vessels and made her feel alive. And around the same moment that she placed her second empty glass on the bar counter, Caspar Brighton ended his acoustic set, and the electric humming of his second guitar cut through the house, drawing cheers from the crowd.
“Do you feel that?” Scarlet asked, turning from Alair to face the stage again. There were goosebumps on her bare arms, and it wasn’t an effect of chilly air, for the club was anything but cold, packed as it was with eager, moving bodies. “That transition always gets me. So are you a stand around and listen sort of loner, or do you ever cut loose and just dance?”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Well, that wasn’t quite true. He wasn’t drunk yet, but he had every intention of continuing his current path until the absinthe deemed him worthy of a promotion from tipsiness. The warmth from his mysterious green drink radiated from his abdomen to his chest and arms, flying through his veins with an energy as electric as the atmosphere of the packed club. His telltale smirk had only broadened with each passing sip, hanging on his lips so precariously that he descended into unprovoked chuckles more than once, the throbbing bass line masking his giddy inebriation. Not that he cared—he wouldn’t have even if he were sober; it was Alair, after all—but he supposed for Scarlet’s sake it was better not to cause too much embarrassment so early in the night.
“Now, now,” he scolded, raising his hands in mock offense. “I’m not a douche. I’m better than that, come on!” He laughed despite his attempt to act insulted, gripping the railing with more force than was necessary. “I wasn’t taking back my offer. I was just telling you it wasn’t a question. You’ll get your nasty drink whether you want another one or not, okay?” Shifting positions, he put his back to the balcony and rested his elbows on the ledge from the other direction, mimicking the redhead’s pose from earlier.
His gaze, more electric than icy now that he’d had several glasses of exceedingly potent alcohol, followed the emerald drink in the redhead’s hand as though mentally willing her not to drop it. The way she gestured, objecting to his objection, he was afraid she might—but that, of course, would have had no consequence whatsoever other than a few glittery shards of crystal glass beneath their shoes. The club had certainly seen worse things on the floor, and the balcony was so crowded now that no one would have noticed a few sparkling—albeit sharp—remnants of his cup.
The viridescent beverage practically glowed in the increasingly hyperactive lighting of the concert. Alair wondered for a moment if it was the drink itself trying to get him to consume even more, but he was already obliging by the time he’d finished processing that thought. With Scarlet sampling his original serving, he brought a second glass to his lips, deciding at that point that there was no point in holding back. Caspar was on his fifth song of the night, which meant that at any moment, the band was about to go full speed ahead into their usual face-melting jams. Letting go sounded more appealing the more he allowed to slide down his throat.
“Good, huh!” he exclaimed, holding out his second glass to crash a little too forcefully into the one he’d handed over to the redhead. “Better than your clam-potato-bisque-julius-caesar-salad whatever-the-fuck, man.” He drifted a little to the side and bumped gently into Scarlet, maintaining his balance with his free hand on the rail. The lights below had begun to blur together in a feverish haze, and the smoke machines were firing up in anticipation of Caspar’s musical transition. The air practically sparked with the hot lightning of youthful exuberance, and Alair, feeling himself losing his footing in the current of chaos, shivered with the anticipation of diving in.
When the scream of electric guitar pealed through the haze, coaxing a chorus of encouraging cries from the crowd all around, Alair’s expression grew utterly wild. His eyes glittered impishly—his glass was suddenly gone—and he was dragging the feisty redhead by the hand before she could finish voicing her question. When they reached the bottom of the stairs, he halted abruptly, turning around so fast that their faces nearly collided.
“Which do you think I am?” he asked devilishly, then tugged her into the throng of writhing bodies.
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
“What the actual fuck!” The chemical red-head almost doubled over laughing, having finally crossed the line and entered the territory that was drunk-scarlet about a third of the way into that spectacular green drink. Her skin tingled and it felt as though the volume had suddenly been turned up for all five of her senses, like the sort of high brought on by pure, untainted joy. The sort of happiness a child feels at Christmastime.
Only it wasn’t Christmas, and Alair was not Santa Claus (or so he claimed). The joy and giddiness therefore came as a surprise to her, and thinking about it all only made the laughter rush harder and faster through her lungs, until she found herself bent over, hand resting on her thighs for support.
“Whoa, one foot at a time, magic man!” Scarlet put a hand out to steady him and gave an exaggerated eye roll. “Jesus, how the fuck are you drunk so fast! Hell… how the fuck am I drunk so fast? What the fuck is in your Leprechaun drink, the Leprechauns themselves?” It wasn’t even intended to be funny, her description of his miracle alcohol; it was simply the way her eyes identified the bright green drink. Spoken aloud, however, it sounded far more ridiculous, and once again she found herself giggling like a thirteen-year-old over sex jokes. “Anyway! Are we just gonna stand around here, or are we—”
Scarlet’s feet were suddenly moving, but not of their own accord. A few long seconds later (given the way her processing speed had slowed drastically), she realized it was because Alair had her by the arm and was hauling her towards the stairs. Fortunaely, drunk-Scarlet largely managed to maintain her balance and coordination, and the downward steps weren’t much of an obstacle. The momentum was, however, and when her companion suddenly turned to face her, she all but bumped into his chest, finding herself startled by the proximity of their faces. She could make out the details in the Sandman’s everblue eyes, little fleck of light that glimmered in his irises like tiny diamonds.
Like little stars, spelling out their own constellations…
“You’ve got stars in your eyes…” The words slipped past her lips, and she hardly knew what they meant, or why she said them, but it was so hard to look away from those eyes…
With his words belatedly registering in her mind, the young woman felt her mouth twist into a smirk, and she hooked her fingers into the fabric of his shirt and stood on her toes. The music had soared in volume, notes hitting decibels that would surely lend lasting damage to ear drums and cilia later in life, so she brought her mouth close to his ear to spare her voice from the taxing task of having to shout. “Come on, Sandy; you’ll lose your footing and land your drunk ass on someone if you bust a move right here.” She laughed, her lips nearly brushing his earlobe. “Over here, where you won’t get yourself or anyone else killed.”
Tugging him forward , Scarlet led the cheeky, inebriated man away from the designated ‘mosh pit’ area and towards a less chaotic corner, where the music bounced off the walls at just the right angle that it didn’t destroy your ear drums. Cas always liked his shows to be ‘big’, and no matter how often she suggested he invest in some smaller amps and speakers for smaller venues such as this, he would sooner stop playing all together than give them up.
“I hope being drunk makes you better at dancing than it does walking,” She commented, releasing her finger-hooked grip on his clothing when she felt they were far enough from the ‘mob of screaming hooligans’. “Because falling in creative ways doesn’t count as dancing, just so you know.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
In fact, he was so far beyond simply tipsy that his inhibitions had taken a knee to the wild desires normally kept at bay. Scarlet hadn’t seen just how many of those glasses he’d actually consumed; the more he drank, the more quickly he tended to replace the swallows he’d taken from the glass, and the more he refilled, the faster it seemed to drain. There was something about the green liquid that bypassed any sort of bodily filtration, absorbing almost preternaturally into his bloodstream to distort his thoughts and make even more honest his already-blatant personality. It was more a drug than a drink for the Sandman.
It was easier than it should have been to let go completely. Even with Scarlet’s encouragement, he’d slipped immediately into the mindset that the upcoming night was strictly for fun; he’d regressed from the mirthful sarcasm of ages-old wisdom to the unabashed behavior of a wild twenty-something, downing his alcohol so quickly it was a wonder he didn’t drown in it. He didn’t know what it was that inspired such reckless abandon, whether it was the stress of cleaning up the destiny of Caspar Brighton or the strange influence of his fiery new redheaded friend—but he was too far gone to change a damn thing now. All that was left to do was lose himself in the rare indulgence of inebriation.
He laughed at her comment regarding leprechauns, the chuckles spilling from his lips like swollen droplets of summer rain on a humid night. “Oh, honey,” he cried in good-natured response, raising his voice over the thrum of the music, “you wouldn’t want to drink a fucking leprechaun. What the fuck is wrong with you? That’s not even fucking possible!” He laughed even harder now, folding his arms over his stomach as his amusement intensified. Hearing the words out loud—especially coming from his own lips, which seemed to have a mind of their own now—made them all the more ludicrous, the point hitting home when tears sprung to his squinted eyes. He swayed in place, the floor pitching like a boat on choppy waters, and he uttered a little squeal of excitement as he tossed his arm out for balance.
He hardly realized what was happening as he led Scarlet down the stairs, and when they collided—when she bumped into his chest and stared back into his eyes—he had a brief moment of clarity in the viridescent haze that clouded his thoughts. But before he could register anything more than surprise, he was grinning again, this time with a wicked gleam to his gaze. Partially stumbling, partially being dragged to the corner, he followed Scarlet in as straight a path as he could manage, a glass finding itself once again in his free hand. He took one long swallow before it disappeared again—he hoped the redhead hadn’t seen his one last shot of courage—and as soon as her hooked fingers had disentangled themselves from his shirt, he was moving.
The transformation was almost magical. He certainly couldn’t explain how he could command his body so acutely when just moments before he hadn’t been able to stride without zigzagging across the floor, but he also didn’t care—it was the music that drove him, that permeated his blood stream as potently as the absinthe, seizing him like a possessing demon and animating his limbs with a control that really shouldn’t have been possible.
“Honey,” he called to Scarlet, matching the twists and sways of her body with his own, “I am fucking good at falling.” They traded positions as Caspar’s wailing electric guitar took flight with a rapid melody, and the Sandman, eyes wide as he mirrored his partner’s moves, laughed despite himself. He leaned forward, putting his lips to hear ear every handful of beats. “Better watch out, alpha arietus,” he slurred with a wide, unadulterated smirk, breaking up the words with the rhythm of the song, “or it might just be you falling for me.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
But that didn’t mean she wasn’t quick to learn.
It must have been going on five years, now, that the redhead had accompanied her friend to his gigs, to help him set up, to be his cheerleader, and (only up until a couple of years ago) helped him learn to melt that debilitating stage fright that interfered with his ability to live his dream. At first, she had just watched the people with drinks in their hands and energy in their eyes as they moved their bodies in urgent yet fluid motions that synchronized with the baseline of Caspar’s drummer and the lead guitarist’s melody. But music was an infectious drug, just as dancing was a contagious one, and it hadn’t taken her long to realize that she was fully adept to taking her own body to the dance floor and kicking up some spirited motions of her own.
Of course, a little drink always made it infinitely easier, and now was no exception as she dragged her inebriated partner to a more spacious corner where they were less likely to bump into others. Scarlet had to give the guy credit, for someone who had hardly been able to maintain his balance on the stairs, his feet suddenly seemed to know exactly what they were doing. Perhaps it was the alcohol talking, but the redhead was actually very impressed.
“You’re not half bad!” She shouted over the music, grabbing his hand to spin herself. The back of her shirt was damp with humidity and perspiration, and her cheeks were flushed from booze and heightened temperature, but she wasn’t inclined to stop anytime soon. “I might even forgive you for calling me ‘Honey’—but I’ll kill you if you do it again!”
Laughter spilled from her lips at the terrible irony of that statement (which was probably far over his drunken head, at any rate), and she twirled again, very nearly colliding with him, saved by the hand she put out just in time that caught his shoulder.
Alair’s mouth was suddenly very close to her ear, and the words he whispered nearly put her rapidly beating heart into arrest.
Better watch out, alpha arietus, or it might just be you falling for me.
Alpha arietus… The brightest star in the Aries constellation. Her constellation. But how had he known? Certainly, reading into someone’s zodiac was no problem for the likes of her… Did the Sandman possess abilities eerily likened to her own?
Just as her panic was about to peak, her sluggish brain recalled the ink beneath the skin behind her right ear; an impulse decision she had made a few years ago, while (admittedly) still a tad tipsy coming home one night from one of Caspar’s gigs. She’d always wanted a tattoo, but sobriety did not lend her the courage she needed to go through with one. Who’d have thought all it would take was a couple drinks and some cash to yield a simplistic, neat sign of the Aries, in a classy and unobtrusive spot?
That was it. Her hair was even pulled to the side, in an effort to keep it off her hot neck; he must have spotted it and drawn the logical assumption.
“Ah, I don’t think so, Magic Man:” Scarlet smirked and rested her hands on his shoulders to speak into his ear again. She could feel the heat radiating from his active body, and couldn’t help but wonder how the two of them weren’t feeling the effects of dehydration yet. “I don’t fall for anyone. Sorry.”
And speaking of falling, it wasn’t long before she became aware of his missteps and her own compromised balance, a combination of sleep deprivation, alcohol and elevated temperature on her part (and perhaps not much different on his own). The dancing had gone from silly to fun to borderline dangerous, it was past midnight now, and Caspar would be wrapping it up in a half hour. All good reasons to call it a night.
“Hey, you still lucid?” The young woman took the Sandman’s face in both of her hands to make him look at her, and he did appear to be as out of it as his clumsy movements suggested. “Okay; I think it’s time we got the two of us home. You’re not going to be hanging out on roof tops tonight.”
Slipping an arm around his waist to guide him through the crowd, Scarlet grabbed her cell phone from her back pocket with her free hand and dialed a cab. Neither of them was fit to make the twenty minute walk back to the apartment complex; she only hoped Alair wouldn’t try something stupid and pull his teleporting trick and cause her to lose sight of him. The last thing the sleeping world needed was a drunk Sandman gallivanting around through the night.
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
To say he’d lost touch with reality was as grand an understatement as the world had ever seen. Coming from the Sandman, a supernatural entity clothed in human flesh and bone whose very nature required the ability to discern fact from fiction, that was a particularly troubling—and particularly hilarious—conclusion to draw. He had lost touch with his sixth sense, the one that anchored him to actuality and grounded his perception of truth and falsehood, up and down, left and right. Given his altered state, he realized this without really knowing what it all meant; to the intoxicated master of dreams, it was all a supremely funny joke at someone else’s expense.
The music had taken on a life of its own, not only controlling his dancing limbs but also commanding the very pattern of his thoughts. His vision had doubled and even tripled, the lines separating the stage from the performers and even Scarlet’s crimson hair from the light of the bar behind them had blurred to a point where Jimmy’s had turned into a watercolor painting that swum, still wet, before his eyes. Had he been sober, he might have appreciated such an image—a dark, dingy club turned bright and flowing with impressionistic brushstrokes. But now, dancing and twirling and stepping side to side, his only connection to the present was Scarlet’s corresponding moves in the center of his vision. He wasn't appreciating the painting—he lived it.
His energy was draining quickly, however; he was beginning to struggle to keep up with his redheaded partner, who also seemed to be slowing somewhat as they continued. He was too drunk to be thankful when they stopped, so he protested instead, pulling a face and sighing dramatically over the chords of Caspar’s finale number. “Scarlet,” he whined, drawing out her name like a child begging to get his way. “We were just getting into it!” But he was leaning on her shoulder all the same, his arm wrapped around her upper back to grip her opposite arm, his steps uneven and wobbly as they made their way past the ticket booth and stumbled into the cool air of the DC night.
As soon as the breeze hit his flushed face, he began to laugh. It was almost cold outside after having become acclimated to the stuffy interior; his shirt was soaked with sweat, and his dark hair was plastered to his dripping forehead. “Lucid,” he said with a giggle, repeating the word she’d used back inside the club, “you said lucid. That’s funny. Get it? Funny! Lucid dreams!” His eyes widened, and he swayed in the wind as a flash of bright yellow—the cab, he realized distantly—pulled up in front of them.
He climbed in the back seat with the redhead’s help, sitting quite still and staring straight forward as he took his place behind the driver. By the time they arrived outside Scarlet’s apartment building, however, he was already starting to feel a little worse for wear.
“There better be a fucking elevator in this place,” he slurred, exhaustion creeping into his words. “Are we fucking there yet?”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Suffice it to say, this wasn’t typically how a Friday evening came to a close, following one of Caspar’s gigs. The redhead tended to arrive with Caspar, and tended to leave with him, when all was said and done and the house had cleared out, sticky floors and plastic cups and a tangle of power cords the only evidence that the music and the dancing had ever been. Depending on how much she’d had to drink, she was either profusely helpful or little more than a hardly functional lush who could barely stand up. On a good night, she would lend a hand and help her musical roommate pack up his guitar and stack up the amps to be collected on another day.
And, on a bad night, she couldn’t remember for the life of her how she had gotten home, but knew Caspar had something to do with it.
But, good night or not, Scarlet was never the one to call it quits, particularly not when she was having so much fun. Of course, on those nights, she did not frequently have a partner to look out for, on top of monitoring her own current state of existence. Exhaustion and heatstroke were written all over Alair’s face; he might have been preternatural in nature, but (if her dream had shed any light onto the topic that was the Sandman) he could get hurt just as easily as any other human. And if that happened, not only would she be subject for wearing the blame in not properly looking out for him, but Caspar might never forgive her for neglecting to be responsible when his friend wasn’t.
“Oh, come on. That’s not even funny.” She groaned as she helped the highly inebriated man into the cab, reaching across his lap to buckle him in before the cabbie took off, bound for the address she’d given him on the phone.
The ride wasn’t a long one, but Scarlet was reluctant to take her eyes off of her less-than-fit companion, lest he actually pass out (and from the way he appeared to be staring into space, he appeared like he might). Imagine the relief when the car pulled over in front of her apartment complex, and the Sandman was still conscious after she paid up.
Helping him out of the cab, her arm encircled his waist again, a little perturbed to find that he was putting far more weight on her now than he had before. “Elevators? In this old place? You’ve got to be joking.” She muttered, focusing on putting one foot in the other as she dragged both her own weight and his inside the aged building. “You’re lucky we’re only on the fourth floor; come on. Oh, jesus, Alair, you’re not even trying! Lift your goddamned feet, I can’t carry you.”
The amount of profanity that the redhead uttered on her way up the stairs must have been a new personal record, frustrated as she was with her near-useless companion who would barely pick up one leaden foot at a time. Her shoulders ached from bearing his weight by the time the made it back to the apartment, which still smelled strongly (and enticingly) of coffee. Thankfully, she had left the light on prior to leaving, so there was no stumbling around in the dark with a drunk man joined at her hip.
“Okay—down you go.” Scarlet eased him onto the couch in the living room with an audible groan, happy to be rid of the extra weight. Without a word, she ventured into the bathroom to grab a bottle of aspirin, and subsequently into the kitchen to retrieve some water. “Take two; I don’t know if you sleep, but you are going to have one hell of a hangover tomorrow, regardless.”
So as to show him the pills were safe (in case he still has his suspicions), the redhead popped two into her mouth and tilted her head back to swallow them dry. While she had sobered up significantly, she was still dehydrated as all hell, and the inebriation had hit her hard. There was no way you could feel that drunk without some dire consequences.
“Tell me if you feel like you’re going to be sick,” the redhead sighed, taking a seat in a beaten up armchair next to the couch, since his long legs required the extent of the latter just to unfold. It was times like these that Scarlet was thankful for her less than healthy sleeping habits; it came in handy when babysitting drunk friends.
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Where before it had been thrilling, his night of irresponsible partying had snuck up on him and sunk its razor claws into his saturated flesh. As Scarlet led him into the apartment, the door slamming forcefully closed behind them, he closed his eyes against the glare of the light she’d left on in their absence and allowed her to lower him to the sofa. The cushions felt more like clouds than the lumpy, threadbare pieces of foam they were, and he sighed his relief as the throbbing in his temples crescendoed in the silence of the flat. His ears rang a high pitched, painful tone in the absence of Caspar’s ear-cracking jams; the quiet settled upon his clammy skin like a cold evening breeze. He shivered against it as a wave of nausea washed over him, but he bit it back, refusing to give in to his body’s revolt against his poor decisions.
“Jesus,” he breathed. When his eyelids fluttered open, some of the focus had returned to his blue eyes. And while he still looked a right mess—sweaty and pale and clearly in all angles of agony—he’d sobered up enough to recognize what a mess he was. He turned to look at the redhead, who had set two aspirin and a glass of water on the coffee table near his head, watching as she took a seat in the armchair opposite. Cringing, he shifted positions enough to swallow the pills—dry—and then guzzle the glass of water as though it were an elixir to cure his oncoming train wreck of a hangover.
Sleep. That was really the last thing he wanted to talk about. Or think about. Or do, really. At this point of the game, slumber seemed far too much like work, and even with how drunk he was, he knew clocking in when he felt so incredibly shitty was a bad idea. He had no dreams of his own, that much was true; he hadn’t taken part in his own personal hallucinations in more centuries than he was willing to count. But sleep, he feared, would not bring relief but rather additional pain—for even if he wasn’t on duty, there was only empty black nothingness waiting for him on the other side of consciousness. And that empty black nothingness…well, it felt a little too much like death.
“Thank you,” he croaked at last, breaking their silence with the hoarse word. He’d sobered significantly by then; the room no longer felt as though he were aboard a ship in a storm, and his thoughts, while still a little unwieldy, were coherent enough to afford speech. “You okay, alpha?” he asked, staring blankly at the ceiling. He folded his hands over his stomach, doing his best not to move for fear of losing its contents all over the carpet. “I…Jesus. What the fuck even happened?”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
“No need to thank me.” She shrugged, dangling her long legs over the arm of the armchair, brushing her sweaty hair from her face with her fingertips. “It’s not the first time I’ve had to set up a drunk on the couch before. Did you want a window open? You look kinda like shit.” Without waiting for an answer, the redhead stood from the chair almost as quickly as she’d sat down, clearing the small living room in only a couple of strides to open a window on a crack. Beyond the apartment, the astral nightlights embedded in the inky black sky winked and twinkled.
And told her nothing.
Ditching her denim vest on the floor, Scarlet returned to the chair, noticing with a start the vivid blue of the Sandman’s eyes fixed on her. With only streetlights and moonlight leaking in through the dirty windowpanes, the clarity of those irises was almost eerie. “Alpha? And here I’ve been grumbling at Caspar for calling me Red.” She snorted, shaking her head. “Don’t make it a habit… And I’m fine. A little sore, but dancing nonstop for hours, running on borrowed energy will do that to you… How did you even know I’m an Aries, by the way? Is my personality really that obvious?”
As to his second question, the young woman had to muddle through her own blurry thoughts and recollections to decipher the fast-paced, hot and sweaty and music-infused evening. “What do you mean, what happened? You were drinking, you danced...” They were drinking. They had danced, but a squirmy, uncomfortable feeling at the pit of her gut made her reluctant to refer to the both of them in his sort recount of the evening. “What the hell were you drinking, anyway? That green stuff… Where the hell was it even coming from? Do I even want to know?” Whatever it had been, it had actually pushed her over the edge from minor tipsiness to full-out inebriation in a matter of minutes.
Scarlet was tired. She ached, and her body felt lethargic, but her mind was alive and it made her fidgety. So she stood from her chair again and crossed the room to the kitchen, grabbing the empty mug next to the couch. He looked like he could use a few litres of good old H2O, and she hadn’t eaten anything in almost twenty-four hours.
After refilling the mug to the brim and grabbing an energy bar from the cupboard, she returned to the dark living room, sitting the cool mug within his reach. “Keep yourself hydrated,” she suggested, though it of course went without saying. “Anything else I can get you, Magic Man?”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Strangely, his misery made him want to drink more in an attempt to mask the symptoms. Instead, he made the wiser choice and reached for the glass of cold water the redhead had brought for him, downing its entire contents in a single breath. The onslaught of liquid on his churning stomach made him feel worse, however, and for a moment he thought he might retch all over the floor. A rush of bile burned the back of his throat, but he swallowed it back with a cringe, sighing with obvious relief as the urge to vomit passed. He collapsed back onto the couch, hardly daring to look at Scarlet, and knotted his hands together on his chest.
His eyelids fluttered closed again. For a moment, with his deep and even breathing, it seemed he had fallen asleep—but he broke his spell of stillness and quiet by clearing his throat and responding to her question after a moment’s contemplation. “I am a creature of the night,” he replied without looking at her, smiling as much as his current condition allowed. “Remember? That zodiac shit’s just part of the job.”
He chuckled. If he couldn’t sleep to avoid the worst of his withdrawal, then he would talk; any sort of distraction was welcome, even if it meant distracting himself. “A fire sign makes sense for you,” he slurred, voice cracking somewhat. “Ambitious. Energetic.” He would have nodded if he’d had the strength. “Is that why you dye your hair? Fire to match the fire?”
Alair may have been one for speaking his mind, but he never would have asked so direct a question had he been even one step closer to sobriety. But as it stood, it wasn’t an attack so much as a genuine inquiry, his uninhibited curiosity reigning supreme over his utterly absent better judgment.
“Aries are said to be passionate lovers, aren’t they,” he went on, his drawl suggesting more that he was speaking to himself than to his companion. A chuckle shook his shoulders. “Been in love, Scarlet?” he asked, settling deeper into the couch cushions. “I have. It’s sort of great, you know? A rush. The best fucking drug…” He opened his blue eyes, tracing the cracks in the stucco ceiling with his gaze. “Better than absinthe. Better than whatever-the-fuck else. It’s a high, alpha. A high.” A smile upturned the corners of his lips.
But his expression then turned sour, his tone darkening along with his stare. “But it’s a high. It’s still a fucking drug, you know? And a drug will fucking destroy you.” He spoke the words with such intensity, such poignancy that for a moment, he didn’t sound as drunk as he was. “All highs have lows. Fucking lows…”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Since she hadn’t really expected to receive an answer to her question, and assumed that in his silence and stillness he had fallen asleep, Scarlet worked away at the energy bar, hoping that the rush of carbs and protein would ward off any urge to sleep for more than a few hours. Her stomach protested at first, churning at the sudden presence of sustenance, but that wave of uneasiness passed quickly enough. With what little she slept, and what little time she spent asleep, it was beyond her how her body didn’t seem to suffer any dire health complications (at least, none of which she was immediately aware). Caspar worried that her heart was going to give out, or something, but that was just Cas; always worried for everyone, with not enough room in his heart of gold to shoulder all of those worries.
When Alair spoke up again, the young woman almost jumped, having settled into a comfortable position on the chair to simply let her sore body relax. “Oh. Well, I guess that makes sense… Reading peoples’ horoscopes from their faces alone must come in handy.” It certainly would make her job a hell of a lot easier, and she felt a small twinge of envy towards the Sandman in that moment.
But the second he brought up her hair colour, that twinge was gone, and replaced with dumbfounded surprise. It was a topic towards which she was far more sensitive than he probably knew, so she tried to keep the bite from her voice before replying. “I don’t dye my hair to match anything, Magic Man. I dye it because I want a change from my natural colour; you know, like most people do.”
But his assumptions and predictions regarding her zodiac sign did not end there, and his next comment pushed the redhead off the threshold of uneasiness and into downright defensive territory. “The fuck are you implying, exactly?” She could feel the muscles in her shoulders and neck contract with the ire building in her stomach and rising to her throat; that is, until she realized that the question was rhetorical. Alair was drunk: he wasn’t talking to her, he was talking at her. Reaching deep into himself, unveiling tidbits and small facts (however vaguely) that she was certain he wouldn’t discuss while sober. Throwing them out in the open, like she was nothing more than a soundboard.
It wasn’t the first time she’d found herself subject to drunken banter, not with the lifestyle she led. The difference was, most of the time it seemed so easy to ignore. But the cadence of Alair’s voice, the words and the tone and the bitterness that was almost palpable… It opened something up inside of her, something that never surfaced, but sat at the back of her mind like a deadweight that would not let up.
Until now. Now, suddenly, it was letting up, coming out, and she couldn’t stop it.
“I don’t believe in love.” The words came out of her mouth, quiet and unbidden, and those that followed coasted on a deluge of emotion that would not be tempered. “I think it’s something that people tell themselves to justify romantic relationships. I don’t know what it feels like, and I don’t care to. But I know what it feels like to be… safe. And to have someone who makes you feel safe. Is that sort of the same thing?”
Sitting the wrapper of her energy bar on a nearby bookshelf, the young woman pulled her knees to her chest, like the breeze from the open window was suddenly chilling her. “You want to know why I’m really living with Cas? It’s not because I’m the only person who knows he’s telekinetic. It’s because he saved me from myself.” That memory… Scarlet swallowed the lump in her throat and decided to proceed, since he wouldn’t remember ever having the conversation in the morning. Now that it had been brought to the surface, she needed to get it off her chest. “I was caught shoplifting some years ago, when I was still on the streets. Thing is, I wanted to get caught. I was… tired. Of fighting, of living, of just… everything. I wanted to be caught because I was giving up, and at least prison was something. Cas saw what was happening and intercepted, with a little help from his telekinesis. The whole thing blew over, I wasn’t arrested, but he… He didn’t just walk away. He could have, there was no reason for him to stick around, but he didn’t walk away. He wanted to make sure I was all right, and let me spend the night here, because the forecast was calling for a downpour that evening. And… well, after that, he just never asked me to leave.”
She paused, turning her attention to the book case, where a picture of one of his sold-out performances sat in a cheap plastic frame. It was a picture she had taken; and it was his favourite. “That was the first night in years that I’d ever felt safe. I still do feel safe. If something bad happens, he tries to fix it, and even if he can’t it still turns out all right. If I wake up from a nightmare, he’s there to listen… he’s always there. And I know I’m overprotective, but I’ve never had a friend like Caspar. He’s all I’ve got; that once-in-a-lifetime chance that will never crop up again. I know that’s not the kind of love you’re talking about, but it’s… again, it’s all I’ve got. And I’m ok with that.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
The lingering nausea of his alcohol-induced haze had thankfully passed, but in its stead settled a churning uneasiness that no amount of water or stillness could calm. It had been a long while since the last time he’d confronted those demons, and now that he’d allowed them to escape he feared he would never be able to coerce them back into their hidden cages. He sighed heavily at the feel of their claws behind his aching eyes, focusing on the physical pain of his current maladies in hopes that the emotional hurt would simply disappear in the shadow of his intoxication.
But as much as he wished he could control the hideous onslaught, that wasn’t how it worked. Drunkenness was nothing if not an invitation for the monsters of one’s past to emerge from the darkness of abandoned thoughts. The Sandman was no more immune to that particular consequence than he was to the effects of absinthe, and—in his inebriated opinion, at least—he was more entitled to grieving than the majority of the population. Was it truly better to have loved and lost than never to have experienced that agony in the first place? Of course it wasn’t. Not when your losses ended only in repetition, not when it meant reliving over and over again the worst breed of death.
“It’s better that you don’t believe in love,” he heard himself say, laughing with cringeworthy bitterness. “It’s a bunch of bullshit. You’re right. It’s an excuse for being happy. Or not being happy, as the case may be.” He would have shaken his head if his temples hadn’t been throbbing with such intensity. “It’s a fucking trick, that’s what it is. And I don’t like being duped. I’m not a fucking idiot, Scarlet. I may be talking like one now, drunk as all fuck, but Jesus Christ…”
He interrupted himself with a long exhale, a sharp hiss through gritted teeth. Anger rose in his chest like bile, and he shifted positions, glancing towards the open window as a small gust of cool air tousled his messy hair. He had been burned too many times to have survived unscathed, but he wore his scars in remembrances thick with sorrow. He was thankful to have Scarlet there to talk to, even if he was doing more self-directed scolding than actual conversation, so when she began to return his dialogue he was thankful for the opportunity to listen.
“That’s the only kind of love that’s worth it,” he told her honestly, reaching up to rest his forearm over his tired eyes. “Safety. Trust. Cas is a good guy for that.” His tone had lost the heftiest of his cynicism, adopting a much softer edge after the redhead’s personal revelations. Even through his fog he recognized the privilege of hearing her story for the rare event that it was, and he knew it was something to be respected. “That’s a familial kind of love. Nothing wrong with that. Like I said, it’s the only kind worth knowing, so it’s good that you’re keeping it that way. Just be ready to fight for it if you have to, you know? Good shit doesn’t come easy, and when you have it it’s even harder to keep it. Can I have some more water?”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Woes such as hers didn’t even seem to hold a flame to what her preternatural companion spoke of; loving and losing and feeling downright shitty because of it. Now that was trivial; people went through that shit all the time. And while the Sandman was, for all intents and purposes, human, and as a human was susceptible to emotional pain as he was physical pain, there was something about the way he spoke of his trysts with heartbreak that made her listen. As if it was more than just heartbreak, cut far deeper than typical self-pity and longing and nostalgia…
But then, she wasn’t acquainted with that kind of love—the ‘horrid’ sort of which he spoke—and consequently was not a good judge of what was legit heartache and what was pettiness.
“Yeah… I suppose it’s kind of like familial love.” Scarlet agreed, although what even that felt like was nothing but a foggy impression on her earliest memories. “Cas is kind of like the brother I wish I had… To be very honest, I can’t imagine him in a vaguely romantic context. It makes me feel weird just thinking about it, but maybe that’s because, like I said, I don’t really believe in the concept of romantic love. But you…” She eyed his still form on the couch, the arm draped over his eyes, and for a moment he looked like the most torn-up, pitiful soul on which she had ever laid eyes. “I guess for you, it’s very real. And it’s apparently really bent you out of shape…”
Heeding his request (and wanting an excuse to get to her feet, anyway), the young woman took the empty mug and returned to the kitchen to refill it once more with water. Unfortunately, even water wouldn’t cure the state he would be in, come morning…
“No offense, but it kind of sounds like you’ve got really shitty taste in women, if you keep getting hurt over and over again.” She commented off handedly, prying his arm away from his eyes so she could put the mug in his hand. “And if you were bitten so bad the first time, why keep going back for more if it always ends so poorly? I mean, come on, Magic Man; I know you’ve got more sense than that.”
Without so much as a word, Scarlet pulled the throw off the back of the couched and draped it over her guest’s legs. It wasn’t like he’d be going anywhere else, anytime soon. “Yeah, I know it’s hot, but you’ll get colder, trust me; between the alcohol opening up blood vessels and making you sweat, and the breeze coming through the window, you’re going to want to stay covered.”
In spite of the energy bar, she was starting to feel the pressure behind her eyes that begged her lids to close, and making a pot of coffee suddenly felt like too much work, after dragging her own weight (as well as most of Alair’s) up two flights of stairs, so the redhead ultimately decided to give in to a bit of shut-eye. “Do me a favor? If you’re sober enough, I mean,” she began, after fishing her cell phone from her pocket and placing it on the bookcase next to her head. “I’m gonna crash here for when Cas returns. And I’ll probably wake up when the door opens, but if I don’t, and I sleep through my alarm, wake me up?”
She settled back into the old armchair and pulled her legs up and closed her eyes, not bothering with a blanket or sweater for herself, since she only intended to sleep for a handful of hours, as it was. “And you’d better be absolutely dying, if you wake me up just to get you more water.” She added after a long, quiet pause, before returning to silence that gave way to the shallow breathing of someone asleep moments later. If the guy didn’t sleep, well, that wasn’t her problem. With any luck, their ceiling was interesting enough for him to fixate on until he sobered up.
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
“Look, Scarlet.” He spat her name as though it were a curse, but his tone held more sorrow than anger. “Just…shut the fuck up about it, okay?” His demand was meant to be hostile, threatening, but it sounded empty and weak as soon as the words departed his lips. He was nothing if not enraged and sad and, in a lot of ways, utterly defeated, but all he could think about now was the pounding in his skull and how much he hated himself. Not just for his past and everything that encompassed, but for his present state of embarrassing misery, a feeling he had never worn well even when it was meant to be expressed.
“You don’t know anything,” he murmured, barely audibly. He closed his eyes and clenched them tightly closed, staring as the imprint of the cracks in the ceiling trailed like bolts of lightning across the black void behind his lids. The sting of his own words resonated through him, taking root in his bones and spreading like a painful disease through his limbs. His story wasn’t one that he’d ever shared, and he had no intention of elaborating now. It was irrelevant, anyway; the only reason it plagued him now was the result of his own irresponsibility, and that alone was not a good enough reason to spill his soul to a redheaded half-stranger who’d dragged his sorry drunk carcass up four flights of stairs.
He snapped back to reality only when he felt the blanket cover his legs, and he opened his eyes, alarmed and confused. Returning his arm to his side, he adjusted the throw as he shifted positions to his side and took the mug of water with the hand opposite the arm he used to prop himself up. Taking a long drink, he resurfaced with a soft gasp and returned the half-empty glass to the table. “Thank you,” he said, his face expressionless but for the sickly pallor of his still-clammy complexion. “Yeah, you should get some sleep. I’ll be here.”
It was hardly more than a minute before he heard the redhead’s breathing turn soft and even, a surefire indicator of slumber even if he hadn’t been the Sandman. He lay in silence for quite some time, seconds turning to minutes turning to hours, drifting in and out of thoughts and memories as though his consciousness itself were the bizarre remnants of a dream. He took a strange comfort in the rhythmic inhales of his companion, her breaths functioning like the ticking of a preternatural clock as his body slowly began to recover from his night of reckless indulgence.
Feeling a little more like himself—but still quite a bit like death warmed over (fucking Amrial, he thought bitterly)—he rose quietly to his feet and refilled his water glass, making a stop at the bathroom. Retrieving his phone from his pocket, he checked the time, then examined his face in the mirror. He looked almost as hellish as he felt. Taking a deep breath, he turned on the shower and jumped inside, slowly increasing the temperature from tepid to warm and then scalding as he made sure he could keep his balance long enough to rinse the sweat from his body and the soap from his hair.
By the time he was out, dressed again, and collapsed back on the couch after expending all his energy, it was almost sunrise. When Scarlet’s alarm was about to sound, he reached up to stifle it, managing to sit upright with his legs folded beneath him and the throw tangled about his knees.
“Hey, alpha,” he said quietly so as not to startle her. “Wakey, wakey.” He paused, leaning back against the cushions as though their padding could muffle the piercing sound of his own voice. “Hey, uh, Cas didn’t come back last night. He texted me saying he was spending the night somewhere, so you shouldn’t freak out.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
‘Gentle’ was not a word that Scarlet would use to describe Alair, and as such, it hadn’t really occurred to her that he would peak much further past simply being silly and energetic (and maybe a little pathetic, now that the alcohol was really taking its toll). And, really, she hadn’t meant any offense by insulting in taste in women; if anything, she thought she’d simply been pointing out the obvious, something with which he would sadly agree.
The ire that surfaced instead, the way he’d spoken her name like a curse and looked upon her with all the bitterness of a man scorned, not only came as a surprise but something of a blow. It bothered her, and she really didn’t know why…
“No, you’re right; I don’t know anything. Never been in love, remember?” She muttered dismissively, and retrieving him another mug full of water was a task performed with the utmost reluctance. She was tired, still a tad (but just a tad!) drunk, herself… Now was not the ideal time to be putting up with this shit.
Glad that he’d at least agreed to be her back-up Alarm, Scarlet was oddly comforted by the simplest of words that he uttered when she closed her eyes: I’ll be here. But he wouldn’t understand what they meant to her, even if she tried to explain, so instead she let the feeling pass and succumbed to the sleep that overwhelmed her.
What Alair didn’t know was that the young woman was an astonishingly light sleeper; another habit from life on the streets that she had yet to shake, and as such, every sound and movement he made roused her just a little. In her semi-conscious state, however, her mind did not piece together who was moving; and, naturally, her reflex assumptions pinned it all to Caspar. The sounds in the kitchen, in the shower… Cas must have come home, she thought, and was too comfortable in that assumption to bother to see if it could be disproven.
The background noise therefore soothed her through the wee hours of the morning, warded off dreams that would otherwise threaten to assault her subconscious mind, and Scarlet felt completely at peace.
Hey, Alpha.
Those were the words that roused her from her light slumber in a split second. Not because he had startled her or that his voice had been too loud, but because there was only one person who called her Alpha. And that person was not Caspar Brighton.
“Oh… yeah. Thanks.” Groggy and stiff, the chemically-altered redhead sat up straight, rubbing the back of her sore neck as she reached for her phone. Just as her fingers touched he smooth plastic, her wakefulness was dragged further from the depths of sleep by another revelation from the Sandman: Hey, uh, Cas didn’t come back last night.
“What? He didn’t come home at all?” Scarlet scrolled through old messages on her phone, but not a single one was from Caspar.
So she decided not to beat around the bush, and called his number before pressing the phone to her ear. Well, at least it was ringing…
A groggy voice on the other end picked up on the forth ring, and the young woman expelled a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “Hey—yes, it’s me. Yeah, he just told me, but why didn’t you just text me? …I would not! Since when do freak out just because you don’t drag your ass home after a gig?” Nevermind that she was freaking out, and on the phone to him. “Yes, everything’s fine. I’m fine, Alair’s fine. Where are you, anyway? I—… What do you mean it’s none of my business? Look, I was just worried, okay?” A pause; and yet, neither one on either end said a single thing.
It was finally Caspar who hung up, with a vague promise that he’d be home soon.
The young woman stared at the blank screen of her phone and pinched the bride of her nose, an attempt to ward off the dull ache of pending panic in her gut. “Did he tell you where he was?” She asked Alair, without turning to look at him. “Actually, you know what—nevermind. I don’t want to know. He can do what he wants, I don’t care.”
Except that she did care, so much that it hurt, and drew ugly jealousy and paranoia from the depths of her very being.
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
The shower itself was something of a blur; despite the fact that it had only been a mere handful of hours since he’d ventured from the safe embrace of the threadbare sofa, he had still largely been under the influence of his bad decisions. When he stirred once again from his position to wake the redhead curled up in the armchair, he realized he wasn’t wearing the same clothes that he’d originally come in—which left him feeling both relieved and puzzled. While he was certainly glad not to be wearing the same shirt that had been drenched the previous night, he also had no recollection of raiding Caspar’s clothing collection to retrieve a new t-shirt and jeans. But that was the only logical explanation—not that anything Alair did was dependent on making sense—and he settled back on the couch hoping Scarlet wouldn’t notice.
“Nope,” he confirmed, his voice soft and hoarse but not unkind. “He didn’t come back at all. Said not to wait up for him. Which we didn’t, so I guess that’s a good thing.” Alair fished his phone from his pocket—well, not his pocket, but close enough—and unlocked the screen with a swipe of his thumb. He pulled up the text message from Cas and held it out for the redhead to examine, but she was already dialing him from her own device. Alair made a face that was somewhere between a cringe and a wince. He had a feeling her roommate was not going to get away with this terribly easily…
And he was right. She was freaking out; he could see it in her eyes as she spoke on the phone, her eyes intermittently flashing anger and worry and disappointment. He settled back into the sofa, not bothering to pretend not to listen; even if he’d been in the other room, he could have heard her conversation through the paper-thin walls of the flat. Her voice pierced his skull like a dagger straight through the bones. When she finished, he remained quiet, pursing his lips so as not to speak before she’d allowed herself to process the exchange in full.
“That’s bullshit, and you know it,” said Alair at her quip about not caring, sitting up a little straighter and then cringing at the effort. He swiped open his phone again and held out the glowing screen to the irritated redhead, arching his brows. “Look. He didn’t tell me where he was either, just that he wouldn’t be back. It’s okay to care, but he is an adult. At least he told one of us, and see, he told me to tell you when you woke up.” He sighed, his little speech sapping what little strength he’d managed to recover after his early-morning escapade to the kitchen and bathroom. “Do you have any more aspirin?” he asked, lowering his voice a little.
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
That said, perhaps her reaction was a little out of context, but… her concern went beyond worry and disappointment. Hell, it went beyond Caspar, himself, and it reached the very pre-dawn stars that had so turned their backs on her, in regards to her suddenly very elusive roommate.
“Oh, bite me.” Came her muttered reply when he called her on her hasty lie; if she hadn’t cared, she wouldn’t have called Caspar in the first place. She wouldn’t have even inquired into his whereabouts.
But Alair appeared to be telling the truth, for glance at the shiny screen of his phone revealed a text-message sent at 2:36 the previous night (or morning; it was all the same to Scarlet) that read simply: won’t b home 2nite, don’t w8 up, all’s well. The Sandman must not have checked his phone until he’d sobered up.
“He’s just… He’s never not here at night, is all.” She was hasty to explain away her sudden rush of worry, not letting onto her own rush of fear and insecurity (and not thinking for a moment that he remembered a thing of what she’d told him regarding her small confession, just a handful of hours ago).
Sitting her phone on the book case, she made to head towards her bedroom to grab a clean outfit, only to stop in her tracks and do a double-take on her supernatural guest. “Are those Caspar’s clothes? Why are you… And, hold on.” Taking a few steps towards him, not close enough that it would be awkward, but enough that she tracked a very familiar scent on his person.
Shooting him the evil eye, the redhead resumed her trek to her bedroom, figuring it best to clear distance before she detonated. Caspar’s elusiveness was enough to plunge her deep into one of her more dangerous moods; smelling her expensive shower supplies on someone else’s skin (and without permission) could very well be a last straw. “…aspirin’s in the same cupboard as the gauze,” she informed him flatly. “And for your sake, that had better not be my shower gel I’m smelling.” That was all she said to him before turning her back and stalking into her bedroom, grabbing the first T-shirt and clean pair of jeans she could find before she headed to the bathroom to shower and clean the night away from her body.
Needless to say, Alair’s fate was sealed before she even locked the bathroom door.
“You know,” she called, through the rush of water from the showerhead and through the paper-thin door, “using my expensive shower supplies is a great way to earn a place in hell. Just because you go out to a club and act like a lush doesn’t make it okay for you to use my LUSH brand.”
The Sandman was lucky that all he’d received was her scorn for that small infraction, and the only reason she hadn’t come down harder on him was because she was (well, perpetually) too tired, and that Caspar’s absence gave her something more pressing to worry about.
“The least you can do is put on a pot of coffee,” the redhead added moments later, between shutting off the water and turning on the blow-dryer. “After I hauled your drunk ass out of the club and up four flights of stairs.”
Whatever retort he might’ve come back with was drowned out by the high-pitched rush of a blow dryer, but when Caspar Brighton’s fiery roommate finally emerged to the smell of fresh coffee, with dry hair and clean clothes (and smelling exactly-uncannily— like Alair), she seemed to have come down a bit from the death-glare she’d shot him twenty minutes ago. “You’re lucky,” she said as she crossed the kitchen, brushing past him to the full carafe, reaching with her uninjured hand to grab a clean mug from the sink. “I need coffee so badly right now that I’m willing to forgive you, since you brewed it.”
Scarlet poured herself, a tall mug, keeping her opposite hand well away from anything that would sting or burn. The gash had long since stopped bleeding, but was angry and pink and looked a little irritated from the soap and shampoo from which she’d been too out of her mind to keep it away.
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Sensing that her anger was not about to settle with something as simple as an excuse of drunkenness, he winced theatrically and leaned back against the cushions. “I think you’d rather have me use your shower gel than wake up to what I smelled like earlier this morning.” Just as the redhead had predicted, he was in poor shape in the aftermath of their night-long partying, and though he certainly felt better than he had on the way back from the club, he was beginning to experience a brand new sensation of discomfort that encompassed the entirety of his tired body. He groaned when Scarlet forcefully closed the bathroom door behind her, the sound blasting through his head like a gunshot.
Deciding it was entirely too much effort to remain upright when he had the entire expanse of sofa at his disposal, he allowed himself to flop to the side, grunting as the side of his head collided with the throw pillow. He kicked the blanket back over his legs, tugging it up and over his head to block out the sickeningly cheerful glow of the morning sun peeking through the open window on the east wall. Not even the aspirin seemed worth the effort retrieving; he was content to wallow in his post-entertainment agony for the time being, thankful that Caspar wasn’t there to witness his sorry state.
He ignored Scarlet’s chiding from behind the bathroom door, at last rising to his feet to retrieve the painkillers from the kitchen cabinet. Cradling the entire bottle in the crook of his arm, he rolled back onto the couch like a dying man unable to withstand the pressure of his own limbs. He didn’t count how many pills he took and swallowed, he simply downed them dry and wished he could exhale his pounding headache with a sigh.
At the redhead’s request, he rose once again, crafting a strong brew of scalding coffee in the percolator on the counter. It was the least he could do after offending her so deeply by using her special soap—he rolled his eyes to himself at the thought; it was just soap, for heaven’s sake—and he had the good grace to make it as hot as possible without bringing it to a rolling boil.
The brightness of the kitchen made him squint, and he leaned against the counter’s edge as he waited for his companion. When his phone buzzed in his pocket, he checked his messages through his thick lashes and saw Caspar Brighton’s name sprawled across the tiny screen. hey, scarlet ok? it read. i tried calling her back but no answer, can u check on her l8r? Alair gritted his teeth. Cas obviously didn’t know the half of it, including the quarter that apparently revolved around the illegal use of fancy cleansing products. He also seemed not to know that the Sandman was still at his flat.
He pocketed his phone when Scarlet entered the kitchen, unsure how to reply. When she was finished filling her mug, he poured himself his own hot helping.
“Lemme see that hand,” he told her, reaching for the gauze pads he’d left on the countertop earlier. “You should keep it covered.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Taking a tentative sip, she eyed the Sandman sidelong, unable to keep a straight face as a gently amused grin tugged her frown in the other direction. “The shirt doesn’t look half bad, I’ll give you that,” she commented cheekily. “But unless you’re going for the 70s skinny jeans look, well… Even I don’t go to that extreme.” Which was saying something, since she was (had always been, really, even prior to taking to the streets) rather waiflike in appearance, with only a hint of a shape that prevent absolutely everything from looking baggy on her.
“You’re not as lanky as Cas, but he’s got baggier jeans than that. I doubt he’d mind if you went and took a look when you’re feeling up to it. But I’ll warn you right now, I can’t remember the last time he tidied or vacuumed. I might have to make you sign a waiver, in case the dust bunnies eat you.”
When he asked to see her hand again, Scarlet didn’t appear to be in the mood to protest, but only gave a brief shrug of her shoulders, glancing apathetically at the angry pink gash across her palm. “Well, it’s not bleeding anymore. Just hurts like a bitch—”
Her voice cut off suddenly when her phone vibrated against the counter, and had she not put her coffee mug down just second before, she’d have spilled it all over her tank top.
“Fuck…” She muttered, cheeks going faintly pink at her own jumpiness as she grabbed the phone from the counter. In her livid haze, it had completely slipped her mind that she’d set it there before hopping in the shower.
Swiping to unlock the screen, she pressed the talk button as soon as she saw the name. “What’s up?”
“I tried to get ahold of you last night, lady. I did a reading the other day; guy was really interested in some ‘concrete answers’. Wanna come take a look at the spread and get the 411?”
Erika (except that she was ‘Riki’, and only ‘Erika’ on pain of death). She’d been Scarlet’s ‘business associate’ from way back; before Caspar, before she’d left the streets of DC. When Alair had asked her about her ‘nine-to-five’, Riki and her tarot cards were it, and their relationship was strictly confidential. Enough that even Cas wasn’t in the know.
“What, like, now?” The redhead exhaled and pursed her lips, pondering her situation, considering she wasn’t exactly in any position to just up and leave without seeming suspicious. Her injured hand was already extended to him, and anyway, she didn’t trust him not to follow if she ducked out of the apartment to rendezvous with Riki, even for only a handful of minutes. “Can’t you just… describe it to me?”
“Describe what?”
“The spread.”
A heavy sigh whooshed in Scarlet’s ear. “Oh fuck off, Scarlet. Get your skinny ass down here. You know describing it will give you shit all insight into anything.”
“Look, I’m not…” She glanced quickly at Alair, and then away again. “It’s not a good time.”
“Like all fuck it isn’t. We benefit each other, remember? You want a cut? Then I’ll see you in twenty minutes.”
“Hold on—” Scarlet began, but Riki had already hung up. Exhaling deeply through her nose, the artificially tinted redhead turned towards Alair again. “How are you feeling, by the way? Did you find the aspirin? You look like you could probably take a little more time to just lie down…” The concern leaking into her voice was intentional, and she held her breath that he’d fall for it and just go back to sleep (or whatever the Sandman did to rest) for a few more hours. “I need to head out real quick, but I’ll be back before you know it. No idea when Cas will be back, but I can give you my number, in case you really need to get ahold of me.”
Posted: Mon May 27, 2013 11:51 pm
“What’s up?” he asked, experimentally bringing his mug of scalding coffee to his lips. It had cooled enough to be just barely tolerable, so he sipped with caution, watching her over the ceramic rim as he swallowed. “That didn’t sound…uh, friendly. From this end of things, anyway.”
It was none of his business, a fact of which he was sure she would promptly remind him, so he pushed past her and sat back on the couch in the living room. The aspirin was kicking in now, making the throbbing in his temples slightly more bearable in the peachy glow of the morning sun, but he knew she was right—even if he didn’t need to sleep to get over this affliction, he certainly needed to rest. Through his stinging headache, he thought little of her sudden concern; despite the fact that she’d been on the verge of murdering him a second time for using her shower gel, he was too absorbed in his own bodily torment to notice how out-of-place it seemed.
“Yeah, go ahead, I’ll hold down the fort,” he said, easing himself back to a prostrate position across the cushions. The warm coffee in his belly was soothing, and it almost made him willing to fall asleep—almost. “I’ll call you if I need anything. What’s your number?” He produced his phone from his pocket, typed in her digits under the contact name Alpha, and bid her temporary adieu.
But instead of relaxing, he found himself rising once more to a sitting position, putting his phone to his ear as he dialed Caspar Brighton. The musician picked up at the last moment, clearing his throat before he spoke an urgent, “Hey,” into the receiver. “What’s going on? Did you check on Scarlet?”
Alair made a face, closing his eyes and arching his brows at the rush of words thrust at him over the satellite connection. “What? Yeah. I actually crashed on your couch last night…I wasn’t really in a state to make it home.”
Cas laughed lightly on the other end. “Glad you had a good time. I’m surprised Red didn’t kick you out first thing this morning.” He cleared his throat again, his tone serious when he went on. “Listen, I know she’s upset, but Alair…” He paused, hesitating. “I met someone last night.”
The Sandman’s eyes widened despite the brightness of the room. Of course, he thought. The brunette from the Baltimore dream. He’d been in no state to remember those details last night, and now that it was sinking in, he couldn’t have been more pleased. “Yeah?” was all he said, however, as enthusiastically as his headache allowed. “Good for you, man.”
“Her name’s Marissa. Hey…do me a favor and don’t tell that to Red. I’ll tell her when I get back.” Another pause. “Which might not be for awhile, actually. If you could stick around, make sure she’s not gonna murder anybody…”
“Sure.” Alair would have laughed, but he knew the irony of the man’s statement would have been lost on the unsuspecting musician, and he was in no position to explain. “Text me when you decide to leave. Or, maybe you should text her. She’s probably going to freak out either way, so you might just be making it worse if you make me your messenger.”
“Yeah, okay,” Cas said, chuckling. “I’ll spare you that. Thanks, Alair. I owe you one. Later.”
The Sandman, his mood suddenly improved in spite of his physical condition, rose to his feet and headed back into the kitchen, refilling his coffee. If Cas wasn’t going to get back for another couple of hours, then he had some distracting to do on Scarlet’s behalf. He began digging through their cabinets, his stomach finally deciding to be hungry rather than just nauseated, pulling ingredients for lunch from their stores.
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Slipping on a pair of flats, she was very nearly out the front door before he called from the living room for her cell phone number. She’d forgotten she made the offer almost as soon as it had come out of her mouth.
“Oh—right.” Calling her seven digits out to him, she grabbed a faux-leather bomber jacket that hung on a hook next to the flat’s spare key. The sun might have been up, but it was still hours away from being warm, with morning dew still in the air. “Let me know if you need anything, or if there’s anything I can pick up for you for your hangover. Some people recommend ‘hair of the dog’, but something tells me you won’t want to see, let alone stomach at any more alcohol anytime soon.”
Scarlet left him, then, jokingly calling for him not to ransack the place while she was gone, and then took to the streets of DC in the early morning light. She wouldn’t be long; her rendezvous with Riki rarely comprised of more than a few minutes. Long enough for her business friend to relay to her the details about the client’s name, their query, and whatever else they had revealed to her during the reading. Riki was a skill tarot reader, and it was never so much that she had to rely on Scarlet to make the readings ‘right’, so much as Scarlet had the other half of the clarity that she required to satisfy her customers. The cards layout was a skeleton of an answer; the stars, which only the redhead could call on, filled in the blanks.
She found the young woman (younger than even her) at their typical meeting spot; an alley that was far too dark to be inviting. Nobody ever bugged them there, and nobody ever overheard. “All right. Give me the details quick; Cas could be coming home anytime now.”
It took all of five minutes. Riki gave her a Sparknotes account of the client—a man in his 40s, hoping to secure a hefty business deal with a bank, and wanting to know how he could make it successful—, showed her the spread if five cards she’d laid out for the guy, and the redhead took out a notepad and quickly jotted the layout and the cards onto lined paper. This was simple enough, but he’d given Riki a ‘very’ nice downpayment, promising more if she could ‘make it so’ for him. Half of which she gave to Scarlet up front without a word. “Anything else I need to know?”
“Nah. That’s it. He wants an answer by Monday, though.”
“I’ll see what I can figure out tonight and give you a call tomorrow, then.”
And that was that; no goodbyes as the two simply returned to the events of their daily lives. Scarlet pulled out her cell phone on the way back, checking to see if she’d received any calls or texts while her ringer had been off, and cursed under her breath when she saw Caspar’s name come up under Missed Calls. He had tried to get ahold of her while she’d been in the shower…
It was just her luck that the redhead would try his phone at the exact moment Alair had given him a call. It hadn’t even rung, but had gone straight to voicemail. “Ugh, Caspar…” She groaned, and waited for the tone. “Hey, sorry I missed your call. Call me back when you get this.” Had he been calling back to apologize? Let her know he was on his way home? Either way, she’d find out sooner or later.
It had finally grown warm by the time Scarlet made it back to her apartment, peeling the bomber jacket from her arms before she was even in the door. “Still alive?” She joked, tossing the jacket aside carelessly before stepping into the kitchen to microwave the coffee that had probably gone several degrees colder than she preferred, only to find Alair… preparing a meal?
“I… take it you’re feeling a lot better?” The young woman raised her eyebrows. He bounced back fast.
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
His good mood persisted despite everything, however, and he found his thoughts had strayed back to Caspar Brighton and his new acquaintance. This was precisely what Cas needed to begin the process of righting all the inexplicable wrongs surrounding his fate, which would make Alair’s job much more convenient when it came time to begin the rest of the untangling. And if the musician was keen enough on this young woman to spend a solid night and a day with her after knowing her little more than a few initial hours, well…things were looking brighter and brighter. He couldn’t force two people to hit it off any more than he could force the sun to rise in the west to alleviate his migraine, so when chemistry did his job for him, he had no right to complain.
When the click of the door announced Scarlet’s return, he turned to the doorway with a knife in one hand and a fork in the other, the tongs of which were still sunk into a half-sliced piece of chicken breast. “Still alive,” he announced, smiling a little at the look of surprise and confusion on her face, “and with stir fry!”
He paused, resuming his slicing of the thawed meat. “Let me clarify, though. My head hurts like a sonuvabitch and I may actually throw up all over this food before it gets cooked, but I’m making an effort.” He flashed her a grin to indicate that he was joking about the vomit, but he was obviously not quite back to a hundred percent just yet; he’d turned off the lights and drawn the curtains over the window, working in a level of dimness that was borderline dangerous for handling sharp knives.
“Hope you don’t mind,” he said, keeping his own voice down as he slid the chicken from the cutting board into a frying pan that already contained chopped broccoli, carrots, and mushrooms. The stove burner flickered to life beneath the cast iron with a crackle and a whoosh. “Could you whisk that pot over there while I get the rice?” he asked, nodding toward a small saucepan filled with simmering liquid.
The more actively he participated in the preparation of this impromptu meal, the more restored he felt. Apart from the occasional shriek of a utensil scraping metal, he could almost forget about the headache boiling behind his eyes. He paused to pop a few more aspirin—probably too many, but it really didn’t matter—before jumping back in, bumping into Scarlet as he reached over to stir the rice on the back burner.
“I’ll serve if you get the plates. Quietly,” he added with a cringe, bracing himself for a crash of dishes.
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
But one thing Scarlet never turned down was having someone else do the cooking. The redhead could hardly boil water without getting it wrong; hell, she could hardly navigate the kitchen without cutting her hand on a knife, spilling hot coffee on herself or breaking a dish or two. If ‘housewife’ had ever been in her destiny (which, luckily, he had not, and still was not), she would have been so fucking screwed.
“Dude, if you still feel like shit, you should definitely not be around food. And if I wasn’t so damn hungry, I’d probably make you go lie down again.”
For someone who’d suffered what had looked like the hangover from hell, he didn’t look so bad, wearing Cas’ clean clothes with his dark hair neatly combed (son of a bitch had probably used her comb, too…). At least, he looked like he could hols himself up, so she decided not to argue and ventured over to the stove to help him out. “I guess I should warn you that I’m a walking catastrophe in the kitchen; or maybe it’s a little too late for that?” The redhead smiled lopsidedly and leaned her elbow on the counter while she stirred the contents of the pot, pointedly leaning as far from the burner as was possible. “Don’t let me have sharp things. I feel like I should still be using safety scissors, sometimes.”
The smell of sautéed vegetables and chicken, and the tangy scent of teriyaki sauce soon flooded the little apartment, and if Scarlet hadn’t been hungry before, she certainly was now. “Hey—easy on those,” she cautioned, frowning at the Sandman as he bumped her hip to retrieve the aspirin and popped a few more pills without even counting. “Now who’s dishing the pills without counting? That shit is hard on your stomach; if you’re still feeling rough, there’s acetaminophen in the bathroom cupboard. You can take that with aspirin still in your system without worrying about overdosing.” Realizing she was making herself out to be quite a serious pill-popper, she quickly ventured to explain: “I get a lot of headaches with these fucked up dreams; you learn a thing or two about painkillers when you’re constantly doing battle with pain.”
She certainly wasn’t cruel, though, and for all the guy was something of a pain in the ass, these small, endearing gestures—making hot coffee, preparing an early lunch—made her give a damn, whether she would admit it or not, so she was careful when taking out the ceramic plates from a cupboard above her head. Alair wasn’t a badguy; hell, she was starting to think he wasn’t much of an antihero, either. He was just… Alair. The Sandman. His own breed, his own person entirely, and she almost found it maddening that she couldn’t fit him into any given category, for all his unpredictability.
Then again, that very feature was what made people intriguing, and at the end of the day, she could appreciate it.
“So where did you learn to cook?” Scarlet popped the casual inquiry as she set the small, square dining table in the corner of the kitchen with plates and forks and knives and glasses. Since he was busy with the meal itself, she even left to retrieve the acetaminophen from the bathroom, setting it on the counter in case he decided he did want it. “And… what made you so keen on putting together a meal like this while you’re still hung over? I could have just as easily picked something up for you on the way back; the corner store down the street actually makes some really amazing sandwiches.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Scarlet didn’t seem altogether convinced that he should be in the kitchen either, given how he could barely tolerate sitting upright less than ten hours ago. And maybe she was right; she probably would have been had he tried putting together anything more complicated than cereal before his brief phone call with her roommate. But the news of Caspar’s social triumph had drawn him from his stupor of self-pity, motivating him with the gladness that accompanied a game well played. Because that’s largely what it was—a game. A game without a tangible opponent, a duel the Sandman fought against time and the universe, a game that required, in a twisted sort of way, playing against himself, outsmarting himself.
“Yeah, you proved your competency with a knife yesterday,” he told her sarcastically, smirking as he tossed the wide shallow frying pan. “Good thing you didn’t try to kill me with one of those.” A laugh shook his shoulders, and he stepped slightly to the side, gesturing towards the chicken and vegetables. “Can you handle pouring in the sauce over these?” he asked, arching his brows high above twinkling eyes. “It can simmer while the rice finishes.”
To her protests about his pill-popping, he shrugged dismissively. There was only so much they could help him, it was true, but he also knew they wouldn’t poison him. With the exception of his magical emerald absinthe, he was strangely unaffected by most substances; even the beneficial ones sometimes didn’t work to the degree they should have. He didn’t have a lot of room to complain, however, and that he recognized; at least the aspirin seemed to be soothing the pain in his skull.
“We’ll have to see what we can do about your headaches,” he told her, pressing a knuckle to his temple with a cringe. Despite the melodrama of his expression, his tone was serious, but he didn’t feel like discussing more afflictions when all he wanted was to forget about his own. “I’m hoping the food helps me ride this one out. Why did you let me drink that much, Scarlet?” Grinning, he leaned backwards against the counter, wrapping his fingers around the edge as he faced her. “Nevermind, you couldn’t have stopped me. I think the food’s done.”
He scooped a general helping of rice on each of the plates Scarlet had set out, then carefully poured the sauce-drenched chicken and vegetables over the piles. “I like food,” he said matter-of-factly, as though that were a perfectly acceptable explanation for how he learned to cook. “You don’t like food as much as I do without picking up a few things. I’ve been around the block a few times.” He smirked, passing her the first plate before picking up his own in one hand and a stack of silverware in the other. “And I was too impatient to wait. Besides, this’ll be better than a store-bought sandwich. Trust me.”
He took his place at the small dining table near the kitchen window, waiting for Scarlet to slide in opposite him before handing her a knife and fork. “Careful. Sharp objects,” he warned jokingly, then cleared his throat. “I take it you and Cas don’t make meals together, judging by how deep your pots and pans were buried in the cabinets.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Scarlet returned his look, arching her own eyebrows as she grabbed the handle of the saucepan (and even remembering to avoid doing so with her injured hand!) and poured it over the chicken and vegetables. The aroma that wafted into the air when the brown sauce hit the skillet made her mouth water, and her stomach growled impatiently at the tangy, savoury smell stimulated her olfactory senses. “I didn’t say I was completely incompetent.” She muttered, so eager to have this meal ready that she began to drum her fingers on the counter, almost counting the seconds before the rice was ready.
It would have been a lie to declare that the young woman hadn’t wondered at the effects (or lack thereof) of normal-mortal pharmaceuticals on this less-than-normal man’s system, and she stared contemplatively at the bottle of aspirin when he put it back down. He must have had at least eight of those in the past ten hours (definitely not the recommended dosage), and yet still seemed to be in a good deal of misery. In her dream, the lorazepam had wracked his body so severely to the point where it could no longer endure, and had consequently ended in a rather dramatic demise, but once again, that had only been a dream, a different realm entirely. Interesting, how the Sandman himself could be so vulnerable in a dreamscape, and yet not even benefit from the anti-inflammatory effects of acetylsalicylic acid (and a lot of it).
“My headaches?” Scarlet arched a brown, wondering when her woes had become a topic to be addressed, since she’d only mentioned them in passing so he wouldn’t make the assumption that she was some practiced druggie. “I don’t think there’s really anything that can be done about those; believe me when I say I know what it feels like to not benefit from aspirin and acetaminophen. Anyway, you and I are probably immune to it for different reasons, but I appreciate the concern. And,” reaching across him, she put the hot pan in the sink to cool in the water while they ate, “I am so not taking responsibility for your drinking habits, Mr. Sandman. Whatever the fuck that green stuff is, one glass of it and I was gone. My memory of anything past the last third of the night is just a lot of noise and movement. So my only advice to you is to lay off that shit if this is what it does to you.”
Scarlet moved to the fridge to retrieve the pitcher of ice water while he was scooping the rice and sautéed vegetables and meat onto the dishes she’d set out, and nearly collided with him as he turned to put the empty pot in the sink. “Whoa,” she gasped, putting a hand out that caught on his chest, miraculously managing not to fall or spill the water. With a hopeless grin, she added, “You’d think I was the one with the hangover, huh.”
He was right, though; the stirfry and rice smelled far more appetizing than a pre-packaged sandwich. After pouring a tall glass of ice and water for the two of them, the young woman took a seat and the plate and utensils that he handed to her, with a cautionary word. “Wow. You’re so funny, I forgot to laugh.” She snorted, taking the blunt knife and fork, before putting the former down and digging in with the latter instead. It was difficult to determine whether she was so hungry that anything would taste good, or if the meal before her was genuinely delicious. Either way, she wasn’t complaining.
“Do you cook this well when you’re not hung over? Because I might be inclined to keep your around, if that’s the case.” The redhead joked. “And no, Cas and I don’t make any meals together. He doesn’t let me hang around when he cooks, for reasons that you’ve probably already discovered; calls me a ‘jinx’ in the kitchen. And he doesn’t go out of his way to make a lot of meals like this because he’s a busy guy. When he isn’t practicing for his next gig, he’s writing new music, shopping around for good deals on amps… I keep a steady diet of protein bars and energy shakes.” She decided not to mention that her eating habits were far more sporadic than her sleeping habits; most of the time, she was too exhausted to even recognize when she was hungry. And yet, for all the unnatural patterns her body suffered, her health didn’t appear to be too much of a worry. Not for her, at least.
“And speaking of Cas…” She paused in her eating to glance at her cell phone. “Has he contacted you? I missed a call, earlier, and his phone must’ve been off when I tried to call back.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
He grinned broadly at her description of his drink, knowing full well that his liquor of choice was an unusual one. It wasn’t so much that he enjoyed the taste so much that it was the only brand of alcohol capable of altering him in any way at all—it just so happened that its potency had the potential to render him just as blithering a drunk idiot as the next man with a beer in his hand. He could down as many vodka and tonics as he pleased; he could guzzle pilsner until he was blue in the face; or he could sip on bottle after bottle of wine, all with the most extreme side effect being more frequent trips to the rest room. But two glasses of emerald, three, four? It was a downward spiral the likes of which he knew quite well at this point, living through the profound effects of its treacherous temptation.
“Absinthe,” he explained, waiting for her to take a seat at the table. He nodded his thanks when she placed the glass of ice water in front of him, taking a sip before he continued. “It’s absinthe. It may be pretty, but boy, it ain’t pretty. Am I right?” Chuckling, he dug his fork into the large pile of food on his plate, spreading the homemade brown teriyaki sauce over the rice before he eagerly popped a piece of broccoli into his mouth. The slightly sweet, slightly tangy, slightly spicy concoction was precisely the flavor he needed to banish the last of the previous night from his system.
“But yeah, your headaches,” he said between bites, tapping a finger to his temple. “We know why I’ve got mine.” He interrupted himself with a smirk. “We should find out why you get yours. Who knows, maybe we can figure something out. Acetaminophen’s not the only answer. Hugs, Scarlet, not drugs.” Shrugging dismissively, he was thankful for the change of subject; as much as he did genuinely want to help the redhead, talking about headaches when one was suffering from one was a formula for more pain on either side of the equation.
He ate quickly, inhaling the chicken and vegetables as though he hadn’t had a full meal in weeks. Pleased to see that the redhead was enjoying her helping as well, he smiled across at her, downing half his glass of water before responding to her query. “I don’t cook very often, actually,” he admitted thoughtfully. “I don’t get the chance as often as I’d like to. Maybe you should try it more often. Practice might rid you of your kitchen jinx.”
Thankfully, at her mention of Cas, he’d had his mouth quite full and could take a moment to decide how to phrase his answer. He cleared his throat. “I called him while you were out,” he said carefully, spooning the last few grains of rice into his mouth. “He said you weren’t answering when he tried to call you. He thought you were pissed at him for ditching you. But he’s fine. He said he’ll be back later and text you when he’s on his way.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
And yet, the substance had been in his hand just last night. And in her hand, and it had tasted as surreal as the word sounded. No wonder the guy had gotten so wasted…
“The Green Fairy, am I right? I think I read about it in a book, once.” The redhead commented, took a mouthful of chicken and rice, and then continued. “My advice from earlier stands, Magic Man; I’d lay off that shit if by the end of the night, you can hardly hold yourself up. I’ve seen people do tequila shots all night long who didn’t look as sore as you did.”
It was any wonder that she hadn’t gotten loopier than she had been, off that single, emerald coloured drink alone. She wasn’t the cheapest drunk, but she certainly couldn’t hold her liquor like a man could. Everything beyond the point of that initial sip, that flavour that she could not identify rushing over her tongue and distorting her senses, was blurry and loud and all together fantastic.
“Anyway,” she went on, jabbing an index finger in his direction, “The next time you attend one of Cas’ gigs, it is so going to be a dry event for you. And if have to personally make sure about it myself, I will.”
The young woman had just brought her glass of water to her lips when Alair decided to comment on her headaches, and very nearly choked on a mouthful at his ‘hugs, not drugs’ moral. “Hugs. Really.” She all but laughed, once she managed to swallow without inhaling any water. “Somehow, I feel like if hugs were the answer to headaches, the makers of Tylenol would go out of business.” Not that she could personally testify it wasn’t a solution; the sad fact of the matter was she couldn’t remember the last time she had actually hugged someone. Not even Caspar. Every so often the poor guy would try, simply as a friendly gesture, but she would stiffen up and gently push him away. Sometimes she wondered if that ever hurt his feelings; if it did, he never brought it up.
“And why are you making it sound like a project, anyway? You have plans to stick around to contemplate my headache problems?” Scarlet raised her eyebrows, finishing the last of rice and vegetables on her plate, vaguely astonished that it was gone already. She must’ve been hungrier than even her stomach was letting on. “In any case, I already know what’s causing them; it’s the dreams. But I’ve always had them, so there’s really no reason to think they’ll go away now. Unless your Sandman magic can work on my migraines the same way it worked on making my hand feel better.” And that still perplexed her, but she wasn’t about to question a good thing.
Finishing the rest of her water, the redhead stood and picked up her dirty dishes, bringing them to the sink to be cleaned. “I don’t know if I trust myself to practice without adult supervision,” she joked, realizing once she reached the sink that washing dishes singlehandedly (literally) was going to be one hell of an interesting challenge. “Caspar gets nervous when I so much as try to make toast. Somehow I always manage to burn it, and it sets the fire alarm off. I think he’s tired of apologizing to the neighbours.”
Scarlet let out an audible sigh as turned on the water, deciding to simply let the dishes soak in the sink for a while. She’d deal with them when she was better able. “I was worried about that,” she murmured in reply to Alair’s recount of what Cas had told him. “I called him back and left a message. Well… he’s safe. I guess that’s all that matters.”
Turning away from the dirty dishes, the chemically-coloured redhead leaned against the counter and returned her attention to the Sandman. “I was just going to say musicians can be so overly sensitive, but then there’s you…” Arching an eyebrow (that was distinctly not the same colour as her hair), a slow smile formed on her lips. “I only barely heard you play the other morning. Why don’t you show me what you can do with that guitar of yours, Magic Man?”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Though he’d briefly considered abbreviating the information he’d received from Caspar for the redhead’s benefit, he didn’t think it was fair to lie by omission to someone who was clearly concerned for his well-being. Scarlet was independent and strong, that much was clear, but her reliance on Caspar for emotional support was clearly rooted in deeper reasoning than the musician knew. Though Alair had been three sheets to the wind the night prior, and though he certainly couldn’t remember everything they had discussed in their strange living room exchange, he didrecall the expression of her roommate’s importance in the scheme of her life. And from the way the man had acted on the phone, he was oblivious to the redhead’s supporting dependency.
Realizing suddenly that he’d been perhaps a little too eager to gorge on lunch, he rose to his feet and returned his dishes to the sink, following in Scarlet’s footsteps. When she reached for the faucet to soak the plates, their hands collided as he stretched for the bottle of soap. He laughed, but he couldn’t help noticing the subtle sting of a spark where their skin had brushed together. “Little too excited to do the dishes?” he said, squirting a stream of blue detergent beneath the rushing water. White suds began to bubble around the cutlery in the base of the sink. “Or…you know, not do the dishes, since I’m not letting you get your hand wet after I just changed the fucking bandage. And I think I ate too fast, so I’m going to go sit down in there.”
He gestured to the living room, leaving Scarlet to turn off the faucet when the water level reached an acceptable depth. Now that he’d left the culinary distractions behind, he was more acutely aware of his lingering headache. “Your headaches aren’t a project,” he told her, sounding almost offended that she might not want his assistance. “But if they really are connected to your dreams, who better to diagnose you than the Sandman?” His distress quickly faded to a confident grin. “I’m assuming I’ll be seeing more of you. I am friends with Caspar, you know.”
Her quip about his musicianship made him snort, a chuckle shaking his shoulders. “Right,” he replied, playing it off with a sigh and a half-shrug. His skull may still have throbbed, but it was going to hurt whether he played music or not. “Cas is…very tolerant, as you know.” His chuckles elevated to laughter, but he was already on his way to obliging her request—or rising to her challenge, if he thought about it—by leaning down to unbuckle the hard-shell guitar case at the foot of the sofa. Perching the polished wooden instrument on his knee, he tuned the strings with a careful ear before turning to the redhead with arched brows.
“Requests?” he prompted, plucking a scale idly as he turned his gaze to his audience of one.
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Injured hand or not, the young woman was stubborn and determined to get the job done (if for no other reason, then because they had but a limited number of plates without cracks along the sides, and Cas would get irritated to see dirty dishes left untouched in the sink). And she didn’t see Alair step up behind her and reach for the soap around the same time that she reached for it with her good hand. She wouldn’t have thought much of it, had it not been for… well, she couldn’t describe it. Like electricity, something… Just something there. Scarlet was half tempted to ask if Sandmen became electrically charged when they got wet, or if she should be leery about feeding him after midnight, but he had already turned to head back to the living room.
“You know, twenty-four hours ago, you seemed to want to kill me.” Scarlet followed him, wiping her damp hand on her jeans. “Now you want to figure out how to stop my headaches. You really change your mind quickly, don’t you?” Or maybe it was just a matter of wanting something to do; after all, while he wasn’t invading dreams or forcing sleep on people, or whatever the hell it was he did as a Sandman (she was still unclear about his job description), he was probably just plain bored. So why not attempt to find a solution to her headaches?
After all, she wasn’t about to make the mistake of thinking he actually cared.
His passive comment about Caspar’s tolerance struck a defensive chord in the redhead, but she decided to let it slide. She’d spent all morning feeling angry and disappointed; it was tiring. “You sure you’re up for this? You still look a little off; need a hug for your headache?” Suddenly, she was the one laughing at the absurdity of his earlier comment, and whatever ember of ire that had threatened to ignite just second ago was extinguished. “Play something original; I hear enough covers from the other bands that Cas fraternizes with.”
Taking a seat on the opposite side of the couch, Scarlet pulled her legs up and closed her eyes as he started to play. Hopefully he didn’t fall under the impression that she was falling asleep, bored out of her mind by the tune or anything; it was simply how she appreciated music. It needed visuals, shapes, colours and forms, and she couldn’t see any of that with her eyes open.
What was instantly obvious was that comparing the stylings of Cas and Alair was like comparing apples and oranges; he didn’t play better that her roommate, per se, just differently. Where Caspar Brighton’s style was all over the place, from acoustic Americana to electric classic rock to even the occasional jazz piece, Alair’s playing… well, she couldn’t find the word. It just seemed to have a lot of soul. Not to say Caspar’s playing didn’t, but…
A good, long handful of seconds passed before the redhead realized that the piece had finished and he’d stopped playing, and she opened her eyes to focus on the unearthly musician once more. “Wow. That was…” Her voice trailed off, simply because she couldn’t find the word that she sought. Clearing her throat, she said instead, “I like your style. Cas could even learn a thing or two from you; sometimes I think he tries too hard. But you don’t really try, do you? It just kind of comes, and you take it for what it is… if that makes any sense whatsoever.” Grinning and waving off her own observation, she amended: “I hang out with way too many musicians, I think.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
As he played, he, too, found his eyelids fluttering closed, his muscles performing from memory as he decreased his strenuous tempo. The song had transitioned from one of unusual shifts and complicated rhythms to a smooth, steady harmony that played off the chords he’d established before, wandering up and down the scale at a leisurely—but decidedly wistful—pace. The notes had somehow adopted a listless, longing tone; the way his fingers struck the individual strings was almost like trudging, proceeding with a hesitation that maintained his beat while increasing the audial tension. The emotion in the air was almost suffocating, and he brought his unintentional catharsis to a halt before it could betray him any further.
He wrapped up almost too abruptly, stopping himself in the middle of a lengthy phrase by strumming a chord that he purposely failed to resolve. The anticipation that resounded in the humid air was enough to draw him from his musical stupor, and he leaned back on the couch with one hand resting on the dip of his guitar’s waist while the other fell to his side. He looked over to Scarlet, who seemed to have been hypnotized by his playing—probably nodding off as the result of her own lingering night of fun, he thought with an inward laugh—and waited for her to open her eyes. When she did, he met her gaze pointedly, holding it in silence for a moment too long before she decided to speak.
“I wouldn’t call myself a musician,” he said honestly, shrugging. He was suddenly tired, and that exhaustion was evident in his posture and his voice. But it wasn’t solely the caught-up effects of his hangover, and neither was it the consequence of cooking a full meal in the state he’d been in the previous night; a switch had flipped within him in the course of the piece he’d performed that made him feel decidedly somber. And to make matters stranger, the patch near his thumb where his hand had collided electrically with the redhead in the kitchen was…well, not hurting, but smarting in such a way that he couldn’t shake the memory of the spark. He cleared his throat and continued, doing his best to brush off the feeling. “I play, and I like to play, but I’m no Caspar Brighton.” He smiled, a little weakly. “It’s fun to jam with him. He’s got a style all his own too. We’re good for each other that way.”
The Sandman sat up a little straighter, poising his hands at the guitar once again. “Cas is more like…” he began, then strummed a steady rhythm in an Americana-blues progression he’d heard her roommate use before. The little run he snuck in afterward was uncannily Cas-like as well, and Alair laughed at himself even while the notes still reverberated. “For all that hanging out with musicians you do, have you picked anything up?” He nodded downward, glancing at this guitar and then back up at the redhead in indication. “Do you play? Or sing?” He plucked a note. “Let’s go. What do you know?”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
And, though she had no intention to voice it aloud, hearing it end turned those raw feelings to a longing disappointment. Perhaps, though, what was left unsaid was evident in her eyes, when they opened again and met the Sandman’s electric blue gaze.
“Any why wouldn’t you call yourself a musician?” The redhead shifted her position on the couch, straightening her spine as she tucked her vivid crimson tresses behind her ears. “You’ve got an ear for good music. You’ve got an instrument; you play it exceptionally well. You don’t need to be a Caspar Brighton, with fangirls fawning over you to be a musician, you know. I mean, it’s only a matter of time before he becomes overrated, right?”
She was joking, of course, evident by the quirky half-smirk that tugged at the corner of her mouth. Scarlet was last person who harbored ill wishes toward Caspar Brighton; she thrived on his success, and not just in terms of the cash it brought in. Seeing Caspar succeed, seeing that it made him so happy, and knowing that she had helped make it happen filled that hole in Scarlet’s fractured heart. It gave her that sense of purpose, of meaning, that she had never felt before, trying to fill the roles that various foster families had forced on her during her childhood... His happiness was her security, even though they were little more than close friends. A lot of people might have found it twisted, pointed out to her the very insecurities and wounds that made her so desperate to keep Cas in her life. But if Caspar himself was benefitting from her dealings with the stars, then the relationship was symbiotic, and she saw nothing wrong with that.
“But hey, maybe you guys could even work something out. From what I heard, your styles could be complimentary. Work on the song you were hashing out the other morning, and maybe he’ll drag you onto stage with him; I mean, do you have any idea how much the guy loves collaborations?” Personally the stage was the absolute last place she wanted to be, but Alair seemed the type who could have a natural stage presence. “Talk to him about it—hey, maybe that’s what he needs, to get him out of this funk with insomnia. Just… something new.”
And speaking of collaborations… “You’re kidding, right?” Scarlet laughed aloud at her guest’s rather optimistic assumption that she was at all musically inclined. “I had a little bit of piano forced on me when I was younger, but not much past the rudimentary stuff… I might still be able to locate middle C on a keyboard?” The very thought of comparing her musical skills to that of Caspar or Alair’s was far too depressing to pursue. “And I don’t think singing in the shower really counts as singing; anyone can sound good, surrounded by the acoustics of a bathroom. I did try my hand at Cas’ guitar once, but he’s kind of protective of it, and didn’t trust me past trying a G chord… ” Shrugging, she rolled her shoulders back with a sigh. “Sorry to disappoint, but I don’t have much going in the talent department.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Lying on the couch, drunk, he’d spilled more emotions into the open air than he perhaps ever had, with hard truths bubbling from his loose lips like water left too long on a lit stovetop. Scarlet had been his unfortunate sounding board, he realized then; and what made it worse was the fact that he couldn’t remember what exactly he’d said. Inebriation bred hazy visions of approximate memories, conveying the gist without giving up its own classified reality. He also remembered vague pieces of Scarlet’s own anecdote, but not enough to fill in the gaps where questions began and answers concluded.
Perhaps that was what was suddenly affecting his attitude, lowering him from his usual over-the-top, theatrical personality to someone far more subdued. He realized, not without amusement, that his demeanor had become rather like his older brother’s—only where Amrial was naturally reserved and withdrawn, it took a monumental shift in mood to bring Alair down to Death’s quiet level. The Sandman did not truly believe it was his guitar playing alone that had inspired his mild bout of melancholia; logic informed him that it was a combination of sobering up that much further in conjunction with having a full belly of food. But regardless of the cause, it unnerved him nevertheless—and it was a feeling he couldn’t seem to shake.
Scarlet’s animation, however, drew him forward enough to paint a broad smile on his lips. “Cas has mentioned that, actually,” he told her, imagining himself on stage—sober, of course—with the lanky musician and his scruffy band. The image was strangely fitting, and for a moment, Alair forgot about the mysterious pangs of emotion plaguing his chest. “Maybe next gig I’ll crash his stage,” he went on good-naturedly. “And I’ll drag you up there with me, too.”
He offered her a wink, then slid down to the center couch cushion and patted the seat to his left. “I’m not that protective of my guitar,” the Sandman told her, arching his brows and leaning forward in invitation. “I’ll show you a few things. Next time Cas is practicing, you can show him up. Guy won’t know what hit him.”
Raising his guitar as she slid next to him, he lowered the neck so that it hovered in front of her while the body of the instrument sat on his left knee. “Okay,” he began, pursing his lips and humming a note as he considered the best starting place. “Let’s start with a G, since Cas didn’t want to trust you with it. I’ll give you the cheater move.” His lips shaped a smirk, his eyes gleaming with amusement. “At the third fret, wrap your hand around the back, like this.” Without hesitating, he reached for her hand, arranging it so that her thumb pressed the top string while her middle finger wrapped around to hold the bottom. “Now, just barely touch the second string with your thumb while you’re holding the E. Yeah, like that. Just keep it from vibrating or else it’ll fuck up the chord when you strum.”
He relinquished his soft grasp of her hand, then strummed with his right while she held down the chord. It rang true. “The cheater-fucking-G!” he exclaimed, not without a hint of exaggerated pride. “Now here, go to D. Like this.” His hand was on hers again, positioning her fingers across the second and third frets in a combination of the bottom three strings. He went on to show her the C—a bit of a stretch across three—and nodded his approval when she gave the strings enough pressure.
“Now you,” he instructed, lifting her right arm to drape over the guitar body while it still rested on his knee. “It’s the easiest progression there is.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Glancing down at his hand, where he had moved and was patting the couch cushion, Scarlet arched a perplexed eyebrow. “You… want to teach me guitar?” Though while her voice might have been lined with uncertainty, her body had a mind of its own, and shifted to the right until the two were very nearly touching on the hips. “Are you sure? Who knows, this could be another catastrophe waiting to happen. I’d feel pretty fucking bad if I broke your guitar…”
And yet, he was too eager to help her feel the music in her fingers, the vibrations from the strings starting at her fingertips and traveling up her body. “So I’m gonna learn this shit to show Cas up, huh? Well…” A slow grin started at the center of her lips, tickling her cupid’s bow until her mouth pulled into an amused grin. “Why not? Might be worth seeing the look on his face, when suddenly I’ve become a music virtuoso overnight.”
The neck of the guitar looked so foreign, sitting across her legs instead of at Cas or Alair’s shoulder, and a brief second of doubt passed where she reconsider whether or not this was a good idea (for she would feel bad, were anything to happen to the Sandman’s guitar, thanks to her incompetence). But that thought was short lived, because the next thing she knew, she felt the warmth of Alair’s palm on her hand as he pressed her fingers and thumb into the correct positions. “There’s a cheat move for this chord? Wish I’d known that before.” She commented off-handedly. “This one’s E, then? So… like this?”
For one, Scarlet never would have thought the Sandman, of all people, would play guitar as a hobby; that was perhaps still the most shocking part of Alair’s company. The fact that he was so human, in spite of practically being supernatural…
Secondly, she never would have guessed in a million years that he would make such a good teacher. Even calm, kind Caspar had lost patience with her before she had managed to successfully master the G chord on his brand new guitar. But Alair was patient; he put up with her mistakes, redirected, and she saw success every step of the way.
“Now I understand why you guitar players get such tough calluses on your fingertips,” The redhead commented, after she got the proper tension and pressure down well enough. She was altogether too amazed and distracted to be startled when the Sandman took her arm, physically positioning her to properly hold the instrument and maximize optimal playing. In an effort to get more comfortable, she had shifted her body on the couch, not so much sitting next to him as she was partially sitting with her back to him. Their shoulders men when she took the instrument the way it should be held, and were she to lean back, she’d find herself leaning into him, and not the back of the ratty couch.
“Okay, so…” Pursing her lips and concentrating, Scarlet slowly made the transition from one chord to another, her unpracticed fingers fumbling some of the strings before she got it right; and when she did (after an embarrassing five attempts), the three chords were flawless. “You know,” she began, turning to glance at him and a little surprised to find her face so close to his. When the hell had personal space gone to the win? Clearing her throat, the young woman finished her thought: “I think… that I could grow to like that cheater chord.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
She was concentrating, her hand fumbling at the neck of the guitar, looking down as she placed her fingers on the appropriate strings. His amusement faltered somewhat, replaced with an emotion he couldn’t quite identify. It was strangely familiar and foreign at once; though it sent him back more years than he could count, he still couldn’t place where he knew it or why. The memories simply wouldn’t materialize no matter how he tried to conjure them. So he pursed his lips and shook his head as though the simple motion would be enough to put it out of his mind, focusing once again on Scarlet’s fingers.
“That’s good,” he said encouragingly. He draped his fingers over hers once more, repositioning them slightly across the frets. “But here. Press harder, more with the tip of your finger. Not the pad of it. Yeah, like that.” He nodded his approval and released his grip, his hand clapping down to his thigh as she took the guitar fully from his lap. She turned her back slightly towards him as she broke from his assistance and played the simple progression on her own, her strums becoming more and more confident as she continued. He smiled, bobbing his chin lightly to the rhythm she produced. When she struck a steady pace that suited her, he leaned to the side enough that his lips were closer to her ear, and he began to hum an improvised melody to her acoustic backing.
When she stopped, he applauded with an impressed grin. “You learn fast,” he declared. “Here, let me see that.” He took the instrument back to his knee, wrapping his hand around the guitar’s neck and playing through her series of chords once before adding a few more flourishes. “Watch my fingers. If you press here with your pinky while playing the D-major, see, it changes. And you can vary it like this too.” He lifted his middle finger in quick succession, then moved to a chord he hadn’t taught her yet. “Start with the basics, and then you can build any song you want.”
He strummed another chord, and then another, until he’d built the progression of another song, angling himself so that she could watch his hands if she so chose. The way he had turned, the neck still hovered close to the redhead, and their knees nearly touched on the edge of the couch cushions. He glanced up, smiling when he met her gaze, and began to sing—driven by the strange barrage of emotion that had inwardly pummeled him since their kitchen encounter post-lunch.
He didn’t hear the click of the apartment door as Caspar entered. When at last Alair noticed the lanky musician lingering in the doorway to the living room, he only smiled, finishing his phrase and letting the music reverberate before dampening the strings and nodding his greeting.
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
And she appreciated it, in a sort of unspoken way. That someone she’d barely known for two days, someone who was little more than an acquaintance, had the time and patience to help her be just a little more musically inclined.
With the only slightly less than perfect sounds of her beginners chords in one ear, and Alair’s sudden humming in her other ear, the haphazard melody started to step up to a whole other dimension. And it wasn’t just humming, either; he was far too on-key to just be messing around, and when the redhead turned her head an inch, her lips were only about an inch away from having grazed his cheek.
“If by learning you mean blindly following what you showed me how to do, then sure.” Scarlet grinned and relinquished the guitar to its owner and watched his fingers dance up and down the frets, moving to a muscle memory that appeared to be long since established. The guy didn’t even need to try anymore; he just plain knew what he was doing. “Any song, huh? I don’t know; when I do it, it just sounds like… well, sound. When your fingers are on it, it sounds magical.”
But the Sandman apparently spun musical magic through more than just his guitar. Perplexed at that cheeky grin on his face when his eyes met hers, she was not prepared for the onslaught of soulful notes that passed those smiling lips. And not only did his skills on the guitar give Caspar Brighton a run for his money, but that voice was certainly not unpracticed. Its emotive quality, textured and smooth at the same time, nearly sent a chill through her warm body on this warm day, and without realizing it, pulled her legs up and turned her body ever so slightly to be at a better angle to listen, bumping his knee lightly with her shin. Like fuck he’s not a musician…
Scarlet was about to voice as much, to chide him for holding out on her, when the song came to an end, and she noticed his gaze drift and nod to someone.
Cas.
A single thought, and the spell was broken. Scarlet turned and sighed at the sight of her roommate, who she hadn’t seen since the night before. Cas looked clean and bright and surprisingly well rested for having jammed ‘til midnight, but he was safe and all right, and that was all that mattered.
“Hey, don’t let me interrupt; I didn’t come back to steal your spotlight, Alair. And, ah… nice shirt, by the way.” The lanky musician teased with a grin, before averting his gaze to address Scarlet. “Hey, Red, get my text? Sorry I wasn’t home sooner, but you guys will never believe the deal I just scored. Marissa got me a gig at her friend’s wedding in a week; the pianist that was booked copped out on ‘em because they got a better deal or something, so they said they’d ‘settle’ for classical guitar. I’ll make them realize just how much they won’t be ‘settling’!”
“Wait… Marissa?” Scarlet furrowed her eyebrows. “Who’s Marissa?”
And that was when Caspar realized he’d let the cat out of the bag a little too early, but there was no taking it back. Not the smoothest way to break in the news, but he’d wanted to tell his fiery roommate in person…
“Marissa… she’s a girl I met last night. After the gig.” He said slowly, feeling as though he was treading thin ice that the wrong word could break. Slipping his guitar off his back, he leaned it against the wall and sat on the arm of the couch. “I’m not gonna bore you with details, but she’s pretty cool. She couldn’t catch a cab on the way back last night, so I walked her home, and we just kind of got talking, until I crashed on her couch not long before you called.”
“…huh. So, a fangirl, then.” There was so much that Scarlet wanted to say. So much that she wanted to demand and to shout, but none of it flickered on her stoic face or surfaced in her voice. Not yet, anyway. “I guess that’s just what they call networking, right? If hanging out with the fangirls gets you gigs, all power to ya. Just do me a favor and drop me a line next time, so I know you’re not dead in an alleyway?”
“Sorry, sorry, that was my bad. But hey, you had some company, right?” Caspar tossed Alair another amused grin, and stood from the couch. “You know, man, usually you wake up not wearingclothes, after partying that hard; though in your case you wake up wearing someone else’s clothes. And… am I just having olfactory hallucinations, or..." Furrowing his brow, he inhaled pensively through his nose. "Do you both smell like... jasmine and honey?”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
He couldn’t deny that it was refreshing to play in front of ears who were willing to listen, and it would have been a lie to say he didn’t enjoy showing off a little bit. But it was precisely as Scarlet would have described—he did not so much play the guitar as he simply let it happen, allowing his fingers to take control after years upon years of practice. Music came as second nature to the Sandman, something that the myths and legends surrounding his position rarely featured. Not that he required any such notoriety, of course; his reputation spoke for itself without necessitating a rhythm and a song to accompany the tales.
When Caspar strode through the door, waiting to speak until Alair had finished his phrase, the Sandman felt a broad grin slide across his face. He swung his guitar to his side and leaned back against the sofa cushions, his knee brushing Scarlet’s leg as they both shifted positions to greet the willowy musician in the doorway. “You know you don’t have any competition here,” he told the young man with a chuckle before looking down at the borrowed shirt. “Thanks, man. The guy I stole it from had great taste.” He winked at Cas, who laughed his response as he headed to his room to drop off his stuff from the previous night.
The topic of Marissa, however, took the Sandman by surprise. His eyebrows shot high onto his forehead, his breath catching in his throat as he sensed the hot tension radiating from the redheaded young woman at his side. Though Caspar’s explanation regarding his new flame was completely unnecessary for him, Alair had no choice but to play along—which made it all the more terrifying and awkward to be caught in the middle between two very different, very powerful (in their own separate ways) people.
“Well, hey, Cas,” the Sandman said, with exactly the right amount of congratulatory enthusiasm, “that’s awesome, man. Weddings pay pretty well. Fuck the piano, anyway.” He laughed, pretending not to sense the strange breed of hostility permeating the warm afternoon air. “Good thing I look fucking great in your clothes. Maybe better than you.”
He sent a wink in the musician’s direction, and Cas rolled his eyes theatrically before laughing lightly. “Yeah, well, that doesn’t explain the shampoo thing,” the guitarist said with a smirk, his eyes darting from Scarlet to Alair and back again. They were sitting rather close together on the sofa…
Alair matched Caspar’s smirk with a fiery one of his own, perfectly aware of how things must have looked to the redhead’s musical roommate. “You know how stingy she is with her showering supplies,” the Sandman responded jokingly, narrowing his mirthful eyes, “we figured we’d…conserve.”
Cas disappeared into the kitchen, his laughter pealing through the paper-thin walls in a jolly, muffled melody. Alair turned to Scarlet, his expression still the same. “See?” he prompted, lifting one shoulder in a half-shrug in hopes to dissipate the…well, the weirdness that suddenly existed in the flat. He nudged her arm with his elbow. “Everything’s good. Right?”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
“Marissa…”
“…she’s pretty cool…”
“…walked her home…”
“…crashed on her couch…”
Her mind, like any mind, could fill in the blanks, should it so desire. It could forsake reason, completely disregard all of the years she had gotten to know Caspar, and it could drive her insane. It was for that reason alone that she chose not to dwell on any of it, and instead focused on the white noise of the two men’s conversational exchanges while paying close attention to her breathing. Now wasn’t the time and place to let insecurities get the best of her; there was always time for that when she wasn’t in the company of Caspar Brigthon, or the Sandman, for that matter.
“You know how stingy she is with her showering supplies; we figured we’d…conserve.”
Talk of weddings and what they paid, of the piano versus the guitar, and of T-shirts and who looked better in them was lost on Scarlet’s ears, for the most part. The blood pounding in her head made it difficult to pick up on meaning, not to mention she was taking her time digesting what she had already heard.
The use of the term ‘shower supplies’ in regards to ‘conservation’, however, dragged her hastily out of her own head and back to the here and now. Just in time to watch Caspar have the good grace to turn away and wander into the kitchen to let out a peal of laughter.
“That is bullshit! Conservation my ass—we showered separately. Separately!” The redhead called after her roommate, leaning forward to ascertain that her voice carried loud and strong into the kitchen. “And I did not give him permission to use my shampoo! Ugh.” Rising from the couch, those mellow moments of their shared appreciation for music long since forgotten, Scarlet spun on her heel and smacked Alair’s shoulder with the back of her hand—and not hard enough, for her liking. “Define ‘good’, because you are so wrong if you think I’m going to let you get away with that little quip.”
Lucky for the Sandman, however, his moment of reckoning was not imminent, as the Scarlet saw fit to follow Cas into the kitchen. Just to make sure he knew just how full of hot air his friend really was. “You know he’s joking, right? Please tell me you know he’s joking.”
“Relax, Red. I know for a fact you’d never share that expensive shower stuff with anyone.” Caspar grinned teasingly at her from over his shoulder as he approached the sink to put a dent in the dirty dishes they’d left him. “I also know that there’s nothing you could possibly cook up to produce this many dirty dishes. So I’ll know he’s joking if he tries to tell me you cooked together, as well.”
“Thanks, jerk.” Scarlet threw the endearing insult his way along with a clean dishrag, her features softening with a smile. In spite of the fact he’d been gone for almost a day (and the reasons behind that…), his calming presence was almost enough to make her forgive and forget and simply appreciate the fact he was home. “Hey; it’s great to hear about that wedding gig. You know I’ll be around to help you set up, if you need it.”
“As always, huh? I can always count on you, Red.” After scrubbing clean the plates, utensils and pans and leaving them on the rack to dry, the musician stifled a yawn and rolled his shoulders back, tossing the dishrag aside. “I think I’m going to crash for a while; that gig took a lot out of me. Can you manage to play nice with Alair for a little longer without needing a mediator? Well… not too nice. I do want to sleep, you know.”
It was a cheap shot, but the look on Scarlet’s face was worth it. Unable to smother his guilty grin, Caspar ducked into his bedroom and shut the door, before the fiery young woman could unleash her fury, leaving Alair to take the brunt of it.
“What? Hey, no—not you too. Ugh!” Tossing the dishrag at Caspar’s door, the artificial redhead stomped back into the living room to resume her death glare at her roommate’s cheeky friend. “See what you’ve done? He is not going to let me live that down!” She lamented, picking up a firm pillow from the armchair and tossing it at Alair’s face before taking a seat at the other end of the couch. “If there are reasons why I shouldn’t kill you, then you’d better list ‘em now. And no, potential incarceration isn’t a good reason.”
With Caspar now out of sight, that feathery feeling of Zen that seemed to follow him had been forced from her mind, and Scarlet could feel the negative emotions stirring anew; and they had nothing to do with the innuendo that Alair had cracked. Whoever this Marissa person was, she’d need to keep a close eye on her and the way she interacted with Caspar. After all, it was no longer a matter of simply turning to the stars for help…
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
The sound of dishes in the sink and the rush of warm water from the faucet greeted him as he rounded the corner. He leaned against the door frame with his arms folded across his chest, washing as Caspar put the last of the plates in the strainer and flicked the excess water from his nimble fingers. The musician met the Sandman’s stare and smiled. “Not too nice,” he repeated, his show of mock condescension broken by the amusement clearly spelled out on his face. “But thanks for sticking around. This one”—he tilted his head towards Scarlet—“probably would have starved otherwise.”
Alair arched his brows high above a smirk and glanced to the redheaded young woman, throwing her a wink as the guitarist slid past and disappeared into his room. The Sandman, suddenly aware that his human shield against Scarlet’s wrath was disappearing to catch up on his rest, casually retreated back to the living room where he leaned against the arm of the sofa. Caspar’s door closed with a gentle, metallic click, which seemed to be the trigger for his roommate’s ignition. The blue-eyed man braced himself for the unavoidable barrage of words—he also couldn’t quite rule out violence, if what he knew of her fiery personality so far was an accurate indicator of how she would react now—and tried to smile pleasantly when she stormed out of the kitchen.
But mercy, it seemed, was not to be had. The wadded-up dish cloth unfolded itself elegantly in the air as it departed the redhead’s angry hand and collided anticlimactically with Caspar’s closed door, and Alair was suddenly thankful that there were no objects of real value—or weight—in the vicinity. He reached up to catch the pillow she tossed at his face next, wrinkling his nose as the cushion collided with his cheek. “Come on!” he protested, a good portion of his amusement gone from his expression. “What the hell is wrong with you, alpha? Jesus.”
He rested the pillow on his lap, sliding from the arm of the sofa to the actual cushion and angling to face her on the opposite end. “Marissa?” he suggested delicately after a few moments of tense silence, sliding his gaze slowly to meet hers. While he had certainly considered what the effects of this new brunette’s sudden appearance in Caspar’s life would mean for the musician himself, he had not expected this type of reaction from his roommate—a presence he hadn’t really been aware of. A pang of guilt radiated through him for a moment before he realized that it was not anything he could have prevented even if he had known about Cas’s importance to Scarlet. As if in playful apology, he gripped the corner of the pillow and reached out to smack her shoulder with it.
“You had to know this was bound to happen someday,” Alair insisted gently, shrugging. “You said you weren’t his girlfriend, so what’s the big deal? It’s not like this Marissa girl is trying to steal him.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Scarlet was angry. Irrationally and irrevocably angry, and it was all because Caspar seemed so… happy. Fulfilled. At peace, in a way that she had never seen before.
And it wasn’t as if she did not wish him happiness. For years now, since the day he’d showed her a life off the streets, Scarlet’s work had encompassed a delicate balance between Caspar Brighton’s happiness and her own sense of security. The young man she had met five years ago had desired nothing more than to become a recognized musician. He’d wanted to write music, to make music, to share it with the world and, more than anything else, he’d wanted it to nourish the world. To reach people’s hearts and move them, change them, make them happy or angry or sad or all of the above.
And she had helped that happen. The music, the talent, that had all been Caspar; Scarlet had not harnessed the ability to make people something that they were not. All she had done was remove obstacles from the stairway to his dream.
Many of those obstacles just happened to be women, with a desire to secure a place in his life.
Those fate trajectories all followed the same, predictable patterns, and she has seen them all: a messy break-up that would halt his career as a musician in its tracks. An eventual marriage that would meddle in his priorities and cause him to give up on music as a career entirely, in favor of a wife and children.
Alternatively, sometimes the wife and children nourished his music, just as he nourished them. But Scarlet was too afraid to look further into that particular arc.
Not that any of them were preferable; none of them had any room for her. And that just wasn’t something that she could accept… so she had to make sure it changed.
It frightened her that, for the first time in as long as she could remember, she felt completely powerless. What she hadn’t realized was that this ominous cloud of impending defeat was written all over her face, or that Alair could interpret it as easily as if it was written in plain English across her forehead.
“What? Why are you looking at me like that?” The redhead frowned, the corners of her mouth dipping into a pout that was distinctly childlike. “You think I’m jealous, or something? No, I’m not Caspar’s fucking girlfriend. I don’t want to be anyone’s girlfriend, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be concerned for him. He’s been my best friend for five fucking years; we look out for each other.” Shifting on the couch, she grabbed the pillow he nudged her with and set in on her own lap. The gesture had been playful enough, with no harm meant, but she could feel the ire burning her skin, and feared she’d unjustifiably lash out at the poor guy if he tried to smack her with a pillow again. “This girl is a fucking groupie, Alair. Do you know what groupies are like? They fall in love with the person on stage for superficial reasons: their looks, their voice, their talent. They don’t realize there’s more to a musician than what you see on stage. Behind the scenes, Caspar still gets stage fright. He gets bouts of insomnia. He has asthma and it flares up in the wintertime, and let me tell you, despite his touchy-feely songs, he really is not all that romantic. You think this Marissa chick knows any of that? What happens when he believes she loves him for who he is, only to have the bitch leave him a few months later when she becomes desensitized to his charm from seeing him outside of his stage context for so long?”
None of that was a lie; Scarlet was genuinely concerned, because she had foreseen that relationship trajectory in regards to other women who she had expertly weeded out of his life. What she wasn’t about to put forth was how scared she was that a romantic relationship might inspire Caspar to suggest they part ways (no girlfriend would be okay with the fact he was living with another woman); she couldn’t handle it. She couldn’t stand to think about it.
And she was beginning to fear that too much of what was left unsaid might be bleeding into her voice and demeanor, so the young woman finally rose from the couch and padded into the kitchen, bare feet sticking to the old linoleum in the humidity. “I’m putting coffee on, if you want some,” she called, already scooping grounds into the paper filter before he even answered. “Gotta pass the time somehow before the bars officially open.” Drinking two nights in a row was not a habit of hers, but given the current circumstances that surrounded her roommate (and her inability to do anything about it whatsoever), she felt her nerves deserved it.
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
The introduction of Marissa Engelbrecht to Caspar Brighton was one of those necessary benchmarks in the correction of the musician’s strangely-distorted path. From the Sandman’s standpoint, it was a simple enough union; the two met, they developed a relationship, and they went on from there. It wasn’t Alair’s business to look into the future, and even if he’d had that particular gift he doubted he would have wanted to peer ahead towards outcomes he couldn’t control anyway. Becoming friends with Cas had been another compulsory benchmark to meet in the progression of his repair, but what he hadn’t counted on was how much he actually liked the guy. It wasn’t that he was damning him by any means; in fact, he was going to make the man’s life that much more enjoyable. But befriending Caspar had consequences he hadn’t foreseen—and specifically a consequence that wore bright red hair and took her coffee at a rolling boil.
He’d had no way of predicting how Marissa’s sudden involvement would play out with Scarlet, which was largely due to the fact that until the previous morning he hadn’t known the young redheaded woman existed at all. And truthfully, if he hadn’t connected so strongly with Caspar in the first place, he never would have bore witness to her plight as he was right now, peering down the sofa at her as she seethed behind narrowed eyes. The heat of her anger was palpable even through the summer humidity, and Alair could do little more than wince sympathetically and wait for her to break the silence. Which, of course, she did sooner rather than later.
“You say you’re his best friend,” he said, pausing for a moment to gnaw at his lower lip. “But I’ve only known him a few weeks and I can safely say you’re not giving the guy enough credit.” He arched his brows almost chidingly, studying her. “He’s a fucking musician, Scarlet. He knows just as well as you do what groupies are like, and he’s dealt with them before. You’ve gotta throw the guy a fucking bone and trust him a little. You say you do, but you’ve got a strange way of showing it.”
His tone was soft despite the edginess of his words; the expression in his blue eyes was more sympathetic than disapproving. “I get that you want to protect him,” said Alair delicately, “and that’s noble of you. But you’ve got to take off the training wheels at some point, you know? How would you feel if he reacted that way to you?”
He called his desire for coffee when she made her way to the kitchen, and when she returned with the steaming mugs he shook his head. “Just…be there for him,” he suggested, more matter-of-fact than sentimental. “If she breaks his heart, then you can help him out.” He blew across the surface of the brown liquid, watching as the ripples spread across the surface. “But tell you what. I’ll get the first drink tonight, if you really want to go out drinking again.” He glanced at the clock on the table. “It’s five o’clock somewhere.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
If only he knew that, deep down, it wasn’t a matter of credit. Scarlet gave her musical roommate more credit than he deserved, at times; she knew that he could take care of himself and clear obstacles as they came. He made good decisions, had a clear conscience and a strong moral framework, didn’t rush into desires on a whim. He was calculating but kind, and his eyes sparkled with that admirable, childlike belief that everything would be okay in the end; and if it wasn’t okay, it wasn’t the end.
The young woman also knew, deep down in a part of her heart that she refused to acknowledge, that Caspar Brighton had gotten on just fine before he’d met her. There was nothing to say he wouldn’t have been fine had he nor, or should they ever part ways. She’d helped him, but her interference had not been entirely integral to his career success.
As a result, she was waiting for the day when Caspar realized this for himself, and she was left in the afterimage of his shadow.
“So what are you trying to say, exactly? That I’m being possessive?” The slam of a cupboard door took the brunt of the artificial redhead’s fury, and a pressure burned behind her eyes: the unusual threat of tears, to which she refused to give in. “You know what infatuation can do you people; it makes them stupid. Makes them overlook logic and reason, because they throw it to the wind in favor of a flight of fancy. So of course I want to protect him. If you know Cas, then you should know the way he thinks; and you should know that sometimes, when it comes to people he comes to care for, his heart severely takes priority to his head.”
With the caffeinated beverage brewed and piping hot, Scarlet filled two chipped mugs and returned to the living room and slowly lowered herself onto the couch cushion, mindful that both mugs were nearly filled to the rim. “After all,” she added, a humourless smile twisting her lips, “Do you really think I would be here, in his life, were that not the case?”
The young woman elaborated no further, however, and brought her mug to her lips as an excuse not to dwell on the topic of her interference any longer. It hurt to think about, let alone discuss it with a guy who was pointing out everything that she already knew, and was making such a solid effort to repress or deny. So instead, she opted for the more obvious excuse behind her concern. “Anyway, have you ever seen a guy with a broken heart? They are fucking insufferable. Cas would lock himself in his room for a week or something and write songs that make you want to slit your wrists. Better to nip the problem in the bud before it escalates, if you ask me.”
The ceramic had grown so hot from the coffee that Scarlet had to set it down at an end table beside he after a mere moment, or else risk aggravating the healing flesh of her palm. Examining the make-shift bandage caused her to wonder just how it was she and the mirthful (yet strangely insightful) blue-eyed man had so quickly transitioned from an almost violent opposition to such a comfortable camaraderie. “I’ll let you get the first drink, then,” she agreed after a moment, looking up to meet those everblue eyes. “But if I see anything green and magical in your hand tonight, so help me, your ass is mine.”
Reflections was easily Scarlet’s favourite bar because it was clean, never overly crowded, and straeddled that tenuous line between rugged and classy in such a way that she found the atmosphere but comfortable and fresh.
That, and it was only a few blocks from her apartment complex; never a long journey home if she knocked back a few too many. And the red head had made no promises to anyone, not even herself, to behave on those grounds tonight.
“Can you believe this place is so low-key for live music? They’ve only ever let Cas play here once; the crowd loved him, of course, but they never had him back.” Scarlet’s mood had brightened significantly between the time that her roommate had returned, and the time that she and Alair arrived at her favourite haunt. She couldn’t quite recall actually inviting the guy to come along, but his company didn’t cramp her style. “I think they might not be doing well financially. I really hope it doesn’t go under; they make the best cocktails here.”
Shades of crimson hair practically glowing under Reflections’ post-modern mood lighting, Scarlet toyed absently with the black feather earring that matched her solid black T-shirt; not much of a step up from the fraying tank-top she’d had on earlier, but it suited the mood of the bar, as well as the mood that continued to fester at the core of her heart. The mood that was the reason she was here at all.
“Speaking of cocktails, I believe you offered to cover the first drink. It had better not be green.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Alair took his place at the bar next to Scarlet, looking around with arched brows as he climbed atop one of the wooden stools. The lighting was modern but warm, which granted the interior a unique European flair that other similar haunts in the city distinctly lacked. The crowd was young, but not too young—old enough to be a little more mature about their indulgences than the writhing, infantile clientele of Jimmy’s from the previous night, but still able to let loose and have a bit of fun. His shoes hadn’t stuck to the dark floor when he’d strode in, and the walls were painted saturated shades of color that, once bright and smooth, had worn and chipped over the years in a charming, elegant display of age. The juxtaposition of contemporary fixes to the problems of an old building loaned the place an endearing rough-and-tumble edge amongst hip patrons, and the Sandman, who thrived on such contradictions, was enjoying himself despite his reservations.
The stage itself was hardly taller than the main floor, and instead of an open area for dancing there were half-occupied circular tables arranged haphazardly across the space. The band up there now was less a Caspar-style group than a classical ensemble, with a slim young woman at the microphone improvising a melody to a backing of guitars, saxophones, and a trumpet. Unlike the venue from the night before, he could actually hear himself think over their songs, and for that he was grateful. For while he was certainly having a better time than he’d anticipated upon Scarlet’s suggestion that they actually go back to another bar, he still wasn’t feeling up for another night of overconsumption.
His eyes strayed over the brilliant display of liquor bottles behind the bar. Shelf after shelf of expensive alcohol lined a wall of exposed brick, and even though it was illuminated attractively from behind each row, he felt his stomach churn at the very thought of more absinthe. Even Scarlet’s mention of cocktails made him reel a little, but he quickly regained his composure and donned a crooked grin. “I don’t think I’ve recovered enough from last night yet,” he admitted, lifting a shoulder in a shrug. He glanced to the crooning postmodern band once more before turning his full attention back to the redhead. “I dig this place, though. Good call, alpha.” Sliding his guitar case off his shoulder, he placed it beneath his feet safely away from any passing traffic. “Now what’ll you have?”
Alair signaled the bartender and waited for the redhead to order her drink before asking for a beer, which the man slid to him in a frosty bottle from the opposite end of the counter. Impressed, he nodded at the man and took a tentative sip, rotating in his seat to face Scarlet as she received her cocktail. “As good as you ever could have hoped?” he asked teasingly, drumming his fingers absent-mindedly on the glass bottle in his palm. “See, I don’t only do green.”
He smirked. Absinthe, his mysterious emerald beverage, was the only liquid substance he’d ever known to have any affect on his body whatsoever. Beer, wine—hell, even vodka—was capable of giving him nothing more than a bit of a stomachache if he chose to drink unreasonable amounts of any of it. So while his ‘leprechaun juice’ was hardly the only thing he liked to sip, it was the only stuff that actually did much of anything.
“Next round’s on you,” he insisted jokingly, placing his empty bottle in front of him with an obvious hollow thud. He grinned. "How about that? For dragging me here when I may or may not still be hungover..."
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
“So, is that in lieu of a girlfriend or something?” There was no malice in the redhead’s tone when she nodded to her companion’s instrument. “I’ve never seen you without it. I think you’d sooner mourn breaking it than you would the loss of a foot or something. Does it have a name?”
Of course, this was after a few solid sips of her caesar, and—as usual—the young woman had little in her stomach to buffer the effects of alcohol. Not fifteen minutes after entering the bar, and she was already on her way to losing herself.
“Hey, maybe Cas needs to take a page out of your book. Maybe if he hauls one of his guitars around with him everywhere, he won’t see a need for sticking like glue to this Marissa girl.” The ‘groupie’s’ name was spoken with sour disdain. Not an hour before she and Alair had made for reflections, Caspar had woken from his nap, made a quick turkey sandwich and consumed it in a fraction of the time, and then declared ‘he was off’ for a while and would return later on that evening.
As to where he was ‘off to’ was no secret, even while it was left unsaid. And it had rekindled the fire in Scarlet’s stomach, along with her desire to extinguish it with another round of drinks, for a second night in a row.
In some cases, alcohol followed the rules of physics and chemical reaction and only served to feed the fire. Lucky for Scarlet (and her companion, for that matter), she was not one of those people. And by the time her caesar was finished, Caspar and Marissa and all of the bullshit between the two of them were nothing but a dull ache at the back of her cloudy mind. Something that would inevitable resurface but, for the time being, was rendered subdued to the charms of vodka. “Glad you approve of the place,” she said at last, an air of lightness to her once somber and angry voice. “You know, they even make drinks for people with hangovers here, too. Tastes like absolute ass, but people say it works. If you don’t mind swallowing a raw egg.”
Knocking back the booze faster the usual, Alair was only halfway through his beer by the time she was ordering up a second round. Instead of a vermillion hued cocktail this time, a tiny shot glass of clear liquid was placed in front of her. “You sure you should be having any ‘next rounds’ if you’re still hung over, Magic Man? But hey, I’ll buy if you’re still up for it.” Picking the shot glass, Scarlet knocked back the clear liquor in a single mouthful, cringing and grimacing at the taste. “Fuck. Why does tequila need to taste like absolute shit.” But she said it with a smile, the hard liquor already circulating through her veins and pushing nagging thoughts of Caspar and Marissa further into her subconscious mind.
The band behind them began an intermission, the singer leaving the stage to rehydrate in the humid evening air, while the band members took a beat to grab a beer. Glancing between the empty stage and Alair’s guitar, a roguish smirk reached Scarlet’s blue eyes, and she nudged her companion gently in the side with her elbow. “Hey—you should totally go steal the show.” Came the conspiratorial suggestion she murmured in his ear, as if it was too badass for anyone else to hear. “I mean, you didn’t drag that instrument along just to have it collect dust, right? Go on, have fifteen minutes of fame!”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
At Scarlet’s mention of the cased instrument, he reached up instinctively to rest a hand on the black exterior, running his fingernail along the zipper as though to make certain it was securely closed. His eyes glittered as he pursed his lips, turning to look at the redhead with an expression caught somewhere between amusement and defensiveness. He had an initial sneaking suspicion that she was being sarcastic, but the earnest look on her face as she spoke led him to think otherwise—and, strangely, against everything he knew about her and the general effects of alcohol on an uneasy attitude, he believed her.
But despite its innocence, her question—is that in lieu of a girlfriend or something—nevertheless conjured a pang of sadness, one that he quickly tried to drown with the last swallow of his beer. “No,” he told her at last, the slight smile upturning his lips tinged faintly with melancholy, “it doesn’t have a name. Who do I look like, fucking B.B. King?” He chuckled lightly, his gaze straying to the guitar-shaped outline propped upright next to him. The truth was that it didn’t have a name, it had too many names—names that were less titles than snippets of memories long past, poignant remembrances from eras gone and loves lost.
It was a piece of him materialized in cedar and steel, the very same instrument that had been his since the very first time his fingers brushed a fret board. It did not look the same as it had all those centuries ago, of course; age, the abuse of constant usage, and the progression of technology had all contributed to its new appearance. After all the repairs and refinishes it had undergone, he doubted it had much remaining of its original body, but it was the same guitar to his mind nevertheless—one that carried the same recollections, the same old wounds, the same scars as the dark-haired, blue-eyed man who still toted it wherever he went after all this time.
That particular tale, however, was not one he planned to share with the redhead, at least not in this context, not when the hot, cleansing burn of alcohol scorched the insides of her veins. He laughed a little more genuinely at her quip regarding Cas and Marissa. “I dunno if that’s the way to solve it,” he said, “but I don’t think it’d hurt him. It does take more attention to babysit a guitar.” A smirk had returned to his features. He watched as she downed her shot of tequila, gnawing at his lower lip in amusement as she teased him for being hungover. “The green juice would be a bad idea,” he informed her matter-of-factly. “Beer? Not so much. Beer will take the edge off, thank you very much. I got this, alpha.”
Her grimace after her fiery swallow made him laugh heartily, and he placed his hand on her shoulder in comfort. “Slow and steady wins the race,” he advised her theatrically, knowing full well whatever words spilled from his lips would be heeded only if she was in the mood to take counsel. At her suggestion for him to take the stage, he only chuckled harder and shook his head. “My guitar is not dusty,” he claimed. “But I don’t think so, alpha. No way.”
He furrowed his brow melodramatically when she elbowed him. “Hey, now. You don’t think I’ll do it?” he protested, but he couldn’t quite keep the impish gleam from his eyes after catching sight of the redhead’s roguish grin of her own. “Tell you what,” he began, “I go up there, you make me coffee every morning for a week. No, two weeks. And breakfast.” Nevermind that he was implying he was sticking around for that length of time; Alair suspected she was too intoxicated to notice, or, if she did catch on to his ploy, too intoxicated to care. “Get ready to have your mind fucking blown, alpha.”
As the bartender poured Scarlet another shot, Alair quickly swiped it away and downed it in one fell swallow. He shuddered, flashed the redhead a devilish I’ll-show-you grin, took to the stage with his guitar slung across his shoulder, and began to play.
Posted: Thu Jun 13, 2013 7:16 pm
Hell, she didn’t drink to think about things. Like every other injured soul familiar with the solace of a shot of tequila or vodka or some other hard liquor, she drank to forget.
The warmer hand on her warm shoulder brought her out of the quick misery of swallowing that bitter, liquid fire, and she returned his cheeky smile with one of her own. “Slow and steady isn’t my thing, really.” She drawled, already motioning for the bartender to pour her another shot. “And, honestly? No, I don’t think you’ll do it. You said yourself you’re ‘not a musician’; you’re not gonna go steal the show. Nice guys don’t steal, and you wouldn’t be friends with Caspar if you weren’t a nice guy.” The comment could be taken in a variety of different ways, but anyone who had an inkling’s worth of insight into the kind of person Scarlet was would understand it was a compliment. In a roundabout sort of way.
But perhaps she’d applied a tad too much pressure to a nerve. Because just as soon as Alair was waving off the idea of making use of the added weight he’d carried with him and taking the stage, he was propositioning her dare. “I thought you didn’t like the way I made coffee.” Scarlet wrinkled her nose and tapped her fingertips on the counter. “And you want me to make you breakfast? Do you realize how big a fire hazard that could be?” Whether or not he was being serious was right over her inebriated head, but it made her laugh, regardless. “Whatever. Your funeral, if you get food poisoning—hey!”
The redhead frowned when her companion snatched up the shot that had just been poured for her, and she called after him as he strutted up towards the stage, “Consider that my contribution to round two! Jerk.” But the frown was no match for the smile that pulled at the corners of her mouth as he reached the bright-eyed man with hair like the night sky pulled out his instrument and, without a word of introduction, began to play.
Conversations dropped and heads turned. Even the band members on their break (who didn’t look offended in the least that their stage was currently occupied) appeared to be taken with the talented, dark-haired stranger and his drastically ordinary looking guitar. In but a handful of chords, Alair had managed to captivate every set of eyes and every pair of ears in the bar, and he hardly seemed to realize it.
“Well fuck, Magic Man…” The artificially tinted redhead knocked back another shot of tequila and shook off the burning aftertaste. “Guess you really did blow my fucking mind…”
“Who? That guy? He’s all right, I guess.” A familiar voice, accompanied by a none-too-pleasant smile manifested in Scarlet’s peripheral vision, as a man who appeared a few years younger than Alair sidled up to the bar, too close to the redhead to seem to be aware of her personal space. Or, he was blatantly disregarding it. “Scarlet. Been too long, huh? Love the hair.”
If he was looking for a reaction, he wouldn’t get one; she was too enraptured with the music, and feeling too good from the alcohol. In other words, the bastard was getting off damn lucky when it came to crossing the fiery redhead. “Devon; hi. You can fuck right off, now.”
“Oh, come on. You too good for me now or somethin’?”
“When have I not been too good for you? I’m serious, Devon, I want you to go away.”
But Devon didn’t budge. Motioning to the bartender to slide a beer over to him, he shifted his position to face her, hand hovering just inches from her elbow. “I don’t wanna fight, Scarly. I just wanted to say hi. No hard feelings, right? It only hurts to hold onto the past.”
“You know what else hurts?” Without a tell or a micro-expression as a warning, Scarlet picked up a ballpoint pen sitting upon the bar counter, and brought it down into the wood, point first, like a dagger—just an inch from where Devon’s fingers were inching toward her elbow. The man looked up and snatched his hand away, startled and astonished and perhaps just a little bit angry. “Didn’t you hear? I was diagnosed as psycho the other day.” Narrowing her eyes, she picked up the last shot she’d ordered from the bartender and knocked it back. This time, the burn didn’t even make her wince. “This place is too nice for a barfight. So get the fuck out of my sight, and I’ll pretend I didn’t see you at all.”
And with that, the redhead left the bar and wandered (her balance and movement only a little off) towards the stage, closer to Alair and his music in an attempt to shake the newly rekindled anger that that past acquaintance had ignited. She hadn’t come here to think, or to be angry; she wanted to be lost, oblivious, as far removed from reality as she could get. And just listening to the blue-eyed man and his talent, that filled the room with notes and chords and magic, suddenly seemed like the perfect escape.
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
The previous band’s lights had dimmed for their intermission, so Alair commanded the stage shrouded in purplish shadow and outlined by the faint orange backlighting against the stucco wall. Clad in the leather jacket he honestly couldn’t remember having retrieved, Caspar Brighton’s t-shirt, and the same ripped jeans he’d donned the previous night, the Sandman looked like he belonged exactly where he was—centered on stage, perched atop a tall stool of chrome and leather, his stubble-blanketed chin bobbing infinitesimally to the rhythm created by his nimble hands. Even his hair seemed to play the part, disheveled and wild above his slightly furrowed brow and gently closed eyes. He handled his scrappy guitar with a tender delicacy that suggested not that it was fragile or that he feared to break it, but rather as though it were a dear friend, one that deserved nothing but the softest respect for the musical power it harnessed.
And harnessed it he did. The dark-haired young man, after plucking a few strings softly and adjusting the tuning knobs at the end of the neck, dove into a melody that drove forward with such energetic urgency that the audience nodded their heads right along with his progression. He maneuvered his hands in such a way that they beat and strummed almost beyond his control—again, as Scarlet had described, something that just seemed to happen when he allowed it—with his wrists and fingers bending in a nontraditional technique almost too quick to follow with the unpracticed eye.
Halfway through his piece, he became dimly aware of a few whistles and yelps of encouragement from his captivated audience, and it was only then that his eyes flickered open to scan the eager faces staring up at him. His heart skipped a beat before regaining its own usual rhythm—he looked almost startled to find himself up there, as though it had just dawned on him that his experience wasn’t a dream. But a soft smile broke through his expressionless face, and suddenly he began to tap his heel excitedly against the hollow-sounding floor beneath him—he’d found his red-haired companion in the sea of gazes—and he’d seen the look in her gleaming eyes.
Plucking out a few other notes before diving back in to the repeated chorus, he looked up again, searching for Scarlet if for no other reason than to flash her a gloating smirk. But instead of catching her eye, he saw her turn back towards the bar, not only away from him but away from some man who was clearly standing too close to her. Alair’s music did not falter, but he furrowed his brow in confusion and distaste, bringing his song to a rather hasty conclusion. Scarlet was in no condition to interact with unwanted advances. It wasn’t that he thought she would give in to them, of course; rather, he hated to think of the damage she could cause when drunk and crossed. She’d seemed pleasant enough before he’d taken her dare, but…well, the whole thing rattled him in a way he couldn’t quite explain.
Rather than acknowledge the applause that erupted after he climbed down from the stage, he slung his guitar upside-down across his back and made his way to Scarlet. It was more difficult to wade through the crowd now that he had fans, so he was grateful she’d made her way a little closer to the stage. “Hey,” he said, bringing his mouth closer to her ear so as not to shout over the sudden wave of excited chatter that filled the air in place of his guitar, “who was that fucker?”
The words had hardly departed his lips before he caught sight of the fellow approaching, weaving through the people who had crowded nearer the stage. Immediately, Alair straightened, smiling sarcastically over the redhead’s shoulder as the man sauntered clumsily up to them.
“Sleazing up the string-plucker already, Scarly?” the bastard drawled, beer in hand. “Why’m I not surprised?”
Alair’s smirk intensified. He slid his left arm around Scarlet’s shoulders, gripping her shoulder snugly as a signal to play along as he pulled her into his side. “Who’s this, sweetheart?” he asked Scarlet as he planted a kiss on the top of her head, his voice all saccharine while his eyes flashed defensive fire. “Is this guy bothering you?”
The man who, the Sandman noted, was a good bit shorter than him, seemed a little taken aback by this sudden familiarity. “Oh, uh, well…” was all he seemed capable of muttering, averting his gaze to the floor before raising them back up to Scarlet, lips parting to regain his footing.
Before he could speak or the redhead could interject, though, Alair asserted himself. “Listen, why don’t you fuck off?” he drawled, his tone so condescendingly pleasant it bordered on comical. But hidden amongst those syllables was an unmistakable warning, one that Devon appeared to comprehend despite the obvious lack of processing power behind his glazed eyes. The Sandman smiled with widened eyes, then reached out to take the man’s beer as he turned on his unsteady heel to stalk away. “Hey, thanks, buddy,” Alair said, his sentiment so genuine it wasn’t genuine at all.
He brought the nearly-full bottle to his mouth and took a long swig, waiting until the asshole was out of sight before relinquishing his grip on the redheaded young woman. “Another round?” he asked brightly, as though the exchange with Devon had never even happened. “To celebrate me blowing your fucking mind? Because let’s be honest, that’s exactly what I fucking did, isn't it?”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
The cheering of the crowd was what finally shattered that blissful stupor into which she had fallen, and Scarlet heard herself sigh out loud, the remnants of the spell that had been broken echoing in her ears. How could this guy not realize just how good he was? Why did he not perform more often? Hell, how the fuck could he not consider himself a musician?
Alair was magic; literally and figuratively. His music moved her in a way that even Caspar’s couldn’t… But there was hardly a way to express such a sentiment without coming across as another fucking Marissa.
Ugh, fucking Marissa…
“Hey, you fucking rock star!” A smile lit up scarlet’s face, cheeks tinted the artificial colour of her hair as a result of the tequila opening up her blood vessels just a little more. The smile, unfortunately, was short-lived; Alair did not return it. Worry painted his face, like something had gone horribly wrong, and the young woman briefly wondered if he suffered from the same stage fright that Caspar did, and was only coming to realize it now, surrounded by newly acquired fans in this cheering crowd.
She didn’t expect his mouth to come so close to her ear, and she didn’t expect the question he breathed on her eardrum.
Sighing through her nose, the redhead simply shook her head and shrugged her shoulders once. “Don’t worry about him. Just some asshole who really fucking pissed me off a few years ago.” She didn’t want to talk about Devon; she didn’t want to think about him.
But it appeared she didn’t have a choice.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake…” She barely turned her head to acknowledge that aforementioned asshole who apparently didn’t know when to fuck off when he was told to do so. “You know, Devon, you’re not impressing anyone. So you can take your ego and shove it up your…”
Scarlet completely lost touch with whatever crass insult had been sitting on her tongue when Alair slid an arm around her shoulder and pulled her into him, like—what? Like they were a thing? Searching his blue eyes for the answer behind his sudden disregard for her (usually) very large bubble of personal space, it took the more-than-tipsy redhead a good handful of seconds to catch on to what he trying to achieve.
Needless to say, she was more than happy to let him take the lead. The less she had to interact with Devon Saunders, the better.
The kiss that Alair planted atop her head was perhaps an unnecessary addition to the act, but Scarlet was far too drunk for it to bother her. Just the opposite, a curious heat crept into her cheeks that tended only to manifest when she was angry, but the look on Devon’s face as Alair expertly put the fucker in his place struck too strongly a chord of amusement at her core for her to be anywhere near angry. Devon wasn’t even a menace anymore; just some poor, pathetic sod who had no idea who he was fucking with. She knew firsthand how well the Sandman could put someone in their place; and, admittedly, she was happy not to currently be on the receiving end of the treatment.
“Unbelievable…” Scarlet raked her fingers through her hair, watching her ghost from the past simply give up walk away without even fighting to get his beer back!
And just as soon as he was out of sight, he was once again out of mind.
“Okay, okay; so you might have blown my fucking mind a little.” She pinched her thumb and index finger together to demonstrate just how little he’d blown her fucking mind with his mad skills, but it was, of course, nothing more than an exaggerated lie. He knew as well as she did that he’d blown her out of the fucking water with his music, and she wasn’t afraid to show it with her smile and the gleam in her eyes. “Fine. I suppose you’ve fucking earned your coffee and breakfast. If you can stomach my coffee and my cooking. But anyway,” swiping the beer from his hand, she took a swig and kept the bottle for herself; payback for the tequila shot he’d stolen from her earlier. “Next round is on you, Magic Man.”
Given the monkey wrench named Devon that had been thrown into her evening plans to relax and let go, the redhead stuck close to her musical company as the night unfolded. It wasn’t even that she was incapable of or too afraid to deal with the asshole whose beer she and Alair had collectively stolen; she was, however, just at that point of inebriation where she knew it was all about to go downhill. She’d lost count of the times that the night had been lost to her, large gaps in her memory between arriving at a bar and waking up in her own bed, and she at least had the sense to know that point at which she required ‘adult supervision’.
Alair could be responsible when he wanted to be; he’d at least ensure she didn’t end up dead by the end of the night.
“It is way too fucking hot in here…” Hours later, with the original band having long since resumed (and were near finishing) their set, the young woman had finally reached the other side of a good time. The dance and party in her had settled, and that sleepy, mellow end of the rainbow had sneaked up on her so abruptly. She sat across from Alair in a cream and chocolate coloured booth, knees pulled to her chest and head resting against the burnt mahogany wood below the railing. Put simply, Scarlet was done; even if she didn’t think so. “Alair, I’m not drunk enough. I can still feel temperature.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
“All right, all right,” he said, slapping some bills with a little too much force on the sticky bar countertop in order to catch the bartender’s attention. “I’ll have another pils,” he ordered, widening his eyes and wrinkling one side of his nose, “since this one is kind of a beer thief.” The employee, who either hadn’t heard him or had simply chosen to ignore another presumably wasted patron, fetched his order before taking Scarlet’s request and placing it unceremoniously before her on a napkin. Judging from the stickiness of the surface, the napkins did little to prevent staining or dirtying the varnished wood, a fact that clear-headed Alair noted with a snort—and a dirty look from the man who’d fixed their drinks.
“What’s that dude got against me?” he asked as they made their way to the perimeter of the establishment, taking residence in a vacant booth while the scheduled band resumed playing on the stage. He placed his guitar, now back in its case, next to him against the wall. “Probably friends with the band. Whatever. He got more tips and he fucking well knows it.” There was no sense in letting it bother him; he was neither drunk nor aggressive enough at this point to press the issue, and since they’d both gotten their drinks as they’d ordered them, he decided it really didn’t matter. He shrugged instead, bringing the bottle to his lips as he studied the tipsy redhead sitting opposite him. She’d pulled herself into a ball, her knees to her chest and her head thrown back in a position against the mahogany that surely wasn’t comfortable.
“Let’s go outside,” he suggested after a few silent moments between them, pushing his empty bottle towards the wall and rising lithely to his feet. He slung his guitar over his shoulder and stepped to her side of the booth, not waiting for her to take his extended hand and simply grabbing her arm to urge her to her feet. The crowd had largely thinned at that point in the night; the band was finishing their set, and Alair began to see hints of the bar’s financial troubles Scarlet had mentioned upon their arrival. If they weren’t holding their clientele through the final few numbers of their booked band, then they really were in trouble. But for them, with the Sandman steering his unbalanced red-haired companion to the front doors, it was a blessing not to have to stumble ungracefully through a writhing crowd.
The night air was cool against his face as they stepped past the threshold and onto the dark street. He drew a deep breath and exhaled with a relieved sigh. “Jesus, it was hot in there,” he commented, relinquishing his grasp on her arm as they slowly made their way down the block toward the flat. “See? It’s good you can still feel temperature. That way you can feel relief now that you’re out of that fucking sauna.” He grinned, his comment clearly more a tease than a complaint, watching Scarlet out of the corner of his eye. Adjusting his guitar once again—he really did need to fix those straps—he stepped over to her and promptly, insistently, and leaving no room for protest, wrapped his arm around her shoulders for support.
“Let’s get you home,” he said matter-of-factly. “If you need to drink more when we get there, at least you’ll have a toilet to puke in and a bed to crash on.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Her eyes were met with darkness a moment later, startling her to open them again as she bit back the bitter thought that she was passing out already. “Ugh, come on.” She murmured to herself, rubbing her eyes with her fingertips. “I didn’t drink that much yet… Where’re we going?”
Her body was moving before she gave it permission to move. Oh, Alair… He was pulling her out of the booth, which, all in all, did not seem like all that bad an idea. The redhead began to cool down before they even made it outside, and when they did, breathing fresh air was the best feeling in the world.
“Okay… okay, you’re right. Discriminating temperature is good.” She agreed, smiling into the night. The streetlights blurred in her impaired vision and made her sway a little, but even if she’d fallen, she wouldn’t have been hurt—well, she wouldn’t have felt the scrape of pavement, the bruising of blood vessels or at worst, the fracture of broken bones.
It was a good call on Alair’s part to steady her with a supportive arm when he did, as she was just about to stumble on a bump in the sidewalk. Although, considering just how drunk she was, her balance and coordination was actually formidable.
“This again?” The young woman furrowed her eyebrows and her lips turned downward in a china doll pout. “Who are we trying to fool this time? Y’know, if you wanted a hug, all you have to do is ask.”
But that was both the beginning and end of mild protests; besides, it was kind of a different experience, keeping someone so close for such an extended amount of time. There was almost a comforting edge to it, something that made her feel calm and reassured. A sad sigh escaped her lips at the thought that strong desire to hold onto that feeling, to bottle it up and keep it close to her heart for when she’d really need it.
She couldn’t recall what alcohol they had back at the apartment (unless he was referring to his absinthe), but the fact he wasn’t trying to forcibly cut her off at that point kept her in high spirits. Although, in all truth, Scarlet wasn’t convinced she would be able to stay awake long enough for another round.
“Pfft, I never puke.” She said proudly, as they rounded the corner to her apartment complex. Without even realizing what she was doing, Scarlet slipped her arm around his waist to steady herself even more as she made her way up the stairs, one step at a time. Stairs and alcohol were never a good combination. “Too classy for that, thanks. Just make sure there’s aspirin and a glass of water within my reach in the morning.”
When at last they reached her floor and managed to unlock her apartment (though she fumbled with the key so much that she eventually just handed it to Alair), they were greeted with darkness and silence; Caspar still wasn’t home.
The rational part of Scarlet had known this. He hadn’t given an ETA, instead of vaguely letting him know that he’d return ‘later’; and later could mean absolutely anything.
“Jesus, what kind of guy walks in, cleans the place, and then bails again?” She muttered, switching on a light and noting the kitchen was clean and the carpet in the living room had been vacuumed. “And yet he leaves his room a mess… what a weirdo.”
Taking a walk in Alair’s shoes from the night before, the young woman let herself collapse on the couch, feeling heavy and drowsy from the mix of beer, vodka and tequila. Though even with that dangerous mix of alcohol in her stomach, she didn’t look nearly half as bad; no headache as of yet, at least. “Do I still have to make you breakfast if I’m hung over…?”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Luckily for him, however, if it wasn’t the additional consumption of alcohol that was making him feel almost completely back to normal, it was the distraction of his red-haired companion. He was thankful to discover that her drunkenness, like his, only served to make her more openly affectionate; her violent tendencies surfaced only when threatened rather than to threaten, and he was glad that she hadn’t interpreted his assistance throughout the night as some kind of display of his lack of faith in her. Even if she had played that card, he had exactly the hand to counter it; he was simply returning the favor from their first night of excessive partying, and he was leveling his debt in a way the Sandman always vowed to do.
He helped her up the stairs much like she’d done for him, although he kept his mouth firmly closed against complaint when she stumbled or trudged against the grimy, threadbare carpet. He tightened his grip around her shoulders as they rounded the corner at the crest of the staircase, steadying her as their perspective shifted to take in the flat, dim corridor. Unlocking the door as soon as she relinquished her key to him, he helped her to the couch and latched the door behind them, placing his guitar in the short entryway. He flicked on the kitchen light and retrieved the bottle of aspirin—the one Cas had returned to its proper place in the cabinet—then joined the redhead on the sofa, placing the rattling bottle on the coffee table and leaning back leisurely against the cushions.
“No,” he replied empathetically, flashing a crooked grin at her question. “You get a one-day grace period. If you’re as bad as you say you are, then I probably shouldn’t make it worse. That’d be like…I don’t know, Death fixing me breakfast.” He chuckled a little darkly at that, realizing she had no way of getting the real joke. “Sound fair?” A brighter laugh shook his shoulders. “And for the record, just because your coffee is too hot right out of the damn percolator doesn’t mean it isn’t fucking delicious once it cools down. Do you want some water?”
Before she could answer, he was on his feet, sticking under the running faucet a chipped mug Caspar had left in the strainer. He brought it back to the living room and flipped off the light on his way out, placing the glass next to the aspirin before taking his place in the same armchair in which Scarlet had collapsed the night before. The room was nearly completely dark now; the reddish-pink glow of the city filtered through the open window and sent strange shadows sprawling across the carpet. Alair watched them dance across the floor before breaking the silence to bid his drunk companion good-night.
“I’ll be right here if you need anything,” he told her, shifting positions in the lumpy chair. “You should probably sleep now before the headache sets in.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
It might even have occurred to her—even if only for a split second—that Alair was possibly easier company than easy-going Caspar.
“Fine. One-day grace period doesn’t start until I wake-up, though.” She agreed, not realizing just how much the light had bothered her eyes until Alair shut it off. The darkness that swallowed the room was merciful, once again shutting out everything that bothered her like blanket putting out flame: namely, numbing the fact that Caspar wasn’t home. And that—if the previous night was any indicator, he wouldn’t be home again like that—he wouldn’t be home again that evening. For the moment, at least, she was still too drunk to care. It made her fear what morning might bring, hang over aside.
Before she could answer his question about the water, Alair was in the kitchen, filling a mug after opening the cupboard to, if she had to guess, retrieve a bottle of aspirin. “You know, this was actually really fun.” She mentioned light-heartedly, taking a sip of the water he’d brought and knocking back a couple aspiring already, as a preventative measure. Not that it ever did much for the hang over itself, but it made it hurt a hell of a lot less. “Even if Devon was there; he really picked the wrong too people to mess with. I kind of feel bad for almost stabbing his hand with a pen, but hey, booze makes me go a little soft.”
And speaking of soft… She couldn’t remember the couch being so comfortable, or the cushions under her head pillowing it in just the right way. It coaxed her eyes shut as sleep insidiously pulled her down, making her want its embrace without even realizing it. “There are two bedrooms available, and you want that chair?” Scarlet wrinkled her nose at the prospect. “That thing is damn uncomfortable… I ‘d suggest Caspar’s room, but it’s a hell of a lot messier than mine. If you don’t mind a few girly clothes lying around…”
Where had she been going with that thought? The harder she tried to recapture that train of thought, the more it eluded her, until at last her mind was no longer among those of the living in conscious, but dwelled in her own world altogether.
She had been here before, on many occasions; more often than she might have guessed—and yet she never remembered. Not that part, anway.
Dreams had a strange way of playing with you, making you believe them to be real, smoothing over inconsistencies with the strangest logic to ascertain that they thought what was happening to them was normal. They brought real life memories into the mix, while prohibiting you from remembering the most integral part of the dream itself.
Should she ever remember the absurdity of this dreamscape in particular in the waking world, Scarlet might have been jarred awake by its oddities and inconsistencies. But she only recalled it every time she returned to it, while the memory lay dormant in her waking hours.
The stark-white of the soft grass, like it had been infiltrated by snow, did not startle her. Nor did the fuchsia and salmon coloured sky, a perpetual sunrise frozen in place on this strange landscape.
She also didn’t recall (or didn’t realize) that her crimson hair, in the land inside her head, always to returned to that natural light-brown that hid beneath layers of crimson.
This is how they always start, she mused to herself as she moved through with her bare feet through the foot-tall grass. She could always recall this much; the grass, the sky, the peace. And she always felt as though it gave her a very odd, very real calm sense of security. But even then, something nagged an unreachable part of her brain that caused her to wonder at this ominous, dark feeling that accompanied all of this security… Like there was always something she was missing. Something integral, and dangerous, and on which she never tuned in until it was too late.
But something was different this time; she could sense it the second she felt the softness of the grass between her toes and the gentle wind on her back. And, glancing over her shoulder, she saw exactly who—or what—about the area felt so off.
“What are you doing here?” Scarlet’s eyes widened, for she had thought that she’d left her dark-haired companion behind elsewhere (though as to where ‘elsewhere’ was, she couldn’t recall), but here he was, standing in a place where, up until now, the young woman had only ever found herself alone.
“How did you even get here? I never get company; I thought only I could see this place.” Her tone wasn’t accusatory; just the opposite, in fact. When Scarlet smiled at Alair then, it reached her blue eyes, and she appeared to be genuinely pleased. Like, in spite of the fact she was surprised to see him, a part of her wanted him here (which had to have been the case; after all, he wouldn’t have been there, otherwise).
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
But while the Sandman had seen his fair share of heaven and atrocity alike, he was still capable of being startled by the contents of a particular individual’s dreams. He didn’t make it a habit to appear in those with whom he interacted on a regular basis in real life; it was an invasion of privacy that didn’t sit well with his admittedly bizarre code of dream-ethics. He’d intruded upon Scarlet’s subconscious the previous day to prove a point, but beyond that he hadn’t had any plans to repeat his performance.
So why he found himself walking fields of velvet-soft grass through the clouds of the redhead’s inebriated slumber, he couldn’t exactly say, but there he was all the same, compelled to stay by a force he neither understood nor questioned. There was something in the dream-air that identified this world as distinctively Scarlet’s, and yet the landscape surrounding him—dwarfing him, even—was not one he ever would have placed as hers by visuals alone. Rolling hills of pale white grass stretched as far as he could see, its milky horizon greeting a sky that swirled with shifting hues of pink and magenta. He moved as though he were part of the terrain; the tall grass, almost translucent, swayed like tethered ghosts around his ankles, catching the salmon-hued light like tiny narrow prisms as he sauntered through its waves.
Despite the change in her hair color, he recognized her silhouette against the perpetual sunrise immediately. He caught sight of her before she detected him; he was approaching the young woman now as though he’d been picking his way towards her all along, but he paused, hardly daring to breathe so as not to disturb the unusual sanctuary she had conjured deep in her subconscious.
“Hey,” he greeted quietly, watching as her wide-eyed expression shifted quickly from astonishment to gladness, and he returned her smile with a warm one of his own. He stepped up to her, standing perhaps a little closer than necessary, and stared over her shoulder across the fields of dancing grass. “Did you forget who you were dealing with?” he asked teasingly, but his voice was tender, breathy. He clasped his hands behind his back, eyes narrowing as he took in the grandiloquent display that was her sky. “How are you feeling?”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
“I guess sometimes I do forget who I’m dealing with,” she admitted. “I mean, you’re just… kind of normal, for someone who’s technically paranormal. Aside from the lurking on roofs and magical Sandman stuff, I suppose. But people have been known to do weirder things.”
Sandman stuff; not Sandman shit, a word more likely to roll off the tongue of the redhead-currently-reverted-to-brunette. Scarlet, of course, thought nothing of it. You didn’t question what happened in dreams, because it all made sense, in its own, illogical way. Whether Alair realized it or not, however, what he was seeing—who he was seeing—was Scarlet, in her purest form. Not even Scarlet, really, but another girl; a girl from which she’d evolved so many years ago, deemed far too weak to continue to thrive in the cold and cruel world.
“What’s with that look? You’ll get wrinkles if you keep doing that.” Scarlet chuckled a she reached out to take his arm. “I feel fine. Why wouldn’t I? I told you, I can hold my alcohol.” She felt giddy, in fact; delighted that someone else was finally seeing this place, one of the few sanctuaries that her subconscious could conjure. Every night, whether or not she could recall in the morning, she would visit this place in some form. The sky wasn’t always bordering on sunset, the grass wasn’t always the stark-white of snow or so velvety that it tickled her feet, in the end, it was always the same place.
A break from its solitude, however… it felt like a blessing. It was okay to be here alone, but what she so often denied to herself was that she didn’t want to be alone. What was the point of beauty and peace of someone else couldn’t see it?
“Sorry, this won’t be very interesting for you,” she admitted after a moment, releasing his sleeve when she was sure he was walking next to her. “Nothing really exciting ever happens. Well…” The young woman paused then, furrowing her eyebrows in thought for an extended period of time. “I always have this weird feeling that something is going to happen, though. But… I guess that’s not really different from everyday life, is it? You can’t always shake anxiety; not even in your dreams.”
She didn’t want to talk about her dreams, though. With a clear mind and a light attitude that the dreamscape lent her, Scarlet had something else to say to her supernatural companion, and she finally had the words (and the absence of that debilitating pride) to say it. “If I tell you something, do you promise not to use it as fodder to pick on me?” She glanced at him sidelong, assessing his face and reading the genuine answer in his eyes before she went on. “I just want to tell you… thank you. For what you did for me back at the bar. It’s the most considerate thing anyone had done for me since… well.” She paused and glanced at her bare feet, ashamed to admit it, but there was no turning back now. “Since I met Caspar. Since he stepped in and prevented potential disaster, just like you did. He was the one who gave me a little more hope for humanity, you know? I thought he was the only one who’d ever make me feel that way—hopeful. But I think I was wrong.”
Grinning wide and true, Scarlet squeezed his shoulder and added, “So the next time it’s clear I want to kill you, just remember that at some point, I did think you were an OK guy.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Yet for all its intimidating splendor, for all menacing majesty of the oceanlike expanse of pale prairie, he did not feel out of place. His feet, bare against the impossibly soft terrain, felt as though they were planted precisely where they should have been, rooted to the dream-soil like an age-old tree whose absence in the landscape had never been known. It wasn’t often that he felt so genuinely welcome amongst the hallucinations of others, and it was refreshing now to know that the redhead he’d so suddenly befriended was not harboring thoughts ill enough to condemn him a second time. There was an ease to his breathing that seemed even to rival his wakeful inhales, and when Scarlet’s hand found his arm, their flesh seemed to melt together beneath the power of her touch.
The Sandman, all dark disheveled hair and sparkling azure eyes, returned her smile without a trace of a smirk, leaning into her grasp without thought. Strain as he might, he could not recall the last time he felt so utterly welcome, so utterly free. It was a bizarre experience that rang with a dissonance he felt completely comfortable ignoring; he was more or less at the mercy of the redhead’s subconscious, and yet he felt somehow empowered with the saccharine aftertaste of swallowed freedom. Her presence at his side loaned him a stability he hadn’t realized he’d missed, and when he turned to see her own blue eyes light with unfiltered, unbridled emotion, he felt something stir within his chest that he hadn’t known in…that he hadn’t known since…
But she was speaking, holding him at arm’s length with her fingers against his arm, chiding him about wrinkled faces and uneventful dreams. Warm chuckles bubbled from his lips, shaking his shoulders as they walked. “You underestimate how mundane the general public is,” he told her, his amusement somewhat muffled as all things seemed to be in this world. “This is a place all your own. I am impressed, I really am.”
The smile he gave her was again so genuine that his usual impishness didn’t dare shine in his eyes. It broadened when she thanked him, speaking words that he hadn’t asked to hear but appreciated, deeply appreciated, nevertheless. He reached up gently with a curved finger, placing it under her chin when she looked to her feet and tilting her face upward so she could take in his expression. He draped his hands on her shoulders.
“Scarlet,” he said, stopping her, arching his brows before shaking his head with incredulous mirth. “Thanks for the reassurance, but I think it’s you that should remember those things the next time you want to kill me.” He chuckled, letting his hands drop from her shoulders before he turned back towards the horizon. “You know,” he said leisurely, “you can make something happen. You don’t have to wait for it, or walk around wondering what’s next.” He turned to look at her, his expression serious but not negative. The breeze picked up as their eyes met, and he reached up to brush a lock of her light brown hair from her forehead. “Here, or when you wake up, or wherever. You know that, right?”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
“I know.” She said quietly, her smile softening, but not fading. “I do make things happen—more than you could know, more often than you could know.” The statement was deliberately ambiguous, because even in her purest, most sincere form, Scarlet knew better than to divulge the secret of her control over the stars. Just knowing it was ambiguous, and predicting the look of puzzlement that it elicited on Alair’s face, made her giggle. “But why would I want to make anything happen here? Just look around; you don’t get skies like this in DC. And I can’t remember the last time I saw grass that wasn’t grizzled and crispy from too much exposure to the sun.”
Turning back to the white and pink horizon, the young woman took a few steps forward, glancing over her shoulder to see if he’d follow—and, just for good measure, took the hem of his shirtsleeve in her fingers to pull him along. “You’re not going to just stand there, are you? I never get the opportunity to explore this place with someone else. See? I am making stuff happen; because you’re coming with me.” With a playful smirk, her slender fingers gently encircled his wrist, slipping to his palm as she traversed the powder-white grass.
“There’s just something about this place… I know I have control. But I don’t want to mess with any of it. This kind of peace just doesn’t exist… I’m afraid I would break it. Don’t fix what isn’t broken, right?” She tossed a smile over her shoulder at him, giving his fingers a gentle squeeze. “Doesn’t it kind of give you a feeling? I can’t really explain it, just… it’s something I wish I could hold on to. Don’t you ever get those feelings?”
It was difficult to assess the distance their bare feet spanned on the strange and beautiful grass. There was no beginning and no end to the landscape; endless fields and endless skies, and rolling hills up ahead. But Scarlet had no destination, no timeframe and no deadline, because there was no time in dreams, and therefore no reason for urgency. She simply continued to walk, fingers having found the spaces between Alair’s as she pulled the Sandman along with her on this leisurely stroll. He didn’t seem to mind; if he had somewhere better to be, something better to be doing, he’d have said something by now. Or, he’d simply have vanished; whatever it was a Sandman did to get out of an unwanted situation.
“You told me you were in love, once.” The redhead-turned-brunette broke the comfortable silence that had settled between them, turning her face to meet his eyes. “I know you said it hurt. But before it hurt… what did it feel like? Anything like this?” She motioned with her free hand t the vast landscape that surrounded them. “Safe. Free. At peace… You know, at the very beginning, I thought I was in love with Caspar. But I soon came to realize that it wasn’t like that… I don’t admire him the same way Marissa does. Maybe I don’t admire him enough, at all; maybe that’s what he thinks, and that’s why this whole mess is taking place.”
Her smile was sad when she turned away from him, rolling back her shoulders in a shrug. “I love Caspar; I know I do. But I’m not in love with him. I love him for who he is, and because this is what he makes me feel… the same way this place does. It’s like he can reach it and pull it forth for me when I need it most. It’s selfish, but… but I need him around. And it hurts, sometimes, because really… if I’m being totally honest with myself, I know he doesn’t need me back.”
Halting in her steps, Scarlet turned towards her unlikely companion again, seeking his everblue gaze with uncertainty. “I need you to be honest with me…” She murmured quietly, as her smile finally began to falter. “Am I… bad for him? Am I holding him back? I mean, I think I already know the answer, but…” She shrugged again, and finally, there was no joy left in that smile. “It wouldn’t hurt to hear it from someone who has no problem speaking his mind. Just in case I’m wrong.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
A flicker of cold melancholy flashed through his icy eyes, and for a moment, he couldn’t breathe. He was suffocating beneath a pressure sparked by her unwitting words, the syllables conjuring traces of memory he’d long ago buried—memories that had absolutely no place within Scarlet’s technicolor sanctuary. He followed her obediently, strolling by her side as though they were on a spring outing in the park, but beyond those starry blue eyes was a storm of sudden emotion that had caught him completely off-guard and left him shipwrecked on remembrance’s lonely isle.
He almost opened his mouth to tell her just how often he’d experienced precisely what she described; he almost allowed his lips to part and rattle off precisely the reasons why he loathed such feelings, spat on them, despised them with every molecule of his preternatural being. But the words simply would not come, halted in his throat by a barrier of common sense and—of all things—embarrassment. Instead, he simply smiled and offered a slow, wordless nod as his eyes strayed over the swells of hill and grass ahead. Bitterness wasn’t becoming in a landscape like this, a panoramic explosion of saturated hue and tranquil sway, and he was not in an appropriate position to spoil the weather.
Thankful for the lull in conversation, he regained his internal composure and allowed himself to get lost in their trek, concentrating on their repeated footfalls like a man hypnotized by the rhythm. Contrary to the former-redhead’s concerns, he had nowhere else to be; she had summoned him with a force he could neither identify nor ignore, and by her side was where he would stay as long as she wished for his presence. What he had not anticipated, however, was her question, which stabbed him through the heart in an unexpected explosion of stinging emotional agony. He said nothing, maintaining his respectful silence as she continued, pausing his own forward progression as she slowed and turned away from him.
“Scarlet.” Her name passed his lips in a breath barely louder than a whisper, his expression a hybrid of ache and concern when she swiveled back to face him again. “Scarlet, how could you possibly be holding him back?” He cleared his throat, reaching out for her arm in a gesture of affectionate reassurance. “You’ve helped him every step of his way. Do you think he would be where he is now if it hadn’t been for you?” The Sandman shook his head solemnly. He may not have realized the deeper meaning behind his words, oblivious to her celestial powers, but they held true all the same. “He might’ve saved you, alpha, but you saved him right back. If that’s not what love is, then what the hell is it?”
A sad smile touched his lips, and he sighed. “You asked me if this”—he gestured widely to the landscape with his opposite arm—“is what it is like to be in love. And the answer is no.” He shook his head, but the somber smile remained. “Here. I’ll show you a fraction, something I’ve never shown anyone.” Except her, he thought with a pang of heartache. “Okay, this is going to feel strange for a few seconds,” he told her, “but keep your mind still, if you can. You'll know what I mean.”
He took a step backward and gently placed his hands on her shoulders, steering her several paces backward until they stood on the perimeter of the current hill’s crest. Though it was in his power to manipulate another’s dream-world, it was rare that he took advantage of the bizarre ability; but in this case he was less changing her landscape than he was opening another window through which she could glimpse the startling depth of his recollections. Around the peak of the hill, just feet from where their toes rested in the grass, the crimson-flavored light shifted, the illumination taking flight on a sudden whirlwind of a breeze as though the bright particles themselves carried weight like fallen leaves. The remainder of the landscape behind them remained unchanged, but before them unfolded a voidlike expanse of black and navy whose hazy edges blurred the difference between the Sandman’s and the stargazer’s worlds.
Stars—they looked like stars—burst forth from the tremulous dark nothingness, bright spatters of twinkling energy that glowed in intermittent shades of crimson and orange. One after another surfaced on the canvas that seemed almost to be swelling like an ocean tide, trembling and shifting in ever-changing constellations. A strong wind blew towards them, encircling them as they stood like a captivated audience, its currents both warm and cold at once. It carried with it the aroma of bliss, of unadulterated contentedness that no words could possibly recant—the delicate, crisp scent of music; the musky, comforting aroma of thick perfume; the concurrent smell of wet autumn leaves and sweet spring flora. The gleam of the celestial specks of light had brightened to rival the shine of a hot summer sun, flashing in streaks of metallic silver and gold and copper as they bobbed like buoys against the blackness of their backdrop—a galaxy of feeling, a self-contained universe defined solely by the fiery heat of lovers’ energy and the glimmer of hope, of endlessness, of eternity.
But as quickly as he’d summoned it, it was gone. Alair released a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding, remaining perfectly still as the lingering sensation slowly ebbed to be replaced with Scarlet’s dream. Realizing that at some point during the display he had reached for his companion’s hand, his fingers having locked tightly into place with her own slender digits, he relinquished his grasp and looked to his feet, at a rare loss for words in the aftermath of his revelation.
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Stars… It looked like stars, it felt like summer, and it smelled like spring. It was beautiful, and terrifying, and suffocating, all at once. Scarlet swore she could feel a weight on her chest, her lungs constricting and her throat tightening. The Sandman was right; it was like a drug, terrible and wonderful and addictive and, possibly, fatal. It took her to a high she had never reached before, twisted her stomach in a peculiar way, and brought a smile to her face.
No, this was nothing like the feeling that engulfed her when she was in the presence of her roommate. That feeling was calm, and safe… This one was dangerous and uncertain and exciting, full of fire and passion and ecstasy, all tenuously balanced on the scales of hope and reality.
It was the first time Scarlet had ever felt anything like it, and she had never felt sadder to see anything go, the second that beautiful illusion faded, and the technicolour of her dreamscape returned.
Gently squeezing her companions hand, the cloud that had descended upon his shoulders, pulling his face into a mask of something so forlorn and reminiscent that it gave her pause to wonder just how well she knew the Sandman. She could understand, though; if watching the illusion fade had stirred lead in the pit of her stomach and caused her shoulders to droop, there was little wonder as to what the true loss of true love could do to a person. Alair had never struck her as someone who was suffering… Perhaps they were not so different, after all.
“…I haven’t felt that before.” She said softly, fixing her eyes on the horizon. Far off stood a tall, white tree, one that she often considered climbing, but she never found the opportunity to do so… And she could not for the life of her recall why that was. “It’s different… Caspar doesn’t make me feel that way. He never has.” Funny, how it could come as both a relief and sad, sad regret. Would she have been happier, had she ever found herself in love with Caspar Brighton? Was it not enough to be his friend?
And was she going to lose him completely to the very feelings she had just witnessed, but for another girl?
Perhaps it wasn’t anything less of what she deserved.
“…I don’t think you’re right,” the former redhead added after a moment, blue eyes never moving from that tree in the distance. “I know you’re being honest, but Alair… you’re wrong. Cas would have made it without me. I know for a fact that he would have. I mean, I might have helped things along, but I haven’t been much more than the stray cat that happened to follow him home five years ago. The one who he never had the heart to kick out. Even if I might deserve it.” And she did deserve it—of that, she was certain. Just how many times had she been solely responsible for interfering in her honest roommate’s potential love life? How many times had she extinguished the flame before it had a chance to thrive and grow, tall, bright and hot?
Shaking her head once, Scarlet flashed a small smile as she met Alair’s once more. “Don’t worry about it, though; it’s not your fault. You just don’t know the whole story… and I can’t tell you.” Taking another step forward, hand and hand with her rare company on this white-blanketed, red-skied landscape, a gasp was suddenly torn from her lungs; something that would have been a scream, had her throat not been too constricted with sadness to vocalize it. And when she looked down, she realized what was coming to pass.
It’s happening again…
This was always the reason for the strange anxiety that lurked beneath the peaceful surface of this dreamscape—because this was always how it ended. There was never any escaping it, for it happened too fast, progressed too quickly, and by the time it came on, Scarlet was too far gone to care.
And by some unwritten rule, some cruel twist of her subconscious mind, she never remembered that it happened night to night until it was on her, and there was no escape. Seemingly out of nowhere, briars had snaked their way up Scarlet’s calves, beautiful and white as the grass, yet dripping with red menace with thorns that cut through the denim of her jeans. The grass beneath her bare feet was quickly stained red.
“I’ve reached the end again…” The young woman murmured cryptically, releasing Alair’s hand and letting it drop to her side. Monotonous acceptance and flat defeat were the only colours to her voice. “It’s okay; this is always the way it ends—for me. But not for you.” Raising her gaze, she frantically searched Alair’s eyes again, in hopes that he would heed what she was about to say. “Listen, do you see that tree over there? I don’t know for sure, I’ve never made it that far, but I don’t think anything can touch you there.” Pursing her lips, she reached for his hand once again and squeezed. “You need to reach it, Alair, do you understand? I won’t have the both of us die.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
The Sandman should have been used to such changes in pace; dreams were unpredictable at their simplest, and if Scarlet had even mentioned aloud that something felt a little bit off, he should have heeded her words as a warning. Instead, he had wallowed in his own past, doing his best to run from the effects of a life long ago, a life that had little bearing on the present situation. But Alair was far from perfect; he was prone to mistakes as much as the next man, only in his case he should have had the centuries-old wisdom to avoid such floundering. Something in the air had intoxicated him as much as his absinthe, something he wasn’t accustomed to tasting on the breeze of dreams.
Scarlet. The name rang through his thoughts, but it wasn’t a revelation so much as it was a stifled scream, the syllables refusing to generate at the discretion of his frozen tongue. The sky didn’t seem quite so lovely anymore; it was tinged with the deep crimson of blood, swirling and flickering like a violent storm of cross-bred flesh and nightmare. Even the hills, though solid beneath his feet, seemed to swell and crash like an angry tide on the eve of a snarling monsoon. He knew before he drew another breath that there was no escape from the mass of doom clouding over the surreal landscape.
The fear struck him before she had even concluded her strangled grasp, and he reached out to her protectively, as though his touch would deter the monstrous holdings of the dream. But not even the Sandman could protect the dreamer from her own mind; as a guest in her dreamscape, he was as much at the mercy of Scarlet’s twisted underlying fantasies as she was, powerless to do much more than stand by and watch her writhe with a combination of terror and pain. It seemed to come all at once, undetectably; Alair could feel the shuddering of her body beneath the palms he rested firmly on her thin shoulders, but until she cried out again—until her damning words emerged as a cryptic whisper from lips drained of their color—he could not identify the source of her anguish.
The blood in the sky was now mirrored upon the ground at the young woman’s feet, the denim of her jeans staining dark as the remainder trickled down in a ferocious torrent to leave a sanguine puddle at her toes. The grass absorbed the sticky red liquid as soon as it dripped to the ground, shining like white pearlescent teeth tearing freely at living flesh. There was too much—it was spilling, running, pouring, gushing—covering his own feet with a coating of sickly wet warmth.
For a moment, when she reached out and squeezed his hand, the horror of their surroundings fell away, and he breathed a sigh that triggered a spark of hope. “I’ll get you there!” he exclaimed, gripping her hand right back until his knuckles were as white as the ghastly grass. “I’ll carry you if I have to, just hold on…” He dropped to his knees, staining his own denim red, and ripped at the thorny briars that had snaked their way devilishly up her legs. But the harder he fought to pull them from her skin, the tighter they strung, snaking their way up and up until they threatened to twist around his hands and sever his fingers.
That was when he felt them pricking his shins.
He leapt to his feet with catlike grace, the terror in his eyes glistening as brightly as the shardlike blades of grass beneath him. “I’ll go!” he cried to Scarlet, as though just realizing the seriousness of her instructions. He reached out to her as he sprinted away, his fingertips grazing her cheek as he pulled into the sprint towards the distant tree. He couldn’t look back as he ran—the world, Scarlet’s world, was a blur as he traversed the rolling hills, covering distance that would have been impossible with the laws of wakeful physics. But still he could feel the thorns digging into his bare feet, emerging from the soil with every desperate footstep as though his touch to the land were what triggered their appearance.
With feet torn and tattered, he was beginning to lose his footing; the grass was slippery now, as though it had just experienced a heavy rain, and he flailed his arms to keep from falling to the ground—and subsequently his demise. It wasn’t until the tree was almost within reach when he realized that the stalks beneath his heels were not wet with rain at all, but rather with his own blood.
Horrified, he pushed forward in one valiant, desperate effort, leaping from the ground with his arms outstretched to catch himself upon the first sturdy limb.
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Scarlet knew what Alair was going to do before the Sandman knelt to tear the thorns and vines away. She had known what he was going to do the very second he realized she was in danger. Because he was not the type of person who would not help if he thought he could make a difference; he had exhibited that much at the bar, when he’d stepped up the moment that Devon Saunders had determined to cause trouble. And he wanted to help her now, even though it was far too late, and there was nothing either of them could do.
He couldn’t help her now; he couldn’t help her because it was already over. It had been, the second she’d remembered the person that she truly was; the moment that the spell was broken and the beauty and peace fell away, because—let’s be honest, it had never really been there to begin with. It was only as real as long as she didn’t stop to think or introspect or weight he consequences of her actions on the lives of others. And although this Scarlet, with her natural brown hair and who did not hide behind the safe and tough façade of curses and intimidation, was pure and honest as any human being could really be, she wasn’t stupid in the slightest. Naïve, perhaps, but that never lasted… If it did, she would not so often wind up dead, bleeding on the soil of her own peaceful dreamscapes.
“Alair, stop! Please, it’s already too late!” She cried out when the dreamscape retaliated, tendrils of vine and thorns as sharp as razors and as white as teeth lashing out at his fingers and hands. They tightened around her legs, climbing and cutting all the way up to her waist, but it wasn’t the pain that made her cry. It was the fact that Alair was so unnecessarily putting himself in danger for someone who did not deserve it. The dreamscape would take him down with her, if it could, and she wouldn’t let it happen. She couldn’t bear to see him die again. “You can’t help me; nobody can help me, it’s already too late… Just go! Go! Please!”
Perhaps he could finally see the futility in his effort. Perhaps the thorns just hurt too much. Perhaps her pleas were too much for him to ignore. Whatever the reason, Scarlet sighed in relief when the Sandman finally gave up, rising to his feet and meeting her eyes one last time. She said nothing, because there was simply no time for words. The beautiful world around her was twisting and warping into something horrifying and evil; it would tear her apart, and it would tear apart anyone who sought to help her. Seeing Alair finally turn and flee, run for the tree that she had pointed out, diluted the stinging pain of the briar as her tired body flooded with relief. He was outrunning it; he was going to get away. He was going to live. Sure, she could have begged for him to help her, to not leave her, to use his preternatural abilities to make it all stop, but her safety wasn’t the first thing on her mind. Because it would always hurt, regardless, in one way or another. But it didn’t have to hurt for Alair—he wasn’t part of this, he wasn’t involved. Just a third party who wanted to be a good friend.
What else could she do but try and reciprocate the sentiment by making sure he got out alive?
“Thank you…” She whispered, though he was too far away to hear. But he would make it. As she watched, tears gathering in the corners of her eyes, he would make it. As the briars climbed higher, cut her skin, constricted her ribcage such that it was near impossible to breathe, he would make it. As thorns pricked her throat, and the only thing holding her upright were the vines themselves, he would make it. She knew he would make it.
Because his fingertips were just inches away from a branch the second that everything suddenly went dark.
Nearly every night, and almost every time she slept and dreamed, Scarlet died alone in her cruel subconscious, a perpetual victim of her own mind.
She didn’t always remember them (in fact, the majority of the time, she couldn’t even recall snippets), but the signs were always there, and the result was always the same.
Sitting upright with a gasp, the young woman dug her fingernails into the couch cushions, shoulders glistening and hair sticking to the back of her neck with perspiration. The first thing to hit here was the dehydration, a side-effect of her heavy drinking from the night before. The second thing was the migraine, before she so much as opened her eyes; it throbbed in her temples like a drum beat that wouldn’t let up, doubling her over with a low groan as she pressed a hand delicately to the side of her head. Whether or not it was the result of a hang-over or a side-effect of her jarring dream experience was unclear, though it was likely a combination of both.
“Cas…” She called her roommate’s name without even thinking. This was it; this was the exact situation where she needed the lanky musician the most. Someone to bring back that peace she’d lost, help her come down from the jarring effects of a violent dream.
But Cas hadn’t returned that night. She knew that the moment her call went unheeded, and she was forced to open her eyes.
She could feel the sunlight on her back before prying her lids open, and the light in the living room was far too much to tolerate. There was only enough time to make out the blurry image of dark hair and bright blue eyes before she shut the world out again, covering her eyes with the back of her arm. “Have you seen Cas?” She asked, no longer surprised to see that Alair had yet to take his leave. Her voice was hoarse and broken from sleep and lack of essential hydration, and perhaps from other, less obvious reasons as well. “Did he text you or anything…?” With her free hand, the young woman gingerly (and seemingly unconsciously) rubbed one of her calves with her fingertips, as if it was sore. Just because she couldn’t remember her dream on a conscious level didn’t mean that the more primitive parts of her brain had forgotten what the pain had felt like.
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Though Alair’s body had not actually been asleep during his escapades in Scarlet’s subconscious, his awakened physical senses bombarded him with normalcy in an attempt to calm his racing mind. A thin sheen of sweat had erupted on his forehead that he wiped away with his forearm, reaching up to run his fingers through his hair. He sighed softly before looking over to the redhead on the sofa—yes, her locks were still dyed the shade of her name—and wincing on her behalf when she began to stir.
He rose to his feet and stepped over to the couch as she sat up, sitting on the edge of the cushion at her back. “Cas isn’t here,” he told her softly, knowing her head would be pounding not only in the aftermath of her nightmare, but also the temple-throbbing dehydration of her indulgent evening. Pausing, he waited for her to open her eyes, searching her expression for some indicator—any indicator—that she recalled the terror of her dream so recently vacated. The Sandman, despite his inside information, never had any real guarantee that those he visited would recall their experience. In this rare case, he sincerely hoped she had forgotten—and not just because of their intimate discussion on that white field of false tranquility.
When she covered her eyes with her arm and leaned backwards again, he reached his arm around her shoulders and propped her up against him, holding her there wordlessly until he could reassure himself that she was physically unharmed. “Shut up, Scarlet,” he instructed firmly, but not unkindly, as she continued hoarsely on about Caspar and his absence. Squeezing her shoulder, he reached with his opposite arm to grab the cup of water on the coffee table and placed it in her unoccupied hand. “Now drink. And take some more aspirin. It’ll help.”
He eased himself back to his feet and made his way to the kitchen to refill his own glass of water, placing his hand on Scarlet’s ankle as he passed. When he returned, he lowered the dented blinds over the window, blocking the worst of the sun’s glare before he collapsed back into the armchair opposite her.
“How are you feeling?” he asked then, unwittingly repeating the same words in the same tone that he had expressed to her in the dream.
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Of course Cas wasn’t there; she’d known that the second her call had gone unanswered. And though a fidgety, irrational and desperate part of her mind wanted to sprint to her feet and check the apartment for her AWOL roommate, corner to corner and wall to wall, the pounding behind her eyes and the odd pins and needles that spread all the way up to her thighs forbade her from making a fool of herself and not taking Alair’s word for it.
“What do you mean, he isn’t here? He said he’d be back later…” There was a bite to her words that was dampened by the hoarseness of her voice, but the anger was, of course, entirely displaced. It was no fault of the Sandman’s that Caspar had chosen to spend yet another night at Marissa’s; he had merely answered her question with honesty. Like a child without her security blanket, suddenly not having Caspar around at a moment when she would have sought him out was jarring and upsetting, and it put her in an even darker frame of mind.
Exhaling a long and shaky breath, the redhead started at the weight of an arm around her shoulders, realizing after she jumped a little that it was Alair (it isn’t like it could have been anyone else, as they were the only two in the apartment). “Bite me.” Came her mumbled reply following his order for her to shut up, but she didn’t protest when he handed her the glass of water. It had grown lukewarm overnight, mimicking the temperature of the room, but it still felt like heaven on her parched throat. She didn’t even bother to save enough to wash down any aspirin, and simply took three (one over the recommended dosage…) of the small white pills one at a time, swallowing them dry.
The moment he pulled the curtains, sheltering the room from the sun’s piercing light and sweltering heat, the very edge of her agony let up a bit, enough for her to open her eyes and take in the cramped little living room, and her supernatural guest. “Thanks…” The young woman mumbled, her voice not as broken and pathetic now that her vocal chords had been rehydrated. Though as much as the question that followed inspired some pending sarcastic laughter, she knew better than to raise her voice much above a whisper, for her own sake.
“Is that supposed to be a joke?” She asked instead, massing her temple with her fingertips, what her other hand continued to rub circulation back onto her legs. What had she done in her sleep, tie herself into a pretzel? “I’m hung over as all hell, my head feels like it might split open, and otherwise, my legs have pins and needles and I feel like I was fucking run over by something heavy… fuck, I didn’t think I partied that hard last night.”
Therein lay the answer to what had been on the Sandman’s mind: Scarlet didn’t appear to remember a thing about her nightmare, about what she had divulged or the precious moments of genuine honesty and tenderness that she had shared with her companion. She didn’t remember the raw feeling he had shown her. She didn’t remember the danger, she didn’t remember how he’d fled from it, and she didn’t remember her death.
But she hadn’t been kidding when she’d told him, a couple days past, that she didn’t have good dreams. Because when they were prophetic, warning of something terrible yet to come, the good was always swallowed by something dark in the end. The only mercy was that she seldom recalled the terror, but it did nothing to relieve the splitting headaches that resulted from her dream deaths. Some people believed that the body truly thought that it was dying when it perished in a dream, and sent signals to startle itself back into reality. In Scarlet’s case, that safety mechanism happened to be a massive temporary spike in blood pressure that wreaked havoc on her temples and behind her eyes, whenever she awakened from the terrors.
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
His understanding of the redhead’s relationship with the guitarist had completely changed after her heartfelt revelation as they’d trod across the white velvet grass. He’d believed Scarlet when she claimed not to be in love with Caspar Brighton, but to hear the tale from her lips—however unintentional the delivery of her story (since he doubted she’d ever have revealed such sensitive information in reality)—brought his comprehension to an entirely new level. Even her insecurities regarding the young man’s dependency had shed invaluable light not only on her reaction to Marissa, but also on Caspar’s friendship with Alair. It proved to him not that Caspar did not need Scarlet to get by, as the redhead anxiously suggested, but rather that he leaned on her more than either of them really knew.
He was being harsh, he knew, in banishing talk of Cas, especially now that he was familiar with the foundation that started it all. But a part of him, a part of him that had not seen the light of day in quite some time, had been unearthed in Scarlet’s dream, and it opened up the dark-haired Sandman to an uneasy vulnerability that came with…well, with caring. He had never harbored ill will towards the fiery young woman, but in the sixty-odd hours he’d known her he had managed to catch a glimpse into a psyche that had him utterly captivated, like a classical aficionado listening through the strings at a world-class symphony.
“You partied pretty fucking hard last night,” he affirmed, nodding from his position in the chair as he polished off his own serving of water and folded his arms across his chest. “Seemed like you had a bit of fun, though.” He shrugged, back to his characteristic melodrama, and allowed a telltale smirk to take residence in his gaze. But the expression, however convincing it would have been to an outsider, was a mask for the truth beneath the surface—a truth that, knowing now she had not carried memories of her dream into wakefulness, he had absolutely no intention of disclosing. He knew, of course, precisely what was causing the sensation of pinpricks up and down her legs, but at least from him, Scarlet would only ever know of her good time.
“Don’t think this means you’re off the hook for the next two weeks,” he drawled then, studying her, “but do you want me to put some coffee on or something? You look kind of like a zombie. And not a good-looking one.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to snap; not your fault he’s not here.” She quickly amended (which, coming from Scarlet, was very rare), pulling her tingling legs to her chest. “It’s just… not having him around is kind of jarring. I know it’s only been a few days, but… you know, never mind. Ignore my hung over ramblings.” What she didn’t know, however, was that she didn’t need to explain, because Alair already understood. But even if she’d known, it wouldn’t have shed light on his own irrational outburst, or why he seemed so bothered that she craved the company of her recently absentee roommate.
Deciding she was in too much agony to dwell on it, the redhead downed the rest of her water, silently wishing the aspirin would kick in faster. “Wait, what? I don’t remember anything about…” She trailed off, sifting through the fog of her mind and the pounding in her head to determine if she had really agreed to something so absurd. The events of the previous night were a blur of colours and voices and sounds, for the most part, with the exception of her run-ins with Devon. But… no, at the very beginning, before she had gotten a tat too drunk. She had dared Alair to play on stage—and he’d done it, but only after she’d promised him coffee and breakfast for two weeks.
Two fucking weeks… What the fuck was I thinking?
With a quiet groan, Scarlet raked a hand through her hair covered her eyes with her arm once more. “Jesus. Did I actually agree to that? Kind of an unbalanced trade, don’t you think?” But she had still agreed to it; and she wasn’t someone to go back on her word. Even if her word had been nothing but a drunken promise made on a whim.
“Well, whatever. So long as I had fun, I guess.” She expelled a sigh of defeat, a weak smile playing on her lips. “You make me coffee right now, though, and I will not only gracefully forget about that 'zombie' comment, but I will happily make you breakfast for two weeks. I just hope you like cereal, because it’s about the only thing I can’t screw up, and doesn’t involve the potential to burn or cut myself.” It wasn’t like he wasn’t already aware of her woeful failures that took place in the kitchen; she could only assume that he wasn’t preparing to have his mind blown by her non-existent culinary skills.
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Alair felt almost guilty to have retained knowledge that Scarlet had not. She had every right to remember; it had come directly from her subconscious, delivered in a state of blissful trust and contentment that she clearly did not experience in her real-world routine. It had been no accident that she’d conveyed such personal information. He supposed then that he, too, had a certain right of recollection; he had not pried the stories from her, after all. She had volunteered them without any outside prompt—plus she had invited him there in the first place—but still he felt odd, as though he had somehow stumbled upon a secret she never would have shared with him otherwise. But he kept quiet on that particular matter, hoping that perhaps something in the coming hours or days would trigger a shard of memory and relieve him of his unusual position between knowing and pretending.
“It’s all right,” he simply told her instead, raising his arms above his head in a stretch as he stood. “Say no more. You’ll be glad it’s me here instead of Cas when you taste how fucking awesome this coffee is going to taste.” He flashed her a grin that he wasn’t sure she caught, maneuvering around the sofa to the kitchen. “Hey, where’d he put the—oh, never mind, I found it.” He pulled the freshly cleaned percolator from the cabinet below the dish strainer, doing his best to prepare their morning caffeine boost quietly so as to avoid more confrontation from the hung-over redhead.
“Here you go,” he announced, placing her overfull mug on the table next to the couch. Twisting tendrils of white steam rose gracefully from the surface, reminding him momentarily of the thorny briars that had seized her in the dream. He swallowed back the familiarity and took a sip of his own serving, wincing against the heat of the liquid. “It’s the perfect cure for a Scarlet-style hangover,” he informed her with a mock-serious nod. “Strong and bold and boiling. If that doesn’t make you feel better, you might actually be hopeless.” Unable to hold on to his teasing stoicism, he smiled crookedly and perched himself on the edge of the armchair.
“Two weeks,” he reminded her. “You wouldn’t think you overpaid if you could actually remember how fucking amazing I was. Just let that sink in a minute.” He grinned. “You should have seen the look on your face. You didn’t think I would do it.” He spared a glance to his guitar in a manner that was almost protective, reassuring himself that it was still safely resting against the wall of the entryway. “So I guess cereal’s okay, if that’s really all the best you can do. I mean, I think I deserve a fucking omelet at least, maybe some bacon, but I won’t say no to Fruity Pebbles. They turn your milk blue.”
Looking rather pleased with himself, he blew a long breath across the surface of his coffee and took a large swallow. “So. This wedding,” he began, setting his mug down in front of him. “It’s this weekend, right? As in, tomorrow night?” A smirk lit up his face, and he paused for dramatic effect. “What do you say we do more than just help Cas set up?”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
“I can’t really argue, there,” she agreed, clearing her scratchy throat as she raked her fingers through her locks of bright crimson, still damp with perspiration, and in dire need of a good shampooing. “Cas might be a wiz in the kitchen, but coffee’s never been his thing. Says it’s because he grew up drinking tea; fucking pansy drink, if you ask me.”
Scarlet’s eyes followed the Sandman as he disappeared into the kitchen before fixing blankly on the wall in front of her, looking without really seeing. Headache and pain aside, the peculiar weight of nothingness pressed on her chest; the feeling of having lost something, or just plain feeling lost. Like there was something very important that she was forgetting, but the more she fought through the cotton-fog of her bleary mind, the more elusive the answer became. It wasn’t a feeling unfamiliar to her, either, but a frequent result of these quiet, unnoted nightly deaths. In Caspar’s absence, without that soothing familiarity of his voice or the words he used to talk hope back into her, it was simply intensified.
“…huh? Oh—thanks.” How long had the coffee been done and prepared, and Alair returned to the living room, before she snapped out of that numb and empty stupor and back to the mundane reality that surrounded her? Taking a tentative sip, Scarlet almost winced as the extra-hot temperature seared her taste buds, and a grin formed on her paler than usual lips. “Scalding; in other words, just perfect. There is hope for you yet, Magic Man.” She had to give the guy credit; even Caspar didn’t show her this kind of mercy when she suffered a hangover.
Unfortunately, she wasn’t quite hung over enough to passably lie about remembering their deal from the other night. Alair was not embellishing his side of the story for his own benefit; he’d taken her up on the dare, he’d told her he’d blow her mind, and he had. Drunk or sober, she had lost that bet, fair and square.
“I can’t believe you’re actually holding me to this stupid bet.” Her sigh blew the steam off of her coffee, and she placed the beverage back upon the end table to (no joke!) allow it to cool a bit. “I don’t care how fucking well you play, what makes you think you’re gonna be sticking around here for two weeks? I’m not as laissez-faire as Caspar; I’ll drive you out of your fucking mind long before then.”
It was evident that Scarlet was slowly coming down from the forgotten and yet ever-present nightmare, and finally coming back into her usual self by the smirk that played on her lips. Not as quickly as she would have were Caspar present, but simply sitting down with coffee while chatting with Alair brought her past that wall of misery and on her way to healing from the inside of her mind and outward.
Until the next time she dreamed…
“Yeah? What about the wedding?” The young woman couldn’t help but wrinkle her nose. The wedding that Caspar would attend as a musician, and that Marissa would, no doubt, attend as… what? A friend? Something more?
“Wait… what? Am I still drunk, or did you say you want to fucking crash it?” Scarlet frowned and pulled her knees rather sullenly to her chest. “Fuck that. Marissa is going to be there. And I don’t do weddings; I don’t think they’d take well to some stranger traipsing in wearing jeans and a Doors T-shirt.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
He took another drink of his coffee, doing his best to suppress a look of smug satisfaction when she placed her piping hot mug back on the table to cool. He’d done better than Cas had, at least, and for that he had no choice but to give himself a great deal of credit. Pleasing the redhead was not a simple task, and after quite a rocky start, the Sandman’s track record was at last improving. What he didn’t realize was that she still yearned for the musician’s comfort, her discomfort prolonged by the absence of his role in her post-binge routine. But even though it was, in a roundabout way, Alair’s fault that her roommate was gone again, he was filling in the best he could, placing himself in the gaps where the guitarist would have known precisely what to say and do. The lanky musician’s shoes were difficult to fill, however, and the dark-haired man could feel himself defaulting to his usual sarcastic antics—for better or for worse.
“You’re going to want me around!” he protested, his brow furrowing with certainty above his electric blue eyes. The words had hardly left his lips when he realized the potency of them, what they could mean beyond their obvious coating of teasing sarcasm. He knew something she could not: that in the coming weeks, Caspar Brighton would rarely be home, rarely spend the night beneath the roof of their shared flat. If she were to venture into the young man’s room, she would find that it was messy because he had been packing—not to leave permanently, no, but enough of a supply of fresh clothing to suggest he had no intention of returning in the next few days.
A pang of sympathy radiated through him, but he tucked it all behind a long sip of his strong brew and another hearty laugh. “Admit it,” he continued, smiling crookedly. “You’re already a little bit in love with me. You’d be sad if I left now.”
He laughed at her reaction to the subject of the wedding, wrinkling his own nose in lighthearted mockery. “Scarlet,” he addressed, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees, his azure gaze flashing bright even in the dimmed light of the room. “That’s exactly it. Marissa is going to be there. Perfect opportunity to, y’know, spy. Am I right, or am I right?” He raised his eyebrows high onto his forehead, nodding his own approval before he went on. “Would you rather see what she’s like when she’s got her guard down to you, or do you really want to wait until he invites you both to fucking dinner or something and you have to be on good behavior?”
“Plus,” he added, leaning back in the chair and pursing his lips decidedly, “free food, free booze. Let’s fucking crash that place.” He paused, watching her carefully. “But if you don’t have anything to wear, we’re going to have to go shopping. Jeans aren’t going to cut it, alpha, as much as you want ’em to. This is a formal gig. Even Cas is going to have to be in a three-piece if anyone’s going to take him seriously over the fucking pianist he’s replacing.” Clearing his throat, he raised a brow and glanced toward her bedroom door, a little skeptical. He stood up and sat down at the end of the couch, his expression typically impish. “Do you really not have anything to wear to a wedding?”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Except that, whatever the Sandman’s motives, he wasn’t here for her; he was here for Caspar. Caspar’s friend, fellow musician, new confidante… At least, that was how the picture was painted from her perspective. There was no point in pondering what-ifs when there had never been a possibility for such an alternative scenario in the first place…
And it was because of Alair’s friendship with Caspar, and the motives that he had yet to fully reveal, that his benevolence confused her, perhaps even triggered a bit of suspicion. She had partied too hard and consumed far too much alcohol, all of her own volition and out of her own poor judgement. Had it been Caspar, the response to her complaints of headaches and pain would have warranted but a single response: “Feel free to feel sorry for yourself, Red.”
Alair, on the other hand, had just gone and made her coffee. He was trying to lift her mood with conspiratorial smiles jokes about cereal… It struck a nagging chord at the back of her mind, that perhaps he knew something that he wasn’t telling her. As to what that might be, she couldn’t even venture a guess.
“I hate to break it to you, Magic Man, but as much as I like coffee, it’s going to take more than a good, scalding brew to make me fall in love with you.” Scarlet snorted and sat up straighter, slowly working away at her steaming hot beverage as her headache gradually faded to the back of her mind, more of a dull ache than a sharp, throbbing pressure.
Stretching her legs, the redhead gingerly got to her feet, wincing at the stiffness in her calves. The tingling pins and needles had receded, but she kept a hand pressed to the wall just in case something gave out. “Are you actually encouraging me to spy on this Marissa chick?” Scarlet laughed once, realized it hurt her head, and refrained from doing so again. “Look, as much as I would love to see for myself just how big a twit and a fucking groupie she is and justify my natural propensity to loathe her, I can’t just waltz into some fucking wedding. Neither can you, for that matter, but especially me.”
Scarlet took one step, then two, and resumed the handful of paces to her bedroom when she was sure her stiff legs would carry her without faltering. “I don’t do weddings. I don’t do formal. So unless something like this is acceptable…” The sound of rummaging and clothes hangers clinking together followed the redhead when she disappeared into her bedroom, and a moment later, re-emerged with a dress dangling by a hanger. It was striped and checkered with bright pink and black, and had the distinct look of having come from a consignment shop. “…I think I might be kind of screwed. It’s the closest thing to formal that I own.”
But he had proposed the option of shopping for something more suitable… She couldn’t decide whether the idea inspired a spark of fun and amusement, or was downright ridiculous. It had been a while since she’d bought anything new… “Seriously, though? You think I should go shopping for a new dress just to seize the opportunity to fucking spy on Marissa and Caspar.” Folding her dress over her arm, she furrowed her eyebrows at the blue-eyed Sandman. “I’m still not entirely convinced you’re not slightly insane. And I mean that in the most endearing way.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
That wasn’t to say he was an expert on dressing other people; he wasn’t presumptuous enough—well, okay he was, but that was beside the point—to press his altogether bizarre fashion sense on anyone else if they didn’t ask. Though he stuck to simple basics that were really neither right nor wrong, his taste spanned eras and generations to such an extreme that it was never clear where he was drawing his inspiration. Not that it mattered; as long as he was presentable and well-groomed, he didn’t particularly care whether or not his clothing was on-trend. He knew he was good-looking; it was a piece of knowledge that came to him more as plain, dismissible fact than any sort of egotistical statement, and as such he knew he could get away with just about anything.
But there was a line to every occasion, one that it was fun to flirt with but never okay to stride blatantly across. Scarlet, too, was a lovely young woman; her fierce gaze, fiery red hair (chemical or no), and pale skin were, like Alair’s consideration of his own appearance, simply factually attractive. And she, like the Sandman, wore a personality all her own that could command a room just as fruitfully as fine-tailored clothing on their backs. But that didn’t mean the two of them could stride into a six-figure wedding in ripped-up jeans and sweat-stained t-shirts and get away with it—they wouldn’t be tricking anyone, and fooling was precisely what they would have to do.
“I’m doing more than encouraging you to spy on her,” Alair said, settling into the sofa cushions as his redheaded companion rose to her feet and pushed through to her bedroom. He listened as she rifled through her closet, the irregular clicking of clothes hangers piercing easily through the paper-thin walls. “I’m actually planning on forcing you to spy on her.” Grinning to himself, he turned when she came back into the living room, his brows arching high onto his forehead. “I have a feeling you can do formal just fine,” he told her honestly. “Not in that”—he glancing disapprovingly to the dress she held up to show him—“but if you’re dressed right, you can get away with anything.”
He smirked, eyes sparkling with a mischief he was hoping to instill in Scarlet. It was clear he knew exactly what he was doing. “Come on,” he begged, trying to convince her. “I’ll knock a few days off your breakfast duty. And do I really have to repeat the whole free food, free booze thing? It’ll be fancy as all fuck. Gourmet. And it’d be weird to go by myself.” He laughed, then waved his hand dismissively, his tone faltering a bit when he continued. “Well, whatever. We don’t have to go. I just thought it’d put your mind at ease about Marissa. I’m mostly just glad that you think my insanity is endearing now.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Both love and acceptance were things that the redhead had determined would never really factor into her life, at least, not outside of the steady and comfortable lifestyle that she had found with Caspar. But even that was no good indicator; Caspar harbored no ill will towards anyone. Anyone would find acceptance in his gold-hearted smile.
That said, she personally didn’t see anything wrong with the checkered pink and black strapless summer dress that she held from its hanger. It had been quite a find, in all honesty, and she was rather proud of the brand-new condition in which she’d found it, for the price she’d paid. About the only thing the redhead tended to splurge her money on was her pricey LUSH shower supplies, ever a sucker for their unique scents; but there wasn’t a single article of clothing (excluding under garments, of course) that she owned that wasn’t second-hand.
“What’s wrong with this?” She returned Alair’s frown, the way he looked at the dress like it was far from acceptable, and scoffed. “It doesn’t have any rips in it or anything—the hem isn’t even fraying! What’s wrong with wearing it to a wedding?”
That alone gave insight into just how out of touch the young woman was with that side of life. She didn’t concern herself with tradition and etiquette, and it was no exaggeration to say that she hadn’t the faintest clue what happened at weddings, or the expected comportment of wedding guests. If they were going to pull this off, Alair was going to have to walk her through it all in baby steps.
That said, Alair wouldn’t be forcing her to do anything; because this was a challenge that she didn’t want to turn down. “You realize how bad an idea this is, right?” The young woman raised her eyebrows, tossing the unsatisfactory dress aside onto the arm of the couch. “It’s just going to fuel my rage towards that groupie, watching the way she is totally misleading Caspar. Because don’t think for a second that she’s not; I know her type. All lip gloss and curling irons and three-inch heels. She’s not even the guy’s type… But he’ll come to realize that sooner or later. Probably sooner, since he’s no dummy.”
If Alair had told her that her roommate wouldn’t be coming home for any extended period of time for quite a while, Scarlet wouldn’t have believed him. So they’d gone a couple nights with his room vacant; it happened. The wedding would likely exhaust him so much with its snobby expectations that she was willing to bet money she’d see him home tonight.
Sometimes, denial really did run that deep.
“Okay, Magic Man; I’ll take you up on your suggestion. But only because you’ll relieve me of a few days of this ‘breakfast duty’ you’re apparently enforcing.” Picking the rejected dress up from the couch, Scarlet wandered away from her bedroom and glanced at herself in the mirror next to the armchair and grimaced. He hadn’t been kidding when he’d told her she looked like a zombie… Today might warrant a little concealer to cover the circles beneath her eyes, just to ensure she looked at least a little bit human. “But before I go anywhere, I’m washing the night off of me. You should, too; you’re not so glamorous yourself, today.” Which struck her as a little bit odd, as she didn’t remember him drinking excessively the evening before… Of course, she could only recall said evening in snippets, anyway. And the ordeal that he’d shared with her in the nightmare that had only ended about an hour ago was completely lost to her conscious mind.
"Maybe you should look into picking up some clothes, yourself," She teased, hooking a finger in the collar of his shirt and giving a light, playful tug. "Caspar might be the sweetest guy alive, but he will kill you if you claim too many of his favourite shirts.
“And speaking of Cas...” She paused a few steps outside the bathroom, tossing a glance over her shoulder. “Could you send him a text? Just to make sure he’s all right. Tell him we miss him and to get his ass home tonight; Friday night is our B movie marathon, when he’s not at a gig.” Flashing a quick smile, the redhead then disappeared into the tiny bathing facility, and the sound of water rushing from the shower spout soon followed.
He smirked and rose to his feet, striding to the window to open the blinds now that the sun had moved past its obnoxious mid-morning angle. “I’m pretty good with bad ideas,” he admitted, fumbling with the cords of the window shade for a moment before giving up and letting them dangle, knotted, towards the carpet. “But I’m telling you, it’ll be better for you to see her when she can’t see you. And that way, if she does something stupid, you can warn Cas with real evidence on your side.”
His grin concealed the true uncertainty lurking behind his proposition. It wasn’t that he thought this newborn plan would actually get them into trouble; the odds were on their side with the guest numbers alone, and if they dressed the part as he was suggesting, then there was no way anyone would detect them as outsiders. Hell, at an event that size, everyone was some kind of outsider save the families of the bride and groom. But Alair had worked tirelessly to ensure the meeting of Marissa Engelbrecht and Caspar Brighton, and the last thing he wanted was to put that effort in jeopardy now that Scarlet, the hidden factor in the equation, was more deeply involved.
Not that the redhead’s disapproval was the only tug needed to unravel the Sandman’s work; if he was confident enough in his spinning to actually encourage a little bit of meddling, then there was little doubt his carefully-placed stitches would hold. Nevertheless, it was a bizarre whim that was pushing him towards sabotaging his own well-established goal, and maybe, just maybe, he was taking things a little too far. But the wheels were already in motion, and if the risk was so minute then it was worth the gamble for a shred of Scarlet’s security. Then again, if she really wasmore distraught by seeing Caspar’s new female friend…
He gritted his teeth while his back was turned. That wasn’t his concern. It was a risk, as he’d reminded himself, and the benefits had the potential to far outweigh whatever negative outcome might come of it. When he wheeled back to face the redhead, she was halfway through the bathroom door, informing him that he’d better be next in line for the shower. “Fine, fine, I’ll clean up,” he said, smiling with more affection than mirth when she tugged his collar. “But I’m only relieving you of breakfast duty, not coffee duty. Just so we’re clear on that!”
Following Scarlet’s instructions, he sent Cas a quick text. Hey buddy, just want to make sure you’re OK. Red misses you, says she’ll kill you if you’re not home 2night for some movie thing. His phone buzzed in his hand a few moments later in response. o shit, apologize 2 her for me! won't be home 2nite, im with marissa. going straight to the gig downtown tomorrow at 4. ill text her. thx!
Alair winced, partially in sympathy for Scarlet and partially in concern for his own well-being when the redhead got Caspar’s message later. She may have been in a surprisingly good mood for someone with a hangover, but the Sandman sincerely doubted she would hold on to any of that cheer when she realized she’d essentially been ditched for the woman she already loathed. If she’d harbored any doubts about crashing the wedding now, he suspected they would be gone now, replaced with a burning desire for dirt on the brunette homewrecker.
When the redhead emerged from the bathroom, Alair took her place, grabbing a towel from the hall closet and pausing in the steamy doorway. “Before you say anything,” he said to her, “no, I won’t use your expensive shit. But Cas said he probably wouldn’t be back tonight…well, there was no probably, it was more of a definitely. He’s going to message you, so I’d keep your phone handy.” He paused, watching her reaction carefully. “Sorry, alpha,” he told her genuinely before he disappeared behind the closed door, “go easy on the guy.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Peeling the T-shirt and jeans away from her skin and discarding it in a pile on the bathroom floor, Scarlet stepped under the hot torrent of water rushing from the shower head. The heat hit her like a double-edged sword, soothing and relaxing the tight muscles in her shoulders and neck, yet exacerbating the ghost of a headache that still throbbed, dull and aggravating in her temples. Truthfully, she felt like absolute shit, head heavy and thoughts clouded and scattered. What had possessed her to drink to the point of ascertaining a hangover like this? Caspar and Marissa.
Was she really the only person who was driven to drink over the very thought of that potential couple?
With her hair and skin were scrubbed clean and smelling strongly of honey and lavender, the redhead could actually indulge in the illusion of feeling good, and even mustered the motivation to dry her hair with a rush of hot air. The sound from the hairdryer did nothing to help her headache, but if they were actually leaving the apartment, she needed to at least look like a human being, and not the psychically plagued zombie that she really was.
Scarlet opened the door, unleashing a scented cloud of honey into the open air that clung to her skin and hair, and to the checkered pink and black dress that she had decided to wear after all. Not to the wedding, of course, but it looked as though it would pan out to be a hot day… and, having put off running to the Laundromat since the day she’d met the mysterious Sandman, she didn’t have any more clean jeans or shorts.
“Hey did you…” Alair cut her off before she could speak, giving the news of Caspar’s extended absence to her plain and clear. The young woman’s expression didn’t waver, however; he had to give her credit for (at face value, at least) keeping her cool.
“Bailing on movie night, huh? Can’t say I blame him; I mean, they are all complete shit.” Wandering over to the second hand particleboard entertainment stand, she ran her fingers over the spines of the DVD collection; most of which belonged to Caspar, with only a handful that actually belonged to her. “I guess it can get old after a while, when you only watch them to make fun of them.”
Her words were cool and easy, but with her back turned to him, Alair couldn’t see the tightness around her eyes or the thin line into which her mouth was pulled. Three nights… Pathetic as it might sound, this was the longest amount of time she had ever spent away from her roommate. And she was growing less and less comfortable with the absence of his calming presence.
“Thanks for the update,” she tossed Alair an unconvincing smile before he disappeared into the bathroom to wash the night away. No sooner had the door closed that Scarlet’s cell phone, sitting on the book case, buzzed with an incoming text message:
hey Red, sorry but i think i’ll have to bail on movie night, i’ve actually made some plans with Marissa… u doing ok?
“Fucking Marissa…” The redhead growled under her breath, as her thumbs sped over the touch keyboard while she composed her response:
yeah, i’m ok. starting to feel like I don’t c u anymore… you gonna grace us with your divine presence some night soon?
: )
“What?” Scarlet stared at her screen for a long moment, until it became obvious that Caspar wasn’t writing another text. “The fuck is that supposed to mean, Caspar? Jesus…” Disgusted and world weary, the redhead raked her fingers through her conditioned hair and stared blankly at the movie collection. What was happening to her and her friend? What was becoming of that bond that they’d had five years to develop and strengthen?
She was learning the hard way that friendship simply could not stand up to love.
Hearing the water shut off, she heaved a heavy sigh and decided to take advantage of Alair’s preoccupation by tying up a few loose ends business-wise.
“Hey, Rikki? Yeah, it wasn’t hard to look into.” Dialing her business associate with a single keystroke, she divulged the details of their latest client, and the steps he’d have to take (or avoid) to see success (luckily, she had remembered to look into that particular destiny before falling victim to alcohol’s seduction the night before). “That’s the long and short of it. Just put my share in my account.”
Scarlet hung up just in time to look up and see the Sandman leave the steamy bathroom, clean and looking fresh and bright. “You ready to go, then? If I’ve gotta find something to wear to this damn wedding, it could take a while. Because I have no fucking clue what I am looking for.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
The aroma of honey and lavender struck him as intensely as the humid air as he pulled the door closed behind him in the bathroom. Wasting no time, he pulled off his—well, Caspar’s—t-shirt and tossed it to the ground, reaching up to wipe away the condensation from the mirror with the corner of the towel he’d retrieved from the hallway closet. As the blurred moisture evaporated, he studied the reflection that stared back at him in the silvery surface, a little startled to see that Scarlet’s earlier assessment of his appearance was right—he really did look like he needed to scrub the night away.
It was rare to find dark circles beneath the Sandman’s eyes; though his body did need to rest and recuperate on regular occasions, he did not actually need to sleep. Physical exhaustion and sleepiness were two very different categories of tiredness, and Alair was fortunate that he could fall victim only to one of them on any kind of regular basis. But studying himself now, after a fretful night in Scarlet’s dreams and the previous day of his mind-numbing hangover, he could see the weariness spelled out plainly on his face. His blue eyes were framed with swollen lids; his jawline was wrapped in dark stubble so long it was practically a layer of whiskers. Even his posture seemed to be affected, his shoulders tense and knotted from his awkwardly-positioned stint in the armchair.
He flipped on the shower and undressed as the temperature adjusted, stepping beneath the scalding torrent with a sigh of relief he didn’t bother to suppress. The water pummeled his stiff shoulders like a boiling deluge, relaxing him immediately as he angled his neck to take the brunt of the water pressure. Hardly realizing what he was doing, he wrapped his hand around the nearest bottle of shampoo and emptied a small amount into his palm. It was only after he’d lathered it into his dark locks that he recognized the sweet smell of lavender and honey. Muttering a quiet, “Oops,” that was more amused with himself than apologetic, he rinsed away the pleasant aromatic suds and grabbed one of the unused disposable razors from the plastic package balanced on the edge of the tub.
When at last he turned off the water, he emerged a completely different person—or at least that’s how it felt. Sweet-smelling, clean-shaven, and refreshed, he dried himself quickly and got dressed in clothes that he couldn’t quite remember having laid out for himself. He wiped away the fog on the mirror again and toweled his hair dry, letting it fall in whatever direction it pleased, then emerged in a cloud to collapse on the sofa.
“Oh, Jesus, that felt good,” he breathed, reaching up to run his fingertips along his newly-naked jawline. “You were right, alpha. I did need to wash the night off me.” He popped up to his feet at her prompt as though he’d suddenly stumbled upon a reserve of energy. “Okay! Let’s go before you fall asleep again.”
They made their way down the dim apartment stairs and out onto the street, which had taken on a completely different life at midday than it had at three in the morning. It was another scorching summer day, but the Sandman wouldn’t have had it any other way; the rush of afternoon traffic, the smell of exhaust, the blasting of horns in congested traffic—the District had always held a special place in his heart, not least because of its quintessential city-ness. He gestured for her to hop on the escalator before him as they descended into the dark concrete cave of the metro train station, and before long, they were speeding into the heart of downtown.
Alair held himself upright with a hand draped over one of the metal standing bars in the coach, sandwiched between his redheaded companion and the double doors that would lead to the platform at their next stop. With a flash of the on-board lights and the metallic squeal of the train brakes, the car jolted to a sudden stop, sending even the most seasoned riders flying from their ride-stances into the neighboring passengers. Thankfully, for the Sandman, his momentum had carried him not into the hard surface of the glass-and-plastic doors, but rather into the side of his companion.
He placed an apologetic hand on her bare shoulder. “Shit,” he breathed, laughing. “Sorry, alpha. This is our stop.” The doors slid open after a warning chime, and he tugged on her shoulder as an indicator to follow him as he cleared the gap to the platform and made his way back up to the city surface.
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
While the metro was certainly not her preferred means of travel through the city (when a destination was too far to walk, there were either taxies, busses or other connections), an opportunity to seek refuge from the sun in the darkness of the car was, for once, a welcome opportunity. “Any idea where we’re headed?” She asked Alair, but in the bustle and business of the station must have absorbed her words before they reached Alair’s ears. The next thing she knew, she was fighting the crowd boarding the car, struggling not to get separated from her preternatural companion. Catching the sleeve of his shirt, she managed not to fall behind, and in the end made it safely into the car, partially squished against the door.
“I knew there was a reason I don’t take the fucking metro…” The redhead muttered to herself as they dashed through darkness in the shaky car, her shoulder blade painfully pressed into the glass door. It wasn’t a big deal at first, but after a handful of minutes of the bone pressing repeatedly against the skin as it hit the flat surface of the door, she was almost certain it was going to bruise. “I ask again, do you have any idea—”
Scarlet’s sentence was cut short by a stop that forced her flat into the glass door, sending a shooting pain through her shoulder when Alair fell heavily into her, sandwiching her between his body and the glass.
“Fuck…” She muttered, reaching behind her to rub her poor shoulder as the doors opened and they exited the monstrous contraption, congested with people. In that brief moment that the Sandman had fallen against her, however, their proximity had allowed her to inhale an incriminating whiff of the scent coming off his freshly washed hair, and she wasn’t about to let that go unnoted.
“…son of a bitch.” She muttered darkly, hooking a finger in the collar of his shirt for the second time that day, pulling him down to her level; no, she hadn’t mistaken that scent. “You fucking used my shampoo again, didn’t you? Jesus, why don’t we just hit up LUSH while we’re out and about. You can get your own goddamn shampoo so you don’t have to steal mine.”
Releasing the Sandman from her two-fingered grip, Scarlet simply shook her head and blew out some steam through her lips. Forgetting to put her sunglasses back on, the re-emergence of sunlight when they exited the metro station very nearly knocked her over, making her visibly wince until her eyes were once again protected.
“Crap… might not have been a bad idea to remember sunscreen.” The redhead sighed, arranging her hair over her shoulders and back to minimize UV damage, though still fully expected to burn, fair as she was. “Okay, this was your idea, Magic Man; you’re in charge of this little outing. Where to first?” It wasn’t a part of the city that she frequented; that said, her sense of direction and (usually very accurate) navigational skills were at a severe deficit.
And then, on a side note, she added thoughtfully, “No guitar strapped across your back today? I’m impressed, Sandman; so you can leave the house without it. Here I was starting to think it was your security blanket, or something.”
And wasn’t she one to be talking about ‘security blankets’… She, too, was currently without one. Because he was fucking AWOL.
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Washington, D.C. was simultaneously a typical and atypical metropolitan area, characterized by its contrasting architecture, United States governmental functions, and diverse range of inhabitants whose occupations ranged from corporate lawyers to state representatives to musicians and artists and doctors and beggars on street corners. It housed some of the most brilliant and the most troubled minds in the nation. It was a mecca for tourists both foreign and domestic, with monuments to wars long past and museums on every topic one could imagine. Buses and taxis dominated the gridded streets, where the din of its messy urban traffic composed a shifting symphony that never once repeated its chorus.
Even the simple metro system was well-known throughout the world, with its highly-utilized trains and cavern-like stations beneath the bustling avenues and pedestrian walkways. Alair loved the city grit that accumulated in such places—with every blast of warm air from approaching trains, discarded trash from inconsiderate patrons skidded across the brown hexagonal tiles. The exhaust-perfume of public transportation filled the air, comprising an underground atmosphere so dim it bordered on dangerous for the unpracticed public. An arched ceiling of corbeled concrete tiles served as a cylindrical sky for passengers on the platforms, its rhythmic texture illuminated from the sides with yellowish bulbs that were only functional half the time.
He loved it all. The dysfunction, the crowds, the chaos, the sound of squealing rails and the rumble of oncoming trains—hell, he even loved being thrown around by a sassy engineer who waited too long to hit the brakes comfortably. But he noted Scarlet’s unease with a pang of guilt; perhaps he should have opted for a cab instead of the noisy train. What was done was done, however, and they were already on their way towards the escalators by the time he recognized his inconsiderate judgment call for what it was. He was just about to turn around to apologize when he felt her fingers hook into his collar, and he stooped over in surprise as she pulled him down to her face.
“Hey!” he protested, but he soon realized what she was doing—she was smelling him. “Hey, I’m sorry, okay? It really as an accident. I didn’t use any of the conditioner.” As though that confession would have made her less irritated… Laughing in a manner that suggested he was not sorry at all, he brushed it off by rolling his shoulders backward, straightening his posture as they ascended the escalators to the street level. “If we come across one of your little stores, then I’ll get my own. Satisfied?”
They crested the moving stairs and strode out into the concrete plaza, the afternoon sun greeting them with a hot overhead glare. Alair shielded his eyes against its gleam with one open palm, unhooking his aviator sunglasses from his collar with his opposite hand and sliding them onto his nose.
“The metro is no place for a priceless guitar, Scarlet,” he told her matter-of-factly, taking off down one of the sidewalks. “Would you take your security blanket on that thing? I didn’t think so,” he finished, without giving her time to respond. He laughed.
“So, are you hungry? Because right here”—he gestured across the street to a little corner restaurant—“is the best fucking chocolate shake you’ll have in your life. You’re not a vegetarian are you?”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Anyway, he had tidied and cleaned up when she’d told him to, even going so far as to shave the stubble away from the square angle of his chiseled jaw. That coupled with the fact he was being so sympathetic towards her hangover, as far as to go and make her coffee… Perhaps there were grounds for forgiveness.
“Better not have,” she muttered, fingertips touching the hair at the back of his neck without really thinking about it, looking for that telltale silkiness from the seaweed and lemon of extracts of LUSH’s Veganese[i] conditioner. The tresses were soft, but not [i]LUSH soft; well, he wasn’t lying on those grounds.
Before Alair could comment on the redhead’s less then orthodox action, she was quickly changing the subject, moving the attention back to his guitar as it dawned on her that she’d overstepped a certain social norm. With any luck, he was too tired to really notice. “I suppose you’re right about that; the metro isn’t any place for anything valuable.” She declared, in a tone that a tad louder and perhaps more enthusiastic to come across as a natural segue. To hide the embarrassment in her eyes, she turned her attention to her injured hand, realizing a little too late that she’d left it unbandaged this morning. At least it wasn’t bleeding anymore, and the pink cut only hurt if she applied pressure. “My body also being too valuable for the fucking metro. Jesus… I swear that thing wasn’t made for human beings.” Reaching over her shoulder, she rubbed her sore shoulder blade, wincing at the bruise that she was certain was blooming.
With the headache, hang over, borderline nausea, and quiet rage towards her absentee roommate, Scarlet hadn’t thought much about being hungry that morning. But the mention of food suddenly triggered that sharp pain in her gut, which in turn stimulated the ever common hangover munchies, and food seemed to be just about the best idea she had ever heard.
“I sure as heck could go for something,” she agreed, glancing in the direction he indicated. “And no, ‘vegetarian’ isn’t something that really happens when you’ve led the kind of lifestyle I have. Beggars can’t be choosers and whatnot. Though now that I do have the choice, I don’t think I could ever give up a good burger.”
Following her blue-eyed companion into the restaurant, it struck her as a little embarrassing to realize she hadn’t eaten there before. For all she’d spent most of her life in DC, such a large chunk of the city was still a mystery to her. For such a long time, as she’d walked the streets with a select group of people, they had always kept to the safer zones; now that Caspar had driven her life in a more positive direction, her safety zone was him, and she followed him where his music and heart took him. Alair was exposing her to something entirely new, and it roused feelings of thrill and apprehension in her fluttering heart. After all, she was only recently beginning to learn that she could trust him (and she just confirmed that for herself the night before, when he’d scared Devon off in the most hilarious and creative of ways).
Scanning the menu (and realizing that absolutely everything just looked too good), Scarlet turned to the dark-haired man with a helpless shrug. “Well, what do you suggest? Everything here looks too damn good. Though I should probably tell you that I have never had a chocolate shake that has impressed me. My mom… A long time ago, she made the most killer chocolate milkshakes. They were healthy, too.” That thought shifted the young woman into a quiet pause, something that seemed wistful and strange on the topic of milkshakes. But she didn’t offer to elaborate, and offered a slight shrug before speaking again, with an unconvincing grin. “Might be hard to sell me on one here, even if, like you say, they do have the best shakes in town, like you say.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Thankfully, the talk of his guitar took the place of the awkward aftermath of her gesture, and he grinned. “I fucking love the metro,” he proclaimed, eyes twinkling. “Probably not the best choice for you today. Sorry, alpha. We’ll get a cab on the way back.”
The city was absolutely sweltering. The sun hovered at an angle just right to filter down the angled avenues with its merciless glare, beating down on the pavement as though it had something to prove. Where the air had previously moved at the urging of a slight breeze, the effort of the wind had faded in favor of a thick curtain of humidity. Alair felt almost as though his shower had been completely futile. Sweat beaded on his brow as they walked briskly across the busy Connecticut Avenue, striding in front of hot idling cars with agitated drivers whose eyes followed them with irritated impatience. It truly was not the ideal day to be out and about while still pointedly hung over, but the Sandman was convinced the fresh air was good for her. The flat would have been equally stifling and probably just as maddening; at least this way they were killing multiple birds with a single stone.
“Well, no guarantees their shakes are better than your mom’s, but they’re still pretty damn good,” he told her, tugging on the door handle and holding it for her as she entered. They had just missed the lunchtime rush of corporate three-piece suits, so the interior was cold and mostly empty when they stepped beyond the threshold. “I’d get the Smokestack,” he recommended, leaning to speak into her ear so he didn’t have to shout over the music, which clearly hadn’t been adjusted now that their crowd chattering patrons had gone back to work for the day. “It’s a little spicy and a lot delicious.” He grinned, stepping up to the cashier and placing his order. “And whatever she’s having,” he said, moving to the side to allow her through.
Their food was ready quickly in the absence of a rush, and Alair carried the full tray to a seat at the window where they could watch people pass by. “Over there,” he said with a gesture towards the glass, popping a scalding hot fry into his mouth, “is the shopping district. Or one of them, anyway. Big names, little names, anything you can think of.” He unwrapped his hamburger and took a comically large bite, spilling ketchup down his chin. Chuckling as he chewed, he licked away the escaped condiment before dabbing his lips with a napkin. “I can’t believe you’ve never been here before. It’s like a District legend. How’s your grub?”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Taking as seat across from Alair, she surveyed the city scene beyond the newly scrubbed windows, so clear that were it not for the reflection of her pale face, the glass wouldn’t even have been visible. “So somewhere in that mini metropolis, I’m going to find something suitable to wear to a wedding that won’t cost a fortune?” She asked, popping back one French fry after another. Now that her taste buds were activated, her appetite had taken on a mind of its own, and she was putting her meal away faster than Alair was his. “I’ll believe it when I see it.
“And I haven’t been out this way before, okay? I mean, maybe once or twice when I was younger, but no. This is a first time; though I can see why it’s a local legend. This food is fucking amazing; and I’m not just saying that because I have a hangover. Not everything tastes good on a hangover.”
The Sandman was only half finished by the time she was completely done, drink and all, and she feigned her impatience by folding her arms and pretending to check her watch. “You plan on getting some shopping done anytime soon? Stop trying to be dainty with a fucking hamburger; you’ve already got ketchup on your shirt, anyway.” Grabbing one of the napkins, Scarlet leaned forward and dabbed away a miniscule amount of ketchup from his (thankfully dark-coloured) shirt collar before it could absorb into the fabric. But only because both of his hands were currently occupied with the task of stuffing his face.
When at last he finished the last of his own late lunch, she picked up the tray and stood, sorted the garbage and stepped back out into the sweltering sun with her blue-eyed comrade. “You’re gonna have to take it from here, Magic Man. This isn’t my turf, I’m hung over, and it’s too fucking hot to go exploring. And, if I hang around outside too long, I’m not going to be suitable to go to a wedding because I’ll look like a lobster.”
Given the foreignness of this section of the city, the redhead stuck fairly close to Alair, afraid she would lose him in the crowds that they passed and find herself totally bewildered. The sun itself was bright and disorienting, and after a short while, she found gave his sleeve a light tug. “Next appropriate clothing shop we come to, we’re going in; screw being picky. If I spend much longer out here without an air-conditioning break, I’m going to fucking pass out.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
“Thanks for waiting,” he drawled sarcastically, elbowing her arm gently as they made their way to the trash can and emptied their trays. He smiled crookedly, popping one last fry in his mouth before tossing his napkin into the receptacle and heading for the door. “It’s not like I bought you lunch or anything,” he went on as they pushed outside. The humidity impacted them as though they’d run into a solid wall of moisture, and though the cold blended ice cream that filled his stomach softened the blow of the transition, it was still hot—arguably too hot—to be doing much exploring. The redhead certainly had that much right.
He lead her across 18th Street and towards the heart of the shopping neighborhood, a dense collection of city blocks featuring designers from Armani to Burberry and back again. The neighboring buildings were sandwiched tightly on narrow lots, many expanding multiple stories in order to accommodate their merchandise and make the best use they could out of their in-demand real estate. It was a labyrinth of commerce and commerciality, of restaurants and retail, of old money and new wannabes. Though Alair didn’t frequent these types of shopping districts, he fell easily into stride despite the temperature; he looked like he belonged, like he knew exactly what he was doing.
In truth, this outing was like any other—flying by the seat of his pants, rolling with the punches, playing it by ear. They perused the windows of shop after shop with little luck; ultimately one of them would have some kind of deal-breaking objection to the displays in the shining glass, and they would pass by without bothering to peek beyond the broad sills. That was, until his companion tugged on his sleeve and declared they were being too picky—a comment he never thought he’d hear from the likes of the redhead—and he grinned, spotting a place across the street that seemed to be harboring a decent group of clientele.
“Let’s try there,” he suggested. They crossed the street without bothering with the intersection—it was too hot for pedestrian laws, as far as the Sandman was concerned—and headed inside. The air conditioned breeze caressed his sweaty face as they pushed through the double doors, and he breathed a sigh of relief. Just as he was about to glance to Scarlet to give her a suggestion, a smiling woman approached and interrupted his train of thought.
“Can I help you two find something in particular?” she asked, glancing from Alair to Scarlet and back again.
Alair donned a casual air, wrapping his arm around the redhead’s shoulder and giving a little squeeze. “We’ve got a formal wedding to go to this weekend,” he told the saleswoman with a friendly smile, “and my girlfriend here needs a new dress. Maybe you can help her out?”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
When a well-dressed woman stepped out from behind the counter to offer her assistance, the first words that came to Scarlet’s sun-fried mined—“Apparently I need something more formal than what I’m wearing”—sounded just as unsatisfactory in her head as it probably would have out loud. And for the second time in under twenty-four she was grateful for Alair’s quick save (although playing the couple’s card again struck her as a little surprising, but now wasn’t the time to comment on it).
“Black is always a safe bet when it comes to weddings. And in this heat, whether you’re indoors or outside, you’ll probably not want something full length.” The clerk offered her helpful opinion, though Scarlet felt as if they’d only narrowed the store down to about a quarter. “What’s your size?”
“Size? Oh. It’s… um… whatever it says on this tag.” Being a frequent scavenger of thrift shops, the tags were often torn off the clothes, so the redhead’s rule of thumb was simply to buy what fit. Letters or numbers, she really didn’t have a clue, although most of her T-shirts had a faded S printed somewhere on the back.
At the same time, she was just as apt to inherit and happily sport some of Caspar’s hand-me-downs, when he grew tired of a Tshirt or hoodie, so her guess was as good as any.
Checking the dress’s tag, the saleslady looked thoughtful. “This doesn’t really correspond with our sizes here… But I think I know a few things you could try. Head over to a dressing room, I’ll pass you some options.”
“Who the hell invented sizes, anyway.” Scarlet murmured to herself, within Alair’s range of hearing while the woman checked racks and hangers for wedding appropriate dresses. “Why can’t there just be ‘fits’ and ‘doesn’t fit’.”
Rolling her shoulders back, she stepped into one of the dressing rooms, and was bombarded with dresses almost immediately over the top of the door.
“If anything is too big or too small, just let me know! I’ll fetch another size.” The clerk called cheerfully, although Scarlet had no intention to prolong this task for more than it should be. One of those—what, seven?!—dresses would fit, and that would be the one they’d take (provided it was reasonably priced, which might inspire another argument between her and her blue-eyed pseudo-boyfriend).
Four of the seven dresses were easily too big for the impatient redhead from the very beginning. One turned out to be too small (at least, she didn’t think it was supposed to fit like a second skin), and one was several hundred dollars more than she would ever be willing to spend on a chance to spy on Marissa. That left her only one option, a short, strapless black dress with a heart-shaped neckline. Well, it wasn’t too tight, but didn’t feel like it was going to fall down; that meant it fit, right?
Glancing in the mirror, she did one quick turn-around, decided it didn’t look as horrible as she’d thought it might (given the style wasn’t really her thing), and unlatched the lock on the door.
“Okay, so one of them actually fits without hurting me with its price tag.” She told Alair, opening the door on a crack and gradually widening it enough for him to see for himself. “Well? Will this pass? And the answer had better be yes, because I am already sick of looking at dresses.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Leaving Scarlet alone with the saleswoman seemed a risky thing to do, but the redhead had been right—he really did need to invest in a new set of clothes. The Sandman did not claim a place of residence anywhere but the subconscious of the masses, and that was hardly an address one could write on an envelope or plug into a GPS; he was a contemporary nomad, a supernatural wanderer. Save the guitar he toted nearly everywhere, his possessions were largely limited to the clothes on his back and the cell phone in his pocket. He had no real way to store anything else. The clothes that had manifested in the bathroom that morning had simply manifested, appearing because he needed them, appearing because he’d felt a little too guilty to borrow any more of Caspar’s shirts—and he didn’t want to question it any more than he wanted to question his teleportation.
While Scarlet finished trying the dresses the clerk had lined up for her, Alair meandered back towards the dressing rooms. The front lobby in front of the main doors separated the women’s from the men’s selections, and he paused at the platform-elevated display as he crossed. Tucking his lower lip behind his top teeth, he glanced around himself before reaching up to snatch a hat from one of the mannequins’ heads, placing it atop his messy hair and striding back to the sales counter. Pulling out his wallet, he paid for the stylish accessory—a short-brimmed trilby hat, black with dotted gray pinstripes—and smiled at the cashier. “No need to package it up,” he told the woman with a grin, “I’ll wear it out.”
He made it to the dressing rooms just in time for Scarlet to open the door, and he leaned forward to get a better view of the garment she wore and was (thankfully) allowing him to see. The friendly saleswoman, having been summoned by the sound of the door unlatching, strode over to stand just behind him. “Oh, yes, that one—” she began excitedly, but Alair cut her off, stepping forward somewhat to block her view.
“I guess it’s fine…if you’re going to a funeral,” he said stoically, furrowing his brow. He turned slowly to look at the clerk, whose face had paled at his declaration, and then grinned his characteristic smile. “I’m kidding!” he amended, holding his head forward as if to indicate the joke. “All the men will be wearing black too!”
The woman giggled nervously. “Should I go get a garment bag for you, then?” she asked, looking toward the redhead and then back to Alair, who she suddenly seemed to be wary of. He lifted one shoulder in a shrug and nodded, turning back to Scarlet as the saleswoman flitted away.
“The answer is yes,” he told her with a curt nod, looking the dress over approvingly. “It looks really nice, alpha. That’ll be perfect.”
He waited for her to finish dressing, meeting his companion at the sales desk while the woman hung up the black dress on a sturdy hanger and zipped it up in a clear, protective bag. “Good thing she did that,” Alair commented as he led Scarlet back to the door, his hand on her upper back. Pausing before the doors, he nodded forward and said, “Look.”
The heat and humidity had joined forces to produce a thick layer of clouds, shrouding the evening sun behind swaths of swollen gray. Rain pelted the concrete outside, splattering against the glass doors with the assistance of a steady wind. He swore under his breath, just loud enough for Scarlet to hear, and paused for a moment before deciding on his actions. “Here,” he told her, placing his new hat on her head. “I’ll go hail a cab.”
Before she could protest, he ducked outside, whistling with his thumb and index finger at the first blaze of yellow he saw. The car slowed, and Alair beckoned Scarlet to follow, jumping in and slamming the door closed against the sudden deluge once she slid in behind him.
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Alair, on the other hand, apparently had no qualms about voicing his thoughts.
“Excuse me?” She demanded through clenched teeth, her words gliding on the electric glare directed towards the suddenly audacious Sandman. “What the actual f—”
Her profanity was cut off by the smile and the jovial angle of his head that confirmed he had simply been joking. When the baffled and nervous saleswoman wandered back to the counter, Scarlet leaned in and murmured, “I’ll be wearing it to your funeral if you pull something that again—damnit, Alair, can’t I take you out in public with risking mortification?”
Disappearing into the changing room, the fiery redhead changed back into her black and pink checkers and stepped out with the black dress draped over her arm, which she held away from her body like the item was too dainty and delicate to be handed by the likes of her. The clerk took it when she approached the counter, expertly zipping it into a protective bag as she rang up the price (which was still significantly more than Scarlet was used to paying, but compared to some of the other prices, it was a steal).
“All of this for a wedding where we aren’t even guests…” She muttered, just as much to herself as Alair as she allowed her pseudo-boyfriend to guide her to the door, warm hand at her back that stirred strange feelings of comfort in her core. “And what do you mean? Oh.”
Just as soon as the question was out, her eyebrows arched high on her forehead at the amount of rain plummeting to the ground like a sheet of water, so heavy and fast that she could scarcely see across the street.
She hardly had time to respond before her companion was suddenly rushing through the glass doors, hailing one of the sunshine yellow vehicles to pull up for him. A strangely selfless act, she mused, and felt more confused than ever at her preternatural comrade’s disposition. One day, he was making her feel guilty for taking his life in a dream; now he was exposing his brand new hat to tainted city rain, so that she wouldn’t need to stand outside in her less than appropriate attire, given the current weather conditions.
There was no point in questioning the feat, however, and when a cab finally pulled up alongside the curb, Scarlet made a dash for it, dress cradled in the crook of her elbow as she slid inside the taxi next to Alair, knee bumping against his leg with the force of her velocity once the door was closed.
Recounting her address to the cabbie, she turned back to Alair, draping the new dress over her knees. “I knew the fucking sky was going to open up, with all this humidity,” she commented, but without an ounce of disdain. In fact, the smile on her face resembled that of a child’s in the wintertime at the season’s first snow. “What? I really like the rain; not so much the thunder and lightning, but I find the rain itself a lot of fun. Like the sky’s just letting go, getting it out of its system. Kind of cathartic, you know?”
The majority of the ride back was fairly quiet, and not for lack of feasible conversation, but because the redhead seemed adequately distracted and occupied, simply following the raindrops as the raced across her window. She didn’t even realize when the apartment complex came into view until Alair nudged her, at which point she handed the taxi driver an adequate number of bills, and prepared to made another break for shelter.
“So, where the hell do you get off trying to pass yourself off as my boyfriend to everyone?” As soon as they were inside and climbing the stairs to the fourth floor, Scarlet glanced at Alair sidelong with a furrowed brow. “I mean, okay, it was warranted around Devon. But you don’t need to start convincing the whole fucking city we’re a thing; I do have a reputation as a cold-hearted bitch to keep up, you know.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
He wiped the excess away with the back of his hand. “Great timing,” he said, only half-sarcastically; at least they hadn’t been caught in the middle of the street when the clouds decided to open, drenching them both and Scarlet’s new purchase. He ran his fingers through his hair, sculpting it playfully to stand up as high as it could with the support of the excess rain. “Could have been worse,” he continued. “I could have ruined my new hat, you could have ruined your new dress…” He interrupted himself with a shrug. “Good work, alpha. Good work.”
They lapsed into a silence that was in no way uncomfortable. Alair watched the pattern of rain trace down the cab windows, the urban blocks a blur behind its watery filter. It was an entirely different way to experience the bustling metropolis than the underground rush of the train. Despite how soaked he’d gotten, he was glad the rain had happened when it did; it gave them an excuse to see the city in an entirely different light, and it was certainly better to be drenched in rain than drenched in sweat.
When the driver pulled up outside the familiar apartment building, the Sandman gave his companion a nudge and they bolted to the doors, protecting their new garments as best they could against the falling torrent from the heavy clouds. He grinned at her when they reached the foot of the stairs, pausing to wring out the hem of his shirt before they began their ascent. “Admit it,” he told her in response, smirking broadly, “we kind of are a thing, Scarlet.” His subsequent laughter indicated he was teasing. Smoothing out his wet hair and placing his new hat atop his head despite the moisture, he folded his arms across his chest smugly, looking rather pleased with himself and his new purchase.
Or so he was until it disappeared from its perch.
He hardly realized what was happening when he saw a flash of checkered pink and black make a break for the door. Making a sound caught somewhere between a laugh and a protesting snort, he took a leap after the fiery redhead—damn, she was fast—before pausing to at least hang up her dropped garment bag on the stair railing. He took off after her into the storm, where it became immediately clear that the rain hadn’t let up since their departure from the clothing boutique downtown. “Hey!” he shouted, splashing down the flooded sidewalk, unable to keep the grin from his face or the chuckles from his shoulders. “Scarlet! You’re gonna ruin it!”
He didn’t care how childish he sounded; he was too consumed in the moment (not that he would have cared anyway) to heed much more than the splashes beneath his running footsteps and the droplets that dripped into his eyes. “Scarlet!” he yelled through breathy laughs as he sprinted, unable to maintain any air of seriousness. “You know, we’ll see who fucking murders who now!”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
And yes, she fucking loved it. Even in the city, where it was less than clean.
“Oh—oh really. I see.” The redhead’s eyebrows shot up her forehead at her companion’s teasing assertion. “Is that so. See, I beg to differ. We can’t already be a thing, for a number of reasons. People who are a thing have a certain level of comfort and trust between one another. We don’t; I mean, not like that.
“For one, we can’t really do this, because it’s just fucking awkward.” Without warning, Scarlet seized one of Alair’s hands and weaved her fingers between his, snug and secure, as if it was something that they always did (and, for the record, it did not feel awkward at all; but that was another conversation for another day).
“And I can’t do this and keep it romantic,” taking an abrupt step forward, she forced the Sandman back against the wall, pressing the knuckles of the hand she still held flat against the whitewash, while her knee forced his leg back until his heel hit the chipped moulding. “because, let’s face it, you’re just going to get the wrong impression and get it in your head that I’m trying to kill you or something—not that I blame you.
“And I really can’t get away with this…” Scarlet trailed her free hand to the side of his neck, tips of her fingers lingering ad tickling the hair at the nape of his neck as she leaned in. On her toes, their faces were level, and they were close, growing ever closer as she leaned in, gradually closing that gap more and more…
Until, with a flick of her wrist, she swiped the hat from his head and placed it atop her own with wide smirk.
“Sucker!” She laughed, pushing away from him before he even realized what was happening. “And this, darling, is why we’re not a thing—I just fucking stole your hat.”
She didn’t know if he would follow; part of her expected him to, the other part thought he might ignore it. But he did seem attached to that stupid hat already, and she really wanted an excuse to run around outside in the rain like a child. If he wanted the damn thing back, he would have to follow.
Sure enough, cries of surprise and empty threats cut through the whoosh of heavy rainfall as Scarlet ran down the sidewalk in her sodden Converse, laughing at her immature little accomplishment. She ran until she encountered the playground just down the road, currently deserted for lack of good weather. People just didn’t know what they were missing; the rain could be so much fun!
“You can try! You can’t kill what you can’t catch.” She taunted, ducking underneath monkey bars of the peeling, old equipment, and curing around the tube slide to duck out of sight. Crouching underneath some of the higher platforms, she held the hat to her head to make sure it wasn’t lost, and slowly made her way back past the monkey bars and to the merry-go-round; there, she could curl around make another dash for it, leaving him in her dust.
The moment she crawled out from under the platform, however, there he was, mere inches away.
Scarlet let out a surprised shriek and fell backwards, catching one of the monkey bars to prevent her fall. “The fuck!” She laughed, shrugging in defeat. “I didn’t even hear you move! Did you teleport, Magic Man? Because that is totally cheating!”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
It seemed he was afforded that bittersweet luxury less and less often these days. His life seemed to be comprised of days much like this one, prior to the storm—sun-blanched and scorching, with little reprieve from the burning glare of a summer’s mid-afternoon. He wandered place to place, consulting dream after dream; his metaphorical feet ached, and he longed simply to kick back and take a moment for himself to breathe. It wasn’t that he was particularly unhappy, and it wasn’t that he disliked performing his celestial duties, but it had been a very long time since he had enjoyed himself so purely as he was experiencing now. Chasing his new redheaded friend through the pouring rain, cursing her name through panting breaths with blatant disregard for shouted obscenities—he felt truly alive, his unlikely companion unburying shards of himself to reassemble in a different light.
Her confrontation in the stairwell was fresh in his mind as he chased her through the storm, his thoughts almost giddy as he sped after his devilish companion down the street. Despite her attempts to disprove his words—which he had truly spoken only teasingly; she made it so easy (and entertaining) to push her buttons that he had a hard time resisting when the opportunities arose—he couldn’t help but feel that everything she’d done had somehow demonstrated the precise opposite effect. He could still feel the pressure of her fingers threaded through his; he could feel her hand at the nape of his neck as it tangled in his thick dark hair; hell, he could even still feel the warmth of her breath on his skin as she’d brought her face towards his, inching closer and closer until suddenly she was gone. Because while she’d declared it impossible to get away with all the things she was, in fact, doing, he could only think matter-of-factly about how wrong she was—because though surprising, nothing about her little act had actually felt uncomfortable.
Inwardly, it startled and confused him just as much as it startled and confused her. Taking out his bemusement on the pavement with the pounding of his shoes through the swollen puddles, he darted after her as she sought refuge in the waterlogged city playground. He was there when she turned around, startling her enough to coax forth a shriek, and he greeted her with a self-satisfied smirk.
“Who says I can’t catch you?” he asked devilishly, in belated response to her previous taunt. He reached out, making a slow swipe to retrieve the hat from her head. She easily maneuvered out of the way, but she wasn’t the only one with tricks up her nonexistent sleeves—because suddenly he was immediately behind her, wrapping one arm around her middle while his opposite hand deposited the hat back on his own head. In the same motion, he twisted and tugged her backwards, catching her as though he’d been at her back and at the ready the entire time.
“And I repeat,” he said, lowering his head to rest his chin on her shoulder as he embraced her from behind, his arms wrapped around her abdomen, “who says I can’t catch you?”
He released her and gently spun her around to face him, searching her shining gaze with blue eyes that sparkled like electricity through the grayness of the evening. Slowly, he brought his face closer to hers, halting only when he was a handful of inches away. “And if we were a thing,” he began, stealing her previous words, “we definitely couldn’t do this…”
He reached up with one hand and placed two fingers tenderly on her lips before leaning in to plant a kiss on his own flesh, their mouths separated only by his joined index and middle fingers. It lasted only a second before he was gone, taking off in a sprint toward the apartment as a streak of bright lightning crackled across the darkening sky.
“Last one to the flat puts the coffee on!” he shouted to her, looking back over his shoulder with a smirk that was surely visible even at a distance.
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Scarlet’s heightened energy in this game of chase had made her giddy like a little girl, but it also made her jumpy, easily startled as the adrenaline and endorphins still played in her veins, alive and active. And when the Sandman was suddenly no longer in front of her, but behind her, the young woman jumped in surprise at the arm that snaked around her middle, freeing up his opposite hand to snatch the sodden hat from her already sodden head. The jarring feeling of going off balance and falling was cut short as her back pressed to his front, noting the warmth of his body on her bare shoulders through the drenched fabric of his shirt, that stuck to him like a second skin.
“Yeah, yeah… rub it in.” She taunted, rolling her eyes dramatically. “It’s not you like don’t have your freaking supernatural advantages that…”
Scarlet’s words trailed off when she suddenly found herself ensnared in his gentle embrace, arms around her middle and freshly shaven chin on her shoulder, because it hit her then that his words could take on a whole different meaning. An odd and foreign feeling stirred in her gut, like something restless, longing to be released, and the redhead found the wind completely taken out of her sails as she was rendered speechless.
It didn’t help matters when he released her from the embrace (which, startlingly enough, she missed the second his arms were no longer around her), only to spin her around and plan himself just inches from her face. “Just what do you think you’re up…” She began, but once again found her words interrupted by two fingers gently placed on her lips. Scarlet searched the Sandman’s electric blue eyes for an answer, for mischief, for yet another light hearted taunt, but she could read nothing in them before he was leaning forward, pressing his lips to those fingers which were the only things separating their two bodies now. To say that Scarlet was rendered speechless yet again would be an understatement: the redhead was completely frozen in place, breath caught in her lungs halfway to an inhale with her heart leaping into her throat and doing double time as she stood there in the pouring rain, caught in an almost-kiss with her new supernatural friend.
A deep rumble of thunder and a crash of lightning shattered the tenuous moment of unidentifiable and unspoken feelings, making Scarlet jump just as Alair sped away, leaving her feeling momentarily stunned and confused. Blinking back into reality, she shook her head and called after him. “I don’t have to agree to that!” Leaving a trail of laughter behind her, she ran after the Sandman, all the way back to her apartment, just in time for the rain to let up a little. By the time she reached the top of the stairs and hurried back inside, however, she was already drenched and dripping with rain water; the furniture would just have to deal.
“Okay, fine. I guess I owe you a coffee after stealing your hat.” She conceded defeat, putting her hands up before making a beeline for the bathroom to grab a towel. With a whisper of a smirk, she added, “No regrets, though. None.” Not even the almost-kiss that, to her surprise, not only had she not shied away from, but deep down had welcomed.
Toweling her hair as dry as she possibly could (she couldn’t be bothered with a hairdryer for the second time today), the redhead let it fall around her damp shoulders as she poured water and scooped coffee grounds into the percolator, something that was a second-nature task for her now.
"Coffee in T-minus approximately seven minutes, for an extra hot brew," the young woman announced, as the hot beverage gurgled its slow drip into the glass carafe. Moving towards the living room, and looking very much like she'd just jumped in a lake with her dress on, Scarlet tossed the towel from around her shoulders at Alair with a cheeky grin. Already the filtered air of the apartment was cooling the water droplets on her exposed skin, bringing goosebumps to the surface.
“If you’re not going to change, sit on that so you don’t soak the furniture.” So as not to make a hypocrite of herself, she simply leaned a knee on the arm of the couch instead of taking a seat, waiting for the coffee to brew and warm her from the inside out. After a beat, she extended her arm towards him. "And let me steal that hat again; it'll dry faster over by the window... What? I'm not going to run away with it this time! Scout's honour. Or Girl Guides... You know what I mean."
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Standing with his hand on the door handle, partially shielded by the jutting stone above the threshold, he turned his gaze to the skies as he waited for Scarlet to catch up. The clouds had darkened significantly beyond the rooftops of the neighborhood buildings, gathering on the skyline horizon like a menacing glare as he surveyed their multi-layered peaks. It was probably for the best that he’d headed toward the flat; playing outside in the rain was one thing, but when streaks of unpredictable electricity emerged to join them—well, the Sandman was no more immune to a lightning strike than the next person, and he would rather not have to recount the experience of thousands of volts of power zapping his skin and bones as he stood in a puddle of water.
When he saw Scarlet approaching, he disappeared inside and ascended the stairs two at a time, the residual energy inspired by their chase fueling his quick footsteps. He paused at the door to their flat on the top floor, waiting for her to crest the staircase and greeting her with a grin containing all the smugness of a childish victory. Still dripping from his hair and clothes, he kicked off his sopping shoes at the entrance and paused before wandering too far into the living room.
“This doesn’t get you out of your other coffee duty,” he declared matter-of-factly, planting his hands on his hips as she made her way to the bathroom and disappeared inside. He chuckled to himself in her absence, running his hands along his wet arms before reaching up to tousle his sopping hair. Another clap of thunder boomed outside as if the storm were laughing along with him, amplified through the open window by its echoes off the neighboring buildings. He stepped over to gaze out at the fat droplets falling from above, watching as they plummeted to the concrete below to splash in the full, rushing gutters. Water had puddled on the chipped windowsill, he noted, but he kept the window open all the same—the cool accompanying breeze was a welcome change from the day’s heat, and listening to the rhythm of the storm relaxed him as much as it delighted him.
Her emergence from the bathroom startled him, and he turned just in time to catch the damp towel she tossed in his direction. “Oh, sure, give me a used one,” he chided, smirking. Leaning over, he draped the cloth over his head and rustled it violently around with both hands, soaking up as much water as he could before standing upright in defeat. “I think I’ll go change. The breeze is a little chilly by the window when, you know, you’re completely drenched.” He threw her a mischievous look. “But I’ll be fucking damned if I let you have my hat again. What are you going to do now, throw it out the window?”
Making a show of holding the hat to his scalp—nevermind that it was making his hair damp again—he disappeared into the bathroom to change into some dry clothes. He hung his soaked shirt and jeans over the bar supporting the shower curtain, allowing what he couldn’t wring out to drip down into the tub rather than the floor.
He emerged after only a few minutes to the scent of strong coffee filling the small apartment, and he nodded to himself approvingly before heading into the kitchen to wait out the last few minutes of its brewing time. “Hey, alpha, better raid that DVD collection over there,” he called to the redhead, retrieving two clean mugs from the strainer and placing them side-by-side next to the percolator. “Bad movies don’t pick themselves!”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Feigning a look of intense hurt when he wouldn’t let her take his hat (and with all the best intentions this time! For real!), she folded her arms and turned her chin up. “Fine, see if I care. Let your hat stay soggy.” And when he wandered into the bathroom to change his clothes (and at the back of her mind she wondered just into what he would be changing, with no obvious stash of clothes of his own), she called, “You’re just mad because it looks way better on me than it does you!”
Taking a page from his book, she decided it wouldn’t do her any good to wander around in a soaking wet dress for the remainder of the day, Scarlet retreated to her bedroom and dug into the deepest pits of her dresser drawers in an attempt to find something that wasn’t pajamas. As it turned out, that was quite the ordeal, and ultimately she had to settle on purple leggings and a grey T-shirt that fell past her hips; not the most fashionable combination, but it was clean and dry, and a good kick in the ass to resolve to go to the goddamned Laundromat soon.
“Hold your horses! I’m not deciding on my own, you know.” The redhead combed her fingers through her long, rain-tousled hair as she emerged from her bedroom, wandering over to the entertainment stand while her dark-haired companion watched the coffee drip into the carafe in anticipation of a nice, hot cup to chase away the chill of the rain from the inside out. Caspar’s collection was pretty expansive, and she hadn’t a hint of insight into Alair’s flavour of bad movies, so she grabbed a handful to sift through and headed for the couch. The moment she turned, however, a crash of thunder vibrated the windowpanes and the lightning that followed lit up the entire room. It was enough to make the redhead jump and drop the collection of DVDs, scattering them across the floor.
“Be a doll and pour my coffee?” Scarlet sighed, picking up the movies one by one and stacking them in a neat pile on the couch before retreating to the kitchen to get her coffee. “So,” grabbing one of the two mugs that he’d filled with the smoky beverage, she headed back to the living room with the Sandman I tow, and fanned out the eight DVD cases she’d grabbed at random. “Do you want cheesy-bad, anime-bad, shoestring budget b-movie bad or failed teen romance bad? I guarantee they are all equally entertaining.”
It was difficult to ignore the sting behind her eyes as she sat with her newest friend, following through with the very same activity that she had done with Caspar for five years, now. He had chosen to skip out because of a girl he’d only met days ago, a girl who could chew him up and spit him out… Not that she wasn’t growing to enjoy Alair’s company more and more, but the change had come on so abruptly that it left her feel shaken. Even as she looked over the worn plastic cases, there was a distant look ion her eyes that she couldn’t seem to shake.
“It’s up to you, Magic Man.” She said at last, picking up one of the cases and bopping him on the head with a grin. “I’ve already seen them all numerous times; close your eyes and grab one at random if you have no preference. Hey, I might even make some popcorn; no guarantees the place won’t burn down, though.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
A shiver ran down his spine, and he reached up with a frown to take off his wet new accessory and place it unceremoniously in the dish strainer. Better there than in the redhead’s unpredictable hands, he told himself as he turned back to the counter and returned the carafe to its warmer. Knowing better than to take a sip first, he took one full mug in each hand and glided carefully into the living room. He managed not to spill a single drop as he deposited the ceramic containers on the coffee table in front of the couch, striding over to Scarlet at her request to select their movie for the night.
He winced theatrically when she bumped him on the head with the plastic DVD case; he pursed his lips and snatched it out of her hand, angling the cover away from the lamp’s glare to see which one she’d deemed worthy of a playful weapon. “Twilight?” he gasped, arching his brows with incredulity. He turned to her, holding out the case as though she didn’t already know which one she’d picked as an option. “Are you fucking serious?” he asked, but his voice was full of mirth; he didn’t know whether to snort his derision or simply to laugh, so he settled on bewildered and rose to his feet as he skimmed the summary on the back.
“Well, what do you know!” he declared with a smirk, glancing to Scarlet and searching for her gaze. “This is like, everything you suggested all rolled into one! Minus the anime, I guess. But we can go there some other time.” He lifted one shoulder in a half-shrug. Judging by her expression alone, he couldn’t tell whether she genuinely bought into the pop-culture vampire saga or if she would be partaking from the opposite standpoint—would suffering through the ridiculous flick be a guilty pleasure for her, or a punishment? Or further entertainment? Deciding he very much wanted to find out (all in good humor, of course), he nodded his decision and popped the reflective disc into the player beneath the television.
The screen lit up brightly as the menu came up, and Alair flopped lithely back onto the sofa as the movie started. He leaned over and turned off the lamp, the room now illuminated by the glow of the monitor and what little light of the sunset could filter through the clouds through the storm. The steam from his coffee beckoned him, and he leaned forward to wrap his cool hands around the warm cup as he once again leaned back into the embrace of the cushions.
“So, no surprise here, but I’ve never actually seen this,” he admitted with a telltale smirk, his gaze flitting between the TV and the redhead at his side, “and I already hate it from the twenty seconds that have played. What’s your Friday night protocol? Do you and Cas usually make commentary, or am I supposed to keep quiet and let the thing speak for itself?”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
“Hey, I did say it was bad movie night, didn’t I?” Scarlet raised her eyebrows, but otherwise managed to pull off quite the convincing poker face as she rose, heading to the kitchen to make the aforementioned popcorn before a blush could rise to her cheeks on the topic of that movie. “We own bad movies specifically for this reason. But we don’t have to watch it, you know. Hey, why not Ninja Scroll instead? I think you’d really get a kick out of it; supposed to be a classic, but nothing is really a classic when you listen to Japanese voice acting.”
When the microwave finally beeped the readiness of a hot bag of popcorn, the redhead poured the buttery snack into a large wooden bowl and returned, just in time to see Alair feed a silver disc into the DVD player and shut off the lights. “So what did you decide to… oh.” Placing the bowl of popcorn on the coffee table before them, Scarlet’s heart leapt to her throat, something that she hoped did not register on her face. Oh, fuck. “You want to watch Twilight? That's one of the worst of the worst, but hey, it’s your funeral, dude.”
Grabbing her coffee, Scarlet took a seat next to him and crossed her legs, glad to have the hot beverage as an excuse to not carry on a conversation. Why did it have to be fucking Twilight? “Depends on the movie.” She shrugged, pointedly avoiding looking at the screen as much as possible. At least the acting was bad enough that it didn’t fluster her quite as much as the books. “We’ve kind of exhausted the jokes with this one; maybe you should just watch it and make up your own mind about it. I mean, to determine just what kind of bad it is.”
Settling back against the cushions, the redhead fell into a curious silence, an obvious shift in her mood of indeterminate origins. When Alair asked her something specific about a character or the plot (not that there was much to either), she would simply shrug her shoulders and pop a piece of popcorn into her mouth, as if to make it obvious why she wasn’t able to answer. It could have perhaps come across as boredom, but at the same time, she appeared a little too familiar with the movie scene-to-scene, aside from the fact it was a little predictable. And towards the end, when the action (okay, it wasn’t really action, but just really shitty drama because of stupid decisions made my stupid characters) picked up, she unconsciously dug her fingers into the couch cushion next to Alair’s leg and tugged at the stud below her lip with her teeth, like it all made her anxious.
“You know,” she said suddenly, clearing her throat when she realized it had gone tight, “if it’s boring you, we can watch something else. No point in wasting twenty more minutes of your life; you don’t get that time back. You sure you don’t want to check out Ninja Scroll?”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Realizing he could potentially be striking a nerve were he to delve too far into his ridicule (and it seemed he’d been hitting too many of those lately, if only indirectly through Cas), he kept his tongue in check, releasing it only to ask a few pointed questions about the (admittedly predictable) progression of the plot.
Alair had always been a fan of movies. Since the invention of the moving picture, he had been an enthusiastic supporter of the new artistic medium, praising it (not publicly, of course) as a means of expression that could, at long last, communicate dreams. The same idea held true today, of course; suspending one’s disbelief and loaning emotions to the cinema were still the two key factors in truly investing in a movie, both of which were necessary for the recounting and replaying of slumbering hallucinations. That said, he couldn’t say he was an expert on film; he’d largely lost touch with it once the novelty wore off, and now he indulged only occasionally when, like everyone else, the reviews were good.
But he liked to think he could spot a bad one when he saw it, just as he could spot a good one. And the one which flickered pathetically across the television screen in front of him certainly did not fall into the latter category. He alternated between wrinkling his nose and laughing out loud, unsure whether the acting or the script was worse. Probably the script, he reasoned, given that it was based on an equally-dreadful book—and what actor, be they up-and-coming or established, would pass up the opportunity to be swooned over by teenaged girls while making entirely too much money?
“Scarlet, I know we were supposed to watch something bad, but this B-movie is more like a D-movie. A D-minus movie.” Alair felt the comment roll from his tongue before he could censor himself, just in case she was enjoying herself. “Like, seriously, alpha, the only thing saving it from an F is the fact that it makes it so easy to laugh at it. You can’t get that far into a bad movie without sticking it out to the end. It’d be ruining the whole payoff!”
He settled further back into the couch, his face its own cinema of myriad facial expressions as he watched the events build toward the end. The rain had picked up again outside, pitter-pattering against the outside windowsill in an unsteady rhythm punctuated by the thunder’s rolling bass. Despite his obvious dislike of the film—if it could even be considered that—he was feeling himself growing more and more relaxed, the storm coaxing from him a level of comfort that he’d forgotten could exist. Leaning toward the center of the cushions, he felt a shiver traverse the length of his spine as he reached for another bite of popcorn.
“You cold?” he asked, reaching for the flannel blanket folded over the arm of the sofa. He unfolded it without waiting for her answer, flipping the material outward to let it settle over both of them. “Just kick it off if you get too warm,” he said, voice nonchalant but soft and warm, nestling his head into the cushion and turning his attention back to the movie.
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Her coffee was finished, the popcorn was gone, so there was little else to do but sit back and pretend not to enjoy the cheesy teen paranormal drama. The redhead wasn’t paying attention when Alair mentioned something about being cold, and the next thing she knew when she looked down, the thick, flannel blanket that Scarlet tended to cover in the wintertime covered her lap, as well as her dark-haired companion’s. It was just a throw, and the temperature in the room had grown a little bit chilly, and yet there was something about the innocent action that made her feel… odd. Not uncomfortable, just… odd. As if she felt like it should make her uncomfortable, sharing her favourite blanket with someone who she hadn’t even known for a week, and yet, it felt natural. And welcome.
The weight of the flannel on her legs and darkness of the living room caused Scarlet’s eyelids to grow exponentially heavier as the minutes passed, to the point where even the rising action (if you could call it that) of the movie couldn’t seem to inspire her to keep them open. She wasn’t sure at what point they closed completely, or when her body began to turn away from the television and towards Alair, knees pressed against his thigh in an attempt to get comfortable, head dangerously close to lowering to his shoulder.
It was the moment just before that happened, before she succumbed to sleep, that Scarlet managed to startle herself back to reality, eyes snapping open just in time to see the ending credits of the movie and body jerking upright; a skill she’d had time to practice over the years. Sleep did not bring her pleasant feelings, and the redhead fought it tooth and nail when she could, with coffee and energy drinks and, overall, just keeping herself occupied and too busy to care to sleep.
“…okay. So, now that that torture is over…” Pushing the blanket aside, she used the Sandman’s knee as leverage to push her tired body upright and wandered over to the entertainment stand. “It’s my turn to pick. Hey, I did say it was movie night, not hour. Cas and I usually get through two or three. And number two is going to be…” Touching the DVD spines, her mouth tugged into a smirk as she pulled out her choice, flashing the cover of 1986’s Labyrinth at him in the dim light of the blank screen. “I want to watch you squirm in discomfort at a young David Bowie’s tight silver leggings. And now that I’ve told you, you won’t be able to unsee it.”
Before he could protest, she ejected the vampire drama and slipped in the fantasy wrought with goblins and bad musical numbers and tight, silver leggings. “Enjoy,” she said sweetly, sitting back down and pulling the comfortable blanket over her own legs, clad in purple cotton-spandex. What? She fucking rocked it.
In spite of the coffee and her efforts to laugh at goblin puppets and their king who looked more like a Drag Queen, the fiery redhead found herself much in the same predicament as before. The room was too dark, the blanket was warm, and her eyes just wanted to shut. Maybe just for a moment…
As Sara was faced with the riddle of two doors in Jareth’s notorious labyrinth (the logic of which had always been lost on Scarlet, to the point where she had stopped trying to figure it out), she decided it was an opportune scene to shut out, and allowed her heavy eyelids to fall once again. Only this time, when her body subtly shifted , with one knee up against Alair’s thigh and the other sprawled across his calf, they did not open again. Nor did they with the top of her head fell to his shoulder, hands folded loosely in her lap as sleep took advantage of her vulnerability and gradually stole her mind away.
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
The movie was coming to a close, but the Sandman found himself unable to focus on the screen. The events of the afternoon—hell, the past couple of days—were catching up to his physical body, playing out as an exhaustion that settled like crippling frost deep in his bones. He didn’t inherently need to sleep, but he found himself wanting to; he longed for the unconsciousness that would later render his mind refreshed and ready to tackle whatever else the city—or Scarlet—decided to throw at him the following day. The partying, the hangover, the second night of partying (in which he’d thankfully abstained from his emerald beverage of choice), the redhead’s dream, the shopping, the heat, the chase…it made him tired in a satisfying way, but tired he was nevertheless.
With the raging storm outside the window acting as white noise against the usual thrum of a Friday evening in the District, Alair found himself almost in a state of hypnosis. The cool breeze caressed his face like the gentle fingertips of a familiar lover while his body remained warm and snug beneath the flannel—a juxtaposition that threatened to push him promptly from the land of the conscious to that of the unconscious. The Sandman may not have been able to form his own dreams, but just because his sleep was rare did not mean he was incapable. Just as the familiar pull started to tug him down into its dark depths, he was startled back to wakefulness by the sudden conclusion of the movie and the redhead’s leap to pick another flick.
He arched his brows at her recommendation. “David Bowie in tight leggings?” he repeated, gnawing at his lower lip before clicking his tongue in mock approval. “Bring it on. I could be on board with that.” It was not quite dim enough in the living room to conceal his smirk, but he adjusted positions and settled back into the couch anyway, readying himself for the surrealist cinemascape. It wasn’t long before he felt the sudden presence of Scarlet’s head on his shoulder, and the gentle pressure of her legs tangling with his beneath the blanket.
Something more than the vibrations of the thunderclap stirred in his chest, and he felt his heart stammer like a flat stone skimming across the surface of his thoughts’ still, tenuous lake. He felt strange, but, bafflingly, comfortable—as though the disturbance of sorts were meant to be, a link in the chain of destiny that could not be fractured or destroyed. Sighing quietly, he sat perfectly still as a soft-breathing statue; even after the movie ended and the screen timed out, surrounding them in the sudden darkness of midnight, he did not move, simply allowed her to sleep—to savor the rest after her trying day, hoping she would be spared the trauma of the previous night’s scenario.
When at last he closed his eyes, he found himself being summoned to her again, subconsciously—and when he appeared, it was just behind her, with velvet-soft grass beneath his suddenly bare feet that was recognizable as paper white even in the shifted light of this familiar world. The sky that had once been magenta was now shrouded in clouds that were a little too blue, a little too dark, their layers so thin and numerous that the majestic display reminded him of the brushstrokes of a frantic Van Gogh. Warm rain fell in curtains of swollen drops, drenching them as they stood on the crest of the hill.
Inhaling slowly, he reached up to place his hand on her shoulder to announce his presence, the rain plastering his dark hair to his forehead. “Scarlet,” he murmured, his voice hardly carrying over the din of the rain. “Scarlet, I’m here.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
That had only been the first Friday night, but the tradition had stuck, and while it probably didn’t mean much to the lanky musician, she always looked forward to it. Because it reminded her of the day that Cas had saved her from herself.
His absence this night nurtured some deep seeded hurt and disappointment deep in her heart that, up until sleep began to pull at her with seductive fingers, bothered her beneath the surface. It felt like the first step in his turning a shoulder to her, and she didn’t know what to do.
But in spite of how it ached, Alair dulled the pain. He wasn’t Caspar, but he filled the empty seat next to her, and not in the same way as her musical roommate. Whether she cared to admit it or not, Scarlet was finding the Sandman’s presence increasingly comforting, and not in the way that Caspar comforted her. It was a feeling that she could not quite decipher, but with her new dark-haired friend sharing a bowl of popcorn and a blanket before a screen playing movies that most people wouldn’t pay to see, the redhead found herself missing her roommate a good deal less than she had anticipated.
All that aside, she wasn’t sure what made her mind decide it was a good idea to rest her head on his shoulder or fold her knees around and between his own, when she had never found herself able to fall asleep next Caspar, supposedly the only person able to put her at ease…
“Alair?”
The warm hand on her shoulder inspired the redhead to turn around, a smile gracing her face at the sight of the blue-eyed Sandman. “Why am I sensing deja-vu? Oh—perhaps it’s this.” Turing her face up to the rain, letting it plaster her brown (not red) hair to her neck and shoulders, her unconscious mind misplaced the familiarity of their encounter, attributing it to an entirely different source. It was not their carefree game in the rain that was triggering something in her mind, but the fact that this was not the first time he had met her in the purest (and most dangerous) manifestation of her hopes and desires.
Just as the young woman could not recall her dreams on waking, the avatar of herself who walked her dreams had a hard time recalling the events from one dream to another—danger and death among them.
Averting her attention back to her companion, she grinned impishly and pulled her sodden hair over one shoulder. “Sorry, but I’m not playing tag like this.” She motioned to her bare feet on the velvety white grass, which was just as sodden with rainwater as her hair and clothes. “I’d slip and break something. Plus, you don’t have a hat for me to steal. But one game is enough; come see what I found.”
Without waiting for consent, Scarlet reached out and took the Sandman’s wrist, which was so slippery with rainwater that her fingers slipped to his hand, which she then clasped gently and urged him to follow.
After no more than a few paces, the scenery before them began to shift, with the white grass crumbling into soft, white sand as a lakeside short manifested where, only seconds ago, there had been nothing but the stark white grass. Raindrops fell upon the surface of the water, peppering it with circles and ripples like a monochromatic kaleidoscope. It lent the placid dreamscape an exotic appeal, like that of a tropical island in the Mediterranean, without the crowding and noise pollution of rowdy tourists.
“Check it out, it’s as warm as bath water. I mean, you’re already soaking wet anyway, so… I’m not giving you much of a choice.” Grinning with ill-hidden mischief, she gave Alair’s arm a sharp tugged and pulled him knee-deep into the lake; which was, as she said, just as warm and comfortable as bath water. “See? Best darn lake water ever, right? No leeches or snapping turtles, and heck, I think it runs warmer than our shower does sometimes... Hey, what's up? You look like you're waiting for a sea monster or something." Perplexed at his uncertain demeanor, Scarlet drew her arm along the surface of the water and splashed him. "Lighten up a little, Magic Man!"
The redhead's smile, her penchant for little games and teasing and all together playfulness stood out brighter than the artificial colour of her hair in reality, framed the childlike heart that she kept so carefully under wraps in the waking world. This heart was big, perhaps just as big as Caspar's, and it was hopeful and and open to whomever needed a piece of it. But with that quality came its tenderness and dangerous vulnerability, which did not appear to matter so much in the warm and comfortable dreamscape where, night to night, she believed she could not be hurt. Here, she felt she could laugh freely, play freely, love freely without the restraints and consequences of the real world.
In a way, it was a blessing that she did not remember the trauma and tragedy that befell her whenever she succumbed to the hands of sleep; for if she did, then this pure, unbridled side of her soul would never get a chance to thrive. And she would have already been lost to herself.
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
What made matters worse was that he had a strong suspicion she didn’t remember anything from last time. Dream-memories were almost always more adept than the waking mind at hanging on to happenings in past hallucinations—a simple fact that was often more hindering than helpful to the Sandman’s goals. In this case, however, he found himself hoping that she wasn’t an exception to this rule, that somewhere within her would stir a warning. Something, anything that would help her recognize the danger she was in—anything short of him actually spelling it out, that was. Because while the Sandman was the keeper of sleep and dreams, and while he did have the power to infiltrate and manipulate, there were self-imposed rules in place for a reason…and this was neither the time nor the place nor the person to get by with breaking them. The risk for psychological trauma was too great, and the last thing Alair wanted to do was betray her fledgling trust in him.
Her eagerness to show him her new discovery only put him further on edge. He allowed her to tug him along by the wrist, momentarily startled when her grasp slipped to his palm—startled enough to forget his anxieties for one blissful second—and found his bare feet suddenly gracing the silken white sands of a beach. The wide lake that stretched before them was a shade of azure rich enough to rival his eyes, and the surface glittered with the ripples of a thousand raindrops despite the overcast skies above them. He paused, marveling at the sheer vastness of the water and the power of her monochromatic landscape, then traipsed after her carefully until he was knee-deep in the gentle waves. The gentle currents covered his feet with a thin layer of sand at the soft bottom, and he visibly tensed until he realized he was still mobile and unharmed.
The water was warm—warm like bath water, as Scarlet described, but for the Sandman it was a warmth that suggested something else. Though dreams seldom followed the physical rules of the conscious world, there was something to be said about the energy they contained—energy borne of firing neurons and latent wishes, of things unsaid and thoughts unaddressed. As relaxing as it was to feel the water lapping at his knees while the rain gently tapped him from above, he knew better this time than to take it solely at surface value; there was something dangerous inside his companion that lurked in the shadows of her dreams. Not a danger in that she was a threat to anyone else (outside of hitting him playfully on the shoulder, perhaps), but rather a danger to herself; she was her own worst enemy, and that was something Alair needed to help her realize. He just wasn’t sure how.
The splash of water at the brunette’s fingertips forced him abruptly from his uncertain reverie, and again he was able to forget about his reservations. She made it so easy to toss aside concern in this strange place. He dipped two cupped palms into the water and sent a wave over her, his smirk flashing brightly through the silvery-blue stream of water. “No one tells me to lighten up!” he protested with a laugh, his exclamation more a statement of fact than anything else. The Sandman was not known for his quiet, subdued personality, after all, and it was rare that someone had to tell him to be more easygoing.
And suddenly, with a devilish cackle, he was gone. He drew a long breath and dropped beneath the surface of the lake, counting on the raindrops on the surface making it too difficult for her to make out his position. He remained submerged as long as his lungs allowed, then struck quickly—pushing off from the sand below to wrap his arms around her middle from behind, dragging her into the water with him.
He laughed, rising to his feet again—it wasn’t very deep where they stood, after all—and held out a hand for her to take. “Gotcha, alpha,” he declared, sending another splash her way with his extended hand. “What now?”
Posted: Fri Jun 21, 2013 9:19 pm
But this Scarlet, this unbridled, untainted, unhidden inner girl who was pushed into the shadows in the waking world, in favor of someone with a thicker skin and sharper tongue, needed to such help. She was having fun, like a little girl dancing through the sprinkler, and if Alair’s presence had any effect whatsoever, it was in the way it broadened her smile and brightened that starlight in her eyes. In her dreamscape, those eyes shone just as bright as his own… almost as if inspired by her own magic, tingling beneath her skin.
The redhead-gone-brunette’s aquatic retaliation came two seconds too late, aiming to splash him yet again, but just as soon as the Sandman was there, he was gone; disappeared beneath the undulating waves of the otherwise placid lake like a merman, hidden somewhere deep and still where she could neither see him nor detect any movement.
“Oh, that’s right; go and hide!” She called, looking this way and that for her friend, who was nowhere to be seen above or below the surface. “This is my lake, you know. I can find you if—”
Scarlet’s words were cut short but a shriek, the sudden sensation of strong arms around her middle and hauling her off her feet taking her completely by surprise. The next thing she knew, she was flat on her back in the shallower end of the water, silken sand cushioning her body as Alair climbed to his feet, smirking with satisfaction.
“What next?” She repeated, raising her eyebrows and taking his hand. But instead of struggling to her feet, the cheeky young woman gave a sharp tug; just enough to throw the Sandman off balance and have him come tumbling down, at the mercy of the water once again. Before he could right himself, the once-redhead climbed over him, pressing his biceps into the sand and peering down at him with a haughty grin. Light brunette tresses framed her face, catching from behind the light of a sun hidden behind the clouds. “Don’t you know that the game’s not over until I win, Magic Man? *Не говорите глупостей!”
With a chuckle, she stood again, hands sliding down to his wrists to haul him up along with her, oblivious to the small Russian slip that snuck past her grinning lips.
And that was when she saw them in the distance.
They were only silhouettes, but there was no mistaking the confident yet welcoming way that Caspar carried himself. And there was the hand that he held, the slender, graceful figure walking next to him, silken hair flowing behind her, as if immune to the pouring rain. Two figures, on the other side of the beach, sharing a moment like she had never before witnessed with her talented and sweet roommate…
“…why can’t I feel happy for them?” Scarlet asked to no one in particular, the smile gone from her face, like it had never been there. “I’m not in love with Caspar. Why shouldn’t he have a girlfriend? Why can’t I be a good friend and just be happy for him…?”
But it was a rhetorical question to which she already knew the answer—and it was already too late. The comforting warm water began to grow colder the moment her smile faded, as did the rain that fell upon their faces.
Dropping her gaze, the young woman raked her fingers through her hair and turned to Alair, her face reflecting the sadness and sudden discomfort of the landscape.
“Some people want fame. Others, wealth; love; material possessions… I’ve never wanted any of those things in my life. I’ve only ever wanted was for things to be all right… and they are. Or, they were, before Caspar met her… She’s going to cast me out. I’m going to end up right from where I started, and I won’t be all right anymore…”
The water had quickly gone from cold to frigid, biting, numbing. The rain froze in the sky before it made contact with their skin or the surface of the water, and the sky had gone from shades of stormy blue to dark and foreboding. “…I never deserved him as a friend, you know.” Scarlet spoke softly now, a catch in her voice that correlated with the tears gathering in her eyes. “If I hadn’t done what I did, he would never have kept me around… If I hadn’t kept interfering…”
Attempting to take a step forward, the once-redhead came close to losing her balance completely. Her feet would not move, frozen (literally) to the bottom of the lake, with no hope of thawing. And the water around her, the placid lake, slowly began to rise, climbing her calves and reaching her knees, and it did not stop there.
“…you have to go.” Scarlet’s eyes met Alair’s again, tears streaking her cheeks as she gave him a gentle shove backwards. “You know what to do; it doesn’t want you, and you can outrun it if you go now. Those who deserve to get out alive usually do…” And she was never one of them. “And, Alair… thank you. I don’t deserve you any more than I deserve him, but I appreciate everything you’ve done…”
* ne govori glupostey: Don't be silly
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Nevertheless, her girlish giggles were as contagious as her mirth, and the Sandman suddenly found himself laughing as he felt himself toppling over. The horizon turned vertical in his vision as he fell to the shore, splashing in the shallow water as she leaned over him, her hands planted firmly on his arms to render him immobile. The rain pummeled his face until the redhead-turned-brunette leaned over to sneer good-naturedly at him, and he squirmed beneath her grasp like a puppy too amused to sit still. “You’ll only win if I let you!” he retorted with all the sharpness of a boiled noodle, feeling her hands around his wrists as she pulled him back to his feet. He regained his footing on the soft shifting sand, cupping his hand to throw another violent splash in her direction. But he paused as he wound up—she’d suddenly frozen in place, her eyes fixed on something distant. Alair felt his heart leap into his throat.
He took a quiet step behind her, following the direction of her gaze over her shoulder. And there it was, the source of her malcontent—the unmistakable willowy silhouette of her musician roommate and the Sandman’s guitar-playing friend, accompanied by the sumptuous backlit curves of a woman. His breath halted in his lungs as he watched them embrace, sharing a moment of saccharine bliss that should have belonged to Scarlet—not the action, of course, but rather the emotion. This was the young woman’s place of refuge, and yet there was the embodiment of her most recent worry, stealing away the good feelings from a dream that was rightfully hers and hers alone. For a moment, Alair felt a flare of anger rise hotly in his chest, but it was no use to protest—this was not his dream to conduct, and as painful as it was to witness, he had to let it take its course.
Tenderly, he reached up placed each of his hands on Scarlet’s upper arms, squeezing reassuringly as the figures tangled. “You don’t have to feel happy for them,” he told her truthfully, doing his best to keep his voice neutral. “It’s okay to be mad at him, you know. It’s a big change for both of you.” He paused, searching for the proper words to convey what he wanted to say. “I don’t think Cas is the kind of guy who ditches his friends, and you guys are like siblings. Give it some time.”
Yet for all his words, he could tell he couldn’t convince her; the Sandman was too new a presence in her life to fully understand the connection between the unlikely pair. He could practically feel Scarlet wilting beneath his touch, and suddenly the air went cold. Alair stood perfectly still, hardly daring to move as the waves against his legs turned frigid, the raindrops plummeting to the ground as sharp, icy shards that shattered violently on impact. It’s happening again. Scarlet’s words from last night’s dream echoed in his mind, and he felt a shiver race down his spine.
“It’s not true, Scarlet, it’s not true!” He was yelling now, shouting over the cacophony of shattering ice crystals as the biting wind began to howl. He leapt up as the water beneath the soles of his feet began to freeze, and when he turned back to his companion he found she was pale as the white frost gathering on the sandy shoals. “Whatever you did, Scarlet, it wasn’t your fault. He likes you—loves you—don’t you see? How can you not see that?” The questions rushed past his chapped lips frantically, and he continued despite realizing the futility of his reassurances. He was too late to stop it, yes, but that wouldn’t cease his attempts…the enemy was not the landscape but rather Scarlet herself, and if there was any chance he could get through to that churning source of frightened self-doubt, it would have to be through his words.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said, standing in front of her now as the water started to rise. Her backwards shove did little to distance him; he stood firm, shivering against the assault of the numbing wind. “Scarlet, listen to me. Listen to me.” He leaned in, hands planted on her shoulders, pressing his forehead to hers and staring into her eyes. “This is your world. You can stop this,” he murmured, barely audible over the roaring weather. Moving to wrap his arms around her as the water rose higher, he held her against his warm body tightly and hoped—waited—for the flow to reverse.
But it was no use. The lake continued to creep higher, and the temperature was so cold that even Alair was trembling uncontrollably against the young woman. “We have to get your feet free,” he said pleadingly, not waiting for a response before diving beneath the churning surface…and disappearing not into the frigid water, but into a void of black emptiness…
Alair opened his eyes slowly, a dark living room greeting him with its mundane tranquility as he resurfaced from Scarlet’s dream-turned-nightmare. The redhead at his side, her head on his shoulder and her knees tangled amongst his own legs, had yet to stir—which meant she had either resolved her predicament, or had simply not yet perished from the self-evils of her own subconscious. He winced on her behalf, for neither option was a good one, and sighed his sympathetic frustration in a soft exhale.
Deftly, he rotated to the side, working one arm around the young woman’s shoulders and the other under her bent knees. He lifted her slowly, the blanket trailing from her suspended feet, carrying her back to her room and placing her gently on her own bed. He stood over her momentarily, concern illuminating his azure eyes, then quietly turned to leave her be. Perhaps if she was lucky, she could return to uninterrupted slumber.
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
He wasn’t moving. The water was numbing, freezing, and rising with every treacherous second, and Alair wasn’t leaving. When the briars had encircled and cut into her legs, he had run for the tree on the hill, just as she’d instructed. He’d gotten away safely—she knew, because she had watched it happened, as she was rooted to the spot, doomed to die at the hands of her own subconscious again, and again, and again.
But he wasn’t listening; this was her dream, her world, and he was defying her. He was putting himself in danger, and it almost physically hurt her to watch.
“Alair…” She met his eyes, all hope gone from her own, but that wasn’t the point. He was still there, not fleeing and saving himself. This time, he was hell bent on finding a way to save her, not seeming to realized that it was all futile. “Don’t you get it, Alair…? This has to happen… it’s okay. It’s just the way things happen, here… I don’t get out alive. But you can, don’t you see?”
Still, he refused to listen, and she could not for the life of her figure out why. And… A terrible, selfish part of her just wanted to hold onto him. She couldn’t prevent the inevitable (not that she could understand, at least), but it didn’t mean that it had to be so terrifying and heartbreaking. That self-centred, desperate quality that landed her in this very situation, wanted him to stay, until it was all over.
And it appeared, for a moment, that she might get her wish.
“Why are you staying?” She whispered, her voice soft in his ear as she leaned her weight into him, jaw trembling and body shivering from the frigid water that crept up past her waist. “You should go… Alair, you need to go, or you’ll go down, too…”
That last thing she wanted to see was her new friend, her good friend, suffer a fate that he didn’t deserve… Even if it felt good, in that moment, not to be by herself. Her heart hammered through her sodden clothes and against Alair’s chest, but none of it was nearly so terrifying. She did not deserve his kindness any more than she deserved Caspar’s, and yet, here it was… Offered so freely, unsolicited, just like the day Cas had saved her.
But the Sandman was gone, all too quickly, diving below the surface to free up her legs. Only he never made it underwater, for he blinked out of existence the very second he dove. He was gone… he was safe.
Scarlet was too preoccupied wondering at her companion’s concern for her well-being, at what had possessed him to stay, to just hold her when that had been exactly what he needed, to even notice when the water finally cleared her head, swallowing her completely.
Movement. Warm arms around her. Something soft beneath her body when, at last, the movement stopped…
Whether the deadly frigid temperatures or the suffocation of the water had taken her this time remained a mystery, but it was obvious that Scarlet had succumbed to her mind once again by the way her body jerked and she suddenly gasped, waking too fast, her heart doing double time as a headache threatened to blossom behind her eyes.
“Alair…”
She wasn’t sure why she spoke the Sandman’s name, just then, as she sat up gingerly in her own bed (how had she gotten there?), but he had been on her mind the moment she opened her eyes. And, sure enough, he was right there, not an inch from her bed, back turned to her as if about to leave, pausing when she voiced his unusual name.
Looking down, peering into the darkness that was permeated by streaks of streetlights through her window, she hadn’t even realized she’d grabbed his hand until she saw her slender fingers encircling his, and shaking like they were cold.
“…play me something.” She said at last, voice sounding and feeling raw and broken. The request came out of nowhere, some primitive part of her mind that recognized she needed some form of comfort, lest she come apart at the scenes for reasons that only her subconscious mind could grasp. Slowly, gently, she released his hand. “Please…”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
It was within his power to afford her an arguably better sleep, he knew—the myths and stories of the Sandman’s mystical sand did not come without actual precedent—but since it was very rarely necessary for such devices, he made a habit of using it as a last resort and nothing more. If the redhead’s slumber continued to be disturbed by such unsettling scenarios, then he would consider offering her the bizarre service; it did take a great deal of effort and energy on his part to generate the stuff, the veritable magic pill of sleep aids, and he simply did not have the strength to conjure it now. Not after the spine-numbing cold and the muscle-freezing panic of her monochromatic world. And it was not without side effects, something to which he wasn’t sure he was okay with subjecting his new friend so soon.
He sighed quiet disappointment on the redhead’s behalf when he heard her speak his name, the syllables barely audible even in the stark quiet of her bedroom. He turned slowly, looking down when her hand darted to clasp his, and smiled softly through the darkness. Her request startled him, his expression faltering somewhat as he considered her words, and after a moment’s hesitation he nodded once. “Sure,” he whispered, giving her hand a squeeze before she relinquished it.
He retrieved his guitar from the apartment entryway, unbuckling the case and slinging the strap over his shoulder as he returned to her bedroom. “Scoot,” he said, tapping her knee as an indicator to slide over so he could take a seat on the edge of the bed. He leaned over to toss one end of the flannel blanket back over her prostrate form, then stretched fingers out in anticipation. Propping one leg up with his heel on the metal bed frame, he lowered his guitar to his lap and gently tapped each string, tuning them in soft succession by twisting the silver knobs at the end of the neck. When he was at last satisfied that they wouldn’t ruin his melodies with terrible dissonance, he strummed a single full chord before charging headfirst into a calm tune of minor and irregular arpeggios.
His fingers moved quickly, but at the same time he seemed to be putting forth no effort; his eyes were closed, in fact, and his wrists were so relaxed it almost appeared as though he weren’t playing at all with the blur that was his fingers. For a moment, he could forget that he was strumming to soothe away Scarlet’s lingering terror, to wrap her in a musical embrace when no one’s arms would suffice.
The Sandman-turned-musician came to a melodious conclusion after several minutes, bringing the vibrating strings to a soft, almost imperceptible halt. He swiveled his head slowly to look at Scarlet, satisfied to see that her eyes were closed and her breathing, the blanket rising and falling in a steady rhythm, was easy and even. Hardly daring to take his own breath for fear of disturbing her, he carefully placed his guitar along the wall opposite the bed and returned to her side. Even in slumber, she looked frightened and uneasy. Alair felt something stir within him that was more than simple pity, and before he knew what he was doing he was lying down next to her on the very edge of the bed. Careful not to touch her for fear of waking her (and her wrath), he stared at the ceiling until his eyes finally closed—allowing him the much-needed rest that had eluded him since Scarlet’s nightmare.
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Most of all, she knew that the Sandman would know exactly what to play for her, what melodies and intervals and cadences to pull out of thin air to suit the mood, to slow her speeding heart and lull her back into a sense of safety and security (if she had, in fact, ever been there to begin with). Music was just as much a part of Alair as it was a part of Caspar, and he wielded it as efficiently as an antidote as he did a weapon, like when he’d torn through Reflections’ crowd and straight into the hearts of the audience without mercy.
Scarlet didn’t need to be asked to shove over, having intended to make room for him the moment he returned, and didn’t say a word as he draped the flannel blanket over her body, vaguely wondering if he had any idea that it was, in fact, her favourite throw. And that despite the fact there were three perfectly clean, perfectly functional blankets folded at the foot of her bed, that was the one he used to cover her (and the fact that she’d allowed him to do that without crying indignation spoke of just how shaken she still was from a dream that she could hardly remember).
Since there was nothing else she could think to say (surely he understood she wouldn’t be asking if the need weren’t dire), the redhead eased herself back onto her pillows and rolled onto her side to face him. For the longest time, her eyes watched the grace of his fingers as they traveled up and down the strings, plucking and strumming an almost hypnotic rhythm. The music penetrated the still night air like a fragrance, but one that invaded all of her senses simultaneously. She felt her eyelids grow heavy with their weighted softness, felt her racing heart slow to synchronize with the downbeat, and before she realized what was happening, she was slipping back into the very slumber that she had come to dread, cradled by Alair’s song.
Mercifully, the remainder of the quiet night did not plague the young woman with any more dreams. Scarlet slept still in quiet, if perhaps a little ill at ease (though that was a given on any night) until the coming of morning, with sunlight streaming through the window pane and directly into her eyes until she could no longer ignore the brilliance of the day.
Rubbing her eyes with the heels of her hands, the redhead blinked the blue of sleep from her eyes, dropping one hand heavily to her side as she let out a sigh at that groggy feeling of having overslept…
…only to come fully awake when her hand came into contact with another hand, that did not belong to her.
“Alair…?” Still too tired to be startled, and with last night’s impromptu request as fresh in her mind as the moment she had made it, Scarlet found it more curious than anything to find the Sandman straddling the very edge of the mattress, eyes closed like he, too, was fast asleep. But he couldn’t have been, for those vibrant eyes snapped open the second she spoke his name.
And that was as far as it went; for whatever reason he’d stayed with her, it didn’t make her uncomfortable. On the contrary, knowing now that had she, for whatever reason, woken up again with the need not to be alone only to find him already there for her… It made a curious warmth blossom in her chest that she couldn’t identify as anything that Caspar, for all his kindness and help, had ever stirred in her.
As far as Scarlet was concerned, what happened at half-past one in the morning, stayed at half-past one in the morning, and there was no reason to discuss any of it. Besides, she had a promise to keep, now that her unlikely companion was awake.
“Coffee and breakfast, right?” Half of her mouth tugged into a grin as she threw her legs over the side of the bed, stretching the stiffness out of her limbs. “I’m feeling adventurous; I think I might try my hand at some omelettes.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Though he longed to drift off, to allow his lashes to brush against his cheeks as the last of his consciousness gave in to what dwelled beneath, something held him back—something that stirred far within him, something buried so deep that even in his current quiet state he couldn’t dig it free from the fathoms of his soul. The Sandman, as boisterous as his demeanor was and as ruthless and cunning as his dream-presence could act, could never be accused of not caring; he had watched the ages unfurl and knew the value of life and death as few others could. And for the young woman sleeping next to him—the fiery, strong-willed Scarlet whose dyed hair blazed as brightly as her personality, the one whose dreams offered her little reprieve from reality and whose reality gave little amnesty from dreams—he couldn’t help but feel protective, as though he’d known her for decades rather than days.
He closed his eyes after staring for a long while at the uneven ceiling tiles above them, tracing the old seams through the dark until his lids were simply too heavy to keep open. He was only dimly aware of the sunlight filtering through the window when the sun at last peered above the city’s uneven horizon; when his red-haired companion spoke his name, he opened his eyes immediately and arched his brows high in surprise. Despite the unexpected contact of their hands, the touch was, bizarrely, far from unnatural, and he responded lightheartedly by wrapping his fingers around her thumb and giving it a quick squeeze.
“Good day, sunshine,” he told her playfully, his voice soft but not groggy. Knowing she would get his spoken reference to the world-famous (and overly cheery, in his opinion) Beatles melody, he smiled a little and turned on his side to face her. With blue eyes whose characteristic mirth now masked a deeper concern, he studied her sleep-intoxicated face to reassure himself not only that the dream had not recurred in his absence, but also that her memory remained impervious to the night’s frightening turn. Her expression put him somewhat at ease, her broad grin lifting his spirits as quickly as her nightmare had dashed them.
When she sprang into action and practically leapt from the bed’s warm embrace, he found himself already stifling a chuckle. He shifted his weight further toward the edge of the mattress, purposely slipping from the top of the blankets to catch himself with his foot at the last moment. Pausing to stretch with his arms high above his head, he followed Scarlet into the kitchen and stopped in the doorway, leaning against the frame as he watched her fetch the supplies and ingredients from their various cupboards. “Wait a second,” he said lightly, his expression a combination of smug skepticism and amusement. “I thought you said you couldn’t even make toast without burning the place down. Should I call the fire department and warn them, then?”
His self-satisfied smirk faded to a milder grin, and he shook his head in apology. “How about we ease into it?” he suggested, stepping forward to put the frying pan on the stove before spinning around to lean against the countertop. “I’ll supervise. Then we can gradually wean you off my professional expertise.” Emphasizing the last two words with theatrical flair, he interrupted himself with a chuckle and shook his head. “Hand me the eggs?” He held out his hand for the carton and looked to her expectantly, unable to hide the mischief from his eyes. “What else you got? Oh, and you don’t get to handle the chopping. Not yet, anyway.”
He angled himself so that he stood between her and the set of knives sitting innocently in their block near the sink; it was easy to become an obstacle in a kitchen so compact. “How’s your hand, by the way?” he asked. “I was going to ask you last night before things got…” He stopped himself, not quite sure how to phrase the rest of the sentence. “Before things got chaotic,” he recovered, shrugging nonchalantly. “Need another band-aid before you start?”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
“Hey, you requested breakfast every morning for two fucking weeks; and that was after I warned you I’m a disaster in the kitchen. I figured it was all just a ruse to see me make a fool of myself for your own amusement?” The smile she tossed over her shoulder was just as teasing, full of mirth and mischief, but with a quality that made it appear weak; as if the effort it required was more than for what she was prepared. “You might want to give the fire department a heads up, though, in all fairness. If they ask questions, I’ll just have to tell them I was trying to be a good friend and not back out of a fair bet.”
Light-footed and keen on the old linoleum tiles, Scarlet moved to the scuffed counter and began taking out the plates and cutlery around the same time Alair reached the stove, at an angle that made it impossible to reach from where she stood. “Supervise? Jeez, Magic Man, this isn’t much of a bargain in your favour if you’re gonna be on edge while I cook; do you really have that little faith in me?” Her lower lip protruded in an exaggerated pout, tired eyes glinting knowingly, agreeing that she was rather ill-qualified for the task.
Without even attempting at an argument while knowing full well that he was in the right, she wordlessly moved to the refrigerator to retrieve the requested foodstuffs and browse for other appropriate ingredients (luckily, they were not so low on groceries as of yet). There was a bit of an unnatural delay, however, in the time it took to extend her slim arm towards the grey carton and pass it to Alair’s capable hands; a handful of stunned seconds where the redhead stared off into the cold icebox without really seeing, face painted like someone lost in a vortex of fog and confusion. The look of someone unrested, restless, and suffering the after-effects of being swallowed up in the icy waters of a petrifying nightmare.
“Oh, whatever. Chop all you want; I’m not a fan of sharp objects, anyway,” the young woman went on, neglecting to comment on her spaced-out state as she handed the Sandman the eggs, some peppers, mushrooms, ham, and a block of cheddar cheese. Her slender hands did not seek out the dangerous knives in their wooden block across from the sink, but they did reach for the spatula in the drying rack at the other side, also inaccessible with Alair acting as a human wall.
“And my hand is fine, thank you kindly; hasn’t bled in days and doesn’t hurt anymore. Otherwise I couldn’t do this.” Without warning, Scarlet somehow saw fit to forego simply asking her friend to step aside, instead placing her hands on his hips and forcibly pushing him out of the way like the obstacle that he was (and with surprising strength for someone her side and weight). “How about you start chopping, and let me flip the damn things when the time comes so that I can say I at least did something?”
Her mouth toyed with a cheeky smile, and she left the chopping of the mushrooms, ham and peppers to her culinary-inclined friend while she proceeded to put on a pot of coffee. That foggy expression returned to the redhead’s fair face on more than one occasion as the omelets cooked: she would suddenly pause in a task and stare without seeing, without moving, temporarily gone from the here and now. It made her clumsier than usual, and she narrowly avoided bumping into the Sandman on more than one occasion, passing it off each time with the joke that he was simply in too many places at once in the tiny kitchen. And when at last a hot omelet in the shape of a half-moon sat on each of the two plates, alongside a steaming cup of coffee on the table, it was at least a good sixty seconds before she even picked up her fork. Scarlet didn’t even venture to try and explain until she caught the curious look Alair cast in her direction.
“Sorry—were you saying something?” A gentle tint of pink blossomed on the apples of her cheeks, realizing just how obvious it was that she was barely functioning like a human being. “I’m a little out of it today; I think I might have dreamt something… I can’t remember. But what else is new, huh?” She failed at injecting and semblance of humor into her smile just then, averting her gaze down to the cell phone that sat flat upon the table. Caspar had yet to respond to the text she’d sent, inquiring as to whether he would be home at all that day or night. And she feared she already knew the answer.
Foregoing a bite of omelet for a long sip of coffee, Scarlet wrinkled her nose and glared at the chipped mug as though it were at fault for some heinous crime. “You know, sleep’s becoming pretty damn overrated… And I think I’m becoming immune to this stuff. I might be better off running on energy drinks. But anyway: we’ve got a wedding to prepare for, right?” Blanketing that fatigue with a smile full of mischief, the young woman stood up from her chair almost as quickly as she’d sat down to eat. Her breakfast was left almost completely untouched as she headed for the sink to start on the dishes after taking a slender can of carbonated beverage from the fridge. The chemical taste of the Red Bull made her cringe (no wonder Cas only drank them when a gig lasted well into the night), but chemicals appeared to be what she needed to stay sane, since her body and mind did not appear to benefit from natural rest.
“So, is it this evening? How are we even going to get in? Is there anything crucial I need to know about weddings so that I don’t stand out any more than I know I will?” Her questions went on, running hot water and squirting dish soap into the greasy pan. It only stung a little on her barely-healed cut. “Seriously, Magic Man, I hope you know what you’re doing or have some sort of plan; spying on this Marissa girl is not worth making a fucking fool of myself in front of my best friend.”
While the redhead prattled on about wedding guest preparations, her cell phone next to her lonely omelet—set to silent and turned off of vibrate—blinked with a new message from said roommate:
hey Red, dunno if/when i’ll b home 2nite, wedding could go late! u have alair’s #? u should text him for a movie or something, i’ll bet he’d b up 4 it, guy doesn’t seem to have much else going on! don’t spend all ur time alone : )
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
He poured the orange juice and coffee while Scarlet turned each omelet, carrying it to the table with the cutlery as she slid each dish onto a clean plate. Taking a careful sip of his steaming coffee, he nodded his full-mouthed thanks when she placed his breakfast in front of him, swallowing quickly in favor of the hot breakfast now served. “Smells good,” he told her, inhaling deeply before digging in, slicing through the fluffy eggs with his fork and popping a large bite into his watering mouth. “Looks like we can call the fire department and tell them they don’t have to wait for us,” he quipped, but his words seemed to be falling on deaf ears—his companion’s gaze was far away, her lips pursed into a thin, preoccupied line. He paused, studying her until she became reanimating again, excusing herself as though such dazes were commonplace—something he knew not to be true, if the past few days were any indicator.
Her mention of the dream—or rather, the inklings of it—startled him, and for several moments he, too, said nothing as he pondered the implications of her remembrance. Had it been his presence in the nightmare that prompted the sudden memories, disrupting her usual, self-admitted alone time in her unpredictable dream-world? He sincerely hoped not. Swallowing a bite, he forced a smile and finished off his orange juice. “Remember who you’re talking to, alpha,” he said, his tone much more playful and casual than his concerns. “The Sandman’s not exactly new to the whole dream thing. Especially the forgetting part.” The smile he offered her betrayed only a little of his actual worry, and he finished off the rest of his breakfast before she’d really made a dent in hers.
Distracted momentarily by her question regarding the wedding, he stood up in her wake and followed her to the sink, grabbing a dish towel and slinging it over his shoulder in preparation to rinse and dry following her sudsy washing. “Common sense rules apply,” he told her, rinsing the glass she handed to him and placing it in the strainer. “Pretend you’re…I don’t know, pretend you’re royalty, or something. Proper manners and all that jazz. Act like you belong there, and no one will question you. It’ll be pretty crowded, so I wouldn’t worry about standing out.” He grinned, hitting her playfully on the shoulder with the damp towel. “You should wash that potty mouth while you’re at it, too. Follow my lead, and you’ll be just fine.”
The rest of the afternoon passed relatively quickly, and it wasn’t long before it was time to get ready. Scarlet took the first shower, relinquishing the foggy bathroom to him in a cloud of sweet-smelling steam. He jumped beneath the scalding stream with a long sigh, making the fully intentional (and wrong, he knew) decision to indulge in his friend’s expensive hair products—under the pretense that he needed to look and smell his best to fly securely under the radar during their upcoming infiltration. She wouldn’t listen to his reasoning, he knew, but that didn’t stop him from doing it anyway. When he’d finished, he emerged clean-shaven and wrapped in a towel, disappearing into Caspar’s room as the redhead prepped behind her own closed door.
He finished drying and tossed his damp towel on a pile of the musician’s discarded laundry on the floor, unzipping the garment bag that hung on the back of the closet door to retrieve his tailored tuxedo. He slipped on his trousers, socks, and undershirt before combing his hair in front of the mirror, sculpting the dark locks until they achieved his approved level of messy-meets-fashionable. From there, he shrugged on and tucked in his bright white button-down, finishing it all off with highly polished black shoes and his perfectly fitted black tux coat. He gave himself a once-over in Caspar’s mirror before heading back to the living room, half-sitting and half-leaning on the arm of the sofa while he waited for the redhead to finish getting ready.
“Come on, Scarlet!” he called, glancing at his phone. “The limo’s waiting and the driver’s getting impatient. More importantly, I’m hungry.” He arched his brows and looked expectantly to her bedroom door. “I’m not kidding about the limo!”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
It was all show, though, just typical Scarlet bravado; because deep down, the redhead was nervous. She feared stepping into a place where she clearly did not fit in. She feared being found out, called out on her lack of invitation. She feared seeing Marissa, and seeing Caspar, and seeing them smile at one another in a way that she had never seen her roommate smile before. So to keep her mind off of it, the young woman busied herself with menial tasks throughout the day, tidying up the apartment and taking a load of laundry down to the Laundromat since she was sorely in need of clean clothes, and she could’ve sworn that Alair went through more towels and facecloths than even she did.
But soon there was no longer room for procrastination, and one glance at the clock as evening approached sent Scarlet into the shower, frantically washing and drying her body and hair and hoping to God no one at this event would be offended by the subtle smell of honey and lavender. So frantic and particular was she in regards to her attire and hair and the uncertainty in how she was to carry herself that she had but a single reproachful glare to toss in Alair’s direction when the same sweet scent came off his skin and hair when he stepped out of the shower a while afterwards.
The simple black dress was not the most difficult part of her attire, she soon realized, after disappearing into her bedroom to finish getting ready. What was she to do with her hair? Her make-up? Were toeless black heels and tights acceptable as part of the attire?
“Hold on! Jeez, I don’t even know what I’m doing…” The redhead muttered, despising the feeling of being rushed, but knowing that she had to make up her mind about whether to keep her hair straight or give it a bit of curl for the event. But the clock soon decided for her, once she realized that she simply did not have time to fuss with style, and her crimson locks remained straight and silky, draped down her shoulders and back. “Tell you ‘limo’ it can wait another sixty seconds.”
More and more the young woman was beginning to realize just how difficult the Sandman was to interpret; sometimes his silliness came across as serious as can be, and vice versa. So how was she to know that, stepping out of her apartment building with Alair close in tow, she would actually encounter a long, black, swanky vehicle parked along the curb? “Alair,” she groaned, casting a defeated look over her shoulder at her smirking companion. “What is this. Isn’t the point not to stand out?”
But the limo had been summoned, and there was no point in telling the driver that his services wouldn’t be needed, so Scarlet simply gave in and let her supernatural companion open the door for her before sliding onto the most expensive leather seats she was likely to ever see.
“I can’t believe you actually called a fucking limo…” She murmured as the vehicle pulled out onto the road again, and tapped her foot apprehensively against the floor. That rhythm persisted for the entire ride, only coming to an end when at last they pulled up to one of the city’s more expensive five start hotels, where this wedding reception was apparently taking place. The couple must have been absolutely loaded…
“You’re sure about this…?” Scarlet asked one last time, hesitating before taking Alair’s hand and allowing him to help her out of the limo. Though her voice flatlined as if to portray boredom, her shaking fingers said otherwise. “If we get found out here, I am so holding you accountable…”
But, as usual, her new friend seemed to know exactly what he was doing. The first floor of the hotel that had been rented for the event was absolutely packed with people, in tuxedos and black dresses, just like herself and Alair, some dancing to some very familiar guitar playing, others chatting, while others still sampled hors d’oeuvres. She couldn’t even see Caspar in the crowd, meaning that he likely wouldn’t be spotting her anytime soon, either.
“This really isn’t my kind of royalty, you know…” She murmured, just loud enough for her companion to hear. Without even realizing it, her fingers had hooked into the elbow of his tuxedo. “You sure we’re not going to stand out, here? I don’t see anyone else with bright red hair, you know…”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Royalty indeed.
The slick black limo idled in a quiet whisper as they pushed their way outside of the redhead's apartment building. The chauffeur, a gray-haired gentleman clad in a shade of expensive noir to match his vehicle, nodded primly to Alair as the Sandman opened the door for his well-dressed companion. He slid in behind Scarlet with practiced grace, the driver striding quickly over to close the door behind them both and take his place behind the wheel.
Alair moved down the long leather seats to settle next to Scarlet, reaching over to pick up one of the two flutes of pale champagne awaiting them inside. He took a sip and nodded his approval, replacing the crystal before leaning back and watching the city lights pass them in a blur through the dark tinted windows. “The point, Scarlet,” he drawled, adopting the air of a man accustomed to a life of luxury, “is to not stand out by standing out.” He laughed at the ridiculousness of the contradiction, a crooked smile slung upon his lips. “Just trust me. They wouldn’t let us past reception if we got dropped off in a taxi. This is modest compared to what you’ll see when we walk through those doors.”
He smirked, a glimmer of excitement flashing in his blue eyes. They were in no real danger, of course; if they were found out, the worst that could happen would be getting asked to leave and escorted to the exit. But if Alair had anything to do about it—and he most certainly did, all things considered—that would never happen, and they were in no way at risk for discovery. Even if they were asked to leave, it would be a quiet, low-key affair; there would be no sense in making a scene amongst the distinguished and wealthy guests. The Sandman had certainly been through worse embarrassments (if such a thing even warranted shame), and if their time was cut short, well…at least they’d have had a good helping of food and surveillance before their untimely departure.
The limo joined a long line of similar luxury automobiles outside the venue, and they patiently waited their turn to park beneath the hotel awning and make their entrance. The chauffeur opened the door and Alair climbed out, reaching out to take the redhead’s gloved hand as she climbed free. “Of course I’m sure,” he told her, his tone serious but his eyes so full of mischief that it stole most of the credibility from his verbal claim. Her trembling fingers caught him off-guard, and he gave them a tight squeeze as though to calm her nerves before relinquishing his grasp. “Hold me as accountable as you want. I…”
His words halted in his throat as Scarlet rose to her full height outside the limousine, and the Sandman found himself sporting a wide smile that possessed no hint of sarcasm as he met her gaze. Though he’d seen her emerge from her room back at the apartment, he’d been too preoccupied with convincing the driver not to ditch them to get a good look at the redhead’s costume. “Scarlet,” he breathed as though reciting a spell, shaking his head with incredulity. “You look…really good, alpha.” His shaking head turned to a nod. “That dress really suits you. Let’s go.” He turned and took his place at her side, pleased to feel her take his elbow as they marched regally through the doors and into the thick of the reception.
Familiar guitar playing filled the perfumed air beneath the sonic layers of chatter and laughter. Elaborately decorated tables were scattered around the perimeter of the room, each sporting full bouquets of lilies and roses in red and cream. Waiters and waitresses, clad in strict black and white uniform, dodged mingling guests, some with trays of hors d’oeuvres and others with sparkling wines. Alair, with his shoulders thrown back and his head held appropriately high, led Scarlet through the throngs to the center of the activity. “You have to own it Scarlet,” he said to his companion, leaning over to speak quietly in her ear as they walked. “I’ve never known you not to, so I don’t think you’ll have any trouble. See, it's not so bad!”
They took two empty seats at a table near the edge of the polished dance floor, easily giving them the best view not only of the other guests, but also the quaint stage area where Caspar sat perched with his guitar amongst rose petals and white candles. There was little chance of the musician spotting them over the crowd, especially as the dance floor grew more and more crowded with dark tuxedoes and glittering ball gowns. Alair took an offered glass of champagne and sipped amusedly.
“So now it begins,” he told her quietly, impishly, his brows arched high on his forehead. “Espionage.” He widened his eyes as he spoke the word, his excitement obvious even behind his royal façade.
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
“I… thanks, Magic Man. You don’t look too bad yourself,” came her startled reply, and it wasn’t until the words were out of her mouth that she realized the weight of their truth. Alair looked amazing; not that that was any surprise (what? She wasn’t blind), but the tuxedo sharpened the confidence of his smile, accentuated his strong jaw and drew attention to those electric blue eyes in a way that she’d never thought possible. With only a little shame, the young woman caught herself stealing sidelong glances at her companion as he escorted her inside and across the floor, past people with more money than brains or morals or virtues. These were exactly the sort of people with whom she did not want to associate, making it that much more difficult to own it, as the Sandman advised.
“And what the hell am I supposed to own, exactly? Like I said, not my kind of royalty.” She grumbled, grabbing a glass of sparkling wine when it was offered to her on a tray. “Not my kind of booze, either, but when in Rome…” The bubbles tickled the back of her throat and made her want to cough, but she downed the glass quickly enough, rather enjoying the speed at which warmth traveled down her throat, down her arms and through her body. Having eaten so little and spent most of the day sipping on energy drinks in lieu of coffee, she wasn’t in much of a position to be capable of really holding her alcohol, and already it was opening blood vessels and turning her cheeks pink.
The sight of Caspar on stage, with his own tuxedo and guitar, did nothing to help the butterflies flitting about mercilessly in her stomach. He looked so confident and poised, the kind of person who could fit in with and please any crowd, and he was. The number of people dancing was phenomenal, swaying to his melody and rhythm, and one glance at the bride and groom sitting at the head table, completely fixated on their musical guest, confirmed that they were not disappointed the pianist had copped out on them.
“Look at him up there. You’d never think he had stage fright…” She sighed, and suddenly something caught her eye. Caspar nodded to someone just off to the side, the non-verbal cue that he gave stage hands to adjust the volume on amps. But it was no practically-dressed sound technician that stepped up to adjust the volume, but a girl dressed in a sparkly black gown, brunette locks hanging in elegant curls down her back. All it took was the more than appreciative look that the musician cast her to reveal her identity.
“Marissa. That’s her.” Scarlet said suddenly, conviction in her voice where there hadn’t been any before. “I know it—I mean, look at her. Look at how he looked at her…” Grabbing yet another glass of sparkling wine, she took a long, meaningful sip before all but slamming the crystal on the table and rising hastily (and surprisingly steadily) to her feet. “Come on. Before I decide to get completely smashed.”
Without warning or explanation, the chemically tinted redhead took Alair by the hands and pulled him from the chair, only relinquishing her grasp on one of them as she dragged him onto the dance floor in order to get a better look.
“Damnit, I can’t see… Think we’ll stand out too much if we just, well… stand around, here and there? I don’t dance. Well, no, I do dance, just… Not like this.” She waved her hand, indicating the couples that swayed around them with a faint grin. “Doesn’t look very exciting, if you ask me.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
His pang of guilt, however, was as short-lived as Scarlet’s glass of champagne. He watched as she downed its contents, a rosy blush covering her smooth cheeks as the alcohol seeped into her bloodstream. When he turned his attention back to the dancing crowd, he couldn’t see Caspar at all through the twirling bodies; he craned his head forward as subtly as he could manage, doing his best to see through the brief gaps between guests. Grumbling under his breath, he was beginning to lose hope in tracking down the elusive Marissa Engelbrecht when suddenly Scarlet was speaking the other woman’s name. His breath caught in his throat, and he followed her gaze towards the stage—sure enough, there she was.
Even from their terrible position, it was clear that what existed between her and the musician was more than simple friendship. The young woman was swathed in a sequined gown, sparkling a thousand shades of black as she swayed to Caspar’s elegant classical guitar. Her hair was longer than he remembered, cascading down her back in tight brunette ringlets—a far cry from the makeup-caked mask she’d worn as a face in her recent dream. It seemed she was a different person entirely. If she hadn’t turned to the side just as an elderly couple retreated from the Sandman’s line of vision, he may not have recognized her at all—but the face was the same, as were her little mannerisms, and he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Scarlet was correct in her identification.
Before he realized what was going on, the redhead was hauling him to his feet by both hands, dragging him onto the dance floor with much more force than he would have thought possible given her small stature. He smirked. “Come on, Scarlet, you could have just asked me to dance. It’s not like I was going to say no,” he said with a chuckle. The words had no sooner departed his lips when he realized she actually hadn’t had that intention at all—and that apparently this type of dancing simply wasn’t for her. He made a face, his expression amused as he wrinkled his nose. “Well, it sounds like the song is ending. Here, I’ll show you how. It’s really not that hard, and it’s not as boring as it looks.” He scoffed as though deeply offended by her declaration. “Some people just can’t appreciate art.”
Melting into a grin, he led her a little further toward the stage, then positioned himself so that he stood facing her. “Put your hands here,” he said, dropping his voice as Caspar’s next piece began. It was a slow number, but the melody was intricate and sweet. As if on cue, the electric lights dimmed almost to nonexistence, leaving nothing but the hundreds of flickering candles scattered throughout the room to provide a soft, shimmering glow. Smiling warmly, he reached out and gently took each of her wrists in his hands, lifting them to the back of his neck. “Now I hold you like this,” he continued, his voice a murmur in her ear as he tenderly clasped his hands together at the small of her back, pulling her in until they nearly touched.
Guiding her slowly, they began to sway together, their steps falling into precise synchrony with Caspar’s tumbling harmonies. Alair sighed softly as they made their way gradually toward the stage, pressing his cheek against her soft crimson locks. For a few blissful moments he found himself forgetting their mission entirely—and like they were stepping in unity through a hazy dream, the rest of the world fell away to leave them in quiet isolation. Even the reverberations of the guitar gave way to silence, and they danced together to the cadence of their aligned heartbeats in a void of time and space that echoed to the ends of the universe.
But the reverie was over as quickly as it began, and he steered Scarlet so that she could peer over his shoulder toward the stage—and Marissa.
“Be my eyes, alpha,” he whispered to her, keeping his gaze angled downward as they moved rhythmically to and fro. The lingering sensation of warmth radiated through his limbs as though it were the powerful inner heat of absinthe, and he swallowed hard—but not with discomfort. “What’s happening?”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Marissa wasn’t dancing with Caspar, obviously; the musician was busy doing what he did best, likely working towards a good sum of money as compensation for his services. But she still danced, alone but not unhappily, for her brown eyes were fixed on him, and every couple of minutes, their eyes would meet.
It should not have angered Scarlet as much as it did. But it did, and there was nothing more dangerous than a vengeful, slightly intoxicated Scarlet.
Those boiling feelings of anger and vengeance were suddenly short circuited, however, when she felt his fingers encircle hers, pulling her further up the floor, where there was a little more foot room. “What are we doing? Wait—Alair, we don’t have time for this…” The redhead grumbled, realizing that in her confession had apparently been hidden the invitation to teach her how to sway to this music, on this floor, among these people. This was most definitely not the point of being there, and it stole away her view of Marissa, just barely leaving Caspar visible beyond the growing wall of dancers.
“Alair, come on, I’m tipsy… Is this really the best time?” She whined like a child, up until her hands were suddenly resting behind his shoulders, and his warmed the small of her back, and they were close enough that she could feel the heat from his body and his breath tickling the hairs on her neck. He was right, though; this sort of dance was not difficult, not even for someone who wasn’t particularly steady on their feet. Because it didn’t appear to be about dancing at all… It was about proximity. Being close to someone else, enough to notice their breathing and their heartbeat, just a moment to enjoy being close and being together. And Scarlet was close now to Alair than she had ever been…
Scarlet let her companion guide her in a gentle sway, in time with the melody and harmony that glided from Caspar’s guitar and mingled in the air around them. She could feel the warmth of his cheek again her hair, and for just a moment—just a brief handful of precious seconds—did she allow herself to rest her chin against his neck. The familiar smell of honey and lavender (her smell, although it seemed it was quickly becoming their smell) soothed her olfactory senses, and her eyes closed for what felt like just a second. And for that second, she felt like she was dreaming again; something calming, something beautiful, something that would not climb and cut her legs or drown her lungs in an icy current.
For that second, Alair achieved exactly the effect that Caspar had on her, and all of her worry and fear and the pain that she didn’t talk about simply didn’t exist.
The moment was over all too soon, however, when the Sandman spoke up and reminded her of what their true purpose there. Scarlet opened her eyes and lifted her head, catching a clear view of that notorious brunette once again. Up close, she looked exactly like the type of girl next door who was too fucking pretty to be any girl next door at all, and however irrationally, the redhead instantly despised her.
“She’d dancing.” She told him in a whisper, blue eyes moving from Caspar to Marissa and back again. “He looks at her, every so often, like she’s some kind of fucking muse. He’s…” The young woman’s words were drowned suddenly in a realization that made her trip and fall into Alair; not much of a change from their previous position, but enough that it went from a respectful dance to an all out embrace until Scarlet managed to right herself.
“He’s playing… for her. Just the way he keeps glancing sideways and his posture…” Swallowing, she closed her eyes again, because it hurt all too much to keep looking. Almost as painful as watching someone die. “These songs aren’t for the bride and groom. They’re for her. Cas isn’t just infatuated, Alair, he is fucking head over heels in love with her…”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Their embrace had brought on a barrage of feelings he had long ago buried, emotions so far away from his recent memory that he’d practically forgotten where he had made their bitter interment. The sensation was not unpleasant, but so too went the rain—soft at first, deceiving in its tenderness before it intensified into its heart’s monsoon. But what made matters worse was that for this tempest there was no weatherman; he did not know how to describe what he was experiencing, not even to himself. His mind uttered excuses and probable causes as irrelevant as the happy newlywed couple, but still he was unconvinced of their validity; something was preventing his understanding, and he had a sneaking suspicion the answer was entombed right along with the rest of the seeping sentiment.
They were less conspicuous now that the lights were dimmed, and with Caspar preoccupied not only with his music but also with his brown-haired female friend at the foot of the stage, they had little chance of being noticed by the performer despite how close they crept. And if Scarlet’s narration was any indicator, he was already too absorbed in another world to see what was in front of him—the very mindset, Alair quickly realized, that Scarlet so dreaded. He would be too blinded by his new muse to see the woman who had been there from the very beginning, who had helped and supported him just as he’d helped and supported her.
The Sandman guided Scarlet around so that he could face them for a moment, to see for himself the scene she described. His heart sank when he realized just how accurate her words had been, and for a moment he felt the warmth in his chest transition to a feeling far more familiar—anger. He was angry at Caspar Brighton, angry and disappointed at a man for whom it was almost impossible to feel anger or disappointment. When his redheaded partner tripped against him, he held her in their accidental embrace with perhaps more force than was necessary, wrapping her protectively against the oblivious blows delivered by her former steadfast compatriot.
He leaned forward to speak in her ear again when she had recovered her position, dropping his voice to a murmur. “She looks like a fucking zombie dancing by herself like that,” he said, trying to lighten the mood. “And Caspar looks like an idiot. What is he, a fucking cartoon, or what? You can practically see the hearts in his eyes.” It was obvious from the way he spoke the musician’s name that he wasn’t happy with the man, but his tone was light nevertheless—far disconnected from the heavy barrage of emotion that had practically drowned him only a few minutes before. As if to reassure her further, he tightened his embrace of her lower back, turning their stance into an even more intimate pose as he steered her slowly away from the unpleasant sight.
They meandered their way back to the center of the floor until their view of the stage—and Marissa—was obscured by the other well-dressed couples. A touch on his shoulder startled him, and for a moment he thought it was Scarlet signaling her desire to return to the table. But the touch was too broad, too forceful, and from entirely the wrong direction for the young woman’s fingertips. Loosening his hands on the redhead’s back, Alair turned toward the close stranger—except, as it turned out, this was no stranger at all.
“May I cut in?” came the familiar dulcet baritone of his older brother, his chiseled face illuminated with a warm smile as his stormy gray eyes met a glare of electric blue.
In shock, the Sandman’s arms fell away from Scarlet’s waist. He stepped forward towards Amrial, bristling, but he found himself instead facing his brother’s back—he had already slid into Alair’s place with the redhead. Before he could register what had happened and how, he was suddenly in the company of another woman, a woman he had met long ago, a woman equally as familiar as his brother.
“Roesaleine,” he said stonily in greeting, taking her hand and waist in the traditional couple’s pose. He glanced over her shoulder to Amrial, then back to her. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
It might have made sense if she’d had designs on his heart. If Scarlet had ever been in love with Caspar the same way that Marissa was, then the agony of watching them exchange those looks might have been justified. Her jealousy would have made sense, and her anger wouldn’t have been such a noteworthy reaction.
If the redhead had ever so much as had an inkling of a crush on Caspar Brighton, then it all would have made sense. But she could not remember ever being in love, not with Cas or anyone else, and it only made her feelings towards this budding couple all the more heinous. Caspar seemed so happy, happier than she had ever seen him, and it was unacceptable. Because if he found this sort of happiness with someone else, then there would no longer be room in his life for her. At least, not the way there used to be. Nothing would ever be the same again, and Scarlet would once again find herself alone…
She was selfish. Selfish, and a horrible friend for hoping so desperately that, somehow, it wouldn’t end up working out between the musician and the brunette. For another precious moment, Scarlet allowed herself to try and forget about their sneaky little mission, pretend that she didn’t care about her best friend and his new romance that she had been helpless to prevent. Her companion’s voice in her ear, his harmless jabs at the brunette and the musician, might have inspired a few chuckles had she truly thought them sincere. But Scarlet couldn’t see Alair’s face, and couldn’t depict in his voice the anger that he suddenly harbored towards her roommate.
“Well… I’ve seen what I came to see,” she spoke at last, once Alair had guided her towards another part of the floor, where Caspar and Marissa were no longer in the proverbial spotlight. If she never saw again that look that her best friend wore on his face in the girl’s presence, it would be too soon. “He’s got the love bug; nothing I can do about it. Maybe we should just go…”
Scarlet was interrupted by another man, a stranger, tapping Alair on the shoulder, and like a mechanism had been triggered, the Sandman’s warm hands were no longer resting at the small of her back, and he was no longer facing her.
“…a little rude, don’t you think?” were the first words that came to mind as the redhead faced her new dance partner, with a voice a few tones lower than Alair’s, and yet who possessed eerily similar eyes…not the same colour, stormy grey as opposed to electric blue, but with that same curious sparkle... “We were dancing. You don’t just walk up to a stranger and impose on their dance partner… Am I supposed to know you, or something?”
And when she looked over her shoulder to call to Alair, to demand why he had let some stranger bully him out and take over, the Sandman was already preoccupied dancing with another woman.
“Good to see you too, Alair.” The dark haired woman gave her head a gentle shake, greeting the man who she considered to be her own little brother with a smile. That was just Roesaleine’s way, and as she’d gotten to know Amrial’s younger brother, she had come to learn not to take some of what he said to heart. After all, when you suffered as much repeated hurt as the Sandman, you earned the right to be resentful.
And she knew that he resented her, on some level. He resented her for the same reason he resented Amrial, despite knowing that they did all that nature would allow in his favour. But he could resent her for eternity, and it would not dampen her familial affections for him.
“Weddings are lovely, aren’t they? They’re the end of a milestone, and the beginning of something else; why wouldn’t Amrial and I be here? Seems appropriate, don’t you think?”
She gave Alair’s shoulder an affectionate squeeze and cast a glance at Scarlet when the opportunity arose, smiling warmly. “She’s very pretty. Kind of seems a little fiery, just like you. How long have you been together?”
There was a glimmer of excitement in her mellifluous voice. After all, it was Amrial and Roesaleine’s lifelong wish that, one day, Alair would stop falling for her; the one he could never have. Surely, in some lifetime, he was bound to form an equally powerful attachment with someone else, and there would be an end to this tragic, vicious cycle.
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
With a touch as cool as sculpted marble and gentle as an autumn breeze, Amrial fell easily into place with his brother’s redheaded partner. He took her by the waist and by the hand in a pose parallel to the one sported by Alair and Roesaleine nearby, studying the young woman before him with an expression of warmth completely contrary to the temperature of his skin.
He was similarly dressed to his younger brother, clad in a well-fitting tuxedo whose harsh tailored lines only accentuated the intensity of his features—a jaw as chiseled as Alair’s, but with cheeks more severe than were the harbinger of sleep’s, and a nose slightly more angular. The ages had treated the brothers well, with time running like raindrops from their skin; and apart from their eyes—eyes that shone with the deep wisdom of their longevity—either one of them could have passed for a regular attendee in the sea of black and white guests that surrounded them.
“Rudeness was not my intention,” he responded smoothly, his gray eyes gleaming with the hint of an apologetic smile before his lips curled gently upward to match the look. He searched her expression carefully, peering into her discerning blue gaze with an expression too saturated with different sentiments to be accurately read. “Tradition dictates that it’s acceptable to cut in when a dance has progressed beyond the length of a song. Don’t worry, he’s nearby.” Alair’s back was turned to them now, but he nodded towards them nevertheless, exchanging a knowing glance with Roesaleine before donning a charming smile.
He turned his attention back to the redhead, shifting their position so that she faced away from his brother once again. “I shouldn’t think you know me, though; we haven’t met. My name is Amrial…and you are?” The embodiment of death paused, listening for a moment to the din of dance floor chatter mingling with the vibrations of subtly amplified classical guitar. “Are you having a good time with your date?” he asked casually, looking curiously to Scarlet. “You do make a very fetching couple.”
Though the Sandman generally prided himself in his ability to maintain appropriate composure in difficult situations, the surprise appearance of Amrial and Roesaleine had him seething so hotly that his blue eyes were practically aflame with it. He glowered unabashedly at his new dance partner despite the pleasantness of her words and the affection in her prismatic gaze, and where his posture had been relaxed in the arms of Scarlet, with the dark-haired singer he was obviously tense.
“Weddings are pointless bullshit,” he replied hotly, his voice low as he addressed her. “And since you two apparently think it’s appropriate to barge back into my life unannounced, I would say yes, why didn’t I just expect you to be here?” For a moment, his eyes were as stormy as his brother’s, swirling with blues as tumultuous as an angry sea. Her unbridled cheer annoyed him nearly as much as Amrial’s continuous glances to her, and despite her friendliness—despite the fact that she’d done nothing wrong, and he knew that—he couldn’t bring himself to mirror it.
He narrowed his eyes at the pressure of her squeeze on his shoulder, and he laughed bitterly in spite of himself. “Together?” he said, his voice cracking at the word. He sensed the excitement in her voice, in her eyes, and his heart leapt into his throat before bottoming out in his churning stomach. Words eluded him for several moments, and he simply shook his head. “We’re not together,” he muttered at last, following her glance towards the redhead. He longed to snap at Roesaleine, to demand how she dared assume such a thing with all that she knew, all that she’d done together with his brother…but he remained silent, his previous fire now deadened with an equally-obvious cold distance.
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Her untrusting gaze fixed on the chiseled features of this Amrial, and her ambivalence towards him was almost instantaneous. He was within the parameters of being despised simply because there was little to nothing about him that she was able to despise. His voice was gentle, unobtrusive, and while she could only guess at the motivation that had driven him to bump Alair out of the way and take his place as her dance partner, he did not come across as someone ill-intended.
“Scarlet,” was her simple reply when he asked her name; the same unelaborate reply that anyone received before she could gauge whether or not they were fully trustworthy. Even Alair and Caspar were oblivious as to her given name; the only person who knew was Erika, and that was only because it was impossible to hide it from someone with the keen skills of a fortune teller. “And no, I’m not particularly having a good time, if you must know. But that’s no fault of Alair’s…” Her eyes briefly caught a glimpse of Marissa again, and the way she watched Caspar play with such awe. She could practically feel her heart plummet to her stomach, and it was all she could do to not tear away and storm out of the hotel, with or without Alair’s accompaniment.
“And he’s not my date.” She added, a tad more defensively than what was probably necessary. “We’re just friends who decided to crash a swanky party because we were bored…” Although Alair seemed anything but bored, it appeared. His new partner was murmuring words to him, touching his face… Kissing his cheek?
A white hot wave of unwarranted jealousy engulfed Scarlet anew, and she turned away in favor of looking down at her feet. Lackluster and spent, she added, “To be honest, this whole shindig has gotten really boring, really fast.”
“Are they, now?” Roesaleine’s dark eyebrows shot up her forehead, prismatic eyes widening with curiosity. “If you truly harbor such sentiments towards weddings, then I only wonder why you are here? Just to show the world how hard you can rock a tuxedo?” The singer’s full lips pulled into a cheeky grin, and she chuckled, hoping that a smile or some laughter would rub off on her beloved’s stubborn little brother. Alair, of course, stood firm on his fury. Another glance in Scarlet’s direction, watching the reluctant redhead dance with Amrial, made her reconsider her assumption, and yet for whatever reason, she continued to draw the same conclusion.
“My apologies,” she said, all the same; Roesaleine picked her battles knew better than to pursue such an argument. “I shouldn’t have assumed. I simply saw how you were dancing, earlier… She seemed very despondent, and you came across as so supportive. But that is what you would do for any friend, I suppose, isn’t it? You, with your heart of gold…”
And although she knew better than to take him to heart, the edge to his words still inflicted small nics in the dark-haired woman’s feelings, and at last her bright smile faded. “Does laying eyes upon myself and Amrial truly drive you into such agony?” She asked softly. This was the crux of the reason why Sleep’s elder brother delegated the fragile task of dealing with Alair to Life; he was less likely to lash out at her, with her ever soft and forgiving words… But that never stopped him from trying.
“Alair, I know I’ve said this before… But it’s all right to be angry. I can accept that; so can Amrial.” Without warning, one of her hands slid from his shoulder to gently cup the side of his face, searching the lightning in his eyes for that calm in the storm. “What I wish you could realize is that we are not here to make you hurt. Amrial cares about you, so much; so do I. We go for decades, sometimes a century without seeing you, without knowing if you are well… We worry. And we miss you.”
Her gentle hand with its delicately rounded fingernails trailed from his face to his chest, where it rested just above his beating heart. “You’re hurting; you have been for a long time, and it pains me to realize there is nothing that we can do to make it stop. But anything can heal, Alair, don’t you see? It is but a matter of allowing it to happen, of… letting go of what burdens you.” With a smile that was more melancholy than it was happy, Roesaleine planted a soft kiss on the cheek of her brother-through-relations; not to incite any more fury, but to try and make him realize her words were sincere. “Whether or not you wish to believe it, more than anything, Amrial and I want nothing more for you than to see you truly, genuinely happy…”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Despite his kind words, Amrial could not deny the look of distrust in the fiery young woman’s gaze, and he winced at the sound of his previous words. “That sounds terribly presumptuous, doesn’t it?” he said with a light laugh, shaking his head to himself in mild disgust. “I assure you that’s not what I meant. You’re right, I should have asked your permission. It was rude of me to intrude, and also to assume the two of you were…an item.” The way he spoke the last term carried with it an air of wistfulness, his tone embittered with the same hopeful disappointment found in Roesaleine’s voice as she spoke to his rageful brother. It seemed this strong-willed young woman had not found a place in Sleep’s guarded heart—or at least not the same empty niche that had been torn open like a wound over and over again, a perpetually bleeding void rooted so deep in his little brother’s soul that Amrial feared it would never close.
“Ah,” he said in simple response to her explanation, unable to quiet the laughter that spilled from his lips. His knowing smile, coupled with a brief moment of mirth in his stormy eyes, said that he was not at all surprised by this information; this was precisely the sort of harmless stunt he would expect from his over-the-top sibling, and to see him carrying it out with another person—romantic interest or no—told him that Alair was doing well. “Well, your secret’s safe with me,” he told her, still shaking off his chuckles. “I doubt you are the only ones here without an invitation.”
Scarlet’s sudden change in demeanor, however, gave him cause for concern, and he broke gently away from the young woman with slight alarm. “If I’ve bored you or offended you, I will—” he began, but he stopped suddenly when he looked up to meet the furious azure glare of dark-haired Sleep. The exchanged glance lasted only a second before it was broken, and Amrial tensed, bewildered, as he watched Alair pull away from Roesaleine and storm quickly toward the exit.
He stepped forward in pursuit, but froze when he caught his beloved’s eye. Stay here, she seemed to say, and he obeyed, planting his polished shoes firmly on the polished wood of the dance floor. Instead, Amrial turned back to the redhead, placing a cool hand hesitantly on her shoulder. “I would be glad to see you safely home,” he said quietly, unable to hide the worry from his voice. Remembering her mistrustful look, he added, “It seems Alair neglected to mention me to you, and perhaps I never made myself clear. But I am Amrial—Alair’s elder brother, you know.”
Roesaleine’s smile, however beautiful and charming and well-intended, did little to rock the firm foundation of his ire. You, with your heart of gold… Well, if his heart were truly sculpted from such an element, perhaps it wouldn’t have been so easily shattered—so prone to wrenching pain. The dull ache in his chest intensified exponentially with the dark-haired woman’s words, and he cast his livid gaze to the floor. Gold could be molded and mended, melted down to fill in the cracks of its own imperfections. If he truly possessed such a thing, then surely he would not still shiver from the violently cold drafts whistling through its serpentine cracks; surely he would not have felt so utterly fractured.
For a moment, his resolve against Life softened, perhaps inspired by the tender pressure of her cupped palm against his clean-shaven cheek. Despite his fury, he knew very well that neither of them were really to blame—that neither of them had done anything but offer their condolences and their kindness and their support. But in the wake of such agony, and the bone-chilling anguish of absence and loss, their efforts simply were not good enough. The Sandman inhaled sharply, his torment flaring back to life as fast as it had faltered.
“You accept my anger, you accept my pain…” Sleep’s voice was dark, venomous. He paused, at last looking up to meet Life’s gaze, his blue eyes almost unrecognizable in their toiling umbrage. “It seems like you can accept everything except responsibility. You know exactly what you’ve done, and you know exactly how I feel.” Looking up toward Amrial, who still danced with Scarlet, he tore forcefully away from Roesaleine and headed straight toward the door.
Weaving quickly through the crowd of laughing, oblivious guests, he burst outside with his hands balled into tight fists. The cool evening air caressed his sweat-soaked brow, and he rounded the corner to the street where he paced wildly back and forth, his thoughts racing.
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
And, maybe it wasn’t… But that made her no less guilty for lashing out. Pushing the kinder people away seemed to be becoming a talent, more and more.
“You haven’t offended me.” Scarlet’s words were carried on a sigh, as she looked up from her high heels to the face of the calm and unassuming stranger named Amrial. “I’m sorry, it just hasn’t been the best of nights. I don’t really get along with people well on a good day, and things have just…”
Amrial saw it before she did, and the young woman had to look past the tall man in his dark suit to cast her eyes upon what had startled him so.
The sight if the Sandman, looking fierce in sharp in his well-fitted tuxedo as he left the hotel, stole the breath from her lungs. And in the next moment, her heart plummeted further from her chest cavity while the breath was stolen from her lungs as Scarlet watched the one man—aside from Caspar Brighton—who she thought she might be able to trust, let her out of his sight and walk away completely.
In that moment, ironic as it might have been, Scarlet died a small death as that icy feeling of realizing she was suddenly very much alone engulfed her, spreading through her veins like a poison that froze her in place until Amrial spoke up.
“His… brother?” Her tongue felt heavy, and the unnatural redhead’s lips felt heavier, clumsy. “But that… but he is… what the fuck is going on.”
Amrial’s kind offer to see her safely home fell on deaf ears, and before she knew what she was doing, Scarlet was running for the doors. In the darkness of dusk, illuminated only by the artificial orange light seeping from the windows of the hotel, the Sandman was nowhere to be seen. “I can’t believe… he just…” Her voice was a murmur, directed at no one in particular, but when she turned around again it appeared as though Amrial had followed her. “To hell with all of this; I’m going home.” She grumbled at last, hailing a taxi the first chance she got. And although she didn’t exactly oppose the tall, dark-clad man when he saw fit to climb in after her, she couldn’t help but add, “If he’s really your brother, then maybe I’m not the one you should be worrying about… I’d kill to have someone like a brother give a damn about whether or not I was okay.” Up until now, Caspar had filled that role beautifully…
“Alair…” Roesaleine was quick to realize when something was futile. She could see the anger escalate in Sleep’s electric eyes, knew that this rage went deeper than simple resentment or laying the blame. “You know that Amrial and I accept responsibility; we are both at fault because we only wanted you to be happy, and we tried to outsmart nature… Wait, where are you going!”
Too soon, the irritable Sandman turned on his heel and left, storming out of the hotel quicker than she could blink.
Life knew how her beloved would react, seeing that their little chat had not gone so well, and turned just as Amrial took a step forward. A look exchanged, accompanied by a quick shake of her head, told him to stay where he was. As much as she knew he wanted to help, Death would not be the water that dampened Sleep’s flickering rage; he would be the gun powder that inadvertently set him off.
As quickly as she could, Life pursued her beloved’s little brother, looking this way and that and stopping by streets until she found him pacing. “Alair, please just… oh, don’t you dare…”
But he did dare, for as soon as Alair realized that Roesaleine was in pursuit, he vanished into thin air, calling on his uncanny powers of not-quite-teleportation.
But two could play at that game, for while Sleep was anywhere and everywhere at any given time, so was Death; and so was Life.
Checking to see that sidewalk was clear of curious bystanders, the dark-haired woman followed suit, trailing Sleep’s essence all the way back to a shoddy apartment with old linoleum floors in the kitchen, and compressed carpet in the living room. It was not decorated to Alair’s tastes, that was for certain, and it ignited curiosity: with him was Alair staying, exactly, and under what ruse?
“Alair…” A deflated sigh escaped her lungs when she found the Sandman in the middle of the living room, with a glass of telltale green liquid that was, already, half gone. “Don’t do this… you know you can’t think straight, on that stuff. Please, just talk to me…”
Brave or stupid, Life took Sleep by his free hand and gave it an affectionate squeeze. “Can’t you see? You don’t need to drown yourself in absinthe, sipping away at it all alone… You’ve gotpeople. People who care and who want to help you, even if all it means is being a soundboard while you have to snap at someone…” After a quick inhale, she even dared to add, “Just because you have not found her in this lifetime does not negate everyone else in your life…”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Though Amrial dashed swiftly after the fleeing redhead, he never once appeared to be in a hurry. He wove through the dancing horde with a pleasant expression betraying none of his worry, nodding his acknowledgment to the people who caught his eye in passing. He belonged at that wedding no more than Alair or Scarlet, and yet he seemed to know everyone in attendance—and, on some level, he did. Death was an acquaintance of all eventually, and the familiarity he struck in others was simply a side effect of that inevitable destiny.
Nevertheless, he did not allow himself to be distracted; he sped after the red-haired young woman until at last he caught her on the sidewalk, gripping her elbow firmly enough to let her know he meant what he’d said. “Wait, Scarlet,” he said quietly, his voice somehow managing to be calm and urgent at the same time. He ducked into the cab after her without waiting for a response, looking over to the distraught young woman with expressionless eyes.
“Alair does not need me,” he stated matter-of-factly, his gaze darkening for a moment as his thoughts drifted back to his younger brother. “I think, Scarlet…I think he needs you.” With arched brows, he turned towards the redhead, the seriousness in his face made all the more severe by the flickering shadows cast across his sharp features. “My brother has been through more than you know. More than he will ever let on to anyone.” The pain of unspoken knowledge thickened his words as he spoke. “He is flawed, Scarlet, as are we all. He is that person to you. And the blame lies with me, I’m afraid, for his leaving just now.”
There was a long pause, filled only with the hum of the taxi wheels on the smooth concrete of the freeway. “Has Alair…has he told you much about himself?”
He disappeared as soon as he saw her coming.
The look of concern on her face was too much for him to handle at that moment; the last thing he needed then was a lecture on how much he was cared about, how much he was appreciated by the two people who had run him through in the first place. He tumbled through time and space in a rushed blur, navigating through the haze until he landed on a familiar sofa. The journey had taken less than a millisecond, and yet it felt as though hours had passed since he had stormed from the five-star hotel, leaving everything behind…
…including Scarlet.
Guilt ripped through him with a violent shudder, and before he had made the conscious decision to summon a drink to his hand, he was holding up a glass of absinthe to his lips. The green liquid burned his mouth and throat as it slid past his tongue, and he downed the first glass in one fell breath. He didn’t even look up when he heard Roesaleine’s smooth voice pronounce his name, just stared blankly forward and brought a refilled cup back to his lips.
“That’s the point, Roesaleine,” Sleep hissed, emphasizing her name like a curse. He took another drink in direct disobedience, at last sliding his blue gaze towards her when she lowered herself to the couch at his side. Her touch on his free hand was, perhaps strangely, not unwelcome, but there was no evidence of gratitude in his expression—indeed, his eyes were already gleaming with the beginning effects of his liquid emerald. Its warmth washed over him like an incoming tide, but it did little to soothe the wrath within. “You guys blindsided me and expected that to be okay? Well, here’s a newsflash. It’s not. I’m not.”
He took another large swallow, cringing at its bitter potency and shifting his gaze to the floor. “What do you want me to say?” he asked at last, his flat tone distinctly lacking any expression at all. “There’s no point in rehashing the story. I was just finding some peace, and it’s like you…you and fucking Amrial…waltz in with your shotguns and your daggers and start the war up all over again. And you have the nerve to act surprised when I fire back?”
The Sandman finished his second glass and slammed the empty cup a little too forcefully on the coffee table. He rose to his feet and paced back and forth down the length of the sofa, then paused. “And what now?” he asked, more to himself than to her. He collapsed back onto the cushions, burying his face in his hands. “Now I’ve blown it with Scarlet too. Fucking fantastic timing, you guys. Really fucking great.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
The words from Amrial’s mouth were perhaps the last that she ever expected to hear from the elder brother of Alair, and it earned Death a startled and confused look on behalf of the young woman. “And how the hell can you determine that? You don’t know me, okay? I can guarantee you that if you did, you’d agree that the best thing for your brother would be to stay far away from me. He’s just too busy being a good guy to realize that…” Or so she had thought, until she had watched him walk away, without even a backwards glance at her stricken face.
Scarlet fell silent and stared out the window of the cab, watching the lights of the city pass in blurs and blobs of all colours, casting attractive patterns on otherwise dingy sidewalks. It all felt like too much, too great a dichotomy, what had happened in the few hours they had spent at that wedding reception. Her casual camaraderie with Alair, turned quickly to something else as they danced, that brief moment when he somehow knew she needed support…
And then, just as quickly, he was dancing with another woman. And then he was gone…
“He doesn’t need me.” She refuted bitterly, raking a hand through her crimson locks. “If you ask me, tonight is a pretty fucking clear sign that he doesn’t know what the hell he wants. We’re all flawed, we’ve all got our issues… What makes him so different from anyone else?” Of course, the question sounded as silly voiced aloud as it did in her head, when at last she parsed the words.
“…he’s told me enough about himself. Enough that I know you’re wrong, Amrial; he isn’t that person. He’s just like every other person I have ever been stupid enough to fucking trust.” If it hadn’t been obvious before how much hurt the Sandman’s abrupt departure had wounded the young woman, then it was now, in the bitterness of her voice. “But if he’s the damned Sandman, then what the hell does that make you? Actually, nevermind, I don’t want to know. One paranormal entity in my life is enough.”
When at last the cab pulled up alongside the curb, Scarlet paid the cabbie without even looking twice to see whether or not she’d handed him exact change, and climbed out of the stale-smelling vehicle. “Look, you seem like a nice guy, although apparently I’m no good judge of character,” she said to Amrial without looking at him. “But why don’t you drop this whole him-needing-me and vice versa bullshit—because it obviously isn’t true—and just be a brother to him. Even if he doesn’t like it, he’ll realize how much he appreciates it sooner or…”
The redhead’s words trailed off abruptly when she suddenly turned around, only to come face to face with Alair’s newer dance partner; an attractive woman with dark hair and strange, prismatic eyes…
“Okay, what the fuck.”
Roesaleine had feared that Sleep would be restless (no pun intended), inconsolable. Encounters with the blue-eyed Sandman with his tragic past had never gone well before, not for decades, centuries, eras. Sometimes she felt as though her desire to help, and Amrial’s desire to rebuild bridges, did more harm than good. And now was a perfect example as to the unintentional ill effects that resulted in when she and her beloved attempted to wedge themselves back into his life.
“I’m sorry. We took you by surprise, Alair, and we shouldn’t have.” Life’s voice was soft and apologetic, and she removed her hand from the Sandman’s when she noted how tense he was, sitting next to her. “You seemed to be in such a positive mood, having so much fun… We were being playful, and should have realized it could be taken the wrong way. I won’t ask for your forgiveness, but I hope you can find it in you to accept this apology…”
But it was dark-haired Life’s turn to be completely taken aback when the name of Alair’s redheaded companion rolled off his tongue, accompanied by a cadence of such sorrow… He had turned and stormed out without his companion in tow, and obviously felt guilty, as a result, but there was more to it than that. He cared about that girl, Roesaleine could tell, more than he was letting on and perhaps more than he even knew.
“No. You’re wrong, Alair.” Roesaleine was suddenly on her feet, a hopeful sprint in her step. “You’re wrong—you haven’t blown anything, I promise. What happened was our fault, and we’re going to fix it. Any blame your companion might have, she is more than welcome to redirect our way.”
And without another word, without outstaying her already unwelcome welcome, Life vanished from the apartment and reappeared before her beloved, and the astonished redhead who stood in front of him.
“How the hell did you get here?” Scarlet demanded, dumbfounded by Life’s sudden appearance. “How the hell has this evening gone from sneaking into a wedding reception to dealing with two more people who can fucking teleport?”
“Scarlet… My name is Roesaleine, and I beg that you forgive this intrusion.” Roesaleine said gently, offering a smile that was not returned—something that the dark-haired woman with prismatic eyes was used to. “And I would also ask that any frustration and anger you have right now be directed at myself or Amrial, but not Alair… I fear we’ve made a mess of things.”
Taking her eyes off of Scarlet, Life turned her attention to Death and gave her head a gentle shake. “He won’t hear me out,” she said softly to her beloved, regret swimming in her uncanny eyes. “Perhaps you can try to speak with him, just to see if he responds, but…” She began to look over her shoulder, back at Scarlet, thinking better of the action at the last minute. “…I am not convinced that either of us is the person to whom he needs to speak, right now.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Critical as his words might have been, there was no edge to his voice, no accusation; his stalwart affection for his brother, however unreciprocated the sentiment may have been of late, was obvious in the soft undertone of his statements. When the pulled up to the curb outside a rather plain looking apartment building on the edge of the District, Amrial climbed out after Scarlet, his brow furrowed with concern for the distraught young woman as he followed her toward the door.
He saw his beloved appear behind the redhead just as she turned. Even in the midst of their familial conflict, Roesaleine looked positively radiant—with her dark hair pinned up neatly, her elegant black dress clinging to her slim frame, and her wide, caring eyes seeking his own stormy gaze, he felt a brief interlude of calm within the raging storm. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders when she approached, giving her a grateful squeeze as he pulled her towards his side in a reassuring embrace. “I believe you’re right,” he responded softly, matching her tone. “I’ll talk to him, but really…it’s Scarlet he needs to see, not the man he blames for it all.” He lowered his gaze. “I’ll try not to make it worse.” Pressing a swift kiss to the top of Life’s head, Death took a few tentative steps towards the door before he vanished, leaving his beloved alone with the very woman his brother longed to see.
Alair had not moved since Roesaleine’s departure. He sat on the edge of the worn sofa with his elbows on his knees and his face buried in his hands, a glass half-full of emerald liquid on the coffee table in front of him. If Death had not already been uncertain enough about confronting Sleep, his heart now plummeted when he saw the defeated posture of his broken younger brother. Amrial’s beloved had not been wrong in her assessment of the situation.
Still clad in his expensive tuxedo, Alair looked a regal breed of shattered. He looked up expectantly to Amrial, reaching out to cradle the glass of green liquid in his palms. A long, steady inhale preceded his words. “How noble of you to send Roesaleine to do your dirty work,” said the Sandman icily, glowering at the statuesque Death over the rim of his glass as he took a sip of absinthe.
“That isn’t fair, Alair.” Amrial took an experimental step forward, his hands clasped behind his back. “Can we talk for a moment?”
The Sandman snorted, and when he spoke his tone was a little more poisonous. “You think she didn’t try that too?”
“Put down the drink, Alair,” responded Amrial, a little more sternly this time. “We’re going to hash this out.”
“Oh, we are?” came Sleep’s retort, leaping to his feet with a snarl. His crystal glass fell from his fingers to shatter on the edge of the coffee table, the chime of the cracks sizzling in the air like a sharp bolt of electricity. “And just where do you want to start, Reaper? The fact that you’ve denied me the one thing I’ve ever needed, the one thing I’ve ever lived for?” He took a step towards his brother. “Or maybe you want to talk about why you think it’s okay to barge into my life unannounced after all this time.” He took another step, this one carrying him within arm’s length of the cold figure at the edge of the room. “Or how about we get down to the nitty-gritty of why you and Roesaleine see fit to flaunt exactly what I want but can’t have, right in front of me?”
Amrial had visibly tensed in response to Alair’s approach. “I have been patient with you, Sandman,” Death said frigidly, narrowing his stormy eyes. “You’re angry, you’re resentful, and the last thing you want is my advice. But, Alair, brother…” He paused, struggling to keep the growing irritation from his own voice. “Don’t you see what you have—?”
Alair’s blue eyes flashed fire behind their absinthe-fueled glow. “God damn it, Amrial, have you learned nothing?” he exclaimed, his incredulity laced with rage. “I don’t give a fuck if you and Roesaleine worry about me. I don’t give a fuck if you guys wonder what I’m doing, or if I’m okay, or how I’m getting on—I’m not a fucking child. You think you’re so high and mighty that I’m supposed to feel honored by your sympathy? Well, here, you can have it back, because I don’t want it, and I sure as hell don’t need it—”
“Silence, Alair,” Amrial shouted, his gray eyes as dark and fearsome as a late summer thunderstorm. “If you would stop thinking about yourself for one minute, you might realize who the truly selfish one is between the two of us.”
The Sandman gritted his teeth. “There—”
Amrial’s voice boomed like thunder. “I’m not finished,” he barked, making a point to look downward at his slightly-shorter younger brother. “You accuse me of being self-righteous, and yet you stand here in blatant disregard for what stands right before you. If you had any sense at all, you might look beyond that nose of yours and realize that you’re not the only one here who is wounded.” The embodiment of death looked so intensely into Sleep’s eyes that the younger brother noticeably paled. “And no, Alair,” he continued darkly, his voice hardly more than a murmur, “I do not mean me, and I do not mean Roesaleine, and I do not mean you.”
The ferocity of Death’s voice sent a chill down Alair’s spine despite the heat of the argument, and he took a step backward, his heel crunching on shards of glittering glass. For a moment, confusion settled in loathing’s stead, and he glowered at Death through thick lashes as he formulated his next jab.
But just like that, Amrial was gone, leaving the Sandman in a silence so thin and tense he felt he couldn’t breathe…and it all came crashing back on top of him with the first shaky sigh.
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
But the Sandman was anything but predictable, anything but readable and, whether or not he would admit it, very guarded. But then, so was she, and the both of them had simply become too accustomed to keeping their heart under lock and key to trust so easily.
But his brother’s words had left an impression on her, and the more she tried to stop thinking about it, the louder the words echoed. And what she simply couldn’t understand was why the tall man with chiseled features was so convinced that she and Alair were somehow integral to one another…
“You live here, then?” It took a moment for Scarlet to register that the question had been directed at her, and has passed the lips of the pretty woman with dark hair and astounding eyes. “Oh, it’s not a judgement—I was simply curious as to why this was where Alair decided to disappear… Does he impose on your abode often?”
Roesaleine’s lips turned upward in a teasing grin, hoping to break the icy barrier that the redheaded girl had instantly erected between them. She should have known it would work no better on her than it did on the obstinate Sandman.
“He’s my roommate’s friend. He’s been crashing here a while because Caspar has been… doing other things. Using up all of my shower supplies; I’ll kill him sooner or later.” Scarlet’s feet scuffed the pavement, scraping the already worn-down heels of her second-hand shoes. By the tone of her voice, it was obvious that she was not giving in. “So you’re his brother’s squeeze, I take it? Not like you two make it obvious or anything.”
Though it was tossed out as an insult, Roesaleine found the young woman’s comment almost endearing, simply because it sounded like something that Alair would say. They were alike in more ways than they realized… “Amrial is my beloved, yes. He has been for a very long time.”
“Yeah? How long? Because I hate to think about how much time you’ve wasted.”
Silence settled between the two women, for even tolerant, soft-spoken Roesaleine could not quite swallow such an accusation. When at last the singer found her uncanny voice once again, it was much softer than before, drowned out in part by the evening city noises. “Scarlet, what do you mean?”
“I mean it’s a waste of time; this love shit. Don’t you get that no one is truly committed to you? Not a lover, or a friend, or a relative…” The redhead turned to her dark-haired acquaintance, muted fury tinted with hurt swimming in her blue eyes. “They all stray eventually. And before you know it, you’re alone, wondering what the hell possessed you to ever commit yourself to someone in turn. If you want my advice, Roesaleine, then I’d be wary of who you choose to love and trust.”
Those words hung heavy in the air, and for but a brief moment, Roesaleine’s careful composure was nicked with anger. Scarlet was an angry young woman, one who, she suspected, had been through and seen far more than she let on. Remembering how she had leaned into Alair’s supportive frame back at the wedding reception, going against her own advice for that brief moment of surrender…
It told Roesaleine all she needed to know about the girl’s disposition, and without warning, her hands found Scarlet’s.
“I am sorry that you feel so strongly in that way,” she said, speaking quietly but not without a firm, almost maternal edge. “But you are wrong, Scarlet. We live in a cruel world where, yes, you will be hurt—perhaps repeatedly, by different people. But you cannot paint everyone’s intentions and tendencies with the same brush. You are human… And human beings need one another. And by making excuses for yourself to avoid that, you are only going to hurt yourself. Take a moment and look around you—look at what you have. And who you have.”
Scarlet’s reaction, of course, came as no surprise, surely. Not when she pulled her hands away and took several steps backwards, towards the apartment complex. “You can fuck right off, thanks very much.” She snapped, shoulders tense and nostrils flaring. “Whoever the fuck you and Amrial think you are, I didn’t ask for your advice, and I don’t need it. And if anyone should be up there, telling off Alair, then it should be me.”
Feeling irate and all too raw, too exposed, the fiery redhead stormed towards the doors, just seconds after Amrial materialized on the sidewalk next to Life, just in time to see a flash of crimson locks disappear behind the doors.
“They have more anger than they know how to deal with.” Roesaleine sighed quietly, pinching the bridge of her nose. “And too much hurt to realize the remedy might be standing right in front of them…”
Reaching the top of the stairs, Scarlet burst through her apartment door, unsteady and off balance from breaking one of her heels on the way up. “Alair?” She called, ridding herself of the pinching footwear, regretting doing so the moment she noticed shattering glass on the carpet, before a distraught Sandman with his head in his hands. He looked positively miserable, and on any other occasion, under any other circumstances… She might have saw fit to try and console him.
But this time, anger won out.
“Brother? Why did you neglect to mention that that guy was your fucking brother? Why did you just storm out like that? Alair, what the actual fuck is going on?” Taking a step forward, careful to avoid the shards of glass on her bare feet, Scarlet tried to stand a position where he could not avoid her stormy gaze. “What the fuck possessed you to just bolt? Did that woman say something to you? Why… Why did you just leave me like that?” And on those last words, a shard of hurt slipped into the pool of anger, and she bit the insides of her cheeks to ward off tears.
“You just walked off and left me behind… Am I really that fucking forgettable?”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
He made no move to stop Scarlet as she sped past him and into the building, only shifted his gaze to Roesaleine. He shook his head as he approached his beloved, lowering his gaze in nonverbal admittance of defeat. “Existence has not been kind to either one of them, has it?” he said at last, reaching down to link his fingers through Roesaleine’s. “Do you think he will ever come around?”
The question was rhetorical, and he concluded it with a heavy sigh. The wounds from which Alair suffered were too deep even for time to heal, proven by centuries and eras of avoidance and bitter resentment despite their best efforts to suture the gashes. “My dear, I think it would be best to leave them be for awhile.” He gave her hand a squeeze. “I feel it would be unwise to leave him alone for too long, but for now…” A pause. “For now we have done all we can, I fear.”
Amrial’s departure had more of an effect on the Sandman than he had initially anticipated. He’d spent the entire evening waiting for him to leave, practically begging for him to go away, but what he hadn’t counted on was the rush of cold reality that would stand in Death’s place, haunting the drab flat like a restless ghost. The silence of the apartment closed in as though it, too, had taken his elder brother’s side, and even the city outside the open window had taken upon itself to remain quiet. Alair looked down at the broken glass between his feet, his head spinning as he studied the sparkling shards.
Fueled by the mystical absinthe being absorbed into his bloodstream, his anger began to boil rather than cool as he sat there in the stillness. The sound of angry footsteps in the hall beyond the door alerted him to the approach of a new storm, however, and he leapt to his feet when Scarlet burst into the living room.
“Excuse me if I didn’t have the chance to mention my brother!” shot back Alair at her immediate attack, blue eyes flashing. “Who, by the way, I haven’t seen in…” In what, longer than she had been alive? Longer ago than her great-grandparents’ births? Seething, he balled his fists and turned away from her, his breaths coming in ragged, half-drunk gasps. When he swiveled back to face her, she had cornered him in such a way that he could not dodge her glare. Unintimidated, he stared pointedly right back at her, his lips curled into a furious snarl.
“You couldn’t possibly understand! Or is it just that you don’t want to?” he shot back, realizing as soon as he spoke the words how juvenile they sounded aloud. “Those two…those two have done some shit things to me, Scarlet, and what they can’t seem to do is let me forget it.” Despite how he bristled, a shard of pain had slipped into his voice as well, not unlike his raging redheaded friend. “I shouldn’t have left, but I couldn’t be with them another second. I just…”
Crimson anger rendered him unable to finish his thought, and the sound that escaped his throat was something between an exasperated sigh and a furious growl. “Forget you?" he snapped, regaining his ability to speak. "I've never fucking forgotten you, not since that morning on the roof. But oh, don’t kid yourself, you would have preferred Caspar’s fucking company anyway. What am I but a fucking stand-in, right?”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
"I do not know, my love... I think that, if he does, it will have to be in his own time." Returning his squeeze, Roesaleine shifted her slight body to face Amrial's tall and strong form and taking his other hand. "I believe we simply need to accept that Alair is broken, and no amount of interference will benefit him at this time... Perhaps we must trust him to continue to hurt, and to continue to make mistakes until he finds a safe place to allow himself to heal. Or, finds the right person to dress the wounds..."
Standing on her toes, Life brushed lips with Death, light as a butterfly's wings and yet with all the emotion and force of a raging tropical storm. A warm sensation, like a spark of electricity without the shock and pain, flooded her body and through her limbs at this chemical reaction to the clash of powerful forces that resulted from kissing Death; not frightening, or painful, but something powerful. And when the feeling settled, she felt nothing but content.
"As selfish as it might be," she sighed, prismatic eyes soft and wistful as they searched her beloved's, "knowing what your brother suffers makes me feel grateful all over again that you will never be lost to me..."
Fingers woven through Amrial's, the dark-haired woman cast a glance at the apartment complex one more time and shook her head.
"He will find happiness, you know. It will come in time... And I have a feeling that, should he see past what he has lost, then it could be more within his reach than even he knows."
Knowing that they had done all they could do, Life and Death, hand in hand, left the miserable scene to unfold in Scarlet's apartment without interfering.
The artificial redhead had expected to find her supernatural companion upset; after all, why else would he have left the wedding reception without a word, and so quickly? But for whatever misconstrued reasoning, she had not anticipated walking into her apartment to find him so angry: not at his brother. Not at her. Not with shards of broken glass at his feet, and the distinct smell of absinthe hanging in the humid night air, thick as pollen in the spring, and ten times more destructive.
"Well for someone who's done some unspeakable, terrible things, your brother's pretty fucking good at playing the nice guy." A blush tinted Scarlet's cheeks, colouring her her namesake as subtle fury rolled in her eyes like storm clouds. "I mean, not only was he courteous when he got the message I wasn't up to dancing with a stranger, but he was pretty fucking insistent on seeing me back here safely, when the guy who accompanied me decided to fucking ditch me."
Alair was right; Scarlet didn't understand, couldn't understand the origin of his pain, because she was not privy to the centuries' worth of repeated agony that he had suffered. And because she did not understand (and now was no time to inquire about the details), it was far easier to pretend like she did not care.
That is, until he mentioned Caspar. That was when her bitter resolve crumbled, replaced with a numbing sort of sting. Novacaine straight to the heart that rendered her temporarily stunned, unable to find her tongue.
When she did speak again, her voice felt like iodine on a wound.
"Is that really what you think? You're actually so fucking oblivious that you see yourself as some Caspar stand in?" The accusation infuriated her, and not only because it wasn't true, but for the suspicion that that had been the message she'd been sending all along. "You know, I might have thought for a second that you and Caspar have a lot in common, but now I see that I was wrong. And so are you in thinking that you can even compare."
Pacing the room, Scarlet ran her fingers through her hair and faced the open window, letting the evening breeze cool her hot face and even hotter temper. It worked on the former only… "You're not Caspar's stand in, Alair. Caspar wouldn't have convinced me to crash a wedding reception, only to get all up in himself and ditch me to go and have a fucking tantrum... I didn't think that you would, either, or else I'd never have agreed to go in the first place! You left me alone, Alair! I'm so unforgettable, and yet you left me. Just like almost every other person I've ever been stupid enough to trust..."
Biting down on her lower lip, the fiery redhead turned back to the wild-eyed Sandman, challenging his hurt with her betrayal. "Your brother told me I'd be a fool not to trust you, you know. And I don’t really know what to make of that, because I did trust you, and you fucking let me down!”
In all fairness, perhaps Alair didn’t understand, either. Scarlet had never spoken of her fear of being completely alone, of her ambivalence towards forming bonds and relying on other people. Maybe if he’d known, he wouldn’t have walked away, leaving her forgotten on the dance floor, in the care of a man that he hated… Maybe. But even that, she could not count on.
Posted: Fri Jul 05, 2013 12:06 am
It was certainly enough to stir the normally-buried desire for physicality, but Amrial would never give him the satisfaction. No, his brother was gone; even if he hadn’t been able to sense it, Death had made himself remarkably clear in his abrupt departure that he would not be back anytime soon, leaving in his was the uncertainty of his return. As unpredictable as the Sandman himself could be, he disliked the trait in his brother for that very reason. Amrial was a man of excess, but never in the traditional sense—no, with Death it was always too much patience, too much care, too much concern. And so too was it with Life, his perfect counterpart, his beloved Roesaleine.
Sleep envied Life’s kindness almost as much as he despised it. And if he hadn’t been taken by absinthe and victimized by raw, unadulterated anger, he may have felt a pang of guilt for snapping at the lovely woman who had done nothing but try to put salve on his burns. But now, in the heat of the continued argument, his brother’s beloved partner was far from his conscious mind—right now he had a bone to pick with Scarlet just as sharp as the one she had to pick with him, and it seemed neither of them were going to back down without flashing their claws.
Alair sighed with furious exasperation as the redhead continued, bringing up Amrial as though he had recruited her for the same battle, all sides against the lone Sandman. “My brother said to trust me?” he exclaimed, half in shock and half with rage. “Well, Jesus Christ, Scarlet, maybe you should just go spend your time with him, then! Death’s a great companion, you know. Roesaleine will tell you. So will all the fucking stories. He’s clearly the better choice of the two of us.”
Alair pushed past the redhead, pieces of glass crunching beneath his shoes as he stepped toward the window, the room pitching under the influence of his heady absinthe. “But I’ll tell you, Scarlet,” he went on after a pause, his voice low and venomous, “Amrial won’t be the one holding you when the flood comes again. So let me ask you this, Scarlet.” He inhaled sharply through clenched teeth, his volume increasing as he continued. “Since you were stupid enough to trust me, then what the hell are you doing now? Do you want me to fucking leave, for good this time?” He threw out his arm, gesturing to the door with wide eyes. “Admit it, Scarlet, all you’ve ever wanted me to do was march straight out that fucking door and never come back. Well, you know what? I might’ve stormed out back there at the reception, but who’s walking away now? Who’s walking away from who now?”
A long, tense pause followed his repeated question, and he took several shaky steps along the back of the sofa towards the exit. “You are, Scarlet,” he finally said, voice dark, filling in the answer to his own demand. “You are. I fucked up, okay? This may come as a shock to you, but you’re not the only one who’s fucking miserable, who has so much baggage they can’t even carry it all and might need some fucking help. I may not compare to Cas, Scarlet, but when you finally have the apartment to yourself tonight, maybe you’ll realize which one of us has been by your side of late.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
“Why the fuck are you putting this on your brother? What the hell did he ever do to you, anyway? Because from the way he and his girlfriend spoke of you, it seems like they really fucking careabout you! Shame on them for giving a damn, huh?” Scarlet was angry. She had been angry from the moment Alair had walked away from her, and at this point, she no longer knew why she was angry. Everything that the Sandman said to her, the look in his eyes and his tone of voice, it all just grated on her nerves. And not all of what he said even made sense…
“Amrial won’t be the one holding you when the flood comes again.” What the fuck was that even supposed to mean? And why did it suddenly strike a chord inside of her, like something in a different language that nonetheless sounded familiar? “What flood? You’ve been into your absinthe,” she hissed at last, face twisted in fury. “You don’t even know what you’re fucking talking about anymore, Sandman. Why are we even having this conversation when you’re just going to spout utter bullshit at me? Because I really don’t fucking have the time or patience for your bullshit, Alair!”
But he wouldn’t stop. The words kept coming, veering from putting the spotlight on his uncanny, supernatural brother to shrouding her in blame. And yet, was he entirely wrong…?
Scarlet recalled the first dream she’d ever had of the Sandman, where his presence had put her off so terribly that she had actually attempted to kill him. But that had been very early on, before she had gotten to know him as something beyond some guy who drank coffee on roofs and had the strange ability to teleport. Has she truly been wishing him away all this time, despite the music and laughter and mischief they had engaged in together?
The answer was no. Scarlet liked Alair; she appreciated his friendship, his support, and the last thing she wanted was for him to walk away, just as quickly as Caspar had.
And yet, that was exactly what she knew she was going to make him do… and she couldn’t stop herself.
“Just shut up already!” She yelled, her voice filling the tiny apartment with anger and venom, practically colouring the air the colour of her namesake. “I never walked away; I’d have kept fucking dancing with you, all night long, with or without Caspar there. With or without Marissa, but you left! I finally let go, long enough to crawl out of my skin and have some fun and try to feel like some semblance of a human being, but that was too much to ask for, because you just had to break the spell and fucking leave!”
When or where she’d picked up the hardcover book in her hand, Scarlet wasn’t sure. At some point during her angry journey around the living room, she had seen fit to pick something up, to grip it in her white-knuckled fist, to… what? Hold it?
If that were the case, then she didn’t want to hold it anymore. She wanted to throw it—and she did.
The object sailed through the air, past Alair’s head, and hit the wall… but not before bouncing off of the Sandman’s guitar, that had been left leaning against the outside of her bedroom door from the other night when he had played her to sleep. Not before it snapped two strings with an audible ping, and sent the wooden instrument crashing to the floor.
Momentarily, it appeared that neither of them dared to draw breath. Scarlet’s heart hammered in her chest, staring at the damaged instrument, the object that Alair carried with him, closer than a lover, and immediately the guilt began to flood her veins. But she didn’t want to feel guilty, not now, when she still had anger in which to stew.
“Go; do whatever the fuck you want, Alair.” She muttered, stalking towards her bedroom door. “I never asked you to stay.”
That was the last thing she said to wounded Sleep before slamming her bedroom door behind her, not expecting to see him again when she next saw fit to open it again.
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
His expression was frigid. He turned away from the young woman, fighting a torrent of icy wrath that threatened to shatter the tight container into which he tried to force his anguish. “If you knew five words of the fucking story, you’d realize why I’ve been into the absinthe,” he retorted, his voice hardly a murmur. When he turned back to face her, his face was utterly expressionless, as though he had crossed a line over which he was no longer capable of feeling anything. Pushed there by the effects of the very beverage he professed to need, the room began to spin. “You know as well as I do that it’s not bullshit. You know, don’t you Scarlet? You feel it. That cold water, the freezing rain. You don’t get it, but you feel it, I can fucking tell. If that’s what you want to call bullshit, then I guess I’m not the person to help you. Maybe you should call fucking Caspar.”
Her shout for him to be quiet, however, came too late—he was already silent, seething, having decided not to utter one more word to the ungrateful redhead whose limited courtesy extended only to herself. When he noticed her pick something up from behind the armchair, however, the Sandman was vaulted back to his second encounter with the fiery redhead and her attempt to kill him in her dream. He watched the book in her hand as though it were a loaded gun, preparing himself to dodge from the path of its hurtled bound block should she choose to launch it in his direction. She was unpredictable on the best of days, but now on top of that was unadulterated anger—a combination that did not bode well for the subject of her ire, whatever that may be. When her grasp sought heavy devices through the blind haze of fury, there was no doubt in his mind that something was bound to break, be it flesh or bone or material objects.
In this particular case, the target, however accidental it may have been, was worse than any bullseye painted on skin or limb. He watched the dense hardcover fly across the room as if in slow motion, tumbling through the air in a perfect arc towards the neck of his exposed guitar. Had his reflexes not been impaired by the absinthe running its rampant course through his system, he might’ve been able to stop it—to teleport into its path and knock it from its deadly trajectory with a quick swipe of his hand. But he was helpless, frozen—locked in place.
A strangled curse escaped him as he watched the spine collide violently with the delicate wood of the instrument. It slid from its upright position against the wall to crash to the floor, vibrating in a cacophonous explosion of painful, resounding dissonance. The top two strings snapped instantaneously upon impact, curling into wild, twisting spirals as the tension keeping them in place disappeared in a nanosecond.
A strange, sweeping calm seized him then. The living room dropped away, and he was surrounded by the overwhelming, mournful cry of the wounded guitar, isolated from everything else in light of this particularly disastrous event. For several moments he did not move, did not speak, did not break his gaze away from the instrument across the room. When at last he summoned the strength and composure to act without retaliating in a way he would certainly regret, his face was a blank slate—assisted by the absinthe, he had withdrawn so far within himself that he could hardly feel his physical body anymore.
One frighteningly blank (but decidedly hurt) glance to Scarlet was all he could spare before he turned his back to the wreckage—and vanished from the apartment.
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
For the past five years, she had always been lulled into security by sounds: Caspar’s voice, his guitar playing, even his quiet snoring from the other room. Dishes in the sink, some bad movie on the old CRT television in the living room… something, anything that indicated the presence of another human being. Anything that negated the possibility that she was alone.
But now, for the first time since she could remember, the chemically altered redhead was very alone. The only sounds from the tiny apartment spawned from her footsteps in her bedroom, her breathing, the creak of the window as she hauled it open to allow the air to hit her face like a slap.
Alair was gone.
She could feel it, that lack of presence; because she had finally driven him away. The guilt that seeped through her limbs, recalling the look on his face, in his electric blue eyes as he’d observed the dented wood and broken strings… It cut like a knife, straight through her heart. And for all her anger towards his leaving her at the wedding reception, only to return to her home and indulge in absinthe, she wished she could rewind the night by just an hour. She wished she had the ability to temper her anger, the was that Caspar did, so that she could have sat down and talked with Alair as opposed to unleashing that deluge of anger that had ended up damaging what was possibly his most precious possession.
But instead, she had hurt him. She had driven him away, and there was no telling when or if she would ever see him again.
Needless to say, the Aries’ did not require the harsh chemicals of her energy drinks to keep her awake at night. Guilt and the lingering burn of anger, along with the sting of hurt, served as formidable stimulants, and for hours she found herself staring out her window at the stars, trying to see the destinies that remained hidden to her: Caspar’s and, interestingly, Alair’s. It was as though everyone she cared about was suddenly a closed book to her, off limits for one reason or another. And she might have given up hope completely if, around six-thirty in the morning, she hadn’t come across the broken guitar, lying exactly where it had fallen.
A light blossomed in her damaged heart. If his guitar was still here, then the Sandman would return for it. Riding on that small high of faith, Scarlet went so far as to take out her phone and sent a text message to the man she had, only hours ago, ruthlessly hurt:
Can we talk?
A simple and vague request, but she couldn’t possibly convey any sincere apology through text messaging alone, not where there was too much to say and to sort out between them. Everything that Alair had said the night before rang true; she had been turning to him, over the past few days, as a pillar of support. Not unlike what she had done with Caspar, prior to his prolonged hiatus, but… he wasn’t a stand in. Not a substitute, not a replacement. Alair was something else to her, and although she did not know what, she couldn’t bear the thought of letting him go, pushing him away before she had it figured out.
Scarlet could not glean exactly what she expected to happen, when her phone confirmed that the message had been successfully sent. Nor the second or third time she requested his presence, as the sun rose higher and brighter in the sky. Finally, what was possibly the stupidest idea she had ever had occurred to her troubled mind, and before she knew what she was doing, the redhead was searching the recipe books tucked away in the corner of the counter. Breakfast and coffee, for two weeks… That had been their bargain, hadn’t it? Would the Sandman really pass down the chance to sit down to a breakfast she had managed to prepare without help or supervision?
It must have been a miracle that, in the end, she pulled it off. The recipe for French toast was simple enough to follow, but given her ineptitude for anything culinary, paired with the fact that she found herself feeling very off that morning (something that she attributed to another night without sleep), the fact that the slices turned out edible and attractive was probably her biggest cooking accomplishment to date. If Alair were there, and sound in mind, he’d probably be proud of her.
But he wasn’t there. And he didn’t show up, even after she set the table for two and cleaned her mess on the hot stove, suffering the rising heat as she already felt curiously overheated without its help.
The young woman’s heart sank as she stared at her commendable handiwork, without a single soul to appreciate it, and her own appetite began to evaporate like the water she’d splashed on her hot skin.
Until the latch on the front door released, and someone stepped in.
Hope flooding her exhausted body, Scarlet hurried towards the door with the most relieved of tired smiles. “Hey, I didn’t know if I’d see you…” But it wasn’t Alair’s intense blue eyes that greeted her, but rather the warm smile of her roommate. And at that moment, surprise duked it out with disappointment, something that she hoped did not show on her face. “Cas.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
“Red!” he said cheerfully, his eyes as bright and friendly as ever. He reached up to wipe the beading sweat from his brow with his forearm. “Smells great in here, Scarlet. What’d you make?” He planted his hands on his hips, catching his breath before the sweet aroma of cinnamon lured him into the kitchen. The warmer temperature indicated that she had, indeed, been partaking in some kind of culinary experiment—for he knew all too well that anything having to do with food preparation was a bit of an adventure for his spunky roommate—but much to his delight he was not greeted with any sort of disaster beyond the threshold.
“Alair must be rubbing off on you, Red,” he declared good-naturedly, his mouth watering as he looked over the two plates of attractively-presented French toast sitting on their small dining table. “How’d you know I was coming?” The musician reached up to ruffle her hair, then waved his hand theatrically in front of her eyes. “Caspar to Red, Caspar to Red. What’s up with you? Are you feeling okay?”
The willowy performer slid into his usual chair, the one his strange, dark-haired friend had occupied only the previous day, and waited for Scarlet to take her seat opposite him before he sliced into the spiced bread. “This is really good,” he said, his mouth filled with a decidedly too large, Alair-sized bite. A few more bites and his serving was nearly gone, and it was only then that he paused long enough to notice that his normally rambunctious roommate was behaving a lot less fiery than usual. “You don’t look like you feel very good,” he commented with a sympathetic wince, his warm compassion at last overpowering his previous hunger pangs. He wrinkled his brow, reaching out with his long arm to pat her forearm. “You okay, Red?”
He rose to his feet and placed their plates in the sink, surprised to find it empty of any other dirty dishes. “Why don’t you go lay down?” he suggested, turning on the faucet to rinse away the sticky remaining syrup. “I’ll bring you some coffee. Just let me call Marissa real quick to let her know I'll be a little late.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
The lanky musician was not an unwelcome sight to the redhead’s tired eyes. His smile was infectious, and he coaxed a smile to her own face, despite that it contrasted with the disappointment she felt deep down.
“Hey. What can I say; I know you too well.” Came Scarlet’s reply when he asked how she’d known he’d come home. In truth, she hadn’t known at all, and hadn’t expected him to be the one to walk through the door just then, to sit down at the table and to eat the French toast that she had painstakingly taken most of the morning to put together without destroying the kitchen.
And on any other day, any other occasion, she would have felt inclined to throw her arms around him. He’d come back to her! Her Cas, with his smile an enthusiasm, was home. He was back, talking to her, appreciating her hard work, making her feel like she was worth something once again.
Except that he wasn’t quite the same Caspar from a week ago. That happiness stemmed from another source, one with a pretty face and sleek brown hair, who had assisted him at the wedding the other night. Caspar Brighton was here, and yet he wasn’t here at all. His mind and heart remained with that girl named Marissa.
“Hey, I can follow a simple recipe, you know,” she scoffed, completely brushing off any mention of Alair. Caspar was here; she didn’t need to think about the Sandman. She didn’t want to. “Glad you like it, though. I figured some good food would lure you back…”
The young woman sat down across from him as he indulged in the rich, sweet breakfast garnished with cinnamon and icing sugar, and it struck her as odd that his obvious delight did not warm her like it used to. Having him home, seeing that smile, hearing that voice… Why didn’t it make her feel better? Why couldn’t she, for just a moment, pretend that he was happy to see her, instead of basking in the aftermath of being with Marissa?
Scarlet didn’t touch the food on her own plate for lack of an appetite, something to which her roommate was apparently oblivious when he picked up the dishes to take them to the sink.
“I’m fine, honestly; I just haven’t been sleeping well,” she assured him—only half a lie, although she wasn’t convinced the crawliness of her skin and her aching muscles weren’t just a side effect of a sleep-starved body. Maybe another energy drink will kick it out of my system… “Don’t stall any plans with Marissa on my account. I can make my own coffee…”
The words that left her mouth sounded foreign in her ears: had she actually just told Caspar that it was okay to leave her alone? At a time when she felt so desperate not to be? Her leaden heart sank further in her chest when Caspar put up an argument, and she was forced to carry on with her claim that she was all right.
“I don’t feel right leaving you alone, Red. Not when you’re prone to such wicked fevers.” The musician cast a glance over his shoulder from the sink, that post-Marissa smile he’d worn replaced with a frown of genuine concern. “Remember that time you almost fainted, just standing up from the couch? What if I hadn’t been there? You could’ve hit your head on the corner of the coffee table or something.”
“Alair will be here later.” The excuse was out of her mouth before Caspar even had a chance to finish; it was a lie, as far as she knew. But Cas would never leave if he thought she’d be stuck alone in that apartment while not feeling the best… And she didn’t want him taking care of her. Not when Marissa would be on his mind the entire time. “Don’t worry about it. If something happens, he’ll be there… he’s a good guy.”
Caspar grinned, drying his hands as he turned away from the sink. “You got that right. Would you hit me if I said you two look kind of cute together?”
Whatever Scarlet’s baffled reply might have been, it was cut off by a knock at the door, followed by another entrance. “Cas, what’s taking so long? It’s hot in that car; we’ve got to go pick up your cheque from that gig before… Oh, hey there!” The pretty, slender form of Marissa Engelbrecht graced the ruddy apartment, all long legs and long hair and a smile that made Scarlet want to slap her. “I’m Marissa—you must be Cas’ roommate… Scarlet, right? It’s great to finally meet you.”
“I… yeah.” The redhead dug her fingernails into the back of her neck, her only coping mechanism to temper the bitter jealousy he felt for her roommate’s squeeze. “Good to meet you, too.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
When the lanky performer’s path crossed Scarlet’s for the first time, he had been an up-and-coming local prodigy, a guitarist continually in search of validation from a public whose tastes changed almost as quickly as the DC summer weather. In his current state, five years later, Caspar Brighton was a lot of things, but he was not desperate—yet in those early days, when he’d used his uncanny preternatural abilities to save the skin of his future roommate, he had been. He’d craved approval so keenly that it had nearly driven him mad, inspiring all the wrong kinds of determination for a youth struggling to find his place in a cutthroat city scene.
Whether or not it had been her intention, Scarlet had navigated the cracks in the embarrassingly faulty logic of his juvenile hubris and widened them to a breaking point. Snapping off the hastily-glued pieces he’d used for years to cover his natural character, the fiery young woman had exposed the parts of him that, essentially, made contemporary Caspar who he was today. He could be himself around her. He could depend on her. She was the steady presence in his life that allowed his grappling confidence a solid hand-hold to support the budding weight of his emerging celebrity. As tough and independent as she was supportive and loyal, he had met his ideal partner-in-crime—the stalwart stubbornness to his forgiving charm, the protective, unabashed thorns to the delicate rose petals of his demeanor.
Until he met Marissa that fateful night at Jimmy’s, Caspar thought he’d had it all. And he still did, that much was true. Scarlet’s role in his life had not changed, but the play in which they performed had shifted drastically in ways he’d never thought possible. Where a part of him was always upholding that stage persona, he found he could lower his guard even further in the presence of his new brunette friend. With Scarlet, he felt he had to maintain a certain standard; for all she leaned on him, for all they had weathered as an unbreakable team, a part of him would always be afraid to let her down. That pressure was simply not there with Marissa Engelbrecht, who had entered his world too recently to have seen the debris left over from the storms of his past.
It was exhilarating in a way he had never anticipated. The freedom was intoxicating; they shared similar attitudes and sentiments, similar life philosophies, similar feelings about love and loss and the meaning of existence—topics he’d never dared breach with his red-haired roommate. He was swept in a current as strong as his ambition, as thrillingly turbulent as the music to which he’d dedicated his young life—and he almost didn’t want to keep his head above the water.
Cas brought Scarlet a mug of coffee that was likely too cool by now for her taste, and he winced apologetically as he placed it on the living room table. “It’s okay, Red,” he told her kindly, his tone so thick with concern it would have been difficult to doubt where his heart lied. But as soon as the knock came to the door, as soon as the mellifluous voice of his new acquaintance, his eyes brightened with something more akin to happy nervousness than simple excitement.
“Hey, ’Riss,” greeted the musician, his lithe form practically floating to the slender brunette in the entryway. He wrapped his arm around Marissa’s shoulder and beamed at Scarlet, his chest swelling with what could only be described as pure happiness as his two beloved worlds at last met.
“Hi.” She turned her head, planting a light kiss on Caspar’s cheek before pulling from his embrace, stepping up to Scarlet with an eager, pretty smile. “Cas has told me so much about you,” she exclaimed, nodding as though to hit the point home. She ran her fingers through her long sleek hair; for a moment, she looked almost nervous to be meeting the young woman Cas had prattled on about so affectionately. But the expression was soon masked by what appeared to be bona fide joy, a kind of unbridled lightheartedness that was especially rare these days. “We’ll have to hang out sometime, yeah?” she said. “This guy thinks the world of you. I guess I should find out what I’m up against!” She winked playfully, clearly teasing, and turned back towards the musician. “Hon, I’m double parked. We better take off.”
"Scarlet's not feeling the greatest, are you, Red?" he replied anxiously. Caspar looked to Scarlet, concern written across his face as clearly as though he’d had the word tattooed across his furrowed brow. “Call me, yeah? If you need anything?” he said, obviously hesitant to leave her alone. “You’re stubborn, Red, but I’m serious. I won’t be far.” He glanced down to his phone, where a message from Alair blinked on the screen.
Marissa seemed to channel his concern. “Yeah,” she chimed in, managing to sound simultaneously worried and cheerful. “Whatever you need, we’ll be on it. Are you sure you don’t want us to stay?”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
There was nothing unpleasant about Marissa Engelbrecht, and that was exactly why Scarlet despised her. Because she could see why this woman had stolen the heart of Caspar Brighton: her pretty, lilting voice, pretty face and pretty hair. That mutual ability to attune herself to the feelings of others, and the way her feelings mirrored Caspar’s as if they were two sides of the same fucking coin.
And neither she nor Caspar could ever understand just how much it hurt to see them together, hip to hip. Marissa as Caspar’s bright future, and she as his soon to be forgotten past…
“He’s talked about me, huh? All good things, I hope.” Scarlet forced her tight lips to form a smile. “Um… yeah. We can totally hang out sometime, if Cas can detach from your hip long enough.” She playfully stuck out her tongue at her now elusive roommate, who blushed a tad at the comment, perhaps realizing for the just how obvious his absence had been.
Although as much as she hated to admit it, Caspar’s absence was the much preferred scenario, placed against the alternative of have both him and Marissa infecting the apartment with their affectionate chemistry. It was bad enough that Scarlet knew it was there; she didn’t want to have to see it, not when she was already feeling like shit on so many levels. “I’ll be fine—go on, they’re insane about giving parking tickets around here.”
“Okay, okay, we’ll go. But get yourself to bed, okay?” Cas requested in that gentle, concerned tone of voice that wormed its way into hearts. “You look paler by the minute… Please call if things get bad. I’ll have my phone on.”
Tossing one more smile in his roommate’s direction, Caspar followed Marissa out the door, closing it so quietly behind him that Scarlet hardly heard the latch click.
For several hours following, the young woman didn’t move from the couch in the living room, staring down at her phone. Waiting for Alair to finally reply to her texts. Waiting for Caspar to call, put his foot down and tell her he was coming home whether she wanted him to or not. And, all the while, contemplating picking up the mobile device and calling her absentee roommate, knowing that this time, he’d pick up his phone.
Cas, you were right. I’m not feeling that great… I don’t really want to be alone. Over and over, she parsed through possible things to tell him, possible excuses that wouldn’t sound quite so pathetic. I’ve really missed you, it’s hard not having you around. I know you’re having a blast with Marissa, but Cas, I feel like I’m losing you… And I think you’re all I’ve got, now.
Of course, in the end, she didn’t dial his number or send him a text. When at last she did pick up her phone, Erika was the recipient of the call.
“Scarlet? What’s up?”
“Hey, Rikki. Could you do a reading?”
“Uh, sure. It’s what I do. For who?”
“For me.”
“What? You fuckin’ pranking me, woman?”
“No. Look, stuff has been happening, and my life… I feel like my life is starting to fall apart.” There was a catch in her voice, possibly from tears that threatened, but Scarlet convinced herself it resulted from the sore throat she’d developed over the past hour. “You know me well enough, you don’t need me there. Just as a favor… humor me.”
“Whatever you say, missy. Little busy today, but I’ll call you when I get around to it.”
And that was the last that Scarlet spoke to anyone for the remainder of the day. Her body grew increasingly sorer, her skin hotter, and her head foggier, quashing her plans to get out and try to forget the chaos and heartache of the night before. She cleaned and tidied and even examined the damage she’d done to Alair’s guitar, resolving to get it fixed for him on the morrow; even if it didn’t bring him back permanently, it would clear her conscience, perhaps enough to forget about him…
But Alair was about as easy to forget as Caspar; in other words, the man was unforgettable. That evening as she lay in bed, staring at her temperature of 100.1 on the thermometer, she wondered if she’d perhaps done the right thing, pushing both of the most important people in her life away. Caspar was free to find happiness with Marissa; Alair was free to… well, do whatever it was a Sandman did. Perhaps meet someone more deserving of his friendship.
Those were the thoughts on her mind as the energy drinks once again failed her, around four in the morning, and she drifted off…
“I know you can hear me!” Scarlet shouted at a psychedelic sky as the ground shifted beneath her feet. While her dreams were dangerous on a good day, the influence of a raging fever twisted them so mercilessly that there wasn’t even the pretense of a calm lake, or beautiful white fields. It was all terror and peril, and the young woman seemed to embrace it all.
“I don’t know where you are, but I know you can hear me—and I don’t regret what I said to you, understand?”
Her words were for Alair. She could not see the Sandman, was completely oblivious to his presence, but she knew he was there; she could feel him there, and he needed to hear that.
“It’s about time you got a glimpse of what I’m really like. I push people away—because I’m scared they’re going to hurt me, or because I know I don’t deserve them. But regardless, it always ends the same way, and it’s my own fault I’m alone.”
The terrain beneath her feet hardened and cracked like rock, coupled with pellets of ice and scaling hot drops of rain plummeting from the sky, cutting and burning her skin. It all very nearly upset the young woman’s balance, but she managed to stand strong. “I’m finally doing the right thing. Today, I let Caspar go; I wanted him to stay, and I know he would’ve come back if I’d called, but he didn’t. I set him free, and I’m setting you free, as well. Don’t return to me, Alair; there is no bright like of hope for my future, and I won’t drag you down with me. Maybe it’s time I faced it all alone. And time for you to find a dance partner who won’t trip over her feet.”
The soil-turned-rock suddenly cracked beneath her feet, separating the ground into pieces like a jigsaw puzzle. It won’t be long now…
“I need to tell you this because I care. Because I brought Caspar down, and I won’t do the same to you. So stay away… please, don’t let me hurt you. Caspar didn’t find happiness with me… you won’t, either. You need to just… just let me go.”
That was when the ground suddenly fell away from Scarlet’s feet, and the young woman felt herself fall, until something caught her arm.
Or, rather, someone.
“Cas…” She breathed, seeing the lanky musician crouch on the cliffside, gripping her elbow with both hands. “Why are you here? How can you be…” But he wasn’t really there—just like he hadn’t really ‘been there’ in her apartment. Even now, where her life was supposedly threatened, he was looking over his shoulder. For someone else… at someone else.
“I can’t just let you fall,” he said at last, barely paying her a glance. I can’t just let you fall… Not, I ‘won’t’ let you fall or I don’t want to let you go. Even now, he was acting like she was just another responsibility, while his true desire lay elsewhere…
“…yes you can, Caspar.” She whispered, finally letting fall the tears that had been building behind her eyes. “You already have…”
With her other arm, Scarlet let go of her roommate, watching the world disappear as she fell, and knowing that with both he and Alair set free of her, she was finally falling alone…
Scarlet awoke with a gasp, to a world of dizziness and heat so uncomfortable that it was hard to breathe, engulfed in a fever that made her tank top and shorts stick to her skin. But the heat went beyond just a fever, as her body was cushioned by more than her old mattress… “I thought I told you to go…” The redhead murmured, hoarse and quiet. To whom she was speaking, either Caspar or Alair, she had no idea, her mind still spinning in the dregs of that terrifying nightmare. Either way, the comment still held.
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
He felt naked in its absence. Without the familiar pressure of its poorly-adjusted strap on his shoulder, without the comforting weight of its body on his back, without the freedom of his fingers to traverse its noble frets whenever the notion struck him, he felt as though a piece of his soul was missing. Where his human acquaintances had largely come and gone throughout the ages, his guitar was his steadfast friend—an ever-enduring companion that could make him remember and forget in the same progression of carefully-considered chords. It had the magic to reassure his worries and raise his spirits, and so too could it destroy him. The power dwelled in its old scuffed wood and lovingly-tuned strings, but the choice was forever his own—an extension of his preternatural psyche that was as much an exercise in control as it was indecision.
When he departed that District of Columbia apartment, his heart had felt as though it had been encased in ice. So startled was he by the assault on his guitar that he hardly dared allow himself to feel anything; it was too significant a blow, too personal an attack, however accidental it had been, and he had not trusted himself to remain there a moment longer. But as much as he wanted to blame the entirety of his discomfort (and lingering ire) on the incident with the unprotected stringed instrument, the truth was that his guitar’s injury was only a small fraction of his summed vexation.
The truth was that he’d sworn to himself he would think no more of the redheaded Scarlet—and yet she was precisely who haunted his consciousness, relentless and burning. And the more he thought of her, the longer his anger prevailed—and the more potent his guilt became. He was caught in a strange state of cognitive contradiction, tugging him this way and that until he feared his mind would be ripped in two at the merciless hand of his struggling designs. He wanted to hate her, to loathe her for the things she’d said on top of the things she’d done, for her selfish ingratitude and continuous mistrust, for her hasty outrage and her infuriating, judgmental nature.
But the more he tried to despise her, the more he realized he was setting forth on an impossible journey—and the slope was only steepening beneath his feet. As much as he wanted to detest those qualities, he knew beyond any shadow of doubt that he was a possessor of precisely the same flaws, and a multitude of worse ones at that. As loathe as he was to loan his brother’s beloved any sense of being right, Roesaleine’s initial innocent assessment had been accurate—they were fiery mirrors of one another, fierce independents who would never admit to their mutual dependency on the other. Like Caspar and Marissa were carved from the same material, so too were Alair and Scarlet cut from the same floes—only their makeup was more lava than fluff, and a thousand times more formidable in its fundamental instability.
And what made matters worse was that he couldn’t stop replaying her words in his head. Over and over they reverberated, with the same ferocious tone he’d interpreted then to mean that she wanted him to go. You just walked off and left me behind. Am I really that fucking forgettable? He stiffened, but this time it was with regret rather than anger. He had been a fool, he knew; he’d even admitted it to her in the closest semblance to an apology he’d been in the mindset to give. But it wasn’t enough, and he knew it. She’d known it, and she’d pressed the issue until it was sore enough to shoot stinging tendrils of pain through the core of his being. The redhead, despite all his excuses, all his self-justifications and memory-drunk rationalizations, had been right all along, and he’d behaved little better than a shrieking child refusing to admit he was in the wrong.
Despite his guilt, however, and despite how badly he missed the presence of his guitar, the last thing he wanted to do was return to that apartment to retrieve what he’d left behind. Because if he thought about it hard enough, beyond the haze of his persisting frustration, he knew that it was not the instrument he was going back for, nor was it for his own retribution or solace.
It was Scarlet.
_______________
When he materialized in the apartment whence he’d departed so furiously, it was nearly sunrise. The glow of the infant day had begun to gather on the eastern horizon, visible just beyond the toothy stretch of the city skyline. Alair took a step forward tentatively, listening through the terse silence of the early morning aftermath for any sign of life. The living room was empty save for the familiar furniture, however, and along the opposite wall near the bedroom doors he could make out the dark outline of his toppled guitar.
For a moment, he considered taking it and leaving without a word, without a sound. But through the cracked bedroom door Alair could hear the labored breathing of the young woman, and he recognized its rhythm—the pattern of inhales and exhales, though decidedly congested, was the same he knew from her nightmares. Reaching down slowly, he brushed his fingers against the curve of his wounded guitar, his mind far away from the abandoned instrument—far away even from reality, from consciousness. For he was in Scarlet’s dream once again, imposing himself into her surreal world this time without invitation.
He was a passive observer now, existing in all corners of her terrifying realm at once. And terrifying it was, this time addled with fever and distorted by residual frustration; this time it didn’t even pretend to be innocent. Ice and fire fell simultaneously from a sky that resembled nothing like earth’s cloudy heavens, simply existing as a lightless void that threatened to consume the cracked, unstable ground beneath the redhead-turned-brunette’s bare feet.
He could hardly hear her cried words over the roar of the shattering soil, but he knew what she was saying—the meaning of her desperate syllables rocked him to the very core he occupied in order to witness the apocalypse of her dream, shaking his essence as violently as the black dirt quaked beneath her. Even the presence of Cas did little to quell her fury and her agony, and for a moment Alair could feel the heart-wrenching sting of betrayal as her musical roommate looked back over his shoulder when he should have been looking into her eyes. Caspar didn’t find happiness with me…you won’t, either. The echoes of her sentiment coaxed more boiling water from the nonexistent sky.
I’m finally doing the right thing…
In the physical world, Alair felt his fingertips start to tremble, and he retracted his hand from the waist of his guitar. He softly pushed through the door to her room, striding over to her bed with careful, quiet strides. Her feet were tangled in a knot of blankets at the foot of the mattress, and a thin sheen of sweat glistened across her brow. Despite the heaviness of his heart, he felt it leap into his throat when he saw the expression written upon her slumbering face—the twisted, tortured grimace of a woman trapped by the sick musings of her own subconscious.
You already have let me go…
With his mind still occupying Scarlet’s nightmare, he lowered himself to the edge of the bed and slid toward the center of the mattress with one leg folded beneath him. Deftly, he slipped an arm behind her neck, lifting her towards him until her sleeping head rested upon his upper chest. Slipping that same arm to her upper back, he supported her by gripping her shoulder and wrapping his opposite arm around her middle.
It’s about time you got a glimpse of what I’m really like…
He held her tightly, protectively; within his embrace held all the emotion he’d been to afraid to show the previous night, all the feelings he’d disguised with rage and anger. His arms were an apology, a plea for forgiveness—but most of all they were there for her to lean on, to let her know that despite the cry of her dream—it’s my own fault I’m alone—she couldn’t have been more wrong in her evaluation.
She wasn’t alone.
He sensed it as she broke back into consciousness, waking from the horrors of her nightmare to greet a haze of feverish confusion. Responding to her hoarse voice by holding her tighter still, he rocked her gently back and forth in acknowledgement before he spoke. “Shut up, alpha,” he whispered intensely, almost sorrowfully, lowering his head to rest his cheek on her damp red hair. It was several minutes before he spoke again, and when he did, it was with slightly more conviction. “Hey, will you be okay for a second?” he murmured, pausing. “I’m going to go get you some aspirin.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
The curtains pulled across her window barred the orange and pink hues of sunrise, maintaining the inky blackness of her bedroom. That, paired with the blurry haze of a fever, significantly impaired the redhead’s vision on waking, and even if she could see, the face of whoever held her was behind her shoulder, and she hurt far too much to attempt to turn her head.
It was the nickname that gave it away. She was Scarlet to strangers and acquaintance; Red, to Caspar and a couple others in cahoots with the musician. But there was only one person who called her Alpha…
“Alair…?” Her voice cracked and she cleared her throat, closing her eyes against the dizzy haze of her high fever and giving into the gentle sensation of being rocked slowly. There was not fight in her virus-ridden body, but even if there had been, she wasn’t going to fight against this: Alair had come back. After a day of convincing herself that she might not see him again (and, furthermore, that it might be for the best), here he was at a time when she needed someone most. Just like Cas used to be, but…
No. She wouldn’t compare him to Caspar, because Alair wasn’t much like him at all. Where Cas was all smiles and positive attitude, Alair said it like it was, whether or not it hurt. He could be childish at times, but not so much that he didn’t realize when a situation required a more adult solution. And he could say hurtful things, yet of late, he had been the Band-Aid on her wounds, and she had never even asked him to be…
Alair wasn’t Caspar’s substitute. All of these years, Cas had been there for her, but only because deep in his heart of gold, on some level, he had felt obligated. But nothing was making Alair stay right now: no sense of responsibility was forcing him to hold her like she mattered. And that was where he and her roommate differed.
Despite the pounding in her head, the aching of her limbs and the elevated temperature of her body paired with the lingering terror of that nightmare, Scarlet could have fallen asleep again in the Sandman’s arms, coaxed by exhaustion alone. But suddenly he was speaking again, pulling her gently from merciless sleep’s hands, and she honestly couldn’t say she was ungrateful. “Huh…? Oh, yeah…” Clearing her throat, the fever-wracked young woman managed to nod her head, shifting her body back to her mattress to grant him mobility. “I’ll be fine…” It wasn’t like she would be going anywhere, after all.
As Alair sifted through the medicine cabinet to find aspirin, Scarlet used the hem of her shirt to dab perspiration from her face, and popped the thermometer from her nightstand back into her mouth. A minute later, it beeped with a blinking 100.9. Fuck… and it still hasn’t broken? Had she been in her right mind, she would have popped a couple of aspirin prior to going to bed to prevent another one of her wicked fevers, as Cas often referred to him.
“Thanks…” Scarlet gratefully took the pills and glass of water from the Sandman when he returned, washing them back with a single swallow. Clearing her throat did nothing but irritate it, and her voice remained hoarse regardless, but it didn’t stop her from speaking up as she placed the soon empty glass on her nightstand. “Alair, listen… I want to get your guitar fixed. Today. I tried to text you about it earlier… I mean, yesterday… you know what I mean.” Throwing her legs over the side of her bed, the redhead stood on unsteady feet, pressing a hand to the wall to keep from losing her balance. Drawing her curtains aside, she squinted into the sunlight of a newborn day, turning away just as quickly as her pupils contracted. “Ok… we’ll go when the stores actually open, but I know a place. It’s where Cas takes all of his guitars; the guy who works there is very careful with instruments…”
Scarlet was determined. In spite of her fever and her headache and the stiffness of a body that felt far too weak, she was focused on repairing the one thing that meant the most to Alair. She had joked once that he carried it around with him in lieu of a girlfriend, but the joke no longer reverberated with the same, lighthearted humor that it had possessed on delivery. Rather, she regretted ever putting it out there, knowing how much it really meant to him. This was only one of the redhead’s many flaws; she could be so cold without even realizing it.
“I’m… sorry. I didn’t mean to break it… I never meant to hurt the one thing that means the most to you.” Running her fingers through her damp, crimson locks, she sat shakily upon her bed once again. “But I want to get it fixed for you—and that’s not negotiable. I won’t take no for answer, got it?”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
The Sandman was no healer of physical ails, however, and he could do nothing but soothe her agony with meaningful embraces and delivering over-the-counter drugs. “Hold tight,” he told her quietly, slipping out from beneath her as she shifted her weight and heading into the kitchen to fetch the bottle of pills. He stopped at the sink and filled a glass with cold water, adding two ice cubes from the freezer in hopes to help break her fever. The ice cracked audibly in the liquid as he hurriedly returned, handing over the glass and the bottle as soon as his arms could reach.
“You’ll feel better when you get your fever down,” he stated matter-of-factly, a little awkwardly, clearing his throat as he lowered himself to perch on the side of the mattress. The Sandman studied her in the growing light of the dawn, inspiring a sympathetic wince when he caught sight of just how tired and pale she looked. When she placed the glass, now empty, back on her nightstand, he prepared himself to get her a refill—but she was speaking again despite the obvious protests of her scratchy, hoarse throat. He shifted positions once more as she made the move to stand up, and he shook his head vigorously in a mixture of disapproval and concern.
“Scarlet, you’re going to take whatever I tell you to take,” he said a little teasingly, firm but not cross. He stood, stepping over to the feverish young redhead and placing his hands solidly on her shoulders. “That’s not up for debate right now, okay?” Spinning her slowly around to face him, he looked at her with brows arched high onto his forehead. His azure eyes sparkled gently with concern. “What you need is rest. And more water. You can hardly stand up, alpha—going outside is out of the question.”
Her apology did not go unnoticed by the blue-eyed man, but he did not acknowledge it until a few minutes later when he had re-established Scarlet in the living room. He’d picked her up in her room, lifting her completely off her feet by scooping her knees with his left arm. Depositing her on the sofa and tossing her favorite flannel throw vaguely in her direction, he retrieved her water glass—not before noticing a curious literary selection beneath the lamp on her nightstand—and refilled it again in the kitchen sink. The apology still rang in his ears despite her protests, and he gnawed at his lower lip when he delivered the cup to the hazy redhead.
Taking a seat on the edge of the couch near her feet, he leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. It took a moment for him to say anything, but eventually he swiveled his head to look at her, eyes filled with more than concern this time. “It wasn’t your fault,” he said at last, his words escaping his system like a sigh. “My guitar does mean a lot to me, Scarlet, but there are more important things than a couple of broken strings.” He reached out, placing his hand on her ankle and giving it an apologetic squeeze. “I just…I want you to know that, okay?”
The heartfelt moment was short-lived, however, because the Sandman was already at the stack of DVDs on the shelf behind the television, making a selection. He slipped in the shiny disc and settled back on the sofa near her feet again, clicking through the counter-intuitive arrangement of a Japanese menu.
“This was one of the options the other night, wasn’t it?” he piped. “Nothing like a bad movie to scare away a virus, right?”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
That said, now was both the best and worst time to be in the company of someone else. Caspar had long since learned to ignore her feverish ramblings when she came down with a virus (luckily she had never been quite so far gone as to address her control over destinies), but she only hoped Alair could tolerate and ignore whatever she spouted just as easily. Especially if she happened to say something hurtful again, perhaps without even realizing it.
“Oh yeah?” Pouting like a child, the redhead reached up to remove his hands from her shoulders, slender fingers lingering on his wrists for longer than what was probably necessary. “Since when are you the boss of me, Sandman? I’m fine, just a little warm… We’d only be outside for—hey! Hey, what gives?” One moment she was on her feet, arguing with her supernatural companion in the early morning light of the sun, and the next thing she knew, he had his arms beneath her, and was carting her off to the living room. “Stop hurting my pride, Alair! I can walk…”
In spite of her protestations, the fever-wracked redhead could feel herself wilt in his arms, such that she even rested her heat beneath his chin for just a handful of seconds. Her body couldn’t hold a torch to her fiery words, and even those were dampened by the hoarseness of her voice. The young woman had no bite today, and no bark to even imply it.
“Flannel? Really? Do I look cold to you?” Scarlet teased him after he placed her carefully on the couch and threw the blanket in her direction. “Look, I’ll watch another stupid movie and drink some water, but that guitar of yours is getting fixed today, virus or not. The shop isn’t that far from here, like a ten minute walk. We can take a taxi if you don’t trust me.”
Taking the newly refilled tall glass of water, she drained it of about half of its contents before putting it down again, punctuating just how dehydrated she was from the borderline high fever without even realizing it. Taxi or not, she wasn’t much in any condition to be outside today, and it was a damn good thing she had someone around to be that voice of reason to counterbalance her delirious though processes. “You want to watch anime at six-thirty in the morning? Well, I’m not gonna jump up and stop you… If Ninja Scroll actually does scare away the virus, then not only will I cook you breakfast for two weeks, I’ll do your fucking laundry as well, Sandman.”
As the menu screen popped up and Alair sat back down near her bare feet, the stubborn Aries’ governed woman found it difficult to pay attention to the ridiculous pace of the fast Japanese language, the grossly-masculinized fight scenes and the over-the-top dramatic storyline. Well, firstly, she’d seen in all before (and it never got any better), but something heavy was weighing on her mind and allocating that leaden feeling to her heart, and before she knew what she was doing, the words were out.
“Did Caspar ask you to check on me?” There was no accusation in her question; only sadness, far more than she had hoped to project. Clearing her throat softly, Scarlet trained her fever-bright eyes on the floor and raked her fingers through her damp hair. “He came by earlier and wanted to stay because I didn’t look well, but… Marissa was with him.” The girl’s name sent a shudder of distaste through her body; or maybe it was just the fever. “I told him… you’d be coming by. Just because I know he’d never have left if he thought I wouldn’t have someone around in case I passed out or something. Did he text you, or something? Because you… I mean, not that you’re not welcome here—because you totally are, I hope you know that—but you don’t have to do it as a favor to Cas. I’ll tell him you stuck it out with me if you need an alibi… So long as you agree to let me get that guitar of yours fixed first.”
Scarlet’s smile didn’t reach her eyes when she looked up, recalling all too well their argument from the other night. How Alair had divulged he felt like a stand-in for Caspar, believing she’d push him aside the second she caught the lanky musician’s eye again. And she didn’t want him to think that, because it was so far from the truth that she couldn’t even begin to explain…
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
He could not die of natural causes; he did not age. But outside perils remained exactly that—perils—that despite his nonchalant demeanor he did have to spare wariness to them. He hadn’t had many near-death experiences over the years, perhaps thanks to his watchful (and powerful) brother and his beloved Life. It was difficult to say with any degree of accuracy whether or not he could be easily offed; so far, it seemed it was his destiny to survive—and he’d gathered knowledge like tools to aid in fixing what might be broken and preventing what may come. He seemed to heal somewhat faster than a mortal man, but not to a noticeable extreme, and in all likelihood he was probably just lucky.
“It is most certainly not getting fixed today,” he reasserted, tugging the discarded blanket away from her legs and tossing it gracelessly over the back of the couch. He turned to look at her, the expression in his gaze caught somewhere between amusement and wariness. “You are not touching that damn guitar,” he said, although from his tone it was difficult to discern whether he was teasing or serious. Regardless, he remained in full possession of his wits; unlike the other night, it would not be hard to stop the fever-addled redhead should she actually try to rise from the sofa to retrieve the instrument. “We’ll talk about it later. Maybe when the aspirin’s finally kicked in. Okay?”
He reached over and affectionately draped his hand on her ankle, giving it a light squeeze. Ninja Scroll was beginning to play, filling the early-morning living room with the rapid staccato rhythm of bad Japanese voice actors. The English subtitles flashed across the bottom of the screen in strange intervals that didn’t precisely match up with the cadence of the vocals, and Alair chuckled to himself, clearly more amused by this program than he’d been during their Twilight screening. At least this gave him something to do when the plot—what plot—failed to grip him; it would soon become a game, comparing the translation to the native, his eyes flitting across the words while his brain took care of the audial cues.
His amusement was short-lived, however, because he soon felt Scarlet’s gaze settle upon him. Alair turned toward her, angling himself against the arm of the sofa and arching his brows. “What?” he asked, taken aback. “No, no he didn’t.” Her sadness stuck him hard in the chest, and he had to remind himself to breathe beneath the weight of her projected emotion. “We sent a few messages back and forth, but he didn’t mention you. Although that would explain the mysterious ‘thanks’ I got last night…” He wrinkled his nose and widened his eyes in theatrical confusion, but then his expression fell to one of somber realism. He had been angry and irrational when he’d accused her of treating him like a Caspar stand-in, but now, in the quiet calm of the apartment, he wondered if maybe it wasn’t at least a little bit true.
“First of all, Scarlet, you shouldn’t have done that.” The Sandman shook his head disapprovingly. “Telling him you wouldn’t be alone…that could have been dangerous, you know?” He shifted his gaze to look away as he continued, his posture wilting ever so slightly as he braced for the words to come. “Second of all,” he went on softly, “I came back because I wanted to. Scarlet...” He spoke her name pointedly, his eyes snapping back to meet hers as he leaned forward to place both hands reassuringly on her ankles. “I came back for you, okay? I shouldn’t have left in the first place. Not like that. And I…” He offered her a small smile that failed to reach his azure eyes. “I’m sorry.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
But while the young woman would have been the first to admit to the absurdity of thinking for a second that she would have been just fine on her own, she hadn't wanted Caspar's company. Not when it included Marissa's perpetual presence at his side, a presence of which Scarlet had no desire to come within ten feet. She'd had to turn them away, because watching her roommate's new squeeze smile and positively glow at the sound of the girl's voice was more than what she could tolerate, and was the only thing less preferable to being all by herself...
"Marissa was with him..." The unnatural redhead sighed, knowing the excuse would not suffice, knowing how childish it sounded, but feeling it significant enough to be voiced since the Sandman was familiar with her dark sentiments towards the brunette. "Anyway, they already had plans; asking them to stick around would've only been a huge inconvenience. Cas was nice enough to relieve me of the task of doing dishes, at least... You missed out on some pretty fucking awesome French toast yesterday morning, by the way." She didn't notice the subtle pain that crept into the cheeky smile she attempted to flash; one that was already horribly offset by how pale she was and how unwell she looked. "Not only did I not burn it, hurt myself or make the kitchen explode, but it even looked edible."
Nevertheless… She wouldn’t have felt right, summoning Alair to her side after such a heated argument and all of its hurtful underpinnings. After receiving no response from the three collective text messages she had sent him throughout the day, it hadn’t occurred to her that he would return at all, let alone so soon. His behaviour had set her off, and her own words and actions had been so final… She’d struck him where she’d known it would hurt, and all because he had hurt her without realizing how or why. He didn’t understand how deeply that almost pathological fear of being left alone ran in her blood, and how walking away from her, leaving her at the wedding reception alone like some prank prom date, had cut deep into the trust she had garnered towards him.
A trust that was already beginning to heal and mend, because here he was, sitting in her living room at just after sunrise, watching terrible, subtitled anime with her, to help encourage preoccupation from her fever-wracked mind.
I came back for you, okay?
Maybe it wasn’t just Sleep’s comforting presence, but the sincerity in the words that made her wish she had never overacted, victimizing Alair’s precious guitar that had never deserved her wrath…
“Why are you apologizing? I still had a blast, you know.” Scarlet wished she could reach up and give his hand a reassuring squeeze, but that would have required actually straightening her spine and employing her abdominal muscles to help her sit upright—neither of which was happening, right now. “I never had the opportunity to attend a prom or anything, but that kind of felt like one, you know? Hell, even if I die tomorrow, at least I know I can cross a few things off of my bucket list: ‘prom-like experience’, first dance… drinking coffee at four in the morning with some freak on a rooftop…” This time, the grin that pulled at her tired mouth was genuine, and she closed her eyes for a moment. “Don’t start getting all apologetic on me now, Magic Man. I already owe you too much, including some emergency guitar repairs…”
The fight scenes on the ridiculously over the top anime film began to pick up and become more ridiculous, finally succeeding in drawing her mind away from how miserable she felt and actually pulling light-hearted, feverish giggles from her body. An already bad show was just that much worse under the influence of a fever, and Alair’s own secretive smiles egged her on to the point where she began to laugh at scenes that probably didn’t deserve laughter. Only when the credits (also written in Japanese kanji, katakana and hiragana) began to roll did her subtly hysterical chuckling subside with the finale of a deep sigh.
“Okay. I’d rather not look as bad as I feel, so I’m going to take a quick shower,” she declared, throwing her legs over the side of the couch and slowly getting to her feet, keeping a hand to the wall until she felt confident that she was steady. “And then, we’re taking your guitar to the musical instrument hospital. I think the aspirin helped enough that I won’t faint in public or anything.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
He couldn’t tell if the pain in her eyes, in her smile—that subtle but detectable aching gleam—was another symptom of the virus running rampant through her body. But if she’d looked carefully, she would have seen the very same distant agony mirrored precisely in his expression, adding dark clouds to the horizon of his azure stare. “Looks like I might’ve rubbed off on you,” he commented, unknowingly repeating her roommate’s words of the previous day. His rendition, however, was laced with an affection Caspar lacked, one that shone through the Sandman’s awkward misgivings to speak, strangely enough, of proud surprise. “Practice makes perfect, though. Deal’s a deal.” When he smiled this time, it was warmer, friendlier; the humor reached his eyes like a ray of sunshine piercing a cloudy canopy. “I want French toast when you’re feeling better. Mostly because I don’t think I really believe you that it wasn’t…I don’t know, that it wasn’t a vaguely-toast-shaped inedible lump of carbon.”
He shot her a wink that accompanied a telltale smirk, a sign that his mood was improving and the fog of his regrets was thinning. Now was not the time to get into the nuances brought about by their violent quarrel; Scarlet was too sick to do much more than lounge on the sofa and pray for better days, and he wasn’t sure forty-eight hours was quite enough time for the blood to clot from the gashes they’d torn in one another. He smiled when she admitted to having fun in spite of his childish behavior. “That was really your first dance?” he said teasingly, pulling a face. “No wonder you were so terrible.”
Scoffing at her comment about indulging in coffee with a roof-dwelling stranger, he shook his head as if to express exasperation at her tale. “Freaks on rooftops,” he repeated theatrically. “There’s a real problem with those in this neighborhood, I’ve heard. Some people think those freaks are just misunderstood, but nah, what do they know. I don’t believe a word of it.” He chuckled, his amusement transitioning from the memory of the relatively recent past to the melodramatic animation playing across the television screen. When at last the anime concluded and the transliterated credits began to scroll, he shifted positions and looked up to the unsteady redhead.
He watched her as she regained her balance, arching a brow skeptically. “Are you sure you’re going to be able to make it through a shower?” he asked, not without concern. “Just…keep the door unlocked. If I hear a big crash, I’ll close my eyes and come to your rescue.” He lifted his other brow to join the one already hovering on his forehead. “And don’t think for a moment we’re going to that guitar store. You’re going to sit your ass right back down on this couch and wait for that fever to break.” Rising to his feet, he followed her to the bathroom to make sure she didn’t fall on the way to the shower. “The breaker of the guitar does not get to dictate when the owner of the guitar takes said guitar to the hospital. Got it?”
The seriousness in his expression was unmistakable, and he made his way back to the kitchen to put on a pot of coffee while the redhead took advantage of her aspirin-fueled reprieve. Pouring two cups of piping hot liquid, he brought them to the coffee table and waited for her to emerge.
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Scarlet shook her head, but a smile played upon her lips, implying an absence of any genuine offense taken. Though whether it was because she had actually seen the humour in his playful jibes, or due to her borderline high fever (which made absolutely anything and everything seem funny, with and without reason) remained unclear.
Her balance was not at its best as she made her way to the bathroom, keeping close to the wall in case she was to fall in case her heavy legs faltered. But her determination went far beyond her usual obstinacy in this case: her clothes stuck to her skin with perspiration influenced by the fever, and if she couldn’t feel well, then she’d be damned if she couldn’t at least feel clean.
“I’ll be fine; don’t sound so worried.” She sighed, gripping the bathroom doorframe. “But do me a favor and yell before you barge in; unless I yell at you first, in which case I will tell you if I’m fine, or if I need help. If you don’t hear anything, then it probably means I passed out.” The redhead grinned ironically, feeling it fade just as soon as it manifested; Alair didn’t appear to find the conditions all too funny.
“Stop holding your breath already; I won’t be long. And that coffee won’t make itself.”
With a final, quick smile, Scarlet closed the door behind her, turning the faucet onto lukewarm-cold and stepping in before she even managed to peel her clothes off of her body. The cool water hitting her face was as much a shock to her system as it was a relief, but she was too determined to ignore the way it made her limbs tremble to heed the warning signs. The young woman hadn’t fully lathered her hair before the quaking of her knees caused her to slip, and she narrowly managed to break her fall with her forearm and knees.
“I’m fine! I’m fine, you don’t need to come in.” She called, knowing the sudden crash of a body accompanied by some shower supplies had probably set Alair’s nerves alight with concern. “I’ll be out in a minute.”
Not bothering to try to stand just then, Scarlet washed the remainder of honey-scented shampoo from her crimson locks and turned off the water, hauling herself back into a standing position with the aid of the shower curtain. Grabbing a bath robe from the back of the door (she was far too out of it to take note as to whether it belonged to her or Caspar), she wrapped the warm flannel around her mildly chilled form without bothering to dry off too much, simply for lack of energy.
“Any cracks about being a klutz,” she said to Alair, rubbing her bruising forearm on exiting the bathroom, “And I will hit you. Even if you make good coffee.”
The fiery redhead slowly disappeared into her room long enough to grab the first pair of jeans and first T-shirt that she could get her hands on, pulling her damp hair into a loose ponytail at the base of her neck before joining her paranormal friend in the kitchen. The comforting smell of coffee brought her further from her feverish haze, and deeper into the world of the living (and healthy).
“…what if we were to take a cab? Come on, Alair, the longer that guitar remains broken, the longer I have to wallow in guilt.” She pouted as she retrieved the mug of coffee poured (and heated) to her tastes, and sipped it thoughtfully. “Anyway… what if I need you to play for me, again? It… really helped, the other night. I have no idea what I dreamed about, but usually when I wake up the way that I did, I can’t fall asleep again.” Glancing away from the black depths of her coffee, Scarlet sought the Sandman’s electric blue gaze, and added: “Sometimes even talking to Cas at four in the morning doesn’t help. But you did… you really helped me. Thank you.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
She may have been hindered by illness now, but there was something about the redhead—something dramatic, something edgy, something dangerous—that nevertheless sizzled in her presence as the welcome burn of her spicy aura. And yet in spite all of that, he felt unmistakably comfortable, as though he had at last found a familiar flavor to complement the taste of his own electric personality. Roesaleine had been right—she was fiery, just like him, able to hold her own against the barrage of his own blazing sparks. Scarlet danced with his flames, not in spite of them; and so too did he amongst hers.
The crash from the bathroom—and the proceeding verbal reassurance that all was well—startled and amused him in quick succession, so much so that he burst into chuckles from his place in the kitchen. “All right, all right,” he called back to her, not quite able to hide the mirth from his voice. When she emerged, he stuck his head around the corner and offered her a wince whose sympathy was negated somewhat by the gleam in his narrowed blue eyes. “Coffee’s ready when you are. I’ll wait to insult your balance until you’ve regained some of it. Deal?”
However unlikely their encounter and subsequent friendship, Alair could not deny the connection he had made with the young woman following that fateful mug of rooftop java. For better or for worse, they had constructed the foundations of a fast, albeit untraditional, friendship, and no matter how he tried to talk himself away from reality, the Sandman wouldn’t have had it any other way.
Which was why hearing Caspar’s name aloud again and again, especially on the redhead’s tongue, was almost enough to break through the wall of composure he’d built around the sensitive remains of his pride. The emotions he’d brushed away from the previous night, the ones he’d tucked away in favor of white-hot anger and inconsolable frustration, came flooding back with a vengeance, this time without any hope of fury’s disguise. Though he was certainly glad Scarlet was feeling better enough to sort through the messy storm they’d left of things between them, the lingering sentiment that he was only serving as the lanky musician’s replacement while he amused himself with a new girlfriend was bright and bitter in the forefront of the Sandman’s mind. He knew Scarlet’s words were meant to comfort him, but he couldn’t quite grasp the full meaning of what she said.
“Well, I’m glad I beat out Cas in that respect,” he replied, but the smile he offered her refused to touch the blue of his eyes. “Look, Scarlet, if you need me to play for you again, I’ll…I don’t know, I’ll sing, or something.” He chuckled, a little more humor sneaking into his voice. “We’ll go tomorrow, all right? You’re not leaving this apartment until your fever’s back to normal.” He arched his brows over the rim of his mug as he took a long swig of steaming coffee. “And I don’t discriminate when it comes to tackling people to the ground. I’ll do it whether you’re sick or not.” A grin curled his lips, and he leaned backwards against the counter with a sly look on his face. “Don’t think this gets you out of prolonged breakfast duty either. I’m tacking on a few days extra at the end.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
Looking back on the unconventional beginning of her friendship with the Sandman, he had never put forth a solid and unwavering reason to earn her trust: just the opposite, his unpredictability made him perhaps the most dangerous person in whom she had ever confided. The full extent of his abilities remained lost to her, and for all she knew (based on past experiences trusting all the wrong people), the next time she turned to him for support, he could just as quickly turn his back on her. His brother would argue otherwise, but she was far less familiar with Amrial (Death?!), and hearsay was not enough to garner trust, at least not to her.
But what perplexed her even more than her openness towards Sleep was in the way he treated her; not like someone he had only met not quite a week ago. Not as his friend Caspar’s fiery roommate with a temper to match. Not as an acquaintance, not even as just a friend, but a good friend. The way his posture around her was relaxed, the ease of his smile, the jokes he cracked like they were old jokes between the two of them…
It would have also been a lie were Scarlet to try to convince herself that she didn’t feel the same way about him: like she had known him for far, far longer than a week, and that their presences complimented one another’s in the most unique and dynamic of ways.
He didn’t have to come back; he didn’t have to be here now, keeping an eye out for her while the fever rendered her slightly less than functional. But here he was, watching bad anime with her, making her coffee, and trying to alleviate some of the guilt she felt from breaking his guitar.
Just like Caspar had extended his hand to her five years ago, showing her kindness when no one else would, so was Alair doing right now, in her roommate’s absence. Caspar had been there for her when the world had turned its back; and now, here was Alair, offering his friendship and support while Caspar slowly, painfully drifted from her life.
Perhaps it was not so difficult to understand why the Sandman felt like a substitute, a replacement… because, in a way, he was. The difference was, he filled yet an entirely different chamber of her empty heart than did Caspar: because he was not the same. They were not the same. Scarlet admired Alair for so many different reasons than she did Caspar… and she wished she could tell him as much, in a way that might stick, that would sound sincere.
But she just couldn’t find the words, because—once again—she didn’t understand why…
“Hey now; we did some karate while I was still in grade school. I think I could take you.” Scarlet laughed, rolling her eyes at his assertion that he could tackle and win. Then again, she wasn’t much of a fighter, and he was probably right. “And you’ll get your damned breakfast; in fact, I’ll make you one today. Though the French toast that you missed yesterday because you ignored my damned texts is still a tick off of my tab; not my fault you didn’t show up.”
Draining her mug of scalding hot coffee far more quickly than what anyone with a fever should, Scarlet was on her feet again, taking her empty mug to the sink and grabbing a frying pan with the opposite hand before her supernatural companion could protest. “Today’s breakfast menu consists of scrambled eggs, because those are damn hard to screw up.” She announced, retrieving a couple of eggs from the fridge and cracking them into the gradually heating pan. “Can you grab the plates? I can barely reach on a good day.”
Even Scarlet could pull off a decent plate of scrambled eggs without getting pieces of shell into the mix, and the bright yellow of the protein-enriched breakfast began to look more and more appetizing even to her, someone who seldom had an appetite for one reason or another. “Any additional requests? Cheese, peppers, mushrooms?” The heat from the stove paired with her fever caused perspiration to bead on Scarlet’s brow and drew a sigh from her lungs. Wiping at the forehead with the back of her arm, she added cheekily: “It could be more like a half-assed omelette. But if you just want it traditional, I think… I think Cas might have some frozen hash browns in the… in the… hold on…”
Everything—the pan, the stove, the cupboard, Alair—suddenly seemed very foggy, and very fall away. Scarlet’s hands began to tingle before losing feeling almost completely, and the redhead managed to put the spatula down just in time to see the kitchen fade to black like the end of a movie before she fainted.
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
But they were not so naïve—neither of them. Alair had lived for millennia, gathering droplets of wisdom with every new experience the new day brought; he was clever and quick, with a vast archive of vivid memories that he could draw upon for information should he encounter the unexpected or the inexplicable. Though his red-haired friend had not lived and breathed for centuries on end, it was clear to the Sandman that she’d had her own fair share of life’s obstacles; from the construction of her dreams to the words she spoke so fluidly within them, he knew her troubled past and subsequent world-weariness had made her already-sharp mind all the wiser.
So while the unlikely pair could act as they did, lighthearted and joking, it was obvious that beneath the soles of their feet was an endless rug of eggshells—a lack of resolution that left Sleep in helpless suspense. Words unspoken, explanations unsaid, and apologies unuttered, Alair sensed a tension in the air that he hoped his companion (in her current hazy state) would be spared. Perhaps the eventual repair of his guitar would bring symbolic closure to the rift that had cracked and spread between them like the crumbling, quaking ground of Scarlet’s nightmare, but he could not be certain; it may have been what she needed to alleviate her guilt, but for the Sandman there was still so much more.
Distracted by his own thoughts, he almost didn’t hear her declare her intention to make him breakfast. Her words failed to register until he watched her spring into sudden action, downing her scalding coffee as though it were cool water and immediately hunting for supplies in the peeling veneer cupboards. “Hey, wait a minute,” he protested, stepping forward to hold open the refrigerator door. “I meant after you were better! This isn’t a good idea…” He furrowed his brow disapprovingly, watching as she lit the stove and poured the egg mixture into the shallow pan. As it began to bubble, it seemed that so, too, did she—her brow was beading with sweat, and her cheeks, painted pink with feverish heat, suddenly drained to a shade of ghastly white.
“Scarlet!” He hardly had time to cry her name before she was swaying on her feet, her knees buckling and her eyelids fluttering closed as she lost her balance—and consciousness—before the burning hot appliance. Leaping forward faster than should have been possible, he caught her as her body crumpled to the floor, sliding his arms beneath hers from behind. In one swift movement, he lifted her off the ground and into his arms, her head cradled against his chest as he stepped into the living room to drape her limp form over the cushions of the sofa.
“Hey,” he said, his voice so thick with concern it was a wonder he could enunciate at all. “Scarlet, wake up.” Hovering perhaps too closely over her face, his blue eyes sparkled with worry as he waited for her to open her eyes, one hand cradling the back of her head despite the pillow beneath it. Without looking, his unoccupied hand found the half-full glass on the coffee table, bringing it forward.
His relief was palpable when her eyes at last opened. “Jesus Christ, Scarlet,” he breathed, shaking his head as he sighed. “Please don’t fucking do that again.” His thumb moved to gently stroke her head where it rested against his palm, but all at once he was on his feet again—the aroma of cooking eggs had quickly turned to one of charring eggs, and he quickly turned off the stove before the redhead’s concoction could ignite. Using the spatula she’d managed to discard before falling to the floor, he sliced through the slightly-too-brown pile of eggs and distributed them onto the plates she’d set out on the adjacent counter, returning to the living room with breakfast in hand.
“You might need to eat something,” he said with a cringe, handing her a fork. “These are probably still edible.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
With her tendency to suffer from high fevers (and her proneness to forgetting or simply neglecting daily meals), Scarlet was no stranger to fainting. In fact, it was rather strange that she did not recognize the warning signs more quickly: that sudden attack of light headedness, the loss of feeling in her hands, the way that everything seemed to blur and grow further away from her vision…
No, it was nothing like falling asleep, but in Scarlet’s case, she would argue that neither was more stressful than the other. At least she didn’t dream when she fainted.
Another difference was how quickly it all happened. In one moment, she was placing the spatula safely down on the counter. In the next, she realized her eyes were closed, and someone was saying her name. Scarlet, wake up. But she was awake, wasn’t she?
Well, she thought she was, before she realized how difficult it was to open her eyes. Almost there, almost there…
When she felt herself blinking and her vision cleared, she was met with a pair of blue eyes trained on her face and swimming with worry. Alair’s face was so close that she could touch it, should she choose, and it would be a lie to claim that she did not feel rather inclined to do so I her feverish haze.
“Your eyes… they’re celestial.” Was the first thing she murmured, smiling just a little at the absurdity of her own statement. “Like little planets, surrounded by millions of stars…” She turned her face to the side, briefly enjoying the comfort of the hand that cradled her head, but just as soon as she realized it was there, it was gone—and so was Alair, quickly making for the kitchen.
In the seconds that followed, Scarlet managed to pull herself into an upright position, slowly coming back into herself as she found the glass of water in front of her and downed its contents. And by the time she finished, Alair had returned with two plates of lightly-browned eggs which he placed on the coffee table in front of the couch.
“Now that I think about it… I actually haven’t eaten anything since the wedding reception.” The redhead admitted, colour returning to her cheeks as shame set in. “I guess I was too stressed out, and then too sick to realize it… I’m sorry. I didn’t meant to have you come back here, only to have to put up with my sick and incompetent self. I promise I’ll cook you a decent breakfast when I’m able to.”
Taking a fork, she made a formidable effort to put a dent in the barely edible eggs, knowing she needed the sustenance in spite of her lack of appetite. The plate was three-quarters cleaned before she feared that eating any more would upset her stomach.
“…Alair. Aside from the guitar, I feel like I still owe you an apology.” Perhaps it was the fever that gifted her with the words to finally say to him what had been on her mind the moment he’d left; whatever the source or case, Scarlet did not think twice about the words that came to her mind, and then left through her mouth. Because if she didn’t say it now, she might not remember to later. “Everything I said the other night… it was just me being melodramatic. I mean, you were upset about seeing your brother, and you had every right to walk out of that reception. I was selfish and tried to make it all about me when you were obviously struggling with your own demons, and I’m am really, truly sorry for acting so childish. I didn’t mean to imply that Caspar is a better person than you, because it’s not true; in fact, I’m starting to think the opposite. It’s just…”
Leaning back into the couch cushions, the young woman closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose, fighting off the sudden threat of tears. “Everything is changing so quickly. I’ve lived comfortably with Cas for five years, and my life has been fine; I’ve been recovering, and I’ve been all right. But then, one day, this Marissa walks into his life, and now everything is bound to change… It’s stupid to whine about this, I know, but he hardly sees me anymore. And one day, maybe someday soon, he’s just going to be gone, and I… I don’t want to go back to where I was before. Not when I finally know what it means to be all right. And I know it's selfish and stupid to be upset when my best friend is finally so happy, but I'm... scared. Because everyone who I've ever trusted or loved has left me in one way or another, and I thought Cas would be the one to break that horrible pattern, but...”
That threat of tears didn’t actually pass, but she opened her eyes anyway, turning her head to meet Alair’s. “I didn’t mean for you to get caught up in this big mess. But I want you to know I’m glad you’re here… Not because you’re some stand-in fir Caspar, or because you just caught me before my head hit the floor.” With a smile that didn’t reach her eyes, she added, “It’s just good to know that there is someone else in the world other than Cas who can tolerate me. I mean, it’s almost been a week, and I haven’t scared you away yet? Aside from Caspar, that’s got to be my next best record... and I'm sorry if I've made you feel like I've cast you in Caspar Brighton's shadow. Because it's not true... I mean..." Blue eyes trailed to her lap when the tears finally broke through, and she wiped at her eyes with her hand before they could fall. "It's not Caspar sitting here with me right now... when I need someone.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
“Look who’s being all sappy now,” he replied, but there was little humor behind the bare bones of teasing words. He turned to face her on the sofa, tucking one leg beneath him while the other remained draped over the edge of the couch. When he spoke again, his voice was grave but understanding, solemn but hopeful. “You didn’t know,” he responded slowly, searching for the most effective way to express his thoughts. “You had no way of knowing, either. Amrial…he does mean well, but there’s also a part of him that doesn’t understand…” The Sandman halted abruptly, not about to go into the details of his historical struggles; he simply was not ready to discuss them, and despite their strange, fast friendship, he wasn’t certain the redhead would have been interested in the heart-wrenching saga.
He sighed instead, allowing her to fill in the gaps of what he didn’t—couldn’t—say, casting his gaze down with the effort of maintaining his composure. “We’ve been at odds for a very long time, my brother and I,” he went on, voice suddenly rasping with emotion. “I’ve started to think he might be incapable of getting it, fundamentally. He’s what he is. But he didn’t tell me he was going to be there, and I should have introduced you before I let him cut in.” Sleep looked up after a long pause, meeting Scarlet’s gaze wistfully. “I’m sorry too, okay? I let my anger get in the way of my manners, and then I took the worst of it out on you when I was the one that couldn’t keep my cool in front of my brother.”
His thoughts unwittingly flitted back to the terrifying storm of her most recent nightmare, to the words she’d screamed at the violent heavens. I know you can hear me! I don’t regret what I said to you, understand? He swallowed hard, looking down at his knotted hands in his lap. While some, if they’d been granted the rare privilege of peering into another’s dreams, would discount those angry shouts as nothing more than the bizarre script of a nightmare, the Sandman unfortunately knew better—he knew how dreams were the manifestations of the subconscious. But he could not speak of that, of course. What little she remembered was more than enough, and it was not his place to conjure memories that had no business reforming.
“For what it’s worth, alpha, I don’t think you’re in any danger of going back to where you were before.” Despite his misgivings, despite the lingering echoes of her fiery words in all-too-recent memory, he smiled—affection illuminating his eyes from deep within that celestial azure gaze. “You had to have known this was coming for Cas. He’s a good guy, talented, good-looking…this Marissa girl could have been anyone, any time. But you, you’ve always been there for him. You’re his ‘Red.’ I’ve seen the way he looks at you, like you’re his little sister. The guy may not have a whole lot of common sense, but he knows when he’s appreciated, and he appreciates you right back whether you want to believe it in light of this Marissa thing or not.”
Alair arched his brows, then furrowed them in quick succession as he watched the transformation take place with the redhead, watched as her eyes swam with tears when she looked up to him. “Alpha, come on,” he said, soothing and sympathetic. Rising to his feet, he waved his hand as an indicator for her to slide over, then slipped in next to her and wrapped his arm tenderly around her shoulders. For several moments, he said nothing, because he didn’t know what to say—she was voicing his anxieties as though she’d read his mind, then dashing them to the ground to shatter like the glass of absinthe he’d let slip from his hand that explosive night.
“Thanks, Scarlet,” was all he could think to say, giving her shoulder a little squeeze. “You’re tougher than you think you are. Cas would be here for you in a second if you called him, but…but you didn’t.” He pronounced the last few words with a shade of incredulity, as though he couldn’t quite believe it was him she wanted at her side. “Relationships change. It doesn’t mean he loves you any less, or that you can’t trust him.” Humor crept into his voice. “Just…promise you won’t be as hasty to hate him as you were to hate me.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
It was almost exactly what sher would have done in that sort of situation, though probably substituting the absinthe with vodka. Not only did they act alike, but often times, but they thought alike as well, even in the midst of difficult situations.
“It's none of my business what went down between you and Amrial. But for what it’s worth,” she commented quietly, still staring down at the floor for fear she’d start to tear up again if she met his eyes, “your brother spoke very highly of you. He told me I’d be a fool not to trust you, and now that I’m over my temper tantrum, I’m starting to think he was right…”
Not only had Amrial been right, however, but so was Alair. Everything he was telling her made sense, from the flaws in her own insecurities to the warped way she was viewing the budding reality that was Caspar and Marissa. Was it really her views and beliefs regarding her telekinetic roommate that had changed, and not Cas himself? He had offered to stay with her, the other day; and so had Marissa for that matter. There had been no insincerity in his dark eyes; he was a terrible liar, and even worse at hiding his feelings, and either of the above would have been detectable right away. He’d worried about her enough to send a text message to Alair, something that the Caspar she knew and loved would have done in a heartbeat for a good friend.
So then… what was it that made all of this so scary? Caspar would always be her friend, and there was no good reason she had to end up on the ruthless streets of DC again. But it was already clear that her fears and feelings went beyond anything rational, at least in terms of what she could openly explain.
“It's weird... The nightmares were never this bad until Caspar’s sleep troubles began as well.” She mentioned, speaking slowly like she was ashamed of the words that passed her fever-pale lips. “I mean, I’ve always had bad dreams, ever since I was a kid. But never so frequently or so violently, making me wake up breathless, disoriented and in a cold sweat. Not until about two weeks before he met Marissa… You’re right, you know. I should have seen it coming.But I guess I was living in some blissful denial, thinking that things would never change for us. That I'd have my best friend all to myself forever... that I wouldn't have to worry about watching someone else walk away, into a new life that didn't really have room for me.”
Cas would be here for you in a second if you called him, but…but you didn’t. And yet again, he had a point. And with that point came another threat to the part of her heart that was struggling to heal.
“No, I didn't ask him to come back. But I wanted to,” she said softly, leaning into the Sandman’s shoulder; she needed a shoulder right about now. “So badly... I almost texted him to come back several times, when this virus really started to make me feel crappy, but I know it either would have meant Marissa would come with him, or he’d have to leave her, and I can’t stand seeing the guy look so forlorn. And, I… to be very honest..." She paused for a moment, considering whether or not to continue, but ultimately the words spilled from her lips. "I was sort of hoping you’d show up, instead.”
Finally looking up to meet his gaze, a hint of a smile touched the corners of her mouth, almost making it all the way to her feverbright eyes. “Look, I’m feverish, and just about every part of me hurts right now; I’m allowed to be sappy when I’m sick, and you’re not allowed to hold any of it against me or poke fun at me for it.” She told her supernatural friend, leaning comfortably against him in spite of the additional warmth that emanated from his body. This virus made her feel weak and vulnerable and desperately in need of human contact. “But, listen; I know I’ve said and done a lot of stupid things since we’ve met, and I can understand why you must think I’m some sort of possessive, violent, hatemongering bitch. But the truth is I don’t ‘hate’ all that easily; mistrust, maybe, but not hate. And even if I could, I like to think I know a good person when I see one. Caspar is one of them, and he has done far too much for me to even consider hating him. And the same goes for you. Alair… Now let me be sappy just one more time.” Letting out a sigh, Scarlet pulled her legs up to the couch and angled her body toward his, warm forehead pressed into his shoulder. When she inhaled, she felt oddly disappointed that he, too, did not smell like honey and lavender. “Don’t take me so seriously when I’m in a fit of rage. I say things I don’t mean, and I don’t hate you—I never hated you, I couldn’t, not even if I tried. Not after everything you’ve done for me.”
The pause that followed stretched such a length that it almost seemed as though the feverish young woman had finally run out of things to say, until her broken voice demolished the quietude. "You wanna know a secret?" She whispered. "Living on the streets for years didn't make me a strong person... between you and me, I'm not strong at all." In case he hadn't already noticed.
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
But he was there for her now, as she was for him. Whether she realized it or not, he was leaning on her (not physically, of course; she was far to weak to do much of anything that required bodily strength) just as much as she rested on him, and together they balanced one another in a state of perfect, albeit unconventional, equilibrium. He realized then that what he felt towards her was an unusual trust, an understanding that went beyond their jests and snappy comebacks—far deeper even than their voiced thank-yous and regrets. They marched to different drums, but the rhythms were the same nevertheless, and they could march or stride or dance alongside one another without fear of judgment, without concern of thought.
Perhaps that was what drew him so powerfully to the young woman. For the first time in recent memory, he did not have to explain himself. Nor did he have to excuse his theatrics, his ambitions, even his bizarre supernatural duties; around Scarlet, he was a version of himself that very few people ever came to know, and she’d fallen into that special role after a scant week of interaction. It hadn’t occurred to him to question it until now; she had slipped so easily into those rarely-donned shoes that he’d hardly noticed she was wearing them.
“Well, as it happens,” the Sandman drawled playfully, “I have a thing for possessive, violent, hatemongering bitches.” He lifted his free shoulder in a half-shrug, smiling down at the red-haired woman with humor dancing in his eyes. “Probably because they get along so well with childish, self-absorbed, grudge-holding bastards like yours truly.” He shook his head, adopting a slightly more serious tone as he continued. “For what it’s worth, I’m glad you don’t hate me.” Tightening his grip on her shoulder for a moment, he allowed a spell of silence to follow his words. “I mean, I figure you for the kind of hatemongering bitch who doesn’t really stand for people hanging around that she doesn’t like. You did a pretty good job pushing me out the door last week. And considering you put your own life on the line—well, that’s an exaggeration, obviously—just so you didn’t have to be around Caspar’s new squeeze? Says it enough for me.”
The lightheartedness of his words was, in fact, a defense mechanism to dilute the saturated sentiment suddenly spilling from Scarlet’s lips. He was grateful for it all, of course, but at the same time it made him slightly (but not unpleasantly) uncomfortable—as though her expectations had suddenly risen, and he didn’t quite know how to make the grade anymore. Nevertheless, he found himself leaning his head gently against hers as she pressed into his shoulder in the sudden quietude. She wanted him there; she’d hoped he would come—just as he’d hoped she would have him back.
“Shit, Scarlet, if you’re not a strong person, then who the hell is?” he queried, exhaling a breathy, incredulous chuckle against her hair. “You have to give yourself more credit. Remind me to knock some sense into you as soon as you’re better.” He grinned, his cheek tightening against her head before he raised it, sitting up a little straighter. “Now, do you want to know a secret?” he shot back, lowering his voice to a whisper. “Behind this manly, macho, rugged, handsome exterior, I’m kind of a sap too.” The smug expression he wore when he resurfaced from his murmur was almost—but not quite, through the soft gleam in his blue eyes—enough to render his confession a falsehood. “You tell anyone, though, and I’ll serve you nothing but lukewarm coffee for the rest of the summer.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
How was it that the Sandman, of all people and entities, could bring her back to the light with such ease when she was so long in her own darkness?
“Childish, self-absorbed, and bastard as not words that suit you, Magic Man.” She said when at last her chuckled died down. “Grudge-holding… well, I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t hold the occasional grudge. I’m not much of a second chances kind of girl unless I feel like the person is really worth that second chance…” Alair might have been a good example of her exceptions, but she had never harbored a grudge against him in the first place. In fact, she had regretted their small fight the moment he’d vanished from her apartment. “Regardless of my mood… you know you’re welcome here. I mean, Cas would give me one of his disapproving looks if he knew I wasn’t letting you through the door… Not that locked doors had ever stopped you, huh?”
And for that, she was glad. Leaning into her friend’s solid form, confident that for the moment, at least, it was there for her, Scarlet briefly pondered the circumstances of their odd friendship. What would have happened if he hadn’t turned up the next morning, after she’d pushed him out that door? If Caspar was suddenly absent, and the only feet treading her apartment and the only hands dirtying the dishes and the only body standing under the shower were hers? She’d be alone—precisely the one place she did not want to be. She would not have a shoulder to lean on right now, someone to make sure she didn’t burn down the kitchen while she cooked meals, someone to catch her before she fell and injured her head when she fainted.
For perhaps the first time in as long as the young woman could remember, fate had dealt her a good hand. And she hadn’t interfered with its outcome, not even a little bit.
Snorting at Sleep’s rather generous first self-appraisal, Scarlet angled her head to meet his eyes, brows rising in surprise. “You? A sap? Who’d have known.” She chuckled. “Why keep it a secret, though? I think the world needs to know that its very own Sandman is just a big ol’ softie, deep down. I’ll bet The Notebook even made you weep like a little girl, am I right?”
Laughing at the mental image that such an assumption brought to mind, the artificially-coloured redhead lightly poked her companion in the side. “Relax, Magic Man, I’m joking. Your secret’s safe with me. But if you ever serve me lukewarm coffee, I’ll dump it over your head. Don’t say you weren’t warned.”
Giggles subsiding yet again, the young woman relaxed against her friend’s shoulder, half-tempted to close her eyes, but so afraid she’d fall asleep and be swallowed by the wrath of her subconscious mind yet again. So instead she trained her eyes on her bedroom door, where Alair’s broken guitar sat, unmended and untended. The surge of guilt that threatened to spill tears once again subsided, however, as a fever-crazy through consumed her mind and attention.
Shifting her body so that her knees rested atop his thight, Scarlet sought Alair’s gaze. “Can we rewind just for a second? About how locked doors can’t keep you out? Well… I know what you do technically isn’t ‘teleporting’, but whatever it is… Are you able to take other people with you when you do it? Teleport them as well?” A childlike smile spread across Scarlet’s face, and her hand sought his, fingers entwining through his completely on impulse. “It’s too hot in this apartment… I’m just going to keep fainting if I stay here. If you’re able to do it, we could go hang out on that rooftop. I’ll even make more coffee, if you crave it through some weird association. Come on, I’m not bugging you about your guitar; we can literally perch right across from the kitchen window. And…” Another thought occurred to her that broadened her grin. “Shit, how could I forget? Cas has a shitload of guitars that he doesn’t play anymore but doesn’t have the heart to sell. You could grab one of those and give me some more pointers; nothing too strenuous or energy-consuming! Hell, it’ll probably be better for me than lying around in a daze all day. Can we at least give it a try?”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
He jumped slightly when she prodded his side with her finger, and he furrowed his brow in an exaggerated mock frown. “The Notebook? Really? You wanna go there?” he retorted playfully, poking her in the shoulder with the hand that currently cradled her upper arm. “Says the girl who has a beat-up copy of Twilight on her nightstand?” His brows arched high onto his forehead, his lips forming a victorious ‘o’ in anticipation of what he assumed would be a defensive response.
When he continued, his expression was a little more grave, his tone a little more serious. “I’m not my brother,” he told her, although he sounded more sad than defensive. After his most recent appearance in the Sleep’s life, thoughts of Death brought about stronger feelings of sorrow and dejection than they did ire and rage. “I don’t wear my heart on my sleeve anymore. I can’t.” He cleared his throat dismissively, pushing his shoulders back as if to assert that the subject was not up for discussion. “So seriously, don’t tell anybody. Do us both that favor—I don’t want to wear the cold coffee I’d have to serve you.”
He nudged her playfully with his shoulder, a complete change in expression coming over him then. Grateful for rather than on edge by the comfortable silence that settled between them, he listened to their mismatched breathing—hers quick and shallow with fever, his slower and deeper—and thought briefly of a melody to the irregular tempo, a melody he had not imagined in more years than he wanted to count, more lifetimes ago than he was willing to acknowledge…
Latching on to Scarlet’s question perhaps a little too quickly, he left behind thoughts of that miserable tune with a flurry of words. “It isn’t teleporting,” he asserted, pulling away from her somewhat so he could watch her as he explained. “It’s hard to explain. It’s like…traveling through consciousness. Harnessing energy from firing neurons, those little electric messages in your brain.” He reached up to drape a hand, fingers spread wide, on top of her head. “I can take objects with me. My guitar, my clothes”—he gave her a teasing wink—“but living things are a little trickier.”
The expression in his eyes was mischievous, however, absolutely indicating not only that he’d tried exactly what she’d proposed before—but that he had been successful. “It doesn’t work with everybody,” he said at last, chuckling a little. “Sometimes I do it without really thinking about it. Well…not taking people with me. That would be weird.” He shook his head and made a face, slipping out from behind her and rising to his feet. Reaching out, he took the redhead’s hands and hauled her to her feet, steadying her by placing his palms on her shoulders as she faced him. “Don’t be disappointed if it doesn’t work,” he disclaimed, gnawing at his lower lip. “It’s only worked with a handful of people, ever. If even that. I don’t really know why, but I think it has something to do with brain power.”
Only partially joking, he winked and cleared his throat. “Okay, step closer,” he instructed. “Yeah. Like that.” He wrapped his arms around her, clasping them together at the small of her back, then squeezed her so tightly to his body that he feared for a moment she might snap in two. But all at once—like a sudden inhale in the void of space, with muscles aching in a split-second sting as they begged for oxygen—they were on the roof of the neighboring building, with the redhead still clasped tight to him.
He relinquished his grasp and laughed heartily, keeping one hand on her shoulder to steady her. “It worked! Hey!”
Posted: Tue Jul 16, 2013 10:16 pm
“I don’t… I mean, it’s just… Caspar gave it to me as a joke! Second-hand, already beat up and dog eared!” Unfortunately, she was taken far too off guard to formulate a convincing lie, and her cheeks began to colour almost as soon as any remaining colour had drained.
“Anyway. We’ll watch The Notebook sometime, and I’ll believe your dry eyes when I see them, you big sap.” Throwing the ball back in his court, she made a playful face at him that lasted only a second, on seeing the smile melt away from his mouth. “You know, only fools wear their hearts on their sleeves these days. I don’t do it, either, but… well, that doesn’t mean I don’t feel. And the same goes for you, Magic Man; you might not be your brother, but you can’t convince me you’ve got a heart of stone. You wouldn’t be here, putting up with and looking out for a rambling feverish girl if you did. Still…” She winked at him, trying to muster a smile that would bring his back. “Your deep, dark, terrible secret is safe with me.”
Scarlet let the topic slide in favor of trying to interpret Alair’s explanation of his teleporting-but-not-really-teleporting technique. Even if he fully understood it enough to explain it, it was such an abstract concept that she didn’t quite think she’d have been able to grasp it, anyway. “Brain? Power? I am so fucked.” She laughed, a harmless deprecation of her own cognisance and mental abilities given her fever-wracked state as she let him help her to her feet, which, to her relief, didn’t feel quite as unsteady as before. “Still, I want to give it a try. But hold on a second.”
Before the Sandman could protest letting her take more than a couple steps, considering she’d just fainted not an hour ago, the redhead headed for her absentee roommate’s bedroom and opened up his closet. Three guitars, one electric and two acoustic, sat sadly against empty luggage bags, like three forgotten friends that couldn’t remember what it felt like to be lovingly handled by a skilled musician. Cas hadn’t played any of them in over two years, but like the sentimental man that he was, couldn’t find it in him to give them up.
After selecting the acoustic in the best condition, she picked it up gently by the neck and returned to her supernatural companion in the living room. “I think Caspar called this one Sadie. After some relative of his that he really admired, or something,” she explained, holding the instrument up for him to inspect. “I know it’s not your guitar, and it probably needs to be tuned pretty badly, but it’ll do until tomorrow, when we get yours fixed..”
She left no room for argument on that note, and instead followed Alair’s instructions, one hand holding the guitar off to the side, and the other gripping his shoulder from behind. Her too-warm body was pressed so close that she could hear the thrum of his heart as she pressed her forehead to his shoulder, a steady rhythm that was offset by her own quickened pulse while her system fought to drive the fever out.
“Well? Let’s try this out.” She insisted, wondering how it would feel to disappear from one spot and materialize in another. That question was soon answered in that split second void of nothingness that seized her like a merciless hand. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t feel, but for the scream of her body pining for air… And then it was over. And when she opened her eyes, sunlight beat down on the two of them from where they stood on the roof.
“It did! It worked!” Scarlet laughed, giddy like a little girl. And like a little girl, she was overcome with the knee-jerk reaction to wrap her free arm around the Sandman in a brief hug. “I guess I had enough brain power after all. Now come on; there isn’t enough music on this rooftop.”
Taking a careful seat upon the concrete, Scarlet gently tugged Alair down with her by the hand, and handed him the guitar once he’d shifted into a comfortable position. “You think you have the iron patience it takes to teach a feverish girl a few more chords?”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
But the deed was done with no one worse for wear, and once the shock of his success ebbed enough for him to grasp what they’d accomplished, he couldn’t keep the victorious grin from his lips. “Are you even going to remember how fucking awesome this is once your fever wears off?” he asked excitedly, unable to keep the lilt of pride and achievement from his voice. He returned her embrace wholeheartedly, and for a moment he was able to bask in their coupled triumph, tossing aside the lingering sorrows in favor of pure, unadulterated glee. On a whim, he ducked his head down and pressed his lips to her too-warm forehead, beaming.
He felt like a child, but in the favorable connotation of the word; his cares were distant, his mood lifted, his energy restored. The sunlight on his skin was welcome despite the heat radiating from the concrete roof that had baked beneath its glare since the early morning, and when he broke apart from the feverish redhead, he squinted through long lashes to see where she was headed. Thankfully, the virus had spared her enough of her wits to select a shady section shielded by the shed-shaped spur of the emergency stairs, and he took a seat next to her on the little ledge.
This high above the sidewalks, the wind blew free and steady without the barrier of the city’s steel and stone. He brushed his messy hair away from his forehead before gently taking the guitar, resting it on one bent knee and strumming the disused strings experimentally. The open chord that rang across the hot rooftop was comically horrifying, so much so that Alair burst out laughing at the awful dissonance. “Out of tune is right,” he said, chortling good-naturedly before pulling a face. He plucked the top, thickest string with his thumb and turned the silver knob at the far end of the neck, the pitch bending at the mercy of this new tension. He worked his way down before finishing up with the sixth, testing it against the octave and making a few final adjustments before nodding his head once, satisfied.
“Sleep waits for no one,” he said cheekily in response to her question, “but he also waits for everyone. If iron patience is what you want, you should probably talk to Amrial. But I think I have what it takes. I’m better with hatemongering bitches, as it turns out.”
He winked at her, strummed another couple of chords in a quick series to double-check the tuning, then passed the dusty instrument to Scarlet. She was seated on his left, which meant it was easy for him to access the long acoustic neck when she held it in position on her own lap.
“Let’s start with an easy one,” he told her, his expression turning serious for a moment before his composure broke, unable to hold up the ruse. “How about an E? Here.” He took her hand, this time without hesitation, and molded her fingers to the appropriate strings and frets. “Now strum. See? Easy-peasy. Now lift up your index—yeah, like that. That’s E-minor.”
He allowed her to pluck at the strings for a few moments without his intervention. “Still feeling all right? Better than inside?”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
“You kidding?” She laughed, his glee as contagious as her own. “Forget that I fucking teleported, or whatever the hell it is? No way, not anytime soon.”
Before they parted, the distinct sensation of soft lips upon her forehead halted Scarlet in position, with her free arm wrapped tightly around his back. It had been years, well over a decade even, since anyone had kissed her on the cheek or forehead. From what she could recall, her mother had been the last person to do so, and that had been a very long time ago… She had dropped out of school before dating and boyfriends became the cool thing to do, and both of those youth milestones were ones that she’d chosen to forgo while she’d prowled the streets of DC. Up until Caspar, she had never met anyone she’d trusted enough to so much as plant a kiss on her forehead, and even then, the musician could hardly get away with hugging her on a good day.
But here she was, on a rooftop across from her apartment building, hugging the Sandman of her own volition and happily accepting his gleeful gesture of affection. Perhaps the fever truly waseating away at her mind and judgement to find herself embracing the current scenario. Before she could think too deeply on it, he was pulling away, and she went to select a spot beneath the shade of the staircase for them to sit.
“Easy would be nice,” she grinned, taking the body and neck of the guitar awkwardly in her lap. “Since I’m not sure just how much of this I’m going to recall tomorrow… And no poking fun at my bad finger coordination if I mess up. You don’t kick a man—or woman, for that matter—if she’s already down.”
Letting him position her fingers over the strings, she tried to get a feel for the instrument, and although it had only been a few days since their last mini lesson, she didn’t exactly feel particularly adept at playing the string instrument. Her fingers slipped the first few times (well, more than a few, enough that even she laughed), and when at last she mastered the E, she glanced to her right, towards the real guitarist of the two of them. “E this, E that… wanna know another secret? I can’t read music notes or sheet music for shit.” Scarlet giggled, like the idea was the funniest thing in the world. “Even back when I took piano lessons, I just toughed through the sheet music part as best I could, just enough until I had the muscle memory down, and my ears took care of the rest… Somehow, it managed to get me through several years of it in grade school, with some pretty nice looks pass scores. But if you asked me to play an E major chord on a keyboard, I probably couldn’t do that any better on the only instrument I ever learned, any more than I can on your guitar.”
Perhaps she wasn’t giving herself quite enough credit, for no one passed piano exams with scores in the As and Bs without knowing where E was on the instrument. But it had been so long since she’d been required to delve into any theory that her doubts ran stronger than her confidence. In spite of her claims, however, she didn’t have much trouble with E minor after her fingers steadiest enough to master the E on Caspar’s old guitar. “I think I'm okay; don't worry so much. At least if I faint again, I'm already sitting down. So what now?” Scarlet turned back to Alair with a lazy grin, and bumped his shoulder lightly with her own. “Show me something harder. I want to see just what I’m capable of while my body temperature is a few degrees above normal.”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
But when he played—that was when everyone forgot. That was when the music spoke for its vessel, for everything it knew and beyond, for everything Alair knew and beyond. Caspar’s newly-neglected acoustic instrument, although similar in make and identical in fundamental technique, lacked that depth of character. The Sandman could make it come alive with notes and runs and powerful chord progressions, but in this case it was the voice of Sleep shining through the melodies; the guitar itself remained dutiful but silent. It was no fault of the instrument’s or even of Caspar’s; it was simply too new for such mournful intensity, and there was nothing either of them could do to rectify its youth. Experience was an attribute earned, not bestowed.
“Whoa, whoa,” he said when she’d finished speaking, rotating on the ledge to face her with one brow arched high onto his smooth forehead. “You play the piano and you didn’t bother to fucking tell me?” It was incredulity rather than any type of anger that fueled his words, his disbelief registering as amusement after a beat. “Scarlet, Scarlet, Scarlet. You were holding out on me this whole time!” He laughed, playfully reaching over to strum whatever chord she was holding down with her left-hand fingers.
“I never had much luck with the piano, if that makes you feel any better,” he confessed, shrugging. He shifted his gaze to study the faraway ledge, its harsh line distorted animatedly by the heat rising from the long stretch of concrete. “String instruments are more my thing. Although I guess technically a piano does operate with strings…the real ones, anyway. I think that’s kind of bullshit.” Looking back to the redhead, he grinned. “How much sheet music do you think Caspar knows, besides? I’m pretty sure if you put something printed in front of him, he’d do better blindfolded than trying to decipher the notes.”
At Scarlet’s request, he cleared his throat and sat forward again, reaching for her hand to position once more on the neck of the instrument. “Let’s try some bar chords, then,” he announced. “These are trickier.” He moved her left index finger so that it stretched across all six strings from the lower edge of the neck, then placed her middle and ring fingers in the subsequent frets on different strings. “You have to stretch these. And hold down all the strings with your index finger. Yep. It might sting a little on the first go. You’ve gotta press pretty hard to keep them from buzzing all over the place. Now try strumming.”
The sound that resonated from the guitar sounded more like a cough than a chord, and Alair did his best to stifle a laugh. “Uh, almost,” he said between chuckles. “Blame Cas’s guitar. Hold it tighter now. Can you slide it all to the next fret, holding your fingers in the same positions to each other?”
Re: [r. Astro] Whilst I wander on this path of the night
“I can’t really go around saying I play the piano when I don’t, really.” She said in her defense. “I mean, I took lessons as a kid, but that doesn’t make me a freaking pianist. If you heard me play now, you’d probably cringe.”
He did have a point about her claims regarding sheet music, however, and the visual imagine of a blindfolded Caspar strumming on his guitar drew another laugh from her lungs. The redhead hadn’t laughed so much in a very long time, and not all of her giggles could be attributed solely to her fever. Not all of Alair’s jokes were even all that funny, but just hearing them come from him, a presence that made her body and soul feel that much lighter, it was as if the laughter was drawn from depths of her where it shouldn’t even have been able to thrive. Not only did it all nourish her bruised heart from Caspar’s absence, but it was also making her fever that much more tolerable.
“Okay,” she conceded, “I’ll agree with you there. About the sheet music, at least. Now show me this bar chord thing.”
Letting her companion take her fingers and manipulate them to press on the appropriate places along the guitar’s neck, Scarlet frowned at how unnatural this particular chord felt already, before Alair even strummed to check the sound—which was so very off that she chuckled. “I take it it’s not supposed to sound like that, then? Jeez, I can see why you guitarists always have calluses on your fingers. Though yours aren’t even as bad as Caspar’s…” Without asking (and without warning), she took his hand and lightly ran her thumb over the pads of his fingers. “The guy’s come home from gigs with bleeding fingers before. I guess there’s something to be said for having thick skin, huh?”
Letting go of his hand, she repositioned her own over the neck of the guitar, trying to recall how he had placed it before. “Okay. Let’s try this again without blaming the poor guitar…” Biting her lip in concentration, she put more force behind it this time, and gave the strings another strum. The sound that resulted made her wince. “Okay, that one is definitely not the guitar’s fault. Hold on, I’ll get this…”
And she did get it, after about six more tries, meticulously orienting her fingers on the strings and pushing with as much force as her hands would allow. It wouldn’t normally be such a problem, but the fever had sapped a good deal of her usual strength, throwing her fine motor skills off just enough to cause her to fail at everything guitar.
“There! That’s how it’s supposed to sound, right?” Scarlet sighed when at last the resulting note did not some piece of a corrupt audio file. “Please tell me that’s how it’s supposed to sound, because I’m not sure my fingers can handle practicing that one too much…”
Shifting to face him, the young woman handed the guitar back to the Sandman and positioned herself across from him. “Ok, here’s the thing; I play by ear. I learn by memorizing sequences and figuring out how they work in my head. Just practicing chords and stuff isn’t really sticking, so maybe play me a short little tune, and I’ll see if I can mimic it. Once it’s in my head, it means the notes will be in my head, and then, the chords… I’m kind of ass-backwards when it comes to learning music. But,” leaning in, her slender fingers encircled his wrists and gave them a gentle squeeze. “don’t make it Mary Had a Little Lamb, for the love of God and all things good. I’ve had to learn way too man renditions for that song, and believe me, it should not have as many renditions as it does.”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you
So suddenly lost was he in thoughts of bodily harm that he started when the redhead reached for his hand, cradling the back in her palm while her dominant hand traced the outline of his fingertips. He writhed slightly at the sensation of her touch along the nerve-dense area, a bemused smile illuminating his face. When he got over the shock of unannounced contact, it was a pleasurable sensation, and his gaze flitted up to Scarlet as she looked down in seemingly serious inspection.
“No, I don’t play as often as he does,” he confirmed with a nod, a little disappointed when she relinquished her grasp. “I don’t know. I’ve been playing for so long it’s just like it’s part of me now.” Realizing how silly that must have sounded, his shoulders shook in a good-natured chuckle. He took the guitar when Scarlet offered it back to him, propping it on his knee and pausing in thought. “Playing someone else’s guitar feels so…weird,” he admitted, idly strumming an E-minor before raising it to a happier E-major. The Sandman wrinkled his nose without obvious cause; the strings were perfectly tuned, the sound pure enough. He glanced up at the redhead, who had moved to sit across from him, and shook his head slowly.
“You’re not backwards,” he said matter-of-factly, glancing down at the guitar in his lap. A thin sheet of dust still clung to the gentle curve of its side, and he brushed it away with the side of his hand. “What’s backwards is playing on this guitar.” The words came out more seriously than he’d intended, and he remedied it with a genuine smile. “But anyway. No Mary Had a Little Lamb. So what’ll it be?” His grin stretched to a mischievous smirk. “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star?” he asked jokingly.
He didn’t give her time to respond before launching into something unrecognizable, looking down at his own working fingers as they danced across the strange boardwalk of frets. The chord progression was simple, with just three basic changes—but the way he strummed, the way he articulated the individual notes of the pattern, it sounded like a whole lot more. Eventually a melody began to form amongst the racing eighth notes, standing out against the others until he stripped them away completely and left only the bare bones of its foundation to repeat over and over.
He played as though he were in a trance, so when he looked up to meet his companion’s gaze, it was as though he’d awoken from a deep, restful slumber. He smiled softly. “Might’ve gotten a little carried away,” he said gently, the cadence of his statement lilting along with the melody he continued to play. “Think you can do that? Here, why don’t you try?” The wind picked up like a breath of relief, tossing hair into his eyes which he quickly combed back. “Those are chords I showed you last time. It might help to hum along.”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you
Giving the poor instrument an affectionate pat, Scarlet sat back and listened as Alair’s musical talent took to the air, in the form of but a handful of chords, arranged masterfully and gliding delicately on the calm breeze. No sooner had his fingers taken to the strings that the Sandman appeared to be completely immersed in the simply yet beautiful and unfamiliar melody. The wind blew his dark hair across his forehead, tousling it in such a way that made it look so soft, enough that Scarlet had the strangest urge to reach out and touch it. The only reason she didn’t was for fear of interrupting this soulful, musical trance; even she felt hypnotized by her companion’s uncanny talent, and found herself not so much paying attention to the chords that his capable fingers manipulated as she was to just enjoying his playing.
The spell was broken the moment he stopped, and the artificial redhead took a moment to re-establish herself back in reality—which, with a fever, was difficult to do. “Whoa… And here I was expecting Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” She teased, sitting up straight and taking the guitar as he passed it to her. “I kinda spaced out a bit, to be honest… Not because I was bored! I’m just running a few degrees above what’s humanly healthy. Let me give it a go.”
Getting comfortable in a spot next to her preternatural friend, Scarlet adjusted the string instrument on her lap and flexed her fingers before giving the first part of the melody a go. Needless to say, many of the chords were far from perfect, falling too flat or too sharp, or just not right at all. In the heat of the day, combined with the fever beneath her skin, it was simply too difficult to concentrate. So after a solid, five-minute effort, she gave up with a defeated laugh. “Okay. I apologize profusely that you had to bear witness to that.” She said, long, crimson locks coming free of her loose ponytail and spilling down her back in a cascade of bright red. “Apparently I’m less of a guitar virtuoso when I can hardly see straight. I think I’ll leave the playing to you, Magic Man.”
Placing the instrument gently down in front of them, the young woman stretched backwards, lying prostrate upon the warm cement of the rooftop, eyes closed against the sunlight. “Maybe I’ll give that little jingle a go on the piano or keyboard, someday… ‘Course, my prowess on the piano isn’t anywhere near as solid as yours on the guitar. You might still be disappointed…” Opening one eye against the glare of sunbeams, Scarlet looked on at her unusual friend, a dark silhouette against the brilliant midday sky. The oddest sensation came over her just then, something about seeing him contrasted so vividly against a skyward landscape, and she found herself righting her position on her elbows, then struggling back into a sitting position.
“I’ve done a lot of crazy shit in my life, you know. But this—teleporting to a freaking rooftop and playing the guitar—I think that pretty much tops it.” Tossing a smile in Alair’s direction, she rested a hand on his shoulder, the fabric of his shirt hot from the merciless UV rays that beat down upon it. “Congratulations on officially making my life surreal, Sandman. Speaking of sand…” Without giving it a primary thought (let alone a second), Scarlet’s hand slid from Alair’s shoulder to his jaw, stroking the length of his scruffy cheekbone with her knuckles. “You could do with a good shave, or you’ll go from having no a sandpaper face to a beard in a couple of days.”
And yet… There was something endearing about the soft stubble along his jawline, and the lazy smile that it complimented, and the flood of warmth (different from her fever) that flooded her body from the contact. Her hand didn’t fall away, nor did her eyes, which searched his electric blue irises as if they held the answer as to why she was suddenly so reluctant to keep her distance from him. And when at last they did drop, they didn’t stray far, instead taking note of the perfect shape of his mouth. All of it, everything about him, drew her in nearer, helplessly, like a magnet. Her body drew closer to his, her face closer to his, her lips closer to his, and before she knew what she was doing…
“Hey! What the hell are you punks doing up here, causing all of that bullshit racket?” The angry voice of a very perturbed, very winded middle-aged man with a round face broke whatever spell to which Scarlet had fallen victim as he climbed the last of the steps up to the rooftop, round face as red as a tomato. “This is private property; ergo, you’re trespassing! So get your arses outta here before I call the cops.”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you
It was a feeble excuse, but it was truthful nevertheless, and Alair felt better enough to dive straight into his acoustic improvisation. The rooftop’s excessive warmth was suddenly comfortable, with the wind caressing his face and running its invisible fingers through his dark hair; the notes he picked flew like songbirds on the rising heat, riding a spiraling updraft to serenade the cerulean sky hovering far above. He closed his eyes for a few moments, losing a certain thread of reality in the sonorous tapestry he wove, doing his best to coax from this foreign instrument the same haunting spirit of the wounded six-string he knew so well.
Only partially successful, he simplified the progression for the redhead’s benefit, distantly aware that he’d perhaps fallen into the trap of showing-off. But the faux pas was accidental, and if Scarlet harbored any sort of resentment for his exaggerated performance then she was hiding it well behind the happy feverish gleam in her bright eyes. “Don’t push it,” he advised her as she began, watching her fingers scramble to find the proper positions for the chords he’d demonstrated to her nearly a week prior. His gaze flitted from the neck to the opening and then back up to the redhead’s face, suddenly aware that she was perhaps exerting herself too much.
But just as he mustered up what to say, she was laughing, dismissing her valiant effort with the flash of a smile. Unable to stop himself from returning the expression, he shifted positions on the ledge, leaning on his left arm towards her as she lowered herself prostrate along the rough concrete. “I don’t really disappoint easily,” he admitted, slinging a lopsided smile on his lips. “I don’t take you for the type to disappoint easily, either.” He shrugged, playing down the compliment as a casual statement of fact. “We should play together sometime. If you want, that is.”
He glanced sidelong in her direction, mischief shimmering in his blue eyes like the vibrating waves of heat radiating from the scalding rooftop. She was stirring now, and he was glad to see that the pallor of her face had been replaced by a blush of light crimson. “I’m glad you’re having fun,” he said matter-of-factly, more taken aback—and flattered—by her declaration than he let on, with his nonchalant grin and slightly raised brows. And before he knew what was happening, her hand was on his cheek, her fingertip tracing over the growing pattern of dark stubble that clung to his jaw, her eyes following the outline of his profile with an intensity he could have sworn he could feel on his warm skin.
The shock of it rendered him momentarily frozen, but soon he pulled away—not enough to break their contact, but enough to swivel in place to face her directly, bemusement shining in his eyes. “Scarlet…” he said questioningly, but his voice was a murmur, lost in the familiar cacophony of city sounds drifting from the bustling afternoon streets below. What are you doing? he wanted to say, but the words simply would not come; he melted blissfully into her touch, his neck slackening as he pressed his face into the tender pad of her palm. His eyelids had fluttered closed, but when he opened them again, his gaze connected fiercely—desperately—with the young woman’s, each searching the other for answers to questions conjured by these new gestures, this unplanned intimacy.
He was as lost in her eyes as she was in his, so submerged in the depths of her twinkling stare that he was only conscious of diving deeper as their faces closed in. He could feel her breath, hotter than the summer air, skip across his skin like smooth stones on a glasslike lake; he could feel the heat of her body and her fever emanating from her lightly-perfumed skin. His hands found a way to her arms, her shoulders, the back of her neck; he guided her closer still, on the brink of awareness, until their lips were all but brushing one another’s ragged, anticipatory breaths…
But they were robbed of their reverie all too soon, and as Alair snapped violently back to the scene around them, he was both alarmed and irritated. He leapt to his feet, startled, and faced the portly man with the thinning salt-and-pepper hair who had burst through the staircase door. “I had a complaint about noise up here,” the man asserted, his gaze obviously finding the guitar Scarlet had lain flat on the concrete before he glared back up at the Sandman.
Alair bit back his offense at the word noise and glanced over to Scarlet. “Yeah, sorry,” he said, shaking his head to himself as though to assist in his recovery from the strange—and wonderful—moment with the redhead.
“I want to know how you got up here,” the landlord—Alair assumed he was the landlord—demanded, pulling at the waistband of his stained khaki shorts. “Was it the fire escape? You do know it’s a federal offense to climb one of those, right?”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you
Whatever the reason behind it, the redhead’s mood swiftly transitioned from blue placidity and contentedness to the bright and enraged colour of her hair. She’d been having fun, relaxing with a friend on a rooftop in an attempt to forget about the aches and pains caused by the fever that wracked her small form. Who the hell did this guy think he was, waltzing in all indignant and self-righteous? Barring a few silly laws, they fundamentally weren’t doing anything wrong.
“Look, the noise was my fault.” She spoke up, climbing to her feet a little unsteadily, taking Alair’ by the arm to ensure that she maintained her balance. “But he wasn’t making noise. That’s called music, pal, and anyone who complained about it is an even bigger nitwit than you.”
“Excuse me!” Although it was seemingly impossible, the landlord’s face grew a shade darker as he mustered the assertiveness to advance on the haughty girl, and her stunned companion. “I’d be careful with who you go around insulting, missy. Particularly when it’s the person whose property you happen to be trespassing on! Now I don’t know how the hell you got up here, aside from the fire escape staircase, but did you miss the part where I said I’d call the cops on you both if you don’t get out of here as fast as you got here?”
Fire escape? Staircase? Oh no, this man had all of his facts horribly wrong. He had no idea that they’d defied the laws of physics to set foot on his precious property; and it just so happened that Scarlet had half a mind (the feverish and illogical and irrational part of her mind) to tell him the truth. Tell him exactly how it happened.
“We didn’t climb the damn fire escape.” She snorted, folding her arms challengingly in indignation. “You want to know how we got here? We teleported—that’s right, we fucking teleported. First we’re there, then we’re gone.” Narrowed eyes accompanied a cheeky smirk as the young woman reveled in the look of utter shock and confusion on the landlord’s face. “You do know what teleporting is, don’t you? Because literally…”
Her words trailed off (or, rather, were cut off) when Alair took a step forward, butting into and taking over the conversation. Had her mind not been so fogged with heat and anger, she might have taken offense and butted right back in, but some small inkling of common sense deep in her subconscious held her back. She was sick, after all, and more prone than usual to be set off like a wild firecracker. Alair at least had the mental capacity and clarity to deescalate and negotiate instead of pick a fight that was best left alone.
Her only peeve was that, on explaining how they had reached the rooftop, instead of backing her (rather haughty, perhaps) honesty, he went along to agree with the landlord’s suspicions as to how they’d ended up several stories above the street without having direct access to the building. The fire escape. Really, Alair?
But the Sandman kept his explanation and apologies short and to the point, as if he’d anticipated that the untruth would ignite her fire, and before she knew what was happening, he was taking the guitar and taking his leave, by way of that same fire escape.
“Hey… hey, seriously? Why didn’t you tell him the truth? Didn’t you see the look on his face when I did?” Scarlet, sounding very much like a little girl denied a trip to the beach, followed her companion closely down the stairs, past the numerous stories of the building. “I’d have given him the real story! Some people can’t handle the truth, and those people happen to be the funnest to mess with… is ‘funnest’ even a word?”
In hindsight, there might have been some twisted logic to her terribly impulsive (yet quite innocent) giveaway of one of Alair’s many abilities, taking into consideration that it was a hot day, she already had a fever, and her balance was off; not a good recipe for someone taking the stairs. Thankfully, it wasn’t too late when she stumbled on a step, suffering yet another wave of dizziness and falling into the Sandman, who at least had the sense to hang onto the railing.
“Alair, there are too many steps…” She murmured, the fight and energy suddenly dissipating from her body like air out of a balloon. When he turned to face her, she clutched the front of his shirt, not realizing why she had felt so compelled to do so until she opened her eyes again, and found herself surrounded not by the sweltering heat afternoon, but by the slightly cooler temperature of the apartment.
“Well that was fun while it lasted…” Scarlet sighed, taking a seat on the living room couch (if collapsing was the same as taking a seat). Pulling her knees up to the cushions, she ran her fingers through her now loose crimson locks, the glow to her face replaced once again by pallor with a resurgence of the virus and fever. “But I think my everything hurts, now… could you get me some aspirin? We can do something that doesn’t require having to get up… How about another movie? Your choice, this time.”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you
His red-haired companion, however, saw it differently through her fever-glazed eyes. He stepped forward as if to stop her, but the declarations were out of her mouth before he could stop them—and he wasn’t sure he wanted to anyway. Able to stifle the smirk from his lips but not from his blue eyes, he played the part of staunch guardian in the shadow of her feisty majesty, silently flattered—and emotionally touched in a way more profound than he’d known in some time—at her comments regarding his music. The thought prompted him to retrieve Caspar’s old guitar, gripping its neck tightly in his left hand.
But his second emotional reverie of the afternoon was soon shattered when Scarlet looked to him to confirm her claims of teleportation, and he furrowed his brow just enough to display his concern. “Sir, she’s not feeling well today,” he said politely, typically charming despite the hostility in the air, “we came up here for a little air. Didn’t think anyone would mind.” Alair wrapped his hand around her upper arm, tugging her gently closer to him as he took a step towards the rusty fire escape. “No harm done. We won’t do it again,” he added, his tone not nearly as sincere as he’d intended it to be.
The grumbling landlord glared at them from the shade of the interior stair, his beady eyes tracing their movements until they had disappeared beneath the edge of the building. Free of his watchful glower, Alair halted abruptly on the second landing down. “No,” he said, turning just in time for her momentum to carry her directly into his chest. He wrapped his arms around her reflexively, looking down into her bright feverish eyes as she tangled her fingers in his t-shirt. “ ‘Funnest’ is not a word.” He chuckled good naturedly, then tightened his grasp and pulled her even closer against his torso.
The blinding world of the late afternoon city summer dissolved into the dimmer, slightly cooler environment of the familiar apartment as Alair pulled them both back through space and consciousness. He propped the guitar against the living room wall and nodded to the pale redhead, retrieving a glass of ice water from the kitchen and delivering it to her with a handful of pills. Suddenly overwhelmed with a fatigue of his own that he hadn’t previously noticed, he followed her lead and collapsed onto the sofa at the opposite end, heaving a tired-sounding sigh that betrayed his sudden exhaustion.
“That heat really knocks it out of you,” he commented dryly, taking a sip of the water he’d gotten for himself. Glad that it would soon be evening, he nodded at her suggestion of a movie and hauled himself to his feet to examine the shelves of discs. “How about…” he began, perusing through squinted eyes, “…something terrible.” He pulled out a plastic case and held it out for the redhead’s approval. “The Notebook!?” he finished, his amusement shining like electricity in his azure eyes. Before she could protest, he was popping it into the player, settling back on the couch with the remote wearing a suitable smirk.
“We’ll see who’s a softie now,” he said, reaching over to flick her foot with his index finger.
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you
Based on her the sharpness (or lack thereof) of her skills of reasoning and observation alone, it was clear that Scarlet couldn’t get the medication into her system quickly enough. The aspirin that Alair had retrieved for her was knocked back with a long mouthful of water, that ultimately turned into her downing the entire glass without pause. That tint of colour that stained her cheeks, which had faded with the day, had returned with vengeance at the resurgence of her fever, which once again had chosen to climb instead of wane, and suddenly everything seemed hot and suffocating all over again.
Nodding her agreement at his comment about the heat, the fiery redhead cast her companion a scrutinizing glance, immediately taking note of the Sandman’s sluggish movements as he went to examine the movies. “You’re looking a little tired there, Sandman… I hope you’re not coming down with what I’ve got.” And at his ultimate choice of movie, Scarlet wrinkled her nose and added, “Okay, you’ve definitely got to be coming down with something to watch that. But whatever floats your boat… since you’ve already confessed you’re a big softie.”
Since it wasn’t as though she was in quite the state of mind to be attentively watching, she humored his terrible choice and scooted over on the couch to make room for him, with her heel pressed up against his thigh. “Ten bucks says you’ll cry,” she teased, and that was the last thing that Scarlet remembered saying to him.
She couldn’t remember seeing any of the movie (that, in all fairness, she had already seen more times than she liked to admit), nor could she remember when she nodded off, or how, or why. But when Scarlet opened her eyes again, it was past ten-o-clock in the evening, the air had cooled, and the world beyond the window was inky dark and speckled with stars. Syrupy music whined on the menu screen that must have been looping for hours, that same saccharine melody that almost physically nauseated the young woman. It wasn’t long before she sat forward with a groan and snatched up the remote, turning off the television before she felt inclined to throw something at the screen. It left her and Alair in darkness, save for the filtered moonlight and the beams of streetlights that leaked into the living room, casting yellow stripes over their forms.
“You got lucky, Magic Man; apparently I wasn’t awake to see you cry…”
But—however phenomenally—it appeared that she hadn’t been the only one to nod off. The Sandman’s form was limp against the couch cushions, his head lolled to one side, eyes closed and breathing soft and even. You’ve got to be shitting me… Could the Sandman actually fall asleep, himself? It gave her pause to worry that he had, perhaps, caught whatever virus that ailed her, and for reasons unknown even to the Aries sign, her knee-jerk reaction was to move him from the old couch to somewhere more comfortable.
Getting to her feet far more steadily than she would have been capable of a few hours ago (and immediately taking note of how much cooler her skin felt, a sure sign the fever had finally broken), Scarlet knelt and draped one of his arms around her shoulders, hoisting him to his feet as she straightened her own body. “You’ll get a kink in your neck if you sleep like that for too long,” she chided him gently, before guiding him (practically sleepwalking) to her bedroom. Caspar’s room might have been a more natural alternative, but it was also further from the living room, and she could only bear the weight for so long.
“I might be the one with a kink in my neck tomorrow…” The young woman muttered to herself, easing him painstakingly onto her bed, foregoing a blanket as the night was already so humid and warm. “The things I do for you.”
Watching as Alair stretched and then relaxed again, never once waking, Scarlet contemplated taking Caspar’s bed for the night, but something held her back. Primarily, she didn’t want to be reminded of the friend who was slipping through her fingers, and secondly… Secondly, she just didn’t want to be alone.
Moving to the other side of her bed, Scarlet eased herself onto her mattress, rolling onto her side to face the sleeping Sandman. An impulsive hand extended to brush his hair from his face and feel his forehead, checking for a fever that (thankfully) was not there, but that hand lingered. It traced the curve of his cheek and jaw, just like it had done earlier that day upon the rooftop, before falling to the curve between his shoulder and neck. The things I do for you… But she couldn’t deny the things that he did for her, either. He was as good a friend, if not better, than Caspar, and she had treated him so coldly a couple of nights ago…
“…I know I’ve already said I’m sorry,” the words passed her lips in a whisper. “So instead I’ll just say thank you. For everything…” And only because there was no reason for her to suppress the urge, she leaned forward on her elbow, hovering above him a few inches, and pressed her lips to his forehead. He’d never know, but… it still made her feel better, if not a tad wistful.
Keeping basic respect in mind, Scarlet then took to the other side of her bed again, turning on her side to face the window, and returned to slumber not moments later, staring at the stars that had turned their backs on her.
Like the beautiful grass turned malevolent, the snow beneath her feet was white, juxtaposed vibrantly against an inky black ocean on the horizon that mirrored an inky black sky full of judgemental stars. It was both beautiful and eerie to behold, but the beauty was lost in the chill that cut through her flimsy layers of clothing, the jeans and T-shirt in which she’d fallen asleep; and barefoot, to boot.
This dreamscape was not two-faced like the beautiful fields of white, nor chaotic and wicked like the dream with which she’d been plagued the night before. It was honest, a true reflection of her restless subconscious mind without the embellishments lent by a fever: cold and vast solitary. Sad.
At least, it was supposed to be solitary. Scarlet wasn’t sure how many steps she had taken, shivering in bare feet with snow up to her ankles, before she noticed a second pair of footprints next to hers. “…why do you keep coming back?” The young woman brushed her light brown hair from her eyes, turning to lay eyes upon the one consistent dream visitor she’d had in the past week. “Is it my fault? Do I drag you to these places without meaning to? Because you shouldn’t be here… we both know what happens. Or what is going to happen.” This time, unlike all the other times, she knew. She remembered the past terrors, and she had a sinking feeling as to what to expect. What would it be this time? Would the snow pile and pile until she could neither move nor breathe? Would the stars fall like fireballs from the sky, burning through her skin? Would the ocean up ahead rise to swallow her up?
By the time she decided to stop in her tracks, and turn to face the Sandman full on, there were already tears on her face. “Alair, you shouldn’t keep coming here. The only thing worse than knowing what is going to happen to me is wondering what might happen to you.”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you
He watched her for a long while, his limbs feeling heavier and heavier as his attention shifted from Scarlet to the screen and then back again. He sincerely hoped he wasn’t coming down with whatever ailed her, but he didn’t feel sick. Nevertheless, his exhaustion was strange and out of the ordinary, and he couldn’t place the source of the weariness no matter how thoroughly he scrutinized his day. Even the twenty-four hours he’d spent away from the redhead in the aftermath of their argument had been less than strenuous, and he couldn’t recall anything that would have sapped so much energy from his body.
It occurred to him about halfway through the saccharine flick that the root of his fatigue was indeed their rooftop adventure. He shifted positions slightly, wedging himself into the corner where the arm met the cushion, his lips curled into a haughty smile. Of course it had been the teleportation. It had been so many years since he’d successfully carried another living being that he’d forgotten the toll it could take on the physical manifestation of his body; to transport someone else was to forego that much more of his own lively vigor, in essence multiplying tenfold the amount of effort it would have taken to move himself alone.
With the mystery solved, he dissolved further into the thick soft embrace of the couch, his arms folded loosely across his abdomen as the neglected film played emptily in the background. This was the kind of exhaustion only sleep could cure—sleep for Sleep, a rare (but not unprecedented) occurrence of late.
The Sandman did not drift off slowly; he did not fall, as so many described, into slumber. It was a purposeful, calculated transition, one that he made consciously. And when he flipped the proverbial switch in his mind, he was out, gone, lost to the clutches of the very notion he represented in the flesh.
He did not dream; Alair, in fact, could not dream. It was an ability he had sacrificed a long time ago, when nature had demanded an offering in order to save someone he cared about very much…when he had tried in vain to save her, the one Amrial and Roesaleine had failed to rescue despite Sleep’s efforts. Had he been conscious and awake, he would have recoiled from the memory as water withdrew from oil, slipping from its clutches in hopes to either wash it away or to evade it that much longer. Fortunately, he was spared the mental torture of that particular remembrance, and instead he slumbered on, oblivious.
But he was also oblivious to things that would have dulled the ache, to actions and gestures that would have reassured him of the presence of good and affection in the world. He hardly stirred when Scarlet wormed her arm around him and hoisted him to his unsteady feet. When he woke in the morning he would have almost no recollection of moving from the drab, lumpy sofa to the much-softer confines of the redhead’s mattress.
He was not awake for the tender brushing of hair from his forehead; he did not feel the soft, gentle press of the redhead’s lips on his skin. And that was what made it so beautiful and so equally tragic.
The snow beneath his bare feet chilled him to the bone, but he was not uncomfortable; his fingertips did not tremble against the cold wind as his hands dangled at his sides, and his nose, though tinted the light, delicate color of rose, was warm to the touch. The black sea stretched to the horizon to chase an equally-dark, star-spotted sky, and Alair stood perched atop a particularly steep hill as he gazed across its eerie, glasslike surface.
He recognized this place instantly. If looks alone had not revealed its source, the feeling that crept into the deep recesses of his soul would have given it immediately away. The beauty he might otherwise have appreciated died with the wind’s bitter whisper, and he shifted positions, trekking forward as the frozen carpet beneath him crunched hollowly under his steps.
He paused in contemplation halfway down the slope of the hill, gnawing at his lower lip as he studied the utterly still shoreline where the dark water met the brightly blanketed land. He wasn’t sure when he became aware of Scarlet’s approach, but he wasn’t surprised when she spoke, asking him why he kept appearing. Turning towards her only to find that she faced away, he took a step to close the distance between them, suddenly feeling the chill that had struggled to seep beneath his skin since his arrival. He folded his arms across his chest, shoulders slumping forward.
Despite his folded posture, his expression was hopeful. “I come when you want me to come,” he replied matter-of-factly, his tone warm but distant. The expression in his eyes shifted dramatically when she professed to knowing what would happen—she hadn’t seemed to have any idea what to expect the other times he had visited—and he closed the gap between them with several quick paces that defied all brands of physics.
The blue of his gaze was darker now, like the water, but the gleam they wore sparkled with the electricity of determination. He placed his hands on her shoulders, gripping her perhaps too tightly as he searched her face. She knew, he could tell; the frosty tears that ran down her cheeks were as much evident of that as the sadness, the fear, the resignation in her stare. With one hand, he reached up to brush aside the moisture on her face before the wind could freeze it painfully to her skin.
“I’m not going anywhere, Scarlet,” he told her fiercely, lowering his head to find her eyes directly. “I left once, but I will never do it again. I can’t leave you here alone, knowing what might happen. Don’t you see?” His own eyes began to water, although it was less to do with emotion and more to do with the sting of the frigid air that had begun to howl across the snowy plains. He repeated himself, pulling her into a tight embrace, a shiver running down the length of his spine: “I’m not going anywhere.”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you
What’s more, the more conflicted, twisted, skewed, strained and biased the subconscious mind, the more freedom the dreams took to their fancy. And Scarlet had scars, mental, emotional, or otherwise, that opened up cans of worms that other various and sundry minds, all peacefully asleep, couldn’t begin to divine. Those scars and experiences all appeared to cause cracks and fissures in the reality that was supposed to be imposed on a dreamscape that let chaos seep in. They allowed malicious vines, armed with the sharpest of thorns, to shoot up from an everwhite carpet of soft grass, and fire and ice to plummet from the sky simultaneously with no apparent source or causation.
Despite the fact her bare feet tread winter ground, the young woman knew at the back of her troubled mind that there was nothing stopping a volcano from shooting up from behind her and melting and burning everything unfortunate enough to fall into its path with the lava that it vomited. These newfound uncertainties, now that she was so suddenly aware of what might occur that it could be argued she was bordering on a lucid dream, only made her all the more apprehensive, and all the more hopeless, because now she knew: every night, by one means or another, she died a small, but no less insignificant death in her own mind. The only recent difference happened to be Alair; a new constant in many of her dreams, barring the last one (understandably, given how badly she’d pissed him off and hurt his feelings). And as much as she knew how he yearned to help, to make a difference in the lives that she lived while she dreamed, even the Sandman himself had only served as a spectator for the most part, helpless under the constraints and restrictions of the dreamscape. Barely more than someone who bore witness to each and every horrific occurrence.
“You shouldn’t come at all… even if I want you to.” Scarlet’s breath fogged in front of her face as she met the Sandman’s spirited blue eyes. And even enfolded in his tight, warm embrace that fought off the bitter winter chill that numbed her fingers and toes and the tip of her nose, she couldn’t find comfort. If he could help her, actually be of help to her, then wouldn’t he have done so already? Wouldn’t one of these ghastly nightmares have ended in something positive, already?
“…I’ve heard it before.” Her words were mumbled, so close was her face to his chest when she spoke up once again. “In different ways, at different times, and for different reasons, but… it always boils down to the same thing. Alair, I know you mean well—I do. But…” Pressing her shaking hands to his chest, the redhead (whose hair was not red; not here) put enough distance between them to meet his eyes once more. “How long until you tire of me, too? How long before you’re gone, like Caspar? How long before you realize I'm not worth sticking around?”
An audible crack, like that of a car’s windshield spidering outward from a nic, only much louder, tore Scarlet’s attention away from her well-intended companion, and her eyes widened with fear as she breathed, “It’s happening.”
Yards behind Scalair, the wind had blown up the powder-soft snow, revealing that the only surface separating their feet from the obsidian ocean was a simple layer of ice; a layer that, a bit at a time, was beginning to crack, break, and fall away, pieces at a time.
“We have to run. Hurry!” Grabbing a hold of one of his hands, Scarlet took off in a sprint, her long legs carrying her far as she all but dragged the Sandman behind her, not about to leave him behind. But like all of her nightmares, the dream was not about to let either of them get the best of it. The cracks spread, spidering out far more rapidly than what should be possible, and the next thing she knew, the next step she took resulted in yet another sickening crack.
The Aries girl felt it before she heard it, with what little feeling was left in the soles of her numbing feet, but still looked down to confirm: the cracking of the ice beneath her, dooming her once again to a terrible fate. With every consecutive second lingered the tease of yet another demise, the ice just biding its time before it decided to shatter beneath her, tossing her to the mercy of a merciless, bitter ocean.
It was only then that Scarlet released Alair’s hand, blue eyes welling with tears again as she turned slowly, gingerly, to face him. “I won’t drag you down with me,” the words glided on the cold air like a whisper. It was only beneath her own two feet that the ice threatened to give way, and if the Sandman were simply to pivot out of the way, he would avoid sharing her fate.
“But… Alair… how do I stop this?” Her attempt to swallow her sorrow and fear was in vain, as the tears were already streaming down her face in small rivers. “I don’t want this to keep happening; I don’t want to die every time I close my eyes! Alair, please… If you can help me, if it’s possible at all, I need you to help me now!”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you
“If you want me here, I will be here,” he told her softly, her hands cold against his chest. “You will never know how long I will last if you don’t give me a try.” He tried to smile, tried to lighten the mood, futile though he knew his actions to be. “You said so yourself that I was no stand-in for Cas…” He shook his head slowly, sighing through parted lips. How could he convince her? He couldn’t, and that’s what made him feel so utterly helpless. It was her dream, her nightmare, her subconscious feelings manifest; he was the Sandman, yes, but more than that he was her friend in this scenario—a welcome presence, in many ways. An invited guest.
But the longer he stayed, and the more often he appeared, Alair began to wonder if his role in this great scheme was something more than just bystander. His thoughts were made audible by the redhead-turned-brunette, and he looked at her suddenly as though he were seeing her—truly Scarlet—for the first time. The desperation in her eyes shone as bright and devastating as the burning giants in the obsidian sky above them, and he shivered—although whether it was due to the dropping temperature or the revelation, he could not accurately say. He wanted nothing more than to cloak her dream-self in his magic, to wrap his essence around her as a shield against the evil of her own mind. But as they both knew, the wickedness dwelled within herself, and therefore it would seep through his defenses from either side of the line to dissolve everything they’d built.
The crack beneath their feet vibrated through his skeleton as though he, too, were made of ice. Over Scarlet’s shoulder, the angry wind was made visible as it kicked up the powdery snow in its terrifying current. But he did not watch the landscape as it unfurled its black and white horrors; his eyes were locked on Scarlet’s, his hands once again finding her shoulders, holding her in place as the sandlike drift beneath their feet eroded to bring their bare soles to the paper-thin ice.
But then they were running, sprinting; they were flying blind across the unpredictable surface, the young woman just ahead of him as she raced away from the nightmare. When they stopped, she relinquished his hand, turning to him with tear-filled eyes and a face as pale as the distant winter scenery. He followed her gaze and saw the cracks outlining her feet; he saw that his own path to safety was a mere handful of yards from where he currently stood. And yet he had no desire to run, no desire to save his own skin; before she could protest, he stepped as close to her as he possibly could, interlocking his feet with hers as they teetered on the edge of a certain demise.
The cracks began to expand, branching away in irregular, serpentine paths that stretched like jagged white lightning across the icy black surface of the sea. He could not change her dream; it was not his place. But he could help her help herself—that was what he’d realized in their retreat, in Scarlet’s absolute panic to get away from the horrifying phenomena of her taciturn dreamscape.
“I am helping you,” he murmured in response, his lips near her ear as he wrapped her in yet another all-encompassing embrace. He pulled her tighter, shielding her from the increasing wind. “And I’m not leaving. I’m right here. Fight, Scarlet. Fight, if you can.” He paused, tightening his grip. “I’m right here.”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you
If you want me here, I’ll be here.
And he was there, right there, with her. Even when the ice beneath her feet cracked and fissured, and the fissures spread and weakened the surface that separated her from the merciless waters of a bitter cold ocean, he didn’t step away. He didn’t even appear to be thinking about his own safety, so preoccupied was he with hers, and as opposed to stepping away (like he probably should have), he stepped forward, until they shared the same danger zone.
And I’m not leaving.
“You’ll go down…” Scarlet wept, pressing her cheek into Sleep’s warm shoulder. “You’ll go down with me, and then we’ll both die…” But he knew this; it was obvious, and this was his decision. To heed her cry for help, and to be there, even if all it accomplished was simply being there, and nothing more.
I’m right here.
Those were the last words she heard, spoken with such conviction into her ear, before the thin ice beneath their feet gave way with a final crack, releasing them to the frigid hands of the water below. There was barely enough time to close her eyes before the nightmare took her once again.
Scarlet had drowned in previous dreams, and she knew what to expect: that numbing rush of cold, followed by the ache turned burning sensation in her chest as her lungs struggled for air that they wouldn’t get. But from the moment she felt the ground dissolve, followed by that pull of gravity that should have dragged them both under, she became acutely aware of the absence of all of those previous sensations. Her body didn’t ache with cold, and her lungs didn’t burn for air—because they were no underwater.
Cracking her eyes open, the redhead-turned-brunette beheld a vermillion sun rising in the east, over an ocean that surrounded not thin sheets of ice, but the smooth stones of a rocky beach, upon which she and Alair sat.
“…I didn’t die.” The words, spoken aloud, sounded far away and detached, and so she said it a second time. “I didn’t die. Alair…” Pulling away just enough to rest her hands on his shoulders, Scarlet’s tearful face illuminated with a broad smile. “Thank you. Thank you for being here and for whatever it was you did that saved me and… just, thank you. I owe you more than I even want to admit.”
Scarlet pulled the Sandman into a warm hug, so relieved that what was left of her tears were tears of joy; she couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt such relief, such reassurance, blooming as strong and bright as the sunrise. It planted a bold seed in her heart, such that when she met his eyes, something familiar and giddy overcame her; that same something that had very nearly led to a delicately intimate moment the day before on the rooftop that had been interrupted.
There was nothing to interrupt them this time, when her fingers slid to the back of his neck, drawing him ever closer until their lips met, softly and delicately as a butterfly’s wings…
…and with the danger of her nightmare evaded, the dream released Scarlet from its grasp, and the redhead opened her eyes to daylight streaming through her bedroom window—over the shoulder of the Sandman, against whom she was, somehow, desperately pressed. Startled by the proximity, along with the dream itself (which, incidentally, she remembered down to the last detail), she unhooked her fingers from where they were practically embedded in the fabric of Alair’s T-shirt, and carefully slipped out from under the arm that held her securely at the waist.
She felt awake. She felt rested, she felt well, and she felt, above all… just plain happy, for the first time in as long as she could remember for any given morning. The Aries’ body ached in the aftermath of the broken fever, the last dregs of the virus in her system, but she hardly noticed as she left the Sandman to what remained of his rest and headed into the kitchen. With any luck, replicating that perfect French toast a second time wouldn’t be too hard a trial; she owed a lot of breakfasts and coffee, at this point.
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you
He didn’t want to look past her; he didn’t want to acknowledge the shifting sinister scenery that surrounded them. He knew enough of dreams and nightmares to understand the mechanics of the subconscious mind’s horrors, and to witness them from the direct confines of his friend’s experience only made them all-the-more daunting. From her recent dreams alone, Alair had learned that Scarlet’s fiery demeanor was born of her innate insecurities, a part of her that not even the Sandman could reach in order to reset the problematic dials. Her request for help was more painful than it was relieving due to this inarguable fact…for Sleep found that he wanted to do more; he wanted to cure her of her own inherent disease; he longed to be more than the bystander he was destined to be.
The wind tore mercilessly at him as he shielded its true target from its frigid breath, ripping at his dark hair and numbing the skin exposed to its cruel element. He could feel her sobs against his chest as she cried, but he held her tighter still, refusing to give in to the ruthless assault of the ice and the weather.
The final crack beneath their feet boomed like a fired cannon, far too full and deafening for any normal sheet of ice. In the final millisecond before they fell through the crumbling surface, he shifted one arm to her upper back and the other to cradle the back of her head—I’m here, his gestures seemed to say, I’m still here—pressing her into him as they descended into the black depths of a certain end.
But that moment never came. Like Scarlet, Alair too had experienced his fair share of drowning in dreams; he knew to expect the shock of the bitter temperature as the water encased his form, he knew that his lungs at last would give out to fill involuntarily with the vicious substance that would rob him of the life he fought for. But none of that came. His cold bare feet greeted the smooth pebbles of a rocky beach, the rocks pressing sharply into the sensitive flesh of his frozen soles. The pain was welcome, however; it meant he was alive, it meant they were alive, and he drew a long, steady breath of warm humid air that grounded him in an entirely new pseudo-reality.
The vivid fanfare of a vermillion sunrise greeted his eyes as they came back into focus, and he only realized he was smiling several moments after his lips had made their characteristic upward curve. Relief flooded his system like a warm ocean sea, calming his breaths to slow, delicate sighs that matched the gentle tropical breeze of this new location. “You didn’t die,” he repeated softly, his eyes shining with what could only be interpreted as pride as he regarded her. He wrinkled his nose, pleased, and shrugged lightly beneath the pressure of her hands on his shoulders. “You didn’t die.”
He said those three words yet again, this time muffled by her light brown hair as he buried his face in the soft locks when she embraced him. He reveled in the warmth, still somewhat incredulous at the fortunate turn the dream had taken, and ran his hands tenderly down her spine until they locked at the small of her back. With her fingers at the base of his neck, their faces upturned towards each other in the demure light of a new dawn, he bent his face forward to meet her lips in a mutual union of comfort and consolation, of relief and intimacy—a wax seal of their safety, a cathartic concluding note in a frightening cacophony, a kiss to end dreams and fates alike.
The Sandman awoke—actually awoke, he realized with a bit of surprise—to the late morning sun spilling through half-parted curtains. Blinking away the grogginess of his rare slumber, he pursed his lips and propped himself up on his elbows. The imprint on the comforter next to him indicated that Scarlet had once been lying there too, and judging from the partially-open door and the distant sound of running water from the kitchen, she had managed to escape without rousing him. Amused, he sat up fully and rubbed his eyes with balled fists, running his fingers through his disheveled hair and swinging his legs to the side of the mattress.
As soon as his toes hit the floor, however, Scarlet appeared in the doorway with a plate, thrusting it into his hands. He took it with a look of surprise, his lips twisting into a surprised smirk. “What’s this?” he said, his voice raspy from disuse. Clearing his throat, he inspected the dish and arched his brows. “You didn’t order this from that place down the street, did you?”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you
Nothing burned. Nothing broke, and nothing went wrong. The worst that came of the redhead’s consolidated effort to make breakfast was the mess of dishes that she deposited in the sink in order to wipe down the counter, and perhaps a few water stains on the cookbook. But the breakfast itself certainly reflected the effort in the mess: the French toast was friend to a perfect golden brown, with just enough maple syrup and a pinch of icing sugar as garnish. And if Caspar’s praise of her last attempt was anything to go by, then there was no reason to believe that this wouldn’t taste as amazing as it looked.
The Aries poured the coffee once it was done brewing, taking a mug in each hand while she balanced the plate in the crook of her arm and made her way back to her bedroom. If Alair wasn’t awake by now, he’d sure as hell be getting his ass out of bed to partake in the breakfast she’d slaved over in the heat.
And it just so happened that the Sandman had finally roused from his curious slumber just as she walked in, prepared to stand before she put the plate in his hands. “Oh, bite me.” She sneered at his harmless jibe and lightly whacked his arm, placing a steaming mug of coffee on the nightstand next to him. “Even the place down the street doesn’t put as much effort into French toast as I did. I didn’t faint, either.”
Grinning, Scarlet took a sip of her scalding coffee before placing it next to her on the opposite bed table, taking note as she looked down that she’d forgotten to remove Caspar’s dorky Kiss The Cook apron. “I’ve got quite a few breakfasts on my tab that I need to catch up on,” She began, in explanation of what was probably extremely unconventional (and, let’s face it, kind of uncharacteristic) for someone like the fiery redhead. “And… I mean, I guess there’s no point denying that I really owe you a hell of a lot, Magic Man. I…” She paused, fixing her attention on the loose thread on the apron. By the colour that crept into her cheeks, it was obvious what she was about to address before she even said it. “For the first time in… possibly forever, I remember my dream. Or, I guess, nightmare. The snow and the ice and… and how you helped me.”
Looking up from the ratty apron, a sardonic half-smile tugged at her lips, and she added, “It’s kind of embarrassing. I never would have thought that I didn’t sleep well because I fucking died in my dreams every night. And this wasn’t the first time you were there, was it?” The colour in her cheeks deepened to such an extent of embarrassment that they almost matched the colour of her hair. “Was it always that bad? Oh, shit, please tell me I didn’t have one of those ‘suddenly naked in front of a crowd’ type dreams. I think dying would be a welcome outcome, if that were the case.”
And that was precisely how she felt now; exposed, cut open, the more concealed parts of her no longer hidden to Sleep. He’d heard her say everything she wouldn’t dare to say in true, grounded reality. He’d heard her admit to things that she would have otherwise denied during wakefulness. For all intents and purposes, she might as well have been stark naked, knowing that so many of her demons had been laid bare to another person.
And then, of course, there was the conclusion of that dream from the night before… That brief moment of intimacy that had felt so natural, so right. It hadn’t appeared to upset Alair in the dream, and he didn’t appeared to upset him now, but she still thought better than to bring it to light.
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you
He settled back in the bed with perhaps a little too much enthusiasm; his toast nearly slid off the edge of his plate. Correcting its balance with a quick snap of his wrist, he pursed his lips in a self-satisfied smirk and settled against the headboard, bunching up a pillow behind his lower back. Brandishing his fork as though it were a weapon, he playfully stabbed at the toasted, syrup-smothered bread and pulled away a bite that was (as was typical of the Sandman) a little too large. The flavors that washed over his tongue coaxed a pleased moan from his throat, and he looked to Scarlet approvingly as he struggled to chew the mouthful he’d taken.
“How the hell do you go from I can’t make toast without having to call the fire brigade to this?” he demanded, taking a swig of scalding coffee before turning back to her with arched brows. “This is…I don’t know, it’s like black magic or something. Not that I’m complaining,” he added, tossing her a wink before taking a second, slightly more modest bite. “I mean, if you were to make this every day for the rest of our deal…” He paused in mock thought. “Nope. Still wouldn’t complain. This is really good.”
Cutting through the second half of his generous helping, he polished off the remainder of his plate far before he was ready to give up the satisfying taste. He mopped up the leftover syrup with his last piece, popping it in his mouth before depositing his plate on the nightstand. He replaced the dish in his hand with his mug of coffee (which had cooled to a more tolerable temperature at this point), and as Scarlet spoke he curled his right leg beneath him and rotated against his pillow support to face her.
His expression, previously warm in the aftermath of a delicious breakfast and a surprising night’s sleep, transitioned quickly to a look of solemn sympathy. “You remember,” he repeated, dumbfounded, unable to keep the surprise from his voice. Looking away for a moment, he cleared his throat before his gaze flicked back to meet the redhead’s, taking note of the color that had risen to her cheeks—she was remembering the conclusion of the dream as well, and the memory of it flashed before his mind’s eye with the Sandman’s typical vivid clarity.
Slowly, he shook his head, confirming her voiced suspicions. “It wasn’t the first time,” he admitted quietly, gnawing at his lower lip. “It was also not the worst of them, alpha. It’s not my place to refresh your memory, so I’ll leave it at that, but…” He glanced down to his hands, which he’d clasped together in his lap so tightly that his knuckles were white. When he looked back up again, the grave twinkle in his electric blue eyes said it all; they spoke of the pain, the horror. “The naked dream...I’m afraid you aren’t exactly one for normalcy, alpha.”
He gritted his teeth, but after a moment he sighed, releasing the recollections of terrible deaths and living, monstrous landscapes in favor of the hopeful end—the intimate conclusion that had loaned a fragment of hope to the stark nightmare of Scarlet’s mind. “But it’s over,” he said, enthusiasm creeping back into his voice. “The second most important thing is that you can make really fucking awesome French toast. And the first most important thing…” He paused, devilish mirth unmistakably filling his eyes, his lips curling upwards in a telltale smirk. Without warning, he leaned forward, propping himself up with his left hand on the opposite side of the redhead so that he was practically on top of her. With his right arm, he reached up and hooked his finger in the top of her raggedy apron, pulling her forward just enough to bring their faces close. “…is how you look cuter than fucking hell in that apron.”
Grinning shamelessly, he concluded his point by pressing his index finger to her lips and then her nose, leaning back to his place on the mattress and sinking down to a prostrate position on the comforter. “So,” he drawled, lacing his fingers together on his stomach as he stared at the ceiling tiles, “when are we going to the music store?”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you
But Caspar wasn’t here now, Alair had been fast asleep when she’d awoken, and however light the parameters of their little bet had been, she was determined to stick it out rather than chicken out. Prove a point to the haughty Sandman that she could, in fact, not only rise to his challenge, but that she could own it.
“I don’t know, really.” The artificial redhead cocked her head to the side thoughtfully at his query, a slow (but very proud) half-grin. “Maybe the fever jumpstarted that part of my brain that allows me to use the kitchen without hacking off a finger or summoning the fire department. Or, maybe all it really took was finally getting a good night’s sleep. Or maybe I am dealing in black magic, and had to sell a piece of my soul to present you with this amazing breakfast. Oh, the things I do to make good on an honest bet.”
The young woman sighed melodramatically, her smile reaching her eyes. There was no shadow of a doubt that not only was she proud of her effort and flawless accomplishment, but that same pride reflected in his eyes (not to mention how he was blatantly enjoying it, judging by how fast it was being devoured) brightened her morning more than the early sunlight. “Glad you like ‘em, Magic Man. Because I’m not sure I’m feeling adventurous enough to try my hand at too many more things before I’m officially off the hook with this deal of ours.”
But when Alair’s teasing smile softened to a look of unadulterated sympathy, it took its toll on her own jovial and mirthful expression, and cast her face in a shadow of confusion. “Yeah, I remember,” she affirmed softly, brows knitting together in the middle. “But it was only a stupid dream. I mean, fucking scary, I’ll give it that, but you were there… it made it better. I’m awake, and I’m okay now.”
It didn’t appear to be that particular dream, however, that made the Sandman’s face awash with a pity that she didn’t really want to see. So it wasn’t the first time... These nightmares didn’t appear to be concurrent, but rather a regular part of her subconscious journey every time she closed her eyes. Draining her of the rest that she needed, leaving her feeling heavy and disoriented each and every morning.
“Look, just forget about it. Maybe they won’t come back, now that I’ve managed to break the pattern, with your help.” Scarlet suggested at last, offering a nonchalant shrug as she took another long sip of her scalding coffee, and then added with a grin. “I mean, honestly? So long as I didn’t have the archetypal ‘naked dream’, then everything else is just water on a duck’s back.” She didn’t want Alair looking at her like that, with pity and poorly masked sorrow; she loved him for his smile, for the mirth in his sparkling blue eyes, and that was what she wanted to see.
And she was happy to see it resurface so soon, when Sleep (thankfully) drew the topic to a close, at which point she beamed again at his unmasked compliment. “You’d better believe I make fucking awesome French toast. And you’d better not get tired of it, either.” She smirked, that cheeky smile quavering with intrigue when the Sandman angled his body so close to hers that she could practically feel the warmth coming off his skin. “Is there really anything more important than French toast?” She teased, but any words that might have followed were lost on breathlessness as she was gently tugged forward by her apron, enough that their faces were just a breath apart. Flashbacks from the positive ending of her dream came flooding back to her in a maelstrom, and a hot blush blossomed in her cheeks at the weight of his finger against her lips.
“Oh. Smooth.” She rolled her eyes with a defeated smile and pushed herself upright, draining the last of her coffee from her mug. “The music store opens at noon. Usually. Geoff’s got weird hours because he spent a few years in Jamaica and thinks that he can apply that lifestyle here.” Not bothering to get up and walk around the double bed, Scarlet crawled over the Sandman’s prostrate form, pausing to run the back of her hand down his cheek an along his jaw. “Gives us time to tidy up and clean ourselves up—and I can’t remember much of what I told you yesterday in my feverish delirium, but I think I mentioned you need a good shave, or you’ll soon start looking like a caveman.” With a playful smirk, the redhead planted a quick kiss on his nose, before finally climbing over the side of the bed and gathering her empty mug and his plate to take to the kitchen.
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you
Though the last statement was delivered with feigned irritation, made obvious by the smirk on his lips and the exaggerated elevation of his brows, his preceding quip regarding the last afternoon was spoken with as much gentle affection as her lips planting a kiss upon his nose. He wrinkled it in response but smiled happily, rotating to his side as she slid off the bed and made her escape to the kitchen with the plates. There was a marked difference in her mannerisms, he noticed; she was somehow brighter, more energetic, lighter. Although he couldn’t decide if her newfound joviality was the result of her broken fever or the remembrance of her dream, he was delighted nevertheless—and the day could only get better.
While Scarlet was in the kitchen, he dragged himself out of bed and trudged bare-footed into the bathroom. The tiles were surprisingly cold against the soles of his feet; he was grateful for the rug between the sink and the shower, but he was even more thankful for the rising clouds of steam from the scalding hot water raining from the showerhead when he flipped on the faucet.
Yawning in front of the mirror for a moment, he studied the strangely sleepy reflection staring back at him, amusement flickering across his face. For being the human embodiment of Sleep, he certainly did not wear the concept well; it had been so long since he had indulged in slumber that he had forgotten how it felt to be disturbed from its comforting embrace. With the French toast sitting in his belly, he was sorely tempted to turn off the water and simply retreat back to bed, but the thought of their upcoming adventure to the music store—and the resulting repaired guitar—was plenty enough to perk him back up to wakefulness.
Realizing just how right the redhead had been about his scraggly appearance, he quickly stripped of his jeans and t-shirt and slid in behind the shower curtain, allowing the warm water to pummel his back and shoulders. He would wait to shave until afterwards, when the rest of him was clean; he was content in the moment to wash away the past few days’ misgivings along with the sweat and grime. As he poured a portion of shampoo into his cupped palm—Scarlet’s, he knew, but justified the illegal use by telling himself he was hardly using any at all—he heard the door click open beyond the stream of water.
“Scarlet?” he called, surprised. He stuck his head from around the curtain, his dark hair streaked with bright white, honey-scented suds, and grinned. “What’s up? Are you wanting to join, or…?”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you
But by the time she finished tidying, Alair had already laid claim to the shower, so all the Aries could do was kill time in the interim while she waited for her turn. Deciding to occupy herself with the menial tasks of straightening the sheets and fixing up the comforter on her bed, followed by picking out an outfit for the day, her eyes drifted from the drab colours of her second hand clothes to her face, and as odd as it might sound, for a moment she almost didn’t recognize herself. Her fair skin was fair, not pale or pasty. The shadows beneath her eyes were far less prominent, the bags far less puffy. And she was smiling… She hadn’t even realized she was smiling until she caught it in the mirror. Small and slow, but significant. She was smiling just for the sake of smiling, because she was happy, just for the sake of being happy. Because she had a reason to be happy, that she didn’t anticipate would be ditching her for some groupie, anytime soon.
And speaking of groupies…
It had been over a day since she had heard from Caspar, she realized, and it was probably because she hadn’t checked her text messages in that amount of time. But when she searched her nightstands and drawers, her phone was nowhere to be found. Nor could she locate it in the living room or the kitchen, or even Caspar’s messy bedroom. It left only one room in the apartment, and that room happened to currently be occupied.
Too bad for Alair, the lock on the door hadn’t worked for as long as she could remember.
Scarlet walked into the bathroom without a second thought, greeting by steam and the sound of running water. She didn’t even spare the Sandman a glance when he popped his head out from behind the curtain seconds later. “Looking for my phone,” she replied, opening the medicine cabinet and checking between the towels stacked on the shelf next to the sink. “I haven’t checked my text messages in days… Hey, what am I smelling?”
It wasn’t until she turned to face to her unlikely companion that she caught a better whiff, and recognized the scent immediately. “You didn’t.” But by the suds in his hair, it was already obvious as to whose shampoo he had used.
One hand planted firmly on her hips, Scarlet extended the other, lips pressed into a thin line. “Hand it over. Now.” She commanded, with no room for argument. “I’m going to hide it since you can’t seem to stay away from it. Seriously, Alair, hand it over; if I have to go and get it myself, right now, then don’t think for a second that I won’t.”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you
But as a man, a man of wakeful morals and a life and world entirely his own, he was unaccustomed to the things he could stir in dreams unfolding in reality—particularly his own. His dispute with the red-haired young woman was far milder than the beasts and demons that lurked in the slumbering mind, of course, but their conflict had resonated with him on a level far deeper than even the dreams could reach. Even now that they had, for the most part, let the animosity between them dissipate, he could feel the strange lingering effects on his own demeanor as he stood contentedly beneath the scalding shower stream. He felt happy, light, and yet somehow sheepish—all of which contributed to a general but genial feeling of caution.
But that trepidation apparently did not apply to his use of expensive shower supplies that did not belong to him. As he lathered, massaging his scalp with a thick layer of white suds beneath his fingertips, he felt not a trace of remorse. Despite having been expressly forbidden, he found that he simply was not capable of feeling guilty for disobeying Scarlet’s orders; the scent of the shampoo alone was enough to relax him and drive his apologies away—it smelled like her, and if he could carry even a sliver of that delicate aroma on his person, then he was willing to break her laws.
When he poked his head out of the shower curtain to greet her, he was already wearing a smirk—a smirk that looked even more mirthful with his crown of suds in dark wet locks that stuck up in every possible direction. He pursed his lips tightly in an (unsuccessful) effort to stifle his laughter at her recognition, and when she turned her glare towards him he greeted her with a full-out grin.
"Oh, I definitely did." He cleared his throat. “Can you really blame me?” he asked, lifting the shoulder she could see above the curtain in a half-shrug. The look she gave him said that yes, she definitely could—and did—blame him, but rather than utter a futile apology he reached up and ran his fingers through his soapy hair. Cupping his palm, he scooped a handful of sweet-scented bubbles from his head, then promptly reached for her extended hand and deposited the miniature pile on her soft skin.
“If you want it that bad, then you’ll have to come and get it,” he told her as he pulled his hand away, his wet fingers trailing against hers as they made their departure. Playfully, he reached for the bottle on the edge of the tub and waved it in front of her. “Come on, you know you like it when I smell like—hey!”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you
And the Sandman’s constant disregard for her unwavering rules around her shower supplies truly didn’t bother her that much. In fact, there was something… well, reassuring about picking up at familiar scent on his skin. A scent that already soothed her nerves, on a person who had been there more consistently than her AWOL roommate to soothe them as well. But, born of her very nature to dabble in destinies and tell the stars what to do, the redhead was nothing short of a control freak, in some ways. Her shampoo was something over which, one would think, she would have complete control—and yet, Alair saw fit to challenge that.
Perhaps that was what fed her the boldness to ditch Caspar’s borrowed apron on the bathroom floor, grip the shower curtain, and quickly haul it aside, closing her eyes against the rush of water from the shower head, as well as from the sight of Alair’s unabashed and unclothed form. “You should know better than to ever call me on a bluff, magic man.” The Aries smirked, raising her voice only ever so slightly to compete with the water droplets beating on the base of the tub. Lifting one knee, she set foot in the sodden tub, keeping her other planted firmly on the dry (but not for long) tiled floor to keep her balance.
“Hand it over!” The commanded, blindly reaching for the slippery bottle that was just beyond her fingers. It would have been a hell of a lot easier, were she able to see, but for fear of furious blushing, she didn’t dare to so much as squint. “Okay, Alair, you’ve made your point. Now give me the damn bottle!”
Perhaps what made the two so oddly (and yet, so perfectly) matched was their strangely compatible penchant for obstinacy. Neither would back down, and more often than not (with the exception of the night she’d broken his guitar…), it turned out to be a brawl of simple, childish fun. Even in all the frustration at not knowing precisely where he held her shampoo, it was nothing short of a game, and before long, the chemically altered redhead found herself grinning and laughing at their utter absurdity. And neither of them would apologize for it.
“Goddamnit, Alair! So help me…” Unable to lean forward without all together losing her balance, Scarlet finally surrendered her resolve to keep one foot dry, and set both in the tub, feeling along the wall where she clutched the soap holder to keep from falling until she got a firm hold on the Sandman’s shoulder. “Now you’re just being a pain in the ass. Don’t make me open my eyes and embarrass the fuck out of the both of us!” She laughed, feeling weighted down with sodden clothing that hung on her lithe frame.
As she stood on her toes, fingertips happening to brush against the bottom of the bottle, Alair held it just a little higher, and the young woman let out a startled squeak as she slipped and nearly lost her balance. Luckily, her arms found their way around Alair’s torso, and her shoulders shook with nervous giggles as she pressed her forehead against his damp chest, feeling strangely defeated, like she’d lost a child’s game of marbles. “You are so dead when we get out. So dead!”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you
So when the fiery redhead threw back the curtain to the shower, Alair could only grin in surprise. The rosy tint to his cheeks from the piping hot steam of the running water did not deepen; he did not turn away from her sudden presence in the normally private confines of the bathroom. Even if her eyes had not been clenched closed, he would not have shied away; he knew no shame when it came to his body, and he would have unabashedly met her confrontation despite his stark nakedness without a second thought.
“I should have known,” he said between chuckles, clenching the plastic bottle tighter in his fist as he stepped away, both hands free to defend himself now that he did not have to protect his nonexistent modesty with the curtain. “You do what you want.”
The matter-of-factness of his tone was shattered by another peal of laughter as he stepped out of her reach, ducking his head—still coated in white suds—beneath the water. The spraying droplets pummeled the opposite wall with a loud, plasticky shriek, and he tucked the bottle behind his back as she blindly flailed to find her honey-scented target. Water was dripping over the side of the tub and onto the tile, but neither of them cared—neither of them seemed to notice.
“Watch where you’re putting those hands, alpha!” he declared playfully, turning away from her reach and holding the bottle at his shoulder. “You might as well give up now. Or open your eyes, either way.” He placed a hand on her shoulder as she at last gave in to her resolve (and his stubbornness) and placed her dry foot in the tub, pulling her gently, but purposely, into the hot stream towards him. He was reminded briefly of their stint in the rain a handful of days prior, when she’d snatched away his new hat to take off into the wild summer downpour. He had given chase, of course, laughing between curses as he trailed swiftly after her, their childish antics culminating in one of their first brushes of intimacy—a false kiss beneath the falling droplets, their lips separated by his paired fingers. The vivid memory tripped his heart, which skipped a beat.
He raised the bottle higher now, his hand extended well above his head and beyond her reach. Her fingers dug into his shoulder as she tried once again to recover the shampoo, reaching up. Her face, with her eyes still tightly closed, angled upwards, and he looked down at her expression of amusement and playful outrage with one of his own. They were close now, very close, and all it would take was a quick closing of distance, a fast but tender movement to unite their smiling mouths in what would this time be a real kiss…
The side of his nose had just brushed against hers, her breath caressing the lower half of his face, when she suddenly lunged forward, losing her balance as her outstretched hand caught the edge of the bottle. Thrown once again back into the reality of their play-fight, he grinned, covering one of her hands on his chest with his own before safely replacing the shampoo on the tub ledge. He leaned back to turn off the water, their laughter ringing jovially in the absence of the shower’s roar. “Stay there, let me get a towel. Unless you’d like to take a peak…?”
Chuckling, his words obviously spoken in jest, he stepped out and wrapped one waiting towel around his bare waist, tossing the other one to the thoroughly soaked, fully clothed redhead. “All right, it’s safe now," he announced. "Although I gotta say I look just as good without it.”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you
But not next time. If she ever caught him red-handed with her coveted shower supplies again, she’d spare no mercy, and no modesty.
“If I wanted to take a peak, Magic Man, my eyes would be open.” She teased, testing her balance carefully as she felt her companion move away from her and out of the tub altogether. “Don’t want to spoil too much of a good thing, do I? Can’t be too careful; I’ve already fainted once, already. Don’t need to give myself another reason.”
The redhead caught the towel that he’d thrown at her, wiping her face dry and opening her eyes, which stung just a little from the soap. “Lot of good this is going to do me,” she mentioned, holding up the towel before looking downward at her sodden clothes, the Tshirt that hung much lower on her hips with water retention.
It was without a second thought that she pulled the curtain back across the slippery porcelain, setting the dry towel on the edge as she proceeded to rid herself of the saturated fabric. “The things that you put me through. It’s a wonder I even keep you around…” Scarlet sighed melodramatically, wringing her crimson hair out over her shoulder. Then, pulling the curtain to the side ever so slightly, she announced, “This is for forcing my hand because you can resist using my fucking shampoo,” and with a good arm, she threw her wet, balled-up Tshirt at his prone torso. “And this is for future usage of my shower supplies, because I so know you won’t be able to resist again.” And with the last of the ammunition that she was willing to surrender, she tossed her balled up shorts at the Sandman, hitting him square in the side.
Once sufficiently dry, the Aries wrapped the massive towel around her own body and pushed the curtain aside, stepping out and using her feet to move the bath mat around, coaxing it to soak up the excess water from their little playfight. “You know, Magic Man,” Scarlet began, sidling up behind him and wrapping her arms around his middle, standing on her toes to rest her chin on his shoulder. Something, a strange sense of probability that nagged at her mind, recalled a brief moment under the deluge of the shower where the faces had felt far closer than they were now… Or had she only imagined it? “If you really wanted to smell like me, maybe you just need to keep me a little closer.” Casting him a cheeky grin in the mirror, the redhead slipped away to let him get to the shaving he’d been about to do, and headed to her bedroom to find a clean outfit.
“Whoa… Red?”
Scarlet was halted in her tracks by the sound of her roommate’s voice, and spun around, holding the towel secure to her body. “Cas?”
“Uh… hi?” The lanky musician, guitar supplies in hand, furrowed his eyebrows in curious confusion—not simply for the fact that Scarlet was traipsing around in a towel (it was Scarlet, after all; she’d do it from time to time), but because the bathroom still appeared to be occupied, despite that the fiery redhead was no longer in it. “Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt anything. Just came to grab a few spare strings for my guitar.”
“No! No way. I mean, you’re not! There’s nothing to be interrupted, I swear! Ugh. Of all the bad timing…” Scarlet’s face turned the colour of her hair, realizing there was no possible way she could explain her way out of this predicament. It was enough to even bring an amuse smile to Caspar’s face, and the guy absolutely sucked when it came to holding back laughter.
“And here I was worried for your health… Well, glad to see you’re feeling better, Red. No judgement on my part. Hey, Alair!” He called through the partially open bathroom door, tucking the supplies under his arm. “Thanks for keeping an eye on her! Oh, and Red;” Just before leaving, he turned and smirked at his roommate, arching a knowing eyebrow. “We’ve never really had this conversation before, since I didn’t think you were into guys… or, well, anyone, for that matter, but if you want a little privacy in the apartment at any given time, it’s always a good idea to lock the front door.”
Scarlet could only groan at the irony of this coincidence, given Caspar’s comment about the sameness of their smell the first time Alair had been so bold as to break the sacred rule about touching her shampoo. Could she really not catch a break?
A pretty stream of curses passed the young woman’s lips, and she smacked her palm to her forehead. Getting caught in a precarious position such as this one had been her own damn fault, this time, and she had a feeling that the Sandman might not be so kind as to let her live it down. “Before you say anything,” she called to Alair, catching his eye in the mirror through the three-inch opening in the door, “just don’t. Or the next thing I throw at you won’t be as forgiving as wet clothing.”
Posted: Wed Jul 31, 2013 12:44 am
If he was fazed by the moment of almost-intimacy interrupted by physics beneath the hot stream of the shower, he did not show it, nor did Scarlet display any indication that she had been aware of the proximity of their faces and the closeness of a first kiss. He felt somehow sheepish, as though he had been rejected; but, of course, it was not the young woman that had denied him, it was gravity and balance as a result of their delightfully childish antics. But the Sandman was really no worse for wear; there would be other opportunities, other moments, and for now Alair was content with any degree of interaction so long as it was with her.
Her. As Scarlet wrapped her arms around his bare torso from behind, he jolted inwardly at the realization that his thoughts had not strayed to her since Amrial and Roesaleine’s unannounced appearance on the night of the wedding reception. The mental and physical intimacy that existed between Sleep and Scarlet had not once conjured feelings of longing or jealousy in the longtime heartbroken Sandman—a fact that shook him deep to his core, but did not, he realized, upset him like he anticipated it might. It thrilled him, in a way; a bud of warmth blossomed in his chest, its comforting petals spreading to his limbs in an unprecedented sensation of acceptance.
Towel slipping from his head to land precariously on the shoulder opposite the one currently occupied by Scarlet’s chin, he reached up to cradle her latched hands in his, pressing her palms to his damp flesh and grinning at their blurry reflection in the foggy mirror. Her hair was an undefined blaze of crimson in the moisture-coated surface, its feathered edge bleeding straight into his equally amorphous swatch of dark locks. Chuckling at their living abstract portraits, he nodded in response to her comment, a smirk upturning the corners of his lips. “Sounds like a less expensive way to do it,” he agreed, giving her hands another affectionate squeeze, “that is, if this stuff really costs as much as you say it does.”
He relinquished his grip and allowed her to pull away, but only far enough to stop her at arm’s length with one hand firmly on her shoulder. “It’s a good idea, you know. Maybe—” he began, pulling her back around towards him, “—I’ll just wear you like a scarf…” With a laugh disguised as a playful growl, he lifted her off the wet floor tiles and slung her across his shoulders behind his neck, supporting her knees with one arm while the other held her upper back.
Ignoring her protests and laughing all the while, he stepped carefully across the soaked bath mat and towards the bathroom door where he angled far enough to the side to avoid smacking her feet on the frame. “See if you can get out of this one—” he began, but the sight of Caspar Brighton, king of great timing, frozen in surprise just outside halted the Sandman in his barefooted tracks.
“Whoa…” the lanky musician said, his eyes widening, “Red?”
“Cas?” came Scarlet’s shocked reply from above. It took everything within him not to burst into hysterics at the expression painted across the musician’s face, and Alair, somehow maintaining his composure, lowered Scarlet carefully to the ground.
“Uh…hi?” Caspar returned, his confusion obvious in his knitted brow. His gaze shifted to the Sandman, who looked so utterly amused and pleased with himself standing there in that towel that the willowy young man had to smile. “Hey, Alair!”
“Hey,” Sleep said casually over his shoulder, turning around to head back to the bathroom as though their interaction—and what Cas had just witnessed—were the most normal thing in the world. He returned to his place before the mirror, now clear, as though nothing at all had happened. Borrowing a hearty dollop of fluffy white shaving foam from Caspar’s slightly rusty bottle, he stood half-clothed before his reflection and dabbed the cream across the lower half of his face while Scarlet spoke to their unexpected guest in the living room.
A string of colorful language announced the redhead’s return and the musician’s departure. Alair, his face only half-shaven, met her eyes in the mirror and grinned. “Well, I did want the whole town to know you were my girlfriend, remember?” he shot back, completely unapologetic. He ran his finger along the underside of his chin, then flicked a tiny explosion of extra shaving foam in the direction of the door. “So far, so good, huh?”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you
Turning with a satisfied smirk, Scarlet adjusted the towel that sat just below her collarbone and made for the door, only to be intercepted by a firm hand on her shoulder. She didn’t know what he was doing, let alone what to think, until the young woman found herself sprawled across his shoulders, precariously balanced and only held in place by his arms. “Alair!” She shrieked, a peal of laughter tearing from her lungs at Sleep’s bold antics. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing? You are so fucking dead if you…”
And that was when the Aries’ eyes landed on her typically missing roommate, who had so decided to not be missing at the most inconvenient of moments. The bemused expression that Caspar’s features formed might have made her laugh out loud any other time, and had she not been the subject of such a profound perplexity. Naturally, her gut instinct prevailed in defending herself against what could have been interpreted as a very different situation, only serving to make her sound all the more guilty in the end. Alair did nothing to help the situation, greeting the lanky musician as casually as if he hadn’t been standing in the towel, and hadn’t had Cas’ redheaded roommate (also in a towel) draped across his shoulders.
By the time the lanky musician had come and gone (more than likely with a whole new outlook on his friend and his roommate), Scarlet’s body temperature rose with the flood of hot embarrassment that painted her face as bright as her hair. Stalking into the bathroom after Alair, she noted the sly Sandman appeared neither embarrassed nor ashamed of the scene he’d displayed, and had dragged her into; then again, why would she have thought for even a moment that he was capable of humility?
“Did it ever occur to you that you should, I don’t know… run it by me first? Before you go making that kind of declaration to the world?” Thank the lord Caspar wasn’t a gossip, but a couple of beers might make him spill the experience even just in passing to Marissa, and who knew how many of her friends might pick up the tale from her?
“You’re a jerk, Alair. You’re lucky I put up with you; any other girl might smack you for pulling something like that in front of their friend.” But there was no real reprimand behind Scarlet’s words, and as the blood slowly drained from her face, the blush was replaced with a slow, cheeky smile. “We’ve already been over this. There are reasons why we’re not a thing; do I have to remind you already?”
As Alair finished shaving and patted has face down with water, a brazen streak impelled Scarlet to take his arm and spin him around to face her, hands on his shoulders and standing on her toes and angled her cheek to caress his, soft skin against soft skin. “I’ll let you off with a warning this time, Magic Man,” Scarlet murmured, her lips so close to his ear that the formation of her words grazed it. “And only because I’m a sucker for freshly shaven skin, and am going to feel like I owe you until we get that guitar of yours fixed. And, speaking of: if you want to get going soon, then get your ass in some jeans. The world’s not ready for the Sandman in a towel. And, for the record; you have no proof that I wanted a look. Innocent until proven guilty.”
Winking playfully, the redhead released him and sidled off to her own room to pull on an outfit, her mood peculiarly light and sweet for having just been humiliated in front of her laid-back roommate. Why didn’t she care more? Why was it that, no matter the situation, being around Alair made everything seem so less dire? Why did she find herself not only enjoying, but craving his company in a way that she had never really craved Caspar’s?
Scarlet could find no answers for her own questions in the depths of her mind, and so she put them out of her mind and returned her attention to that task at hand. Dressed once again in another pair of shorts and another thrift-shop T-shirt, the plush towel discarded in a heap on the floor, she wandered barefoot out of her bedroom, gingerly picking up the Sandman’s damaged instrument by the neck. Her veins were filled once again with guilt and remorse the second her fingers touched the wood. “Alair? Hurry up and let’s get going already! You can do your make-up later.”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you
The sensation of her breath down his neck sent an involuntary shiver sprinting down his spine, and he smiled softly against her cheek despite her sugar-coated threats. “Scarlet, I’m the Sandman, not the fucking…I don’t know…supersonic-hearing-man,” he returned curtly, his eyes crinkling at the corners in an effort to suppress his amusement. “I didn’t know Cas was gonna be there. All things considered, he didn’t seem too shocked…” He winked at her when she pulled away, sidling back to her bedroom with a sarcastic spring in her step that spoke precisely to their shared teasing mood.
He pushed the door closed and draped his towel over the curtain rod to dry, dressing quickly in clothes that he distinctly did not recall having set out for himself but that were there on the edge of the sink, folded neatly and waiting for him nevertheless. He slid into a pair of dark jeans with fraying knees and cuffs, then topped off with a heathered navy v-neck shirt that highlighted the bright electric azure of his eyes. Borrowing a comb from Caspar’s shelf in the medicine cabinet, he took to his lightly damp tresses and tore through the snags, leaving it only slightly more kempt than its immediate post-shower arrangement.
Clean-shaven, sweet-smelling, and surprisingly well-rested, the Sandman stared at himself in the mirror until he heard Scarlet’s voice urging him to go. Smiling before he could stop it (not that he wanted to), he swiveled abruptly and joined her in the hallway, twisting his lips and arching his brows when he caught sight of the damaged instrument dangling in her hands. He drew a breath through his teeth at the sight of the chipped fret board and the snapped strings, but it was clear from the hopeful gleam in his eyes that his thoughts were only on its upcoming repair, not on the reason it had been injured. “Here,” he said, taking it gingerly from the redhead before snapping it in its case. He lifted it to his shoulder with an eager smile and headed for the door.
There was a cab waiting for them outside when they stepped through the front doors of the building, a bright swatch of idling canary beneath the late morning sun. Alair opened the passenger door for Scarlet before he scurried around to the other side, cradling his guitar on his lap as the redhead gave their destination to the bored-looking driver. After a short drive through narrow old streets not unlike the one upon which the apartment was located, they pulled alongside a broken curb outside a grungy-looking, hole-in-the-wall business with bright electric guitars posed upright behind the dusty glass of the front window.
Alair, anxious to get inside, almost stepped on the redhead’s heels as she lead him through the doors. A hollow bell dangling from the top of the frame announced their entry into the cavelike music store. It was far bigger than the Sandman had presumed from its façade; the space was narrow as was typical of old New England neighborhoods, but it extended far back from the front window display. The ceiling stretched unusually high overhead—probably due to the second floor having been completely removed, if the varying striped tones of the bare brick wall was to be believed—and decorated with track lighting that looked just slightly too modern for the environment they illuminated.
The Sandman met Scarlet’s gaze, his expression declaring his approval as they headed for the service counter on the east wall. A labyrinth of new and used amps created narrow corridors near the desk, with colorful cords and cables slithering like tangled snakes across the stained carpeting.
Alair lifted his guitar case to the glass countertop and flipped it open. “A few broken strings,” he said, pointing out the obvious as the snapped wires burst from the confines of the black plush interior, “and a chip in the neck. Here.” He pointed, gritting his teeth a little in a rare display of anxiety. Despite the redhead's glowing recommendation, and despite how at-ease he felt in the establishment, he couldn't help but feel a pang of nervousness for his old acoustic companion. “Probably should get all the strings replaced anyway. What’s the prognosis on the other damage?”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you
“Come on,” she smiled past her guilt and headed for the door. “Cab’s waiting.”
Taking their time down the stairs, as there was really no rush, Scarlet slid into the passenger’s seat of the taxi and gave the unenthusiastic driver the destination. All of it felt akin to taking a friend to the hospital, not a musical instrument of wood and metal to a repair shop. That guitar meant more to Alair that she would perhaps ever know… If only she had kept that in mind before she’d completely lost her head the other night.
“This is the place,” she announced to the cabbie when he very nearly drove past it (some people mistook it for a pawn shop; Geoff wasn’t the best when it came to store display), and handed the man a handful of bills before exiting the cab. Alair was on her heels the moment the vehicle stopped, and she couldn’t help but laugh at his enthusiasm. “Relax; we’re here. If it’s not busy, Geoff can probably have that fixed for you within the hour. The guy works wonders with instruments.”
Lucky for them, the store was all but vacant, save for one customer with whom Geoff was currently occupied. A young man holding a violin, curiously with just as much tenderness as Alair held his guitar, and the same way that she often saw Caspar hold his. It brought a smile to Scarlet’s face, and she shook her head. Musicians…
“Will the neck hold?” The young man was inquiring, as if he were asking after the health of a relative. Geoff, calm and composed, smiled and gave a nod.
“Just like new. My work’s guaranteed. Though if you don’t mind me asking…” He looked from the man to the violin and back again. “How did the neck get broken?”
“Tuba player in the last orchestra I performed with.” There was a lilt to the young man’s voice, the sort that suggested an innate working knowledge of a second language. “Accused me of stealing his girlfriend… Decided to get even before he let me explain myself.”
Geoff shook his head sadly. “That speaks ill of a musician who takes his feelings out on an instrument. She’s all better now; don’t provoke any more tuba players.”
The young man smiled appreciatively and put the violin securely back in its case, nodding respectfully to Scarlet and Alair as they approached the counter. Before leaving, he paused, sparing a glance over his shoulder at Scarlet; something that neither of the pair saw, for they were already at the counter, speaking with the owner.
“Scarlet.” Geoff greeted her warmly, a twinkle of perplexity in his eye. “Caspar not with you? That’s a first.”
The fiery redhead quashed that pang that accompanied the thought of her absentee roommate, and simply shrugged her shoulders, as if it hardly mattered. “Geoff, this is Alair. His guitar requires your services…”
“So I can see…” The shop owner whistled as Alair flipped open the case, and he gingerly lifted the instrument from its bed, laying it flat on the counter to assess the damage while Alair went over the instrument’s injuries. “Well, the strings won’t be a problem. And the chip can easily be taken care of. But here…” He gestured with his hand with the cracked dent in the bottom right of the guitar’s body. “Not impossible to repair, but it could take a while, and just be prepared after a repair like this that the tone of the guitar might be different for a bit until the body gets seasoned to the pressure and humidity again. The more you play, the more it’ll sound like an old friend again. You’re not in a rush, are you? I just finished with a violin and don’t have any other jobs on my hands; if you’re willing to stick around for a few hours, I could have this done before suppertime.”
Having nothing more to contribute to the conversation following introductions, Scarlet had quietly wandered into a back room while the two men chatted. And from that room now flowed the slow, harmonious chords of keyboard playing. It immediately brought a grin to Geoff’s face, and he called over his shoulder, “So, tell me again, when are you gonna buy that orphan?”
“Someday! I promise.” Came the redhead’s reply over the chords, only broadening the shop owner’s smile.
“She’ll swear on the mighty cross that she’s not a musician, because she quit her piano lessons when she was twelve and can’t read music.” He began, picking up Alair’s wounded guitar with all the delicacy he would use to handle a child, and sat it on his workbench, just behind the counter. “But give her a new song, any song that she hasn’t heard… She’ll listen to it once, and it’s like her fingers just know what to do. And then you get that.” He waved his hand in a gesture to indicate the music now spilling from her fingers.
And then, on another note (no pun intended), he added, “I hope she and Cas didn’t have a falling out? They’re so joined at the hip I always thought they were dating, ‘til I saw Cas with a gal the other day. Real sweetheart by the name of Marissa, or something… Good to see the guy so happy.” But hopefully not at the expense of his friendship with Scarlet… Although if anything so drastic had come to pass, the redhead in the back room didn’t appear to be all too bothered by it.
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you
The Sandman inhaled deeply as they waited their turn to speak with the man at the counter. It was a shop of hidden secrets, a shrine to melody and harmony tucked away from unappreciative souls; its contents were protected by its unassuming window display and its off-the-beaten-path location. He took to it instantly, like some might take to a quaint corner bistro or a small local café; he was in his element here, surrounded by those who presumably shared in his musical passions, encircled physically by guitars and pianos and drums in a silent ecosystem of potential sound. Even with the anticipation of his own instrument’s repairs, he was able to relax—or at least to be distracted, which was perhaps just as good.
The blue-eyed man cringed as Caspar’s man—Geoff, as Scarlet had introduced—assessed the damage. “I didn’t want to risk playing on it in this condition,” he confided in the repairman, glancing after the redhead as she disappeared into the back room. “The heat and humidity have been rough on it as it is, and with the cracks…” His voice trailed off, and when he looked up at the scruffy fellow behind the counter he was met with a nod of complete understanding. Alair relaxed a little, knowing he was speaking with someone familiar with the same language, and ran his finger along the edge of the dented neck.
Geoff picked up the guitar with a light, gentle touch—one that Sleep, watching carefully, approved of—and examined the back and edges with his experienced, discerning eye. For all Alair’s experience playing the instrument, he had never trusted himself with fixing it. He knew his guitar inside and out, but crafting any sort of repair beyond the replacement of strings was beyond the scope of his expertise. At Geoff’s tentative warning regarding a change in tone after the patch, the Sandman simply nodded, then looked up when the man did not continue.
“Most people hear that and get a little freaked out,” Geoff admitted, laughing a little nervously.
Alair arched a single brow, incredulous. “Really?” he said, taken aback. “A guitar’s voice isn’t that different from a human’s. It fluctuates. Where’s the personality if it always sings the same thing?” He shrugged. “Besides, you’re the expert. Not much I can do about it anyway, right?”
Geoff laughed, his chuckles so genuine that Alair couldn’t help but return a smile. “You have no idea how good it is to hear that, man. Most people want to do my job for me.” The man looked down at Sleep’s guitar, his eyes examining the pattern of wood grain. “Mind if I ask how old she is?” he asked, indicating the instrument.
Alair shrugged. “Pretty old?” he offered questioningly, feigning ignorance.
“I’ll say it is,” the man said, awe creeping into his syllables. “I can’t even identify the wood. It looks like it’s a bit of everything, but none of it’s got a modern finish…well, some of it does. Huh. Where’d you get—”
The storeowner was interrupted by a sudden melody pealing from one of the pianos in the back room, filling up the unusual space with a warmth not unlike Sleep’s own guitar. It coaxed a grin from Geoff, and Alair looked over the man’s shoulder, his curiosity piqued. “Yeah, she’s good,” the Sandman agreed distantly, not quite able to keep the look of wonder from his electric blue eyes as his mind latched on to her haunting progression of notes. He realized then that he had never actually heard her play; he had only heard her profess to having taken lessons, and her admission that she played exclusively by ear and imitation.
Snapping back momentarily to the conversation at hand, he answered Geoff’s concerns perhaps a little too dismissively; he wanted to go back to Scarlet, to watch her fingers as they danced across the ivories. “Nah, they’re good,” he told him, lifting one shoulder in a half-shrug. “Caspar's a friend of mine. He's been spending more time with Marissa. Which is actually pretty convenient, you know? Means I get to spend more time with Scarlet.” He flashed the storeowner a wink, tapping the counter conclusively with his index finger. Unbeknownst to the cheeky Sandman, the expression in his eyes spoke the volumes his words neglected as to his sweet fondness for the red-haired young woman.
Geoff nodded, studying Alair with a slightly more critical eye after this new piece of information, taking the guitar to his workshop to begin the delicate process of repair. “Feel free to play whatever you’d like, man,” he called over his shoulder, gesturing to the massive wall of guitars as he disappeared into one of the side chambers. "We got some new Epi's in last week. Or, you know, whatever you want to try out."
Calling out a thank you, the dark-haired man gnawed at his lower lip and approached the overwhelming inventory of stringed instruments with a glimmer of excitement in his eye. With Scarlet’s song filling the air, he perused the stock within arm’s reach until one particular model caught his eye. It was ebony black, polished to a stellar shine, with metallic gold hardware and opalescent fret markings. Curious, he lifted it from its hook on the wall and bounced it carefully in his grip; it was constructed from heavy wood, and it was of excellent build despite being a new reproduction of a much older model he’d seen used decades prior. It was characterized by its unusual three pick-up arrangement beneath the fingerboard, one of the first of its kind Gibson had produced in the late 1950s.
With the Les Paul in tow and a bright red cable slung around his shoulders like an academic stole, he maneuvered around to the back room, locating Scarlet’s vibrant red hair quickly amongst the myriad dark shades of brown and black. Creeping up behind her as she played, he watched for a moment while she remained oblivious to his presence, then announced his arrival with a kiss placed affectionately on the top of her head.
“You know, you told me you could play, alpha, but you didn’t tell me you could fucking play!” he declared, flipping on a nearby amplifier and pulling up a rickety old bench from a neighboring baby grand. He reached over and playfully hit her shoulder, leaning over to plug in the Gibson. The familiar buzz of pre-reverberation electricity through the old tubes filled the air, and he took an experimental strum.
“Keep going,” he urged, nodding to the keys. A few flat notes sounded as he picked idly at the strings, and he frowned, tuning them up quickly. “Anything you want.”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you
But that was the sad beauty of this room, for most of the instruments hanging on the walls or displayed on a stand required repairs of some sorts. Geoff lovingly referred to it as the “Orphanage”; discarded instruments that people pawned, traded, or simply dropped off because they were taking up space in the attic or garage, finding their temporary home at the back of his shop. Scarlet, with a far darker outlook that the lackadaisical shop owner, thought “Infirmary” better suited it, as to Geoff’s credit, it was his full intention to repair each and every instrument in that room to the best of his expert ability. And she knew he’d made good on the resolution, but there was always a more immediate task such as Alair’s guitar to undertake, and inevitably, the orphans were continually pushed to the back of the line that would never see an end.
The ’95 Yamaha keyboard, however, was not in that line. Once, a few years ago, it had made it to the front of it and gained been the subject of Geoff’s coveted tlc. The store owner had explained to her how he’d spent a good handful of weekends tinkering and tampering with it, in hopes of reviving some of the settings (Choir 2, Electric Piano 1 and Synthesizer, among a handful of others). But the problem was electrical in nature, something to do with the tiny computer chips inside, and Geoff was no electrician or connoisseur of anything computer. He’d called all around the city for advice, only to discover that the replacement part he needed for the instrument was no longer in production, given its age and the fact that the model had been retired over a decade ago.
But it was not by any means useless: the volume worked just fine, the pre-programmed canned rhythms and recording device all functioned, as did many of the diverse musical settings that enabled it to imitate other instruments. Figuring someone might be in need of a cheap but relatively functional keyboard, Geoff asked a modest price for it, but no one ever bit.
Except for Scarlet.
Her fingers had found those keys the very first day she’d set foot in his shop, when Caspar had come for a new set of strings for one of his many guitars. She liked the feel of the matte plastic, the size of the keys and the quality of the sound, had taken to the scratched display screen. Geoff had offered her a deal on it from the very beginning, and promised it would hold for as long as she wanted to think about it.
Five years later, she was still thinking. And he had no idea why she was so reluctant to take it.
For the most part, Scarlet had no fucking clue what her fingers were doing. They pressed the keys, intuiting intervals and chords and harmony, governed by some signal from her ears to her hands, and somehow, if she took it slow at first, then it always seemed to work out.
She was trying her hand at a song that had very recently caught her ear, one that had been playing on the radio in the cab, when she was startled to halt by a kiss planted on her hear. “Way to scare the crap out of me,” she joked, grinning at him sidelong as she fixed her eyes on the keys. “And I’m not really sure that this counts as playing so much as messing around… I’m not even sure what the song’s called, and—hey, what are you doing?”
Scarlet frowned as the Sandman pulled up a bench and plugged a guitar into an amp, an expression of momentary concern befalling her fair features. “What, we doing a duet or something? You sure about this? I’ll just… probably throw you off.”
But Alair insisted, and she couldn’t blame the guy for feeling eager to play, considering he’d been without his own guitar for what probably felt like eons. For all the damage she’d done, the least she could do was oblige.
“If you insist… But I warn you, I actually suck.”
Taking a breath, the Aries positioned her hands over the keys again and took from the top what she had been attempting before. But this time her fingers stalled, paused, fumbled. At last, she seemed to give up and pull them away, gripping the sides of the instrument with a sigh. “So, you know why Cas and I actually hit it off to begin with?” She began, offering Sleep an apologetic glance. “Because, although I’m not a performer, we both suffer from really fucking bad stage fright. I quit piano because the recitals freaked me out… If I know someone’s listening to my playing, and how I’m playing, this happens.” She raised her hands in a defeated gesture to indicate her point. “But… if you really want to give this a try, then bear with me…”
Repositioning her hands on the keys, Scarlet closed her eyes this time, shutting the world out. She didn’t see the keyboard or Alair or anything at all, just the blackness behind her eyelids where she tried to find that calm spot that would bring her back to where she’d been ten minutes ago, before Alair had come in. And in that calm spot, she found the need for something else, in addition to the note that began to spill from her fingers.
The artificial redhead kick-started herself back into gear with the vocals that led to the appropriate chords, and from there, it all began to flow, easy and open to Alair’s accompaniment.
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you
Smiling, he looked down and readjusted the top string’s tension, bending its pitch delicately upward as he plucked the taut fibers and twisted the knob. He stopped when it matched the same resounding pitch as the outdated Yamaha beneath Scarlet’s fingers, honing in with an obsessive ear as the beat frequencies at last aligned. Electric guitar had never taken precedent for the dark-haired Sandman over its unplugged acoustic predecessor, but that didn’t mean he would give up the chance to indulge in a technological whim when presented with the opportunity.
It was an entirely different animal, one that was both harder and easier to tame at once. It allowed the sound to be tweaked and distorted and shifted at the push of a pedal or the flip of a switch, but at the same time he was limited to the combinations programmed into the electronic systems. With an acoustic or classical instrument, he knew precisely what he was going to get when his fingertips pressed the strings; he used his own body as an amplifier, as a modifier, as a conductor. He could not only feel the music but become it, something that electricity, however advanced the technology that it powered, simply could not imitate.
The old amplifier buzzed contentedly in the silence between his idle strums, its voice crackling hoarsely, but energetically, from its disuse. The Sandman dragged his thumb lightly down the six metal strings above the center gold pick-up, sending a rather cheerful G-major ringing crisply through the back room of used instruments. For all its age and dusty appearance, the gigantic Fender seemed somehow spritely and youthful in the musical hands of Alair, breathing new life into its tired old lungs with a reproduction guitar and a set of willing fingers. He reached over to turn a few of the dials, fine tuning its rich warm tone to suit the triple pick-ups of the instrument in his grip, and shifted his attention back to the suddenly-reserved redhead.
As soon as the words tentatively left her lips, her hands pressed a chord that preceded the rest of her phrase. He recognized it from the radio in the taxi, watching her fingers in an attempt to pick apart the intervals in the familiar progression. He joined without trepidation, correcting his occasional mistake when he fumbled for the proper chord constructions, and soon fell into a rhythm that matched hers—and the song’s—in perfect cadence.
“Beating like a hammer,” he repeated softly, backing up her decidedly haunting (but unmistakably beautiful) voice with an additional layer of hummed harmony. “Beating like a hammer…”
When at last she concluded the song, he strummed his own final note and allowed it to resonate until it was lost to the soft buzz of the amp at their backs. For several moments, he said nothing; he simply sat there, pleased with their impromptu performance, smiling crookedly at Scarlet’s back.
“Here,” he said mischievously, his fingers flying through a scale that ended in a pronounced dissonant harmony. From there, he took an unexpected turn downwards, then resurfaced with a major third and adding a quick seventh. Adding a compound rhythm of triplets, he repeated the pattern again, the melody unfurling beneath the pads of his fingertips in an involuntary torrent. “See if you can keep up.”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you
It felt like an out of body experience, where she could hear and appreciate each piece of the music, yet see it all as one beautiful picture: the keyboard, the vocals, and the guitar. And what astounded her the most was just how much she and Alair worked. She sensed his chord progression as he intuited the direction of her hands on the keys, and together they were able to discern and cover up one another’s insignificant shortcomings without becoming self-conscious. When at last the melody concluded, Scarlet turned and raked her fingers through her hair, and exhaled as if she hadn’t taken a breath the entire time she sang. “Wow… that was something,” she commented, sharing Alair’s triumphant grin. “Can’t say I’ve ever done that before. Nice saves for all of my screw-ups, by the way.”
Before the Aries could comment further, Alair was beginning to strum something new and different on the electric guitar, first egging her on with his eyes, and then verbally when she didn’t bite. “What? Oh, come on, you can’t put me on the spot!” The young woman whined, lower lip protruding in an immature pout. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were testing me.”
The inner child in her wanted to fold her arms and stiffly refuse, but the more daring, adult side of Scarlet’s soul urged her to rise to the challenge; and if he laughed at her, she would simply find something else to throw at him.
Turning back to the piano, she listened intently to his repeated chords, and like magic her hands found the complimentary notes on the piano. Since the tune was new and unfamiliar there were no vocals to distract her from what her hands were doing, but that simple trick of closing her eyes and removing the urge towards perfectionism seemed to do the trick. Before long, Alair’s guitar had full keyboard accompaniment, and not just simple complimentary chords but her own single note embellishments that she added where it felt appropriate. She let the Sandman lead, carrying the melody from the climax all the way down to the denouement, and read into his cues when he drew it to a close.
“Probably nowhere near as thrilling as jamming with Cas, huh?” She teased, rolling her shoulders back and cracking her knuckles. “It’s amazing how you can just pick up any guitar and do absolute magic with it, no matter whose hands have seen it last or what it’s made of. I’ve only ever really been able to take to this poor thing.” Half-turning towards the keyboard, Scarlet ran the pads of her fingers over the once white, now ivory coloured keys. “I mean, I can pound out notes on any keyboard or piano, but I mess up and it all just feels awkward to me. I think I must have tried out every keyboard that has ever seen the walls of this shop, and this one is still the one that feels the best. I mean, who gives a shit if the saxophone setting on it is all fucked up? If I wanted music that sounds like a sax, I’d go learn how to play the fucking sax.”
Smiling, Scarlet turned back to the keys and set her fingers upon them delicately. “So there’s this tune I’ve been hashing out for like… fuck, I don’t know. Five years? Hanging out with Cas really got me back into music.” With a shrug, she added, “But I think it’s missing something. Just hear it out… See if you can’t add some magic to it with your guitar skills.”
And once again, undergoing that ritual of closing her eyes and drawing a quiet breath, a melody began to spill almost expertly from the very fingers that Scarlet claimed were so underpracticed.
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you
Of all the people with whom he had duetted over the years, the fiery redhead with her raw voice and deft fingers was perhaps the one that surprised him the most. It wasn’t that he hadn’t expected her to be good (he had not, in fact, known what to expect at all after she’d dodged his question and dismissed her abilities with a change of subject), it was that he’d had no way of anticipating just how well they played together. They didn’t need to play perfect strings of notes; the way their separate parts perfectly filled in the gaps of the other made their performance something of flawless coordination—a rhythm that went beyond the tempo of their song, a cadence that thrummed like a shared heartbeat beneath layers of audial skin.
While it was certainly true that playing with Caspar was fun, Alair did not share with him anything remotely akin to the bizarre unity he had with Scarlet. Cas knew his stuff; his fingers could fly up and down a guitar’s neck with all the accuracy and endurance of a breathing machine, and he’d been playing long enough to understand the makeup of common chords and their subsequent progressions. The Sandman enjoyed his energy, his enthusiasm; it was as easy to get along with the lanky guitarist’s music as it was the man himself. But with the ever-surprising redhead, however, there was emotion, there was excitement.
His observations were only confirmed as they continued to play, their improvised tune becoming more and more complex as they took turns layering variations on his initial theme. It was with reluctance that he drew it to a close, allowing the sound to die on its own accord as it faded through its electronic filter and seeped into the instrument-filled room.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” he replied, shaking his head slowly. “This is…” He paused, struggling for the proper words; his denial was perfectly genuine. “This is way better than jamming with Cas. He’s good, sure, but he can be kind of a robot, you know?” When she went on to explain her affinity for the old dusty Yamaha, he couldn’t help but smile, and slid his bench forward as far as his cord would allow. Sitting just to her left now, he looked to his right and met her gaze, blue eyes sparkling with complete understanding.
“Sounds like how I feel about my guitar,” he pointed out with a curt nod, her words resonating with him on a level that only confirmed his affection for the young woman. “It’s like getting to know a person, like making a friend. I can have a conversation with anybody on the street…” He paused, gesturing downward to the Gibson in his lap, and strummed a few pointed chords. When he continued, his voice had softened. “That’s all well and good, but that doesn’t mean I know them. Their favorite food, how much they hate the wallpaper in their bathroom, their brother’s name, how they take their coffee in the morning…” Reaching out with his arm, he nudged her playfully with his elbow. “But let’s hear that song, alpha. You’ve heard enough of my shit already.”
When she began to play, he dove headfirst into the melody, his chin bobbing infinitesimally to the beat as he picked apart its direction. Gradually he began to add the texture of his guitar, strumming along with more and more confidence as she played on until he felt comfortable with deviation. Leaning somewhat closer, he began to hum, tossing on yet another blanket of warm harmony to the subtly-arranged mix. The result was haunting and beautiful, bittersweet—but what was perhaps more intoxicating than the woven sound itself was the very act of performing it, of two souls coming together to forge something so utterly extraordinary, so completely moving…
As the music drew to a soft, gentle close, Alair felt his heart begin to race; it accelerated against his breastbone rapidly, striking like the rich, warm pulse of a fine-tuned timpani that traveled in waves of vibration to the tips of his fingers. Trembling now, his fingers gave way on the fret board to an abrupt halt of the sound. And before he knew what was happening, before he could register the rush of crimson to his cheeks, before he could even take a breath of the music-saturated air—he was leaning towards her; his hand tenderly pushing her left shoulder back as her fingers still danced slowly, conclusively upon the ivory keys. His electric eyes fluttered closed, and at last, at long, long last, he pressed his lips to hers in the only fitting finale of their duet—a kiss.
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you
Alair filled in the gaps. Beyond that, his talent lent the melody a whole other air, picking up on the innermost harmonies and adding the occasion descant that sent a thrill down the redhead’s spine. This was it; this was what she had been working towards for years, picking away at the ivory keys every time she visited Geoff’s shop. The reason she could not provide the song with what it had been missing was because she had only written half a song, after all. Certainly, it could stand on its own as something mediocre, at best, but it was built to be accompanied by something else—someone else.
And with this enlightenment came another very shocking realization: it was no longer her song, Scarlet the sole composer. It was their song; composed and performed by her and Alair.
The melody continued for a few beats after the Sandman’s strumming and picking petered out. Her right arm reached towards those quiet high pitches that served often as embellishments, drawing the song to a sweet and gentle close, just as she felt the warmth of Alair’s hand on her shoulder. Turning her head, prepared to ask what he was up to, whatever cheeky words she had in store died before they ever reached her tongue. Instead of Sleep’s sly smile, and those vivid blue eyes, Scarlet was met with something far more potent, something for which there was no way she could have been prepared in that moment, where they at the back of Geoff Mader’s music shop.
There was no pride in admitting you were in your twenties and had never been kissed, and as such it was never a topic that the young woman ever brought to light. She thought about it, from time to time, wondered what it felt like, and if there was really as much meaning behind the gesture of affection as people (and movies, and books) let on.
All of those questions were answered for her in a fraction of a second. Scarlet’s heart spend up twofold at the first contact of their lips, guiding blood to her cheeks and freezing her hands in mid-air where they had lifted from the piano keys. That semi-paralysis was temporary, however, and when her hands moved at last, it was of their own accord; fingers resting featherlight upon his knees. Finding the soft cottonblend fabric of his T-shirt in their grip. Finding the groove of his shoulders, where they stayed, the tips near her fingernails hooked into his shirt, as if she were worried on a subconscious level that gripping too tightly was bad etiquette.
It was right. All of it was right, it felt right, and Scarlet knew this for the fact that she wasn’t thinking about what she was doing, or worried as to how he’d react when her body gravitated closer, to the point where she took a partial seat on both benches. She wanted this, and she had for a while now, she realized. It was no odd happenstance that she craved Alair’s proximity, relished it, and had come to prefer his company over Caspar’s. It wasn’t some flight of fancy, particularly where—in every other aspect of her social life—she had issues with proximity. It wasn’t even mere infatuation; it was beyond that, far further than she had realized.
Any closer, and the redhead would have been sitting in the sandman’s lap. Her fingers found the hair at the nape of his neck, tangling in it briefly with the sudden insurgence of emotion that heightened the gravitational pull between their two bodies. This was the feeling she had been missing out on, foolishly thinking she could do without it… Was this how Caspar felt when he kissed Marissa? If so, could she really blame him from preferring the brunette’s company to hers?
Where the rush of musical magic from their fingers had brought them physically together in the moment, in a kiss that had been long delayed, it was the tinny musical twang of strings being tuned in the other room that brought Scarlet back. Pulling away with a great deal of reluctance, the artificial redhead opened her eyes and met Alair’s, understanding replacing the confusion that once swam in her own blue irises. Her hands slowly dropped from his neck to rest on his knees when she very innocently (and without even the mildest hint that she was joking), asked: “So… does this mean we’re a thing?”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you
The young woman with whom he had fallen irrevocably in love had ignited within him a flame that he had never been able to extinguish—even after all these years, it smoldered undying in the depths of his soul. Its embers had darkened, but they cast sprawling shadows like the faintest flashes of memory in the cavernous, supernatural stretches of his being; it had become a part of him as sure and fundamental as a dream. But it existed, glowing alone in a state of repression while Sleep did his best to forget, to ignore the sad warmth that seeped from its desperate core.
Unbeknownst to the distracted Sandman, however, it was the heat from that very center that fueled the rushing blood and heightened pulse when his lips dove forward to brush against the young woman’s. Inebriated with the residual reverberations of their song, intoxicated by the perfume of her skin when he drew ever closer, he did not recognize the warmth flooding his system as having originated from that particular tucked-away hearth. The sensation of its rekindled flames was buried behind excitement and denial alike, disguised beneath another blissful veil of newfound adoration and the rush of physical proximity.
With one hand supporting the neck of the guitar in his lap, the other migrated tenderly from her left shoulder to the small of her back, and he pulled her in closer until she was bridging the gap between their two benches. He straightened his posture and pressed into her hands as her grip found the material of his shirt at his collarbones, and he reached up with his opposite arm to cradle the back of her neck with his fingers. Their bodies tangled together like the very music they had just finished performing, with all the twisting energy and harmonious improvised movements of Scarlet’s haunting composition now manifesting in the signals of their bodies.
When at last their intimate symphony reached a close and they reluctantly pulled away from one another, Alair allowed his hands to trail from her shoulders to her arms, landing at last upon her own that she’d draped across his knees. His expressive eyes were perpetual carriers of a mischievous gleam, but the typical amusement that resided within his blue gaze had been replaced now with an unreadable twinkle, a pattern of bright sparkling cerulean caught somewhere between the searing indigo of lightning and the undulating azure of the sea.
Her question caught him off-guard at first, and he held her curious stare for several moments before his carefully-composed face dissolved into lighthearted, affectionate laughter. He leaned forward, pressing his forehead into her shoulder when the guitar at his middle prevented a full embrace.
“We’ve been a thing for, like, a thousand years, Scarlet,” he said into the fabric of her shirt between chuckles, sitting upright to meet her gaze once more. “And besides, I’ve already told everyone in town, haven’t I?” A grin tugged at the corners of his lips, and he reached up to tuck a strand of her crimson hair behind her ear. “I think we should make music like this more often. What do you say?”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you
Well… It had certainly felt intimate and meaningful. Everything about it, from the moment itself to the way he held her, like he didn’t want to let her go. Like she was actually worth holding onto.
“What? I’m being serious!” She hissed, albeit playfully, and the answer came soon enough in Sleep’s oh so eloquent way of putting things.
But what started Scarlet perhaps the most was that he was right.
The Aries had felt something for the Sandman the very night they’d met (well, barring the anger and any possible dream homicide), but for the life of her she hadn’t been able to put her finger on just what it was. At first, she had simply assumed that his company was simply a favourable alternative to being alone, now that Caspar was apparently involved with someone else; Alair hadn’t been entirely wrong when he’d claimed she thought little more of him than a substitute to the lanky musician.
Behind the similarities between the two men, however, Alair was so very different from Caspar, and the more time she spent with him, the more impossible it was to picture him as a mere substitute. Something more than someone who served only to buffer those pangs of fear and loneliness when she woke up from a nightmare with a headache and no one to turn to, no one to talk to. Scarlet still loved Caspar Brighton; perhaps she always would. But it was hardly comparable to the love that she had for the starry-eyes sandman. The way it thrilled her, neurons firing with electrical synapsis every time they touched, every time he held her, every time she was able to make him smile. This was a different kind of love, one with which she was hardly familiar, but that thrilled her to the point where she hardly knew what to do with herself.
“Like I said before, Magic Man; it’s nice to, you know, talk it over with the lady before you start fucking spreading rumors light that.” The grin that tugged at the redhead’s mouth triggered the soft appearance of dimples in her cheeks, and she gave Alair’s knee an affectionate squeeze. “But thanks for clearing it up for me. Although I’m not sure if it would be abusing Geoff’s kindness if we were to head down here all the time, just to play the instruments..." As one of the hands that she had come to trust so thoroughly reached out to tuck her hair behind her ear, she leaned into it ever so slightly, temporarily lost in Alair's blue eyes. This was real. This was actually happening.
Scarlet cared about someone who cared about her as well, and she hadn't had to manipulate the stars whatsoever for this outcome.
As if time itself had arranged everything perfectly on cue, the scruffy shop owner with his head full of dreadlocks peeked around the corner into the Orphanage. A slow smile spread across his face at the unmistakably intimate and meaningful proximity between the two, not appearing the least bit offended that they’d chosen the quiet corner of his shop to steal several moments’ worth of privacy, no doubt in order to share a kiss.
“Sorry; didn’t mean to interrupt anything. Just wanted to let you know that the patient is patched up, strings replaced, and in a stable condition. No need for overnight observation; you can take the guitar home today.” Chuckling at his own terrible joke, he added, “And, for what it’s worth… Pardon my eavesdropping—kind of a small shop, if you haven’t already noticed—but you’re both welcome to come down and play the orphans whenever you like. Otherwise they just remain on their shelves collecting dust; frankly, they could all use a little tlc at the hands of… Well, gentle human hands. Stop by whenever you like.”
"For real? Jeez, Geoff, if I'd known this like, five years ago you'd never have been able to get me to leave your shop." With a teasing smirk she rose from the bench, her hand finding Alair's as the Sandman rose simultaneously. "Come on. Let's go see your good as new guitar."
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you
He laughed, then looked over when Geoff’s tentative voice called through the nostalgic quiet of the dusty Orphanage. He had to lean forward (and into Scarlet) in order to see the dreadlock-sporting shop owner around the old Marshall stack, and when he caught his eye he smiled, nodding. “Thanks, man,” the Sandman said, beaming—although his sudden rush of happiness had less to do with his completed guitar than just how thrilled Scarlet seemed at the prospect of returning to visit the lonely keyboards in the back room. “I’m sure we’ll be back then,” he went on, rising to his feet to follow Geoff to the front of the shop. “If you can stand our noise, that is.”
Geoff snorted, turning to look over his shoulder at the pair behind him. When he spoke, he was addressing Scarlet. “He’s kidding, right? He’s definitely kidding. You have no idea the kind of plucking I hear in here all day. Mostly kids who’re bored after school and think they’re the next Hendrix.”
Alair laughed. As they traipsed through the narrow path between used instruments, Sleep’s fingers entwined with the redhead’s so naturally that he hardly realized they’d joined grasps until they reached the counter and he had to surrender his hand to inspect his guitar. He placed the reproduction Les Paul on the counter, the only betrayal of his sudden nervousness in the way he gnawed at his lower lip. His heart skipped a beat when Geoff hoisted the case up and opened the buckles, lifting the lid to reveal…well, to reveal a guitar that looked almost exactly as it had before its unfortunate injury. And that was precisely what he’d wanted.
Geoff lifted it from the plush interior of the case and extended it to Alair, whose expressive eyes were as full of emotion as a man reunited with a long lost family member. He took it with a grip that was simultaneously tender and confident, holding it to the light from the front window to inspect first the chipped neck and then the cracked, dented side. It bore scars that were barely detectable, scars nowhere near as prominent as a half dozen other past fixes—a testament not only to the progression of technology in the craft of instrument repairs, but to the supreme expertise and skill of Geoff Mader.
Without realizing it, Alair was grinning. Like ancient Japanese stoneware whose cracks were mended with the brightest of gold, so too would the repairs on his guitar shine with the precious reminder of this magical moment. As subtle as they were, he would always recognize them for what they were—the mark of an emotional turning point, the perpetual symbol of rectification and apology and, ultimately, acceptance. They had torn gashes in one another that evening, but time and patience—not unlike the skill required to patch the traumatized wood—had healed them, brought them back together stronger. It wasn't good as new, it was better than new.
“Jesus,” Alair breathed, at last turning back to Geoff. He glanced to Scarlet, then back to the shop owner, shaking his head incredulously. “This looks fantastic. Do you mind if I strum a little…?”
“No, no, not at all,” Geoff said quickly. “I was going to tell you to give it a test run before you take it home.”
Balancing it awkwardly on one knee while he stood, the Sandman strummed several chords and plucked a scale, too elated to care that the strings had not yet been tuned. Nevertheless, at the discretion of his expert fingers the guitar sang true—warm and full and rich, as devastating and beautiful as ever. Geoff nodded, impressed, when Alair turned back to him and placed the guitar back in its case.
“How much do I owe you?” the Sandman asked before Scarlet could interfere, retrieving his wallet from his back pocket. He reached over for the redhead’s hand in hopes that it would silence her, giving it a reassuring squeeze before paying the man the modest amount he asked.
“Like I said, guys, come back anytime,” Geoff told them as they headed for the door, smiling. “The orphans could use a little company, and I’ve only got two hands, you know.”
Alair nodded, thanked him once more, and then stepped outside with Scarlet in tow and his guitar slung across his shoulder. It was early evening now, and the sun had begun its brilliant descent in the west while it bathed the city in its pinkish-orange glow. “What do you say we walk back, spare the cab?” he suggested, reaching for her hand. “It’s a beautiful night.”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you
It was one of the first things that had truly drawn Scarlet’s attention to the Sandman, from that first night they’d knocked a few drinks back at one of Caspar’s gigs, pre-Marissa phase. When they’d danced, letting loose and just having an altogether good time, it had been the way his fingers felt when woven between her own that had caught her attention. And, from then on, she’d sought out further contact with him, wondering what else would feel right. Admittedly, wondering if kissing him would feel right…
All of those questions were now officially answered.
As she left the Orphanage with her fingers tightly entwined with Alair’s, she shot Geoff a grin and bit back a laugh. “Of course he’s fucking kidding—I mean, on his part, anyway. I can guarantee I won’t produce a bit of noise pollution myself, on that poor keyboard I’m constantly abusing.”
It was almost heartwarming the way Sleep’s face twisted into a momentary look of uncertainty as Geoff brought the guitar case to the counter, opening it like a coffin containing a fully living and thriving body. Without thinking, her now free hand migrated to his back in a small gesture of reassurance as he inspected the talented shop owner’s handiwork. She could feel her own face brighten at the look of relief and astonishment when—even to her surprise—the instrument looked as good as new. Or, as Alair imagined, better than new. She could hardly make out the seams where the projectile object had dented and chipped the shiny wood; it must have been one of Geoff’s greatest successes, to date.
“Looks and sounds amazing,” the redhead murmured, and it was entirely possible that she was more relieved than even the Sandman. Her temper tantrum hadn’t damaged it beyond feasible repair; it had been her gravest fear that even Geoff Mader, miracle worker for al instruments, would not be able to bestow his magic touch and heal the chipped wood. She had never been so happy to have been proven wrong.
That flood of relief was cut short when she suddenly heard the right words come from the wrong mouth: How much do I owe you?
“Hey… hey, we had an agreement!” Scarlet stage-whispered, reaching for Alair’s wallet before he could take out the cash. He held it, of course, several inches beyond her reach, and in the end the transaction was made without her assistance, putting the Aries in a curiously brooding state of mind.
As they bid Geoff goodbye and Alair captured her hand in his again, Scarlet frowned at the sunset ahead of them. “I was supposed to pay for that.” She argued, smiling at him. “Damnit, Alair, it’s my fault it got broken in the first place! Not fair, Magic Man. How else am I going to assuage my guilt now?”
Luckily for him, it was a beautiful evening, and foregoing the cab was about the best counter to Scarlet’s temper. She brooded and sulked, of course, but her hand never left his, and over the next half hour as they made their way back to the apartment complex, the evening air placated her to a point of circumstantial forgiveness. “You’re so fucking lucky you have a face that’s easy to forgive.” She said at last as she rounded the corner to her neighbourhood. Pivoting to face him, she grinned affectionately and sighed her own defeat. “Here; head to the apartment and put your guitar away. I’m taking you out to dinner, and you that is not up for negotiation.” Standing on her toes, she brushed his lips with a brief kiss, followed by a playful shove in the opposite direction. “Go, hurry up! I’ll wait here.”
The young woman watched the strange man with a hold on her heart sprint towards her building, her chest light with exhilaration at the enormity of what had occurred at Geoff’s shop, and what it meant for days ahead. Unfortunately, that light hearted feeling of walking on clouds was short lived, interrupted by a voice that she did not want to hear.
“Scarly. What’re you doing, standing ‘round, all alone like that?”
The fiery redhead turned to meet with the unpleasant face of Devon Saunders, turning the other corner and heading her way. It was too late to ignore him, and she couldn’t flee to her apartment, because she didn’t trust him not to follow. So instead she put her hand up in a gesture that could not be mistaken as fuck off, but just in case he was too clueless to read it: “Fuck off, Devon.” Her tone took on an edge, as she always had to when It came with dealing with this guy. “You can keep moving. I’m not talking to you.”
“Really? ‘Cause I thought those words coming outta your mouth was talking.” Smiling a sly grin, he was fast for someone who had obviously been into the alcohol a little early for a weekday. Before Scarlet found the reflexes to rethink her decision not to head for the apartment and move beyond his reach, his fingers were around her wrist in a vice grip. “Come on. We haven’t talked in a while. That asshole interrupted last time, but I don’t see him anywhere now. Guess you were just bsing me about dating him, huh? I should’ve known.”
“Let go. I mean it, Devon, let go!” Scarlet yelled, and wound her free hand up in desperation to make a fist aimed at his jaw. Devon caught the punch, mid-swing.
“You know how I should’ve known you were bsing me, Scarly? You wanna know?” Devon’s voice rose, and to punctuate his words, he shoved Scarlet backwards, flush against a brick wall. “Because you don’t date. You don’t date because you know that no one could love someone like you. Just ‘cause you’re not crawling the streets anymore doesn’t make you any less scum than you were before; no one can love a fucking thief and a liar, so don’t fucking kid yourself. Scarlet’s not even your real fucking name, is it? Is it!” With the force of his body, Devon shove her backward again, her knuckles cutting and scraping against the brick.
“Stop it! Just stop!” Scarlet went from angry to afraid in a matter of seconds. Because up until now, she’d forgotten one thing above Devon; he was impulsive. And those impulses had landed a lot of other girls she known in the hospital with injuries that almost always left scars.
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you
He bowed his head to meet her lips in a soft parting kiss, the gesture sending a shockwave of affection through his limbs despite the brevity of their contact. He grinned broadly with unadulterated glee, stepping backward when she playfully shoved him in the direction of the apartment. “Sooner I get there and back, sooner we can eat, huh?” he shot back teasingly, wrinkling his nose and sticking his tongue between his teeth. “I see how it is!” Taking a step towards the familiar building, he pivoted on the ball of his foot and swiveled back to face her in an abrupt change of direction, planting one last parting kiss on her lips before launching into a swift jog with his guitar case bouncing at his back. When he reached the doors, he turned around and shouted, “Gotcha!” before disappearing inside.
The Sandman took the stairs two at a time, leaping up to the fourth floor in quick stages with jumps fueled more by the thrill of their…well, their togetherness than anything else. Even the satisfaction that stemmed from the successful repair of his guitar took second place to the burning excitement of their music store revelations. Bursting into the apartment, he tucked his instrument—safely in its case this time—around the living room corner. The air drifting from the open window was pleasantly cool in the pastel light of the evening, and Alair, figuring one or the other of them would be chilly by the time they finished eating, grabbed an oversized leather jacket from Caspar’s disorganized closet before heading down to meet Scarlet outside.
Freed from both the cumbersome, ill-adjusted straps of his hard-shell guitar case and the worries about its safety that had consumed him for the better part of the day, he descended the stairs with a jaunt in his step, his hands buried in the pockets of his borrowed jacket. The expression on his face was jubilant and hopeful when he pushed through the double doors to greet Scarlet outside, but when he heard a voice—the wrong voice—slicing nastily through the pleasant evening air, his good mood shattered as abruptly as a pane of glass striking the concrete…or a bone on the receiving end of his wrath.
“Let go of her.” Alair’s voice was icy venom when he spoke, announcing his presence to the man he recognized from one of their nights out the previous week.
Devon, holding Scarlet to the rough brick of the apartment’s façade, swiveled to look at the man who confronted him. A flicker of recognition flashed through his alcohol-glazed eyes, and he donned a disgusting lopsided grin bearing crooked, yellowing teeth. “Wouldja look at this?” he slurred, sliding his hand slowly from Scarlet’s shoulder down to her wrist. “This guy’s good, Scarly, I’ll give you that. Where’d you hire him?”
“I said let go of her.” Alair’s eyes had darkened to a frightening stormy cobalt, and he stepped forward threateningly, his muscles tense.
Devon’s grip only tightened around her arm, his knuckles paling with the effort, and he leaned forward towards the redhead’s ear as his gaze slid purposely to meet the Sandman’s. Though he looked toward Sleep as he spoke, his words were addressed to the young woman. “But you know what, Scarly? You couldn’t fucking pay me to be with your street-crawler ass. You’re a little fucking bitch—”
Alair lunged forward, his fingers hooking in Devon’s collar and wrenching him forward, tearing him from Scarlet in one disorienting motion. Devon, momentarily losing his balance, struggled to remain upright as the Sandman stepped over to place himself between the redhead and her attacker. As soon as the inebriated bastard recovered, however, he came at him, both fists balled at his sides.
Dark-haired Sleep easily dodged the first attempted blow, ducking beneath Devon’s slow, predictable swing as though the entire confrontation had been choreographed in advance. But something had snapped within the peaceable Sandman—a defensive, protective rage triggered not only by the sleazy man’s provocation, but also his unacceptable treatment of Scarlet. And before he could tell her to go inside, before he had a chance to think through his actions, his fist was colliding with Devon’s brutish jaw, knocking the man’s head backward with a cartoonish smack.
Devon, looking stunned, had little time to recover before Alair was at him again. The Sandman’s deeply furrowed brow cast dark shadows over his eyes as he swung and swung again, at last succeeding in knocking the man to the cracked concrete. Flailing as Sleep bent over him, his boot crashed against the Sandman’s nose; a jolt of pain burst through his skull, but Alair was too far invested in the fight to let that stop him—he pinned the man’s arms at his sides and pressed his knee to his chest with the full weight of his body, reeling back with his right hand to punch him again.
It was only when he felt something—someone—Scarlet?—holding his arm back that the pain in his hand began to register, but he didn’t care; this man had not yet received his fair consequence as far as the Sandman was concerned. But as sticky warm fluid coated his fingers and palm, running down his arm in gentle torrents, he relaxed his fist and allowed himself to be pulled back.
Panting, his words came between ragged breaths in quick, almost unintelligible spurts. “Are you okay?” he demanded, reaching up to cradle her face with his uninjured hand. “That fucking...sonuvabitch...Did he hurt you? Tell me he didn't hurt you, or I swear I'll fucking murder him...!”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you
A result of one of the many, many bad decisions that Scarlet had made during her time living on the streets, the young woman had known this guy for a long time. Devon had been around for as long as she could remember, and why she had tolerated his insufferable presence for as long as she had, she would never know. But she did know what he was known for, and the man’s notoriety came from his fists—and his weapons.
It was seldom that Devon didn’t have a weapon on him, his favourite being a tiny switchblade that remained hidden in the sleeve of any coat he wore, and that was what worried her now. Because the blade most frequently made an appearance when the asshole was under the influence of alcohol, such as he was right now. And right now was possibly the first time that Scarlet had genuinely feared for her life in a very, very long time. Because it was only a matter of time before that blade came out, and before she knew it, she’d be wearing the same scars on her arms that Erika wore. It had been Devon’s treatment of her friend and colleague that had turned her away from the streets in the first place… But he was right. Just because she’d left the streets of DC behind didn’t mean that the streets had lost interest in her. Devon Saunders was living proof of that.
“Devon, you’re drunk! Let go!” She cried again, giving up the struggle, because she was already bruising and it would only make it worse. To the Aries’ great surprise and relief, however, her voice was echoed by a similar demand, from a similar voice. Over Devon’s shoulder, Alair was making his way towards him, and she had never seen his face spell so many kinds of murder. Not even when she had nearly killed him in her dream around when they’d first made one another’s acquaintance; he’d been peeved, but not this crimson shade of livid.
“Alair, you need to be careful—” The frightened young woman began, but it was cut off with a gasp when Devon’s grip tightened, and he continued to murmur hurtful and hateful things into her ear.
But then, in the next moment, she was free. And Devon was on the ground… being completely bested by Alair.
On one hand, it could have been argued that there was no avoiding this; that once Devon was riled up, someone would have to fight him, and someone would have to get hurt. Scarlet had yet to see the guy lose a fight, but then his new adversary seemed far more capable than she ever could have imagined. And far more frightening…
But regardless of how well Alair could hold his own, he didn’t know Devon. He’d didn’t know the bastard’s sleazy tricks, and the weapons in his sleeves, and what he didn’t know could very well lose him this fight. And Scarlet couldn’t just stand back and watch the one person who had been watching out for her when she would have otherwise been alone get hurt by this son of a bitch; she wouldn’t be able to live with herself, and she already owed Alair far too much.
“Alair, stop! You have to stop, we’ve already won!” The chemical redhead yelled as the Sandman had Devon Saunders pinned to the ground. In the scuffle, she couldn’t tell whether or not Devon had had a chance to pull the ace out of his sleeve, but another worry at the forefront of her mind was that Alair, in his blind rage, might not know when to stop.
At last, on realizing that she wasn’t going to be heard, Scarlet hurried towards the aggressive pair and grabbed one of Alair’s arms. “Stop! Alair, you need to stop!”
Something must have gotten through, for when the Aries tugged at his arm, Sleep seemed to remember himself, remember her, and slowly rose, stepping away by the gentle guidance of her arm.
“I’m okay—see? I’m okay.” Scarlet assured him, covering his hand with her own. “He didn’t get to hurt me, everything’s all…”
Everything wasn’t all right, and the young woman caught the untruth before it passed her lips. The unmistakable sight of blood dripping from Alair’s fingers made her go white in the face. Devon had pulled the knife on him, after all, and the blood ran thick and fast.
“Oh my god. Come on, Alair… come on!” It was not a request, but a demand. Scarlet pulled the Sandman along by his good arm until they were a safe couple of blocks away from where they’d left Devon, groaning and moaning on the ground. When their feet finally skidded to a stop, she grabbed him by his injured arm, and hauled up his sleeve to see the damage done. “Uncurl your fist,” she ordered, and the amount of blood that she saw flowing from a jagged cut that spanned his wrist onto his palm was almost enough to make her queasy. “We need to get you to a hospital. Hold on, I’m calling a cab.”
Her fingers shook as she dialed the number for the taxi service she frequented, so much that she cursed at her own incompetence, until she finally got through to someone on the other end and confirmed a ride.
“We just need to wait a minute. A cab will be here soon…” But they needed to staunch the blood in the meantime. It couldn’t have been by chance that she happened to be wearing the one pair of jeans from which she always forgot to take out her bandana. The dark paisley fabric was a feeble bandaid for such a gushing wound, but it would do. It would have to do… “Keep your arm elevated, it’ll slow the blood flow.” She advised, tying the bandana off on the top of his hand. “There. Now you can make a fist again…”
Scarlet wiped her eyes on the back of her hand before tears could moisten the fabric of the bandana. Why was she crying? It was a bad injury, but not a fatal one. And yet, all the same, she was no less frightened for Alair’s well-being than she would have been, had the knife embedded itself in a more crucial part of his body. Alair was injured, and—however indirectly—it was because of her.
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you
He was quaking to his bones, his muscles trembling with the ebb of adrenaline and the shock of what had occurred—but not least from concern for Scarlet’s well being. Taking in a deep breath through clenched teeth, he did his best to calm the frantic thoughts spiraling through his mind, turning his attention to each syllable of the redhead’s reassurances in turn as he gradually recovered enough to compose himself. The feel of her hand on his own unraveled some of his efforts, however, for as soon as her touch brushed his knuckles he realized all was not as well as she had initially professed.
Stinging pain shot down his arm in lightning-like bursts originating at his wrist and palm, accompanied by the nauseating sensation of fresh waves of warm blood bathing the skin of his arm and fingers. “Fuck,” was the only thing he could think to say, the word escaping his throat in a strangled cough. He held his wounded hand away from his body, his fingers clenched; he could feel the separated skin of the gash pulling apart, each pulse of his rapid heartbeat sending another blatant reminder of the wound’s gnarly presence in the tender flesh of his hand.
He had been too blinded by his fury to notice the subtle, practiced maneuvering of Devon Saunders’ nimble hands; he hadn’t seen the dull flash of the spring-loaded knife as it slipped from his sleeve to his palm, lashing out like the strike of an adder’s fangs between Alair’s powerful blows. With wrath acting as anesthesia and adrenaline encouraging him on, it had not even occurred to him that he might have been injured.
Allowing Scarlet to pull him along for several blocks, he winced against the rhythmic ache that came with each of his ragged footfalls, grateful when at last she deemed them far enough from where they’d left the crumpled, moaning form of Devon on the gravelly pavement. He held out his hand for her without a word, clenching his jaw as he uncurled his fist to lay eyes on the damage for the first time. The cut was a deep, jagged slice that spanned from the center of his palm to the base of his wrist, curling sideways to wrap around his thumb. Blood dripped in swollen splashes to the sidewalk below.
Closing his fist around Scarlet’s makeshift bandage, he bent his elbow per her instructions and reached out for her with his good arm. “Look, Scarlet, I don’t think this is really necessary,” he said hoarsely, tightening his already-balled fist experimentally. The reassuring smile he tried to express came out as a wince at best, but he pressed on anyway, giving her shoulder a squeeze. “You’re sure you’re okay, right? You’re sure? Because we can just head back to your apartment. We wouldn’t even have to use the front door, you know, if that fucker is still there…” His attempted chuckle came across as a cough, and this time he couldn’t quite suppress a look of anguish.
“Yeah, I think I’d rather just go back,” he told her with a nod, his blue eyes still a shade darker than usual—but this time it was not anger, it was fear that clouded those azure irises. “A couple of aspirin will do the trick.”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you
Scarlet sounded angrier than she felt, her words with far more of a bite than what was mirrored in her worried expression. Did he take her for a fool? Any idiot could see the way the blood had drained away from his face, down his arm and how it was spilling onto the sidewalk beside his feet. He was far from all right; anyone in his situation would have been, anyone who had faced off Devon Saunders with as much boldness. And she had known… She had known, and she should have hauled him off of that son of a bitch sooner. She should have fled with him, before any of this had happened—hell, she should have fled towards the fucking apartment the second she’d seen the goon. None of this would have happened…
But hindsight was neither here nor there, and in the here and now, someone for whom she cared the world was badly injured. Sandman or not, Alair was mortal enough to bleed, leading her to believe that he was also just human enough to bleed out, if they didn’t do something soon. “Alair, you are fucking bleeding; and I’m not talking an aggravating cut from a kitchen knife. You need help that neither of us can provide—aspirin isn’t going to fucking cut it!” She hadn’t shouted at him with such ferocity since the night of their heinous fight, but even more than before, she felt he deserved it now for belittling an injury that was clearly a good degree of serious.
“Are you really one of those types? Too fucking macho to admit that you really can’t handle something on your own?” She demanded, but received no answer, for the cab pulled up along the side of the curb just as she was finishing. “Come on. There’s nothing in my apartment that’s going to help you.” Opening one of the back doors, Scarlet all but pulled the Sandman in next to her by his good arm. “The hospital—and break the speed limit,” she told the cabbie when they were both inside. “My boyfriend is injured.” Boyfriend… Although now was neither the time nor place to consider the connotations of the word, and what it meant in regards to her and Alair, it sent tingles down her spine to try it on her tongue. But, like Alair had said… Who really needed labels?
“Injured? Jeez, sounds like an ambulance would’ve been a better choice.” The cabbie muttered, rolling his eyes in the rear view mirror. “Bleed on those seats and you’re getting charged extra.”
“Just. Fucking. Drive.” The caustic venom in the fiery redhead’s voice was all it took, and the cab squealed away from the curb, without another word from the driver. Scarlet returned her attention to Alair and closed her own hand over the fist of his injured one, scrutinizing his face in the dying sunlight, ironically the colour of blood. “How are you feeling? You’re not a fainter, are you? Don’t you dare faint on me, I can’t drag your ass from the cab to the hospital…”
At this point, her anger was little more than a thin veil for the concern and anxiety that wracked her heart and mind. There had been so much blood on that sidewalk… Alair wasn’t invincible. For all there was so little she knew about his supernatural nature, she knew he could die; not easily, perhaps, but it wasn’t as if his injuries were magically closing like nothing had ever happened between him and Devon. She could lose him, and that frightened her.
Resting her head on his shoulder, fingers wrapped around his lacerated hand, she didn’t utter another word until they arrived just outside the hospital. Her shaking fingers fumbled with her wallet as she searched for bills to toss in the driver’s direction, before she all but leapt from the taxi, skirting around the vehicle to open Alair’s door for him and help the wounded Sandman out. “You okay to stand?” Well, he didn’t have much of a choice than to be okay to stand, because Scarlet couldn’t carry him. And, fortunately, it didn’t seem to be much of a problem. With one arm around his waist, and the other hand resting on his bicep, she led the reluctant Sandman towards the hospital doors, directly under a blue sign that read: EMERGENCY.
This was still where people came when they were fucking bleeding to death, wasn’t it? Scarlet truly couldn’t remember the last time she had set foot in a hospital for any reason, and was as unfamiliar with the protocol as was Sleep. It earned her a couple of curious glances when she approached the receptionist straight away, knocking on the little window to get the woman’s attention. “Hey—excuse me. We need a doctor to patch up a knife wound, ASAP.”
“You can take a number next to the window…” The older woman tapped the glass, indicating the reel of tear-away numbers to the left.
“Take a number?” Scarlet glanced towards the direction of the waiting room with a frown. Not a lot of people were seated: some elderly out-patients, a few parents with coughing children, and one couple who looked to have fallen asleep waiting. Even if they only had a handful of others ahead of them, it was clear that this place operated at a snail’s pace.
Tapping on the window once again, Scarlet drew closer and annunciated this time to try and get her point across. “Look, I’m sorry if I wasn’t clear; this is a knife wound we’re talking, and he is already bleeding all over your fucking floor.” She wasn’t exaggerating, either; the bandana was already saturated, tiny crimson droplets from Alair’s hand staining the antiseptic white tiled floor. “We need a doctor now; please don’t make me repeat myself.”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you
The pain in his hand was not the most excruciating he had endured, but it was enough to make him wonder—however briefly—if the red-haired young woman was right. Because although the Sandman had no qualms about pain on a fundamental level, and although he accepted his injury at precisely its face value, his true uneasiness stemmed from his strange relationship with the medical community. He admired doctors and nurses for their skill and expertise, but they were a group he would much rather admire from a distance, far away from their prying questions and scientific tests and crawling suspicions…
The very thought of it made him shudder. As Scarlet could testify from their first early morning encounter, the Sandman was not one to hide who and what he was. Where his elder brother largely refused to discuss his status with anyone outside of his immediate circle—people who were already in the know, in other words—Alair was not so keen on keeping himself hidden. And it wasn’t for attention, as Amrial might have suggested; rather, it was on point with his strict policy of honesty, a part of his deeply-engrained moral code that he was rarely willing to defy. He suppose he understood why his brother might be a little more hesitant to reveal his identity—Death was a much more ominous force than Sleep, after all—but there was something about stark blatancy that Alair held more or less as sacred.
That said, even in his current state, he wasn’t about to take orders from Scarlet—but somehow that’s precisely what he found himself doing, biting back his retorts just as he tried to do for the pain. He closed the door of the cab behind him while the redhead barked her directions, and he leaned back in the seat, doing his best to study his bandaged hand in the dimming light. “Do I looklike a fucking fainter?” he shot back, but his tone was weaker, both less biting and less teasing than he’d intended. “Look, Scarlet, I’m pretty sure this isn’t necessary. The bleeding’s slowing down, and…”
He halted abruptly when he felt her fiery gaze upon him, and he sighed, his shoulders slumping forward in defeat. By now, the last of the fight’s lingering adrenaline had dissipated, and he felt exhausted, weary, and unwilling to argue with the last person with whom he wanted to disagree. Nevertheless, he was plagued by a discomfort completely disconnected from the pain itself; it was the thought of their destination, their totally logical final stopping place, that made him want to leap from the speeding cab and take his changes rolling on the asphalt.
“I can stand. I told you, I’m okay.” His words came out stronger this time, and he climbed from the taxi with his good hand steadying himself on the tail light. Scarlet’s sudden presence at his side startled him, and he jumped as her arm slid around his waist for support. Together, they trudged inside, Alair’s apprehension growing exponentially with every labored step towards the emergency room doors.
The bandana around his hand had soaked almost completely through by the time they reached the windows. In the fluorescent overhead lighting of the waiting room, it looked particularly nasty—the colorful cloth was stained a dark wet crimson, and as Scarlet spoke with the attendant at the desk, it began to seep thick droplets that plummeted to the white linoleum in quiet splashes at his shoes. He shifted his weight uncomfortably; he could feel the eyes of everyone in the waiting room, watching in silent horror as his blood leaked all over the floor.
“She’s just a little worried,” Alair told the woman at the desk, wincing. He turned to the redhead, widening his eyes to indicate that she should follow the clerk’s instructions. The woman pushed forward a form and a clipboard, instructing him to fill out the front and back of the attached form to the best of his knowledge. He gave her a weak smile and took the board with his good hand, promptly handing it to Scarlet as they found a seat amongst the other waiting patients.
He closed his eyes for a moment as he collapsed into the vinyl chair, gnawing at his lower lip. When he spoke, his voice was hushed. “Let me clear this up,” he told her, leaning in to speak softly in her ear. “I’m not ‘too macho’ to accept help, okay? Hospitals are…well, they’re not my scene. I’m a little hard to explain, see what I mean?” He cleared his throat, glancing down at the form on her lap. “A-L-A-I-R,” he spelled teasingly, leaning in to nudge her shoulder with his uninjured side. “I don’t have a last name. Put whatever the fuck you want. ‘Sandman,’ maybe.” Perhaps his nerves were getting the better of him, because he chuckled, a little giddier than he should have been with how much blood had drained from his wound.
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Scarlet’s eyes were wide, and the following words she had in mind for the receptionist were harsh and colourful in nature. Fortunately, for all Alair had lost a bit blood, he was quick to guide her away from the window before her temper could draw any more undue attention to them, wandering to a more secluded corner of the waiting area.
“Can you fucking believe this?” She sighed her exasperation, collapsing in the chair next to him, hunching over the form. “It’s a fucking good thing he didn’t sever your hand or something, or you’d probably be dead. I have half a mind to stitch you up myself; by the time we see a doctor, you could be bled out.”
It wasn’t that Scarlet couldn’t grasp the Sandman’s aversion to hospitals and the medical community as a whole; in fact, the very concerns that were on his mind also happened to have crossed her mind on the drive down. Definitely a drawback, and an issue that would require some quick thinking, but it couldn’t be helped. They couldn’t avoid it on the ground of uncertainty when Alair’s well-being was in the mix.
“I know—I get that. But what choice did we have, Alair? Your Sandman powers apparently don’t go as far as immediate self-repair, like an earthworm or a fucking starfish. And you really don’t want me stitching you up myself, so… this is really our only option.” Skimming the form, the Aries rolled her eyes as he spelled out his name for her, and just out of spite she added an E at the very end.
“You don’t need a last name. Some cultures don’t have them.” She mentioned, gnawing on her lower lip as her trembling hand scratched whatever bullshit her pressured mind could come up with the quickest, just to get through the form. “What’s your blood type? Do you even have a blood type? I’m going with B- because you’re being so negative—and stop fucking giggling, you’re freaking me out! “
He was losing it. Alair was losing it, and Scarlet was losing her patience. There were so many questions that remained unanswered, because no amount of creativity could fabricate something even remotely believable (how many numbers did an individual have on their health card, anyway?). But what was worse were the question that they could answer (or, rather, that had answers), but the answers that they gave would only further delay the process for getting Alair the medical attention that he needed (she couldn’t very well write that ‘Death’ was his next of kin).
“Okay… this will have to do.” With a laboured sigh, Scarlet got to her feet and carefully helped Alair to his. “They’ll have to work with what they have. I’m not putting ‘the beginning of time’ or whatever as your year of birth; we’ll never get out of here because they’ll throw me in the loony bin.”
Approaching the receptionist’s window again, Scarlet slid the half-blank form over to the aged woman, who frowned. “You missed a few things… Quite a few things…”
“We couldn’t fill everything out because we don’t have an answer for every damn question.” Scarlet spoke through clenched teeth, practically shaking with the effort to keep her anger in check. “Can we please just see a doctor? Now?”
Frowning, the receptionist glanced back at the form, confirming her answer with a shake of her head. “I’m not sure I can—”
“That looks downright nasty.” A woman in scrubs, looking to be in her early thirties commented on the sodden bandana that was doing a poor job of staunching the blood from Alair’s wound. “Where’s his paperwork, Agnes? He should be seen to as soon as possible.
“They did not fully complete the paperwork…” The receptionist stammered, adjusting her glasses. “And Dr. Messier—”
“Dr. Messier is in the process of setting a dislocated shoulder.” The nurse interrupted, sliding her hand under the window to take the clipboard. “And it’s a health hazard not only him, but to the custodians who have to mop these floors to have him bleeding over them. I’ll handle this immediately; both of you, this way.”
Dumbfounded (but not in objection to anything), Scarlet exchanged a glance with Alair, taking his arm before following the nurse down the long corridor, around a corner and into a room.
“Alaire?” The woman in scrubs tried to pronounce his name, narrowing her eyes as if she were looking for all of the information that Scarlet hadn’t happened to write down.
There was something nagging, something familiar about those dark eyes, that dark hair…
“Look, I know your paperwork is important and all, but we really need to fix him up.” The redhead urged, finally dropping her attitude now that they were getting the services they required.
Unperturbed, the nurse barely looked up as she reviewed just what they had written down. Every so often, the corner of her mouth would quirk upward in amusement. “Don’t make excuses—it’s fine. I’ve dealt with people like you before; the doctors don’t need to know the details, really.”
“People like…” A cold fear gripped Scarlet by the heart. What did she mean by that? People like Alair? Or people like the both of them? People who were slightly more than human, by nature… people with abilities that surpassed what should be possible?
“Street kids. Sorry for the term, no offense and all. I’ve got a soft spot for people like you, because my little sister happens to be one of you. In fact,” her dark eyes trained on Scarlet then; “I think you might know Erika.”
The look on Scarlet’s face alone was enough to confirm. The nurse (whose nametag read Patricia) must have assumed that Alair’s form lacked adequate information because he made the streets his home, and didn’t have that information. The knife wound she also probably assumed had occurred in a gang fight.
“How about this, then:” Patricia went on, spinning in her chair to gently close the door to the examination room, then returned her attention to Scarlet. “I’ve seen you with my sister; she won’t talk to me, but she’ll listen to you. Tell her Patti wants her to come home, and that I leave the back door unlocked every night, just in case… You do me that favor, and I’ll fix up your friend here, conveniently lose the paperwork, and no one will be the wiser. Do we have a deal?”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you
“Is this what happens before you die?” Alair said, leaning over to whisper dramatically in her ear. Unable to upkeep the mock-seriousness of his inquiry, he pursed his lips in an effort to stave off the giggles. “You get really, really fucking amused by fucking everything?” He knew better than most people that such a statement was outlandishly incorrect—his brother, after all, was Death, a fact that only served to fuel his exaggerated glee—but nevertheless he couldn’t help but wonder if his giddiness wasn’t some kind of side effect of his injury or his blood loss.
The part of him still in touch with logic knew he was in no danger of bleeding out; as far as he could tell, Devon’s blade hadn’t severed any arteries. But his hand hurt like hell, and the bandage was fully saturated, and Scarlet was acting concerned… A brief pang of fear that had nothing to do with the doctors coursed through him, but it was gone nearly as soon as it registered. Perhaps his maniacal laughter was not a symptom of his gushing wound but rather a defense mechanism against the real cause of concern—not his bodily health, but his discovery.
The nurse’s sudden attention, though clearly appreciated by Scarlet, only served to make the Sandman more uneasy…and subsequently more amused. With support from the redhead, he made his way reluctantly into the exam room after the dark-haired woman, taking a seat on the paper-covered as instructed. He cradled the wrist of his wounded arm with his opposite hand, sobering up as if someone had flipped a switch as soon as the door clicked closed. In the tighter confines of this new location, Alair no longer had the excuse of distraction to avoid confronting his anxiety, and it washed over him like a cold, furious ocean wave as soon as Patricia turned her attention to him.
“Wait, wait, wait,” Alair said, his tone adopting the sharp bite of a man in pain—a stark contrast to the warm laughter of the blue-eyed fellow in the waiting room. “Street kids?” he questioned, glancing to Scarlet.
The redhead’s look alone was enough to silence him, but Patricia seemed to understand something to which the Sandman was not privy. “Sorry,” she told him genuinely, exchanging a knowing look with Scarlet that only served to aggravate him. “I don’t mean it offensively. Like I said, my sister’s right there with you. I’m more than happy to help you out. Won’t get slapped with a bill that way, either.”
Alair seemed to shrink when she approached him, his posture wilting. She wheeled a cart forward that was draped with sterile blue cloth, a variety of instruments spread across the top section. He surrendered his hand to her only when Scarlet dug her fingers into his good arm, gritting his teeth as the nurse carefully unwrapped the makeshift bandage with her gloved fingers. When at last she’d stripped it completely away, the metallic odor of fresh blood filled his nostrils, and he pursed his lips, daring to look only when she made a comment.
“Well, that’s not good,” she stated, her voice lilting with the practiced cheer of a medical professional who did not want to alarm her patient. Alair’s eyes wandered to his upturned hand, his throat tightening at the sight of the gash. Outside, in the dimming light of early evening, it hadn’t looked quite so dire—but now, illuminated by the bluish-white glare of the overhead fluorescent bulbs, he could see far too clearly just how much damage had been done. A whole new shock of pain ripped through him and traveled up his arm, and as Patricia slowly began to clean the skin around the gash, he found himself reaching with his left for Scarlet’s reassuring fingers.
“Dr. Messier should be done resetting that shoulder,” Patricia said at last, narrowing her eyes as she admired her cleaning handiwork. With a lump wedged firmly in his throat, he risked another glance only to be completely revolted once again—blood still ran fresh from the long, jagged slice in his tender flesh, and he could see the layers of muscle and tendon beneath the crimson-stained flaps of outer skin. “He’ll be in in a minute to make his assessment. It’s not a good place for a cut like that. If you severed any tendons, I’m afraid you’ll need surgery right away.”
As if on cue, a tall, slender man in a long white lab coat strode through the door. He smiled at Alair through thick-rimmed glasses, sat down on the mobile stool near the sink, and rolled enthusiastically towards him. His hands were already sheathed in gloves by the time he reached the wounded hand.
“You’re lucky,” he proclaimed, peering into the gaping hole in his flesh. “Can you wiggle your fingers for me?”
Alair obliged with a wince, and the doctor paid special attention to the mobility of his thumb. Murmuring his approval, the willowy man prepped for stitches, Alair looking on with dread spelled out all over his pale face. As evidenced by his careless overdose of aspirin after his hangover earlier that week, modern medicine had a strange way of affecting him, more often than not meaning that it had very little effect at all. The doctor injected the flesh around the wound with anesthesia, but no matter how much he gave, the Sandman was unfortunately fated to feel every last tug and pierce of the needle.
Pretending not to hear the man say he would need two layers of sutures—one beneath the surface around his thumb—he clenched his eyes closed and turned to Scarlet, his uninjured fingers seizing her hand without thought and squeezing until his knuckles turned white. “Talk to me, alpha,” he hissed. The needle pierced the interior of his flesh with a quick, cold sting—it was almost too much to have to pretend not to feel it for fear of arousing suspicion. “Just…anything. Please…” He opened his eyes just long enough to meet her gaze, his azure stare bright with anguish. "Please...?"
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you
Scarlet only had an answer for the last question, and that was because Erika never told anyone anything if she didn’t believe it would have any consequence. That went for both clients as well as friends, and the girl hadn’t seen fit to mention that, unlike many of the other street dwellers with whom she’d become acquainted, she actually had relatives that cared about her. It made her wonder what the young fortune teller’s story really was, and she tucked it away at the back of her mind to ask her at some point, at a time when she might actually be willing to talk (which wasn’t often).
“I… don’t see her as often as I used to,” Scarlet told Patricia carefully, not wanting to blow their cover as turning not to be the “street kids” that the nurse assumed they were. “But I’ll talk to her.”
“Thanks; I’d really appreciate it…” Patricia smiled, and began to go about cleaning the wound on Alair’s arm. The sight of the gash alone was enough to nauseate her, and consequently the redhead turned her face away, just in time to feel Alair’s hand searching for hers.
“You idiot; don’t look.” She murmured, physically turning his chin away from the nurse’s work station (which happened to be his bloodied arm) and towards her face instead. “Trust me, if that’s the last thing that I want to do—and I’m not even the one who’s hurt—then you sure as hell don’t want to watch. It’s not great entertainment.”
Well, some people would probably argue that point, but those were the types that watched the hospital dramas on television, the very shows that she had always went out of her way to avoid. It wasn’t so much that Scarlet was squeamish around blood, as it was she had something of an aversion to anything that looked remotely painful. Hence her own reason for avoiding hospitals for as long as she had.
As the nurse mentioned the possibility of surgery prior to leaving, if the gash was worse than it looked, Scarlet rubbed Alair’s good arm reassuringly. The guy had gone all but completely white with the possibility, and she couldn’t deny that she wouldn’t be much better off, in his situation. And although she didn’t believe her own reassurances, she needed to bring the guy down before he fainted. “They always give you the worst possible scenario; it doesn’t really mean anything, and it’s rarely the case. Just part of their job.” She offered him a reassuring smile as the doctor walked in, taking a seat to examine the damage. Scarlet held her breath that it really didn’t turn out to need surgery, because there was no way that even the kind nurse could waive that kind of bill. And, on top of that, the doctors might find they had quite the case study on their hands when their patient failed to respond to general anaesthesia.
That thought triggered another consideration, one that stirred an uneasy feeling deep in Scarlet’s gut. If Alair hardly responded to over the counter pain killers, what kind of effect would a local anaesthesia have on him?
The answer, she soon discovered, was no effect at all. Sparing a glance at the doctor, she saw the needle pierce Alair’s torn skin, in the very second that the Sandman suddenly seized her hand in a death grip, begging her to talk to him.
“You’re okay,” Scarlet rubbed his back, gently kneading the hypertense muscle in his shoulder. “Try to relax—breathe from here. Trust me, it helps.” The Aries briefly touched his abdomen, fingers lingering as she instructed him to take a slow breath. It hearkened back to the days when she had to talk Caspar through his stage fright (though unfortunately, as advice goes, it never worked when she tried the method herself). “Just focus on your breathing; nothing but your breathing.”
Mind you, it was probably easier said than done, in this instance; Scarlet could only imagine the sting of a needle through skin, over and over again, in a part of the body that was rampant with nerve endings. Calm breathing along wasn’t going to help him, so she hastened to think of something to say to him.
“So, does any of this get me out of cooking for you?” She grinned, carefully resting her chin on his shoulder. “I’m not a fan of hospitals either, you know. Open wounds make me pretty fucking squeamish. I think you’re gonna owe me after this… Well, after I buy you supper and we’re square again. I wonder if any places will be open by the time we’re out of here… If not, you’re gonna have to settle for ice cream. There’s a place not too far from here that makes some kick ass sundaes.”
The Aries prattled on about what they could do with the remainder of their evening, in an attempt to shift Alair’s mind from what was happening at present to what was in the near future. She knew it was working on some level when his attempts to hide a wince came to a stop, since his mind was temporarily off the pain, so she kept it up, rubbing calming circles between his shoulder blades and teasing him (curiously, though) about how she had no idea where his wardrobe came from, but how he should wear V-necks more often.”
When at last Dr. Messier finished the sutures (Scarlet had lost count of how many her poor companion had), Alair’s arm and part of his hand was wrapped gently in some light gauze and sealed with medical tape. The poor guy looked so relieved to have the procedure over and done with that she had to hold back laughter.
“No heavy lifting or arduous tasks with that arm; don’t get the stitches wet, try to clean around the injured area.” Dr. Messier casually instructed, wheeling the cart to the side. “Come back in a couple of weeks so we can take a look at how it’s healing, and… Whatever you did to get a wound like that, don’t do it again.”
“Thanks for your help.” Scarlet said to him with a nod, then stood, taking Alair’s good arm and guiding him out of the room. On the way towards the front doors, Patricia stopped Scarlet with a hand on her arm.
“Come see me at my home to get those out in a few weeks.” She offered, handing the redhead her business card. “I’m only here part time; I do some in-home care for a couple of folks the rest of the time. Unless infection sets in or you have any problems, give me a call.”
Scarlet nodded, quietly thanking the helpful nurse, before leading Alair from the building. He still seemed high strung and tense, a huge contrast to the laid-back Sandman that she had come to know. “You’re gonna have one hell of a time showering without the use of that arm,” she teased, slipping her arm around his waist. “And you’re gonna have a hard time stealing my shampoo. Karma, man.”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you
That did not mean, however, that he was not suffering. He could hardly hear Scarlet’s reassuring words over the thundering bass of his heartbeat in his ears. When the doctor informed him that he would be injecting another round of local anesthesia, it was all he could do to hold his tongue and refrain from lashing out, screaming outright that it was no use, that he could be injected with the potent stuff all day and night and it still wouldn’t do him an ounce of good, and if he was any sort of medical professional he should have realized his patient was still in excruciating agony and fucking done something real about it. Focusing on Scarlet instead, grateful for the way she squeezed his shoulder and placed her hand on his back, he endured the last of the sutures in silent torment, daring to breathe again only when the repetitious sting of the needle ceased its rhythmic piercing.
“That’ll do it,” Dr. Messier announced, removing his gloves with two quick snaps and tossing them in the red bin of soiled medical waste. He flashed Alair a smile that the Sandman pointedly did not return. “Patricia will finish you up here. Your hand and arm will be numb for the rest of the night, so don’t do anything too strenuous.”
As soon as the tall man closed the door behind him, the tension evaporated from Alair’s body like boiling water on a dry summer’s day. He wilted conspicuously, his posture crumbling forward so far that for a moment he wondered if he’d be able to hold himself up on his own. The nurse’s advice fell on deaf ears as she wrapped up his arm in padding and gauze—he was so relieved that the procedure was over that he felt for a moment he might faint. Scarlet’s hand on his shoulder perked him up somewhat, and when Patricia declared him all set and ready to go, he rose shakily to his feet and studied his newly-bandaged hand. Only the tips of his fingers were visible beyond the bandage, and he wiggled them experimentally, stopping immediately with a wince when the motion sent a shock of pain up his arm.
Despite his relief from the worst of the pain, he was still rigid with anxiety. Thankfully he had the redhead to guide him out the doors and away from the terrifying sterile confines of the hospital; when they reached the end of the block, he released a sigh that concluded with a nervous laugh, leaning into Scarlet when she spoke.
“Karma?” he shot back, his voice a little strangled but nevertheless playful. “I’ll tell you about fucking karma. You not letting me use your damn soap brought all of this on. Thanks a lot!” He looked down at his wounded hand again, with amusement this time; his fingertips were beginning to swell, and they looked comically large compared to his left side.
“I am still fucking hungry, okay? How far are those sundaes?” he said, lowering himself slowly to one of the iron benches on the edge of the hospital’s landscaping. “Ugh, God almighty, that fucking hurt! Why couldn’t that stupid fucker have knocked me out, too? Would’ve been better than that.”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you
But if they were counting technicalities, the Sandman was partially right: she had a hand in it. If only she hadn’t hesitated, if only she’d high-tailed it back to the apartment the moment that that chillingly familiar voice had reached her ears instead of thinking for one stupid moment that she could talk him down, none of this would have happened. She could have been safely inside, and she could have called the cops on Devon’s sorry, dunk ass… no one had to get hurt. And the one person who did was the one person who really didn’t deserve it.
As Sleep turned towards a bench and made to sit down, Scarlet stuck close to his side, her expression just as pained as his own as he complained about his discomfort. “Devon doesn’t knock people out. He’s not kind enough for that. If he fucks you up, he wants to make sure you feel it…” The redhead bit her lower lip, looking down as his bandaged arm and the swelling in his fingers. There was no word in the English language that could do justice to describing the swell of guilt that threatened to overwhelm her, and she pressed her forehead against Alair’s good shoulder to stifle a sigh.
“I’m sorry… fuck, I’m so sorry this shit happened.” She murmured, already well aware that she had the Sandman’s forgiveness, but that did not absolve her of apologies. “You got hurt because of me, and you never should have had to get involved. I should have been the one to get the fucking stitches; at least the local anaesthetic would have worked on me…” She had to commend the guy for putting on such a brave face at the hospital, barely flinching as that needle pierced his skin again and again, looking little more than a patient with a lot of anxiety around needles. Had it been her, not only would the anaesthesia have worked, but she would have likely fainted at the sight of a wound like that on her significantly smaller arm.
“You sure you’re all right to go out somewhere? You kind of look like hell; justifiably so, but still…” Extending her hand, Scarlet placed her fingers on the side of his face and turned it towards her. In dull yellow of the lamplight, she could make out the pallor of his skin that seemed to have lost its colour the second he'd set foot in the hospital, and the darkness beneath those electric blue eyes. Withstanding that kind of pain must have been both physically and mentally exhausting… “It doesn’t have to be sundaes. We could call a cab, head back home and get some take out. The Chinese food restaurant just down the block from Geoff’s store offers take-out and delivery all night long; you could sit back and laugh at my attempts to make anything but noise on your guitar, if you’ll still let me touch it, and then you can maybe take some of your own advice and get some sleep.”
Not to mention, neither of them were exactly dressed for a night on the town, both clad in shirts that would never fully be rid of the bloodstains, Alair’s worse than hers. “To be honest, I’d feel better if we just took a cab; knowing that Devon is probably prowling the streets with revenge on his mind doesn’t exactly inspire any confidence.”
Making the executive decision for the both of them, Scarlet took out her phone and called for a cab, hoping to have a slightly less obnoxious driver than the last time. But, hoping not to disappoint, she added, “If you still really want a sundae, though, I think there’s still some ice cream in the freezer. No hot fudge or anything, but maybe we can get creative and experiment with some melted chocolate or something.” Grinning, the stubborn young woman leaned in and kissed his cheek. “And…thank you. For what you did for me. I’m just sorry that it had to get you hurt…”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you
“Probably shouldn’t give this coat back,” he said in defeat, lowering his arms and resting his injured hand in his lap. The sudden shift in position was enough to inspire a hearty sting, and he grimaced, no longer able to hold back his emotions—especially when it came to pain. Nevertheless, a smile tugged at the corners of his lips, and he rose to his feet as the yellow taxi pulled up to the curb.
He steadied himself by placing his good hand on Scarlet’s shoulder, his expression softening when her lips brushed his cheek in apology. He glanced down to her, glad to see that the most intense of the worry had disappeared from her eyes, and climbed in to the idling taxi after her. Sitting on the passenger side, his left was nearest his supportive companion; he reached over to drape his hand over her knee, chuckling at the look of alarm the driver shot them when he realized that the stains they sported weren’t simply an interesting fashion statement. Alair had no desire (or energy) to explain, and thankfully, the man seemed to know better than to ask.
“Maybe while we’re waiting for the food we can, like, break into Geoff’s and jam.” The words departed his lips as soon as the thought occurred to him, and hearing them aloud made him laugh. Giddiness—stemming this time from relief as his fears slowly began to wane—was once again upon him, and his inhibitions had apparently vanished with the rest of his composure. It wasn’t clear from his tone whether or not he was joking, and honestly, he wasn’t even sure himself. He felt as though the doctor had drugged him, but of course that was not the case; he was falling victim to his own strained mind, paying his dues in mild delirium for three solid hours of crippling pain and anxiety.
When they arrived outside the Chinese restaurant, the Sandman very nearly teleported inside. He was feeling particularly impulsive now that they had put a good distance between themselves and the hospital, and it was difficult to control his desire for spontaneity. Thankfully, he’d caught himself just in time. He reached over with his left hand to open the door, waiting for Scarlet to climb out before heading into the restaurant.
The place was another hole-in-the-wall joint tucked away in a New England-style storefront. But unlike Geoff’s quaint music store, this place was not at all shy about its identity; its solid glass front glowed from the interior’s fluorescent lights, topped off with saturated neon signs declaring its twenty-four hour business schedule, its three favorite beer brands, and a flashing illustration of chopsticks near the door. Alair grinned. It was perhaps not the classiest establishment, but it smelled delicious—the warm, welcoming aroma of garlic and oil was enough to banish the lingering stink of disinfectant from his nostrils, and his mouth promptly began to water.
The young woman at the cash register greeted them boredly when they came in, but her face quickly paled when she looked up to study the approaching customers. Realizing how they looked—with their blood-stained clothes practically glowing beneath the bright lights of the foyer—the Sandman laughed, holding up his bandaged hand to reassure her that they weren’t murderers, and placed his order.
When Scarlet had finished, he made his way clumsily to one of the tables along the side, leaning his head against the wall tiredly. “If I was sure we wouldn’t end up in Argentina or something by mistake, I would totally you-know-what us back to the apartment.” He grinned, his eyes closed. “Did you get this to-go? Because I’m not sure I can keep myself upright much longer. And then people will think you killed me. The last thing we need right now is a police investigation, am I right?” He laughed at his own joke, grimacing suddenly against the throbbing in his wrist. “Plus, I don’t think this is a bring-your-own-absinthe kind of place. And I think I need some.”
Posted: Sat Aug 10, 2013 1:55 am
The redhead helped her injured companion into the cab when it finally pulled up along the curb, climbing in first to act as Alair’s pillar of support as the injured man gingerly climbed in. Reaching across his body, she helped him grab and the seatbelt, before grabbing and securing her own. The cab took off down the road after she gave the address, and for the first time in several hours, the Aries finally felt herself begin to relax. It was over… Devon was not currently in the picture, Alair’s arm was on the mend (without getting them stuck with some exorbitant bill), and now the two could simply pick up where they had left off, before their evening had been so rudely interrupted by a brief, impromptu street brawl.
Well… relatively. If Scarlet hadn’t already been aware of the effects (or lack thereof) of modern drugs on Alair’s less than convention biochemistry, she, too, would have been inclined to think that the local anaesthetic was having more than the desired effects on his injured arm. But the Sandman was still in pain, although by the way he smiled and chuckled and joked, one wouldn’t think so. “I don’t think Geoff would be inclined to invite us back if we broke into his store, hon.” She said patiently, taking on a tone better reserved for a child, and she didn’t feel the need to explain herself when she brushed his hair aside to check his forehead for a fever. There was none, of course; the guy was just high on the adrenaline that buffered the ache and sting of fresh stitches.
That said, he still came across as a little off his rocker, and she was reluctant to let him follow once the cab pulled up to the Magic Wok. But Alair was out of the car before she could even voice the suggestion, and since it would be too much of a hassle convincing the stubborn Sandman to stay put, she didn’t bother to try.
Alair had beaten her to the counter, by the time she asked the cabbie to stay put a few moments and stepped inside, and already he was wreaking havoc. The young woman behind the counter appeared a little ill at ease, and when the full light of the restaurant exposed the full expanse of blood on the Sandman’s T-shirt, Scarlet could see why.
“We’ve been in the Emergency room for a while… had to skip supper, so we’re kind of hungry and just thought we’d grab something on the way back.”
Once they put their orders through, Scarlet accompanied Alair to a table while the young woman hollered out the orders to the cooks in Mandarin. “No, it’s probably safer just to take the cab back.” She chuckled, covering his good hand with hers. “And there is no fucking way we’re staying here with you in this condition. We’re going straight home, we’re going to eat, then you’re going to put on something comfortable, have your one glass of absinthe and then high-tail it into bed. It won’t kill the infamous Sandman to catch another night of sleep, I’m sure.”
When the orders were ready, Scarlet stood and gathered the cardboard and styrofoam boxes, and held the door open for Alair on the way out. The cab ride was significantly shorter than the last (and thank goodness, because Sleep looked like he could really use that absinthe, asap), and by the time she paid the driver and they made it up the four flights of steps to her apartment, he looked like a pitiful study in pain and exhaustion.
Without even an ounce of guilt, the redhead made a beeline for Caspar’s room after placing the take-out on the counter, and returned with one of her roommate’s older and less sentimental T-shirts, along with a pair of pajama bottoms, which she promptly handed to the injured Sandman. “Here, ditch what you’re wearing and put on something comfortable while I sort out all this food.”
It didn’t occur to Scarlet just how difficult a simple task like pulling on or peeling off a shirt would be for someone who only had use of one arm until several minutes passed, and Alair still hadn’t come out of the bedroom. “How are you holding up in there?” She asked, knocking once on the door. “Need some help?”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you
Despite his strange loopy behavior, the ache in his hand was sharp enough to shorten his temper—or at least to give him an attitude slightly more outspoken than usual. When the clerk at the register called back their order in Mandarin, Alair opened one eye and glanced from Scarlet to the other young woman a few paces away. “No, chicken,” he called over in Mandarin, his knitted brows loaning him a look of irritation. “I ordered chicken, not beef.” The girl turned around, taken completely aback, and corrected his order in hushed tones. Alair, the beginnings of a headache stirring in his temples, propped his head up with one hand and closed his eyes again, oblivious to the fact that he had so abruptly changed languages.
By the time they made it back to the apartment and ascended the stairs, the Sandman felt a thousand degrees of awful. He stumbled into the flat, steadying himself with his good hand on the back of the couch while Scarlet disappeared into the bedroom and returned with some of Caspar’s loungewear. He grinned. “Won’t say no to that,” he professed, draping the t-shirt and pants over his injured forearm and stepping into the musician’s vacant room.
Even at this distance from the kitchen, he could smell the food—fresh, hot, and probably greasy as all hell, but it was precisely what the doctor ordered. Well, not the real doctor, he thought with amusement. Thank god. Smiling to himself through a grimace, he pulled off his blood soaked t-shirt by maneuvering it carefully over his swollen bandage. It fell from his hand to the floor, and he reached down to retrieve it only to rise back to his feet with a strong wave of dizziness washing over him. He steadied himself on the edge of Caspar’s dresser, then resumed undressing with a little more caution.
He made it as far as slipping from his jacket, shirt, and jeans when Scarlet, apparently unsatisfied with his untimeliness, knocked on the door. “It’s a little tough with one hand in agony, I’ve gotta say,” he called back teasingly, tapping a knuckle on his good hand on the other side of the door. “If you don't mind your magic man's half-naked state, then by all means...but I think II’ll manage. Just a sec.” Balancing unsteadily on one leg, he placed his foot through one of the pant legs and then the second, pulling them up by awkwardly tugging on alternate sides in quick succession. The prospect of donning another t-shirt was suddenly too daunting (especially for his growling stomach), and with a shrug and a quick glance in the mirror, he tossed the clean garment over his shoulder and emerged from the bedroom, nearly running into the redhead waiting outside.
“What?” he asked, looking down at his shirtless chest with a half-shrug. “I’ll probably just bleed on the thing anyway. And I should probably wash up this arm after dinner…” He extended his right limb, rotating it to display the dried blood staining his skin crimson from mid-forearm to elbow. Having learned his lesson about sudden movements, he lowered it to his side slowly, bringing his left hand—now clutching a crystal glass of bright green liquid—to his dry lips.
“Can I just skip a step in your master plan, alpha?” Alair asked after a particularly large swallow, cringing. “In particular I’d like to skip over the eating-then-bed thing and just go straight to bed. With the food,” he clarified. He pushed past her gently, making his way into the kitchen to retrieve one of the containers. A giddy laugh shook his shoulders when he turned around and nearly collided with her, ignoring her protests and heading straight to her bedroom with an armful of food.
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you
How he could pull together enough spirits to joke and jibe while in that kind of pain, she would never know, but she’d heard somewhere that laughter and the endorphins that humor released could be just as effective as any painkiller, on a psychological level, so she figured there was no harm in encouraging it. “Are you forgetting that I barged in on you this morning in the shower?” She drawled, shaking her head with a half-grin that he couldn’t see through Caspar’s bedroom door. “What makes you think your half-naked state is going to bother me?”
In the end, she didn’t end up lending him a hand, but only because she hesitated in the decision to walk in on the guy in a semi-state of undress, and because he beat her to it, and the door opened a moment later.
“…all that time, and you couldn’t even get fully dressed.” Scarlet laughed lightly, not at his lack of shirt, but in the neutrally defensive tone he took on as he tried to rationalize it to her. “Cas does have a few button-up tops, if that would be easier… Or, you know, you could just strut your stuff.” Either way, the chemically-altered redhead was not particularly inclined to complain.
But she wasn’t shy to hold any complaints back when Sleep made the executive decision to take the food into her bedroom—and use both arms doing it. “Wait, seriously? But it might mess up my bed… Hey, don’t you dare lift that with that arm!” Before he could protest, she took the large styrofoam case of fried rice from him and carried it in herself. “I don’t want you lifting anything with that arm until it’s healed up a little. Not even a face cloth, got it? That’s not a suggestion, it’s an order, Sandman: my house, my rules.”
Gathering up what remained of the food in the kitchen, Scarlet grabbed a wooden tray to guard her comforter from the grease before setting it down between the two of them, with some disposable paper plates on the side.
“Wow… I think there’s something to be said for Chinese take-out at… one in the morning.” She confirmed by checking the alarm clock on her night stand, next to her embarrassing copy of Twilight. Between waiting for cabs, waiting for service at the hospital, and waiting for their food to be ready, a hell of a lot more time had passed than Scarlet had thought. “I think it actually tastes better. Or maybe it’s just because you gave them a gentle reminder to make it right, I’m assuming… Speaking of, how the hell do you know Mandarin?”
After eating her fill of chicken balls, egg rolls and rice, the Aries finally gave in to the way her gaze continually drifted to Alair’s injured arm; how, in between sips of his absinthe, he still seemed to mind the itch and the dried blood, and resolved to do something about it. “Wait here a second; feel free to finish off the chow mein, I am so full I don’t think I even want to hear Mandarin for a long time.”
Rising from her bed, Scarlet headed to the bathroom, where she retrieved a real roll of medical bandages (not duct tape and gauze), along with a small bottle of rubbing alcohol and cotton swabs. It might kill her, but they needed to clean around the stitches, lest they get too itchy and inspire him to scratch. Even if he had only downed a single glass of his magical green Leprechaun juice, the thought of him going about cleaning it himself made her uneasy.
Scarlet joined him again just as he seemed to be finishing up as well, placing the tray on the nightstand with his single good arm. “Before you ask me if I’m qualified to do this, the answer is no. But you’re already tipsy, so that automatically makes me more qualified than you.” Taking a seat to his right, she very gently took his injured arm and inhaled before proceeding to unwind the bandages. The moment the sutures were visible against his irritated skin, her breath left her lungs in a rush and she looked away. “Okay… okay. I can do this. I’m going to do this. Give me a minute…”
Exhaling slowly, the redhead unscrewed the cap to the rubbing alcohol and dipped one of the swabs into the strong-smelling liquid, turning her attention back to Alair’s arm once she was sure she wouldn’t faint. “Just… tell me if I’m hurting you,” she requested, gnawing nervously on her lower lip. “I’ll stop if it’s not worth the pain. Feel free to down another absinthe, if you feel like it will help.”
As gently as she possibly could, the young woman began to wipe the blood from around each individual suture, one slow swipe at a time with the tiny swabs. It wasn’t that the sight of the dried blood made her squeamish, but rather, the torn seam where the knife had severed his skin sent a chill down her spine. It looked painful, and even though it wasn’t her skin that bore the damage, just looking at it made her own arm tingle.
“Still doing all right?” Scarlet asked, once she was about halfway done; a question that bordered on comical, since she was the one taking all the pauses to breathe and regroup, when staring at the damage for too long made her stomach twist in knots.
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you
In the Sandman’s case, enduring his emergency room visit pushed him over the edge and then released its hold, allowing him to fall into a void he was seldom in a position to explore. When he pushed past the sprawling shadows cast by uncertainty’s blinding walls, he at last found the proverbial light in the darkness—bringing not death, of course, but solace. Solace, that was, that knocked his inhibitions from their perches to shatter on the rocky floor of his unpredictable psyche—solace that failed to numb the physical pain but succeeded in anesthetizing his concerns.
With his—well, Caspar’s—shirt still folded and draped over his shoulder, he climbed delicately into Scarlet’s bed with his good hand clutching the styrofoam container. Every other time he had graced this particular mattress, he had remained respectfully on top of the blankets; this time, however, he peeled back the sheet and comforter and settled right in, leaning against the headboard with his food resting on his lap. Obediently, he placed the container on top of the wooden tray the redhead brought in for him, and he sat up a little straighter.
“Fuck, I’m gonna have to eat with my left hand,” he drawled, his tone amused as he grasped his cutlery with his non-dominant fingers. Fumbling a little—it was clear that even his modest dose of absinthe had already permeated his bloodstream—he chuckled to himself as he took a bite, sliding his gaze to Scarlet at her quip regarding his Mandarin. “Damn straight I told them to make it better. Or it was implied, anyway.” Looking entirely too satisfied with himself, he took an Alair-sized bite and leaned his head back with a closed-mouth smirk as he chewed. He had avoided her question, but not purposely; the combination of pain, giddiness, and now alcohol had rendered his attention span as long in duration as a child’s.
Practically inhaling the remainder of his food, he reached over to stab a piece of Scarlet’s, popping it into his mouth before she could protest. “You can’t be mad at a guy who just had fifty thousand stitches in his wrist,” he said between giggles, nudging her shoulder with his own. He moved the tray back to the nightstand and leaned further into her, closing his eyes with mock slumber until she suddenly stirred, rising from the bed and disappearing into the bathroom. “Hey!” he protested, twisting his lips into a playful scowl that soon turned genuine when he spotted the goods she had retrieved.
“Ugh, no,” he groaned, lowering himself to lay fully prostrate on the bed. Reluctantly, he surrendered his injured arm to the red-haired young woman, draping his left arm over his eyes in protest. Scarlet’s gestures were gentle, but still the pain shot through his arm like lightning across a ceiling of thunderheads. He gritted his teeth but said nothing, relaxing a little when she paused to ask him how he was doing.
“Hurts like a motherfucker,” he said pointedly, lowering his left arm to squint up at her. The worry in her eyes softened his demeanor, and he tried to smile—but it was unconvincing, for his face had paled and a thin sheen of sweat had erupted on his brow. “Just do the rest as fast as you can.”
Drawing a quick breath through gritted teeth with a hiss, he endured the remainder of the cleaning and rebandaging with only a handful of muttered curses. He sighed into the air when she disappeared to discard the bloodied supplies, wondering if he could prescribe himself another round of absinthe as both reward and remedy. “C’mere, Scarlet,” he called, his tone childishly whining. He greeted her with a silly grin when she appeared at the bedside once more. “I said c’mere,” he repeated with a laugh, reaching out with his good arm and tugging her into the bed. When she was still enough to risk it, he leaned over to deposit a swift kiss on her cheek, accompanied by a grimace when he eased himself back to the pillow. “Thanks, alpha,” he said genuinely, rolling onto his side to study her. “Really. Thanks.”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you
And she wasn’t about to so quickly forget that, had Alair not stepped in as soon as he had, she could have been on the receiving end of Devon’s cold blade. For that alone, she’d tolerate his complaints and take care not to put him in any more discomfort than he already was.
“You know what would suck? If every single one of those fifty stitches got infected. Imagine how fun that would be, Alair.” It wasn’t her objective to rub salt into an open wound (no pun intended), but that much, she felt then need to point out. They had gotten lucky—very lucky—in the emergency room, this time. Why tempt fate, when the odds of things working out in their favour a second time were so slim?
“Anyway, I’m just cleaning around the sutures. Otherwise all the dried blood is going to start to make them itch, and you might scratch at them by accident…” Scarlet wasn’t the injured one, wasn’t the one in pain, and yet the very idea of scratching at a suture, tugging those little wires that penetrated flesh to hold it together… It was enough to nauseate her, and she was already wiping perspiration from her own brow before she swabbed around the first stitch. How people did this for a living, dealt with blood and torn flesh and needles, was all entirely beyond her; picking splinters out of skin was sometimes enough to make her feel faint.
But what bothered her most of all wasn’t the rawness of Alair’s wound, but the distortion of his face as pain temporarily took precedence as the one thing on his mind. Only hours ago, he had kissed her, perhaps one of the gentlest and most meaningful gestures in any human exchange; in return, she was wiping blood from his arm and irritating the knitted gash with rubbing alcohol. Not exactly a fair exchange… It was enough that she didn’t even have it in her to feel sorry for herself, being the follow-up responder to this post-trauma.
Scarlet tugged at her lower lip with her front teeth, concentrating on accuracy, concentrating on being gentle, concentrating on not getting light headed from the smell of the antiseptic and the sight of fifty fucking stitches holding together the flesh of the Sandman’s exposed wrist. “Okay—can you maybe pretend like you’re not in agony? Or something?” She exhaled through her nose, pressing the back of her hand to her forehead. “If I were any gentler, I wouldn’t even be touching you. And if I rush, I might fuck something up, so just… suck it up, princess.”
From any other lips, in any other situation, that would have come across as harsh and mean and unnecessary. From Scarlet’s lips, they only sounded casual, and somehow even managed to convey that she was worried about him, that she felt bad that it happened and further felt bad that she was causing him this temporary discomfort, however necessary it might have been. “Almost done…” Those words came as more of a relief to her than they likely did to him, as the Aries’ trembling fingers swabbed red and brown crust from the final suture, closest to the middle of his forearm. In the end, she was the one who looked about ready to pass out, by the time she put the antiseptic away and bandaged Alair’s limb anew.
Picking the supplies up and cradling them in the crook of her arm, Scarlet wordlessly stood and returned to the bathroom to replace them in the cupboard, Alair’s whining barely more than a murmur in her ears through the sound of her own pulse.
“I’ll be right there; just because your hurt doesn’t make me your fucking personal attendant.” She called right back, cupping her hand under the sink faucet and splashing her face with cold water a couple of times until her light-headedness receded. It didn’t, however, make her feel any steadier on her feet, and the redhead was more than happy to return to her bed and call it a night. She didn’t protest the arm that pulled her into bed, didn’t bother to find a clean pair of pyjamas to replace her stiff, ripped blue jeans. There was no word that could accurately describe the sort of exhaustion that flooded her body from head to toe, weary from what the night had brought.
“You had better be fucking thankful,” she murmured, a touch of a smile curling the corner of her mouth. “I had to touch stitches. Trust me, there is a reason why I avoided the emergency room when I cut my hand, and it had nothing to do with the bill I’d have been stuck with.” Lying flat on her back, she held her left hand in front of her, examining the puffy pink cleft of a scar that still stung if it came in contact with harsh dish detergent. Would it ever fully heal? “But, seriously, Alair… why the hell are you thanking me?”
Turning her head to the side, her right hand found his left, weaving her fingers between his. It was a comfortable fit, like two appropriately interlocking puzzle pieces. “If you hadn’t stepped in… I don’t know how it would have ended, with Devon. That asshole puts people in the hospital all the time, and some of them… from what I know, some don’t fully recover. And as much as I want to fucking bitch at you until I lose my voice for thinking you can take someone like him on and walk away unscathed… I am too fucking grateful that you were here for me. Thank you. Seriously.”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you
Nevertheless, a few quick seconds of study was quite long enough. He tore his eyes away and focused instead on the ceiling tiles above, focusing and unfocusing his gaze until the pattern of dotted squares doubled and tripled in his visual field. An unbridled chuckle spilled from his lips as the shapes began to spin, and he pressed the palm of his uninjured hand to his forehead. The skin was clammy. He shivered with a half-smile on his lips, hardly daring to breathe as his companion dabbed at the dark bloodied scab on his wrist. The pressure from her cloth naturally stung the wound, but her touch was gentle; he took comfort in the fact that it was her hands behind the tender gestures, her caring sentiment behind the necessity of cleaning the gash.
He sighed deeply as Scarlet made her departure. The combination of fear, exhaustion, adrenaline, physical pain, and mental anxiety at last began to take effect, soaking from his coursing blood through his veins to settle into his bones. As a result, the Sandman’s normally keen perception of time was somewhat altered; the redhead’s absence seemed at once like seconds and hours, and the relief that he felt when he tugged her into his arms was of the same caliber as if she’d been gone a lifetime. His eyelids fluttered closed as she settled in next to him in the bed, giving her fingers a solid squeeze when he felt them lace through his own.
He kept his eyes closed as Scarlet spoke, feeling her gaze on him as she expressed her gratitude. For a beat longer, he was silent, his appreciation for her sincerity welling in his chest before rising to stick in his throat. But true to himself—magnified tenfold by his current emotional state—it manifested not in sweet niceties but rather with a broad, unbridled grin. Resting his injured hand carefully on his hip, he turned to his left side to face her.
“You really never want to give me any credit, do you?” he said, wrinkling his nose playfully. The expression in his eyes was undeniably one of exhaustion, but no amount of tiredness could fully quell their perpetual gleam of mischief. “I mean, if this fucker is as bad as you say he is—and he totally is, and probably a lot worse—then who better to kick his ass than me?” He laughed, trying not to shake his shoulders for fear of setting off another wave of discomfort in his arm. “I didn’t even go all supernatural or anything. Just a good old fashioned ass-whooping.”
He moved his head forward until his forehead rested against Scarlet’s, his left ear cradled by a pillow that smelled comfortingly of the redhead’s shampoo. “Only a fucking coward uses a knife in a fistfight. I mean, really.” As humorous as the words were meant to be, they left his lips in a throaty whisper. With the final drawn-out syllable, he concluded his defense by pressing his mouth gently to hers, pulling away after a moment’s lingering hesitation an studying her face with a somewhat muted smirk. “You’re welcome, in case that wasn’t clear,” he clarified with a snort, pulling the blankets up to their shoulders. “How else am I supposed to be your knight in shining armor if I don’t fuck up the big bad wolf here to Sunday? Or, you know, some kind of metaphor that actually makes sense. Blah, blah, blah.”
He closed his eyes mid-laugh and settled deeper into the pillow, his forehead still angled towards hers, and drifted—suddenly, unexpectedly—into a much-needed, much-deserved slumber.
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you
An image—a memory—flickered in her mind’s eye: that day, five years ago, when she had nearly been arrested, and Caspar had saved her ass. But all too soon it was replaced with a vivid flashback of the night’s events: how Devon had his hands on her, how he’d had that look in his eye that suggested he’d wanted trouble. Yes, it could have ended far worse than the way things had actually turned out. Five years ago, she would have been locked up, if not for Caspar. And just now, but a handful of hours ago, she could have been the one admitted to the emergency room, if not for Alair.
Scarlet’s chest welled with a thanks so painful that it could hardly be put into words. The corners of her eyes glistened with the gathering of crystalline tears. “Alair, what you did…” But her whisper was cut short, because her lips—seconds ago, preoccupied with words that she could hardly express—were not occupied with the gentle caress of the Sandman’s, sweet and meaningful but all too brief. Alair had only just barely pulled away, rolling onto his back with the abrupt onset of weariness (or, perhaps, the sedative properties of the absinthe) when her fingers released his hand to cup the side of his face. The Aries’ didn’t bother to think; in fact, she didn’t let herself so much as contemplate the gesture before she was bracing her weight with her arm on his opposite side, allowing her some leverage above him to capture his mouth again; to properly conclude that kiss, one that had been far too short for her liking.
That said, she was not oblivious or apathetic towards his injured state. Alair was tired, in a bit if pain, and certainly in no shape for the relative intensity of her feelings at that given moment. Her mouth moved against his, slow and genuine, but not for too long. She withdrew before she completely lost herself in this man for whom her own heart beat, meeting his electric blue eyes with a mischievous glint to her own. “Thank you, in case it wasn’t clear.” She teased, and lowered herself back onto her side, draping one arm loosely across his middle. “You’ve got nothing to prove, Sandman; don’t be so ridiculous. I don’t even need a knight in shining armour. I mean, what do I look like, fucking Princess Peach?” A pause. “You have played Mario, right? Because if not, I’m whipping out the Nintendo 64 tomorrow. But—that’s totally beside the point. Listen, I’m not looking for a knight in someone. I just need…”
But in all of her rambling, the Sandman had, at some point, closed his vivid blue eyes, chest rising and falling in a soft, slow and rhythmic pattern. Fast asleep. The peace written on his face brought a smile to Scarlet’s, urging her fingers to comb through his hair in gentle motions. “I just need someone to love me for who I am.” And it appeared that she need not look much further than Alair. All along, he had been the key to unlock the windows of her soul and let in the sunlight that she never thought she’d see again.
The sky had taken on the sunset colours of orange and red and pink; clear, unpolluted, and all together beautiful. An expanse of grass (green and yellow; not an unearthly shade of white) from the young woman’s bare feet, all the way to a village ahead. Houses of stone and wood and straw settled towards the very bottom of a hill, dwarfed before the shadow of a vast stone citadel, towards which horses rode in the distance. Something directly out of a fairy tale, and nothing that Scarlet had ever thought she would have the imagination to dream up.
“Look at what you’ve done; you and your talk of knights in shining armor.” The redhead-turned-brunette cast the Sandman a glance over her shoulder, smirking at the companion who she’d known was there long before she’d even looked. From her shoulders to the tops of her bare feet, the fiery young woman was clad in silks of greens and blues that gathered high on her torso in an empire waist, a sea of colour that brought out the pigment of her eyes. Her once crimson locks, now a soft brown (that at a few shades lighter might even have been considered blonde) were plaited in a way that she could never on her own accomplish in a hundred years, and judging by the colour that tinted her cheeks, she was all too aware of how un-Scarlet the attire rang.
However, Scarlet appeared decidedly less concerned with her own appearance as she was the Sandman’s, and it wasn’t long before her smile broadened to accompany a light chuckle.
“Nice get-up, Sir Lancelot.” She teased innocently, reaching out to gently tug on his white shirtsleeve. “Though you’re a little lacking in the armour. Digging the pirate shirt, but are you sure the leggings are tight enough?”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you
It was the absinthe, he thought at first, that prompted the blurry flashes of pastel across his field of vision. It was morning, surely, and he was gradually coming to; he could make out the sky and the horizon, with clouds painted bright peach and pink to herald the arrival of a new day. The familiar cathedral spire was silhouetted crisply against the vibrant painting of the eastern heavens, and the sound of uneven wooden wheels on jagged cobblestones spoke of merchants and travelers gearing up for their long, strenuous days.
But that was wrong, all wrong. He rubbed his eyes with balled fists—one of which was perfectly healthy, unbandaged—and squinted, bemused, towards the distant line where land met sky. His throat tightened in confusion when he realized he was not looking east, but in fact gazed westward at a sunset brighter and more vivid than any he had recently witnessed. It reminded him of the spectacular dusks of centuries long past, of times when the wind blew purer, before the smoggy exhale of recent modernity drew its first irreversible breath. And sure enough, as soon as he oriented himself with the environment in which he stood, he could smell it, taste it, feel it—the traces of a dream on the very edge of all his senses, as true and certain as the glow of the setting sun before him.
He recognized the scene almost immediately; the gargantuan stone cathedral on the western edge of the village rose like a castle from the rolling hills. Even backlit by the sunset, it was unmistakable—and not by any twenty-first century standards or awareness. The church was destroyed two hundred years later by arson, and the townsfolk had turned what little of its foundation remained into a second layer of small homes. The half-ruined outbuildings became expanded business locations for international traders at the crossroads of the town’s two major roads. Later, the traffic and prosperity of the medieval boomtown brought jealousy, which of course bred conflict and war—leveling nearly the entire valley-tucked metropolis at the dawn of the greater Holy Roman Empire.
No, this couldn’t be Scarlet’s dream. Her slumbering hallucinations had proven themselves to play out in a very particular pattern, and this place possessed none of those steady characteristics—and that was completely beside the fact that it was absolutely impossible for her to know of this place, of the church on the hillcrest, of what this forgotten European village looked and sounded like. History had erased its presence from any contemporary map or textbook; Alair’s memory was what kept it alive. And yet there was Scarlet, standing just an arm’s reach away, clad in period attire—dreaming all of these things that simply couldn’t be.
Unless it wasn’t her dream at all. Could it be…?
Despite her costume, she spoke to him exactly as she would have had they been exchanging taunts back in her Washington, D.C. flat. Alair smiled despite his sudden uneasiness, looking down at the outfit she mocked before turning his gaze to her own. He wore a tunic shirt of hand-woven ivory linen, belted at the waist with a long strip of leather. His legs were indeed swathed in brown leggings as she proclaimed, skin-tight and thick against the chill of the evening, tucked into worn leather boots that did look rather nautical, now that she mentioned it…
“Hey, gotta show off the goods somehow,” he countered, his voice finding its usual tone of sarcastic mirth despite the concern that was evident in his slightly-furrowed brow. “I’d take a look in the mirror first before you go criticizing my fabulous outfit, princess.” Tossing her a wink, he strode to her side and placed a hand on the small of her back, guiding her gently forward. He led her down the grassy hill, closer to the edge of the town. “A bit of a departure from your usual dreamland, huh, Lady Guinevere?” he commented experimentally, hoping her answer would put his worry to rest.
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you
“Hey now; Guineve was a player and almost got herself killed for it.” She said indignantly, lifting her chin and grinning at the intrigue in his eyes. “But, hey; if Lancelot could pull off tights as well as you can… I can’t say I blame her—what? I’ve read more than fucking Twilight, okay? Le Mort d’Arthur is pretty fucking awesome. I know my Arthurian legend.”
Scarlet allowed herself to be led down the hill, further into the dreamscape that was more unfamiliar to her than usual.
And yet… more familiar than she could come to comprehend. Scarlet knew far too little about the middle ages to dream up something so elaborate, and it all put her on edge. Knowing now what she suffered nearly every time she closed her eyes, her nerves were alive with anticipation. Something would happen any moment, now. The wrath of her subconscious mind never allowed her more than a few moments’ happiness and peace before it struck with something horrendous, traumatic. She found herself staring down at her feet, expecting the ground to open up and swallow her.
“Why hasn’t anything happened yet?” She asked at last, her voice barely above a whisper. Her hand had found his arm without realizing it, and clutched his bicep so tightly that she loosened her fingers for fear that she was hurting him. “I’m still… alive. In this dream, I mean. And you’re still here… Alair, is it over?”
Scarlet stopped in her tracks at the bottom of the hill, pivoting in front of the Sandman to face him full on. “Did we break the cycle? Is it possible?” Her smile was hopeful and subdued, but deep inside, Scarlet wanted to shriek with glee. Could it be that Alair had helped her reach the end of that road of fear and pain? Was she finally, after so, so long, returning to a normal pattern of sleep where she didn’t wake up sweating and out of breath, with headaches and pains, with the resolve that she would never close her eyes again?
Without a hint of a warning, Scarlet’s arms encircled Sleep’s neck while, standing on her toes to achieve an inch’s worth more height, she pressed her lips to his, a kiss that was as powerful as it was unapologetic. Relief flooded her body, branching outward from her heart, traveling her bloodstream as ruthlessly as the virus that had bested her health a few days before. It’s over, she thought. Had she permitted another ounce of emotion to cross that tenuous barrier between calm and collected and a sobbing mess, she wasn’t sure she’d had been able to stop weeping with joy. It’s all over. I won’t be held hostage by my dreams ever again.
The burning in her lungs was the only force powerful enough to tear her away from Alair at last, but that reassured smile was unaffected. “All right, Lancelot; what do people do for fun in this time period?” Scarlet’s hands slipped from his shoulders, trailing down his arms and came to rest at his palms, clutching them gently to pull him along as her feet took her a few paces backwards. “You’re the expert here. I think I can tolerate this Halloween costume for a little while; it’s kind of growing on me.” With a teasing wink, she added, “I’ll be the Guinevere to your Lancelot. Arthur wasn’t exactly the king he was cracked up to be, anyway.”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you
Crafting his own from scratch was a tremendously useful tool not only for his own sanity, but for his duties as guiding hand in the lives of men. But that particular ability had long since vanished, a sacrifice he had made willingly in hopes that its power might save someone very dear to him. He had lived with his deficiency ever since, fully aware of the irony of a dreamless Sandman, learning to function without it—which was less coping than simply avoiding slumber altogether. Where previously sleeping had been a helpful device to achieve an end, it had since been rendered almost completely unnecessary, and Alair had little desire to subject himself to dreamless unconsciousness if he could ever help it.
But there was no other explanation for what they experienced now. The more Scarlet spoke, the more she expressed her own reservations about the bizarre historic departure from her usual surrealist landscapes, the more convinced he became that this was no ordinary dream. Perhaps it was the adrenaline of the day, perhaps it was the injury, perhaps it was the absinthe—but he was potentially commanding his own dream for the first time in a millennia. And there was only one real way to find out if his suspicions were justified…
As exhilarated as he was frightened as he was hopeful, he began his manipulation as cautiously as the first steps of a newborn filly. A breeze here, a different arrangement of cobblestones there; the grid-like pattern of the village layout shifted imperceptibly to serpentine trails that ebbed and flowed with the rise and fall of the hills. And as the changes happened, as the world bent to his orders, his inhibitions crumbled—and the bolder he became. He could feel the energy behind his companion’s subdued smile; he could sense the joy and excitement coursing through her blood. When she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him close, his grin matched her own as he looked down into her bright eyes.
She wrapped him in a passionate kiss as soon as their gazes met. He surrendered to her lead with a heart that thundered violently against his breastbone, doing its damnedest to crash its way through its cage of ribs to unite with the young woman whose soft mouth moved so ardently against his. So caught was he in the current of her affection that he forgot himself; the gleam of the setting sun shone suddenly bright gold, bathing them in a warm light that set the emerald hillsides around them ablaze.
He grinned when she pulled away to take a breath, leaning over her so their faces were never more than a few finger widths apart. “Why hasn’t anything happened yet?” he repeated huskily, his lips puckering as the corners of his eyes crinkled with mischief. “Hmm. Let’s see…” His hands trailed down her back to find her waist, and he pulled her towards him firmly. Pressing his lips to hers, their eyelids fluttered closed—and when they opened again, the hills were gone, hidden behind thick walls of polished marble.
Stained glass windows rose tall and narrow above them like skyscrapers trapped within borders of finely-sculpted stone, capturing the sunset’s unearthly gold brilliance and translating its yellow glow to hues of azure and crimson. It was a far more elaborate design than the original cathedral had boasted all those centuries ago, and certainly more than its exterior silhouette had suggested from afar, but the Sandman no longer craved accuracy of form—no, this was for Scarlet, to prove to her that dreams need not be something to dread, but something to revere.
He pulled away and moved to her side, his hand still cradling the small of her back. With his unoccupied hand, he raised his palm to the air before them. From the smooth marble floor beneath their feet came elaborate candelabras that shone subtly in brushed copper and gold, each arm supporting a tall candle made from off-white hand-dipped wax. Alair stepped once again to face Scarlet as the last few emerged from the end of the nave, taking both of her hands and stepping lithely backwards until they booth stood bathed beneath the light of the impossibly large, startlingly elaborate rose window above the doors.
“Scarlet,” he addressed breathily, his voice reverberating musically despite the softness of his tone. He looked up suddenly, then brought his palm parallel to his mouth where he blew gently across his skin. As the exhale traversed his fingers, the candles illuminated in swift succession. A smile upturned the corners of his lips. “Might I have this dance?”
He bent at the waist in a shallow bow, his smirk dissolving whatever mock period formality he tried to display. “Y’know, since we were so rudely interrupted last time. That’s not going to happen again.” Pulling a face, he held out his hand, the gesture cuing a quiet, sourceless melody of a bell choir in the recesses of the grand architecture. “C’mon, please?”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you
Why hasn’t anything happened yet? Hm. Let’s see…
This was it, she thought, that hopeful smile fading as she searched the Sandman’s face with sudden uncertainty. Was this really Alair? The real Alair, her Alair? Or was it yet another pawn of the dreamscape, just as Caspar had been during that single terrifying nightmare inspired by the fever she had suffered some nights ago? Just another dakr aspect of the dream taking what she loved most, who she loved most, and playing them against her... She doubted, she second-guessed her own judgement, and when the Sandman’s hands (if this really was the Sandman, and not some imposter designed to lure her into a false sense of security before all shit hit the fan) were planted firmly on her waist, that was the second where she very nearly pulled away and ran, before it was too late. The thought, the shoddy escape plan, crossed her mind; and had Sleep been but a millisecond slower, she might have followed through with it.
But Alair’s mouth was on hers once more, passionate and insistent, and only then did her anxiety lift like a heavy blanket from her shoulders. She was still alive; the ground had not opened up to swallow her, no water rose from the earth to drown her, there were no cliffs from which to fall to her death, nor rain on fire, nor vines with thorns to asphyxiate her if she did not bleed out first. There was none of that: nothing but the Sandman and his reassuring presence, and when she opened her eyes again, she found herself standing beneath the stained glass windows of a vast cathedral, nothing like she had ever beheld in Washington. The sky was dark, beyond; dusk had finally prevailed over the day, and there was no sunlight to stream like liquid gold through the coloured windows, but the premises were soon alight with candles that lent the atmosphere an even more intimate mood.
“You made this…” She murmured, the corners of her mouth turning upward in a gentle smile as the Sandman kissed the air, and the wax and wicks surrounding them were aglow with fire. “You made all of this.” There was really no reason for her to be so surprised; he was the Sandman, after all, and dreams—any dream—were his domain. And yet, he had never once interfered in her nightmares to change events around for the better. But that was something for which the redhead-turned-brunette could not hold her supernatural companion at fault; after all, she had a feeling that no sort of interference would have made much of a difference. Her nightmares had always been so determined in nature, so steadfast, and intuition told her that there wouldn’t have been any way to find a happy ending within them by trying to manipulate the fabric of their terror and sorrow.
What it had taken all along was the assurance that she wasn’t, and didn’t have to be, alone. That last nightmare had diffused and resolved itself, all because when the ice had cracked and she had been about to fall through, Alair had been prepared to go down with her; his help, his presence alone, had broken the vicious cycle. And now, everything that happened—from the clothes to the cathedral to the phantom music and, finally, Alair’s request to dance—was just for fun. Up until just now, she had been willing to believe that nothing good ever came of sleeping and of dreaming. And, once again, the Sandman was showing her another side of something she feared or avoided, shedding light on the more positive aspects of this world born of her unconscious mind. This one had a no hold on her; a vague sense of familiarity and deja vu , perhaps, but she chose not to trust that particular intuition because she was certain that if ever she had seen a place like this before; it had to have been on a television documentary, or something similar.
“Very nice touch, Sandman.” The young woman teased, taking Alair by the hand and pulling him to his feet following his question to her. The purposeful chivalry was making her blush, and he wouldn't fail to point it out if she didn't put a stop to it. “Particularly with those candleabras… Although I think I already know the answer .” Grinning, she slipped one of her hands up his arm until it came to rest on his shoulder. Interrupted or not, she had enjoyed their dance profusely at the wedding reception to which neither of them had been invited. And he was right: now they had the privacy that they need, to ensure that this did not end in disaster like it had before, it afforded them the ability to simply enjoy one another's company.
“Alair…” As Scarlet let her companion lead her through the music (and , to her surprise, her feet did not feel as though they both belonged on the left side of her body), her heart swelled with so many things she wanted to tell him, but for which she could not find the words. So instead, she delivered yet another ‘thank you’. One hand resting at the back of his neck, she briefly pressed her forehead against in shoulder. “Do you have any idea what this means to me? Dreaming and enjoying it, no Caspar or Marissa to throw me for a loop… If you keep this up, you’re going to turn me into a fucking optimist, or something.” For the first time in her life, she didn't want to wake up.
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you
The Sandman was so preoccupied with the progression of Scarlet’s well-being that he had completely neglected to notice the vastness of his own happiness. It swelled like the oncoming tide, pulled onto the shores of his mind by the magnetic grip of his own triumphant moon—and yet he was oblivious to what it illuminated in its gentle glow. Alair, a being whose youthful body was more or less a vessel for millennia of anguish and angst, was at last able to drop his defenses without fear of remembrance, without the bitter pain of loss. The warmth of his current bliss manifested in the candles’ tiny flames, which blazed to life in a golden flare as he took Scarlet’s waist and began to step in time with the resounding phantom melody.
He held her close, bowing his head to hover above her shoulder. Their bodies were pressed gently together by the force of their mutual moving embrace. For a long time, they did not speak, but simply drank in one another’s presence and proximity; the waltz that rang from the high vaulted ceilings aligned perfectly with their heartbeats, which pulsed in time with one another as consistently as their lithe footfalls on the marble.
When she spoke, their swaying slowly ceased, and they stood with their arms around one another in a calming stillness borne of the cathedral and the candles. He reached up to cradle the back of her head when she buried her face against his shoulder, closing his eyes above a soft smile. “Well, we can’t have that,” he proclaimed teasingly in response to her quip regarding optimism, pulling away so that he could meet her gaze. “Then again, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. Seems like it might already be affecting me too.” A chuckle shook his shoulders. He placed his hands on her upper arms before sliding them delicately down to take her fingers in his own. Looking straight up to the dark ceiling, he gave her palms a squeeze to indicate she should copy the gesture.
Though hundreds of candles illuminated the lower half of the great atrium, the far reaches of the hovering pointed vaults were cast in shadow too deep to penetrate. As their eyes searched the blackness, small orbs of light flickered into existence against the solid backdrop; they sparkled like stars, falling into place as constellations as their gentle twinkles cast light upon the gilded lining of the elaborate upper nave’s architecture. As Scarlet watched them spark into being, Alair quietly shifted his attention to the elegant features of her face—oblivious, of course, to the irony of the arrangement he had created. And then they were falling, falling upwards, floating like the winged cherubs that smiled down at them from the frescoes. The Sandman’s stars twisted and spun as they rose into their domain, and when at last he dared look back down to the floor—
—he awoke to a bright twenty-first century early afternoon.
“Scarlet?” he whispered groggily, groaning as the dull ache in his hand settled back into his consciousness. “Hey, alpha, you up?” He shifted positions, realizing too late that his good arm was nestled beneath the redhead's slumbering neck. Hissing as he reclaimed his arm, he shook out his tingly fingers and rubbed his eyes with the back of his wrist. The lingering effects of his new dream-experience had left him simultaneously rested and exhausted, and he yawned noisily, collapsing back into the pillow. His ruffled dark hair, standing on end in every possible direction, surrounded his head like a halo.
"Alpha," he said, dragging out the syllable in a sleepy whine. "My hand fucking hurts."
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you
The Aries’ met the Sandman’s gaze as his hands slid from her shoulders to her fingers, linking between her slender digits as comfortably as two accommodating puzzle pieces. His blue eyes glittered like sparklers in the firelight, a mesmerising dance of bright cobalt and soft yellow flecks, and she could easily have lost herself in them for hours. There was warmth in those eyes, comfort, acceptance; everything that her life had been missing, even with gentle Caspar Brighton as a part of it. It felt to the young woman as if Alair was not only filling the cavity in her chest where something had always been missing, but he was that missing piece; she truly couldn’t explain the intensity and conviction behind the feeling, but it was there, and she couldn’t get enough of it.
Scarlet only averted her gaze when her companion tilted his chin the look upwards, and the sight all but took her breath away. She had seen stars in her life, over and over again, to the point where they had lost their beauty and were little more than tools to serve her means. But the glittering lights above their heads were more than stars; they were gems, diamonds fragments of a mirror ball that flickered above them and around them, because suddenly, they were falling—
No, not falling. The young woman knew the sensation of falling in a dream, and this sensation as the floor suddenly falling from her feet was far different. They were not falling, they were flying, rising up and up until the cathedral with its candles and stained glass disappeared, and she found herself rising with Alair, up into the sky and the atmosphere, one with the stars that surrounded them.
Words played behind Scarlet’s lips; words that she never thought she would consider, let alone speak, but they were relentless. And before she knew what she was doing, they were pushing their way out.
“Alair,” she murmured, releasing one of his hands to cradle the side of his face; smooth, and freshly shaven from that morning. “I need to tell you… I think…”
I think I’m in love with you. The words were on the tip of her tongue, rushing to pass her lips—
—and then she was cracking her eyes open, not to a bright and starry sky, but to the yellow day glow of morning, with a familiar voice murmuring in her ear. As the redhead fully came into consciousness, she realized her cheek was pressed against Alair’s chest, one arm slung over his side, and her ankles woven between his calves. Though perhaps a little startling at first, the events of the night before came flooding back to her in a rush; Geoff’s music store, their encounter with Devon, the emergency room, and then the brief but sweet moment of intimacy before they had both drifted off to sleep.
And speaking of sleep…
“Yeah—I’m awake,” she murmured, her voice hoarse from lack of use as she stretched her legs out in front of her. “And, oddly… rested. Thanks for the dream, Magic Man.” And with a quirky smile, she kissed the tip of his nose. “I can’t remember the last time I didn’t want to wake up… I wasn’t aware it was in your power to make things so… beautiful.” The dancing, the cathedral, the stars that surrounded them… Scarlet closed her eyes again, as if in an attempt to recapture those moments, but as per the transient nature of dreams, the images were quickly fading from her mind.
Perhaps it was for the better; there were issues in reality that needed her attention, such as Alair’s injured arm. “How are you feeling, by the way?” Experimentally running her fingertip along his bandage, she frowned sympathetically when he winced, and forced her sleepy body into an upright position. “Just relax; I’ll go put on some coffee. I’ll even brew it at a palatable temperature.” Rubbing the side of his shoulder, Scarlet stifled a yawn and combed her fingers through her hair, leaving the Sandman to rest as she made for the kitchen.
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you [18+]
He could still recall how it felt to terminate a dream; he remembered the ways in which the transition between reality and fantasy could be manipulated to ease the coming and going of multiple dimensions. The blurry middle ground between the two worlds could be particularly potent upon waking (more so even than the strange sensation when initially falling asleep), and previously Alair had learned to manipulate that unique space as one of the most influential tools of his unusual trade. But this time felt different, somehow less purposeful—as though he had not, in fact, had any control at all, like he had surrendered the reins to the natural firing of his neurons. And the Sandman, of all people, was not interested in that.
Despite the sneaking confusion regarding their unconscious experience that night, the hoarse voice of his groggy companion nevertheless brought a smile to his face. He shifted to face her again, pursing his lips. “Good,” he told her as she declared her current state of wakefulness, wrinkling his nose in mock protest when she pressed her lips to its tip. “Because if you weren’t, I was going to shove you off the mattress.” He moved his good arm to rest on her shoulder and gave it a playful squeeze. His face lit up in a characteristic smirk—albeit a sleepy one—and he chuckled.
He could feel the warmth of her presence at his side, and that alone was enough to assuage his uneasiness and bring him back to some semblance of normalcy. “You’re pretty cute in the morning, you know?” he said, reaching up to press his finger between her eyes. He slid it down to the end of her nose and tapped it lightly, then pressed its pad to her soft lips. It was not unlike the teasing gesture he’d made on the playground in the soaking rain, and the correlation was not lost on him as he was certain it was not lost on the redhead. The memory broadened his drowsy grin. His contentedness, however, was not to last, and it was surprisingly the words of the very same young woman who had eased his worries not three minutes before that dashed his elation.
There was a noticeable shift in the expression in his eyes when she closed her eyes. Her words sunk in like a poison, crushing whatever unrealistic hopes he’d had regarding his exploits in their shared dream. Inwardly scolding himself for being so gullible, he smiled in return and nodded. “Yeah,” he said, a little uncertainly, “no problem.” He swallowed. “I’m not really supposed to do that…” The way in which he trailed off suggested that there was far more to the story than he was letting on, but she drew his attention back to the dull throb in his wrist and he cringed. “It’s sore,” he admitted tersely, biting his lower lip. “Coffee would definitely help. Thanks.”
He climbed out of bed after her, steadying himself on the edge of the mattress before making his way into the bathroom. For a long while he stared at his reflection in the warped mirror, boring holes into his blue eyes with his own harsh stare. It was her dream all along. The words repeated over and over in his mind like a mantra, each iteration coming with intensified bemusement. It simply wasn’t possible—from the ease of his manipulation to the eerily accurate initial details—there was no way it had been Scarlet’s dream. And yet that was precisely as it stood, presented before him under a spotlight on a stage. It couldn’t be. Unless…
No. He slammed his good fist onto the counter by the sink, his muscles locking tight with the sudden tension of denial. Gritting his teeth, he turned on the faucet and splashed water over his face, looking back up at his reflection as the droplets rolled from his skin. A wave of pain coursed through his limbs that had nothing to do with his injury. The fact that Scarlet could be…that she could have been…no. The idea was so preposterous—so completely unwanted—that he laughed aloud as he spun to turn on the shower, forgetting for a moment that his hand would need to be wrapped.
“Hey, Scarlet?” he called, clearing his throat. He shook his head back and forth to himself as though to clear it of the agonizing thoughts of moments ago. “Could you bring me some plastic wrap or something? I still have fucking dried blood all over me.”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you [18+]
Pinpricks of tears gathered in the corners of Scarlet’s eyes as she scooped dark coffee grounds into the paper filter, and she dabbed at them with her fingertips before they could fall. Did Alair really have any idea just what that dream had meant to her? Beauty aside, it was the peace, the joy and reassurance of feeling the warmth of the Sandman’s embrace as they had danced. The fairy tale that she had never so much as dared to consider, for fear that her twisted and tortured subconscious mind would turn it into something horrible. For the first time in a long time, the Aries not only felt human, she felt truly and unarguably alive.
“Take it easy there, Magic Man,” She cautioned gently, hearing the echo of his footsteps follow hers, bare feet on the cracked linoleum floor. “No one says you have to get out of bed; I still owe you a shit ton of breakfasts and coffee, don’t I?”
The coffee had just finished brewing, filling the kitchen with its strong, smoky aroma, when the distinct sound of something hard making contact with what sounded like the chipped faux-marble counter next to the ceramic bathroom sink made the young woman jump. “Shit, Alair,” she breathed, carefully placing the two mugs she’d retrieved from the cupboard atop the counter before her startled fingers could let them fall to their doom upon the hard kitchen floor. “Calm your damned testosterone, will you? If you’re gonna Hulk out, then kindly don’t make us liable for damage to the fucking apartment.”
Partially curious, although mostly worried, Scarlet abandoned the steaming coffee carafe and made for the bathroom, pushing the door open at the same moment the Sandman called his request for plastic wrap. Her paranormal companion really was growing on her, it seemed; she didn’t even bat an eyelash at the towel around his waist. “Whoa, now; let’s just hold our horses, shall we?” Taking him by his injured arm, she (gently) pulled him away from the steam of the shower. “I’ll get you your plastic wrap, but I’m not about to let you make a mess and flood the fucking bathroom while you try to pull this off with one arm. Stay here; move a muscle and... fuck it, I’ll think of something threatening later.”
When the young woman left Alair temporarily to his thoughts, however, she didn’t make a beeline for the kitchen, but for her bedroom, first. Fuck, where’d I put it… I know I own one of these things. It must have been at least two years since she’d last gone swimming, but the Aries would have bet money that she owned a bathing suit, somewhere the mess of clean clothes that was stuffed untidily in an overflowing dresser drawer. Only after dispersing about half of her wardrobe around the floor and on the bed did she manage to locate the top, and it was completely by accident that she came across the matching blue shorts hidden behind several pairs of denim jeans. She was almost embarrassed to feel so relieved when she tried both halves on in the mirror to discover that they still fit. What the hell does it matter how it looks? It’s a bathing suit. Apparently, it mattered a lot, when you had someone in your life who mattered a lot, and whose opinions suddenly mattered to you.
Fortunately, Scarlet wasn’t very good at being particularly vain, and didn’t dwell on self-consciousness for too long. Not while there was an injured (and strangely perturbed… had she really heard him punch the counter?) Sandman awaiting her return, with the plastic wrap he’d requested. Tying her hair back in a ponytail, she made haste in retrieving the requested item, before returning to the tiny bathroom that was quickly filling with the shower’s steam.
“All right; here’s how this is going to work.” Sitting on the edge of the tub, the redhead took her injured companion’s arm upon her lap and began looping clear sheets of cellophane-like plastic around the prone bandages to protect them from the assault of water droplets. She didn’t bother to explain the change in her attire, since her intentions were—most likely—already obvious. “You’re going to get in, sit down, and keep your arm out of the water… Here, rest it on top of this.” Stretching out one of her legs, she reached with her ankle to haul out the plastic stool from underneath the sink as Alair followed directions, only narrowly missing the stream of water pelting from the shower head. She was the one who got the worst of it when she climbed in behind him, standing on her knees to put herself a foot or so above his head.
“Ugh—shit, and you tease me about liking my coffee scalding!” Scarlet frowned, wincing when the hot water hit her face, and stood on one leg to reach over him and adjust the temperature. While she was at that height, she grabbed the soap and shampoo from the caddy hanging just behind the nozzle. “And for the record, this officially gets me out of, like, at least three breakfasts that I owe you.” She announced, squeezing a dollop of honey-scented shampoo into her hands (alas—it had been the easiest to reach). Her fingers were gentle, a blatant contrast to her snide words, as they massaged it into his scalp. “In fact, I think you are going to owe me, by the time those stitches of yours are healed.”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you [18+]
For a man who had survived a long, emotional day only to endure a painful, anxiety-ridden night, the dark-haired Sandman was surprisingly unconcerned with the details of the waking hours before they’d drifted off. His frightening scuffle with the murderous Devon suddenly paled in comparison to the fairytale dream he’d shared with Scarlet. And though the two events existed on entirely different ends of a spectrum of good and bad, it was nevertheless his dreamtime bliss that occupied his thoughts. For despite his self-reassurance, he could not shake the feeling that he was missing a vital piece to the puzzle, that there was something standing right in front of him that he simply couldn’t see.
He withdrew his hand from the shower, startled, when he felt the young woman’s hand wrap around his arm and tug him gently away from the water. The sight of her was enough to melt away some of the hard, troubling thoughts that coursed through his mind, and he smiled crookedly despite himself. “How’d I know you weren’t going to be happy with this decision?” he shot back teasingly, arching a brow. When she spun on her heel to retrieve the plastic, he called after her, “You just didn’t want me to spill your shampoo, didn’t you!?”
The declaration inspired a laugh, which in turn helped to dispel the anxieties that had built up in his bloodstream. “Oh, you’re going to tell me how this is going to work?” he retorted. “Last time I checked, you weren’t the one with the Frankenstein hand.” As he spoke the words aloud, he remembered her cut—and grinned, raising his own bandaged appendage as she wrapped it snugly in a protective layer of plastic. “Cheers to us, with scars that almost match,” he quipped, settling into the tub and resting his arm where she instructed. “If I wasn’t about to get assaulted with water, I’d raise a glass of leprechaun juice to us.”
He flashed her a wink and closed his eyes as she wet his hair with the scalding stream, wincing a little as his wrist shifted. “Nice outfit, by the way. Sexy,” he commented with his eyes still closed, another smile tugging at the corners of his lips. His spirits were rising slowly but surely with Scarlet’s help, even if she didn’t realize she’d extended her hand. “But this doesn’t get you out of breakfast. You signed yourself up to be my personal shower assistant. You answered an ad I didn’t even put out, alpha, although I can’t say I don’t appreciate the help.”
It was the closest thing to a real thank-you she would likely receive. When the scent of honey and lavender reached his nostrils, he opened his eyes, pulling a face of approval as she massaged the soap into his scalp. I could get used to this, he thought playfully. When he opened his mouth to say it, however, he was interrupted before he even began—by none other than the lord of perfect timing himself.
“Well, howdy there, Cas!” Alair greeted cheerfully, looking up from his position in the tub to see the startled musician hovering in the open doorway with a backpack slung over his shoulder.
“Alair,” the lanky young man said, his voice cracking mid-syllable. His cheeks were rosy with embarrassment. “Hey, Red.”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you [18+]
His comment on her attire only drew a louder laugh from her lungs, because she thought he was being absolutely ridiculous, if not flattering and sweet. “No—no, not really.” The Aries shook her head, but pent to plant a kiss on his cheek all the same, his skin soft against her lips. “I just wasn’t about to get my clean clothes soaked on your behalf. We’ll talk ‘sexy’ under different circumstances. When you’re not half-incapacitated, and when I’m actually making an effort to be sexy. Which, to be honest, would probably be just as laughable, because I have no fucking clue how. As for breakfast—”
And then, just as bad luck would have it, the redhead’s elusive roommate made an appearance around the corner, face colouring furiously at the sight before him before he respectfully turned away.
“…you know,” she sighed, rinsing the soap off of her hands, “I’m not even going to try to explain this, because I just give up. Hey, Cas.”
“Ah… it’s fine. No explanation necessary, anyway.” The lanky musician, nervously scratching the back of his neck, pointedly avoided looking at both occupants of the bath tub. “Look, I ah… I just wanted to come by to let you guys know about the music festival going on up in the mountains at the end of the week. Marissa tipped me off about it, and I scored a spot as an act. I’ve got a couple complimentary tickets, if you’re interested—I’ll just put them on the kitchen table.”
Moving more quickly than what was perhaps necessary (the poor guy was clearly ill at ease for having walked in on what he perceived as yet another intimate moment), he moved from the doorframe to the kitchen, and didn’t return. “It’s from Friday to Sunday, morning to night, if you’re interested in going. I’ll, ah… I’ll just let you two be, then.”
Heaving a sigh, the redhead tried to peer around the doorframe to catch a glimpse of her roommate before he left, but to no avail. “Would you believe me if I told you it’s not what it looks like? I mean, come on, Cas; I’m wearing my fucking bikini.”
“Oh, I noticed.” Caspar’s uncomfortable voice bounced off of the walls of the empty hallway, just prior to the creak of the front door opening. “And, to answer your question… no. I don’t really believe you. But, hey, no judgement on my part. Later, Red. Alair.”
The soft groan in Scarlet’s throat when she and Alair were once again alone in the apartment was only partially obscured by the running water. “I try to be nice. I try to be helpful, and considerate, and in the end, I just end up looking like some floozie.” Shaking her head, Scarlet ran her fingers through Alair’s dark locks as she rinsed the honey and lavender soap from his hair. “For that alone, I get out of at least one breakfast. Because it’s not fair that Cas walks in on every single questionable moment, goddamnit it all.”
The news that the young musician had brought had, however, intrigued her a little. If the festival was up in the mountains, then it sounded like a camping trip; which, in Alair’s condition, might or might not be entirely feasible. “Well? What do you think?” She asked, resting her hands on his shoulders (which felt worrying tight) and giving them a gentle squeeze. “If you’re feeling any better at the end of the week, would you be interested in a little camping trip with a bit of music? Could be fun.” Her smile wavered, however; in spite of the Sandman’s snarky and teasing behaviour, there seemed to be something on his mind that he wasn’t addressing.
“Hey… you all right? You seem really uptight today.” Was it something she had said or done? Although she couldn’t understand how her behaviour could be the culprit, she shifted her body just enough to plant a kiss on the corner of his mouth. “Is your arm really bothering you? Because if your green alcoholic beverage is the only thing that takes the edge off, then by all means, summon one up. I can supervise your tipsy ass if need be.”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you [18+]
Despite Caspar’s obvious embarrassment, the Sandman detected neither animosity nor disapproval in his tone. Bemusement was inevitable, but that was just how things were when it came to Alair—and apparently when it came to Scarlet as well. They were both lucky that he was so easygoing, Sleep supposed, but then again he had never been one to be perturbed by others’ thoughts. He’d lived too long and seen too much to fret over outside opinions; the only ones he truly cared to hear were those belonging to people dearest to him personally. Scarlet had rapidly become one of those people, but Cas, with whom he had been friends a longer period, had yet to break that particular barrier.
He called his farewells to the redhead’s roommate and risked a glance to Scarlet, his azure eyes at last finding their characteristic gleam. “See, you do look sexy. Cas basically admitted it,” Alair pointed out, closing his eyes once again as she sprayed the water down on his head. The sweet-scented suds dissipated in his hair with the aid of the scalding stream, but unfortunately they did not taste as good as they smelled. He made a face and stuck out his tongue at the sudden bitter taste. “Ugh, you got it in my mouth!” he exclaimed, blowing air through his lips. “That does notcount as breakfast. Gross. There’s no way there’s honey in there.”
Squirming beneath her touch like an impatient child, he wiped water from his eyes with the back of his good wrist as soon as Scarlet switched off the shower. “You make it sound like ‘questionable moments’ are a bad thing,” he said, smiling as she kissed the corner of his mouth. “Look at us. We’re adorable. Nothing questionable about that.” He shifted positions, cringing as he rotated his injured arm, then looked straight up at Scarlet. “You’re not embarrassed of me, are you?” he asked, his voice serious until he betrayed himself with a chuckle.
He stood up, tensing once again at his protesting wound. “I think it sounds like a good time,” he said with a half-shrug, stepping out of the tub and onto the towel Scarlet had placed over the rug. It was already damp beneath his bare toes; it seemed they’d made a mess anyway, even with the redhead’s help, but Alair remained quiet, silently thankful for both her company and her assistance. “Get out of the city, see the mountains, hear some music…I’d be down. Toss me that towel, will you?”
Using one hand awkwardly, he leaned over the draped the dry cloth over his hair. “I’m all right,” he said, although his voice was a little too strangled to be telling the whole truth of the matter. “My hand just hurts. I might need to take the edge off a little, but you can cut me off after one glass.” He looked up, trying unsuccessfully to look nonchalant. “Not sure how adventurous I’ll be feeling today, although I’m sure that’ll change with a little absinthe…”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you [18+]
Another laugh escaped her lungs at his attest to their being ‘adorable’ and, in a way, she had to agree. “I dunno, Magic Man… You are pretty embarrassing. I’m not sure if it’s in my best interests to be seen with you; particularly not in the freaking bath tub.” But Scarlet only managed to pull a serious face for a split second, and then laughed again as she carefully got to her feet in the crammed bathtub. “You already spread the word that we were a thing before it was official; exactly what other rumours do you intend to garner, anyway? I feel like I should have some say in all of this, you know.”
Bracing her legs on the sodden wet bath mat, the Aries took Alair by his good arm and eased him out of the tub and onto the floor. Well, she’d made an effort not to flood the place, at least. “Easy, there; careful not to get your arm wet. Here, have a seat.” Reaching for the last clean, dry towel hanging on the rack, she ran it briskly through the Sandman’s damp hair before playfully tossing it in his direction. “How about we play it by ear, then? I mean, I’m not really in any hurry to be running into Marissa again, but…” But now things were different. Now, not having Caspar Brighton around didn’t feel like such a void in the shaken consistency and predictability of her life. It simply felt like another change, something to make room for Alair… The new constant in her life. Someone she could depend upon, and someone for whom she cared for perhaps as much as she did Cas, only… Only differently. With a greater intensity than she had ever felt towards the calm, kind musician.
Since she had no reason to suspect that the Sandman might not have been telling her the whole story when she asked after his worries and concerns, she simply smiled and bent to unwrapped the plastic from around his arm. “One glass then. Although I’m not sure about mixing it with coffee; might not have the desired results. And speaking of coffee…” Just remembering she had left the coffee maker on, Scarlet left Alair to check the carafe. Still hot… thank goodness. “When you’ve conjured yourself up some clothes, get your butt out here and I might be nice and make you breakfast.” She called, air-drying in her bikini since the rest of the towels were wet and needed to be washed. “Just take it easy today, we can save the adventuring for when you’re not in pain. You into video games at all? We’ve got an old N64; I’ll kick your ass at Mario Kart.”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you [18+]
“Hey, Scarlet…” he heard himself say suddenly, his tone significantly darker than his joking mannerisms from moments ago would have suggested. When she turned back to look at him, his throat tightened, and he managed an expression that resembled a wince more than the intended smile. No…he couldn’t tell her… “Never mind. Just…” He looked down at his bandaged hand, now free of its plastic encasement, and then met her bright gaze with azure eyes that had gone cobalt with a strange, stormy sadness. “Thank you. I think I could use a cup of that coffee about now.”
When she left him to get dressed, he returned to the mirror, wiping away the condensation with a soft, muted squeak of the towel against smooth wet glass. The face that stared back at him was gaunt despite his new state of cleanliness, his muscles tight with a lingering anxiety that would not let him be. No, he whispered to himself gruffly, although to what he was disagreeing, he was no longer sure. Sighing softly, he ran his fingers through his wet hair and dressed himself quickly—perhaps a little too quickly; his hand began to throb as he wove it through its sleeve—in a pair of ripped jeans and a soft white t-shirt. The only thing left to do was ride out the wave of discontent, and the only cure he knew was waiting for him with a cup of coffee in the tiny apartment kitchen.
He rounded the corner slowly, but despite his caution nearly collided with the redhead. “Shit! Sorry,” he muttered, gratefully taking the steaming mug of coffee with his good hand. Momentarily forgetting about his wound, he tried to reach for her unoccupied fingers to lead her into the living room. A shockwave of pain made him very aware of his mistake, and he winced, a dry chuckle escaping his throat. “You know, I’m not really that hungry. You can make me double breakfast tomorrow.” He looked towards the couch, then back to Scarlet, who was still sporting her bathing suit. A soft grin spread across his face. “I’ll be okay for five minutes if you want to get dressed. And then I will kick your ass at Mario Kart,” he corrected with a smirk.
Making his way to the couch, he settled in and rested his bandaged arm on one of the throw pillows at his side. He downed his coffee in a handful of swallows, grateful for the warmth that settled in his belly in cold apprehension’s stead, and awaited Scarlet’s return. His coffee mug was suddenly filled with green liquid, which he sipped slowly, savoring the additional burn. “I’m going to be one-armed and half-drunk and you’re still going to lose,” he called, doing his best to sound lighthearted. “Just be prepared, okay?”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you [18+]
Scarlet turned on her way out the door when the Sandman called her name, a look of perplexity befalling her face when she saw the look in Alair’s eyes, the sparkling bright azure almost as dark as cobalt. She hadn’t misinterpreted, something was bothering him, and it set every nurturing cell in her body on high alert. Turning back around, she reached out to take his good hand in her own. “Alair, if something’s on your mind, I want you to know that you can tell me. I mean, honestly—what grounds do I have to judge?” The smile that she attempted to pull then might have been convincing, were it not for all the worry in her eyes. “I’m not gonna make you tell me; that wouldn’t be fair. But if and when you’re ready, I can’t guarantee that I’ll give the best advice, but I can definitely listen.”
Leaning down to plant a quick, soft kiss on his lips, the redhead then straightened and resumed her trek out to the kitchen, where she poured the still-hot coffee into the two ceramic mugs waiting on the counter. Despite the warm humidity of the morning, goosebumps had risen on her bare skin where she waited for herself to air-dry, but she wasn’t really concerned with what she was wearing (or, in this case, not wearing; bathing suits didn’t count as clothes).
Her mind was far from her tasks at hand, as she put on Caspar’s apron and got started on washing some of the dishes in the sink while she waited for her companion to dress. It was peculiar, how her relatively solitary life, aside from Caspar, had segued so quickly into allowing someone to be part of it. And yet, it didn’t feel forced or intrusive; Alair had just shown up one night, had become part of her routine as if it was a natural transition… and it made her feel good. That she didn’t need Caspar as a lifeline. That someone actually cared for her. That, for once, she didn’t feel so insignificant.
“Whoa! Hey, careful,” Scarlet gasped as she turned and nearly collided with the Sandman, hot coffee in one hand as the other became occupied weaving its fingers between Alair’s after handing him his mug. “Don’t go and pull your stitches; I’m not sitting in the emergency room with you again.” As he told her he’d be fine while she dressed, Scarlet pulled a look of mock hurt that was so exaggerated it was comical. “What, I don’t look good enough for you in a bikini? And here I always play Mario Kart in a bathing suit!” Winking, she put her coffee down and retreated to her bedroom, where she changed out of the wet garments and into and oversized Led Zepplin T-shirt that bordered on falling off her shoulder, and fitted jeans that tapered at her ankles. “I hope you know who you’re challenging, by the way; in five years, Caspar has yet to beat me at Mario Kart. Here, hold on; I’ll try to even it up a bit, but you’re still going to lose.”
After turning on the Nintendo 64 and waiting for the game to load, the Aries disappeared into the kitchen for a handful of seconds, and returned with a small bottle of crème liqueur, which she then added to her black coffee. “I’ll feel kind of bad beating an opponent with only one useful hand, but just to make you feel better, I’ll play the tipsy card, as well.”
She took a sip of her coffee, that was at once bitter and pleasantly sweet, before taking a seat next to her companion on the couch. After selecting their characters, the game started up, and although Alair’s efforts were commendable, his single-handed performance was pretty sad from the very beginning.
“Come on, Sandman; are you even trying?” Scarlet teased, taking the lead in the game with relative ease. Needless to say, she won in record time, but did not turn down the first, or the second rematch that Alair requested. The poor guy lost twice more, each attempt slightly worse than the one before. And after winning her fifth consecutive round (although her steering by now was a bit off, thanks to the alcohol in her coffee), the redhead finally put down her controller long enough to gloat.
“You know… I was wrong. I’m not put off winning against a handicapped opponent, after all.” With a light laugh at the sour look on Alair’s face, she gently squeezed his knee and gave him a kiss on the cheek, lips lingering near his ear as she said in a sing-song voice, “Just admit I’m better than you,” before gently nipping at his earlobe with her teeth. “Ready to admit defeat yet, and worship me as the Mario Kart champion?”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you [18+]
Even his efforts to hide his distress were futile and halfhearted; he knew Scarlet could see straight through him, that his eyes if nothing else would be giving away the depths of his pain. She was the only one who could console him, it was true, and yet it was the young woman herself who had inadvertently initiated his perplexity in the first place. Speaking to her about it would only spawn more questions that she couldn’t answer, and the last thing he wanted to do was to put her in a position where she could perceive her helplessness as his disappointment. Because truth be told, it was him, not her, that was the source of his woe—frustration with himself, and with a nagging past he was utterly powerless to erase.
Nevertheless, the silly video game was enough to distract him. That, in combination with Scarlet’s taunting laughter and jeers, was enough to draw him from his self-induced stupor and crack a genuine smile. Soon enough, he was swearing right back at her, grinning and frowning with equal fruition. With one hand out of commission, he could not follow his performance-improvement tactic of physically moving the controller, so he settled for leaning with his body instead—which, given their close proximity on the sofa, meant a lot of playful shoves and nudges that may or may not have been strategic in nature. “Fuck!” he bellowed, guffawing loudly as he steered into Scarlet in both pixels and in the flesh. “You fucking won again!? How is that even fair?”
He leaned back into the couch cushions, his lower lip jutting out in an exaggerated pout. “You’re supposed to let the drunk hurt guy win, didn’t you know that?” he said, wrinkling his nose. He looked everything like a small child who hadn’t yet learned how to lose—narrowed eyes, pursed lips, and arms (or at least one of them) folded stubbornly across his slouched torso. His expression did not change even as she planted a soft kiss on his cheek, but when she nipped his earlobe tenderly between her teeth, he let out a playful growl and quickly turned over to pin her against the throw pillows.
With one arm incapacitated, it was more difficult to be suave, but the Sandman had all the confidence of absinthe and the sourness of a five-time loser to fuel his actions. He wrinkled his nose again and leaned over her, his good hand holding down her shoulder as he hovered. “Never,” he told her with a mischievous smirk, leaning in close to her ear where he gently returned the nibble. “The Sandman does not admit defeat!” With a chuckle, he leaned forward and kissed her deeply on the mouth, his blue eyes open to meet hers during the exchange. He pulled away reluctantly, then heaved a melodramatic sigh—after which he collapsed playfully on top of her, really pinning her this time.
“I’m sorry, who’d you say the champion was again?” he taunted, grinning.
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you [18+]
“Anyway, since when did I ever promise to go easy on you—hey now!” Scarlet laughed again, giving the Sandman’s chest a playful (and futile) shove when she felt Alair’s teeth gently graze her earlobe. “Careful of the earring, mister!” Though truth be told, she couldn’t have cared less about the cheap studs with their clear glass gems. All that mattered in that moment was the fact that that thundercloud that had been hovering over him an hour ago seemed to have lifted. His smile (albeit influenced by the absinthe, no doubt) was real, as was his laughter and that playful edge that had drawn her to him from the very beginning. Part of her still wished he had confided in her when she had inquired into his odd shift in mood, but now all she hoped for was that whatever the reason for that storm cloud, it was too far from the forefront of his mind to be retrieved anytime soon.
In light of his sudden streak of playfulness, another snide retort sat on the tip of her tongue, only to be silenced by the feeling of his lips on hers. It only took a split second for her to forget what she was about to say. “Sneaky bastard.” She murmured with a smile on her mouth, “And a sore loser at that—and heavy! Ugh, Alair!” The giggle that escaped her throat barely made it out of her chest cavity, with the Sandman’s weight pinning her firmly to the couch. “Such a sore loser.” She said again, reaching up with her only free arm to run her fingers through her dark hair. “Although if we’re still measuring championship… I still say I’m the real victor.”
Sliding her hand to the back of his neck, she pulled him forward for another quick kiss, impishly tugging at his lower lip with her teeth before gently but firmly shoving him backward into a sitting position. “Ok, drunky, up you go. I want to check something.”
It took more than a little effort on the young woman’s part to push Alair off of her, but when she regained her full lung capacity and mobility, Scarlet moved forward to straddle his waist, one calf on either side of his thigh. “Don’t hate me too much, Sandman; I just want to make sure you didn’t pull any stitches. Fuck, you get into gaming more violently than I do when you’re drunk. I think I might have bruises from your elbows in my side.” Gently taking his injured arm, the Aries carefully unwound the bandages protecting his sutures, contemplating at the back of her mind just how she would go about pinning him down again if she had to get up to retrieve peroxide to clean around the incision. Her surprise was palpable when it became obvious that peroxide wouldn’t be necessary.
“Fuck… you’d think it was, like, two weeks ago that you’d gotten your arm torn open. Not last night…” The redhead ran her fingertips feather-light near the pink, healing skin around the sutures. No sign of infection or trauma… “How the fuck is this even normal? At this rate, you’re gonna need to stitches out in days, not weeks. It’ll be fun trying to explain that to the hospital… Jeez, Alair…” Carefully letting his arm drop back to his side, Scarlet shook her head and wearily rested it against his good shoulder. “You’re mentally and physically exhausting, you know that? You’re just lucky you happen to be kind of cute, too…”
Wrapping her arms around his middle, the smile tugging at her lips suggested she was joking (at least, in part). “For the record, I could kick your ass at video games, with or without use of your other arm.”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you [18+]
He rolled off of her when she squirmed and protested, using her action of pushing him upward to aid in his rise to a sitting position. A contented sigh escaped his parted lips as he briefly settled into the embrace of the back cushions—a sigh that quickly turned into a mischievous chuckle mid-exhale when the redheaded young woman planted herself on his lap. Keeping his injured arm at his side, he reached around her slender waist with his good hand and pulled her closer. She was near enough now that he could smell the perfume of alcohol on her breath, and he grinned despite himself, knowing full well that he was far tipsier than she was.
The Sandman leaned forward with the intention to plant another kiss on her soft lips, but she shifted her attention down to his bandaged wrist before he could complete the gesture. Sticking his lip out in a childish pout that she mistook for a silent complaint about his injury, he settled back again and grimaced as she unwrapped the gauze. It was still tender and sore, but it was much better than it had been the night before; then again, that very well could have been the absinthe making its judgment. Either way, Alair supposed it was good that the pain had subsided at least enough to be bearable. He only hoped she wouldn’t insist on scrubbing out the sutures again so soon.
As it turned out, he was in luck—and perhaps more than that, for Scarlet’s unexpected reaction caught him enough by surprise that he braved it all to sneak a peek at the exposed wound. “Oh,” was all he could think to say, narrowing his eyes as he inspected it himself. She’d been right to be so shocked; where the previous night it had been a swollen red seam straight out of a melodramatic horror flick, now it was a light pink line of freshly-healed skin. The stitches looked out of place now, and Alair flexed his fingers experimentally.
“Well, no wonder it hurts,” he said tentatively, watching as she ran her fingertips delicately along its serpentine path. “It feels…tight. Scarlet, I don’t think we’re going to need days. I’m thinking a couple of hours.” He looked up, his expression caught somewhere between concern, confusion, and his usual mirthful amusement. “Hey, at least I’ll be better in time for Cas’s gig this weekend, huh?” Leaning forward, he nuzzled her shoulder and leaned back with a grin. “What do you think? Up for it?” He reached up with his good hand and tapped his index and middle fingers together like scissors. “I’m no lefty. I don’t really trust my aim.”
He leaned his head against hers when she brought it in against his shoulder, chuckling more lightly this time. “Shouldn’t you be glad I heal so fast?” he protested teasingly. “Otherwise, you’re right about one thing. I am cute. And the cute one demands a rematch when his hand is better. Or, more better,” he corrected with a snort. “Now where—” Wrapping one arm around her back, the Sandman rose to his feet, lifting the redhead up with him. “—are those tickets Cas left?”
Ignoring any protests—his injured arm was still unbandaged—he set her back on her feet at the kitchen table and picked up the tickets her roommate had left for them on the placemat. “Oh, hey, it’s in the Shenandoahs?” he exclaimed, arching his brows. “This will be like…real camping.”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you [18+]
With a chuckle, she planted a kiss on his neck, her mirthful smile fading when he commented on his stitches. “It looks tight, but… a few hours? Seriously? Alair, you can’t ask me to cut those out of your skin. I’ll fucking faint!” The redhead groaned when he set her back on her feet, shuddering at the thought of removing stitches from human skin. “You just need to learn to be fuckin’ ambidextrous, like I am. It really comes in handy, you know.” If it came down to it, it might end up being their only option. Going to a doctor would only rouse suspicion and trigger questions that neither of them would be able to answer. Frankly, she didn’t want to think about it, and quietly decided that she wouldn’t unless (or until) circumstances demanded otherwise.
“Tickets are on the kitchen table,” Scarlet replied in a sigh, not bothering to pester him to re-bandage his rapidly healing arm. The gash no longer looked quite so severe; a little exposure to fresh air would probably be good for it. Since she hadn’t actually laid eyes upon the colourful pieces of cardstock, when the Sandman proclaimed the music festival was in the Shenandoahs, her eyes went almost childishly wide with excitement.
“Are you serious? I’ve never actually been… But real camping? I am totally down for that.” The redhead slipped her hands around the Sandman’s waist, peering over his shoulder at the two brightly coloured tickets. Suddenly, in spite of that temporary dark spot that had surfaced, and the peculiar rate at which his arm was healing (that may or may not lead to her cutting his stitches out), the day seemed exponentially brighter. “You need to get better before then; I don’t want to be the only one swimming.”
Spinning around to face him, Scarlet planted her hands gently on his shoulders and brushed the tips of his nose with hers. “You are up for some real camping, right? Like campfires, tents, and roughing it? You don’t strike me as being too dainty for that shit… well, at least, not when you aren’t injured. Otherwise you’re just like a full grown kid.”
Rising onto her toes, she made as if to plant a kiss on his mouth, but in the last second chose to gently nip his lower lip with a playful smirk. “I still owe you breakfast and coffee. Go sit your slightly drunk ass down, and ignore the smoke alarm if it goes off; I’m going to attempt to make pancakes from scratch.”
The Aries gently turned him and gave him a light push between the shoulder blades, to send him off to the living room, calling a playful, “You can practice Mario Kart while I’m cooking so that you don’t suck so bad the next time I kick your ass! I want an honourable victory!”, before turning her attention to the kitchen counter, even thinking to grab the apron that he had deemed ‘cute’.
It wouldn’t have been accurate to call the chemical redhead’s next culinary attempt a complete disaster. The kitchen was turned into a mess, as usual, but there was nothing wrong with the consistency or look of the golden pancake when at last they were out of the frying pan and on a couple of plates. The smoke alarm had only gone off once, at that!
“Hey, I think these are actually edible! I’m getting better.” The young woman called, doing a bit of preliminary tidying and wiping down the apron before piling the plates on an old wooden try and carrying them into the living room, where the Sandman still appeared to be struggling with the Nintendo controller.
“See? I didn’t even burn down the house.” She commented, taking a seat next to him and playfully bumping his good shoulder. By the looks of the cold cloth draped over her wrist, however, she had appeared to have burned her hand, and was either too embarrassed to bring attention to it, or simply couldn’t be bothered. Especially not in light of the stitches going up Alair’s arm… How petty would it be to complain of a burn, when the poor guy had practically had his arm torn open?
Posted: Sun Sep 29, 2013 10:22 pm
It was the ideal time of year to hold a music festival in the park; the weather of late summer brought pleasantly warm days and chilly nights in the higher elevations, with the deciduous trees just barely beginning their autumn shift in color. Alair had seen the Shenandoahs before, but he had never before had the opportunity to explore them in detail. He was familiar with camping, familiar with the outdoors, familiar with short-term survival in the wild (at least for him, whose physical needs could generally be ignored longer than most), and he could think of no one he would rather share such an excursion with than the feisty red-haired city girl he’d grown recently to adore.
He smirked when she took his lower lip between her teeth, narrowing his eyes playfully. “Real camping,” he repeated in affirmation, his excitement shining in his blue eyes. “I’ve got us covered. Including the all-important knowledge of how to build kick-ass, authentic s’mores over a kick-ass, authentic campfire. You have had a s’more, right?” He laughed, wrapping his good arm around her and giving her an affectionate squeeze. “I won’t argue with you on the coffee and grub front. I think the leprechaun juice went straight to my bloodstream.”
Neither of them could argue with that. When Scarlet relinquished her grip of him, he swayed a little, steadying himself with his left hand on the kitchen counter. He laughed, apparently all too aware of his current state of pleasant inebriation. Just as any other human, his empty belly had done him no favors that morning in terms of warding off tipsiness. Pancakes would hit the spot. Despite his stammered offers to help prepare the late breakfast, the redhead banished him from the kitchen—and he reluctantly obeyed, retreating back to the living room where the game sat in pause, asking silently if he wanted to try again.
As it turned out, that was precisely what he wanted to do. He left it in two-player mode and grabbed his controller, this time experimenting—with very little grace—with incorporating his right hand. It was easier without the bandage, but it was still a little painful; healing quickly often meant more intense pain in the shorter duration of the injury. Alair persisted, however, and after a few more rounds he had improved his performance only enough to avoid one or two levels of humiliation. He was frowning childishly when she returned with the wooden tray, and it was clear in the way he did not hesitate to put down the controller that he had had quite enough of his own lackluster execution.
“Aside from the smell of melted plastic—or whatever that is—I gotta say I’m impressed,” he teased, sitting back on the couch and resting the tray across his lap. He sliced into the fluffy stack and dipped the large bite in syrup. “Jeez, Scarlet,” he said between bites, “I guess French toast was like your fuckin’ gateway drug into culinary land. These are pretty good.” He nudged her side, his expression falling when he caught sight of the cloth draped over her hand. “What’s up with that?” he asked, concerned. “You okay?”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you [18+]
It wasn’t a big deal; it wasn’t even all that painful (although her pain tolerance was decidedly high), so why did it bother her so much? Scarlet had never cared about these things around Caspar. If he thought she was a culinary disaster, so what? She didn’t cook for him, and when she did, she didn’t really care about the way it looked or tasted, or even what he thought of it. But she had never really been inclined to impress Caspar; sure, he was important to her, but not in the same way that she discovered Alair was. Not in a way that made his opinion of her matter more than anyone else’s… As a result, a simple mishap such as a burn made her worried that she really did colour herself as a klutz, and that the impression would remain in the Sandman’s mind.
So in an attempt to change the subject, Scarlet turned her attention to the Sandman’s injured arm after polishing off one of her own pancakes. “You weren’t using that arm to game with, were you? Because just because the bandages are off doesn’t mean you can go all out with it, Sandman. Those stitches are still in your skin, and they can still tear, and infection can still set in. Don’t make me go all ‘mom’ on you.” It was still uncanny, the way the skin had knitted together so quickly, leaving nothing but a healing pink like directly beneath the dark sutures. Did all supernatural embodiments of abstract concepts heal ten times more quickly than the average human being? The redhead almost wanted to ask, but truth be told, a bigger part of her decided that she really didn’t want to know.
“So, what am I down to now? A week of cooking you breakfast?” It was more like a week and a half, but in the Sandman’s slowly dwindling inebriated state, there was a chance that his memory was not at its sharpest. And if that was the case, then she fully intended to exploit the opportunity.
When both plates were finally empty, the Aries picked up the tray and migrated back to the kitchen, where she filled the sink with soap and hot water to let the dirty dishes soak. Lazy-man’s dish washing technique, as Caspar affectionately referred to it. Lazy or not, it was a hell of a lot more convenient to have the residue fall off with little to no scrubbing after hours of soaking. And anyway, with the stinging burn on the side of her hand, and Alair’s stitches, it wasn’t particularly advisable for either of them to be submerged up to the elbows in water.
And, speaking of Alair’s hand, yet again…
“…I’ll be right back,” she called from the kitchen, grabbing her cell phone and heading for her bedroom. “You keep practicing your Mario Kart skills—single-handedly. You be good to that injured arm of yours.”
Deciding that it might relieve a little bit of anxiety to be informed, the chemical redhead collapsed against her pillows and browsed the Youtube app on her phone, on the off chance that she’d find something useful. It’s not like he’s bleeding anymore… How bad can cutting out sutures be?
As it turned out, her anxiety didn’t encompass torn skin and blood, and it didn’t matter that she wouldn’t be dealing with either of those. After browsing a few videos, some geared towards medical training and others dramatizations for the sake of entertainment, Scarlet’s face had all but drained of colour, and was fortunate to already be lying down. There was a reason medical school had never been a prospect in her future; she just couldn’t handle anything medical, gory or not.
“So… hypothetically, what do I get in return if I end up being the one who has to fucking cut those sutures out of your arm?” She called feebly from her bedroom, over the predictable, over the top sounds from the video game that Alair was playing. “Because it had better be more than reprieve from my breakfast duty. Seriously.”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you [18+]
His tone left no room for argument. He leaned reassuringly into her side as he took her wounded arm with his good hand, his face hovering so close to hers he could smell the syrup on her exhales. Resting her wrist delicately on his knee, he lifted the damp fabric away and pressed his first three fingers to the small pink blister beneath. He may not have been able to take advantage of anesthesia’s benefits himself, but he could certainly administer a similar relief to others—a gift he was, at present, extraordinarily grateful for. The Sandman was neither heartless nor unkind, but he had also never been one to mindlessly donate his peculiar talents; there was no way he could put an end to all the suffering in the world anyway, he’d figured. But now, with Scarlet at his side, he understood the need to give it away, to dispense all the comforts in his power, for the first time in…well, since her.
The Sandman’s startling azure gaze did not stray from his companion’s face during the short process; he removed his touch and replaced the cool cloth all without looking away, hoping that if she turned—and she did—he could express his care in an altogether different way, sealed with a feather-light kiss on her soft lips. He pulled away from the exchange with a smile that still testified to his state of inebriation, humming his approval in his throat before leaning back to settle against the cushions. “Better?” he asked coyly, but not without a hint of hopefulness.
He thanked her for returning their dishes to the kitchen, biting his tongue against protesting her departure as she disappeared into her room. Looking down at his own exposed wound, he ran the index finger of his good hand experimentally over the vertebrae of the sutures. “All you have to do is cut them,” he said, as though that were going to be good enough to reassure her. Realizing the ridiculousness of the statement, he chuckled. “Really, alpha. Just…snip them, you know?” He made a cutting gesture by spreading his index and middle fingers and bringing them together again quickly. “We can tag team it. You cut, I’ll…pull them out.”
Alair did his best to sound confident, but in this instance—whether or not it was the direct result of his alcohol consumption—he was failing rather miserably. He shuddered. The thought of each individual stitch sliding end-from-end, one at a time through the skin of his arm was more than enough to turn his stomach. But he cleared his throat and tried to smile it off, holding out his arm to indicate his readiness for the upcoming torture.
“Maybe we could, like, actually get ice cream after this? I'll buy,” he suggested, wincing prematurely as Scarlet prepared to make the slices. “Assuming I don’t end up puking all over you. And maybe I'll give you another dose of the burn-antidote. You know, as thanks.” He winked, fidgeting, but his mirth was still not quite enough to cover his uneasiness. "Let's get this over with for both our sakes, huh?"
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you [18+]
But it didn’t matter: she was going to do this. Alair… She owed Alair more than he perhaps even realized. He’d stuck up for her on countless occasions, and those stitches in his arm were likely an attest to the reason she was alive and unharmed. He had intervened in her dreams, saved her from a terrible fate that her own subconscious mind had in store for her. If Scarlet was on the road to emotional as well as psychological recovery, then it had nothing to do with the absentee roommate to whom she’d once thought she owed the world. It had everything to do with Alair, and she was not about to let him down.
But it didn’t mean she had to like it.
“No. No, please, save the descriptors,” she groaned, sighing heavily as she made for the kitchen to retrieve a pair of scissors. The Sandman just happened to be really freaking lucky that the pair she reserved for trimming her split ends were small, fine and sharp, and needed only to be sterilized under some hot water. “You aren’t going to touch them, understand? If we’re going to do this, then you’re going to do as I say, got it? No… pulling. Ugh, if only I could do this with my eyes closed…”
Grabbing a towel and a bottle of peroxide from the bathroom on her way, the redhead moved towards the living room and took a seat next to her injured companion… whose arm really didn’t look very injured anymore. Where flesh had one been severed, a raised, pink scar had already finished forming. The only thing left was to be rid of the sutures.
“We’ll discuss ice cream later; I don’t want to talk about food right now.” The young woman murmured, exhaling slowly as she took Alair’s arm and rested it upon her knee, much like he had done her injured hand to numb the sting of her burn. If only it were as simple as magic… That, unfortunately, was not a talent that Scarlet had at her disposal.
“For fuck’s sake, Magic Man, I haven’t even touched you yet!” She grumbled when he flinched, only offering a sympathetic and apologetic blue-eyed glance after the fact. “Just try to relax. Please, please try to relax, because I am so far from relaxed, and if you freak out, I think I’ll faint.”
Stalling wouldn’t get this over with any faster, so without further ado, Scarlet made the first snip at a suture near his wrist. Ok. That wasn’t so bad… Neither was sliding the wire out of his skin. No worse than taking an earring out… That was, at least, what she told herself. As to whether it hurt Alair, she couldn’t bear to look up and see his face to determine if he was in pain. So she just kept going.
It wasn’t until about halfway through that the very nature of the task really began to sink in. That was when Scarlet’s hands began to shake, when her vision started to go spotty because she actually forgetting to breathe, and for a brief moment, she feared this would not end well.
“Alair?” She breathed his name, putting the scissors on her lap for fear of dropping them. There was desperation in her blue eyes when she met Alair’s azure irises, a fear that she might not be able to continue. But instead of fainting (like she felt she might), Scarlet leaned toward the Sandman, grabbing him by the front of his collar so that he could meet her halfway in a kiss. Longer than their brush of lips after he’d soothed her burn, and far more desperate, but when she pulled away after what seemed like an eon, her face was not the ashen colour of someone about to quickly lose consciousness.
“…okay. I think I can get this done with.” She said at last, that small, intimate reassurance all that she needed to recharge her confidence (not to mention tolerance).
And the rest went seamlessly; the stitches came out without any trouble, there was no blood, and where Alair’s skin had, for the most part, patched itself up, his discomfort appeared to (mercifully) be minimal, even when she dabbed the area delicately with peroxide on a cotton swab. Scarlet had never been happier to put down a pair of scissors.
“Never again.” The Aries groaned, pressing her forehead into her dark-haired companion’s shoulder. “You are never allowed to get fucking stabbed again because I never want to have to cut out your stitches again. Are we clear on this?”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you [18+]
As much as he was willing to help out, he was just as grateful that the red-haired makeshift doctor forbade him from involvement; as soon as she rounded the corner, scissors in hand, his stomach flip-flopped with anxiety. The only consolation he had (apart from knowing it was an unfortunate but necessary step to his recovery) was that it was Scarlet performing the act, with her gentle touch and genuine care; her work was simultaneously efficient and tender, the warmth of her fingers reassuring him even as she began the sensitive procedure.
Alair looked away with a grimace, focusing his stare on the point where the two walls met the cracked ceiling. Breathe, he reminded himself silently, narrowing his eyes as the pressure of Scarlet’s work at last began to register against his flesh. Inhale, exhale. One tiny snip at a time. The experience, as he’d predicted, was not exactly agonizing this time around, but the sensation was decidedly more unnerving; he imagined this might be what it felt like to receive stitches, had his body been open to accepting local anesthesia. There was a pulling, a sharp tugging, and a bit of a sting as the wiry thread snaked its way out of his skin. If he concentrated on the experience too hard, it made him queasy. Breathe in, breathe out. One, two…
He lost count by the time Scarlet came to a halt, and when he opened his eyes he realized that she was only about halfway finished. But what was worse than the sight of his unfinished wrist was the expression on the redhead’s face. Her complexion was ashen and pale, her eyes glassy when at last she looked up to meet his gaze. The Sandman, momentarily forgetting about the half-done course on his arm, leaned forward and reached out with his good hand as if to catch her should she faint. But before he could formulate what was happening, her hands were entangled in his collar and her lips were upon his, lingering a good deal longer than the sweet, swift peck he’d given her only minutes prior. He smiled against the movement of her mouth, returning the gesture eagerly, the hand he’d thrown out to catch her finding the skin of her neck and tangling in the back of her crimson locks.
“I think I needed that too,” he breathed when she pulled away, donning a lopsided grin. “Thanks, Doc,” he added playfully, “you sure know how to put your patients at ease.”
The remainder of the removal was quicker, easier, and judging by the look on Scarlet’s face they were both equally glad for the act to be over and done with. Flexing the fingers of his freed hand experimentally, he wrapped both arms around her back when she leaned forward into his shoulder, pulling her into a tight, grateful embrace that he held for a good long time. His wound, liberated from the seaming holding together his flesh, felt immeasurably better without the unnecessary pressure of the stitches.
“Right,” he agreed as she pulled away, his smirk lighting up his eyes that were, for the first time in the past twenty-four hours, pain-free. “No more getting stabbed. It wasn’t pleasant for me either, you know.” He wrinkled his nose teasingly, then brought his arm between them to study what remained of the injury. “You know, it looks better already,” he commented, a little taken aback. “And neither of us barfed. I think I deserve an award. Or a reward. I think we could both use some fresh air, huh?”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you [18+]
Scarlet was spent; it showed in her face, in her posture, and even in her voice. There was no doubt in her mind that Alair realized the mental willpower (not to mention the devotion to his well-being) that it had taken to bring herself to complete the task, but damn… If she’d thought cleaning around the sutures had been an ordeal, it was nothing compared to this.
Folding the discarded pieces of wiry thread in the towel, Scarlet waited until her head stopped spinning to get to her feet, discarding the entire towel in the trash. A memory of a task about which she wanted to forget very quickly.
“Yes. Yes, fresh air sounds like a damn good idea. You wanted ice cream, right? Let’s get ice cream—my treat. If we walk, maybe by the time we get there I’ll have an appetite again.”
The redhead didn’t wait for her azure-eyed companion to reply before she slipped a pair of shoes on her feet and grabbed her wallet from the kitchen counter. “Come on. I know a place that makes soft-serve in twenty-four flavours.”
Flashing a smile that lit up her otherwise ashen face (it would be a while yet before she recovered from that previous ordeal), she locked the door behind them after he caught up, and her arm found a place around his lower back when they were side-by-side on the sidewalks of late afternoon. It was a good thing the Aries could more or less go on autopilot when it came to the streets of DC, because she seemed positively zoned out, floating in another dimension as she leaned against the Sandman, only half-aware of all that was going on around her. Tripping herself up on a square of sidewalk, raised from frostheave some winter passed, and very nearly losing her balance was enough to snap her out of the semi-trance with a startled laugh.
“Fuck… I guess playing doctor took more out of me than I thought.” She grinned sheepishly, exchanging a look with Alair. “I could use a good dose of pure sugar right about now… and a coffee. A really, really big coffee; maybe with a shot of espresso.”
Caring little for the indignity of very nearly falling flat on her face, Scarlet’s hand slipped from Alair’s waist to trail down his good arm, hooking her fingers through his own warm digits when they reached his hand. Casting a tired (albeit bright) smile over her shoulder, she led him inside a little shop on the corner that, much like Geoff’s own shrine to music, could have otherwise been easily overlooked.
The tiny ice cream parlor was far from bright and retro, and instead harboured something of a country rustic atmosphere. Wooden tables and chairs with nics and dents and carved initials, matching walls comprised of light wooden panels, with a faded counter at the centre (blatantly an add-on when the place had become a parlour, constructed of fake wooden boards that stood out like a sore thumb in comparison to the rest of the place). “Believe it or not, this is all that’s left of the original building that stood here like a century ago.” Scarlet mentioned off-handedly to Alair, pointing to a plaque on the wall that boasted those very words. “Used to be a pub in the 1940s. I guess the owner here didn’t have the heart to change much of the layout, even though it went from serving beer to serving ice cream.”
Stepping up to the counter, the chemically altered redhead knew what she wanted before the teenager behind the cash register even had time to ask. “What do you want, Magic Man? Go find us a table, I’ll bring it over.”
Shortly after Alair picked out some seats for the two of them, Scarlet made good on her word and brought over the tray. The look on Alair’s face at the sheer amount of ice cream in her own designated bowl made of waffle cone made her smirk. “What? I’m tired; I need a good sugar rush. And coffee.” Sure enough, next to the very large order of what appeared to be a sundae (all of which she pulled in her direction) was a tall paper cup full of steaming coffee. “Did you think I was joking? You need to learn to take me more seriously, Magic Man. And before you ask, no—I am not sharing.”
Full lips pulled into a broad grin, she handed Alair his modest order (in comparison to hers, at least), then took a large spoonful of whipped cream from atop her sundae. “Okay, so you might end up having to pull me off the ceiling; but it’s not like I plan on sleeping tonight, anyway. Not after… that.” Suppressing a shudder, she put her spoon down to take a long swig of coffee, not so much as flinching at the hot temperature that conflicted with the cool of the ice cream still on her tongue. “Not for all the fucking nightmares it could give me. Hey, let’s pull an all-nighter, slumber party style; I’ll bring out the pajama pants, popcorn and chick flicks.” Already giddy from those few bites of ice cream, mixed with the caffeine now flooding her veins, it was difficult to glean whether or not she was joking.
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you [18+]
It was a warmth that he felt even now, as he traipsed after her down the dim apartment stairs. The weather was pleasant, the temperature having dropped after the front of the week’s past storm. Even the exhaust-tainted breeze of the inner city was refreshing to inhale after his suffering indoors. He smiled softly down at his companion as she snaked her arm around the small of his back, and in turn he reached up to wrap his good arm around her shoulders and gently squeeze her opposite shoulder. They fit together as though they had never been apart, falling into perfect, comfortable stride with one another as Scarlet guided them through the maze of cracked concrete and gray asphalt.
Or so it was until she misplaced her feet, stumbling against him unexpectedly as they passed the uneven block of sidewalk. He grinned, gripping her to keep her upright, and did his best not to chuckle. But a smirk illuminated his face nonetheless, and he took her hand with another tight squeeze. “It’s a good thing I found out how clumsy you are after you came at my battle wound with scissors,” he said teasingly, purposely swaying into her path to bump into her side. He pulled her close again by the hand, but she was already leading him towards a narrow door that, despite its rough appearance and chipped sign, was their ice cream parlor destination.
He held the door for her and followed her inside, smiling as he was hit with the familiar scent of sugar and coolant of the admittedly bizarre interior. Ordering his favorite at her prompt—a banana split, with chocolate instead of vanilla ice cream on top—he made his way to a seat near the cloudy windows and waited for Scarlet to return. When at last she slid in opposite him, he clapped a hand over his mouth to stifle a loud guffaw.
“Jesus,” he breathed behind his palm, his blue eyes alight with mirth. “You didn’t tell me you were ordering a fucking mountain. I would have gotten two of these babies.” He lifted his banana split from the tray and picked up his spoon, looking down as if contemplating where to begin. But instead of digging into his own helping, he reached over to steal a morsel of Scarlet’s across the table—which he popped into his mouth with a very satisfied smirk. “Sorry,” he said, in a way that indicated he was not sorry at all, not even a little.
He laughed heartily and leaned back in his seat. “You’re just so fucking cute when you’re irritated. And high on sweets,” he told her between gigantic bites, nudging her foot under the table. “If you eat all that and drink that coffee, you really are gonna be up all night. You know,” he said coyly, gesturing at her with his spoon between his fingers, “I can fix that. You don’t know all my tricks yet, alpha.”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you [18+]
Reaching across the table with her spoon, Scarlet stole a bite of the Sandman’s banana split, revenge for the lost spoonful of ice cream that he had not so stealthily swiped from her own bowl. “Fix what? The unhealthy amount of energy this amount of sugar and coffee is going to give me?” Arching an eyebrow, the corners of her mouth turned up in a smirk. “Alair, I don’t care if you’re the fucking Sandman; you do know who you’re talking to, right? I’ve practically perfected the art of not sleeping, and functioning without it. Before you walked into my life at 4AM that morning, sleeping was not my norm, it was an exception to the rule. And, to be very honest, this whole getting ‘regular hours of sleep’ thing these past few weeks… It feels fucking weird.”
For a relatively small young woman, the amount of ice cream that she could put away was actually very impressive (not to mention the speed at which she could do it). Alair was only halfway through his banana split when she took the last bite of her massive sundae, at least having the decency not to eat the now soggy waffle bowl (what? She didn’t want to come across as thatgluttonous!). “Honestly, I’m not sure trying to sleep with this much sugar in your system is even good for you. That alone is enough to give you nightmares, nevermind cutting stitches out of someone’s arm… And we can’t have you on nightmare patrol every night. That just wouldn’t be fair.”
Scarlet knocked back what was left of her coffee and gathered the sticky napkins on the tray. “You know, I might be clumsy, but I fucking put you to shame when it comes to ice cream, Magic Man. I must’ve put away more than twice as much as you, and in half the time.” The young woman planted a peck on his cheek as she passed to deposit the garbage in the trash bins. “Come on; let’s go get this slumber party started. After what happened with Devon, I don’t really want to be out this way past late afternoon. We’ll order Chinese take-out again if it makes you happy. Or maybe you'll let me pierce your ear; if I can take out stitches, why the hell not?”
Leaning against the doorframe, she tapped her foot in mock impatience while she waited for the Sandman to finish. “Come on, Magic Man; I’m practically buzzing right now. I’m ready to grow wings and fly all the way home, or something.” Scarlet grinned when, at last, he joined her at the door, and her hand found his once again as she dragged him back out into the sunlight, which had long since been high in the sky. There was something qualitatively different about scarlet these past three days, a spring in her step and a brightness to her smile that could not be contributed solely to the current spike in her blood sugar. It wasn’t just the fact she was eating more regularly, attaining more hours of true sleep, or finally finding herself free of a dependent life tethered to Caspar Brighton’s side as a result of her own insecurities. Alair’s presence, his authenticity and for all he had done for her… In a way, she felt as though it was changing her. But not for the worse, and not into something that she wasn’t supposed to be. Like a caterpillar crawling out of its cocoon only to discover it has the wings of a butterfly, Scarlet finally felt like she was reaching heights that, alone, she’d never have been able to reach. After all, were it not for the Sandman’s faith and trust in her, there was no way in hell she’d ever have been able to trust her fine motor skills enough to cut the stitches out of someone else’s arm.
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you [18+]
“And caffeine,” he added teasingly, kicking her foot a little more forcefully this time when she began to tap her toe. “What’s with that, are you impatient or just that hyped up already?” He laughed. “You know what, don’t answer that. I think I know what you’d say.” The next two bites he took were purposely sluggish, taking off one tiny spoonful at a time and letting each little mound melt on his tongue before swallowing. He narrowed his eyes impishly at his red-haired companion, then broke his own composure with another hearty chuckle. “Don’t ever play poker,” he advised, amused by her pointed unamusement. “But okay, okay, I’m hurrying, I’m hurrying!”
He finished the last of his banana split in three Alair-sized mouthfuls, rendering him completely incapable of speaking for fear of triggering an ice cream headache. With a pleasantly full belly, he slid out from the booth and accompanied the redhead outside, his fingers intertwining automatically with hers. “I admit defeat,” he confided in her, a sugar-fueled spring in his step. “You out-ice-creamed me. And this time I don’t want a rematch, because if we’re getting Chinese later I’d like to, you know, actually have room for it. I was in enough pain last night. So yeah, I’m in, as long as you don’t paint my nails.”
He grinned down at her. For a moment, he considered simply taking them home, to spare both of them the late afternoon walk with bellies full of frozen dairy, but he thought better of it almost immediately—he, and most of all Scarlet, quite frankly needed the little trek to work off some of that energy. She was certainly right; there was no way either of them would sleep that night (which was, coincidentally, not a regular occurrence for either of them anyway), unless they suffered a debilitating crash. Alair somehow doubted it. Scarlet had loaded herself with enough fuel to last well into the night hours by his calculations, and he had to admit that a slumber party-style hangout sounded fun.
“I told you, you don’t know all my tricks,” he went on, continuing their conversation from the strangely-decorated parlor as they strode casually towards Scarlet’s flat. “Nightmare duty isn’t what I’m talking about.” His azure eyes sparkled. “Have you never wondered where I get my title? The crazy stories aren’t all crazy. Just most of them.”
Leaving it at that, he held the door for her when they got to the familiar building’s front doors, looking twice to make sure they weren’t being followed by any other of the redhead’s enemies. When they got up to the apartment, he collapsed onto the couch with the groan of blissful self-indulgence, tugging Scarlet down to the cushions with him. “So I’m not really hip on the slumber party protocol,” he admitted, feigning embarrassment. “Does it involve making out, by any chance?” Without waiting for a definitive answer, he leaned over and planted a kiss on her lips, pulling away only long enough to tuck a stray lock of her hair from her face before diving into another.
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you [18+]
Funny, how that one bizarre night had led to such a bizarre cascade of events that had brought them together… Nevermind the manslaughter that she’d committed in the first dream where Alair had manifested. A dream that had led to a pink scar across her palm that led to a matching pink scar across the Sandman’s wrist.
And it had all begun with a simple cup of coffee at an ungodly hour of the morning.
“Or are you talking about your fairy dust? Do you even have sand, Sandman? Where do you even keep it? Your pockets don’t exactly look very full—and no, I am not just checking you out. I’m a little more discreet than that.” With a shameless chuckle, she planted a kiss on his cheek and gave his waist a gentle squeeze. “If you’re so sure I don’t know all your tricks, then I guess you’re just going to have to show me, sometime. When you feel like not being one of those pricks who keeps alluding to things that he never reveals.”
If the giggle that followed wasn’t an indication as to just how childishly high-strung the Aries’ was, then the way she stuck her tongue out in a playful mocking gesture confirmed she didn’t actually think he was a jerk. The sugar rush (combined with caffeine) was apparently hitting her as quickly as did alcohol, and it would have been a gross overestimation of her tolerance to assume that she was any more functional than she was when she was drunk. Scarlet practically skipped all the way back to her apartment building, hauling Alair along by his good arm, until she was forced to break contact to unlock the door and let them both in.
Individually, the two of them could be anywhere, at any given time, it seemed (perhaps moreso in Alair’s case, given his uncanny teleportation skills); and yet, as a pair, they always seemed drawn to the ragged old couch in the living room, sinking into its embrace as they sank into one another’s embrace. The redhead was more than happy to fall next to Alair, slinging her legs across his lap as she stretched luxuriously. “What? You mean to tell me you’ve never been invited to a slumber party?” Scarlet feigned astonishment, but that gentle tease was short-lived, as she once again found herself completely taken by another intimate moment with her blue-eyed companion. That question had laid itself so terribly open to warrant a snide or teasing remark, but Scarlet didn’t even feel the urge. Not with Alair so close, the warmth of his body as reassuring and comforting as the taste of sweets that still lingered on his lips. Her hands, first resting atop his shoulders, fell to the front of his shirt, where she hooked her fingers into the fabric and pulled him closer. Dizzy from lack of breathing, combined with the rush of sugar and caffeine in her blood, the redhead found herself between a rock and a hard place, knowing she’d soon have to pull away to collect herself, and very much not wanting to.
Almost as if driven by a frenzy, gliding on a high stemming from both the sugar and the thrill of the Sandman's lips against her's, Scarlet gradually pulled herself onto his lap, closing the distance between their bodies as her fingers slipped again from his shirt down to his waist, where they hooked in the belt loops of his jeans. Perhaps more dangerous than even alcohol, that volatile mixture of pure sugar and caffeine brought her frisky playfulness to a whole different level, made this moment with Alair something all the more intense and serious, made her forget that she should breathe...
Of course, necessity to breathe eventually won out, and she detached from the Sandman just long enough to draw a few dregs of oxygen into her lungs. When her blue eyes met with Alair's bright azure irises, they were only partially focused and wrought with an inner conflict between self-control and a guilty sort of desire. "You should've known better, Sandman" she murmured, lips barely parted from his, "than to get me going when I've got more energy to burn than I even know what to do with. I hold myself responsible for nothing."
And then she was kissing him again, lips moving eagerly against his, fingers digging into the denim of his jeans such that she feared her nails would tear the fabric. They only loosened their hold long enough to grab the hem of his shirt and give it a fierce tug upward, temporarily forcing his arms up as she hauled the garment over his head, discarding it on the floor behind her. "Responsible for nothing," she reiterated, lips grazing his ear as she whispered, hands finding a comfortable spot against the warmth of his bare torso.
O.o.C: I changed the end of this because of that stupid gif I REGRET NOTHING I AM RESPONSIBLE FOR NOTHING I BEAR NO SHAME
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you [18+]
He could have pulled away; he could have outstretched his arms to hold the young woman at arm’s length, blanketing the start of their embrace with a ceasefire and holding Scarlet to her promises for the evening. But he couldn’t—he didn’t want to push her away, he didn’t want to hold her back. As she moved across the cushions to resettle on his lap, the clash of their sudden heat was enough to make him realize that he had been craving exactly this since their first true exchange at the keyboard in the music store—he had longed for this kind of proximity, a closeness that was both intimate and carnal at once, a collision of fierce desires that had finally, at long last, found the perfect opportunity to surface.
No, he had never been invited to a slumber party, and no, he had never participated in the traditional rituals of such get-togethers, but in that moment, those thoughts were further from his mind than he had the capacity to fathom. This was not, he presumed, the sort of night his companion had imagined, but she also did not seem to care that he’d deviated from her propositions—the way she had sprung onto him, latched her fingers into the folds of his denim, the movement of her mouth against his, this was certainly the preferred schedule of events. And even if he had been the one to (jokingly) initiate the proceedings, she had taken his invitation with exactly the sort of enthusiasm he had secretly hoped to invoke.
He felt animated, aflame, possessed by a demon whose scalding presence beneath his skin was as welcome as the redhead’s lips upon his. When her hands found the hem of his shirt and tugged it above his head, he raised his arms to ease the removal, his hunger for her kisses increasing exponentially in the split second they were forced to be apart. Freed from the restrictions of cotton and cloth, he bit her lower lip and hummed a note of satisfaction deep in his throat, wrapping one liberated arm around the small of her back and pulling her aggressively closer as he straightened his posture against the cushions. He smiled against her mouth as her fingers trailed across his bare skin, and he shivered with utter contentment beneath the new sensation of her ravenous touch.
His hands, too, craved the texture of her smooth skin. The sliver of exposed midriff between her jeans and her shirt was an agonizing tease, and as the temperature shot ever skyward he at last seized the chance to toy with the devious hem. He slipped his fingertips just beneath its gentle cling against her abdomen, allowing his palms to slide up and down the length of her back beneath the thin textile. The feel of her trembling muscles beneath his hands coaxed forth a surge of boldness that had him pulling the barrier of fabric upwards and over her head until, shirt tossed away and forgotten, hot skin brushed hot skin.
Soft breathy laughter escaped between desperate, ragged exhales, his mischievous blue eyes startlingly electric as he broke from her mouth to kiss along the length of her jaw. His tongue and lips played with equally devilish zeal as he descended to her neck and collarbones, and for a moment he was utterly lost in her presence, intoxicated as if far away…and yet there she was, pressed against him, both as real and incredulous as a dream from which he never wanted to wake...
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you [18+]
The redhead felt the corners of her mouth tug into a grin as the Sandman’s lips grazed her bottom lip, a favour that she returned as soon as the opportunity presented itself. Her hands traveled the expanse of exposed skin, from his shoulders back down to his waist, one finding its place at the back of his neck to prolong kisses that left her giddily deprived of oxygen, head spinning with the energy she could practically feel coming off of her companion’s body.
A touch was such a small thing, and yet the reaction that the brush of Alair’s fingertips on her midriff elicited in the young woman was pronounced enough that she felt her breath (what little of it she had) catch in her throat. It stirred such a curious spectrum of reactions that should have occurred exclusively of one another, with heat blooming on her cheeks (a colour that came close to matching her hair), and goosebumps rising on her skin, despite her temperature which was surely a few degrees higher. From his touch alone, a myriad of realizations occurred to her: how much she wanted it, how intensely it affected her, and how uncomfortable was the fabric of the sleeveless top that clothed her upper body (one that, up until just now, she had always considered comfortable).
Either their minds were uncannily in sync (which, perhaps, was not so strange, given the turn of events), or Scarlet was well aware as to where it was going, and couldn’t have been more in accord. Because if Alair hadn’t hauled the slip of worn cotton up her back and over her head, she would not have been long to follow through with the task herself. The elimination of that one, simple barrier between their two bodies suddenly made all the difference, enough that the Aries’ sighed a breath against Alair’s lips that she hadn’t realized she’d been holding, pinpricks of stars dancing in her oxygen-deprived vision. Skin burning with the wick of this passion unleashed, she pressed her torso hard against the blue-eyed man’s, dead-set on stealing another kiss and temporarily disappointed when he withdrew, until she felt the warmth of his lips and tongue on her jaw and her neck and her shoulders; the soft sound that heard from her own throat reminded her that she was okay with this.
But that was the thing about Alair; contrary to leaving something to be desired, there was almost too much about him that she desired, a fact that was made all the more apparent by this energized overtake of thoughts and feelings of which she had always been aware, but which she had kept tenuously to the sidelines of her mind. This was what she wanted; he was what she wanted, and there was so much more to want…
At some point, lost as she had been in the sensation of the teasing ministrations of his mouth on her body, Scarlet’s fingers had found their way back to his denim waistband, digging into the gap between the obstructive fabric and his skin. And as she became aware of them once again, they traveled up his sides and to his shoulders, where she gently pushed until he broke away from his preoccupations and met her eyes. The fierce, unbridled energy and raw feeling in her gaze was all the communication required in that moment, and without a word, her lips seized his once again, meaningfully but only briefly before her hands gave a far more forceful shove to his right shoulder, turning his body and sending it backwards until it met the threadbare cushion of the old couch.
It all came so naturally that it was almost like she’d had time to rehearse, but that was the beauty of their dynamic, the Sandman and the chemically-altered redhead: nothing was rehearsed. Nothing was fake or feigned or exaggerated, everything was just so natural, as if they had known one another for more than a handful of weeks. Scarlet could read him, had come to anticipate how he moved, what would make him laugh or frown, so innately that in a single smooth movement, she judged just the right amount of pressure and just the right angle to take him off guard (maybe just a little) and send him sprawling beneath her.
She didn’t bother to hide the impish grin into which her mouth was drawn as she adjusted her position on his hips, drawing her hair over the side of one shoulder as she leaned down to kiss his lips again, and then his jaw, his neck, the crevice between his collarbones and the expanse above his heart. This—none of this—had been her anticipated evening. But all of it was so much better than what she could have possibly anticipated, and already, the sugar-crash that was bound to descend upon her later on was so justified.
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you [18+]
The craving for her skin to be pressed against his own had done little to prepare him for the shock of the actual experience. As soon as their torsos collided, muscles writhing against muscles, a jolt of electricity rocketed down his spine and spread like hot fireworks to the very tips of his limbs. His gleaming eyes flashed vivid blue through half-closed lids as he worked his way back up to the redhead’s mouth, his kisses caressing every inch of her body between her sternum and her jaw. His fingers worked ravenously at her back, tracing the ridges of her bony spine before cradling her slender waist between his palms; he simply could not get enough of her, no matter how he tried.
The heat of the dying day had given way to the night’s pleasant cool, but not even the thrown-open window could successfully battle the rising temperature between the walls of the apartment. The Sandman’s bare skin was coated in a delicate sheen of sweat that he found mirrored upon Scarlet’s glistening form, but rather than discourage their actions it seemed only to serve as a catalyst for further heat. They were synchronized, utterly concurrent in their mutual progression; while one ebbed the other flowed, the movements of their limbs and expressions gliding together as effortlessly as a choreographed dance. But it was a performance for which they needed no rehearsal; they fit together now like shifting musical harmonies, like variations on a rhythm to the same perfect tempo.
A hoarse gasp escaped Alair’s lips as the redhead, wearing a mischievous smile, knocked him aggressively to his back against the lopsided seat cushions, throwing both his balance and his expectations alike as she swung her leg across his hips and leaned forward over his prostrate body. His subsequent furrowed brow had nothing to do with irritation or confusion, but rather with desire—his azure gaze had darkened with passion, its sparkling expression catching the light wickedly as he shifted his stare upwards to meet hers with a smirk. And all at once, she was kissing the sharp line of his jaw, the tense, chiseled arc of his neck, the expanse of skin over his chest that could barely contain the mad racing of his heart below. He moaned musically, throwing his shoulders back against the upholstery as his spine arched upward to close the gap between them.
Taking a long inhale, he found control of his hands again and ran his fingertips up the length of her sides and towards her neck. His thumb caught purposely on the straps of her bra, however, and as she pressed her face to the angle of his collarbones he eased each side slowly down her arms to free the tops of her shoulders. There was something surprisingly intimate about the gesture, and he rocked forward, pressing his mouth against the bare, uninterrupted surface where her neck began its supple upward curve.
“Scarlet,” he whispered raggedly, his breath a hot exhale in her ear. He took her earlobe gently in his mouth, tapping the earring playfully against his teeth before pulling away and collapsing back to the sofa. His touch, never fully departing her body, moved down to her jeans where he tucked his thumbs beneath the denim’s waistband. Tugging her hips abruptly forward by the cloth, his face lit up with a hungry grin that matched the fiery glint in her own blue eyes. “Maybe you should come a little closer.”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you [18+]
Her lips were at his ear, teeth tugging gently on the lobe when the trail his fingertips traced up her sides caused her body to elicit a tickled sort of shiver, suddenly hyperaware in all of her senses, with this sense of touch proving the most intense. The two satin straps of the last garment that separated the expanse of her torso in its entirety from his bare chest ceased their annoying chafe between her neck and shoulder, slipping down her arms as guided by his thumbs, and a subtle sigh of contentment escaped her throat between determined kisses pressed to his collarbone. From the way she leaned forward, crimson locks spilling over one shoulder and cascading over one of his arms, the obnoxious contraption of satin, cotton and underwire pulled and cut against her collarbone, a sensation of which she was all the more aware now that the loops of ribbon sat limp at her elbows, with only the cotton and hooks at the back maintaining its position.
And just like he had been there when she had been sick, when she had needed him, the Sandman was quick to kiss it better, his soft lips like a balm against her sensitive skin. Her shoulders rolled back and relaxed in response, spine arching in a subtle curve that simultaneously pressed her lower body more firmly against his. He was here, he was real and he wasn’t going anywhere, but that alone didn’t satisfy. She could not get enough of him, of his kisses and his touch and the mischief that danced in those azure eyes, for which she had fallen (albeit unknowingly) from the very first time their gazes had met.
An impish giggle shook her shoulders when the hands she craved brought her forward all the more, hooked as they were in the waistband of her thrift store jeans, and the movement of his lips against her ear sent a pleasurable shiver down her spine. Maybe you should come a little closer. Taken from a literal perspective, positioned as she was over his hips, and with the warmth of their skin mutually contributing to the room’s rising temperature, it was hard to imagine that she could really be any closer.
But on a whole other level of intimacy, she knew that was far from the truth.
“Closer?” She breathed, eyes sparkling with the same devilish mischief mirrored in the eyes of the dark-haired other. It sounded like a challenge, and Alair should have known by now that there wasn’t a challenge to which Scarlet would not rise. But, perhaps that was what he was counting on. Leaning forward, her lips were but a breath away from his own when she murmured, “How much closer, Sandman?”
One of Scarlet’s hands withdrew from the taut muscles of Alair’s torso, just long enough to reach behind her back and expertly unlatch the hooks of her bra. The garment fell away almost instantaneously, and she slipped it off of her arms and tossed it aside with the remainder of the unwanted cloth discarded between the two of them. Without a moment’s consideration to follow, the redhead’s lips were on Alair’s once again, as she folded herself downward such that their bodies were flush up against one another’s, this time with nothing in the way of the electricity that seemed to dance between them.
And, once more, the mischievous young woman found her hands shamelessly trailing down his torso, traveling the denim of his jeans until they hooked into the front of the waistband, popping the button effortlessly with her thumb and index finger (at this point, she was just showing off her single-handed dexterity). “Well,” she breathed in-between kisses just below his ear. In the gathering dark of the small apartment, with the outdoor lights dancing in patterns on their bare skin, the dull yellow glow cast a fiery amber sheen to her red hair, and a determined shine to her half-lidded blue eyes. “How close is too close?”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you [18+]
Alair could never be classified as bashful or shy or even hesitant; his extraversion was contrarily as much a part of his nature as his role as Sleep. But in the throes of their current intensity, he found himself performing with a delicacy that bordered on trepidation. As hungry as he was to please her, to feel her, to experience every part of her, there was a part of him that firmly gripped the reins and held him back. There was something different, something special about this—about Scarlet—and in spite of his eagerness he was hardly willing to jeopardize their relationship for the sake of immediate satiation, as contradictory to his personality as it might have seemed.
But the steamier the living room got in the dimming gleam of the tumescent evening, the more insistent they both became—the progression led unsurprisingly by the young woman whose ripe lips were trailing mercilessly down the Sandman’s bare torso. He hummed deeply in a musical moan, closing his eyes as he exhaled and arching his back sharply to meet her sweet exploratory kisses. His pulse thundered in his ears as she suddenly sat up straight atop him and tossed back her mane of crimson locks, her deft fingers finding the clasp of her bra and tossing the undergarment aside, instantly forgotten. Freed of the only cloth barrier between their upper bodies, Alair felt his previous restraint dissolve in the presence of another potent wave of desire.
The tickle of her hot breath against his cheek as she leaned forward to murmur her response was maddening, and he tilted his head towards her until their lips were nearly touching. “Muchcloser,” he confirmed with a mischievous smirk, his voice devilishly husky in its half-whisper. With an impish twinkle to his azure eyes, his hands encircled her wrists as her fingers hovered at the zipper of his jeans. He sat up as far as he could, the exposed muscles of his abdomen tensing, and took a gentle nip at her earlobe before he guided her touch pointedly downward from the button she had so nimbly unfastened at his waistband. “What kind of question is ‘too close’?” he breathed with a gravelly chuckle, releasing her hands to allow his touch to travel freely up her sides. “Do I detect a challenge?” When they reached her waist, he flashed her a grin before he lifted her up and over in one swift, effortless movement, tossing her into the sofa cushions so that she was lying face-up.
The position-swap allowed him to climb over her, one hand supporting his weight while the other roamed shamelessly from her stomach to her chest. He paused for only a moment before he allowed his palm to travel over her breasts, his aching mouth finding hers with a fervent kiss. His free hand once again roamed downward to her own waistband, releasing its button with single-handed dexterity to rival Scarlet’s.
In the golden glow of the sultry city night, her skin shimmered with sweat. Consumed with renewed wanting, he didn’t hear the first round of knocking that resounded flatly from the apartment door; he allowed his kisses to trail southward until his lips brushed the softness of her breasts. But the tapping grew more insistent, more frequent—and he paused, furrowing his own soaked brow as he met the redhead’s gaze with confusion.
“Who the fuck is that…” he muttered, amused, reluctantly sliding toward the back cushions to allow Scarlet to slip from the couch. He ran his fingers through his damp hair, which was already sticking up at every possible angle, and breathed a slow exhale through pursed lips. “If that is fucking Cas, I swear to God…”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you [18+]
Because Alair was her new drug, only he was far more than just that. Through getting to know her mysterious companion, she had begun to find meaning in small things, had begun to get to know herself on a deeper level. And, what was best, unlike her tenuous relationship with Caspar, she did not need to seek the aid of the stars to make the Sandman want to stay.
He was here, with her, of his own accord.
And for that, Scarlet had never felt more solidly grounded. She had never felt so whole… Given her disposition, this sense of self-assurance and security that she’d never felt before, the redhead had no qualms about the pace of this intimate activity. Something had awakened in her, since their first kiss at Geoff’s quaint little shop; a reassuring feeling that told her it was ok to want to be near someone, to matter to them. A feeling that told her that Alair was ok, that his brother was right; he was someone she could trust, he was someone who was safe to love.
Right now, that exact same feeling reassured her that it was ok to want this, too, to immerse herself in this. In Alair. And that she needn’t feel guilty for it, because it was Alair, and everything about him was right.
The young woman’s challenging smirk twisted uncertainly when he caught her wrists at the waistband of his pants, and her blue eyes shot him a teasing glare that said, you don’t seriously mean to stop me now. Not now that they were in this deep, only half-clothed but entirely swathed in passion for one another. It became clear that his intent wasn’t at all to stop her when instead he guided her hands ever downward, drawing a low chuckle from deep in her chest when she felt his teeth gently pinch her earlobe. “Didn’t you know, Magic Man?” She murmured, low and sultry as her eager fingers gently squeezed his inner thighs. “The challenge was on the second you kissed me.”
It happened so fast—his hands on her waist, and suddenly the feeling of the couch cushions against her back—that Scarlet hardly had time to gasp in surprise (or feel silly for being surprised at all, figuring she should have seen it coming). The astonishment from their sudden shifts in positioning did not endure long, however; not when Alair’s hands, warm like electricity on her skin, traveled up the length of her torso, caressing her in that intimate way that she had denied every other human being. That she had denied Devon Saunders, inciting his disdain and vengefulness. Truth be told, up until now, she hadn’t imagined she’d ever want this; but that was before she’d known Alair. And Alair, everything about Alair, just felt right, and all of a sudden she not only craved his touch, but she couldn’t get enough of it.
Scarlet sighed heavily against his lips, pulse racing like a humming bird’s as she ran her hands over the taut muscles of his shoulders, fingers falling away and digging into the coarse textile of the cushions when his insistent kisses trailed across her chest. Her heartbeat had jumped into her ears, now, and there was no suppressing the moan that resonated in her throat as her spine arched upwards, the backs of her shoulders pressing hard into the scratchy cushions as her body moved at the discretion of its own desire. She didn’t even take note of the knocking on the door, until the spell was broken and Alair was sitting up.
“What…?” She sighed audibly, voice dripping with disappointment as she threw her legs over the side of the couch and stood, raking one hand through her tousled red hair as the other refastened the button on her jeans. “Cas doesn’t knock, he has a key; unless he’s just being cute, in which case I am going to fucking punch him.”
Deciding it was too much of a hassle to pick her clothes up off the floor, Scarlet grabbed the cotton robe hanging behind her bedroom door to cover her bare upper body, fastening the tie around her waist before unlocking the front door. “…Erika? Jesus, you could have called or something…”
The small brunette, dark hair pulled into a haphazard braid over her shoulder, pushed past Scarlet the moment the door was open. Waiting to be invited in clearly wasn’t her thing. “I did. I called you, and I fucking texted you, and you didn’t fucking respond.”
“Yeah, I was busy. My phone’s not attached to my hip.” Scarlet replied, surly, and folded he arms across her chest. “What’s this about? You can’t just… come barging into my house.”
“For one? My sister decided to come find me.” The younger woman replied, lips pursed and overall, appearing far less amused than even Scarlet. “Devon Saunders’ name came up so I wanted to make sure you didn’t get yourself into some shit with that fucker.”
“Okay,” the redhead sighed, raking her fingers through her hair again, “Nice to know you care, but… seriously, Rikki, now’s not a good time.”
Setting her ratty deck of tarot cards onto the kitchen counter, Erika turned and gave Scarlet a once-over, her dark gaze flat and humourless despite her remark, “Jeez, I’m sorry. My watch is broken and it didn’t tell me it was sex-o-clock.” The gathering of colour in Scarlet’s cheeks was all the confirmation she needed for her suspicions, and was more than happy to move on. “But now that you’ve got your pants on, I’m assuming you’ve got a moment to shut the fuck up and listen…”
The dark-haired girl trailed off, as if suddenly cluing into the fact the implications of Scarlet’s prior engagement meant that they weren’t alone. Side-stepping the counter, she peered into the living room, gaze hardening when her brown eyes met Alair’s blues. As if there was something automatically unlikeable about him, at first glance. “Right. The other half of your “busy” equation: he can leave. We need to talk. Emphasis on need."
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you [18+]
They had succumbed to one another in mutual trust and desire with a reward more potent even than intimacy. Intimacy was something they already possessed, manifesting in stolen kisses, clasped palms and entwined fingers, in laughter through the raindrops and sutures through the pain. Unbeknownst to them until this very moment, their shared intimacy had begun the moment the Sandman had mischievously teleported from the neighboring rooftop to the redhead’s narrow kitchen, the moment she had poured him a mug of scalding joe, and perhaps even the moment he had spontaneously called out to her in the fresh morning air. What had begun as a series of bizarre coincidences and aggressive confrontations had blossomed so naturally into romance that neither of them had detected the change as it happened—but Alair was very glad it had.
As unwelcome as the interruption had been, Sleep was not easily defeated; the abrupt halt of their actions had done nothing to dull the passion that had exploded between them, and Alair had a feeling this could only mean they would resume at a later date. Lying prostrate on the threadbare sofa, he stared unblinkingly at the ceiling as his companion tore away and answered the door. It was something to look forward to, or so he told himself in order to sate the ache of longing that had swelled in his chest. As if on cue, muffled voices—complete with the unmistakable sound of irritation in Scarlet’s hushed voice—filtered from the entryway. Reluctantly, he swung his legs to the side and reached for his discarded shirt, mopping his soaked brow with the wadded cloth before slipping it over his head.
He stood, adjusting and refastening his jeans at his waist, and ran his fingers once more through his hopelessly messy hair. Whoever their visitor was, it wasn’t Caspar Brighton; the dark-haired Sandman did not recognize the strange female’s voice, nor did he recognize the young brunette woman’s face when she peered into the living room in obvious search of his presence. Alair met her gaze fearlessly, his face twisting into its characteristic smirk despite her obvious displeasure. “It’s actually just after sex-thirty,” he quipped, stepping towards the kitchen. His expression fell somewhat as the stranger continued, disapproving of her sudden attitude with Scarlet. The redhead certainly did not need him to come to her rescue, but he was there should the requirement arise—a fact of which he wanted to make sure both parties were aware.
“Hold on. Who the fuck are you to barge in here and then tell me to leave?” he demanded. Despite his words, his tone was startlingly conversational; he could just as easily have asked how her weekend had been. He looked to Scarlet, his quirked brow the only obvious indication of his objection. “Really, though,” he went on casually to the redhead, as though the thought had just occurred to him, “who the hell is she? I hope she knows that I'm not going anywhere.”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you [18+]
“Cute.” She drawled humourlessly in response to his take on her bad joke, folding her arms across her chest. “You got yourself a cute one, Scarlet. And I don’t mean attractive.”
“All right: commentaries aside, now.” Not foreseeing this going anywhere positive, were she to leave Alair and Erika to their own devices to duke it out, Scarlet put herself between the two, stepping just a couple feet in front of Alair. He didn’t need her to step up in his defense any more than she needed him (not when it came to Erika, anyway), but it was her hopes that she could defuse this before it escalated. The girl with the tarot cards was not known for being diplomatic. “Alair, this is Erika. She’s… we work together. Erika, this is Alair—”
Erika held up a hand, pressing her other one against the side of the counter. “It’s fine, I already gather what you do together. Let’s move on and get down to business.”
Business doesn’t happen here, Erika, the redhead thought bitterly. Not in her home, and not—especially not—in front of Alair. Especially not while there was already enough fodder for questions later on, many which she wasn’t ready to answer, lest it disrupt the good thing they had going. It was also for that reason that she couldn’t simply ask the Sandman to take his leave, particularly not when just moments ago, the only things that had existed in their conjoined universe was one another; it wasn’t fair, and frankly, she preferred his company to Erika’s. “Whatever this is about, he can stay.” She said at last, meeting Erika’s eyes with conviction. “What is this about?”
The dark-haired girl, for about a half a beat, looked tempted to argue. Fortunately, that dilemma resolved itself silently, and she simply reached behind her to grab her deck of cards. “Suit yourself.” She murmured, shuffling the large deck expertly with her small hands. Fanning them out in an arc, she held them out to her partial business partner. “Pick a card.”
Something about staring at the familiar deck made the hairs on the back of Scarlet’s neck bristle. Maybe it was sheer annoyance at the task in favour of which Erika had so rudely interrupted her passionate moment with Alair. Perhaps it was something else. Folding her arms across her chest, she sighed heavily through her nose. “Not right now, Rikki.”
“No? Why not? Because when you called me last week, whining that your life was falling apart, that sure as hell wasn’t your frame of mind. You asked me to do a reading, remember?” Erika’s gaze didn’t leave the redhead’s. “Draw a fucking card, Scarlet.”
In the end, she didn’t do it because she wanted to. The reading she had asked of Erika that handful of days she and Alair had parted ways didn’t even seem to matter, as her life appeared to have sorted itself out for the better. But it was clear that the brunette wasn’t going to budge until she indulged her. So she reached out two fingers and drew a card from the middle of the fan, glancing at it for a split second before turning it to face Erika. “Seriously? Is this what’s got you so antsy?”
Without a word, Erika took the card back and shuffled it back into the deck, before holding out the fan again. “Again.”
“Erika, this is—”
“Again, Scarlet.”
Scarlet drew another card; the same as before. The eerie form of a skeletal figure upon a black horse stared up at her with sightless eyes.
Erika took the car back, knowing full well what it was, and handed the deck to her occasional colleague. “One more time, for good measure. You shuffle this time.”
Lips pressed into a thin line, Scarlet’s fingers redistributed the sequence of the cards, and handed the deck back to Erika, who fanned them out again. Once more, the foreboding imagery of the Death card greeted her when she turned her selection over. “So what?” She asked the brunette, handing the card back. “You know it isn’t literal—”
“Except when it is.” Erika interrupted, her voice taking on so dire a tone she came close to shouting. “I did your reading, Scarlet. In fact, I’ve done a few different spreads, on several different occasions this past week, and this is always the mediating card. It’s not a coincidence, and chances are, it isn’t a fucking metaphor.”
“All right; so let’s say, for a minute, that it isn’t. That it’s something to worry about. But things can change, Rikki, do you understand what I’m saying?” Scarlet stepped forward and placed a firm hand on her friend’s shoulder. “Destiny can change. Nothing is ever finite.” Not when I have the stars at my disposal.. “You, of all people, should surely know that.”
A silent understanding passed between the two women, although in the end, neither had budged much for their initial stances. Erika simply chose to give up for the moment; but she looked far from comfortable doing so. “Sure. Believe what you want. I’m just the fucking messenger.” Shoving the deck of cards into her pocket, Erika made a beeline for the front door. “I really hope for your sake that you’re right.”
The door closed with far more force than what was necessary, making Scarlet flinch as it shook the walls. It hadn’t been her desire to blow Erika off so quickly, but the matter had seemed petty, and she was still stinging from the interruption. “Fucking psychics…” The redhead breathed, turning back to her blue-eyed companion and wrapping her arms around his waist. “I swear she’s harmless, she just gets a little overzealous sometimes… and gets worked up over stupid things is pretty much never come to pass.” Sighing heavily, she brushed her lips against Alair’s in apology. “If I’d known it was her, I wouldn’t have answered the door.”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you [18+]
He would not normally have been perturbed by a stranger’s negative opinion of him, even if that judgment had been made by association—he couldn’t pretend Erika’s immediate dislike was unrelated to her clearly-expressed feelings about the redhead engaging in intimate activity. That aside, this did not feel like any regular confrontation. Alair objected so strongly to the premature evaluation because it didn’t feel like an evaluation; it felt, he realized, like a condemnation, like a trial whose verdict had been decided long before the courtroom gathering. Now all he had to do was wait for the unjust sentence.
The expression in the brunette’s eyes was so fiercely accusatory that the Sandman found it increasingly difficult to hold his tongue. And she kept doing it, glancing at him over Scarlet’s shoulder even as she explained why she had come, why it was so urgent that she see the redhead right fucking now. Despite everything she claimed, Erika didn’t seem to be frightened; rather, she seemed confident, and the continual flashes of glaring looks were not out of uncertainty but instead out of warning. She was wordlessly threatening him, Alair realized, shocked. She was doing her damnedest to keep him at bay with narrowed eyes and a biting tone, as if she knew something neither he nor Scarlet had yet grasped. He did not like being kept in the dark, and he liked even less to be considered the root of a problem.
So the Sandman, utterly baffled, watched as the redhead drew cards from the fanned tarot deck. At first he could not see the result, but from Erika’s reaction—and Scarlet’s quick and dismissive defense—he gathered that she had drawn the same face for each attempt. When at last he caught a glimpse of the skeletal figure illustrated on the positive side of the cardstock, his breath snagged in his throat; Death. She had drawn Death. Of course. Instantly his thoughts veered to Amrial. Surely if Erika’s claim was correct, if it did indicate a literal prediction, Sleep’s older brother was the reason. They had interacted once before on a surprisingly personal level, hadn’t they? And it was only a matter of time, he knew, before his brother appeared again to check in… It would be difficult to imagine a more literary definition of the card than a visit by Death himself.
But that wasn’t it. He knew, deep down, that there was far more to the situation than either woman was letting on, and it would require an explanation more elaborate than the simple fact that Alair and his relatives weren’t entirely human. The unspoken understanding that passed between Scarlet and Erika did not go unnoticed by the mildly alarmed Sandman, and it conjured a pang of uncertainty akin to the one he’d felt upon waking from their shared medieval dream. It was the last thing he wanted after the bliss he’d experienced with the redhead only minutes before.
The slamming door echoed like a gunshot through the apartment, and for a moment, Alair hardly dared to breathe. Questions swum with wild abandon through his mind. “A little overzealous?” he repeated incredulously, leaning into her as she snaked her arms around his middle. He laughed nervously. “Jesus, Scarlet. What the fuck do I even say to that? And she wanted to murder me, did you see the way she glared? Fuck.” He emphasized the last word with a more genuine chuckle, and he pulled her into a tighter embrace as their lips brushed once again. He closed the gap tightly with a fervent kiss reminiscent of their previous shared passion, smiling when he pulled away.
“You know,” he purred, bringing his lips to her ear and guiding her towards the living room, “I think I would’ve preferred Cas at the door.” They crashed together back into the sofa, and Alair pulled the redhead back onto his lap. “Do you wanna talk about the whole ‘Death’ thing?” he asked, grinning. “Because I could call Amrial. You have powerful friends now, and he likes you.”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you [18+]
“Oh, stop; she didn’t want to murder you.” Scarlet rolled her eyes, linking her hands at the small of his back. “Erika is… this is just how she is. Try to cut her a little slack; she had it worse than me, and she’s not exactly in off the streets, as much as I’ve been trying to convince her for the past five years.” Giving her small shoulders a shrug, she added, “I used to be just like that, you know; bite first, ask questions later. In some ways, I still do.” To illustrate her point, she grinned and stood on her toes, lips and teeth gently grazing his earlobe in a teasing but wholly affectionate gesture.
If ever she had wished for a re-wind, a chance to go back about fifteen minutes and not answer that fucking door, then it was now. For all she appreciate Erika’s concern (and she couldn’t deny that it was the brunette’s own, strange way of showing that she cared), nothing short of a life and death situation would have convinced her to veer from her prior engagement with the dark-haired Sandman, who now led her back into the dying daylight of the living room. Was it selfish of her to have preferred that indulgence in favour of ignoring the warnings of one of the few people she could really call a friend?
Maybe. But Scarlet didn’t aim to be a flawless human being, so it sat perfectly fine on her conscience.
“I don’t know,” she drawled, allowing herself to be pulled back onto his lap as they met the couch once again. “Had it been anyone else at the door, Caspar included, I think I’d still have punched them. Anyone but Erika, and that’s because she punches back, and packs a bigger punch than I do, to begin with.” Grinning impishly, the Aries planted a kiss just beneath his ear, and it was only through some miraculous self-control that her hands behaved and sat patiently on either side of his waist. Only mention of the Sandman’s equally preternatural brother did she pause, pulling away to meet his eyes.
“The short answer to your question is ‘no’; I can think of far more interesting things I could be doing with you besides talking about Death—or Amrial, for that matter.” Scarlet raised her eyebrows, one corner of her mouth turning upward in a cheeky grin. “Seriously, though; don’t let it get to you. Erika does a shitload of different readings every day, and at least once a day, she’ll predict someone’s death. She’s predicted her own death twice; she’s predicted my death three times, and Caspar’s death once. And, as you can see, all three of us are still kicking.”
Adjusting her positioning on his lap so that her knees were on either side of his thighs, the redhead raked her fingers through her tousled hair, the oversized robe clothing her upper body falling off one shoulder in the process. “It’s not that she doesn’t know what she’s talking about; she’s as psychic as Caspar is telekinetic. She knows what she sees, but the thing with predictions are the mediating factors always change as peoples paths change. An action as simple as getting up to pour a cup of coffee could mean the difference between someone’s life and their death, and the majority of the time someone’s ass appears to be on the line, destiny just… kind of works itself out. Sure, you get the occasional poor bastard who kicks the bucket, but it’s rare. Maybe five minutes ago, I was supposed to die, but I’m not sure I buy it; you know why?” Bringing her hand to his face, the young woman’s palm cupped Alair’s strong jaw, blue eyes softening to portray a feeling she wasn’t sure she could put into words. “Because I’m not convinced you’d let anything happen to me.”
Those words allowed yet another perfect excuse to lean in and steal a lingering, meaningful kiss, one that painted a smile on her lips when they parted from his. “If you’re really worried, then by all means, call your brother up. Just… maybe do it when I’m a little more presentable? I feel like I should be wearing something other than a summer robe and ripped jeans when consulting with Death over my potential demise.”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you [18+]
Erika had not been an exception. Her imposition had bothered him initially because she had done just that—impose. Their unexpected visitor had interrupted a moment of genuine passion, a moment filled with bliss unlike any he’d experienced in more years than he cared to recall; it was enough, he reasoned, to warrant a little irritation on their end. What it did not excuse was the way Erika had regarded Alair. Her furrowed brow, narrowed eyes, and potent glare had pierced him straight to the substance that functioned as his soul, shaking his volatile core in a way that did more than offend him, it wounded him. The fact that this stranger could regard him as a predator—especially when harming Scarlet was something that would never cross his mind—inspired anger in place of his previous passion.
Scarlet’s reassuring words did little to quell his unease, but the resurfacing of her feisty mood was the beginning of successful distraction. He smiled crookedly despite himself, leaning his head forward into her teasing bite of his earlobe. “You say she’s harmless, but I say it’s a damn good thing looks can’t actually kill,” he said honestly, but his voice was tender, deep. “And probably also a damn good thing that Death happens to be on my side.” He chuckled, relieved that the tension in Erika’s departing wake was rapidly lifting. They may not have planned to venture down the particular avenue down which they’d trekked already, but their unannounced guest had been an unwelcome detour to their path. Now, it seemed, they were finally back on the main road, and addressing Erika’s business was something that could be put off until much later.
The living room, despite the open window and the distant hum of the nighttime city beyond its threshold, was still hot and humid as they tumbled back onto the threadbare cushions of the sofa. He placed his hands on either side of her slender waist as she positioned herself on his lap, giving her a playful squeeze as she leaned forward to plant a kiss beneath his ear. A sigh of pleasure escaped his lips, and he wrinkled his nose in childish protest when she pulled away to refute her friend’s dark prediction. “Point made,” he admitted with a smirk, hardly having paid heed to what she’d actually said; he could feel the heat radiating from her cloaked body, and the perfume of her skin drifted to his nostrils as she leaned forward once more to greet his mouth with hers.
It was only when she pulled back and cradled his face in her hands that he refocused, his expression softening as seriousness crept into her words. “Why?” he asked at her prompt, searching her gaze with a look of genuine curiosity in his blue eyes. Her answer caught him off-guard. Because I’m not convinced you’d let anything happen to me. The statement resonated within him like a powerful chord, at once harmonious and dissonant. “Never,” he affirmed, with such fervor and intensity that the kiss that followed rendered him utterly breathless. He drew in a long inhale when she broke their touch, the azure of his gaze shifting and dancing like ocean waves in the sunlight. “I will always protect you,” he told her, his voice somehow tender and ferocious at once. He reached up, cradling the side of her face with his formerly-injured hand while the other stroked her long crimson hair. “Scarlet,” Alair murmured, shaking his head as a tiny smile that erupted on his lips, “I love you.”
The Sandman kissed her then before she could speak, electric energy coursing through his system as though the gesture had sparked a lightning strike. “But anyway, Amrial’s such a buzzkill,” he said breathily as he relocated his lips to brush against the line of her jaw. “Let’s, you know, forget him...”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you [18+]
But the Sandman was a proper noun, a character in a myriad of myths; Death, on the other hand, was never supposed to be a ‘he’, or wear suits and court Life who, similarly, should not have been the flesh-and-blood entity that she was. It was only out of the impossibility of these identities that the phrase Death is on our side did not embody a morbid and impossible thought. And, admittedly, it was the only reason why Erika’s warning had not resonated with her on a more urgent level.
Well… no. Alair’s unique relation with Death only served in part as contributing to her odd sense of calm; because she meant what she said. Around Caspar, Scarlet had felt secure, reassured; comfortable. But in Alair’s presence, the Aries sign felt near invincible: like anything was possible, everything was worth pursuing, and as if, though she could fall, she would never hit the ground, never shatter. Caspar might have been an anchor, but Alair was the ground beneath her feet, the wall to lean on when she felt weak, and the rain that nourished her, body and soul, and the sun that warmed her heart. Alair was…
“Scarlet, I love you.”
Those words, simple and few, suddenly opened the window of clarification for the breath-taken young woman. Alair was more than the elements that sustained and nourished life; he was the validation, motivation and meaning for her very existence. She couldn’t explain it, because no words would suffice, and even if any had come to mind, he was kissing her before she could voice them—and, once again lost in the warm intoxication of his tenderness, she forgot all together how to speak.
Exhaling on a musical sigh when his lips broke away from hers, only to relocate on the elegant curve of her jaw, a slow and satisfied smile played on Scarlet’s lips at the blue-eyed man’s suggestion to ditch the prior topic of conversation. “Amrial’s a buzzkill, Erika’s a buzzkill… to hell with other people.” Grin widening, she slid her hand deftly from his shoulders to press against the firmness of his chest, that familiar, mischievous twinkle sparkling in her eyes once again. “I only give a damn about one person right now. Alair…” Her words trailed off as she brought her lips so close to his, just a whisper of a kiss away, until a familiar jingle sounded, tinny and electronic, from her bedroom.
Turning her head, the chemically-altered redhead was suddenly on alert again, an expression of concern accompanying disappointment in her features. “If that’s Erika again, trying to be cute… fuck it all. With my luck, the one time I don’t answer will be the one time it’s an emergency.” Slipping off Alair’s lap with a reluctant sigh, she made her way to her bedroom. The phone stopped ringing just before she picked it up, swiping the screen to unlock it. Below the notification of a missed call was a text message:
sorry red, butt-dialed you! with marissa again tonight, see you at the band festival this weekend?
“…really, Caspar? Really?” Scarlet groaned audibly and turned her phone off, tossing it unceremoniously onto a pile of clean laundry. The universe did not seem to see fit to leave her and Alair alone tonight, and she was half tempted to take a peek out the window at the star formations and alter the evening’s events in her—their—favour.
Except that she had had no hand in drawing Alair into her life; and she feared that any tampering with his destiny would upset their beautiful dynamic.
Scarlet turned in time to see that Alair had wandered into her doorway, looking equally as amused as she was disappointed. “Everyone is a fucking buzzkill tonight, Sandman.” She complained, advancing on him playfully until his back met the wall. “Maybe you should go put ‘em all to sleep, so that the night can finally be ours…” Hands gently gripping his hips, she stretched her neck to brush his lips with a kiss, pulling away only a fraction of an inch some long moments later to catch her breath and murmur softly, “Say it. Tell me again…” She didn’t need to specify, but she did need to clarify what her heart ached for her to vocalize: “Tell me you love me, Alair. As much as… as much as I love you.” The request had an embarrassingly beseeching ring to it, one that brought colour to her face along with the confession, but there was no going back. And she wouldn’t go back, not even if was up to her to decide—and it wasn’t.
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you [18+]
Alair had never questioned his freedom. The Sandman was perhaps entirely too free; he had at his disposal the infinite power of dreams, with endless possibility for outcome and location and character. But for all the potential he carried to succumb to the mercy of such fantasy, his unique way of paying homage to illusion was to live his life swathed almost entirely in actuality. He connected to a world—the world—that everyone shared, and he reveled in the laws and ground rules that governed its smooth running. It was a standard, a constant, a control group for the vast, complicated, experiment-like awareness that was Sleep’s bare-bones existence.
His elder brother Amrial had been given an entirely different world experience. Death was concrete, finite; he was a concept so engrained in the order of the universe that he regarded everything through a basic filter of black-and-white logic. But for Alair, nothing was that easy—his solid foundation was one that he had built for himself; the universe had provided no standard from which he could build. The Sandman’s life was a series of decisions that led to more decisions that led to infinitely more decisions; he swum in the strong current of his own endless river of time, and there was rarely a branch to which he could cling to catch his breath.
But Scarlet…Scarlet was a rock, an island. The red-haired young woman was the shore that allowed him to pause, grounding him while he warmed his chilled bones on the soft warm sand. He had never imagined that uttering those three little words could further solidify the genuine feelings behind them, but that was precisely what had occurred. She had offered him solace from the relentless forward trudge, drying him in the warmth of her presence while the rest of time—and the world—continued its forward procession. And she deserved to know that; she deserved to know that for all he professed to protect her, she was the one saving him.
He kept his composure as she departed for her phone, running his fingers through his messy dark hair as he slid forward to the edge of the cushions. Upon hearing her annoyed groan through the paper-thin walls, he smiled to himself and strode to her doorway, pausing to lean against the frame with his arms folded across his chest. “It’s not nice to call me a buzzkill, Scarlet,” he told her with an expression of mock seriousness, a straight face he could not hold for long before shattering it with a chuckle. He took her in his arms as she approached, letting her push him back until his shoulders collided with the bedroom wall. “I could arrange that, you know. Putting them all to bed. Tucking them in like good little children.”
He narrowed his eyes playfully and wrapped his arms around her, clasping his hands at the small of her back. Her mouth brushed his gently before it led to a full, lengthy kiss, his hands roaming slowly up and down the length of her spine as he drank in the warmth of her body and the meaning of her lips against his. He smiled demurely when she broke away. Looking down at her through half-closed eyes and long lashes, Alair sighed longingly at her request, drawing a soft breath to speak. “I love you,” he whispered after a beat, reaching up with one hooked finger to caress her rose-tinted cheek. “You have become my night. My slumber. My dreams…” Trailing off, he smiled, meeting her eyes with an affection words could never properly convey. He pulled her ever closer into a tight embrace, leaning his cheek against her red hair. “I love you, Scarlet.”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you [18+]
“I would say go do it,” she sighed between fervent, meaningful kisses. “Go put the world to sleep, so that we can have it to ourselves… But if that requires you to leave this room, right now, while I am sitting here waiting for and wanting you… then fuck it.” The word ‘love’ was on her lips, present but unvoiced, when she leaned in to kiss him again, standing on her toes and hooking an arm behind his, then trailing downward and planting a kiss near his collarbone as he murmured those beautiful words again: “I love you, Scarlet.”
It was, in fact, the first time she had ever heard anyone murmur those exact words. The closest she could remember to receiving the expression of such of sentiment was embedded in a foggy memory, one that involved a small, white house, yellow flowers planted in the back yard, and a tall, slender woman with soft hair that turned blonde in the sun. “Я люблю тебя, Марьяна.” I love you, Maryana, she could recall her mother murmuring to her at the most random of moments. Like she needed to say it out loud to remind herself, and to remind Scarlet of her worth… But it wasn’t quite the same sentiment as she felt now, hearing the words (in English) spill from the lips of her azure-eyed Sandman. A mother’s love, after all, was assumed; but Alair, on the other hand, was under no obligation to say those words. They were pure, genuine, meaningful, and because they were not assumed, they weighed so much more than the Russian lexicon of that cloudy, far-away memory.
She wanted to cry. At the same time, she wanted to laugh at her own reaction, to yell at him for not saying it sooner, but instead she just kissed him—once, twice, again, and again until she was tired of standing, in which case she took him by the wrists and pulled him towards the edge of her mattress, where she sat him down and sat next to him, body angled towards him. “I love you.” She whispered back, pressing her lips to his collarbone. “I love you, Alair… Don’t make me regret it, okay?” She was joking, but only in part: after all, they had established during one of their first conversations that love was dangerous, that it could hurt as much as it could heal, that it could destroy just as quickly as it builds. But anything was possible right now, and in the moment, she felt no repercussions to pursuing the feeling and riding this wave. Alair made it all worth it.
But the wave lasted far longer than she intended, and the night simply did not appear to be long enough. Lost in Alair’s invigorating presence, she kissed and embraced him for what felt like only moments, but their intimate and curiously innocent escapade lasted, in fact hours. At some point, when she had freed her hands from his shoulders or hair or the waist, she managed to be rid of the chafing denim of her second-hand jeans for comfort purposes alone, but even the soft cotton robe that remained intact contributed to the already extreme rise in temperature. In the end, it was the humid heat of the night that forced her to finally put a few inches of distance between their bodies, her skin where it showed glistening with a thin layer of perspiration. The core of that unbridled passion in which they had engage prior to Erika's interruption screamed that it craved more than Alair's kisses, caresses and embrace, but she painstakingly kept it at bay, for fear that it would trivialize this delicate moment where their racing hearts were synchronized in intimacy.
“Not too long ago, I tried to kill you in my dreams.” She mentioned, a curious grin tugging at the corners of her kiss-swollen lips. “You were pretty pissed, and called me psychotic. Funny, how opinions can change so quickly…” Hooking a finger in a belt loop on his jeans, she propped herself up on her elbow and cradled her chin in the palm of her hand. “You know what’s ironic? You might be the Sandman, with all of your pixie dust and moon minions… and yet, I have never been so disinclined to sleep. Moreso even that from the influence of those nightmares that, thanks to you, will probably tone down.” Scarlet smiled cheekily, tracing patterns below his ribcage with her fingertip. What was becoming increasingly apparent, however, was the sugar crash that appeared to be setting in. The weight of her eyelids, the way her muscles strained as her arm bore the weight of her body, the subtle rasp to her voice… All of those factors suggested an exhaustion of which she might or might not have been aware. And if she was, well, then her own stubbornness was to blame; knowing Scarlet, chances were she'd been fighting fatigue for hours, in favour of extending these meaningful moments to infinity. “Why sleep when my dream come true is right here, in reality? Alair, you have no idea how… how alive you make me feel.”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you [18+]
The Sandman felt at once vulnerable and secure, the simple statement of her reciprocation—despite her actions already having made her feelings clear to him—confirming aloud a new role that he had sworn never to assume again. As wholly as sleep and dreams were a part of him, so too now was Scarlet, and it was a bond he doubted could be shattered even if he had wanted it broken. The redhead had borne witness to his bitter drunken rant; he had, as she had learned from his inebriated speech that night, sworn off love long ago in the wake of tragedy. Heartache and sorrow had rendered him little more than a breathing ruin from which it had taken decades to recover, stripping him entirely of his will to live—his cosmic duty was the only thing that had animated him during that desperately black, hopeless period.
He might have bounced back eventually from that low place, but not once since had he ever felt alive again. Not until now. Wearing a smirk on his lips that couldn’t quite mask the contradictory soft affection glowing in his blue eyes, he placed his hands on either side of her waist as she tugged at his jeans and led him towards the bed. This was what it felt like to be alive, he thought. This—the silken texture of her crimson hair beneath his palm as he ran his fingers through the lengthy locks; the perfume of her skin in the late summer air that filtered through the window; the pressure of her body against his; the striking warmth that radiated from their exchanged embraces; the sleepy look in her eyes as she regarded him between their kisses—this was what he had denied himself. This young woman, the fiery redhead who had rolled into his life like a hurricane, was the missing piece to his everlong void.
What felt like minutes had progressed to hours. Somewhere between kissing her neck, caressing her skin, and running his fingers through her hair, he had tugged his sweat-soaked t-shirt up and over his head, discarding it to the floor along with the majority of the unneeded blankets. Now, damp and warm and pleasantly exhausted, he settled back into the pillow at the head of the bed and relished in the cool late-night breeze upon his bare skin. Smiling tenderly, he turned his head to look at her, blinking lazily as he met her gaze. He reached out to drape his hand over her upper arm, glancing down with a grin as she reached over to hook a finger in his belt loop.
“Well, you didn’t exactly roll out the welcome mat, I’ll give you that,” he agreed, winking playfully as he rolled to his side to face her. A sudden laugh shook his shoulders, and he gave her a teasing shove with the hand he’d placed on her arm. “Let’s face it, though, you’re not any more psychotic than the guy who eats people on the moon or whatever-the-fuck. I have to admit I didn’t give you a lot of choice when it came to first impressions.”
He had, whether he’d meant to or not, been far more of an intruder to her life than she had been to his—as an acquaintance, yes, but also by initially trespassing with blatant disregard for how she might have felt about a stranger’s sudden appearance in her own domain. But as she said, it was remarkable how quickly their opinions of one another had changed—how they had navigated their own seas of self doubt before meeting haphazardly in the middle, exchanging an unspoken treaty over similarities they hadn’t even realized they’d shared. Through all his jaded self-talk, he had overlooked how rapidly he was falling, and now he was flying—soaring high on Scarlet’s tattered wings that glowed with utter perfection in his eyes.
He shifted his hand to her face, cupping her cheek gently as his thumb caressed her damp skin. “I feel more alive than I have in…” He trailed off, hardly knowing how to complete the sentence. A thousand years? More? No duration of time seemed appropriate because nothing he had ever felt compared to what he experienced now, a realization that struck him hard and left his ears ringing. But it was a good sort of chime, a mark of healing, of bliss. He wouldn’t have had it any other way.
At that, Alair’s lips curled into a smile, and he shook his head back and forth in partial incredulity. “You should sleep,” he murmured gently, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “Here…” The Sandman propped himself up on an elbow, pulling his other hand forward and upturning it as though something tangible rested there. “This is why they call me the Sandman,” he said quietly, his eyes widening with an expression akin to excitement. Drawing on the energy from their passionate evening, Sleep closed his eyes and exhaled a slow, calculated breath. A small pile of powder, so fine and delicate that he may as well have cradled a cloud in his palm, manifested in his grasp. In the dim shifting light of the city that illuminated the bedroom, it glittered a silvery-gold reminiscent of a bright rising moon on a hazy horizon.
“What if I promise I won’t devour you in your sleep?” he proposed with a chuckle, wrinkling his nose at the look of suspicion she shot his direction. He closed his fingers around the preternatural substance and leaned forward, laughing when the redhead squirmed and resisted. “Come on, Scarlet, it’ll help!” he declared, falling backwards as they gave one another playful shoves. “It’ll even keep the nightmares away. I don’t just give this stuff out! Hey!” A pillow rushed towards his face and he ducked, grapping its edge mid-swipe and using it as a shield to buffer her retaliations. “All right, you’ve left me no choice, Scarlet,” he said, pinning her to the mattress with a grin.
Without any further warning, he leaned in for a fast, hard kiss—and sprinkled the shimmering powder in her eyes…
Posted: Tue Nov 26, 2013 2:38 am
Scarlet let out a chuckle and shook her head. “Are you fucking serious? You do have fucking pixie dust!”
But as intriguing as it was, and as much as she trusted Alair’s intentions, she wanted nothing to do with the powdery substance sitting in his palm. The thought of falling asleep at someone else’s bidding, however painless it might be, struck of chord of alarm deep in her, and she couldn’t bring herself to comply. “Ooor, we could just do this all night?” Her mouth stretched into a cheeky grin as she pressed a lingering, meaningful kiss to his lips—only to catch his wrist as he brought it dangerously, uncomfortably close to her face. “You’re serious! You want me to sleep when we could be picking up where we left off before Erika strutted in? Come on, Magic Man, I don’t take rejection well—hey!”
The girl of the Aries zodiac gave her dark-haired companion a playful shove when he pulled his wrist free of her inferior grip, a laugh escaping her lungs as she grabbed a the pillow behind her and swung it at his face. “You know what else keeps nightmares away? Not sleeping!” Scarlet giggled with all the amused, sleep-deprived glee of a teenager, and swung the pillow again; but Alair was too quick, grabbing a hold of the cotton-stuffed cushion and tossing it aside, before she found herself trapped under his weight.
“Alair…” Some of that childish glee faded from her smile, replaced with uncertainty. But her concerns remained unvoiced, suppressed by the sort of rough kiss that she was craving, before the redhead gave up struggling entirely, her whole body relaxing as it succumbed to sand that glittered at the corners of her eyes.
The sun was bright; brighter than she’d ever seen it, and the city was so much greener, picturesque… Because it wasn’t the city at all, but some beautiful elsewhere.
Scarlet pushed herself to her feet, from where she had been sitting in the lush green grass, and a strong part of her did not want to resist what she was seeing, did not want to question the beauty in nature’s simplicity. “Alair?” She called, smoothing a curiously uncomfortable skirt that appeared to be woven with cotton and wool over her otherwise bare legs. Nothing adorned her feet; luckily, it was too warm to make a difference.
On a single turn of her heel, the Sandman was there, arms open as she rushed towards him, pulling his body against hers. His hair was longer, curling endearingly around his ears, his attire was likewise not of the era she was used to, and his own feet were bare on the lush green grass, but there was no mistaking those cosmic blue eyes, and that striking grin that warmed her heart. Who cared if they weren’t in DC, or if she didn’t have shoes? Did it really matter where she was when Alair was nearby?
“Where did you take us this time?” She laughed, pulling away to stand on her toes and brush his lips with a kiss. Alair spoke to her then, but from the first word on, her ears went deaf to the remainder of his reply. Because the first word wasn’t a word, but a name. Mariana.
Maryana. “…hold up.” Pressing her fingertips to his lips to silence him, Scarlet’s brows knitted together in the middle. “But that’s… I’ve never told you about that. About my real name.” She was not angry; merely surprised, curious, like there was more about this encounter of which she was unaware. “How did you know? Alair, is this—”
Scarlet’s words were left hanging, a gasp of pain taking their place as the redhead (no… as she knelt, the tresses that fell over her shoulder were a dark, chocolate-brown) doubled over, clutching her side. Blood seeped freely from between her fingers, and when she looked up again, the Sandman was gone. “Alair? Alair, please, what is…”
A dream; it had to have been a dream, and she knew how to deal with those. The young woman closed her eyes and resigned herself to the fate the dream had assigned her, feeling her lifeblood rush from between her fingers until her fingers lost feeling, and her mind grew too weary to think…
When she opened her eyes, there was no blood, no blue sky, and no Alair. Scarlet sat upright in a bed that wasn’t her own, in clothes even far less comfortable than the scratchy skirt. An older woman with an apron glared at her from across the room, chastised her in… French? “You are late to rise again? Marie, after how the Housemaster reacted last week, catching you late at night with that dark-haired young man… how can you see it safe to have the gall to be lazy!”
Housemaster…? What the fuck as going on? “Dreaming… I’m dreaming.” Scarlet said, in prefect French that she didn’t realize she knew. Who was this old woman, who looked like someone’s maid? Was she a maid, as well? This was more character than her dreams typically exhibited, but she knew how to beat them now, thanks to Alair. She was in control; she had to be in control, or her subconscious mind would best her, again...
“Alair… I’ve got to go find Alair.” She declared, more to herself than to the old woman, and dashed out the bedroom door, bare feet slapping against the smooth wooden planks. The expanse of a mansion unfolded before her, a decorative, wide corridor with gold and marble and gems adorning furniture that did not look fit for sitting.
“Alair! Where are you? You have to tell me what’s going on!” Her peculiar French accent echoed off the walls, but it wasn’t the Sandman whose attention she caught. Someone caught her by her hair—stark blonde, and flowing long down her back—hauling her harshly backwards until she looked up into the face of an older, well-dressed man. She recognized drunken ire in his reddened eyes, and helplessness settled in the put of her stomach. Scarlet didn’t know why, but something told her to abandon hope; something that went against exactly what the Sandman had taught her.
“Little trollop,” the man hissed, tugging on her hair so hard she let out a cry. “You want to prove yourself useless? There is no room for idle hands under this roof!” He shoved her, then, so hard that she went sprawling on the cold floor, her shin hitting the foot of an end table. Something on its surface wobbled, and toppled, and she hadn’t even a second to see what it was before it came crashing hard upon her head.
There was no splitting pain in her skull when Scarlet opened her eyes again. Yet another bed, another unfamiliar setting, but at least there was no berating old woman, or crazy rich house owner. Like the last bedroom, this one was particularly Spartan, although the cut of the furniture suggested a time and era that hearkened closer to the one she was used to. If she had to guess, she would've thought herself a part of the early 1900s...
And, at a glance to the right, Alair’s sleeping form stirred under the blankets next to her. “Alair… thank God.” She murmured, drawing him upright when he opened his eyes. “Alair, I can’t wake up. I don’t know what’s going on…” As she straightened her spine and the blankets fell away, Scarlet realized with a start that neither of them was wearing any clothes. It might have instilled a sudden bashfulness in her, maybe… were she not shocked by the sight of her own lap. Arms dotted with freckles. She did not have freckles on her arms. A fuller chest and curves that sloped gently from her waist to her hips. A figure that no young woman with her unique troubles could hope for. Rounded fingernails, void of any laquer. Her fingernails grew square at the tips.
Alair appeared perplexed, taking her hand in a soothing gesture and asking her why she was so alarmed. Or, not asking her, but one ‘Mary-Anne’. Someone she was not. It was then that Scarlet realized with a pang of sadness that Alair wasn’t actually here at all; whatever the dream’s intentions, it was merely projecting his image onto the landscape. Meaning she was technically alone.
Without warning, the young woman (whoever she was, at least she was still female) sprang from the bed and hurried over to a modest square mirror hanging on the wall. The girl who stared back at her had red hair, but of the yellow-ish, natural shade that could not be found in a box of chemicals. It cascaded down her bare shoulders in soft waves, framing a heart-shaped, freckled face with startled brown eyes. “This isn’t me.” She whispered. “This isn’t me. This isn’t me, and I don’t know what I am supposed to do…” A pile of modest, white cotton caught her eye at the foot of the bed, and Scarlet (or Mary-Anne) grabbed what looked like the type of nightgown her great-grandmother would have worn, pulling it over her head of wild, ginger waves and curls. She needed to explore, needed to figure out how to beat this dreamscape if she wanted to wake up, and there was no way in hell she’d be doing it naked.
The Alair in the bed called to her, his voice filled with concern. He didn’t know what was wrong, why she felt the need to run, and though it tugged at her heart, she didn’t have the time to negotiate with a dream-induced projection of the man she loved. “I’m sorry,” she sighed, looking over her shoulder at him. “I’m… whoever you think I am, I’m not that person. And... you're not really here.”
Turning away with one last, remorseful look, Scarlet reached for the doorknob, but before her fingers could make contact, the worn brass turned of its own accord. And, worse than the drunken Housemaster, she found herself standing face to face with a tall man, not much older than her, armed with what appeared to be a hunting rifle.
“…I knew it. Your old man said it wasn’t true, but I knew it, Mary-Anne.” He seethed through crooked teeth, glaring so piercingly that Scarlet found her feet taking her backwards, towards the bed. “I know you, and when you said that this bastard was just a friend… I knew you were just a dirty little liar!”
Scarlet knew nothing about guns, but the click that the fire arm made sent her heart racing, and once again, something deep inside her suggested she abandon all hope. Particularly when the young man aimed the firearm at Alair. “I thought we really had something, Mary-Anne; why’d you have to go and do this to me? Why’d you have to go and make me have to do this!”
“Don’t… just put it down…” Scarlet tried to reason with the angry young man (who, she deduced, she had cheated on…?), but she was not in control of this dream. His finger was already on the trigger.
So she did the only thing she could think of, and threw her body in front of Alair’s, and felt the bullet bite into her skin, embed itself in her chest, between her clavicle and halfway to her heart. Blood, more blood, too much blood, spilled between her fingers, but the pain didn’t stop this time, not even when she closed her eyes. The universe had not taken her to another place when she opened them, again, and before her was the dumbfounded expression of the lover who had shot her, and Alair’s worried and anguished features at her fatal wound.
“No… no, enough. I’ve had enough of this.” She breathed, shaking her head as the world around her grew hazy and meaningless to her waning sight. With her free hand, she dug her fingernails into the back of her neck so hard she thought she might’ve drawn blood. It wasn't enough to rival the pain of her bullet wound that was draining the life out of her, but it was her last hope. Pinching herself to wake up somehow didn't occur to her as useful, given that the way she was dying felt very, startlignly, real. “I’ve have enough of this! I... have had... Enough!”
“Enough!” Scarlet’s voice was raw in her throat when she sat bolt upright in her own bed. She knew it was hers, because her copy of Twilight sat on the nightstand to her right, and a familiar scar ran the length of her palm when she looked down at her body, still clothed with the robe that had twisted awkwardly around her torso and legs. At least she was herself again, but she felt so… drained. Moreso than she ever had with her previous nightmares, such that she didn’t trust herself to get to her feet for moments afterwards. Her side hurt from the first fatal injury she’d experienced in that heavy dream, her head throbbed, and her chest ached. And Alair was not with her.
A current of panic steered the redhead toward her bedroom door, the Sandman’s name on her lips when she picked up the soothing, haunting melody of guitar playing. A technique that she had come to associate exclusively with Alair, and she followed the sound to the living room, where he sat with his beloved instrument, wearing a curiously sullen expression.
“…you said there would be no nightmares.” It was not an accusation, if for no other reason than the fact that Scarlet was too exhausted from the events of the nightmare to be accusatory. “Alair… I have no idea what I just saw… all of these women, and they all knew you, but they all…” They had all died. And the worst part was that, deep down, she knew she could have seen more, had she not been so determined to wake up. She didn't know how she was so sure of it... but she was.
“What’s going on?” Scarlet eased herself onto the cushion next to him, adjusting the robe to cross more modestly around her body, still trembling and unsteady to what her subconscious had subjected her. What she really wanted to ask was why he hadn’t been there to change things around, to pull her out of the nightmare from the very beginning, but there was already something heavy about the atmosphere in this infant morning, where the sun had yet to rise. Alair was all but entirely swathed in shadows, save for the piercing blue of the eyes that looked up from his guitar to meet hers. She couldn't determine the look in this beautiful eyes, but it unsettled her profusely. “And… why are you looking at me like that?” Like she had done something wrong?
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you [18+]
Beneath his lips, Alair felt her relax, felt the tension evaporate from her limbs as she fell into the gentle embrace of the pillows at her back. But as her breaths slowed to a steady, even rhythm, so too did time—and the Sandman, suddenly paralyzed with his lips inches from hers, felt a frigid shock travel through his limbs that rendered him absolutely, painfully immobile.
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- Mariana.
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The sound that left his lips was a strangled cry, a noise caught somewhere between a gasp and a sob. He didn’t remember the jolt of searing electricity that struck him like lightning in the center of his chest; he didn’t remember his presence blinking from the familiar bedroom only to reappear unsteadily at the foot of the bed. He didn’t remember stumbling backwards as the floor pitched beneath his bare feet, his shallow breaths drawn in choking rasps from a tightening throat…
He came to on the floor with the wall digging sharply into the flesh of his back, his legs tangled in discarded blankets strewn from the foot of the bed. Numbness was all he knew at that moment, that endless, agonizing moment of cold unfeeling. As if in a trance, he stared unblinkingly forward, his eyes fixed on the slumbering form of the peaceful young woman on the mattress. Seconds passed like centuries as he remained in that position, his heart thumping so swiftly in his ears he could hardly distinguish its individual pulses as it filled the room with its deafening thunder. Gradually, mechanically, he untwisted the wrinkled sheets from his feet and folded his legs beneath him to stand. Every action required extraordinary effort, his limbs moving as sluggishly as if trying to maneuver across the sea floor beneath the pressure of a mighty ocean.
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- The basement was dark, damp. Golden sunlight filtered through the cracks in the cellar door, the warm promise of its day reaching into the dank shadows with its garish fingers in a futile attempt to coax forth the gloom it housed in the recesses of its stone walls. Out of its reach, the Sandman lay on the earthen floor, the deathly pallor of his face evident even in the dense blackness.
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- “Amrial,” he murmured, his voice hardly stronger than a whisper. His fist found Death’s shirt sleeve, and he gripped the threadbare fabric until his knuckles whitened a shade paler. “Just let me go, Amrial, I beg of you…let me die!”
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- “Alair, brother.” His tone was calm, his words steady, but behind that wall of characteristic stoicism rang the deep-rooted pain of sympathy. He knelt at the Sandman’s side, his outer expression unreadable. With his own icy hand, Amrial pried away Sleep’s fingers and draped his brother’s arm across his prostrate torso. “Brother, you cannot,” was all he said.
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- A wave of fury passed over the Sandman. “I must!” he cried, sitting up with a grimace. Amrial forced him back down with a colder, stronger hand. “Do you not understand? You haven’t the right, you haven’t my permission—”
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- “Alair,” said Death patiently, “if I required permission to perform my duty, do you think I would exist at all?” Amrial smiled softly, his stormy gray eyes filled with equal parts sympathy and remorse. “We must maintain our balance. You know this. It is as much a part of you as it is a part of me, and each of us plays our role in the equation. I cannot allow you to die, brother.”
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- The Sandman writhed in pain, clenching his eyes closed as the nausea of fear and blood loss crept ever closer. His white shirt was stained a deep crimson, and the cloth stuck to the jagged abdominal wound beneath the weight of saturated blood. Amrial reached over, effortlessly tearing the linen to expose the fresh gash.
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- “I tried, Amrial,” Alair said hoarsely, his eyes remaining closed.
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- “No,” he insisted, looking up with such fervor in his blue eyes that Death had to pause, startled. “You do not know. I tried to follow your rules. I obeyed every one of them for the sake of equilibrium. You disregarded all of it. Do you not see?” Alair lifted his neck, his brow furrowed deeply. There was a feverish glow in his azure glare. “My life for her life. The balance is maintained, and yet you refuse to honor my decision. It is you who has stopped me, betrayed me, betrayed Mariana. It is you who murdered her, and will continue to murder her, over and over, all for your own selfish validation. I cannot forgive that.”
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He didn’t know what to think, what to feel. Trembling now at the force of a hollow weight he could not define, he slipped his wadded shirt over his head and lifted the blankets back to the mattress. Emotionlessly, he stretched the sheet over Scarlet’s slumbering form, then followed it up with the comforter. He couldn’t look at her, couldn’t take in that face. Where only minutes prior they had experienced one of the most profoundly intimate exchanges he had ever known, he now felt distant, disconnected—far away from the rush of life he had allowed to infiltrate his veins at the prompt of her sweet kisses.
Reality brought him to the doorway, and he paused stiffly at the threshold with his back to the bedroom. Inside, however, he was running, sprinting through the caverns of his darkened mind towards the brilliant glow that was her—that was Scarlet. He could taste the blood in the back of his mouth from the strain of screaming her name. The light burned brighter the closer he came, but he knew it was an illusion; the more distance he covered, the further away the warm salvation of its core traveled, ever beyond his grasp while it fooled him with intensified illumination.
It had been her all along. Tucked somewhere within that robust personality, hidden behind well-guarded defenses of a life hard-lived, disguised by a shock of long vermillion hair was the woman with whom he had fallen in love all those centuries ago, the woman whose soul had been allowed to pass, over and over again, from one existence to another. From her delicate kisses to her playful shoves, from her infuriating stubbornness to the intoxicating perfume of her skin, Scarlet had been his beloved incarnate all along—and not once, not once, had he even considered the remote possibility.
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- Amrial tended to Alair’s tragically self-inflicted injury with methodical precision, saying nothing for a long while. “We have given you a chance, my brother, and you know that,” he responded at last, weariness creeping into his tight syllables. “We have done more than what was required of us. We have agreed to perpetuate her soul, her essence—do you not see the sacrifices we have made for you already? And you, with your insolence, you are to repay us with your childish refusal to accept what cannot be undone? I task you to reassess which of us is the selfish one, brother.” As if to punctuate his point, he pressed a steaming cloth to Sleep’s wound. “Are you prepared, Alair?” he asked quietly then. “Are you prepared for what lies ahead? Are you prepared to love her?” His question rang in the empty cellar like a funeral chime, and the azure-eyed Sandman looked away in pain. “Because I fear for you, my brother. I fear that the heartbreak will destroy you over and over again until there is nothing left of you. You wanted this, to mend the tragedy, and yet I cannot help but think…I cannot help but think you have promised yourself to an eternity of sorrow, with the wound opening afresh every time before it can heal. You must let it heal, Alair.”
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She had been his antidote, his cure. Scarlet had been the one at long last to break the curse he had brought upon himself under the influence of devastating heartache. She was the marked end of his misery, the start of something brand new; she was the healing bandage that would aid him in learning to live again, her and her alone. So taken had he been with her—blindsided by her sudden and unanticipated presence in his life—that he’d failed to see the clues, failed to read the signs that pointed to what he had assumed would never be again. And now…now he had been rocketed straight back to the beginning, taken so completely aback that he hardly knew what to think.
His feelings for her—for Scarlet—had not changed, that much he knew. He had loved the redhead long before this moment of revelation, and that passion and care burned as strongly as ever for the extraordinary young woman who had unknowingly come to his rescue. She was, after all, the very same. But despite his unconditional affection, it was different now, more complicated—she was anchored in his past in an impossible yet undeniable way, with a connection that caused her to be entirely familiar and entirely foreign to him at once. Because he could never deny that in spite of everything he also loved her, Mariana, the woman who had once been, the woman whose soul his brother had preserved but whose life he could not…
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- “I am ready for anything, Amrial,” rasped Sleep furiously, struggling against his brother’s iron hand as it restrained him against the floor. “I know what I promised. I know what I sacrificed for it. I gave away a piece of myself to spare her, a piece that I cannot get back even now, when all has failed.” He sighed suddenly, wilting, moisture brimming in his half-closed eyes. His strength, his desire to fight, his very vitality was lost with the hope of his beloved’s safety, lost in the face of an eternity spent in her absence. “I thought…I thought I could fix this, brother. I thought we could fix this,” he croaked, a sob catching in his throat.
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Alair heaved a sigh, breaking. He gripped the molding on either side of the door frame and bowed his head, shaking clear through to the bone as the muscles in his body convulsed with emotion that overpowered his floodgates. He turned quickly, his pulse sending repeated ripples of anguish to the tips of his limbs as he finally, almost reluctantly, settled his attention upon the slumbering redhead who drifted oblivious in her mind’s alternate world. In the late night gleam of the city outside, his eyes had darkened to a cobalt reminiscent of his brother’s hardened gaze, and they further clouded with a curtain of gathering tears as he slowly approached her bedside.
“Scarlet,” he breathed, leaning over her. He swallowed hard, reaching up to cradle her sleeping cheek with a violently trembling hand. “I have loved you for so long…” With his voice on the verge of breaking, he pulled away, overcome with simultaneous joy, fear, and sorrow. But even as he spun, his hand brushed against her fingers in its retreat…and he held on, bringing his opposite fist to his lips to keep back the sob that threatened in the pit of his chest.
Sweat beaded upon his brow despite the cool air, and with a sudden burst of motion he released his gentle grasp of her hand and stormed into the living room. He paced like a caged lion along the length of the sofa, the bookshelves, the back wall; the energy of his repressed sentiments had detonated all at once. Where he had felt numb and immobilized minutes before, he was now wild with sensation, his skin crawling just below the surface with hot and cold and pain and pleasure. Tears, released of their hold, flowed feely down his cheeks, but he did not cry—he could not cry, it seemed; he was beyond the sweet cathartic relief of silent weeping. He had found her again. He had found her in the most unexpected of places, the most unlikely of vessels…at last, at such long last, they had been reunited.
But it was a bittersweet confluence, one that had him reeling with unprecedented conflict. The Sandman strode furiously into the kitchen, bracing himself on the small rickety dining table near the window. He wrapped one hand around a stray mug whose inner rim was stained with leftover coffee, one they had apparently forgotten to return to the sink, and raised it into the air. The urge to throw it, to watch it shatter across the worn linoleum in jagged ceramic shards, very nearly overcame him. It was the glass she’d handed him across the gap in the neighboring buildings, the container he had taken playfully as an invitation to conversation, to the then-stranger’s life. Tensing his jaw, he placed it on the counter next to the strainer and paused in the door.
It caught his eye almost immediately, the black case that contained his guitar. It sat unassumingly against the baseboards in the hall, a curved silhouette in the shadows that offered, strangely, a glimmer of hope. He retrieved it and took his place on the couch, pulling out the ragged instrument and perching it on his awaiting knee. The desperate fire within him subsided almost immediately. A newly-healed hand for a newly-healed guitar, he thought with affection, running his fingertips over the new scar on its polished surface. Strumming once quietly, experimentally, he released a long, heartfelt sigh—one that heralded the return of his hurt as plainly as the notes he began to play.
Alair summoned the mournful arpeggios and silken chords with eyes tightly closed. The haunting melody came without thought, without consideration; it was simply what he knew he must play, the only composition fitting for that infinitely cruel night.
He became aware of Scarlet’s hovering presence somewhere towards the end of his song, but he did not move, did not speak. Until the last woven harmonies faded into the pre-dawn atmosphere, he could not look at her. She eased herself onto the cushion next to him, and he shook his head wordlessly in the silent wake of her inquiry. His sullen face was shrouded in darkness. “There should have been no nightmares,” he whispered. His voice sounded weary, exhausted; when he turned his despondent gaze at last to search hers, his heart leapt into his throat. He returned the guitar to its case before he spoke, the terse quiet punctuated by the metallic snap of the closing buckles.
Because I love you, he wanted to say. Because I have loved you for a thousand years. Because I know now who you are, who you will be. But the words piled in his throat and refused to depart, the ghost syllables tripping over themselves as he remembered to breathe. She deserved to know the truth, and yet…he could not speak it. Frustration manifested as a flash akin to anger in his cerulean stare. She was his peace, his happiness, his home, and she had been long before he’d known the truth, but the declaration simply would not come—and the vexation he meant to project inwardly, he conveyed unintentionally in his words to the young woman. “Because, Scarlet,” he responded, the intensity in his voice matching that in his eyes, “because I was prepared. I was prepared for anything.” He paused, widening his eyes. “Because I care about you too much, don’t you see?”
He rose to his feet and strode to the window, folding his arms across his chest as his eyes swept across the distant skyline. A shiver traversed the length of his spine. “I care about you too much,” he repeated in a barely-intelligible whisper.
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Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you [18+]
The nightmares were one thing, that small but significant deviation from Alair’s promise just prior to sprinkling that silver sleep dust into her eyes. She could handle nightmares, knew her way around them and, thanks to the Sandman’s help, knew how to beat them. Nightmares she could tolerate, she could handle and walk away from, relatively unscathed.
But the same could not be said for the blatant vexation that she faced on confronting her dark-haired companion in the living room; no, not companion. That had changed hours ago, when the word love had fallen from his lips, and then her lips in turn. Alair was so much more than that, meant so much more to her than Caspar ever had…
And he was angry. And he was being vague, and given the intimacy of this past evening, she could not for the life of her understand why.
“Alair…?” His name fell from her lips in a whisper. Scarlet watched, mouth agape and at a loss for words while her eyes followed his stiff form as it strode over to the window, his back to her. What have I done wrong…? Her frantic, unrested mind played over the events leading up to her impromptu slumber. Had she forced herself on him with far too much zeal? Was he having regrets? Or, worse… was he reconsidering those beautiful words that had filled every last, vacant crevice of her patchwork heart?
I love you, Alair. Don’t make me regret it, okay?
Please… oh please, don’t make me regret it…
“What… what in the hell is that supposed to mean?” Scarlet raked her fingers through her crimson locks, pulling the flimsy robe more tightly around her lithe form. The atmosphere, humid though it was, was making her feel suddenly vulnerable and cold. “What were you prepared for? You aren’t even making any sense…”
For the first time since their argument following the wedding reception to which they hadn’t been invited, Alair appeared unstable. She yearned to take him in her arms and reassure him that whatever vague obstacle plagued on his mind was not as insurmountable as it seemed, she feared that a brush of her fingertips would send him array.
If anyone should be entitled to a foul mood, it was her, given the multiple deaths she had just died, wearing several different skins and identities in her nightmare that should not have been. And if Alair knew something about that, if there was some significance to the fact that it had taken her so long to wake up, he owed her an explanation. Unfortunately—painstakingly—he did not appear to be forthcoming with words of reassurance. Maybe there were none, and that was what frightened her the most.
“Why did I have a nightmare?” For once, it required a good deal of effort and concentration to summon assertion into her voice. She did not want to raise her voice to the man to whom, just hours before, she had proclaimed her love. “Alair, do you have any idea what I dreamt? I can’t even begin to comprehend… I mean, I don’t have that kind of imagination.” All of the identities, the time periods, the landscapes and foreign languages… But all with one thing in common.
Summoning resolve, Scarlet closed the distance between them and placed herself in front of Alair, trapping him in the corner between the window and the adjacent wall. “Talk to me, Alair. I want to know what’s going on. I wasn’t… I wasn’t even me in these nightmares. Just a lot of different women who…” Her throat closed up temporarily, reluctant to divulge a secret to her identity that she kept close to her heart. But Alair was part of her heart now, and hiding it from him would be like hiding from herself.
“They all had my name. My given name. Or a variation of it…” These were not the circumstances under which she had wanted to spill this part of herself. In her head, this occasion had been comfortable, passionate, maybe involving bed sheets in lieu of clothes; a time when all else was exposed, so it would only make sense that she expose that part of her core identity, for whatever it was worth.
But here, and now… Suddenly, she was certain of nothing, and the apprehension brought goosebumps to the exposed flesh of her arms and collarbone. She wasn’t divulging out of trust and intimacy, but as a means to acquire insight into a strange scenario that had Alair putting up all defenses. Quite possibly, the Sandman had never frightened her more than he did right now.
“Maryana Sofiya Aleksei.” The name, so familiar and yet so foreign, rolled off her tongue with the perfect Russian intonation that she no longer practiced, yet had tethered to her identity too long ago to remedy. Unable to hold his gaze, she folded her arms tightly across her chest and stared at her bare feet. “I only heard it when I was in trouble with my mom; when she died, and I was put in foster care, I got sick and tired of hearing other people try to say it and getting it wrong. Not Maryana, but ‘Mary-Anna’; they’re two completely fucking different names…Sometimes to be cute they’d try to shorten it to Marya or Yana, and one old woman insisted on just calling me plain old Mary, because it was ‘more efficient’. So, as stupid as it might sound… it was the reason I got fed up and left.”
Scarlet had never forgiven herself for her crass decision. They had been kind people, for the most part; sometimes the expectations of her foster families had intimidated her, but they’d never meant her any harm. But her wounded, childish heart had been selfish, and yearned only for the mother she’d never see again. Erika and Caspar had been the only other people who knew the story in full and had not judged her against it, the former because she herself had taken to street life for similar reasons, and the latter because the lanky musician, to her knowledge, was wholly incapable of asserting such judgements. Whether Alair did or not, she was soon to find out. “I took to the streets at thirteen and went by Scarlet for completely arbitrary reasons. Honestly… I think the only reason I’m still standing and breathing is sheer dumb luck.” And the uncanny ability to look at the stars and steer things the way I want to see them turn out. “Caspar is part of that dumb luck, I guess, and… you know the rest.”
But the insight into her background had deviated slightly from her initial question concerning her name. Because it held significance, and directly correlated to her dream; of that, she was certain. And Alair knew why.
Inhaling slowly, the chemical redhead reached out and gently gripped the Sandman’s elbow, looking up to meet those emotion-packed, electric blue eyes. Eyes that had seen more, and knew more, than they let on. “What is going on, Alair? This is the first I've heard my name spoken in a decade, and I don't understand why now, and why in the messed-up recipe of some bizarre nightmare that makes absolutely no sense.” Scarlet beseeched tentatively, her voice gentle and calm, the sort of tone she was apt to use with skittish animals. “Did you… did you see any of it? Any of my nightmare? There’s something about it, and I can’t place it… but…” Her grip tightened affectionately, and she stepped ever closer until they were chest to chest, and she had to look up on a slight incline to maintain eye contact. “It has something to do with why you’re so upset, doesn’t it? I… I care too, okay? I care about you, and you know it. You had better know it.” That familiar, frisky bite had found its way back into her tone, and she pressed her lips into a firm line. “Talk to me, Sandman. Right now, or I swear…” What did she swear? What could she possibly hold over him as an ultimatum? The empty threat fell away like words on the wind, and her astute shoulders slumped in a self-perceived defeat. “Just… please. Talk to me. This evening was not supposed to end with you fervently pacing the apartment at four in the morning…”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you [18+]
The possibility that Scarlet might blame herself for the sudden shift in his demeanor stabbed through his heart with reckless abandon; the look she wore in her eyes may as well have been a sharpened stake driven straight into the frantically pulsing muscle behind his ribs. Because as she searched his face for answers, he caught a glimpse of the uncertainty behind her resolve; he noticed the way she faltered against the sudden change in himself he had not bothered to mask. And what was worse, he realized, was that he had granted her every right to demand answers when he was not willing to divulge responses to her legitimate questions.
It was not fair to her, and yet he could not help but feel his silence was the more merciful option. Her rightful and caring curiosity left him in the midst of a very painful dilemma, one that tugged him towards secrecy with forces equal to those pulling him towards revelation. If he were going to bear the anguish of his heart and his soul to any being, he knew it would be to Scarlet—and yet she was the very focus of this unanticipated ache, the unintentional harbinger of the grief of his past. But the longer he delayed speaking, the worse the situation became—because she was blaming herself, he could see it in her eyes. Every moment was another inward redirection of guilt, an unbalanced analysis that was missing, at his fault completely, an entire subset of information that would abolish those poisonous slivers of self-doubt.
As she approached him, he had to fight not to pull away, to keep his feet planted firmly in their place at the window. He could not deny that he craved the sweet solace of her gentle touch; but as much as he longed for it, the thought alone of how little he deserved it was enough to cripple him with overwhelming emotion. Her arms snaked around his waist nevertheless, and he found himself reflexively clasping his hands behind her back. But despite the familiar (and comforting) pose, his expression remained haunted, morose, and it only deepened as the words of her story tumbled from her soft lips. When he looked down to meet her gaze, he felt the cracks in his shaky composure widen.
Maryana, she’d said. If there had been any possibility of mistaking her soul’s true identity, the unlikely option was dashed at the very first syllable of Scarlet’s true name. His heart once again leapt into his throat, and for a long while, he forgot to breathe. It wasn’t until her story came to a close that he released his long sigh. Still he was not ready to speak, however; stiffly, he leaned slowly forward until their foreheads met, the tip of his nose brushing hers as his eyelids fluttered closed.
“Maryana,” he murmured, his hands traveling from her back to grip each of her upper arms as if holding her in place, as if he feared she would vanish. A rush of strange relief washed over him with such strength that he shivered, moisture gathering behind his closed lids before he continued. “I am so sorry.” He wet his lips with his tongue. “The nightmares were not dreams, Scarlet. They were memories.” The tension in his pause was as palpable as the cool humidity in the air. He withdrew just far enough to look into her eyes, his blue gaze veiled with unfallen tears and a glimmer of hope—and devastation. “I was there, but not in the dreams,” he told her somberly. “I lived the moments you saw. Where you…where you died.”
Alair closed his eyes again and pressed a kiss to her forehead, then guided her to the sofa where he angled himself on the edge of the cushions to face her. “I fell in love once,” he began, hardly recognizing his own voice. “Long ago.” A deep breath, a trembling exhale; he took her hands in his and gripped them tightly. “She died, very unexpectedly. And my brother and I…he was able to ensure that her soul would live on, in different forms, through reincarnation. It was the only way…the only way I would not lose her. Lose you.” He tore his gaze away, looking down at their entwining fingers. “It has been my curse to find her again through the lifetimes, through the ages. I think…I think what you saw was a glimpse of those lives.”
He broke away, standing up yet again, but he did not retreat; he simply stood, his back to Scarlet, his posture rigid. “I had given up,” he admitted distantly, his voice breaking. “I thought I would never find her again. Find you again.” He bowed his head and, barely audibly, whispered, “I am so sorry…”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you [18+]
But then, if it were true, what did any of that have to do with what she had dreamt? The redhead would have bet money that her unique and horrifying nightmare had something to do with Sleep’s distress; she could see the tension build in his muscles when she brought it up, and then all the more when she took a terrible risk and recounted a story that few had ever had the privilege of hearing. It was personal and dark, and all together more than what anyone would have wanted to hear. Perhaps he was under the impression that she simply meant to garner sympathy, when she only wished to explain, to make the connection between the nightmare that never should have been and that tiny, secret detail. I’m telling you this because I trust you, she wanted to say, but there was no need, as the sentiment was reflected in her blue-grey, otherwise confused eyes.
This must be a mistake. The realization that it might be easier to admit defeat and walk away dawned on Scarlet like a dark and heavy cloud, weighing on her shoulders such that they began to slouch. Life had conditioned her to expect blows and disappointments, and Alair's unhappiness, if it truly had something to do with her, was a blow that she wasn't sure she could bear. Her mind had her convinced of this, but that was before she heard those three, musical syllables of a name with which no one had addressed her for years fall from the Sandman’s lips, as accurately in intonation as if it had been spoken by her own mother. It brought tears to the corners of her eyes, where they sat and glistened, but did not fall. She was too preoccupied with what Alair suddenly felt he had to say, and crying was a forgotten possibility.
“I lived the moments you saw. Where you…where you died.”
“…what?” She must still be dreaming; another dream within a dream, a continuation of that vicious loop that had been so relentless and difficult to vanquish; that had to be the only reason for Alair to say something so absurd. There was no time to pinch the inside of her elbow or dig her fingernails into the back of her neck to jar herself awake, however; Alair was leading her back into the living room before her mind could gather its faculties and form words. Perhaps it was not such a bad thing; sometimes, it was easier to just listen.
That is, when the topic did not pertain to reincarnation and demise…
What seemed like so long ago, now, Alair had confided the dangers of love in Scarlet, without ever going into great detail. And, in spite of her insatiable curiosity, she had never ventured to pry. Particularly not when she was convinced it would dampen that smile with which she had so quickly fallen in love, and dim the sparkle in those electric blue eyes. Not that it would have mattered; had she dared to pry a little deeper, even if she had a million years to psychoanalyze the Sandman, she never would have derived the answer that he put forth.
“But how do you… I don’t understand how…” The words wouldn’t come to her, because she didn’t have any idea what exactly it was she was asking. Scarlet stared down at their entwined fingers, two shadows in the dim light of streetlamps that leaked their eerie glow through the broad living room window. The rational part of her mind screamed that it was too fantastical, too absurd; the realistic part of her mind realized she was sitting next to the Sandman, thusly rendering her rational leaps of logic completely invalid. After all, what reason would Alair have to lie to her? “Are you sure...? I believe you, Alair; I believe that you believe it to be true, but I just… How can you be so sure I’m that person?”
When he stood up, and she was met with his back, Scarlet rose with him and wove her fingers through his. So she might have shared a similar name with these women, but beyond that, how could he be so certain that she embodied their very same soul? Was everything that had happened, from the moment they had shared a coffee that evening, through an open kitchen window, a path that had been predetermined by fate and time? Did it explain the magnetic sort of chemistry that had kept Scarlet glued to Alair’s side all this time, that had convinced her to open up to him, to trust him and, ultimately, to realize how far into love with him she had fallen? Not dumb luck, not even good chemistry; this was a twist in destiny that was beyond even her reach to control.
Tucking her hair behind her ears with her free hand, Scarlet shook her head and gave his hand a squeeze. “Don’t,” she whispered, finding it more difficult than she’d anticipated to filter the excess emotion from her voice. “Stop apologizing. Don’t make this—don’t make us—into something that warrants an apology.” Without another word, she guided him back into her room, pulling him into the tangled mess of sheets as she eased herself back onto the mattress. “I just had the most fucked up nightmare that I can imagine; be a gentleman and at least lie down with me for a while until I can get back to sleep.” The young woman grinned cheekily, but the smile didn’t reach her eyes as she pressed her cheek into the pillow, lying on her side to face Alair.
“Here’s the thing… I know shit all about reincarnation. So I can’t even begin to fathom the idea that I’ve been alive, before, as a bunch of different people… All I know is that I’ve felt something being near you, from the day we met. I mean, I’ll admit, you were kind of a threat to me at first… Caspar had been acting weird, and it all correlated to when he’d met you, and the next thing I know, my only anchor to leading a relatively normal and sane life was too busy hitting the sheets with some brunette bimbo to even bother letting me know if he’ll be coming home anytime soon.” The Aries’ gave her head a shake and reached out to stroke Alair’s cheek with the back of her hand, tracing the path from his jaw to his neck to his shoulders and all the way down his arm, until her hand found his again. “But the weird thing was… I could never bring myself to really dislike you. These past weeks, I’ve cared more about spending time with you than worrying about what the infamous Caspar Brighton is up to, and I couldn’t figure out why. I’ve never been in love before, but even I know enough to realize that those feelings were so… so solid, given that I haven’t known you for very long. Maybe it is because I’ve actually known you forever.”
Pushing herself forward, Scarlet’s lips brushed Alair’s, lingering to get the meaning across before she put a few inches’ distance between the two of them again. “So maybe it is some strange shadow of destiny, that our paths happened to cross. Given the kind of life I lead, and the people I know, I wouldn’t doubt it. But even if that’s the case… Who says that either of us have to hold onto the past?” Her hand traveled then from his hand and arm to rest on his hip, and the smile that touched her lips wasn’t sad or confused, but merely, genuine. “I don’t care about who I was before, because I can’t even remember those women. All I know is me, and you in the here and now; you really think I care that you stopped looking for me? Because clearly, it didn’t seem to matter, in the end.” Pulling his body against hers, the young woman tucked her head under his chin and wove her knees comfortably between his, the two of them like adjoining pieces of a puzzle. “I love you, Alair. And I want to be with you. And it has nothing to do with what I do or don’t know about past lives spent with you as completely different people; hell, I’ve got enough baggage to carry around. So… why don’t we just put the past—your past—aside, for a while, and just enjoy each other and who we are and what we have, right here and right now?” And, lastly, she added a meek; “Please?”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you [18+]
The answers he subsequently provided seemed to do little to ease her guilt, much less her confusion—his confessions, he realized, were falling upon ears unaccustomed not only to the trials of his past, but to the inner workings of the universe privy only to those connected to its core. Alair had not often spoken of the situation to anyone but his brother, or Roesaleine, and even then their talks had been less conversation than they were vicious argument. Never before had he been faced with his beloved actually recognizing who she was; never before had he felt, even with her, quite what he had experienced with Scarlet. The headstrong red-haired woman deserved to know, yes, but faced with the task of explaining his saga the Sandman found he did not know where to start.
He loved her. He loved Scarlet, regardless of whose past lives the soul beyond her flesh had worn over the centuries. Though at the time he hadn’t felt the tether as it wrapped snugly around his heart, he knew now that had belonged to Scarlet the moment he had accepted her reluctant cup of coffee that warm summer morning. Not once had he lied to her, pretended to be someone or something he was not; never had it been necessary. She coaxed from his carefully guarded soul the very best of himself. Through all the teasing, all the jokes, all the showy confidence and outspoken soliloquys, he was more genuinely Alair than he had been since Amrial had tended to his self-inflicted wounds in the dank old cellar. He had bled away the old version of himself that day, leaving his body a shell fueled solely by a blend of grief and regret.
But how could he tell her? How could he explain that he had been willing to give up anything—everything—to preserve her well-being? Someone who by definition was a completely different person from Scarlet, and yet was precisely the same? The Sandman had been willing to die for love that fateful day; his life in exchange for hers, maintaining the precious proverbial balance. Appeasing not only Amrial and Roesaleine but also the very system of the universe, it should have worked; it should have spared her her undeserved end and granted him the freedom to wait for her on whatever so-called other side existed. But his brother would have nothing of it. In a state of mostly-healed hindsight, Alair knew he had been right. Instead, he had sacrificed another part of himself entirely, giving up an ultimately nonessential piece for a shattered image of his former idyllic hopes.
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- “Been in love, Scarlet?” he remembered slurring, settling deeper into the couch cushions. “I have. It’s sort of great, you know? A rush. The best fucking drug…Better than absinthe. Better than whatever-the-fuck else. It’s a high, alpha. A high.”
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The rush of his short-lived joy had poisoned him slowly—the after-effects of a drug taken without thought of the consequences. When he had warned Scarlet against it that night—when he had sworn off love and warned her against its destructive properties and crippling lows—he had meant every word of his inebriated spiel, revealing a part of himself that rarely saw the light in the presence of another. He had obviously not heeded his own warning (neither of them had, as it turned out), but he already bore those scars and had sported them for a thousand years; she, on the other hand, did not carry that same brand of pain. It terrified him that she might now experience even a remote pang of the sorrow in his soul, the sorrow that seemed to have fused to become permanently part of him. Because that drug could kill you, he had warned. And he’d meant it.
The dark-haired, defeated Sandman melted into Scarlet’s embrace when he felt her arms snake around him, bowing his head to bury his face in her shoulder. The scent of her hair—the same honey-sweet perfume attached to his own short locks—filled his nostrils with every inhale. “I am sure,” he whispered into her skin, grateful that his face was hidden as it contorted with pain. More sure than anything, he thought, but the words choked in his throat with a sob that threatened to break. He gripped her tightly, but it was she who was holding him, she who was keeping him afloat on this tumultuous sea of anguish and discovery.
When she led him to the bedroom, he collapsed onto the mattress with the weight of his misery escaping in a long sigh. He settled into the pillow, brow furrowed above eyes that welled with tears when he met her gaze—utterly unable to muster a smile in response to her attempt to lighten the mood. “I can’t expect you to understand all of this,” he said quietly, his stare boring into hers with a dark potency that seemed to intensify his blue eyes from within. “You shouldn’t have to. You shouldn’t fucking have to.” Pursing his lips, he took a moment to regain his composure. Scarlet ran her finger from his jaw down to his hand where she gripped his palm tightly; he sighed and leaned into her kiss with a hesitance he had not shown her before.
“I was drawn to you from the beginning, Scarlet.” Alair paused, and then amended in a soft murmur, “Maryana.” He reached out to her cheek, running the side of his finger against her warm skin. “I don’t know whether it was a part of me still connected to your legacy, or if it was just dumb chance that we crossed paths. I love you, Maryana, and I have loved you for so many lifetimes…” He trailed off. The emotional exhaustion in his voice manifested in a tone that was breathy and fragile, bearing his struggle with little to cloak its immensity. “I thought if I stopped looking for you…I thought the ache would eventually go away. But it never really did, and I think I recognized a part of that pain in you that made us…well, that made us so compatible, because it was the part that still existed in me. That will always exist in me.”
After a moment, he went on. “None of this changes how I feel about you, Scarlet, I want you to know that,” he said, gathering both her hands in his and raising them together to his lips. He brushed her knitted fingers with a gentle kiss, then leaned forward to press his forehead against hers. “I don’t want to hold on to that past, but I’m scared. I’m scared that I can’t let go.” His eyelids fluttered closed. “I’ve fought in this battle for a very long time. I always thought…even if I couldn’t win it, I could at least call a truce, or a ceasefire, anything. But the truth is I’ve never been able to walk away from it, not really. It follows me no matter how fast I run.” He shook his head against the pillow, and then suddenly, he laughed—a hoarse, humorless chuckle, but a chuckle nevertheless. “Love’s like a drug,” he reiterated, smiling a crooked smile that failed to touch his eyes. “I think I warned you about that once.”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you [18+]
Except, in the Sandman’s case, it seemed that he had faced a myriad of second and third and fourth chances with a heart full of hope, only to have it broken over and over again, if she was accurately interpreting the tone behind his words. What had happened, exactly? Had he truly never seen a happy ending with any of her past lives? Scarlet wanted to ask, but it didn’t feel appropriate. Not now, while the first man she could ever say she’d ever truly loved (in this lifetime, anyway) could barely piece a sentence together, words and voice strangled by grief as every wall of defense he’d ever put up was crumbling around his feet.
It was then that the red-haired young woman quietly vowed never to ask Alair about his past or hers, nor would she seek the answers through an underhanded consult with Erika and her cards. If the Sandman was going to see past the shades of days gone by, if he was ever to harbour hope in his patchwork heart that their future could be optimistic, then she needed to practice what she preached and put away her curiosity. Because this changed nothing; not the way she felt about him, or the way that she wished to proceed with him, and there was nothing stopping the two of them from being happy; of that, she was certain.
“I don’t have to understand.” Scarlet murmured patiently, the tears in his eyes not escaping her notice when they gathered in the corners and trickled down the side of his face. Without a word, she leaned in and kissed them away before they could complete their trail. “And you don’t have to hold onto old pain… I’ve been Scarlet for longer than I’ve been Maryana. Sometimes I wonder if we’re even the same person anymore… But then I realize, who the fuck cares? What does it matter? I’ve made…” She bit her bottom lip thoughtfully, then continued, “I’ve made a lot of mistakes, okay? A lot, and every day I wonder what it would have been like to stick it out with a foster family, live like a normal teenager, go to a prom and get into college… But just because I fucked up doesn’t write off any happy endings for me. The past only has as much power over us as we allow.”
It didn’t really compare, though; Scarlet was where she was out of selfish, childish choices. Alair was here in spite of a love that had never really faded. It was easier to forgive yourself for being selfish than it was to endure multiple lifetimes of pain, chasing something that eluded you and left you broken and scarred… What were the chances that she alone could stop the bleeding? How can I help someone when, all of my life, I’ve been completely incapable of helping myself…?
“You can let go, Alair.” She whispered at last, her eyes searching his electric blues that glistened with the remnants of tears. Scarlet had never seen Alair so completely crushed by the weight of his baggage, asphyxiated by a love that just wouldn’t die. It frightened her, truthfully, because she was not the stronger of the two of them; if Alair crumbled, she knew she wouldn’t be far behind, and she simply couldn’t let that happen. “You can let go, because I am going to make it stop, okay? I don’t know who any of those other women were, or what they were like, but I am going to put an end to whatever is causing you pain—do you understand me?” She took his face gently in her hands, setting her jaw resolutely as the enormous promise forced its way past her lips before she could think better of it. “It ends with me; I am going to make it end with me. But it is also going to start with me, right here, right now—a brand new chapter, one with endless possibilities. So put your tears away, because you’re not going to need them ever again.” With a lopsided grin, the young woman wrapped her arms around his neck and closed the gap between their bodies, pulling him into so passionate and meaningful a kiss that her lungs burned for oxygen, and she forgot all about the curious air of melancholy that had clung to her from the moment she’d awoken from that wicked nightmare. “I don’t know about you, Magic Man, but I wouldn’t mind finding myself addicted to this love thing…”
The only thing that weighed on her now was the promise she had just made. Scarlet was no healer in any sense of the word; some days, she even wondered if she was much of a good friend. What had she been thinking, promising him the sun and the moon and happiness? Could she make him happy? Hell, what were the chances that she could possibly live up to the expectations he must have?
She was still willing to try—she had to, and not for her sake. Alair had saved her from her nightmares and from Devon Saunders; he’d kept her grounded, kept her from falling to pieces during that hard transition between realizing Caspar was a lost cause, and falling fast and hard for her roommate’s new friend. She owed him her effort. She owed him more, and yet, she had nothing more to offer.
Pressing her cheek into his shoulder, Scarlet’s mouth turned upward in a soft smile. If she was going to set an example, then she needed to put her own fretting to rest and reawaken the optimist in the Sandman. “Close your eyes,” she murmured, resting her arm across his hips, “and think ahead to the weekend. Camping in the mountains, music, no Devon to send anyone to the hospital and no Erika to cockblock.” She had to suppress a chuckle, knowing full well that the dark-haired fortune teller had felt far more awkward about the whole situation than she’d let on. “I hear the view of the stars at night is pretty good from high up. I know a thing or two about constellations… you teach me a few more chords on the guitar, and I’ll teach you to see every one of the twelve zodiacs. Bonus for you if you can actually find Alpha Arietis in my constellation.”
Scarlet’s hand drew slow patterns on the Sandman’s back as she murmured her reassurances, wondering what the chances were that she could actually coax the sandman to sleep and put his mind to rest for a few hours. Which of them fell asleep first was a fact lost on her, however, as she slumber engulfed her before she realized she was drifting off again, carried this time into a mercifully dreamless sleep.
The bright sun penetrating the thin membranes of her eyelids was what roused the fiery young woman late the next morning, and with consciousness came the weight of the previous night’s events (and not the good parts, either). Her nightmare, Alair’s distress, and the link between the two was so stifling that Scarlet’s body wouldn’t remain still, and before she knew what she was doing, she’d moved from the sleeping Sandman’s tight embrace, throwing her legs over the side of the bed. Quiet and careful, so as not to awaken the distraught man who arguably needed rest more than her own mortal body currently did, Scarlet made for the bathroom and turned the shower on to almost scalding. Her movements were mechanical but purposeful, and when she shed her robe to expose her skin to the hot stream of water, it wasn’t until she felt the burn with a gasp that she realized she was actually trying to cleanse herself of guilt. But what guilt? What did I do wrong?
Nothing—yet. That was the answer, because the guilt all stemmed from her fantastical yet desperate promise to the man she loved, the promise that she feared so terribly that would break before it was given a chance. I’m going to make it stop, okay? I am going to put an end to whatever is causing you pain. It was impossible; no one was impervious to pain, and there was nothing she could do about that. She couldn’t be the wall that shielded Alair from everything that could possible hurt him; but she could be the light that dispelled the shadows in his vision. And, sometimes, perspective was everything.
When her hair was scrubbed clean and her skin was pink from the relentless assault of hot water, Scarlet stepped out of the tub and drowned out her thoughts with the sound of the hair dryer, until the crimson tresses cascaded down her back in a soft waterfall of fire engine red. Part of her was afraid of what the day might bring—or, more specifically, whether the Sandman would be able to look at her and really see her, Scarlet, Maryana Aleksei in the here and now, and not the woman she had been a hundred years ago, or a hundred years before that. This isn’t about them, she thought with irrational jealousy towards her very own past lives as she made her way barefoot down the hallway. This is about us. This is about now… Alair, I am going to make you see that.
“You going to sleep all day, or something?” She asked teasingly, taking a seat on the edge of her bed and giving the Sandman’s shoulder a shake. “I’m taking orders for breakfast. Just bear in mind that I will be cooking, so I offer no guarantees for quality or taste. Alternatively, we could go out and grab something, but that depends on whether or not you’re feeling particularly lazy.” She added that last part with a playful grin, then leaned in to plant a kiss on his forehead. “And if you want to be lazy, well, that’s okay, too.”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you [18+]
With its cruel sense of humor and relentless pockets of change, existence had knocked him from his feet to land on his hands and knees in the hot coals of its proverbial fire. The burn of initial impact had kept him in agony until the seared patches healed over enough for functionality, leaving behind masses of hardened tissue that served not as armor, not as badges, but as constant reminders of what had tripped him in the first place. In his eyes the patches were not evidence of strength but rather of his tremendous weakness, not only of the initial happening—of Mariana’s untimely demise—but of his own multi-leveled failures. He had vowed to protect her, yet in the end he had been helpless, useless in upholding that promise.
When Amrial had asked for a sacrifice—requiring an alternate source of power that would temporarily allow him to venture against nature—Alair had willingly made the forfeiture. The power of the Sandman’s dreams was an extraordinary force, and the brothers had been utterly convinced that such a gift would have been enough to accomplish what Sleep demanded. When it failed so miserably, and when Alair made the radical decision to end his life himself in exchange for his beloved’s, he had been ready to give it all up. He had known even in the seconds before Amrial tended to his wounds that he was prepared for his existence to cease, and in that pledge, somewhere, he had found a moment’s peace. A soldier dying for love, a fighter falling amidst devout purpose.
But it was not to last, and in fact, its potent opposite was to persist until the very present. Until he’d found salvation in Scarlet’s arms, the torturous chaos that was his life and emotions had continuously burned in the pit of his being. He could suppress it, hide it, force down the flames and play out his role as planned, but nevertheless it was perpetually there, the pilot light to his daily animation. The redhead—alpha, Scarlet, Maryana Aleksei—was the first he had known of anyone, reincarnations of her included, that had harnessed the ability to dampen the blaze. She hadn’t covered it up, she hadn’t distracted him from its heat; she had, to his complete and utter dismay, succeeded in the first steps of extinguishment. She was healing him. She was completinghim.
More tears welled as his companion kissed them sweetly away, and he clenched his eyes closed against their spill. He reached up to her face, cupping her cheek before moving to cradle the back of her head. He pulled her gently towards him until her head rested against his chest. “You are making it stop,” he whispered, stroking her hair tenderly as he spoke. He shook his head gently, then leaned down to plant a kiss on the top of her head. “You were my solace before any of this came to light.” Thank you, he wanted to say, but his gratitude stuck in his throat with yet another swell of emotion. “I love you,” he murmured instead, burying his face in her crimson locks and locking her into a tight embrace. “You, Scarlet. Do you hear me?”
He pulled away and wriggled down to meet her eyes; they lay side by side, their feet entwining as they faced one another. “It hasn’t always been like this,” he told her genuinely, his voice finding some semblance of strength. “I have found her—you—before, but it…it was never guaranteed to work out. There were times I got to know her and it just wouldn’t work out, no matter how we tried. Other lifetimes, she wouldn’t give me the time of day. And that’s only if I could find her.” A flicker of sorrow passed through his blue eyes, but it was soon replaced with something warmer, more hopeful. “But sometimes…sometimes it was real. Just never as real as the first.” He paused long enough to bring his hand to her chin, tilting her face towards him as he planted a soft kiss on her lips. When he spoke again, his voice was breathy. “But you, Scarlet, you’re something more. You calm me, all of me. You make it all…you make it all worth it. The pain, the heartache. All of it led me right here.” Brushing another kiss upon her lips, he pulled away and—for the first time since the torrent had nearly drowned him—smiled. “Right here to you.”
At her prompt to close his eyes, he obeyed, realizing with a sudden sigh that he was completely physically exhausted. He did not need to sleep, but with Scarlet’s urging he realized he wantedto; he wanted to slumber next to her, with her slender frame clasped in his embrace, with her soothing presence at his side while he began the long and strange process of recuperation. The Sandman found sleep instantly, plunging his brain into unconsciousness as if he had flipped a switch. This time, however, he stayed far away from dreams—not those of his own, of course, but the visions that might be playing through his companion’s mind. Neither of them needed that this night; reality had become dreamlike enough during the past handful of hours. Rest was precisely what Scarlet had accurately prescribed, and for Alair, it was a welcome reprieve from the gauntlet of feeling through which he had been blindly sprinting.
He woke immediately upon her question, opening one eye reluctantly before muttering a staunch, “Yes.” He grimaced and shifted positions, lying on his stomach and burying his face in the pillow. “I think I will, thank you.” When she took a seat on the edge of the mattress, he rolled over to meet her gaze with pursed lips. Though the late morning light was cheerful and bright, it did not take long for the rush of dark emotion to settle back into place in his bones. He shuddered despite the pleasant warmth of the filtering sun. “Let’s go out,” he said hoarsely, narrowing his eyes against its glare. He sat up abruptly, his wild bed hair a dark halo atop his scalp, and took Scarlet’s hand in his. For a long while he said nothing and simply studied the pattern of their laced fingers, his face once again adopting a haunted expression that brought shadows to his blue eyes.
“I think it would be good for me to go out,” he told her at last, trying to smile. “The distraction might help.” He leaned forward, tossing back the covers and planting a tentative kiss on her cheek. “And you, of course.”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you [18+]
And, sometimes, the enormity of what those windows to his immortal soul revealed was almost too much to bear. Scarlet couldn’t even begin to understand the torrent of pain that glided on the tempest of his undying love for her—for her soul, the part of her that remained constant—and although she refused to let on, it instilled in her an inevitable guilt that cut deep to her core. Were she to dwell on it, were she to give it more than a moment’s consideration, she knew too well that those same shadows would cast shadows in her own eyes, and Alair did not need that. He was hurting, but he was healing; right now, what he needed was a source of light, something to see through the fog of his haunted lifetimes. She had to be that light… she had to be, lest she never see him smile again, that same, cheeky, endearing and warm smile that had won her heart in seconds.
“Sorry, that was a rhetorical question.” The redhead said lightly, raking her fingers through her hair, soft and feathery as it was freshly dried. “The real question is, are you going to haul your own ass out of bed, or do I need to start making threats? I do bite, you know.” Winking at the not-so-empty warning, her eyes trailed to their conjoined hands when the Sandman wove his fingers through the gaps between hers, his broad and strong, hers slender and still partially damp from the shower. Though such a simple gesture, it somehow made her feel worth something, that touch of hands. For the first time in her life, Alair had made her feel like someone worth holding onto, something solid and something meaningful. Not a transient and useless shade, as she had established during her time on the streets; not an old toy, cast aside for something new and shiny, as Caspar had (albeit unwittingly and unintentionally) made her feel.
Alair loved her. He loved her, over and over and over again, and she would be damned if she couldn’t succeed in piecing his shattered heart back together, one fragment at a time. I’m going to make it better, Alair., she wanted to tell him aloud, but the wounds reopened last night needed to mend, and the shadows carved into his face needed to soften. She wouldn’t bring it up again, any of it, until she was certain he would be all right. Until she was certain he was whole, again, without the risk of crumbling under the weight of a merciless past that had him by the throat and would not let go.
Shaking her head, Scarlet playfully reached up and mussed his already tousled hair, dropping her hand then to rest tenderly at the back of his neck. “You don’t need a distraction, Magic Man; you need to put one foot in front of the other, and just keep on walking. Pick up where you left off before you felt yourself fall apart.” Drawing his face towards hers, the young woman brushed his lips softly with a meaningful kiss, then hooked a finger playfully in the collar of his V-neck. “Step one was putting your tears away; step two is smiling like you mean it. Come on now, Sandman, how many more reasons do I need to give you to smile?” She emphasized this with yet another kiss, tugging him forward by his shirt and very gently grazing his bottom lip with her teeth.
“I’ll pretend you just genuinely want to get out of the apartment, and aren’t scared stiff of whatever I can cook up in the kitchen.” The redhead winked and slid from the mattress, adjusting the towel around her slight frame. “Come on—go run a comb through your hair and get your shoes on. Coffee and breakfast is on me this morning.” When Alair left to make for the bathroom, Scarlet pulled out the first sundress that she could find in her disorganized dresser; judging that by the heat and humidity that had already settled in her skin, it was not the type of day to wear anything that did now allow for some air circulation.
By the time Alair was finished and presentable (and wearing a different V-neck; an odd phenomenon to which she had grown accustomed, never thinking to question where the Sandman’s wardrobe came from), she was already slipping on her shoes with her keys in hand. “Better,” she commented, looking him over and sizing him up. “I mean, you look fantastic, as always, but I’m still not quite convinced…” Standing on her toes, Scarlet’s lips trailed from his jaw to his mouth in three consecutive kisses, and as they drew a smile out of the depths of Alair’s foggy and haunted mood, her own grin broadened. “That’s more like it. Now hold onto that, because if I’m the only one of us walking down the streets and looking to be in a good mood, people are going to assume I abuse you or something.”
Scarlet stuck her tongue out briefly and playfully, slipping her hand into Alair’s and heading out the door. She didn’t tell him where they were headed, because in truth, she had no idea, herself; not that either of them seemed to care. He had wanted to get out, and the sunlight did him wonders, brightening the dark shadows that crept across his face, its warmth relaxing his posture a little. Finally, he was beginning to look less like someone who had lost their puppy (or rather, witnessed it being savagely torn apart), and more like someone in need of coffee and quick energy. “Over here,” she urged, leading him into an unfamiliar café at the end of a rather familiar street. The sign above Geoff’s shop could be seen not a block away.
“Maybe I should’ve taken you for ice cream, instead; you look like you could use a sugar rush.” She nudged Alair’s side lightly as they approached the counter, and her eyes skimmed the menu with patience and precision. These places that offered more than light, medium and dark roast coffee blends confused her; why turn something so pleasantly simple into an artificially flavoured, artificially sweetened, more-milk-than-coffee concoctions, topped with fake whipped cream and colourful sprinkles that looked and tasted like plastic?
Putting in their orders, the Aries girl led her beloved companion over to a table near a generously sized window, directly facing the very shop where all of this (in this lifetime, anyway) had begun; where they had shared their first kiss, bonding through their mutual love and understanding of music. And that was when Scarlet was struck with an idea.
“What do you say we pay Geoff a visit when we’re done?” She suggested, resting her hand lightly atop his wrist on the table. “He’s always interested in how his “patients” are recovering; you could give him the 411 on your guitar. And, it’ll give me an excuse to show that poor, neglected keyboard some love.”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you [18+]
The worst part, of course, was the added sting of the knowledge that all this discomfort was born of his own misfortunes, his own insecurities, and his own long-endured grieving. With a soft sigh escaping parted lips, he tossed the blankets back over the bed and folded over the tops of the sheets. Scarlet’s apartment had always seemed cozily small, but now, with the weight of the previous night settling back on his aching shoulders, her room was maddeningly confining. Attempting futilely to swallow the lump that had wedged itself in his throat, he made his way wordlessly to the bathroom. With the door closed securely behind him, he braced himself against the sink and, now safely out of Scarlet’s sight, wilted. His shoulders fell forward and he bowed his head, staring at the edge of the sink without truly seeing it.
There was little to do now but to continue forward. It was precisely as Scarlet had spelled out, with wisdom beyond her years; if he did not put one foot in front of the other, he would never put distance between himself and the unpleasantries best left behind—unpleasantries that, strictly speaking, were temporarily no longer relevant. Stirring back into motion with an outlook slightly improved, he switched on the faucet and doused his face in the icy relief of cold water. Next, he discarded his pajamas in a heap on the floor. He donned yesterday’s dark jeans and a new white t-shirt, its neck cutting a low v over his sternum. One step at a time. One foot before the other.
Moisture glistened on his brow as he stepped to face the mirror. Despite his internal words of encouragement and the echoes of the redhead’s hard-fought optimism, the man who stared back at him in the reflection was pale, gaunt; even shadowed, the azure of his blue eyes stood out like bright jewels stranded in the weary landscape of his familiar visage. Pursing his lips at the state of his appearance, he reached up to attend to what little could actually be changed at the moment; he ran his damp fingers through his unruly mane of dark hair, ruffling the already wild locks until they fell into a flatter chaos slightly more organized than his tousled bedhead had been. With a roll of his shoulders and a quick stretch straight upward, he deemed himself ready and emerged from the confines of the bathroom.
The jingle of Scarlet’s keys alerted him that she had beaten him to getting ready, and when she strode up to study him he had to fight not to shrink back under the new significance of her stare. “I look like someone who’s seen a ghost,” he said, but the intended humor of his self-deprecation was lost in the sad, steadfast delivery and the heart-wrenching truth contained within the joke. His crooked smile did not quite reach the caliber of a smirk, and it barely touched his eyes. He was grateful, though, for the brush of her gentle kiss, and the trail she left with her lips down the length of his jaw; he wrapped his arms around her slight form before she could withdraw, and he simply held her there, pressed to him, his arms firm but tender as though she might disappear should he let go.
With a sigh, he relinquished, planting his hands on his hips as he stepped back. “Okay,” he said, his expression somewhat brighter from the embrace, “Let’s go.” He didn’t bother to conjure false enthusiasm; he knew she would see straight through his pretenses. But he would put forth his best efforts, and that counted for something. He could see her relief at his slight shift towards cheer. That was what counted; he would hold on to hope for her, and she in turn would help him heal. He wound his fingers through hers and clung to her as though to a lifeline on a rough sea, tethering him to a steady shore when all he could feel were the angry tidal waves.
But the tiny smile he wore when they headed out was more genuine; the golden sunlight on his face was refreshing rather than overpowering, and the heat of the day once again began to feel easy rather than restrictive. The shadows in his eyes lifted like dark veils in the light of dawn, and his gait at last found its characteristic spring as they rounded the corner to the unfamiliar café. He gave her fingers a squeeze before letting go to hold open the door for her, and he shook his head against her second-thoughts. “Caffeine will do just fine,” he promised, his voice already stronger, livelier. Following her lead, he placed his order for a strong café au lait and followed her to the table near the window with his drink in hand.
“You know, in France, they serve these in bowls,” he commented, studying the artful swirls of white against the dark beige of the coffee’s thin froth. Bringing the mug to his lips, he nodded once in approval. “I prefer the Polish kawa biała,” the foreign word rolled as effortlessly from his tongue as Scarlet’s true name had only hours before, “but this is pretty good too.” He cracked a smile that was perhaps his most real yet, and he nudged Scarlet’s shoulder playfully with his elbow as he gazed across the street to Geoff’s modest storefront. The distance from the restricting flat, the fresh air, the sunlight, the aroma of roasting espresso and steamed milk—it was an experiential potion that Scarlet had concocted as perfectly as her previous morning’s French toast; this was a success that had rendered the Sandman almost completely unrecognizable for the sorry, defeated man who had left the apartment that day.
“I think that sounds like a good idea,” Alair admitted, sipping his coffee thoughtfully. His voice still carried with it a breath of sorrowful weariness, but he hid it well behind his syllables, a work in progress. He watched through the window as a young girl toting her clarinet case disappeared inside the music shop after her mother. “It’ll be good to look around without the dark cloud of my guitar’s impending doom hanging over my head, you know?” She draped her hand neatly across his wrist, and he placed his opposite palm lovingly overtop her fingers. A small squeeze indicated he was teasing, but he didn’t let go. “I want to hear you play some more,” he declared with a nod that said, this is not up for discussion. “Deal?”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you [18+]
And he still was. Even if he couldn’t see it through a haze of pending tears.
But he was improving; she could see it in every movement, in every passing moment. First a slight lift of his shoulders, and then his chin; the way he picked up his feet more as he walked, the light that, once more, she could see reflected in those beautiful azure eyes. And, finally, the quips over his mug of fancy caffeinated beverage, a small window into that clever sense of human that, on some level, had always made her laugh (even if only on the inside). Slowly, but surely, Alair—her Alair, her Sandman—was coming back to her. He would be all right.
They would be all right.
“And I thought I was a coffee snob.” Scarlet scoffed, taking a bite of her buttered bagel as she rolled her blue eyes in jest. “Does that even qualify as coffee? Or is it all looks, no substance?” Without warning, she pulled the polished ceramic mug towards her, and her nose crinkled in distaste the moment the flavour hit the tip of her tongue. “Ugh—seriously? There is milk in that. I feel like if wrong was a flavour, that is what it would taste like.”
Smirking impishly, she took a long swig of her own black, extra hot java, without so much as flinching as the liquid burned its way down her throat. “The French can have it. So can you, for that matter; at least now I know to avoid—what did you call it? Café au lait? Sounds as pretentious as it looks.”
Scarlet teased because she knew he wouldn’t mind; because she knew the contagion of smiles, and the dimpled, self-righteous smirk that tugged her lips to the side was big enough for the both of them. And it was working, if the way his own smile began to reach his eyes was any measure of progress. She wasn’t going to push him; you couldn’t pressure someone into bringing a closer end to their grieving, any more than telling them to toughen up would somehow bring their pain threshold to new levels. Alair would heal in his own time, slowly or quickly, however it may be. But that did not exclude her efforts to speed the healing; being the clotting factor that halted the bleeding, taking on the role of white blood cells that fought infection. Knowing now what she did about her dark-haired, sky-eyed Sandman, it was not apparent that he hadn’t been a whole man from the moment they’d met (for no one with the weight of his baggage was without prolonged injury). And, there was nothing to say that he would ever be, that the endless possibility of the future would somehow put the past in perspective and shut it away, once and for all, but he would be happy again. Alair would be happy, because she was going to personally see to it that she guarded that cherished smile with all the influence she could have.
Finishing her coffee in record time, and leaving the other half of her bagel untouched (she had rather hoped he’d take a bite; appetite was often a good measure of how someone was feeling), the chemical redhead finally stood, smoothing out the skirt of her blue pinstriped sundress. “I think Geoff’s clear of customers,” she announced, as the young girl with the clarinet walked out empty-handed, her woodwind in the careful, loving hands of the man who saw music as having a soul all of its own, and instruments as being the very vessels of that collective entity. “Let’s go say hi. I’ll play for you if you’re lucky.” Scarlet raised her eyebrows on that last word, a small, cheeky indicator that when it came to her, everything was up for debate. But, given the situation, she couldn’t help but amend with: “Or… if it’ll make a difference.”
Her small hand found his the moment Alair pushed his empty mug of wrong aside, leading him back into the sweltering heat and humidity of midsummer. The act of putting one foot in front of the other to cross the street was enough to draw beads of sweat to her brow, and the confines of Geoff’s shop with its broken air conditioner did little to remedy the flush in her cheeks. “Dude, seriously, how can you concentrate in this heat?” Scarlet teased Geoff in greeting, leaning across the low counter to catch the breeze of his small table fan.
“You learn to just deal with it pretty quickly when you discover how much it costs to run an air conditioner, let alone get one fixed.” The dread-locked man replied calmly, glancing up from his work over a small, shining clarinet. “What’s up, Scarlet? You look… really good.”
“The hell’s that supposed to mean, G? I don’t usually look good? Ouch.” Scarlet withdrew and stuck her tongue out playfully, drawing it back into her smirking mouth as she added, “Right in the self-esteem. Mind if I give that keyboard of yours a little love?”
But the spunky young woman already knew that Geoff didn’t mind, and broke away from the counter to head into the back room, leaving Alair to follow.
Stifling a chuckle, Geoff shook his head, deft fingers replacing a tiny screw in the woodwind instrument so efficiently that you’d think he could do it in his sleep. “How’s your guitar, man? Did everything settle in nicely with the replacement wood in the body?” Patiently attending Alair’s response, the talented musician and repairman couldn’t refrain from smiling, when next he asked, “And… are you responsible for that smile in her eyes?” His voice was softer, and he angled his head towards the room, from where the cadence of electric piano spilled like a waterfall of perfectly balanced harmonies. “Between you and me, in all the years I’ve known her, I’ve never seen her like… that. Scarlet’s always been kind of fiery, but in a more… I don’t know. In a more subdued way, around Cas Brighton. Not really happy, so much as just content. Almost like he grounded her a little too much, y’know?” Offering a shrug, he furrowed his brow in concentration as he fussed over his current patient, careful as a surgeon. “But you… whatever you did, man, it’s like you’ve set her free. From whatever it was keeping her down, when she’s around you.”
When he looked up again, his cool grin was apologetic, almost bordering on mild embarrassment. “Sorry, I know it’s none of my business. But I always kind of worried for her, at the back of my mind; and I don’t think I have to, anymore.” With a temporarily free hand, he gestured invitingly towards the back room. “Have at whatever instruments you want; I don’t gripe at some free entertainment while I’m slaving over woodwind in this heat.”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you [18+]
The rift between himself and his elder brother had varied in width over the years, the gap piloted entirely by Alair. When Sleep was feeling particularly forgiving, he would spend time with Death in an attempt to bridge the deep canyon carved between them; Amrial was always more than willing to oblige, likely in hopes that each meeting would signify the end of their longstanding estrangement. That wishful thinking was never fulfilled thanks to the Sandman’s tendency towards rapidly-changing moods, but the good times were just that: Good. Before the first World War had rendered Europe a volatile time-bomb of hatred and destruction, they had once visited a quaint little café in the old-town district of Poznań, a prosperous city in the west-central region of Poland. Death had convinced a very reluctant Sleep to sample his “excellent” kawa biała, doing his best to break his younger brother of his coffee prejudices while they were on tolerable terms.
And it wasn’t that Alair found it particularly amazing; it was good, he could not refute his older brother’s claim, but what transformed it from a slightly over-doctored coffee beverage to a drink that could settle his frayed nerves was inarguably Amrial. Even now, drinking a decent Americanized version of the concoction he’d sampled a hundred years ago in the heart of Washington, D.C., he felt himself strangely comforted by amicable memories of his stormy-eyed sibling. Despite the heat of the summer, the warmth that slid down his throat was akin to his brother’s cold, reassuring hand on his shoulder. And that, combined with Scarlet’s smile and gentle teasing, drew him yet another step forward, another step in the direction of recovery.
The memory of his brother on that chilly autumn morning was enough to coax a small, if distant, smile from his lips, and he downed the rest of his drink in one large swallow. Noticing the half-finished bagel in front of his companion, he shot her a look that wordlessly asked, May I? while he reached over to break off a small piece. He was unaware of Scarlet’s scrutiny of his appetite, but it would have pleased her to see his attempts to resume normalcy; he was not particularly hungry just as he was not particularly over the onslaught of emotion from the previous night of revelations, but again, it was a start—and a gradual effort to regain momentum and restore his former livelihood would be rewarded eventually.
When Scarlet stood, he followed obediently, depending on her more than he realized for some direction for the day. It felt good to let her take charge of their schedule; he was content, or at least mostly sated, as long as he was in her company. It didn’t particularly matter what they did or where they ventured. But the music store seemed as good a choice as any with all the happy recent memories it housed, and the Sandman walked hand-in-hand with the redhead through the sweltering summer haze until they ducked behind Geoff’s faded door.
The air inside provided little relief from the heat beyond its threshold, but Alair didn’t mind. The deep scent of musk and wood and polish and grease greeted him like a familiar perfume, heightened by the temperature and humidity that had infiltrated from the weather outside. He nodded at Geoff in greeting as Scarlet spoke, his gaze wandering over the wall of electric guitars. Realizing his companion was leaving him behind, he made his way toward the affectionately-named Orphanage in the redhead’s swift wake. But a light, unexpected touch on his shoulder halted him in his tracks, and he turned towards the dreadlocked craftsman with brows arched high onto his forehead.
“It’s great, man,” Alair said in response to the query about his guitar. Discussion of his prized patchwork instrument conjured another smile that was perhaps even more genuine than the last, and he nodded thoughtfully. “Better than before, probably.” At Geoff’s next comment, the Sandman’s expression quickly melted from curiosity to something more poignant, and he smiled thoughtfully as the shop owner spoke. “I agree with you. About Cas Brighton,” he replied, but his tone had shifted from conversational to something softer. “He’s a friend of mine, you know, a good guy. But I don’t think it was him guarding her, not really…I think she guarded herself. For his sake, in a lot of ways.” He looked down, watching as Geoff tinkered with the clarinet’s miniscule silver screws. “You might think I’m good for her, but I can guarantee she’s even better for me.”
At that, the woodwind surgeon looked up, his smile apologetic, his eyes embarrassed. Alair chuckled. “Hey, don’t worry about it,” the Sandman said, shaking his head slightly. “It’s good to know she has allies. She deserves them. And thank you.” He nodded once, curtly, which the shop owner returned with a broad grin above the clarinet.
“By the way,” Alair said in a whisper, pausing before he headed to the back room and placing his hand on the counter, “you shouldn’t go selling that keyboard back there to anyone who, you know, isn’t me.” Sleep winked at Geoff, whose look of confusion and surprise quickly transitioned to one of knowing approval. Alair tapped the counter to conclude the conversation and followed the sound of Scarlet’s piano to the back room.
“Don’t stop on my account,” he announced to Scarlet when she looked over to him as he entered. He prowled the cramped makeshift aisles until he laid eyes on something that called to him—this time a scratched up, paint-stripped old Danelectro that, judging from the few chips that remained, had once been pastel blue. Though its body was a little worse for wear, the strings were brand new. Alair ran his fingers over the edge of the fretboard to check for warping, satisfied that it would do. Through the piles of neglected equipment, he caught sight of a shock of bright crimson hair, and from a distance he simply watched her—watched as her expression brightened and fell with the musical swells beneath her fingertips, watched as the harmonies enveloped her and breathed even more life into her already-lively self. She was beautiful. His lips curved wistfully upward at the thought, and after a moment longer he returned to her side.
Grabbing a stray cord from the top of a dusty old stack of Marshalls, he plopped himself tiredly down next to Scarlet and plugged his instrument of choice into the nearby functioning amp. He tuned the strings expertly as Scarlet played, glad to discover that it held on to the tension despite its previous owners’ obvious neglect. Experimentally, he plucked a few notes along with the redhead’s improvised melody, then looked over to her waiting for instruction.
“To answer your question from before,” he began, trying to sound lighthearted, “it will make a difference to hear you play.” The smile he offered her was tiny, but meaningful, and he reached out to touch her forearm. “I’ll join in if you want some accompaniment.”
Re: [r. Astro] I was prepared to love you [18+]
“Duly noted,” Geoff smiled easily, winking in the Sandman’s directed as he made to join in companion in the other room. “I wouldn’t worry that that poor instrument is going anywhere soon; I’ll make sure of it.”
Oblivious to the two men’s exchange in the front room, Scarlet didn’t notice Alair’s sudden presence until his shadow, stretching from the doorframe, cast darker shades over the keys of her favourite instrument. Naturally, she paused to offer a smile over her shoulder, but quickly resumed at her companion’s request. “If you’re sure,” she shrugged, resuming her musical improvisations, fingers dancing over the keys like she knew their positions as thoroughly and intimately as she now knew the dimples and laugh lines that accented the Sandman’s face when his smile reached his blue eyes. “Don’t make me do this alone; go grab some strings, Magic Man.”
The young woman toyed with chords on alternating minor keys, separately and in unison, until she felt the warmth of Alair’s hip against hers when he took a seat at her side. And, without warning, Scarlet found herself helplessly and inexplicably moved by the unified sight of the old keyboard, the Sandman, and the guitar he held and the strings at which he plucked with an inherent sort of grace that could only manifest as the silver lining to a relentless battle with the years, with time itself. Only to her, could the stifling humidity of a back room, two damaged, neglected instruments, and the pressure of someone’s thigh against her hipbone agitate the desire to shed a tear. How is this so perfect?, she thought initially, but forced the musing aside. Now was not the time to cry in front of Alair, even if the tears were borne of polar opposite of grief.
“That song… the one I heard you playing last night.” Scarlet’s fingers slowed on the plastic keys and bit her lower lip nervously, hoping that the conjured memory of that beautiful song would not be accompanied by the anguish she’d witnessed in Alair’s blue eyes as she’d listened to him play it. “Will you… can you play it again? If you remember it…” She did; every note, every chord progression, and the memory tightened her throat. It could very well be a touchy venture, but… “I’ll improvise your accompaniment; it’s how I play best.”
And there was no better way to express her joy and appreciation when his fingers plucked and strummed that familiar memory, than for her own hands to find accommodating, complimentary places on the keyboard. This was not her song—it belonged solely to Alair—but to him, in her accompaniment, she offered a piece of herself; of her purest self. The chords and cadences that her slender fingers spun, delicate yet solid like the silk of a spider’s web, all played their part in a pattern that was uniquely hers, yet had no meaning nor rhyme nor reason apart from the Sandman’s melody. In essence, just like the way he seemed to embody his music while there was a guitar in his hands, Scarlet’s accompaniment was a part of herself that only existed in light of her love for Alair. Her foot found the pedal when the bar warranted a prolonged crescendo, softened when the guitar demanded its time to shine, the notes gliding from both instruments not only playing off of each other, but with one another. Their musical dance continued until she anticipated the song’s conclusion, her fingers obeying as they lightened on the keys, holding a final chord as the guitar led the song tenderly to its end.
For a moment, Scarlet could only stare at the discoloured plastic keys, a myriad of feelings that she could hardly begin to interpret tumbling over one another in her chest. They tightened her throat and pressed on her eyes until a tear forced its way to the surface, trickling down her cheek and splashing upon the back of her hand. It startled the redhead back to reality, and she only managed to wipe her eyes in time for a torrent of more tears to follow the first. “I’m okay—I promise, I’m fine,” she assured Alair hastily, worried for what he might think of this sudden movement of emotion that refused to remain suppressed. “Just… your songs. It’s like I can feel what was on your mind when you write them: it’s right there in the notes.” Plain as paint on a canvas, and ten times more influential and moving.
Shifting her body to face her companion, Scarlet was the one to steal a kiss in the coziness of Geoff’s Orphanage this time, one hand gripping Alair’s shoulder and the other resting on his knee as her lips brushed deftly yet urgently against the Sandman’s, eyes squeezed shut to halt any further barrage of tears.
“Whatever gets into your heart and makes you write songs like that,” she murmured, barely any distance between their faces as she searched his eyes. “it must be beautiful.”
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
When Scarlet broke the silence that had settled between them when her fingers halted their trek across the plastic keys, Alair had not anticipated the request that would follow. That song…the one I heard you playing last night… She hadn’t needed to qualify it beyond the first two words of her tentative sentence. He knew precisely which song she meant, and the immediate realization twisted the knife that was already lodged in his tender heart. A shadow fell over his eyes as he shifted his gaze to meet hers. “Scarlet,” he said quietly, desperately, a trace of anguish suddenly evident in his hushed voice. But whatever else he’d meant to say remained tightly stuck in his throat, and before he realized what was happening his fingers had assumed the position of the first haunting chord and his right hand poised to play.
A long, drawn sigh escaped his lips, and he lowered his gaze without another word. His eyes fluttered closed as he began to strum. The initial structured sounds, gentle and spaced at the tender pressure of his touch, began to dissolve into the same stirring rhythm of the previous night’s mournful recital. Despite the difference in instrument—his own ancient, beloved acoustic guitar versus this long-neglected electric stranger—the piece that aurally unfolded from his masterful hands was no less powerful than it had been in the hollow night of Scarlet’s apartment. It was a glorious ebb and flow of musical emotion as torrential and damaging as a raging tempest. Its crescendos swelled with longing and heartache; the diminuendos spoke of hope and devotion.
As the chords drowned his scattered, wounded thoughts, the Sandman’s eyes remained closed in a state of meditative concentration. The music was no longer a product of logic or reason, but rather a profound, shifting artifact of the heart—a direct line to the tremulous, deeply bruised part of him that had been tucked away and silenced for far too long. But as he played—as theyplayed, together—he slowly, distantly recognized that it was his beloved redhead on the opposite end of that buried connection, the tether irreversibly entwining around its matching piece, its stalwart anchor, residing within Scarlet. Even in their fleeting afternoon duet, they instinctively knew when to pick up where the other left off; they writhed in musical, harmonious fusion that ran, whether or not either of them made a conscious realization, on the same spiritual and emotional level from whence Alair’s music had painfully originated. Their twisting melodies carried with them their own distinct individual signatures, but together they created something else entirely—an ethereal braid of personality and affection, of memory and love; a progression with silent promises and wordless declarations nestled neatly in its intervals.
The final note that sang softly from the marred Danelectro at last faded to silence, and the barren atmosphere that greeted them in the song’s poignant aftermath drew Alair back to present reality. It was several moments before he moved, breaking the lingering spell of sound and blinking his eyes open to realize his cheeks were stained with the trails of moist tears. Without bothering to wipe them from his warm face, he turned to Scarlet. Alarmed to find that she, too, had begun to shed tears, his expression darkened with concern. “Hey,” he breathed quietly, lifting the guitar from his knee as he spun on the bench to face the same direction as the young woman. “Hey, none of that.”
He reached around her to cradle the side of her face, his thumb tenderly wiping away the swollen droplets as they fell from her downcast eyes. Even still, another tear escaped his own half-closed eyes, and despite everything he chuckled softly, incredulously as they leaned into one another above the black and white keys. Gently, he wrapped one arm around her shoulders and pulled her close until her head rested against his chest. Though she provided it, he needed no explanation for the gush of overwhelming sentiment she currently displayed; he, too, felt precisely the same surge. It was evident even in the way he held her, the way his long lashes trapped yet another rush of gathering tears on the brink of spilling.
“It’s your song,” he whispered huskily, leaning his head softly against her crimson hair. “I wrote it for you, in Venice.” The memory was hazy and distant after so many years of trying to forget, but quickly it sharpened back to vivid clarity as though he’d put no effort into leaving it in the past. He tightened his grasp on her shoulder, holding her tighter. “It was unseasonably warm. Like unlike today.” Sniffling softly with an inhale, he pulled away, at last dabbing away his fresh tears with his sleeve and facing her with a the most genuine small smile he’d worn all day. “It sounds better now than it did on those Baroque guitars,” he said, reaching up to tuck a strand of her red hair behind her ear. “They were always so…tinny?”—he wrinkled his nose uncertainly at the word—“in the seventeenth century.”
He leaned in for their soft kiss, lips sparking with a crackle as they met. When he pulled away—only a few centimeters—his azure eyes glimmered with a hint of characteristic warmth. “It’s you, you know,” he informed her tenderly, his honesty so thick in his voice it was nearly palpable. “It’s always been you. The most beautiful thing I’ve known is right here…” He reached out, indicating the redhead by touching two fingers delicately to her sternum. "…and now here," he finished, taking her hand in his and pressing it against his chest.
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
Those three words, simple though they were, hit Scarlet with a force she wasn’t expecting. They paled only in comparison to another select sequence of words that he had murmured the night before, but elicited the same rush of warmth and electricity that brought tears to her eyes and made her heart beat in a rush, the feeling it endured nearly too much for it to function. “Venice,” she breathed with an unstable laugh that hearkened to her currently less than stable state of mind, drowning as she was in the sentiment carried on the marriage of guitar and keyboard, existing in the crescendos and diminuendos of that beautiful piece of music. “It kind of sucks, you know? That I’ve technically been to all of these places, at one point in time, and I don’t remember a damn thing.”
And as if she wasn’t already seriously overwhelmed with what she was now certain had to be love, the two fingers that the Sandman gently touched to her sternum elicited a blossom of warmth inside her chest. Not akin to the uncomfortable humidity of the hot summer afternoon, but a gentle unfolding of comfort, like sitting in front of a fire on a cold day in winter. It traveled from her heart and all the way down her arm when, just seconds later, she felt Alair’s heart beating, firm and rhythmic, beneath her palm.
“It’s you, you know. It’s always been you.”. Words she had never heard before, certainly not in reference to herself. The only way she knew to react was to let out a breathy, humble laugh and shake her head.
“Come on, now… I’m not much. Certainly not that much.” At least, not in this current life. How she compared to her past reincarnations was beyond her knowledge, but her self-deprecation was not borne of some buried sense of self-pity, but a point of view that, long ago, she had come to take as fact. “You know, if I wanted to get really cliché, I could go on about how I don’t deserve the way you’ve given yourself to me…” And she wasn’t just talking the here and now, but the centuries that he had sought her, held out for her, and lost her. He could have moved on; perhaps he should have. But he didn’t, he hadn’t, and for what she was worth—little or much—she was determined to ascertain he didn’t regret it.
Scarlet’s fingertips trailed up his chest, past his neck and the curve of his jaw to gently entangle in the dark locks of hair at the back of his neck. There was nothing hurried about the way she kissed him this time, her lips brushing pliantly against his at their leisure as her other hand joined her first, hooked around the other side of his neck, gently kneading the taut muscles at the curve of his shoulders. “Alair,” she breathed at last, parting from his lips only barely, “I only wish I had found you sooner…”
But that was a what-if; it was hindsight, and hindsight was an impossible and painful thought upon which to dwell, with its taunting, seductive possibilities that could never come to be. What she had—what they had—was the here and now. That is all that mattered. She would make it matter.
“Pick that guitar back up,” the redhead ordered at last, that familiar, cheeky grin returning to spite the tears that still threatened to fall. “It’s my turn to lead. Let’s see who can improvise better.”
This time, when her long fingers traced their harmonic patterns across the plastic keys of the old keyboard, they were accompanied by imperfect, yet haunting vocals. This jarring melodywarranted it, and any self-consciousness surrounding her lack of practice when it came to singing completely dissolved in the song’s atmosphere, intensified by the Sandman’s stringed accompaniment. Perhaps it hadn’t been the wisest choice within the confines of her musical repertoire, with too much feeling and far too much melancholy than this happy occasion warranted, not to mentioned the cut her tears loose once again when she reached the chorus for a third time. But Scarlet went with it, rolling with the punches and the swelling in her chest, secretly impressed that her voice stayed strong, that it did not give out until the very end, when the piece came to a close with a prolonged diminuendo.
“Okay; I think you win both rounds.” Scarlet couldn’t help but laugh, wiping the tears from her cheeks before they spilled onto the plastic keys. “Bad choice of song, with my floodgates already open… I promise I am not usually this emotionally unstable.” Placing a hand on his arm, the fiery redhead seized the opportunity when he turned to look at her to steal another kiss, without even a trace of shame. “Thank you. For this… for everything.” She murmured, spinning around on the bench to face the same direction as her azure-eyed companion. “What do you say to a quiet night in? Order out, maybe a coffee on the roof? A real coffee, none of that café au lame shit.” Winking mischievously, she ran a hand through her hair. “It’s probably gotten cooler outside; we could take the long way back and cut through the playground, if you feel so inclined. It’s a lot more fun without torrential rain.”
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
Overcome with a feeling more akin to optimism than gloom—a foreign sensation he barely recognized through the thick clouds of the past twenty-four hours—he pursed his lips and closed his eyes against another threat of tears. It was only when Scarlet’s fingers entangled in the shaggy hair at the back of his neck and brushed her mouth against his that he felt the urge subside, and he returned her kiss with as much passion as he’d had heartache. He could feel a similar mirrored emotion in the redhead as their lips moved against one another’s, slowly but nevertheless fervently, and it settled over his toiling core like the comfort of a calming blanket in the wake of a terrible cold nightmare.
Her quiet words drew him back to the heat and humidity of the music store, but he was not willing to pull away just yet. I only wish I had found you sooner, she’d said, but Alair knew better than to yearn for the same—he had learned time after time, lifetime after lifetime, that reconnecting with his lost Mariana was never as simple as hindsight made it out to be. Had the Sandman appeared on that rooftop two months, two days, two hours earlier, their paths may not have intercepted at all, and even if they had, their mutual first impressions may never have transgressed their initial animosity. He knew better than most the power of timing, both as a master of dreams and a victim of his own repeated sorrows. But the sentiment remained as true as ever regardless of the impossibility, and the words he longed to say simply could not depart his throat: I wish you had never left.
Scarlet’s determination once again anchored him to the present, and he came hurtling back with her suggestion to pick up the old guitar. He willingly obliged, grounding himself further by inhaling the rich scent of dust and resin, and spun back around to resume his position with his back to the plastic keys and the instrument’s neck extending outward to his left. A quick tune of the strings and he was ready to go, flashing the redheaded pianist a nod and a tentative smile. “Game on,” he told her, his teasing remark lacking the same gusto he’d sported before their alcohol-fueled video game duel. But nestled in the look he cast her was a glimmer of affection so pure that there could be little doubt as to whether he was healing over—no expression that wholesome, that genuine could have been forged without the retreat of the rough emotions that had polished it clean.
The Sandman waited until he could recognize and predict the course of her chords and her melody to join in with his own accompaniment, and when at last he began to pluck the strings, his harmonies were so subtle and delicate that it seemed the song had never lacked them. He kept his eyes closed as he played, the music becoming part of him as it intensified. Scarlet’s voice, ringing with haunting clarity above the steady backing of the keys, reverberated in his mind in a way that reminded him of their dream-excursion to the vaulted medieval cathedral.
Colors burst behind his eyelids in a vibrant fireworks display of raw human experience, all summoned by the magic of her words, her lyrics. Memories twisted with dreams twisted with nightmares, and for several moments, he couldn’t distinguish himself from her song. Her voice was his oxygen, the tempo his heartbeat; he caught a glimpse in one deafening blur all the lifetimes she had lived, all of those he had been a part of, and all the resulting aches within himself. Your hair was long when we first met, soared the verse, and it sent him spiraling back more years than he could count in the descent. Her hair had been long then; and so had his. He’d loved her first and would love her forever, his steadfast truth mingling with one created anew for her as their stories became irrevocably entangled.
She may have been the one to live different lives time and time again, but so too had the years changed Alair. The history books may have forgotten their entwining stories, but the Sandman never had.
Not even once.
But sweet as she was, and contrary to Scarlet’s sung poetry, she had never been his downfall—for all the sorrow, all the grief, she was always the light and the good, the sunshine filtering through his ruins. He had brought defeat upon himself; the only blame that could be placed rested on his shoulders alone. Now that he had found her again, he wanted nothing more than to shield her from the smoldering desolation of what he could never quite rebuild in her absence. But the smoke was in the air, the scent clinging to him irreversibly; the dirt was beneath his nails and his knees were scraped from being dragged through the rubble. He could keep no secrets from her. She knew his pain, she had seen it overcome every inch of him that night, body and soul—and when all he wanted to do was shield her from his worst, he had no choice but to let her in if there was any hope of seeing his best. Because he was at his best when he was with her.
His fingers knew what to do when the song came to a close, his mind catching up after a moment’s pause. The diminuendo eased away like the gentle ebb of a full moon tide. “I don’t know about that,” he told her softly, opening his eyes. He leaned over, kissing her wet cheek so lightly their skin hardly touched. “It was a beautiful song, Scarlet.” His voice was low, husky. In one swift motion, he swung the guitar to its stand on the floor, swiveling to wrap his arms around the red-haired young woman who had moved to face his direction. “There’s nothing to thank me for,” he said, kissing her forehead. “I should be thanking you. But maybe we should just call it even for now, yeah?” He smiled lightly. The look in her eyes told him she agreed, and he nodded once curtly.
Before he stood, he leaned in close, stealing yet another slow, tender kiss witnessed by the dusty old instruments. “I could never forget you,” he whispered, pulling away just far enough to look into her eyes. “I want you to know that. I never have. I never will. I promise.” He squeezed her hands, smiled more broadly than he had in hours, and rose to his feet. Offering his hands for her to take, he tugged her to her feet and into a standing embrace with his fingers knotted at the small of her back. “You lead the way, alpha. Let’s put that ‘torrential rain’ theory to the test.” His azure eyes glittered, and he took her hand as they headed to the front of the store.
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
Because, prior to Alair, Scarlet hadn’t really understood love. Not the love in the song, the very love that had given a name to the way her spirits lifted around the Sandman, with his azure eyes and infectious smile. The very idea of investing such a magnitude of your own happiness in another person, handing over something so fragile and finite as your heart, had seemed stupid. Because people were cruel, people could hurt you; people (with the exception of Cas) were out to satisfy their own needs, and they would make you think, make you feel anything that they wanted as a means to an end, with no regard to which it might reduce you. Love had seemed risky and senseless, and the young woman hadn’t missed what she had never experienced.
Simply put, she hadn’t known what she was missing; Alair had shown her. Before either of them had even been aware, her dark-haired companion had crumbled the defensive wall surrounding her heart with his warm smile and kind eyes and comforting embraces. He’d stripped the organ bare, he had let the sentiment seep in and infect her, and suddenly so much more in life made sense to her—including the wisdom in laying past experiences to rest, and freeing herself from self-enforced restraints that she had never known existed.
And that abhorred song, with its lyric-heavy chords and soulful pitches, had suddenly spring from her fingers, from her vocal chords, and touched her the way she’d never thought possible, leaving her fair cheeks damp with salty tears.
It would have required no effort on her part to allow the floodgates to open and give herself over to the sobs she had been holding back since the night before. It would have been so easy to fold herself in Alair’s solid arms, press herself into his chest and just cry until she emptied herself of this overwhelming feeling, but she wouldn’t. That was not why they were here; Alair didn’t need her tears. He needed her smile, perhaps just as badly as she needed his.
“You think I’d let you forget me?” The redhead quipped, her lipring shifting further to the side of her face as her mouth quirked into her characteristic smirk. “I’m not going to give you the opportunity to forget me; because I’m not going anywhere, Magic Man.”
A telltale jingle from the front of the shop alerted them to the arrival of customers, hinting the end of their session of music and tears and smiles, just as the young woman allowed the Sandman to help her to her feet. There would be other opportunities to indulge in their duets; it went unsaid that Geoff’s doors were always open to them.
Linking her finger’s with Alair’s, Scarlet wandered out of the orphanage with the man who had her by the heart, flashing a parting smile at Geoff so as not to interrupt the conversation he had going with someone looking to buy a used crash symbol for his drum set. Returning to the warm outdoors, the sun was quick to dry the traces of tears on her face, erasing the melancholy that had accompanied the feel with which Alair made her chest swell. The song was over, but the day was not, and her heart only beat with happiness in the closure of who they were, and the bond between them that even time and lifetimes could not sever.
A few turns of a few corners, no more than two extra blocks, and the chipped primary colours of the familiar playground unfolded in the middle of a pit of gravel. Lonely and unused, behind a small neighbourhood private school building that had closed several years ago, Scarlet tugged Alair playfully towards the equipment, releasing his hand so she could grab a hold of the monkey bars.
“We used to cut through here on the way back from Cas’ gigs, when he had them down this way,” she began, swinging from one bar to the next, all the way over to the adjoining metal platform. “But we got a little too optimistic, this one time; after a few too many shots, I mean. I don’t remember, but Cas relayed a very unfortunate account of how monkey bars and vodka shots don’t mix; and I woke up with three stitches to prove it.” With a guilty half-grin, she held up her elbow, indicating a faint, white scar. “So we avoided this place, after that… I hadn’t been back since that day in the rain, when I stole your hat.”
Stretching her arms, the chemical redhead flexed her fingers and made her way back over to where the Sandman stood, one bar at a time, until she clung to the very last one, facing him.
“Also… don’t go down the slide.” She cautioned with a smirk, before swinging her legs out and catching the Sandman around the waist to haul him closer, crossing her ankles at the small of his back. “You’ll get stuck. Ask Cas about that sometime if you wanna see him turn really, really red in the face.” Continuing to exert her upper body strength to keep herself suspended from the bars, Scarlet grinned to match the mischief in her eyes and stole a kiss, long and slow, from Alair’s soft lips.
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
In this case, however, he believed there could be no mistake in the meaning of his recital. As the couple passed the counter and nodded their silent farewells, Alair caught the shop owner’s gaze and held it a beat longer than was necessary. It’s okay, each man seemed to say to the other in wordless unison; Geoff bobbed his head infinitesimally in understanding, and Sleep looked down and away in acknowledgment before pushing out the front door with the characteristic metallic jingle. Their brief conversation earlier that afternoon had been confirmed in that glance in more ways than one—not only the business projection for the orphan keyboard, but the more sentimental matter regarding the heart as well. Alair took strange comfort in their silent exchange and squeezed Scarlet’s hand.
The afternoon had progressed to evening while they were tucked away in the forest of worn amplifiers and instruments. It was the Sandman’s favorite time of day to absorb the character of the city; while the sun dipped toward the western horizon, it shed its warm golden farewell on the odd angles of its eclectic urban architecture. Colors seemed more vibrant in its powerful saturating glow, the shadows lengthened dramatically, and the staggering heat of the day gave way to pleasant warmth that beckoned forward night’s cool air. He breathed deeply, following his companion through the labyrinth of street-level pathways until they reached the promised playground.
He recognized the faded primary hues immediately, a smile appearing unbidden on his lips as they approached the familiar tangle of painted metal bars. Scarlet was right—it was a completely different place during clear daylight hours. No longer shrouded by curtains of torrential rain, he had a chance to study the structures’ sculptural curves and juxtaposing straight edges, his expression broadening to a grin as the young woman leapt to the monkey bars. He followed her, standing near the ladder as she made her way back towards him. Hanging suspended from the nearest support, her face was several inches above his, a challenge he met with a sudden rush of eager playfulness. He twisted towards her as she locked her ankles around his torso, a peal of warm laughter tumbling from his lips.
“Cas must have been very drunk if you got him to go down that slide,” he quipped, the mental image of the lanky musician trapped in the confines of the covered slide providing him with the pure comic relief he needed. A guffaw shook his shoulders. “He never struck me as the type. You, on the other hand…” He reached up to wrap his arms around her neck, careful to avoid too much downward pressure with additional weight on her shoulders. “I have no trouble picturing your shenanigans here. Maybe because I witnessed them. Mmm.” She locked him in a kiss, and he smiled against her lips.
Her tender kiss stopped him for only so long, however. With a careful but decidedly mischievous smirk—indicative that he was returning to the ease of his old self—he rose to his toes and snaked his hands upward, jumping slightly to catch the same bar held by the redhead. “This could get interesting,” he announced, suspending himself with one hand while the other reached across to catch the next support through the space above her head. One grip remained next to Scarlet’s, and the other faced away—they hung there, a haphazard tangle of swinging arms and limbs, until the Sandman leaned his head sideways to steal a long kiss on her cheek. Then, like a schoolboy embarrassed of his bold actions, he took off down the length of the monkey bars and landed lithely on the far metal platform. He had to pull his knees towards his chest to allow his feet to hit the ledge, but he pulled himself up with feline grace nevertheless.
“Catch me if you can,” he taunted, sending her a wink before taking off across the adjacent platforms, a blur of motion between the sun-blanched supports of the play structure. “What article of clothing are you gonna steal from me this time?” he taunted breathlessly. "We wouldn't want to be obscene…"
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
In a lot of ways, it had marked the beginning of the rest of her life.
When that familiar grin crossed Alair’s face then, full of the playful impishness that had begun to grow on her from the very beginning, the redhead furrowed her eyebrows in curiosity, wondering what it was he intended. Whatever it was, she didn’t care; he was smiling, he was having fun, he was happy. And that was all she wanted. “Hey! Careful, there!” She laughed, when their arms were criss-crossed like two links in a chain. “If you make me fall and I need stitches again, I swear I will kick your ass.” Which, of course, was impossible; he was taller than her and stronger than her. But it was still a fun threat to make.
The challenge was on as soon as he began to climb away from her, two supports at a time, reaching the platform at the other end in less than half the time it had taken the fiery redhead. Wrinkling her nose, Scarlet tugged on her lipring with her front teeth, and smirked. “It is on!” She laughed, before swinging her way back over to the fleeing Sandman, who had almost made it all the way to the other side of the equipment by the time her feet hit the sheet of metal at the end of the bars. “Hey, I can play it G-rated!” She called, her lithe body climbing past the plastic tic-tac-toe game on one of the rusted inner walls. “I’ll just make reservations to steal whatever article I want later on, when we’re not in the public eye. Really, Magic Man, it would’ve been safer for you just to wear your hat.” Which, incidentally, she totally intended to steal again, the moment the Sandman took it out of hiding.
While smaller and not as strong, Scarlet was quick on her feet, and agile enough to use the rusted walls and peeling metallic poles and dented steps to her utmost advantage. As a result, she managed to clear the distance between the two of them in a matter of minutes, her fingers grazing the soft fabric of his V-neck a tantalizing handful of times, and missing only by a fraction of a second. But finally, somewhere towards the bottom half of the station with a squeaky ship’s steering wheel, the tip of her finger managed to hook into one of the belt loops on the Sandman’s jeans, giving her the opportunity to haul him backwards while he made to climb a ladder up toward a higher platform. The movement was so quick and abrupt that it not only threw off Alair’s balance, but Scarlet’s as well. As a result, the redhead was the first to fall onto the peripherated metal flooring of the equipment, cushioning the impact of the Sandman as he quickly followed suit.
A low groan reverberated in the young woman’s chest cavity, and she reached behind her to rub at her lower back, were her tailbone had made painful contact with the hard ship’s steering wheel. “Talk about a pain in the ass…” She complained, all the while smiling, even with the entirety of the Sandman’s weight in her lap, for once. Hey, at least she hadn't ended up requiring more stitches; bruises, she could deal with. “I’d apologize for the tumble, but believe me when I say it hurt me more than it hurt you.”
Snaking her arms around his waist, Scarlet rested her chin on her blue-eyed companion’s shoulder, linking her fingers together just below his chest, and with a triumphant sort of chuckle, she kissed his cheek and asked: “So… pretty sure I win. What do I get, Magic Man?”
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
The realization brought a tightness to his chest that had nothing to do with previous grief. As he leapt from one platform to another, his quick footsteps a staccato rhythm that reverberated brightly from the surrounding buildings, he found himself laughing between gulps of air. The old saying about the blindness of love was eerily accurate when it came to he and Scarlet. They had belonged to one another since the very beginning, and the fact that it had taken them so long to recognize it—to see the glowing piece of themselves that dwelled within the other—was only a comedic testament to their individual stubbornness. It was no longer of consequence to whom Scarlet’s soul had belonged in the past; she was his everything in the here and now and the foreseeable future. That was what mattered, and nothing else.
He scrambled across the play equipment until he reached the last of the platforms, leaping from its modest height to land solidly on the ground. He propelled himself around the swing set, knocking the suspended seats by their chains in hopes that their asymmetric motion might deter his pursuant as he jogged around to the opposite side. It wasn’t long before his hopes were dashed, however, and with a shout of mock terror he leapt from her reach and headed back to the taller structures. He zipped past the plastic tic-tac-toe set, climbing higher. His heart drummed rapidly behind his ribs, but it was not solely the physical activity that set it racing; he was, though he was not yet ready to consciously acknowledge it, happy.
“Just my hat?” he called back teasingly, making his way across the monkey bars two supports at a time. He grinned at her wickedly across the gap now between them, planting his hands victoriously on his hips as he waited for her to traverse the broad space. He kept his pause a beat too long, however, and soon found himself genuinely trying to keep away from the fiery demon in his wake—a tough feat in which he succeeded until, disastrously, he did not.
The word that passed his lips as he fell backward toward the metal platform was not at all appropriate for children’s ears. A moment of panic swept through him at the sensation of tumbling off-balance; the knowledge that the smaller, lighter Scarlet was behind him only increased his split-second anxiety, and he tried futilely to catch his fall before he crushed her slender frame. Though he managed to throw back his arm in time to absorb some of the shock of impact, his palm slapping the metal to their side, he cringed when he felt the full force of his weight crash uncontrollably into his companion.
“Fuck,” he repeated loudly. “Are you okay?” At his demand, his blue eyes clouded with worry. Her non-answer inspired a frown, but as she snaked her hands around his waist and rested her head on his shoulder, his expression dissolved to something more neutral. “You win only because you get the sympathy vote,” he told her, tipping his head back and planting a tender kiss against her cheek. The Sandman reached up and covered her hands with his own, pressing them against his ribcage as his pulse slowly returned to its regular, more leisurely pace. A tiny smile upturned the corners of his lips.
He rose to his feet, freeing her of his weight, and turned to offer her a hand. “Sorry to flatten you, even if it was your fault,” he said mildly, tugging her up. But instead of folding her into another embrace, he held her at arm’s length. With a mischievous smirk, one that perhaps betrayed his intentions, he placed two fingers against her lips, then leaned in to press his mouth against his own knuckles. “Actually,” he whispered, pulling away just far enough to speak, “since we’re a thing now, I don’t think we’ll be needing these…” He moved his fingers from her lips to her chin, where he tilted her head slightly upward. Free of the silly barrier that hearkened back to their first heart-filled experience on the playground, he kissed her and surfaced with a chuckle.
“There might be more where that came from," he said with a wink, making towards the ladder to climb to the ground (since the slide was apparently not an option). "One of the many perks of being a thing."
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
Lower back throbbing from where she’d connected directly with the stupid fake ship’s wheel, the young woman did not hesitate to take the Sandman’s hand and allow him to haul her to her feet, suppressing a groan as her muscles pulled and straightened as she rose to her full height. “To hell with a sympathy vote,” she scoffed, wrinkling her nose. “You ran, I chased, and I caught you, fair and…”
Two soft fingers pressed to her lips cut her short, and before Scarlet realized what was happening, his kiss transported her mind back to that day in the rain. She’d stolen his hat, he had made chase, and the running joke that entailed the two of them being a ‘thing’ had led to the almost kiss. That very gesture, teasing though without any malice, had stood out in her mind until the day that he had kissed her for real, in the cramped little space of Geoff’s Orphanage.
Today was meaningful for a lot of reasons: for not only was it truly the first day of the rest of their lives, the first authentic day of them, but revisiting these small steps towards their cohesion as two halves of the same heart had provided the both of them with a therapeutic atmosphere. Alair was getting better; he was smiling, he was laughing, he was teasing, and returning to himself again. And Scarlet, who hadn’t thought she’d been in need of the cathartic effects of music or making use of playground equipment that was clearly not designed for adult bodies, felt inexplicably lighter, more at ease. Like a burden she hadn’t even realized she’d been bearing had been lifted from her shoulders, allowing her to stand taller and walk with more of a spring in her step.
Perhaps it was all because Alair had never truly been bearing his pain alone; and if their separation had been the source of his pain, then it was only logical that their healing was not mutually exclusive.
With an impish twinkle in her blue eyes, Scarlet kissed his two fingers in the aftermath, almost as if to spite them. “Face it: we were basically a thing from the morning that I went all reverse Freddie Krueger on you and tried to kill you in my dreams.” She quipped, and instead of following him down the ladder, she wrapped her body around a tall metal pole, sliding downward in a single smooth motion until her feet hit the gravel, beating him to it by seconds. “Which, you know, could have totally been avoided if you’d bothered to tell me you were all buddy-buddy with my roommate from the get-go.”
The fiery redhead slipped her arm around the blue-eyed Sandman’s waist when his feet touched the ground and he straightened, leading the way off the lonely, abandoned playground and towards the sidewalk again. Were in not for the ache in her lower back that made even walking without grimacing at each step a challenge, she might have insisted they prolong their shenanigans on the rusted equipment, but the decision to return to the apartment appeared to be one that was silently mutual. Scarlet should have picked up long ago on the way their very body language complimented one another, how some things were fine remaining unsaid, without losing any meaning or context. You knew you belonged with someone when you found yourself able to read their silences.
“What do you say I spare you my cooking and we order a pizza tonight?” She suggested, as they turned the corner and were met with the familiar tall, grey rectangle that was the apartment complex. “Your choice of toppings, on the condition that one of them isn’t anchovies.”
Climbing the four flights of stairs up to the apartment had never been a daunting task for Scarlet, not even with arms full of heavy groceries or a massive bag of laundry. But with a bruise forming near her tailbone, aching every time she picked up her knees, she came very close to complaining aloud, and refrained only because she refused to have Alair feel bad or guilty when it had been a result of her own reckless actions.
On unlocking and entering the quiet abode, however, she did not refrain from walking casually to the freezer and finding an ice pack, which she promptly pressed to her lower back. Before the Sandman could make a remark, she held up a hand and quickly declared, “No; you are not allowed to feel bad or make fun of the fact that I fell on my ass. That would be way too cheap a shot.” Scarlet grinned sheepishly, straining to stand on her toes and kiss his cheek, before handing him a small notebook full of important and frequently used phone numbers. “The closest pizza place is the fifth number down, if you’d care to do the honours. I'll go find another awful movie to expose you to.”
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
He followed Scarlet into the familiar building with a quick look in either direction down the deserted street—a subconscious effort to check for creeps like Devon Saunders who might be lurking about. Greeted by little more than a passing car with a burnt-out headlight puttering down the empty avenue, he tugged the door closed behind them and ascended the four flights with his companion in tow.
Earlier that day, the shattered Sandman had been desperate to escape the confines of the redhead’s apartment. The small rooms and low ceilings that had always been cozy rather than oppressive no longer seemed welcoming in the rising heat of the day. In the course of the long, cool night, the modest city living space had begun to press in on him like prison walls, trapping him in a den filled with the newly-freed ghosts of his own memories. He had agreed to Scarlet’s suggestion to leave without a moment’s hesitation, knowing that even if the fresh air itself did not aid in his recovery, the distance between himself and the flat certainly would.
A flutter of anticipation swelled in his chest as she unlocked the door. As he stepped across the threshold, he breathed a sigh of relief heavier than he had known he was harboring. He had little time to contemplate his newfound solace, however, before the young woman was striding away from him and into the kitchen, returning with an ice pack pressed to her lower back. He furrowed his brow. Having remained oblivious to the extent of her pain until that moment, he flushed, furious with himself for being too wrapped up in his own reservations to have noticed sooner. “Another perk of being a thing with Sleep,” he said slyly, ignoring her attempts to silence him, “is this.” As she stretched up to plant a kiss on his cheek, he wrapped an arm around her and placed his palm solidly against her tailbone. “Anesthesia. Sort of,” he told her with a grin, granting her a peck on the forehead. “I promise I won’t say anything about being a pain in the…” He paused, then allowed his hand to stray downward to her rear, patting it once in place of the word ass.
With a chuckle, he stepped back, perusing the numbers in the notebook she handed him. As she disappeared into the living room to select the evening’s visual entertainment, Alair fished his phone from his pocket and peered at the list with amusement. Before he dialed the fifth number down per Scarlet’s instructions, however, he stopped, struck suddenly with a better idea. He returned the device to his pocket and headed out to the living room.
When the redhead asked if he’d completed his task, he grinned and nodded, stepping up quickly behind her and wrapping his arms around her middle while she continued to peruse the shelf of disks. “Scouts honor, no anchovies,” he promised, grasping her upper arms and turning her back around to face him. “Now,” he continued mischievously, draping one hand on either of her shoulders, “close your eyes.”
She did as he instructed, and he soon followed suit. There was a rush of wind, a sudden chill, and then an atmosphere of pleasant humid warmth that surrounded them from all sides.
“Okay. Open,” the Sandman whispered, his lips suddenly against her hair. He held her once again from behind, wrapping his arms tightly around her middle as he stooped to rest his chin on her shoulder. “What do you think?”
The panorama that stretched before them was so entirely unlike Washington, D.C. that the Sandman had to stifle a startled laugh. He had been prepared for the change, but the difference between American and European cityscapes never failed to strike awe in him anew. The sky above was mostly clear—a soft shade of navy-black interrupted by a handful of low-slung clouds that glowed with the pink and gold gleam of Venice nightlife. From their perch on the flat stucco rooftop, the city’s labyrinth of well-used canals twinkled vibrantly with reflected light. A distant cacophony of music from a hundred sources floated on the soft saline breeze, and below, a man shouted angrily in Italian at a group of noisy teenagers shuffling past.
“Venice might not be the fifth number down, exactly,” the Sandman admitted casually, “but it is the best. And we're still not cooking, so it counts, right?”
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
“I have to say, that is a really convenient perk, given how fucking prone I am to hurting myself,” she commented with a slow smile, the corner of her mouth quirking into a grin, accompanied by a slight scrunch of her nose when his helpful hand wandered. “Oh. Cute. Really cute, Alair.” But she couldn’t even bring herself to roll her eyes, because she was too relieved in the absence of suffering the pain of a bad bruise, and instead just brushed her lips against his in a featherlight kiss.
Leaving the Sandman to do the honours of phoning in a pizza, the fiery redhead headed to the living room to browse her and Caspar’s combined collection of terrible movies. For the past five years, Friday night had fallen into the tradition of being reserved for such movies, when the lanky musician did not have other commitments. Part of her was surprised to find that she had taken the transition so well, not feeling much nostalgia for her bond with her roommate; he was moving on, and she… She had found where she belonged. Or, more specifically, to whom she belonged.
And she was more than content to sit back and waste time on these awful movies with Alair. In fact, were she in a position where she would have to choose… This is how she’d want it to be.
Her indecision, as it turned out, was notorious this Friday night, and by the time the Sandman joined her in front of the bookcase full of DVDs, slipping his arms around her middle, she had already chosen and put back a total of five movies. They were all ‘bad’, in their own way, but everyone had their own taste and preference in what constituted as a tolerable sort of ‘bad’, and she was still getting to know Alair’s taste in particularly terrible movies. Certainly, she felt he wouldn’t have cared either way, were it an installment of Twilight or another terrible subtitled masterpiece from Japan, and yet felt oddly self-conscious about what she chose to show him. His happiness had mattered before, but given the delicate nature of the situation—that Alair was finally coming back to himself, after what had transgressed during the pre-dawn hours of the day in this very living room—she was terrified that the slightest mishap might break the spell. And that would break her heart.
“Why don’t I feel inclined to trust your ‘Scout’s honour’,” Scarlet teased, giving his hands a squeeze. “Have you ever even been a Scout, Magic Man?”
Before she was even finished asking, Alair had spun her around, moving his hands from her middle to rest on the downward curve of her shoulders. Not only was the request abrupt, but it was highly suspicious, and the redhead narrowed her eyes to mirror the sentiment. “What exactly are you up to, Sandman?”
But, for better or for worse, the young woman trusted him. And no sooner did she voice her wariness that she shut her eyes, turning her mouth contemplatively to the side. It was the sudden breeze on her face as the subtle drop in humidity that finally made her eyelids part again, and when they did, Maryana Aleksei was left completely breathless, in every sense of the word.
“This… what is…” She couldn’t piece a sentence together, but judging by the qualitative difference in language, the obvious fact remained that she was A) no longer standing in her apartment, and B) was more than likely no longer standing in D.C. “Am I dreaming? So help me, Alair, if you got crafty with that pixie dust of yours…” But the crimson tresses that hung over her shoulders, billowing gently in the exotic breeze, was a testament to reality: in her dreams, Scarlet’s hair was its natural colour, a non-descript shade of light brown.
Venice. The word that passed the Sandman’s lips sounded as surreal as what surrounded them, and in spite of all of the evidence contrary to the skepticism of her mind, the young woman could hardly believe it. “Did you… Are you fucking kidding me? You took us to Venice?”
It should not have come as such a surprise to her. Alair was more than capable of disappearing and manifesting wherever he wanted, whenever he pleased; he had demonstrated such on a number of occasions, and yet her imagination had never dared to venture beyond that feverish afternoon on the rooftop across from her apartment complex. Truth be told, the whole world was at his fingertips… And he now chose to share it with her.
There truly was no reaction appropriate enough to express her wonderment and gratitude, so the best that the shocked redhead could do was turn and stand on her toes, hooking one hand across the back of his neck and pressing the other over his heart as she monopolized his attention and lips with a long kiss, so extended that she was forced to break apart only when her calves began to cramp. “Something tells me you didn’t phone in that pizza.” She laughed, biting her lower lip to stave off tears: no more crying. Not in sadness or happiness or complete and utter bewilderment. “But yeah… I guess it still counts as not cooking. You have a place in mind? And… do you even speak Italian?” The question hadn’t seemed stupid until the words had passed her lips. Shaking her head, she amended with, “Nevermind; if you speak Mandarin and understand Japanese without the subtitles, I guess Italian probably isn’t much of a stretch.”
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
Though he had known the city since its ancient inception, Alair was of the controversial mindset that it was, in 2013, the best that it had ever been. Its physical foundations may have begun to crumble after centuries of aquatic erosion, and it may have been overrun with foreign tourists during key seasons throughout the year, but the Sandman’s unconditional love for the thriving urban island had never faded. Regardless of his personal past there—and, perhaps more importantly, the part of his past that included one of Scarlet’s prior manifestations—he was overjoyed to introduce the fiery redhead to the unique and elusive spirit that was Venice’s very own.
Scarlet’s long kiss allowed him to lose himself further in the present moment, inhaling the intoxicating perfume of the young woman’s skin as it mingled with the spicy, vaguely watery aroma that drifted up from the canals to their perch on the unnamed roof. The energy required to transport not one, but two living beings so great a distance was immense, but at the mercy of Scarlet’s velvet lips and loving touch he was oblivious to the effects his snap decision had taken on his physical body. His hands wandered from her waist to her neck, where he gently cradled her chin as their mouths tenderly danced with one another. “Hey,” he breathed, pulling away only when she lowered herself back to her heels, “you’re supposed to be enjoying the view. That view.” Extending an arm that he then wrapped around her shoulders, he gestured to the glittering panorama of pointed archways, narrow windows, and Byzantine spires.
“If you don’t want to be here, I can take us back,” he told her teasingly, wrinkling his nose in mock protest. “But it just so happens that we’re standing on top of one of my favorite pizzerias in Northern Italia. It’s like…reverse delivery.” His azure eyes sparkled, and he beckoned for her to follow as he made his way to a staircase tacked on to the side of the building. As they made their way to street level, the scent of baking bread, basil, and oregano combined into the familiar cologne he knew and loved of the district nearest the Rialto Bridge. He paused before they reached the cobblestones.
“Wait…” he said knowingly, holding up a finger in anticipation. Sure enough, a familiar female voice pierced the night, barking orders at whatever unfortunate intern she’d taken under her wing. “That’s Mama Zola,” he explained to Scarlet in hushed tones, unable to keep the grin from his face as the middle-aged woman’s voice spewed words unfit for sailors’ ears. “Come on.”
He grabbed Scarlet’s hand and pulled her to the street-facing façade, the front of which had been opened completely to the late summer air. A wiry female with silvery streaks through her thick ebony hair flitted back and forth from an enormous kitchen, her stained apron knotted twice around her uncharacteristically tiny middle. Her gruff voice was far louder and meaner than anyone would have guessed based on her slight appearance, but as soon as her gaze settled on her dark-haired, blue-eyed guest, her creased face lit up in delighted surprise. Her ferocity dissolved instantly with a shout of recognition, and the rapid Italian that followed was smooth and kind with motherly affection.
“Look who waltzes in unannounced!” she exclaimed excitedly in Italian, swatting Alair’s shoulder with the back of her hand as he approached. “I thought I told you to keep in touch. Where have you been? And you look exhausted!”
The Sandman shook his head and grinned. “Always the charmer, Zola. It’s good to see you too.” Glancing to Scarlet, he cleared his throat. “Zola,” he introduced in English, “this is my girlfriend, Scarlet. Scarlet, meet Zola. She makes the best tomato sauce in Venice.”
“Scarlatto,” the woman said, her smirk not unlike one that would be worn by Sleep. Her dark eyes swept up and down the redhead’s form twice, appraisingly. “I see our Alair has finally roped himself a girl. I see, I see!” Though her English was heavily accented, her genuine sentiment managed still to shine through. “Needs to eat, I think. Skinny.”
“You’re one to talk, Zola.” Alair beamed. “We’re not in town for long, sfortunatamente, unfortunately,” he said with a wince, anticipating a second gentle slap from Zola’s small hand. “But we would like a little something to eat. Chef’s choice, hold the acciughe.” He winked at Scarlet and squeezed her hand. “Anchovies,” he whispered in translation, nudging her arm playfully.
The short woman nodded once in approval, then clapped her hands with impressive volume as she turned back to the kitchens. One shout from her and her kitchen lackeys were sent scurrying. Alair gestured to a table on the front patio, one that overlooked the minor canal on the opposite side of the pizzeria. “Too much?” he asked, arching his brows as they took their seats to indicate the entire Venetian experience. “We can always take it to-go. I guarantee we’d be the only ones in D.C. with pizza this hot and authentic.”
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
“Take us back?” Scarlet’s voice rose a pitch on incredulity alone, her nose scrunching into an expression of displeasure. “No fucking way—don’t even joke about it. I mean, Venice… I am in fucking Venice!”
Scarlet was far from what one would consider worldly or well-traveled; in fact, she really couldn’t recall any road trips or visits out of D.C, let alone out of the state itself. Back before she’d believed that nothing was impossible (which hadn’t been all too long ago, come to think of it), the only wild getaway that had crossed her mind was the possibility of convincing Caspar to someday accompany her elsewhere in the country, but not beyond the freaking continent. The surrealism of it made her feel so giddy that she couldn’t refrain from giggling.
Lacing her fingers through Alair’s, the fiery redhead breathed a wistful sigh at the horizon that unfolded in front of her. It was a strange sort of melancholy, finally realizing just what you had been missing all of your life, without ever so much as daring that you might see it. “Alair… fuck, I don’t even know what to say. Can I take a rain check on heartfelt, tearful words of gratitude? I think the both of us have cried enough to day to suffice for… well, forever.”
Following the Sandman down the steps, never further than arm’s reach (just for her own security), she was granted a new perspective of the bridge that she had seen from the roof, surprised to find it was much smaller than the skyward view had portrayed. “Mmm… does all of Italy smell like this? Or just Vennice?” She inquired, just before Alair prompted her to quiet down. Her eyebrows knitted together in concern. “What? Is something wrong?”
The question was answered by the authoritative and rather abrasive female voice that cut through the afternoon din, bearing such an edge that it made Scarlet wince when it fell upon her ears.
“What in the world… Who—or what—exactly is Mama Zola? Do I even want to find out?” Given Alair’s answer, the smirk on his face and the fact that he beckoned her onward with a firm but gentle hold of her hand, it must have been safer than she thought. Then again, Italian was as foreign a language to her as any, and it was entirely possible that the dramatic intonation of its rolling Rs was simply characteristic of its semantics and lexicon. For all she knew, the person shouting could be incredibly happy.
As it turned out, she was half-correct. Mama Zola wore a scowl on her face, until her dark eyes alighted on Alair, drawing a smile on her mouth (with which Scarlet could totally empathize; simply being around the Sandman made her smile, as well). As Alair introduced the two, Scarlet—at an almost complete loss for words—simply defaulted to extending her hand to the wiry, fiery woman. “Um, hi…” But Zola was too preoccupied in taking in the redhead’s lithe form with a critical eye. The young woman flushed at the comment, and very near bordered on a retort, but was guided away by the Sandman’s gentle hand towards the patio, where they took a seat at a wrought iron table set.
“Did she seriously just call me skinny?” Scarlet bristled as she took a seat, self-consciously wrapping her arms around her small chest. “I mean, look at her; she freaking disappears if she turns sideways. I am not skinny. Seriously, how do you meet these people.”
But she was hungry, and the smell of the restaurant persuaded her to do anything but leave, even with a crazy waif of an Italian woman judging her aesthetic qualities (or lack thereof). Sighing slowly, the redhead relaxed her arms and shook her hair over her shoulders. “You don’t go to fucking Italy to buy a pizza and bring it back to America, Magic Man. I want the full experience. Even if that woman is completely whacko.”
Scarlet reached for Alair’s hand, giving it an affectionate squeeze before rising from her seat again, nervously adjusting the skirt of her sundress. “Be right back—where are the washrooms here? If this is, like, a bona fide date, I need to double check to make sure I look good enough.” She winked playfully in his direction and turned, pausing mid-step to glance meekly over her shoulder and add, “I’m not that skinny, right?”
While the young woman could read nothing in Italian, fortunately the signs designating male and female washrooms were relatively universal, and she had no trouble finding it. One glance in the mirror confirmed she looked passable, with the exception of her hair looking a little windswept (which, in all honesty, rather suited her face), and she hadn’t exactly planned to pack make-up to touch up her eyeliner. So she to leave after the short excursion to the mirror, stepping out of the washroom not a moment later, and nearly jumped out of her skin when she came face to face with the terrifying little Italian woman.
“Your hair; very eye-catching,” Zola drawled in her thick accent, reaching out to take a tress of Scarlet’s fire-engine red hair casually between her fingers. “But girls like you… Girls who change their hair to incredible colours, girls who paint their faces very extreme, who put holes and jewels in their eyebrows and noses and lips, many do not do it to draw attention. They change their hair and their faces to hide, to distract from what they don’t want world to see.” Letting the tress of hair drop from her fingers, the tiny Italian woman leaned towards Scarlet, her face completely (terrifyingly, devoid of emotion), and said, “What do you hide, Scarlatto? And do you hide it from Alair?”
In a matter of minutes, the rapport had gone from distantly uncomfortable to up-close and personal creepy, such that Scarlet could only stare in stunned silence, before at last her feet remembered how to move and she hurried past Zola. That woman made her a whole new level of uneasy, and while it was probable that her casual affection for Alair possibly made her overprotective of the Sandman, the chemical redhead couldn’t help but wonder if she was aware of more than she let on. There were people like Erika in the world, who could read a person based on their ‘auras’ alone; anything was possible.
Deciding not to let on about that particularly unnerving exchange, Scarlet took a seat across from Alair again, just in time for positively delicious-smelling thin crust pizza to arrive. “Good lord,” she breathed, grabbing a piece with a pair of tongs and dragging it onto an attractive stonewash plate. “If this tastes as good as it smells, Sandman, then this venture was totally worth it.”
Posted: Sat Dec 21, 2013 2:28 am
His eyes followed a long, lean gondola that passed quickly into the shadows of the covered Rialto Bridge. It was a Friday night in a city that prized its indulgences, and he could hear a group of women laughing excitedly from across the wide waterway. At just before midnight, it was early by Venetian standards; late summer meals were often enjoyed after dark, which meant post-dinner socialization didn’t truly get underway until the infant hours of the morning and often stretched until dawn. No doubt part of Mama Zola’s exaggerated ferocity was fueled by anxiety for a busy stretch of weekend business. They had, however, beat the rush, and for that Alair was grateful. It was overwhelming enough to transport Scarlet unannounced halfway across the globe; it was another thing entirely to throw her amidst a large crowd of noisy, inebriated Italians.
But there was nothing he could do about Zola. He chuckled at Scarlet’s reaction, shaking his head with a grin. “She’s Italian,” he said, as though that explained everything. “Food is her religion. She thinks everyone is too skinny, although I have no idea how she manages to keep that skeletal figure of hers. Just another contradiction to add to the list, I guess.” He chuckled, his expression turning thoughtful. “I’ve known Zola a long time. I knew her grandmother, actually, back when her nonna was just a girl. The Gallo family has lived here for generations.” Smiling his thanks at a frazzled-looking waiter who dropped off two glasses of dark red wine. A laugh shook his shoulders, and he muttered a playful curse. “That demone always remembers the vintage I like,” he murmured.
He cleared his throat and looked back to Scarlet, drawing a breath to continue. “I saved Pietra from falling into the Canałasso, the Grand Canal, in the 1908. She was five years old and a little too spunky for her own good, a trait which clearly hasn’t neglected any of the other women down the familial line. But I’ve been friends with the Gallo family ever since. Pietra’s daughter Renata—Zola’s mother—lives just down there.” He gestured down the street to the south, then settled back in his chair with the bowl of his wine glass cradled in his upturned palm. “You don’t have anything to fear from Zola. She’s not whacko, she’s just…Venetian. Which means she’s protective of those she considers family. Guess I make the grade, even though I’ve been away for so long.”
A peal of raucous laughter drifted across the water. He squeezed Scarlet’s hand and grinned. “You look fine!” he protested, not having taken his own appearance into account, and nodded reluctantly as she dismissed herself to the washroom. He was soon joined by an expected presence in the redhead’s stead, and he smiled at the wiry Gallo woman as she lowered herself tentatively into the seat Scarlet had occupied only seconds before.
“Alair,” Mama Zola greeted smoothly, her hands and apron covered in flour. Mama was a coveted title the Gallo women had passed from one generation to the next, an indicator of rank and respect not unlike that of ‘queen.’ She reached across the table to touch his hand, but thought better of it when she realized the fine white powder coated her skin. She smiled instead. “Alair,” the woman repeated in Italian, “you are happy.”
The comment startled the Sandman, whose surprise must have shown clearly on his face judging by the chef’s smug expression. “I am,” he replied, tentative at first.
“She makes you happy?”
Unable to determine whether she had posited a question or made a statement, Alair nodded.
Zola’s eyes softened. “I have never seen you this way before. If my mother were here, she would say the same.” She folded her arms across her chest, her expression caught strangely between pride, excitement, and skepticism. “We just might forgive you for abandoning us, omino del sonno, if this is the state you’re in when you return.”
The Sandman snorted at his nickname, but he looked grateful nevertheless. “I see you’ve kept your skills sharpened. As sharp as the knives in that kitchen of yours, I imagine. Very impressive, by the way.” He took a sip of wine.
“Ah, ah, ah. Don’t change the subject, Sandman. You can’t use that smirk on me.”
He laughed. “Your nonna wasn’t so immune to my charms, you know. You got this from your mother.”
Undeterred, the thin woman went on, cracking only a hint of a smile before getting straight back to business. “You are tired.”
“It took a lot to get here,” he admitted carefully, watching her.
Her eyes widened in surprise, the meaning of his words sinking in. “You brought her with you? That way?” She shook her head incredulously. “Can’t you use a plane and a cab like everybody else?”
“I know my limits, Zola. If there were even a hint of danger, do you think I would put her at risk?”
Zola sprang forward in her seat, and suddenly Alair could not determine whether it was with enthusiasm or something darker. Her deep brown eyes saw far more than she let on, the Sandman knew, but in the low light he thought he recognized a flicker of doubt in their wise depths that had nothing to do with the issue of travel. “Just…be careful, will you?” She sighed wearily, rising back to her feet. She barely cleared Alair’s seated form in height as she strode to his side, brushing one hand on the hem of her apron before patting him affectionately on the shoulder. For a fleeting moment, Alair caught a glimpse of the petite chef as a much younger woman. “If you insist on making it years between visits, at least have the decency to take care of yourself,” she said with a sigh, scurrying off into the building before he could formulate a response.
Alair looked down, swirling the wine in his glass absently until a round, red-faced young woman placed a crisp, steaming pizza before him. The aroma alone was enough to bring back what little of his appetite still straggled behind, and when Scarlet materialized opposite him once more, he breathed a sigh of relief. “It’s better than it smells,” he assured her, momentarily forgetting Zola’s strange warning—if it had even constituted that. “And the wine will pair perfectly, trust me. You won’t believe it even when you taste it. Here.”
He cut off a piece, allowing it to steam for a moment on his fork, and held it out for her to take with her mouth. His eyes gleamed impishly. “Well? What do you say?”
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
So aside from taking a rather long swig of red wine on her return to the table (a drink in which she didn’t frequently indulge, and that brought colour to her cheeks in a matter of moments), the chemically altered redhead summoned the smile that she knew her companion wanted to see. “Next time you want to take me on a surprise trip to somewhere extraordinary, give me a heads up so I can at least remember to pack compact powder.” She teased, about to pick up the fork and knife on either side of her plate when Alair offered her a bite from his own piece, a gesture so simple and yet so sweet that it deepened the colour blossoming in her cheeks. “Really?” Scarlet giggled. “We’re doing this? Okay then.”
There had been no exaggeration on the Sandman’s part in terms of the quality of the food. One bite alone made the young woman increasingly more grateful that they hadn’t ordered a quick pizza from the joint two blocks down from the apartment complex, and she thought she might actually be able to forgive the crazy Italian woman and her unnecessary forwardness just moments before. “Okay; you win. You were right.” She put her hands up in mock defeat. “This is the best damned pizza I have ever tasted. Seriously, why didn’t we skip over to Venice sooner?”
Nothing could have sufficed as a substitute for this evening: between Alair’s doting company, the view of the canals from where they sat on the patio, the candle that the waitress lit at their table when daylight continued to wane, and the fucking amazing food, what had begun as a shaky day full of questionable emotional stability had unfolded into something beautiful. Seeing a glimmer of light into Alair’s past was just a bonus, but it certainly helped her to understand his warm camaraderie with Zola (and, perhaps, helped her to begin to forgive the woman for cornering her outside of the washroom).
“So you’re in pretty tight with this family, huh…” The fiery redhead mused aloud, starting on her second piece of pizza in a matter of minutes. “I mean… do they know? About you and your… nature? What you can do?”
While he graciously confirmed, it didn’t occur to Scarlet how silly the question was until she’d asked it. If he’d known Zola’s grandmother as a child, and Zola herself was well into adulthood now and probably had children of her own, there was no way out of explaining to each subsequent generation why he never appeared to change, why his face remained youthful and death seemed so far beyond him. Her heart twinged with an irrational pang of jealousy at the thought that this woman and her family most likely knew Alair better than she did, despite that she had—technically—known him forever. “All this talk about calling you an anti-hero, that night I met you through the kitchen window, and you have actually been a hero all along.” She teased, nudging his ankle with the tip of her toe beneath the table. “Do you make a habit of saving people from themselves, Sandman? Superhero by day, Sandman by night?”
Since the Italians didn’t beat around the bush, and were no strangers themselves to being forward, Scarlet didn’t think twice about the small display of affection as she leaned across the table to plant a kiss on her dark-haired companion’s cheek. His eyes shimmered like Australian opals in the candlelight, and the shadows that the flame cast on his face accentuated all of the right curves and crevices of his face, and if it were possible to fall in love with someone all over again without ever having fallen out of love with them in the first place, then Scarlet did.
Between the two of them, not a scrap of the pizza remained by the time they decided to clear out just in time for the evening rush to burden Mama Zola’s frantic waitresses. But the woman herself was (to Scarlet’s dismay) not so inundated with work that she could not see the two of them out. “Alair,” she embraced him warmly, planting a kiss on both of his cheeks before going on in her quick and feisty Italian; “Don’t you make me wait this long to see you again, you hear? Time holds meaning for those of us who age.” In emphasis, she pointed to her silver-streaked hair, raising her eyebrows as if to indicate she wasn’t getting any younger.
When she turned to Scarlet, it was all the redhead could do not to shrink back from the embrace that she was not convinced was so sincere. “You take good care of him, Scarlotto. Make him smile, make him happy.” As Zola pulled back, she gave the young woman’s bare arm a pinch, one that Scarlet was convinced was intentionally hard. “And put more flesh on your bones; don’t you know men want to feel more than bone when they hold you!”
“Right… I’ll work on that.” Scarlet bit the inside of her cheek to keep any snide remarks at bay—but only for Alair’s sake. “It was nice meeting you.”
As they stepped out of Mama Zola’s apparently very popular restaurant, the redhead exhaled a deep breath that she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “…okay, you have to admit that she is slightly terrifying. I think she left a mark!” She exclaimed, rubbing the arm that Zola had pinched as she leaned into Alair’s side, the moon’s reflection on the canals captivating her attention. “Worth it, though; totally worth it. All of this…” Pivoting in front of him, she took both of the Sandman’s hands in hers and met his glittering blue eyes. “Alair, thank you. I mean it. This is… all of this is fucking incredible. Makes me wish I could do more than make you French toast and overly hot coffee to show you the extent of my appreciation.”
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
Though the pizzeria had been opened originally by Renata, Zola’s mother, it was Pietra that had planted the seed for the business all those years ago. Recipes were often handed down from one generation to the next, and generally the Italian mindset was to keep them not only as true to the original as possible, but also as well-guarded secrets. In the Gallo family’s case, the women’s tight-lipped philosophy paid off in the form of respectable profit and an unparalleled reputation for some of the best pizza in the city. Even with the flocks of tourists that frequented the Rialto Bridge district, it was not easy to survive in the ruthless Venetian restaurant business, but Zola had managed to grow her mother’s modest sapling beginnings into a strong, many-branched success.
He brought his wine glass to his lips and took another bite of the divine creation still steaming on his plate. “They know,” he confirmed when Scarlet inquired about state of the Gallo family’s knowledge. A soft, nostalgic smile curved the corners of his mouth. “I couldn’t have hid it from them even if I’d wanted to. Part of Zola’s, uh…” He frowned for a moment, searching for the proper descriptor. “Part of what makes her come across so forward and unnerving isn’t just her heritage. The women in her family have a certain ability to read people. It’s an aura thing, I think, and apparently it gets passed down from one generation to the next. When Pietra was a toddler, I think her mother sensed the impending disaster right as I did. We both reacted at the same time, and then she saw me scoop her up right before she teetered over into the water. Pietra’s mother…she knew I’d been too far away to get there in time by any normal means.”
He smiled wistfully at the memory. “Even if I wanted to keep certain truths away from them, I couldn’t exactly shirk away from a witness without causing some kind of backlash. And besides, once I returned her daughter, she interrogated me. Apparently my aura is weird.” A smirk so wide it bordered on a grin spread across his face, his blue eyes twinkling. “The Italians have a version of me in their lore, so they…well, they understood as best they could at the time. Her descendants were a little easier to convince, though.” He glanced toward the building, chuckling as a series of curses rocketed through the open window to dissipate into the Venetian night.
Scarlet’s kiss brought him back to present day, however, and he returned it eagerly. As their lips brushed, he was simultaneously aflame and exhausted—he wanted nothing more to gallivant around the city, dragging the redhead by the hand down each narrow corridor, narrating the story of its development and kissing her passionately in each shadowed niche they stumbled across in the jagged inner facades. But as the night wore on, the more aware he was becoming of his weariness, and as active as his mind might have been, his body was simply not up to the adventure.
They said their goodbyes to Zola—Alair assuring her repeatedly that their departure was only temporary, promising beneath the scalding heat of her intense brown glare that he would visit again as soon as time allowed it—and headed out to the fondamenta. As they strolled down the cobblestones that lined the waterway, he wrapped his arm around Scarlet’s shoulders and pulled her against his side. “Coffee?” he proposed, but he knew the answer before he had voiced the suggestion. With a grin, he led her a few blocks down the canal and into a tiny but crowded café whose only available seating was along the damp edge of the water.
After inquiring after Scarlet’s order—one he knew before asking—the Sandman shouted their requests in sharp Italian over the muffled din of the evening crowd. Despite the throng of people, their drinks were completed quickly. The barista mopped his brow and slid two paper cups down the length of the counter with a little too much force. Alair caught them deftly before they crashed to the floor, carrying the motion through to present the redhead her piping hot beverage. “Yes,” he confirmed, “I did specify that it should be extra hot. C’mon.”
He ducked back onto the fondamenta with Scarlet in tow, leading her back to Mama Zola’s eatery and up the stairs they had descended earlier that night. From the rooftop, the sprawl of the city glittered beneath an enormous moon. Alair collapsed onto the stucco outcropping that bordered a tall chimney, resting his back against the rough brick of its ornate spire. “You being here is thanks enough,” he said at last in response to her gratitude, draping his arm over her shoulders. “I should have given you some warning about my spontaneity, but you knew what you were getting into before establishing this, y’know, thing that we are.” He grinned, planting a teasing kiss firmly on her cheek. “How’s the coffee? Not…what was it? ‘Au lame’?”
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
But Zola was not the first she had encountered with such a gift, and the talk of auras and the seemingly innate ability to ‘read’ people was not the first time she had ever happened on the subject. It mention brought her back to the first days she had gotten acquainted with Erika Boone, the uncanny, hard-headed psychic and her ‘partner in crime’ (the real reason she had any form of income, to be very honest). The dark-haired girl’s abilities did not begin and end with her tarot cards, but spanned to visions, to gut feelings and to ‘sensing’ the air around someone: something that she, too, had called an aura. “Everyone’s got a different colour,” she remembered Erika telling her once, when they’d confided their preternatural abilities to one another for the first time. “It can change, of course, since people change, but as a general rule, the darker they are, the more darkness the person has lurking in their life.”
When Scarlet had asked her to define this ‘darkness’, however, and what constituted as a darkness looming over someone’s shoulders, Erika could only shake her head. “It’s unique to each person: I only see the colour, not the cause. That’s where my cards come in handy. Sometimes it can allude to secrets, to baggage… But sometimes…” The girl’s eyes darkened then, shadows settling into the curves of her brow bones that the redhead had been certain hadn’t been there before. “Sometimes, it can mean something terrible to come. Something really, really fucking terrible.”
And that was when and where they had become a team: Erika’s card and intuitions detecting a movement in fate and destiny, and Scarlet’s secret bond with the celestial bodies of the nighttime sky to shed light on exactly what these movements entailed.
She wondered what Zola had seen when she looked at her; how dark her aura must have seemed, and precisely what the middle-aged pizzeria owner had read into it. Whatever it was, she hoped to God that she hadn’t breathed a word of it to Alair.
Given the Sandman’s happy, cheeky and otherwise nonchalant demeanour (ergo: he was finally acting himself again), the young woman’s shoulders relaxed slightly, figuring that if hard-headed Zola, overprotective as she was of her dear friend (and as mistrusting as she was of Scarlet) had cautioned the Sandman in regards to whatever she had ‘sensed’, he would not be so at ease. And now, under the smattering of stars on this humid evening in Italy, was perhaps more at ease and happier than she had ever seen him.
“Coffee sounds amazing,” Scarlet smirked, knowing that it clearly went without saying. “So long as it doesn’t taste like that cup of wrong you had earlier, with the foam on top. I’m not into pansy drinks.”
Surrounded (and slightly intimidated) by loud Italian chatter, the fiery redhead stuck close to Alair, one hand on his arm at all times while he ordered what certainly sounded like somethingcaffeinated. With the language’s inclination towards rather dramatic intonation, however, everything sounded rather dire in almost angry sort of way, making it difficult to differentiate enthusiasm from teasing from an argument, and for the first time, Scarlet felt oddly inclined to pick up on one of the many languages her immortal and eternal companion had long since endorsed. Who knows; perhaps she could squirm her way onto Zola’s good side if she took a crack at solidly learning the language.
Opening her mouth to make an inquiry, as she took the hot coffee in her hands, a smile spread across Scarlet’s face as Alair all but read her mind. “How did you know that recognizing how I take my coffee is a direct way into my heart.” She planted a quick kiss on his cheek as they made their way back to the steps ascending the roof, and as per her suggestion, the two star-crossed lovers sat with piping hot beverages beneath a bright smattering of stars, while the world below them continued to move. Atop that building, with nobody else around, even if spite of the late-night Italian banter from passer-byes, the red-haired woman and the Sandman could have very well been the only people in the world.
Taking a sip of her coffee, a satisfied smile graced Scarlet’s features as she leaned into her companion’s side, “And, knowing how I take my coffee and making sure the barista gets it right is definitely confirmation that you must be my soulmate.” Chuckling, she kissed the angular curve of his jaw, keeping the cover firmly in place on her cup of coffee so that she didn’t end up with a second injury as a result of foolishness that day. “You know, I have no idea what you said to the barista or that no-nonsense Zola, but your natural inclination towards foreign languages is pretty sexy. Tell me, what’s ‘I love you’ in Italian?” When the Sandman turned to face her, she seized the opportunity to plant the next kiss on his mouth, mindful of the scalding beverage in his hands. Then—in fluid Russian, which she had no doubt he understood just innately as she—Scarlet added, “Because I do love you, Magic Man. I love you, and that will never change.”
The two sat in comfortable silence for a period of time, then, enjoyed the stars, enjoy their coffee and enjoying the presence of one another, and Scarlet had never been so at ease. Were it not for the caffeine flooding her veins, she could have easily fallen asleep like that, with her head on Alair’s shoulder, under the stars that she understood so well. Taking a look at the shadows cast over the Sandman’s face, and the way his posture gradually began to slump forward, she wondered if he wasn’t in exactly the same mindset. “A little tired?” She teased, gently running her fingers through the dark locks of hair above his ear. “We can head back to the other side of the world, if you like. We need to get rested up for our road-trip tomorrow, remember? Anyway, it’s not like we can’t come back here some other time, in a heartbeat.”
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
Caffeine was precisely what he needed, yet it would do little to combat the exhaustion that was now settling mercilessly in his bones. The initial distraction of Venezia’s magic had done wonders in staving off the inevitable, but the delay was catching up to him faster than he could outrun it. Hiding it from Scarlet was more difficult than he had anticipated, however, and despite his best efforts he knew he was slipping. It took a tremendous amount of preternatural energy to teleport alongside another breathing soul; he was built to withstand great distance and frequency when it was his own body doing the lengthy jumping, but traveling with another sapped his strength the instant his feet touched down on their new destination. Sleep may not have needed sleep, but he did need rest—and recovery.
But he refused to allow his weariness to dampen the affectionate mood that had swept over their private rooftop. He could rest when he was home, he reasoned; with Scarlet at his side, he could power through long enough to extend their evening as long as possible. Taking another long drink of coffee, he leaned into her tender kiss along his jaw with a hum of pleasure and closed his eyes. “Soul mate,” he murmured, his repetition accompanying a small nod of approval. “I like the sound of that.” He swiveled his head to return the kiss, meeting her velvet lips softly.
“I’ve had a long time to pick up languages,” he commented, leaning his head back to rest upon the sharp clay blocks of the chimney spire with an impish smile. “Not everybody speaks English in their dreams, you know. Comes in handy in the real world, too, I guess.” Downing the last of his hot beverage, he cleared his throat. “Ti amo,” he said suddenly, sitting forward again and turning abruptly to face her. “That’s I love you in Italian. And I do. Ti amo, Scarlatto.” The vowels became sharp at the discretion of his tongue, making the flawless Russian of Scarlet’s touching statement sound all the smoother, all the more genuine. The meaning of her flowing words grasped his heart in a healing embrace, and though the change in tongue had surprised him, he did not miss a beat in reacting to her sentiment.
The blue-eyed Sandman leaned in close, pressing his forehead intimately to Scarlet’s while his eyelids fluttered closed. He reached up to cradle the side of her head with his hand. “I love you too,” he whispered breathily in elegant Russian, running his thumb against her cheek. “I always have. I always will.”
The silence that came over them in the aftermath of their exchange was thick with nothing but unspoken adoration. He draped his hand over her knee, gazing over the twinkling golden lights as the city’s energetic nightlife began to emerge from their daytime hideaways below. Like the redhead, he could have remained there for hours more—but she was right; they had things to do on the morrow that could not be neglected. He smiled weakly at Scarlet’s question, chuckling. “Yeah, a little tired,” he confirmed, closing his eyes and pretending to snore. “It…uh, it can sometimes take a lot out of me to zap places without warning. With a passenger, at least.”
He opened his eyes, remembering Zola’s dismay at learning how exactly they had arrived in Venice. If they didn’t return soon, he wouldn’t have the strength left to get them both to D.C., and there was no way they could miss Caspar’s upcoming show. But worrying Scarlet was the last thing he wanted, and so he said no more on the subject, hoping (grimly) that she would leave the matter be. “Come here, Scarlatto,” he said, spreading his arms. As she climbed into his tight embrace, he clutched her close—
—and when they opened their eyes again, they were once again facing the shelf of DVDs in the familiar Washington apartment.
The return had taken an obvious toll on the Sandman, who clutched the back of the sofa with white knuckles. A thin sheen of sweat had erupted on his forehead, which was several shades paler than his typical coloring. “I’m fine, I’m fine,” he reassured the red-haired young woman, mopping his brow with his sleeve and smiling sheepishly. “Really.”
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
Smiling impishly, Scarlet folded herself into his warm embrace, inhaling the scent that was innately Alair as she felt his arms encircle her, their empty cups of coffee forgotten and abandoned on that clay-adorned rooftop. The air and temperature around her changed noticeably before she even opened her eyes, the breeze vanishing completely as sticky mid-summer humidity clung more desperately to the air. She was astounded at how quickly and easily she missed the island of Venice when she took in the mundane, familiar sights of the apartment, the DVD player still waiting to be fed a disk, and the discarded selection she’d been contemplating prior to their spur-of-the-moment date.
As she had already expressed, there were no words to properly convey the gratitude and heartfelt appreciation for what he had done; but she sought the words, nonetheless, and just as her lips parted to express some form of verbal thanks, Alair’s balance seemed to abandon him completely, and it cut her thoughts short.
“Fuck, Magic Man…” The young woman breathed, grabbing him by the waist with one hand, and by his arm with the other. “Sorry, but that is not my definition of ‘fine’. Come on.”
Scarlet’s grip on his waist did not relent as she steered him towards her bedroom, moving slowly to ascertain he didn’t fall. His face was positively ashen, not the expected shade of someone who had just spent hours in the wake of a sunny afternoon in the USA, and the sunset of the close of a day in Venice. Offering no pause for argument, she guided him to take a seat on the edge of the bed, and took her hands from his person only when she was convinced he had enough strength and wits about him not to fall forward.
“Hold tight, I’ll be right back.” The young woman instructed, wasting no time retrieving a glass of cold water from the kitchen. The cool beverage was in his all but listless hands in under a minute. “Hydrate yourself, at least… Damn, Alair. Maybe the next time we travel all the way to another continent, we should plan for a longer stay, just to make sure your batteries are recharged… I don’t want you passing out in the midst of a return-trip or something.”
Waiting (entirely without the intent to move) until the contents of the glass were gone to ascertain he’d drank it all, the fiery redhead pulled back the bed sheets and draped them over his lap, tucking them in at his waist. At the back of her mind, Scarlet realized that his insistence he was ‘fine’ had only been a matter of pride, and that her action could easily be construed as patronizing or controlling, given that her ears were entirely shut off to any of his protests toward her attention. Perhaps, in that way, she and Zola did not differ so much: just like the hard-headed Italian woman, she worried profusely for Alair, and was entirely unflappable where his well-being was concerned. The cadence of her voice softened as a result of that realization when she went on.
“Were you aware that that little excursion would drain you so badly? You didn’t have to do it… for me, I mean.” Pressing the back of her hand deftly to his cheek to assess if he was overheated, the cool temperature of his skin alarmed her more than would a raging fever, causing her to pull a third blanket over his knees. “You need rest, Sandman. And if you’re not feeling up to it tomorrow, we can postpone our trip to Sunday, instead. The music shindig is on all weekend.”
Pushing back his thick, dark hair, Scarlet pressed a slow kiss to his forehead, before crossing the room to shut off the light. Pausing at her dresser on the way back to the bed, she pulled the sundress over her head and substituted a T-shirt in its place, as—contrary to the impossibly cool temperature of Alair’s skin—she was far warmer than what was comfortable. “Here I thought Italian coffee was supposed to be hella strong,” she joked with a wry grin, taking up the spot beside Alair and pressing her warm body to his cooler form, damp as it was in his cold sweat. “It apparently didn’t do much for your energy levels.” She, on the other hand, was nowhere near ready to turn in, between the fresh dose of caffeine in her blood and the difference in timezones between Washington and Venice. But lying next to Alair was calming, reassuring, and while it might be hours before she could actually succumb to slumber, she had no intent to leave his side.
“Do me a favour and take care of yourself, Sandman.” She murmured, draping an arm across his chest as she pressed her cheek into his shoulder. “Don’t make me worry about you… If we both make questionable decisions—like making an impromptu trip across the world and not thinking of the freaking repercussions—then who the hell is supposed to be the voice of reason?” Her quip was accompanied by a grin, as she looked up to meet his eyes. Tired though they were, in the moonlight, they were as bright as gemstones, and the way they regarded her warmed her more than the sun and heat of even Venice could.
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
She must have sensed his internal defeat, for as soon as he lowered his defenses fully she seemed to rise to the occasion, her actions becoming somehow more urgent yet no less gentle. A small smile tugged at the corners of his lips, and though his eyelids drooped heavily beneath the weight of his fatigue, there was no mistaking the characteristic sparkle that illuminated those startling blue irises. “I really am fine,” he protested hoarsely, chuckling as he gave in further and capitulated to the pillowy embrace of the bed. “Tired, maybe, but I’m not dying, for fuck’s sake.” Despite the confidence he managed to convey in his groggy voice, it wasn’t long before his eyelids fluttered closed and he sighed the soft release of sleepy surrender. Scarlet’s instruction to stay in place was entirely unnecessary; even if he’d wanted to move, he simply hadn’t the remaining energy.
He groaned playfully when she returned with the glass of water, propping himself up on his elbow with a second melodramatic grumble. He downed its contents quickly, and for all his halfhearted complaining he resurfaced with a smile of gratitude. “Thanks,” he said, lowering himself back to the pillows. “The trip was a spur-of-the-moment decision. I didn’t really have time to check my fuel tank.” His mouth curled in a soft smirk. “It’s kind of unpredictable. It depends on my physical energy level. Emotional shit…it, uh, can drain a lot out of me.” Swallowing, he shifted his gaze to the redhead in an affectionate but distantly sad exchange that needed no explanation. “But it’s weird, because I can also draw energy from some emotions. Anger, for one.” He pursed his lips, the exhausted equivalent of a shrug, and closed his eyes. Part of his tiredness this time had to do with how he’d summoned the sand for Scarlet the previous night; that, too, was an action that generally could contribute to draining him.
He kept that to himself, however, nestling his cold form closer to the redhead as she snuggled close beside him. “I promise I’ll warn you next time,” he told her with a tiny smile. “But warning myself might be more useful.” With his last ounce of physical strength, he reached up to cradle the side of her face, his palm cool against the heat of her cheek. Before he could lower it, he was asleep—lost to the Sandman’s own breed of slumber, a dreamless void of subconscious rest.
_____________
When his eyes fluttered open, the sun’s morning glow had barely touched the eastern city skyline. Scarlet was on her side with her back pressed to his torso, and his arm was wrapped protectively around her waist. The soft, even rhythm of her breath told him she was asleep as keenly as his Sandman’s sixth sense, and he smiled knowingly against her subtly perfumed hair. The city outside their window had not yet begun its ritual stirring; it was the delicate sound of the redhead’s slumbering sighs that provided the morning’s demure soundtrack. Alair, feeling as much rejuvenated from his rest as from the excitement of their impending trip to the mountains, laid perfectly still until his eagerness got the better of him.
Carefully disentwining himself from Scarlet’s sleeping form, he crept to the kitchen to prepare a pot of coffee—a brew that would sadly not rival what they might have enjoyed in Venice, but would do the job well enough. While it percolated, he quietly entered the washroom and stepped into the shower. The scalding water was a temperature the redhead would be proud of, and he bore its burning sting with a grimace of strange pleasure.
The coffee was ready by the time he stepped from the steaming stream. Sporting nothing but a damp towel wrapped haphazardly around his slender hips, he poured two large mugs of piping hot java and strolled casually in to wake the young woman still buried in the wrinkled sheets. “Alpha,” he called from the doorway, approaching the bed with a broad grin. He placed the mug firmly—and loudly—on the bedside table, smiling triumphantly. If she’d had any doubts about the speed of his recovery, they would certainly be dispelled now. “Alpha, it’s almost six-thirty. I know, I know.” He sat on the edge of the bed, tossing back the covers playfully as she protested. “Have some caffeine. We’ve got mountains to get to, so we better get packing, yeah?”
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
“Well, how about next time, we plan for a longer stay; a few nights, say?” Her lips tugged into a grin, and she slung an arm across his hips, pressing her forehead against his dark, damp locks. “I mean, what’s more romantic than Italy? Not to mention the coffee was fucking amazing…”
Her hand traced slow circles on his back until his eyes fluttered closed and his breathing slowed, and when the Sleep himself finally succumbed to a restful slumber, the redhead smiled and settled comfortably against her pillows, wishing it were so easy for her to fall unconscious after a cup of coffee.
When at last she did, she remembered why sleeping with caffeine coursing through your veins was not a good idea.
She couldn’t stop running. Similar to most of the young woman’s dreams, without the Sandman there to point out otherwise, she wasn’t aware that the images and sounds and smells before her were a dramatic work of her vivid imagination, mediated by inward fears and insecurities…
And something else. The very something that had been happening for frequently since she had completely lost control over Caspar’s life, since the stars were not speaking to her about that young man the way they used to.
Her throat burned and her chest ached, and pins and needles shot through her feet and legs with every step, like tiny, invisible spiked impaling her soles. She didn’t know who she was running from, and when she thought on it, her mind provided her with neither a name nor a face. The only thing on her mind was the urgency to run, because for whatever reason, her life depended on it.
The landscape was not a psychedelic play on colours and weather and elements, consistent with most of her dreams. It was the simple, familiar, dirty streets of downtown DC, places she had been before, pre and post Caspar. She knew where she was going, and the only thought that kept her panic at bay was that she knew where she could hide.
Except that when she found that place, it didn’t exist anymore. And a tall, brick wall, stood in its stead.
Scarlet skidded to a halt, her heart simultaneously sinking and racing, hyperventilating so loudly that she almost didn’t hear the footsteps behind her, the scuff and skid of a pair of sneakers in a pattern that struck her as oddly familiar. Through her rising panic, she couldn’t remember the form of her assailant, or the reason that she was running… And yet, surprise was not the first thing she felt when she turned around, and her frightened eyes fell upon the face of Caspar Brighton.
“Please, Cas,” she whispered, a tremor to her voice. “This isn’t you… I can fix this, I promise. But this… this is not—”
In a split second, the distance between them disappeared. The redhead felt the weight of Caspar’s shoulder against hers, his breath on her neck, and a pain—a horrible, sharp, pain—in her abdomen. When the lanky musician stepped back, so dark a look upon his face that he hardly resembled the kind, sweet young man who had so quickly become her best from, she saw the knife in his hand. It was stained red, and the red was dripping on the hot pavement, and it matched the red that blossomed from the source of pain just above her hip.
The majority of the pain, however, was not in her abdominal wound, but in her eyes, when she looked up at Caspar one more time. “I’m sorry.” Where were the words coming from? It sounded like her voice, but she could hardly feel her lips moving, or the jarring pain to her knees when her legs gave out. “I’m…”
She had only been asleep an hour, but Scarlet awoke with a start, sweating and shaking, her mind scrambling to comprehend the nature of the subconscious torture she had just witnessed. What the hell kind of metaphor was that? Where was the symbolism in one of the gentlest people that she knew (let along her best friend) stabbing her to death?
In the end, Scarlet decided she didn’t want to think about it; in fact, all she wanted to do what forget about it, because seeing such a violent light cast on Caspar Brighton was truly unsettling. So she curled up to Alair’s still sleeping form, buried her face in his back, and resumed a mercifully dreamless sleep.
The sound of ceramic on particle board, and the familiar call of ‘Alpha’ was what roused Scarlet the second time. The mattress dipped with Alair’s added weight, and his announcing the time of day (well, morning) drew a groan straight from her chest. “No.” She murmured into her pillow. “There is no such thing as six-thirty in the morning. Not in my world.” Following that awful nightmare, the redhead’s sleep had been restless, at best, and the thought of opening her eyes—even to the promise of seeing the mountains—was abhorrent. It wasn’t until the Sandman tore the covers away from her bare legs that she gave in, after a feeble attempt at drawing her knees into her T-shirt failed to provide the comfort she needed to drift off again.
“Fine… right. Packing.” Sitting up slowly, Scarlet ran a hand through her hair, wavy and full of body. Rubbing her eyes with the back of her knuckles, her sleep-addled vision finally took in her companion’s towel-clad form, and a light laugh shook her shoulders. “Well damn, Alair. If I knew you’d come and wake me up with nothing but a towel on, I wouldn’t have been so difficult.”
Leaning to the side, she planted a teasing kiss on his cheek, then reached for her coffee. “Okay. So, packing… Everything outdoorsy should be under the couch in the living room. Lack of storage space in this apartment.” She grinned, offering a shrug, and took a sip from her mug. “We should have two tents—though knowing Cas, the jerk probably took the bigger one. The other’s a little cozy, but I’ve seen him and two other guys cram into it to get out of the rain, once; so either way, we should be set.”
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
The fact that they would be attending a music festival made their upcoming journey all the more exciting. Without bothering to put on anything more substantial than the white towel draped from his slender hips, he wrinkled his nose playfully and took a long swig of scalding coffee. Had he not been so utterly drained the previous night, he would have been more attuned to Scarlet’s dream-experiences; he could have joined her, helped her, comforted her as they happened, keeping her safe from the vicious manifestations of her own mind. But their brief, unexpected vacation to Italy had sapped him of the strength required to do anything more than simply be unconscious, recovering, and as such he was completely unaware of the redhead’s lingering nightmares.
Though his own sleep had been dreamless, he had risen that morning with the seed of an idea having nestled into the soil of his thoughts. As he stepped up to Scarlet and wrapped his arms warmly around her, from the notion’s tiny sprout a pair of leaves unfurled—and as he leaned his cheek against her head he grinned broadly. “You know,” he said, leaning away to hold her by the shoulders at arm’s length, “for someone who was so happy to zap to Europe last night you sure don’t seem all that excited for a second trip. Sorry to burst your bubble, but you’re not getting out of this one. You can sleep in the car on the way.” He planted a kiss on her forehead and winced in sympathy before sporting a telltale mirthful smirk.
“Let’s get ready now,” he prompted excitedly. He broke away and jokingly made a gesture to remove his less-than-modest towel. A laugh shook his shoulders, and he disappeared back into the bathroom to get dressed. When he emerged, he was clean-shaven and dressed for the outdoor climate of an early autumn in the Blue Ridge—indigo jeans, a hunter green v-neck beneath an old-fashioned black button-down sweater, and his favorite pair of black boots so worn they were almost gray.
He relinquished the shower to the redhead with a wide gesture before he followed Scarlet’s instructions and took to looking beneath the sofa for camping supplies. “Sorry, I don’t share tents. You’re going to have to sleep outside,” he called to her playfully, sliding out the folded vinyl structure and piling it next to his guitar case near the door. To the stack he added two thick plaid blankets, a rolled sleeping bag, two pillows from Scarlet’s bed, and a baggy flannel jacket he found stuffed in the corner of Caspar’s closet. The rest of his clothing he stuffed into a ragged backpack, along with two books of gas-station matches, a flashlight he procured from a cabinet beneath the kitchen sink, and a utility knife that had conveniently found its way into the pocket of his jeans.
“The car’s here,” he called to Scarlet, gathering as many supplies as he could before making the first trip to load the rental. It was, he discovered, a modest black sedan that shone bright with fresh polish, a fact that the squirrelly young Hertz employee emphasized as he reluctantly surrendered the keys to the Sandman. A smile tugged at Alair’s lips at the thought of the muddy roads they would be taking to the southeast, but he nodded agreeably and loaded the trunk with the tent and blankets (to the kid’s nervous horror as he drove off in the goldenrod van). Taking the stairs two at a time, he burst back into the apartment to find Scarlet and grab the rest of his supplies—among which were two metal thermoses that he filled with coffee for the trip.
“Ready?” he prompted impatiently, jingling the car keys in one palm while extending the thermos with the other. When she took the container, he picked up his guitar case and slung it over his shoulder. “Let’s beat that traffic. I’ll drive.”
He opened the door for her when they approached the idling car, then piled the rest of the gear in the trunk and slammed it closed with perhaps a little too much force. When he climbed into the driver’s seat, he was practically hitting the accelerator before he closed his door. “Music preference?” he asked, gesturing to the digital console. “Or are you seriously going to be the most boring road trip co-pilot in the history of the world and just sleep the whole way?”
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
Scarlet hadn’t, in fact, been camping since the first year she had lived with Caspar. The two of them, along with a couple of his friends, had headed into the Shenandoah’s for a weekend, the four of them renting a car and splitting the cost between them. The cool air of the mountains and the chilly lakes in the mid-morning had been a welcome change to the stifling mid-summer, and Caspar’s songs at the campfire, on his old acoustic guitar, were memorise that she would be hard-pressed to forget.
But this was a new chapter in her life, and it was high time she established some memories with someone who cared for her as much as she cared for him, in a way so much more significant than the friendship between the redhead and her musical roommate. And all of the sleep-deprivation in the world wouldn’t have kept her away from this camping trip with Alair, who was in such better form than he’d been the night before. Amazing, what a few hours of good rest could do, when he’d been about to collapse just hours before. In fact, she was surprised that he was still up for further adventure—but she wasn’t complaining.
“Hey! It’s not nice to tease!” Scarlet stuck her tongue out at him, laughing at the taunting gesture she made with his towel, and slipped out of bed with her coffee in her hand. She was one to talk, strutting to the kitchen in a T-shirt and her underwear, but as far as she was concerned, the attire served as acceptable night clothes—and, anyway, she’d never claimed (nor made the effort) to be modest.
While the coffee Alair had brewed steamed barely at a temperature that she could consider satisfactory, for her tastes, she appreciated the gesture behind it and downed the mug quickly enough to keep it from cooling. And, by the time she placed the empty mug in the sink and turned around, the Sandman was dressed, clean and tidy, in jeans and a sweater. “You are going to roast with that on; it’s still hot in DC, even if the mountains are another story.” She teased, wrapping her arms around his newly clothed form—and wrinkling her nose at the familiar smell that clung to his skin. “Alair, so help you, if my shampoo is fucking empty…” The redhead shook her head and made for the shower, relieved to find just enough of her precious LUSH product left for one further application. “You are so buying me more of this stuff when we get back!” She called above the running water, before stripping out of her T-shirt and stepped into the shower.
Before she knew it, he was shouting that the car had arrived, and she had only just finished drying her hair, standing around in the same towel he’d sported when he’d awoken her that morning. “What? Fuck, I’m not even dressed yet, Alair! Next time, give me a heads up about the packing agenda!”
There was no way she was going to sit in a hot car wearing long sleeves, all the way to the Shenandoahs Valley, so as she dug through her mess of clean clothes, tossing denim and cotton into her duffle bag at random, she found a pair of cut-off denim shorts and a plain blue T-shirt, foregoing a sweater or any other pullover with long sleeves. They had blankets, and she didn’t recall the mountains being that cold.
“I have no idea if I even have everything that I should be bringing,” she admitted, slinging her duffle bag over her shoulders and standing on her toes to press a quick kiss to Alair’s lips before gratefully taking a thermos full of coffee. “But yeah, sure; let’s call me ready and get out of here. The heat here lasts so long, I often forget what it’s like to be somewhere without humidity.”
Scarlet had no problem with Alair driving, simply for her lack of experience behind the wheel. Sure, she had her license—had procured it due to some gentle nudging from Caspar, a few years ago, since he claimed it was a milestone she simply was not allowed to outlive—but neither she nor her roommate owned a vehicle, and frankly, it was scary enough being a pedestrian in DC, let alone a driver. Plus, it meant that she could shut her eyes for a while, were this second cup of coffee to fail to bring her full to her senses.
“Jeez, eager much?” She laughed at her companion’s enthusiasm, pulling the seatbelt across her torso. “And you’re fucking right I’m going to sleep. You said I could.” The cheeky redhead stuck out her tongue, a grin dimpling her cheeks. “But, until I do… Let’s find a radio station that won’t make our ears bleed.”
As Alair pulled away from the curb and their journey began, she fiddled with the available stations until she happened upon some classic rock that the both of them could enjoy. “Nothing like a little RUSH at seven-fucking-thirty in the morning, to put you in a not-so-murderous mood.”
Giving his shoulder a light shove, she placed her thermos down in the cup holder, and when they stopped at a red light, slipped her hand along the back of his neck. “Alair?” She spoke his name to get his attention, and no sooner did she meet his eyes that she leaned across her seat and pulled him into a brief, but very meaningful kiss. “Thank you. For… this. For everything, most of which I probably don’t deserve. But,” smirking, she shrugged her shoulders. “I wouldn’t trade this for an opportunity to sleep in. No way.”
True to her warning, the redhead did doze a bit along the way, though her inability to fall asleep in a moving vehicle was too frustrating an endeavor to continue. Most of the trip, therefore, consisted of teasing conversation, light-hearted arguing over radio stations, and one pit stop (she’d warned him her bladder couldn’t hold out when she mixed coffee and cars; he just hadn’t been listening) before the air turned cool in the presence of the mountains.
“So, wherever we pitch a tent, there’s got to be a good fire pit, and a lake nearby. I so fucking miss swimming!” By the time they arrived, Alair wasn’t the only one brimming with energy; Scarlet was practically bouncing, reaching for her bags in the back seat before he even pulled the car to a stop.
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
“Hey, you’re welcome,” he replied when the car floated to a smooth stop at the intersection. The sudden expression of gratitude surprised him, and he quirked a brow. "It'll be fun. And we can always come back if you can't get your coffee just right using the caveman way. You know, with fire instead of electricity." But he leaned into her kiss with a crooked smile all the same, parting from her lips reluctantly when the light turned green and permitted them to merge onto the westbound freeway. Maneuvering out of the city was far easier at this time of day than trying to make one’s way in, and he sped up the on-ramp eager to beat the second wave of the outgoing traffic.
The benefit of living in such a thriving urban area was an abundance of radio station selections, and after a few minutes of seeking, they settled on an independent broadcast out of a city in Virginia that played music to fit their strict criteria. Classic rock was always good road trip soundtrack material, and this particular station played tracks not ordinarily found on the commercial selections. As the pavement rushed past in a gray blur beneath the wheels, Alair reached over to rest his hand on Scarlet’s knee, giving it a gentle squeeze. Humming along quietly to a tune by David Gilmour, he smiled to himself as he noticed she had dozed off to the gentle rocking of the vehicle.
The four hour trip passed quickly between playful arguments, mock serious conversations, and brief interludes of singing along to whatever familiar song happened to blare from the speakers. Before their eyes, the landscape had transitioned from dense city sprawl to undulating hills, and it was through those pitching swells that their current route snaked. Alair pulled through the park gates slowly, the two-lane state highway giving way to a far steeper, far narrower route up the ridge. Signs for the music festival had been periodically stuck into the ground off the shoulder of the road, and at last they caught up to the first throng of early guests. They idled in a line of cars leading to the campground nearest the valley stage until the Sandman, quirking a brow in impatience, pulled around the queue to take the fork in the opposite direction.
“We didn’t want to stay there anyway,” he scoffed playfully, placing his right hand face up on the seat next to her as an invitation to take it in hers. He gripped her fingers tightly, their combined excitement almost palpable as they made their way slowly upward. It was early enough in the year that the trees were mostly green, but fleeting glimpses of the mountain peaks showed hints of peeking gold—the promise of a brilliant autumn fanfare in the coming months. At last, they pulled off the paved pathway and onto a rarely-used gravel road, following faded signs for a campground neglected in favor of the more technologically-advanced space near the park entrance.
Throwing the vehicle into park, he turned off the engine and leapt out, inhaling the fresh dewy air as he headed towards the trunk. “How’s this?” he asked, planting a hand on his hip as he surveyed the short trail that would lead from the car to the small clearing in the woods that constituted what was left of the forgotten camping space. With his other arm, he pulled Scarlet towards him and pressed her to his side. He planted a kiss on the top of her head. “I think I saw on the map that there’s a lake close by. Not a big one, but still. A fucking lake.” He turned back to the gear in the trunk and pulled out his backpack. “If we luck out, we’ll have the place to ourselves, too. I don’t think this place has been used in awhile.”
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
“Perfect.” She breathed, pressing herself into Alair’s side as the two of them surveyed the scenic vista overhead. The young woman hadn’t realized just how nice it would feel to get out of the city for a good amount of time, be somewhere different with the one person who meant the most to her, but it was truly cleansing. Italy had been a fantastic surprise excursion, albeit too brief; this was their true vacation, a chance to put past turmoil behind them and wipe the slate clean, begin anew, and build on what they had now—not in past lives, or centuries before.
Scarlet stole a look at Alair’s face, saw it painted with ease and excitement, and could tell by the upturned corners of his mouth and the gleam in his eyes, twinning the colour of the sky, that his debilitating emotional burden had lifted. He was himself again, and yet, so much more.
“This is perfect, Alair. I don’t care how big the lake is; hell, I’d settle for a pond. Any body of water deep enough for me to submerge.” Parting from him only briefly, she moved to the trunk of the car and slung a hiking bag over her shoulders like a backpack, and filled her arms with whatever else she could carry, be it tent stakes or the cooler of food they’d brought. For someone with a waiflike frame, her body could carry its share, and then some. “Bonus, if there’s no one else around. Who wants the frequently used spots, anyway? They’re all dirt and the firepits are usually crap.”
Without another word, the eager redhead led the way down a less than even path through trees and brush that scraped against her bare legs. After a sort ten minute stroll, the dust beneath her sandals gave way to soft moss, and the trees parted, opening up to what had once been a maintained camping spot, but had since been long forgotten. The circular remnants of an old firepit had left grooves in the ground, grass had been allowed the freedom to grow where dehydrated soil had once been kept unalive, weighted by tents and old picnic tables. It was rustic, and there likely wasn’t an outhouse anywhere nearby, but Scarlet was in love the moment her eyes beheld the way the sun dappled the earth with pale freckles of light, and by the utter intimacy of its seclusion from the rest of the camping crowd.
“Here. This is definitely the spot.” She affirmed, gingerly squatting to drop her gear against the trunks of some tall trees. “All right, how about this: we set up the tent, get everything organized, and then go find where the music is going to happen.”
It wasn’t even noon, and the show didn’t start until early in the evening, giving them plenty of time to set up… and, as it turned out, to mess up.
Scarlet had pitched a tent before—she had, she insited, the last time she had visited the mountain. Between her and Caspar, they’d gotten the thing standing in under a half hour, tall and sturdy even when the sky had unleashed some unholy, unexpected downpour. And that had been the bigger tent, the eight-footer with enough room to stand.
So why would she have anticipated its smaller brother to be so difficult? Assuring Alair that she could get it standing before he was even finished unpacking, the young woman found herself rather unpleasantly surprised by the difficult (fuck—they were entirely incomprehensive) instructions that accompanied the flimsy structure. Determination rapidly bled into frustration, which spiked with a multitude of cuss words, until finally the redhead simply didn’t have the energy to be angry anymore, and literally collapsed in a fit of giggles.
“Okay… okay, fuck it, fuck all of it, I fucking give up.” Transitioning from the balls of her feet onto her behind, the fiery redhead fell backwards beside the tarp and plastic stakes, knees up and back pressed into the soft grass sprouting from the soil. “What even is this piece of shit? A tent or a time machine? And are these instructions even in fucking English? Is this even a language? I mean, take a look at this—does this look like ‘easy assemblage’ to you? The box fucking lies!” Overtired from her late night and early morning, Scarlet laughed so hard that her abdomen began to hurt, and held up the instructions for her companion to see. “I swear I’m still sane; just overtired. Here. Save me. I admit defeat to a fucking piece of plastic trash.”
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
He dropped his armful of gear rather ungracefully before swinging his backpack to the ground, and he turned to face the empty site with his hands planted on his hips. “If you want tent duty, be my guest,” he told her, shrugging. He bent down, rifling through his bag and pulling out the necessary supplies for the fire. One flick of his wrist sent the matches and container of lighter fluid skittering across the soft grass towards the pit, and he set the flashlight safely aside on a bright patch of moss. With the smaller stuff out of the way so as not to lose it amongst the blankets, he lined up the sleeping bags and unpacked the remaining gear in silence—silence that was very, very difficult to maintain, as it turned out.
He did his best to observe Scarlet’s struggles from his peripheral vision only, wanting to appear as busy as possible so as not to distract her from the task. He only managed to suppress his chuckles for a short time, however, because as soon as she collapsed into a dramatic, cursing heap on the grass next to the jumble of poles and tarpaulin, laughter burst from his lips in an unstoppable cascade of amusement. “Christ, alpha,” he roared, her own frustrated giggles fueling his mirth. “You fucking told me you could pitch the tent! Seriously? Scarlet!”
Beaming, he tossed his knife to the grass and stepped awkwardly over the stone circle that would later house their flames. He stood over her, shaking his head with incredulity and affection, then dropped suddenly to his knees at her side. “Here,” he said, swinging his leg over to straddle her knees and planting his hands on either side of her head. With his face and torso now hovering just above hers, he grinned down and met her gaze. “Perfect. Now I’m the tent. See, that wasn’t such a wasted effort, was it?” He closed the distance between their mouths and kissed her sweetly, the crisp breeze running its fingers over their skin as if welcoming them to its fresh domain.
“To tell you the truth,” he went on, rolling off of her and sitting up at her side, “I don’t have a fucking clue how to pitch a tent. Give me those.” He snatched the wrinkled instructions from her grasp and peered at the pictograms with a look of playful disgust. “I mean, we could probably figure it out. They look kind of like the shit we have here. But I say fuck it. Let’s go find the lake instead.”
He sprang to his feet and offered her his hand, pulling her up with him. “What do you say?”
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
The redhead’s hysterical giggles gently subsided when the Sandman made to sit next to her, only to resume when he straddled her knees, his torso successfully blocking out the bright afternoon sun that shone overhead. “Alair!” She laughed again. “No. The Sandman can’t also be a tent. That just doesn’t fucking work, and—”
Her lips were met with his, insistent but sweet (and certainly not unwelcome), cutting her off before she could complete her thought. And when they parted, she couldn’t even remember what she’d been about to say, which assured her that it couldn’t have been that important in the first place. Not while she was a giggling mess on the mossy ground.
Grabbing his proffered hand with both of hers, the young woman let him haul her back to her feet, her shoulders still shaking with giggles as she brushed the dirt from her backside. “Okay… okay.” Inhaling slowly, she exhaled in double-time to calm the laughter that had all but possessed her like a demon. “Okay. Yes. The lake—swimming. Fuck the tent, let’s go swimming.”
The lakes in the Shenandoahs comprised a large part of her excitement for this little adventure, and while they still had plenty of time to unpack before the music started this evening, the two had been stuck in a car for long enough that their bodies could use a good stretch in the therapeutic embrace of fresh water. In fact, the redhead had anticipated swimming today (in that if he hadn’t made the suggestion, she would have, and soon), and had donned her bikini beneath the T-shirt and shorts as opposed to typical undergarments.
Without so much as a thought or a care, Scarlet kicked off her sandals, tugged off the shirt and stepped out of the cropped denim shorts, placing them neatly in a pile next to the rest of their clothes before she knelt to rummage for a towel. One glance over her shoulder notice the faint discolour of a bruise just above her tailbone, from where her antics with the Sandman on the playground equipment had led to a minor nuisance of an injury, but the redhead was far too hyped for the opportunity to swim to care, or even to be self-conscious about it.
“You decent yet, magic man?” Scarlet asked, though spared a look over her shoulder before he could deliver a response. Far less modesty existed between the two of them combined, it seemed, than standing alone. “Come on—it’s past noon, the water shouldn’t be too cold with the sun on it!”
Smirking, the redhead slipped her sandals back on her feet and headed in the direction where she thought she’d spotted a lake on the map she’d been studying during the drive up. Sure enough, a five minute walk yielded calm, sparkling waters, surrounded by walls of rock and moss on either side. The ground before the shallow water was precarious, more sharp stones than sand, but off to the side someone had installed a wharf at what must have been the deep end of the water; a decidedly safer are to take a tip, she thought, and made a beeline for the smooth planks.
“Jesus, you’re so slow, Alair!” She called to him tauntingly over her shoulder, shedding her footwear once again to sit at the edge and dangle her feet in the crystalline depths of h2o. The moment her toes touched surface, however, a shrill squeak rose from her lungs and escaped her throat, causing her to draw her knees to her chest. When at last Alair joined her, her lips were pulled into a pout.
“Okay—I was wrong. It’s fucking freezing.” She complained, hugging her knees. “Think there’s, like, some area where it might be warmer? Further along the rocks, maybe? Hey, don’t look at me like that—I get cold easily! I don’t exactly have a lot of insulation on these bones, you know!”
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
Instead, he sobered up by clearing his throat, his guffaws calming to sighs, his azure gaze several shades darker than the bright noon sky that peeked through the swaying leafy canopy above them. It was unsurprising that the campsite was located near a recreational body of water; the Shenandoah Mountains, though perhaps less traditionally grandiose than the great Rockies far to the west, housed pristine lakes like twinkling cerulean secrets amongst its numerous peaks and valleys. It was a major draw for the region and the park especially, which took great care in preserving the resources residing within its vast protective boundaries.
He turned his back respectfully as Scarlet began to strip, although he quickly realized that she probably didn’t care—and, as it turned out, she was already pre-dressed for a swim beneath her regular clothing. He smiled to himself. They’d had precisely the same notion—just as she’d worn a bikini in regular undergarments’ stead, the Sandman had donned swimming trunks in lieu of boxer shorts—and for whatever reason, their mirrored sentiment prompted yet another warm blossom of affection to burst open within his chest. He met her gaze when she casually looked over her shoulder, extending his arms out to his sides with his shirts and jeans slung over each respective arm.
Compared to the stuffy confines of urban Washington, the air was refreshingly cool against the bare skin of his torso. He smiled at his companion as he tossed his clothes aside and picked up his rolled towel, unfolding it and draping it around his shoulders like a short cloak. “Okay, navigator,” he said, pushing her gently in the direction she currently already faced. “You studied the map. Lead the way.”
He traipsed after her when she set off, his pace not quite so swift as the red-haired young woman’s. His footsteps came to a pause when the trees parted to reveal the water, a sizeable expanse of deep, calm blue that brilliantly reflected the fluffy white clouds hovering in the cerulean above. It was cradled in a tight valley that yielded to tall slopes of dense trees—a textural mesh of deciduous and pine that stretched all the way to the towering swells of rock. With the more popular, more easily accessible beaches closer to the park entrance and the main campground, this was a better, more private, and more beautiful oasis than either of them could have asked for.
By the time Alair came back to his senses, Scarlet was already rushing to the underused dock, beckoning him with taunts that fueled his approach faster. He kicked off his own sandals at the shore, then padded down to the end of the wooden planks to join the redhead at the very end. “It’s a fucking mountain lake, alpha!” he exclaimed, bending down to rest his chin on her shoulder from behind. Their reflections in the choppy surface of the water blinked back at them irregularly, distorting their features into one morphed face. He grinned. “Did you really think it was going to be warm?” He stood up behind her, a mischievous gleam appearing in his gaze. “The only way to deal with it is to jump right in,” he said, barely finishing his sentence before he pushed her forward off the edge—and directly into the chilly embrace of the Shenandoah waters.
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
So light on her feet was she that she managed to beat Alair to the lake, her eagerness to submerge in the soothing depths of clear lake water only dulled when her foot met with a less than pleasant chill. “Hey, I haven’t been swimming here in ages,” she protested, turning head to plant a kiss on his cheek when she felt the weight of his chin on her shoulder. “And I don’t remember it being this fucking cold! Maybe we should, I don’t know… wait a little later in the day and…” Taking note of the Sandman’s impish smile on the surface of the water, the redhead narrowed her eyes in suspicion. “…no. Alair, don’t you da—”
Too late.
Scarlet didn’t even get the chance to finish, before a quick shove between her shoulder blades sent her falling forward, meeting with the icy depths of Shennandoah lake waters. The shock was intense—like millions of tiny knives embedding themselves under her skin—but mercifully short, taken over by an almost instantaneous numbness that spread from her center outward, and that didn’t recede when she surfaces, spitting water.
“Fuck, Alair!” Her shouting practically echoed, almost as loud as her chattering teeth and nearly as intense as the glare she shot her laughing companion, safe and dry on the wharf. “Son of a—you are so dead, you hear?”
Her lips curled into a spiteful smirk, then, and her arm shot out to grab the back of one of his knees, breaking his balance and hauling him forward. Laughing, she darted out of the water before their bodies could collide, bringing her hands up to shield her face against the splash. She was still laughing when Alair surfaced.
“Oh—what was that you said, Alair? The only way to deal with it is to jump right in?” Scarlet taunted, splashing water at him just as he managed to shake it away from his eyes. “How’s that working for you, Sandman? Don’t pretend like it’s not fucking arctic temperatures—I can see you shaking, too!” With another lighthearted laugh, Scarlet threw her arms around his neck, pulling his body against her own and stole a kiss. “But since we’re both in here, and we’re both going to fucking freeze if we don’t start moving… Last one to the other side has to pitch the time machine!”
The cheeky redhead was off, then, slender but efficient arms pulling her body along in a steady breaststroke from one end of the small lake, towards the other. The breeze through the mountains did nothing to put her shivering to rest, but by the time she reached the shallow end of the other side of bank, panting and out of breath, the numbness in her limbs and core had gone from aching and heavy to just… well, numb. That blissful point where the pain was gone, and you were neither warm nor cold…
“Well… looks like you’ll be pitching the tent… or else I am going to make you be my tent…” Scarlet pushed out the words between deep inhales and even deeper exhales, having reached the other side only seconds before her drenched companion (though she suspected he had let her win; but she had no intention to grip about it). The sky reflecting on the water only brought out the azure of his eyes all the more, and his smile made them shine, and if it were possible to fall in love all over again with someone you already love so profoundly, then she would have. Placing her hands on his shoulders, she planted a kiss on his cheek, unable to keep her jaw from trembling. “Okay… let’s say we got our exercise for the day, and head back. Maybe make a fire and jump in it. My legs are so numb I’m not even sure I have legs anymore.”
Out of breath as she was, the redhead managed a gentle backstroke all the way to the wharf, turning and gripping the smooth wooden planks when she hit it with the back of her hand. Pulling herself out of those arctic waters was unreasonably difficult; her body felt as though it had doubled in weight, and her arms were so cold that her muscles would hardly cooperate to pull herself up. Only with some help from Alair she managed to climb out of the lake , shivering uncontrollably as soon as the breeze hit her skin. “O-okay… bad idea…” She shuddered, wrapping her arms around Alair’s torso and clinging to him like a second skin, desperate for warmth. “Next time… w-we swim at night. When it’s warmer…”
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
What he had not planned, however, was the indisputably ungraceful way he tumbled into the waves, his balance lost at the discretion of the redhead’s vengeful gesture. Even as he felt her fingers collide with the back of his knee, he was caught too off-guard to thwart the inevitable—regaining his balance was impossible, and yet so was a dignified entry into the frigid waves beneath the dock. A sound that was half gasp, half guffaw soared from his parted lips as he toppled clumsily over the edge, and as soon as he found himself submerged he succumbed to the laugh that erupted in bubbles from his nose.
The same shock of cold that engulfed Scarlet hit him soon thereafter, his limbs becoming the cushions for a million needles that pricked his bare skin like bloodthirsty mosquitoes on a humid summer night. He broke the surface of the water with a loud gasp, his dark hair plastered to his forehead, his blue eyes reflecting in amusement the tumultuous waves of his fall. “Christ,” he cursed playfully, jerking his neck back to flip the wet strands of hair back from his face. Treading water with one arm, he reached up with the other to brush the rest of it away—then sent a tidal wave splashing over Scarlet as he returned it to the water. “Ha!” he cried, ducking below the surface again before she could retaliate.
“I am not cold,” he declared, the falsity of his statement as comical as the face he pulled to purposely betray himself, scrunching his nose against a violent shiver that momentarily possessed his spine. He wrapped his arms around Scarlet’s back when she came to him, pulling her tightly against his torso against the chill. The kiss she placed on his lips served to warm him only for a moment. His lips donned a soft smile as she pulled away, and at her direction he turned, surveying the rocky shore opposite them. He was grateful for the challenge to race; physical activity would quell the trembling that plagued his body, and the opportunity to explore the other end of the modest lake was a pleasing prospect indeed.
While Scarlet made her way in a graceful breaststroke, the Sandman opted for a stealthier approach—making it difficult to let on just where he stood in the ranks of their two-person competition. He drew a deep breath and submerged himself completely, holding his arms straight above his head with his hands meeting at a point, his legs doing most of the work to propel him through the depths. The water was surprisingly clear, its stony floor obscured only slightly by murky clouds several feet down; though he could not see far ahead of him towards their established finish line, it was not difficult to make out the shapes directly below—a surreal sunken landscape that, along with the icy temperature of the water, allowed him to forget himself for the duration of the swim.
He came back up for air only a handful of times, judging Scarlet’s distance ahead of him by the disturbance in the pattern of watery clouds that followed in her smooth wake. The deepest portion of the lake had gradually sloped upwards, its carpet less sharp stone than softer sand as a result of the currents near the taller rock formations on the border. When Alair touched down and resurfaced, he dug his toes into the silt as he caught his breath, grinning at Scarlet through the droplets that plummeted from his soaked hair.
“Get over here, then, or I won’t be pitching anything,” he commanded teasingly, grabbing her wrist and pulling her close. He looked down into her eyes for a moment, his breathing still heavy, then pulled her into a full on embrace without speaking a word. Their touch was their conversation, the gentle lapping of the waves their soundtrack. The wind whispered approvingly of their affection through the boughs of the old pines nearby. Alair buried his face in her wet locks, which looked almost brown in their current saturated state—like a dream, he realized suddenly. Like her dreams. The thought prompted him to tighten his hold protectively around her slender frame, and he held her there in blissful silence until their shivers rattled them apart.
He followed her in a backstroke to return to the wharf, and he hauled himself up into the open-air territory of the unforgiving breeze. Dripping, he leaned over to shake out his hair, running his hands through it rapidly to dispel the thickest of the moisture that clung to the deep brown strands. “It’ll only be colder at night,” he said, clenching his jaw to prevent his teeth from chattering. He reached for the towels they’d discarded at the shoreline, draping one around Scarlet’s shoulders and sliding his feet back into his sandals. He dried off his bare torso quickly before wrapping his own towel around his waist, and together they made their way back to the campsite with little warmth to spare despite the pleasantness of the afternoon.
“The tent can wait for the fire,” the Sandman declared, grabbing a handful of kindling to stuff beneath the larger branches some previous camper had abandoned in the pit. They would need to increase their supply before long, but for now Alair was grateful not to have to hunt for suitable firewood in his half-clothed, half-frozen state. The fire crackled to life from the match in Sleep’s deft fingertips. It grew quickly from a dancing flame to a suitable warm blaze, and he patted the log next to him as an indication for the redhead to sit. He met her gaze with a self-satisfied smirk. “Grab one of those blankets, will you? I’m not getting dressed until I’m actually dry. I’m not moving from this spot until I’m actually dry, either.” He ran his hand through his hair as if to make a point, the locks standing up on end. "You better warm me up if you ever want that tent built, alpha."
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
But pressed firmly against the Sandman’s secure form, gathered in his arms with her chin on his shoulder, the redhead suddenly felt inexplicably warm. Alair was not only the anchor that grounded her, kept her feet on the ground, but he was also her balance: he restored homeostasis to her world, brought light where there was only dark, brought warmth where there was only cold. Even in the middle of that frigid mountain lake, with the breeze cooling droplets on her dampened skin, for a moment she felt nothing but warmth. “You don’t pitch the tent, then you willend up being the tent, Magic Man.” She murmured against his skin, a mischievous grin playing on her lips. But it diminished as soon as Alair let go, and the cold once again dug its claws into her body, the spell broken.
The backstroke back to wharf grew more and more difficult, the cold numbing her skin and cramping her muscles. How the Sandman so easily shook it off like water on a duck’s back (more literally than figuratively), hoisting his weight onto smooth wooden planks as if the chill hadn’t drilled its way into his bones too, completely astounded her. “That is not very reassuring,” she murmured when he spoke of the nights in the mountains growing colder than the days, grabbing the edges of the soft towel as he wrapped it around her shoulders and holding it to her skin as if it was the single defense against the biting chill brought on by a harmless breeze against numb skin. It served as a pretty crappy shield, in the end, not covering nearly enough of her on her cold, trembling body on the shaky walk back to the campsite. She could hardly feel her feet in her sandals, nor the pressure of the stones along the path beneath the soles of the flimsy summer footwear, and her body shuddered so violently that she had to take a hold of Alair’s arm to simply maintain her balance.
It came as a great relief that pitching the stupid tent happened not to grace the top of the Sandman’s priority list when they reached their site. The thought of a fire right now was enough to lend temporary function to Scarlet’s numb body, and she eagerly tied her damp towel around her waist in favour of helping to gather kindling. At least the breeze was decidedly less harsh, through the protection of dense thicket and age-old trees, which made her wandering a tad easier as every minute movement didn’t warrant another full-body chill. The twigs and branches beneath Scarlet’s toes were dry enough to suggest the mountains hadn’t seen any precipitation in quite a while, meaning they would burn well, albeit too quickly. If the flames could last long enough to sooth the frostbite afflicted onto her small frame from the unforgiving mountain lake, then it was well worth the effort of the repeated bending and standing of her effort made to pick up the wood.
There was no rhyme or reason to the way Scarlet and the Sandman tossed their findings into the abandoned pit, not bothering to ponder any strategic stacking method that might serve to prolong the life of this desperate fire. All that mattered was that the flame from Alair’s match took almost instantly, while the young woman watched in hypnotic relief as the gold and vermillion fire lick upwards ever higher. Her trance only broke when Alair took a seat on an old log, cut in half to fill the role of a sturdy bench, and requested a blanket. “But we’ll get it wet and have nothing to keep us warm later on…” She pointed out, but—nonetheless—reached for their pile of supplies to grab a thick blanket and dropped it atop Alair’s head with a smirk, quickly moving to take a seat next to him (and steal some of that coveted fabric to garner her own warmth).
The trouble with being lithe was that your natural insulation was at a minimum, severely hindering not only your tolerance of the bitter cold, but your ability to warm up with assaulted with it. That said, the young woman only rolled her eyes at her companion’s comment pertaining to the fact it was (apparently) her duty to warm him up. “And how the hell am I supposed to do that when I can hardly keep warm myself, genius?” She joked, but shifted at his side all the same, lifting her body and replacing it not next to him, but on his lap, both legs dangling over the opposite side of this thigh. Encircling his waist with her arms, Scarlet chuckled and pressed a teasing, featherlight kiss on the underside of his jaw. “How’s this? Any warmer?” The redhead chuckled. In the end, it was more a benefit to her, leeching from his sturdy frame whatever warmth it gave off. Murmuring against his damp skin, she added, “I can’t keep your properly warm yet, Sandman. Not without a tent… It would be a little indecent.”
Winking playfully, her shaking body shook more with a light laugh as she turned her attention back to the fire, suddenly hyper aware of the perfection of the moment. They were away in the mountains, free of the city’s ever-moving influence, and alone but for the coveted company of one another, in the untainted embrace of nature. The thought alone was enough to warm the young woman from the inside out, and before long, her trembling came to a complete halt.
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
He stared into the flames as though the weight of his gaze would hasten its heat, watching as the tiny flames eagerly consumed the smaller kindling and began to lap their way up the sides of the bigger logs. Their conglomeration of dry fuel had not been arranged in any particular fashion, and though it was beginning to burn hot, it would flame out before long without any structure to keep it under control. Alair was not particularly concerned, however; as soon as Scarlet draped herself across his lap, his attention shifted from stoking their hasty hearth to warming the shivering slender redhead. He snaked one arm around her back while the other rearranged the blanket, laying it over the top of her shoulder while the rest fell overtop their overlapping legs.
“Yes,” he said decidedly, squeezing her tighter as her lips brushed the underside of his jaw. He wrinkled his nose and craned his neck forward, nuzzling into her neck before resting his chin on her shoulder. “Definitely warmer. We should probably keep that up. You know, for health and safety reasons.” Unable to keep the grin from his face, he planted a return kiss on her neck, trailing the playful pecks repeatedly along her jaw until his mouth found hers. “How’s that? Better yet?”
Knowing the answer to his question before she could respond, he tucked his arm beneath her knees and lifted her as he stood. The blanket pooled at his sandaled feet, and he placed her upon it with one finger extended in a gesture that said, wait. He was mostly dry now, and though the air was certainly cool, he was not nearly so miserably chilly as he had been upon exiting the water. He stepped lithely to the edge of the campsite—only a few paces away, but far enough from the flames to lengthen the distance by temperature alone—and brought back Scarlet’s knapsack as well as his own.
“The only way you’re going to warm up is if you put some real clothes on,” he informed her matter-of-factly, tossing the pack at her feet with a grin. “As fuckin’ adorable as you look in that bikini, it’s a regrettable fact that you’ll be more comfortable fully clothed,” he added with a wink. “Hey! I’m turning around too, so don’t give me that look!”
The Sandman procured his previous outfit—much more appropriate now that they’d experienced the most frigid of mountain activities—and quickly changed, buttoning up his sweater over his forest green v-neck and sliding on blissfully dry jeans. As a final touch, he ran his fingers through his still-damp hair and slid a pair of wool socks over his feet. “You decent, alpha?” he called, risking a glance over his shoulder. When he got the official all-clear, he practically leapt back to the fireside, lowering himself to the log bench and patting the seat next to him in second invitation.
“Get over here!” he commanded teasingly, and when she did, he arranged the wrinkled blanket back over their laps and wrapped an arm tightly around her shoulders. “At least you’re not shaking anymore,” he commented, wrapping a strand of her damp tresses around his finger and giving it a gentle tug. “It’ll help when your hair dries too.” Blue eyes glinting in the shifting light of the fire, it was difficult to read his expression. But rather than speak, he filled the lull in conversation with a kiss—a long, meaningful touch that brought a hint of rose to his still-cool cheeks.
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
Scarlet’s lips parted to respond to his rhetorical question, but no sound was permitted to pass her lips before Alair’s arm came up beneath her knees, and before she knew what was happening, the blanket fell from their mobile bodies, pooling upon the mossy ground where the Sandman then carefully placed her. “Alair…” The redhead began to complain, frowning at his gesture to wait as he went to retrieve their bag of clean, dry clothing. And with that, their temporary spell of proximity was broken.
“Already? And here I thought we’d just air-dry.” The corner of her mouth quirked upward in a cheeky grin, but she wasn’t above conceding (only because he had a point that she was at a loss to argue). It didn’t stop her lips from forming a pout in his direction, one that earned her some defensive words in return.
“Fine. Have it your way.” With a melodramatic sigh of defeat, the young woman stripped out of her damp bikini, her skin once again pulled taut with gooseflesh as she dug around their belongings for something warm and try. But Scarlet hadn’t been in the same mindset as her preternatural companion when she’d stuffed the duffle bag full of her own clothes, and where Alair had foreseen the sense in packing long sleeves and thicker fabrics as a shield against the cold, the closest she had packed to a sweater was a half-sleeve T-shirt, which offered little comfort against the residual bone-chill from the mountain lake that had made a home under her skin.
Alair should have known better than to expect a straight answer to his sensible question, and a smirk formed on Scarlet’s lips before he even finished asking if she was decent. “I dunno,” she drawled in a singsong tone as she pulled on her sandals again. “Guess you’ll have to turn around and find out.”
Her shoulders shook with a mischievous chuckle when he turned around, and she tossed a wink and blew a kiss at her dark-hired companion. “Watch out. One of these days, I’m gonna take you by surprise, with a question like that.”
Tempering the urge to tremble and shake, which had returned in the absence of their brief proximity, the fiery redhead took a seat on the log, so close to him that she was practically on top of him, though not quite. “I take back that comment about making fun of you for your sweater,” she admitted, latching the tips of her fingers into the warm fibres of his shirt. She didn’t even clue into the fact she’d stopped shaking again until he saw fit to point it out; once more, the effect of that all-encompassing warmth of their proximity, their magical togetherness with which time and space could not interfere. They were untouchable, the two of them; they were eternal, in their own way, despite that Alair was the only one who existence extended the length of any normal lifetime.
“…can you believe I actually packed a hair dryer, out of habit?” Scarlet admitted at his comment. Though the comment—one that would usually have the two of them keeling over in mutual fits of laughter—fell flat of its intended humour, encapsulated as it was by the moment that grabbed them and refused to let go, until it was address with and validated by a kiss. Scarlet’s fingers tightened in the fabric of his sweater, her cool lips warmed by his breath and the flow of blood that lent colour to his cheeks. Unsatisfied with its current position, one of her hands then looped around the back of his neck, toying with the dark, damp tresses of hair until she had to break the spell yet again and come up for air.
“Warm enough, Magic Man?” She drawled, planting one more kiss on his cheek. “Should we go scope out the stage, now? Or should we take another crack at pitching that fucking time machine?”
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
The Sandman leaned into the kiss she planted on his cheek and wrapped one arm around her shoulders, puckering his lips with indecision as they both turned side-by-side to survey the veritable disaster zone of vinyl and fiberglass poles. Struggling to assemble the pieces was so unappealing an idea that he promptly wrinkled his nose and snorted, nudging one of the stray poles with the toe of his boot. “You’re more than welcome to try again,” he said at last, heaving an exaggerated sigh that concluded with a chuckle. “Me, I’d rather go check out the festival. What do you say?”
He tightened his grip around her shoulder affectionately, then released his grasp quickly to dig through his pack. “Here,” he said, pulling out a hastily-folded navy cardigan and tossing it to the redhead. “You’ll drown in it, but better to drown in wool than that freaking Arctic lake.” He grinned at his own self-perceived cleverness, rising from his crouch next to the half-log bench. “Why don’t we go see what all the fuss is about? And scope out the best seats for tomorrow. That’s when the really good stuff starts.” Sleep’s cerulean eyes sparkled mischievously, but he said nothing more, grabbing his companion’s hand and snaking his fingers between hers.
Their trek to the festival location was mostly downhill. From their deserted campsite, the rarely-used trails gradually widened to well-beaten dirt trails as they neared the stage grounds. Before long, their feet struck loose gravel, and then, at last, a broad biking trail paved with black asphalt that led straight to the open meadow. The distant buzz of activity had been audible on the breeze for some distance, but its muffled song had given no indication of the extent of the festival. The massive stage, with its criss-crossing metal supports, gigantic silver light fixtures, and stacks of black amplifiers to rival the mountains themselves, looked infinitely more out of place than Scarlet’s hair dryer. Rather than laugh, Alair had to whistle his awe.
“Jesus,” he breathed, squeezing Scarlet’s hand. Large white vans and several beaten-up smaller cars had been haphazardly parked on the edge of a roped-off gravel lot, their trunks and back doors propped open while frantic roadies and band members rushed to unload equipment. “Any sign of Cas yet?” he wondered aloud, leading Scarlet towards the sound board that was slowly being assembled in the back center of the lawn. He scanned the disconnected mix boards with a critical eye, glancing up to the stage not without a hint of satisfaction on his features.
Other onlookers had begun to filter from the neighboring campground, attempting to stake their claims of grassy space where the massive audience would soon swarm. Alair chuckled. “That’s not going to do a lot of good,” he said, watching as a group of twenty-somethings spread out a patchwork blanket. He turned back to Scarlet, tucking a loose strand of her now-mostly-dry crimson hair behind an ear. “What do you think of the setup? You know, since you're Cas's usual roadie.”
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
A snicker hummed in the fiery redhead’s chest when Alair stooped to sift through one of the duffel bags, following his cheeky comment about her hair dryer, and she couldn’t help but remark with her own: “I hate to break it to you, babe, but I don’t think the hairdryer is going to work out here. You can’t always trust my superb intelligence… oh.” Scarlet held her arms out as he tossed her the sweater. She’d never been so eager to put on long sleeves, when summer was technically only just beginning to peter out, aging gradually and gracefully as a sunrise (and still hot—except, apparently, up in the mountains). “I can’t guarantee you’re going to get this back, this weekend… Like, at all.” She cautioned, but he couldn’t have been too attached to it if he’d offered it for her to wear. “I mean, you can always fight me for it. But I bite.”
Lacing her fingers through his, Scarlet stood on her toes to brush her lips against his jaw in a hasty kiss, before making their descent to the vicinity where—according to the maps she’d had hours to stare at—the actual jamming would be taking place.
The field that unfolded before them was far grander than she had imagined, spanning several hundred yards of nothing but green grass, with the occasional patches of dirt where tents had deprived the greenery of adequate sun and rain to thrive. Sunlight glinted off of the silver stage supports, forcing Scarlet to squint when she glanced at them at just the right angle. “Well, this is kind of a big deal, apparently.” The young woman remarked, shielding her eyes with her free hand. “I don’t think Cas has ever played at such a large venue… At least, not as long as I’ve known him, and the guy wasn’t even all that well known before we met. I wonder just how large they expect the audience to be…”
If Scarlet’s musical (albeit, currently AWOL) roommate was anywhere nearby, there was no picking him out from the dozens of musicians and roadies and bystanders on that massive field. There was one face, however (or, rather, it was the dreadlocks) that stood out against a trio of unfamiliar people. Scarlet’s mouth stretched into a wide grin as she shouted, “Hey, you, there! With the dreads!”
Geoff, a heavy tripod tucked under one of his arms, turned with an expression that melted from confusion to endearment. Muttering something to the three unfamiliar faces, they waved him off and moved on, just in time for Scarlet to haul Alair over by the hand, releasing it only to throw her arms around Geoff’s neck. “Dude, you playing or something? I thought you were just coming to chill like the rest of us.”
“Hey, who ever said anything about not chilling? Doesn’t mean I can’t help a few brothers out with their equipment. Hey there, Red.” Geoff chuckled, using Caspar’s nickname for the redhead as he gently, temporarily discarded the tripod and lifted her off her feet in a bear hug. Releasing her and lowering her to the ground seconds later, he moved to clap the Sandman on the shoulder. “Alair. Here I thought I’d see you carting around your guitar, at an event like this.”
“He has it here; he just gets to cart me around for a while.” Scarlet smirked, her hand once again finding her dark-haired companion’s. “Cas must be here already, right? You haven’t seen him around, have you?”
Geoff tucked a dreadlock behind his ear, a thoughtful look crossing his face. “He’s here, all right. Showed up real early to unload, though he and Marissa went to go set up their campsite…” Glancing at his watch, he continued; “Well, that was three hours ago, now. Probably, ah, taking advantage of some alone-time before this shindig gets on its feet. He’s on at five.”
“Really?” Scarlet wrinkled her nose like she smelled something foul. “TMI, much? You could’ve just left it at ‘setting up the campsite’, G.” Not that she was one to talk, given how many times Caspar had bore witness to what had surely been the most awkward moments of her life. The very thought made her snicker, earning a confused frown from Geoff. Shrugging his shoulders, he angled his head towards the main stage.
“You can grab yourselves a program, over there. Quite a variety of musicians here, this year; even some classical violinist who’s traveled with different orchestras all over Europe. But, remember,” winking, the musician and repairman leaned in conspiratorially, “We’ve all gotta tell Cas he’s the best. He’s got a girlfriend to impress; can’t let his ego get bruised by bigger fish in this small pond.”
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
But it was more than the promise of the festival’s entertainment that knocked Alair’s heart aflutter. Regardless of how impressive the lineup was, the mischievous Sandman had a surprise up his sleeve with Scarlet’s name written all over its carefully hidden surface. Seeing the stage now only made his planned scheme all the more real—and all the larger, as it turned out; neither he nor Cas, with whom he had furtively conspired, had anticipated the vastness of this mountainside venue.
His heart skipped a beat. He had wanted to give Scarlet a gift unparalleled by any she may have received in the past; he wanted, more than anything, for her to realize just how special she was to him. Her, Scarlet—her past selves aside, their tumultuous history forgotten. She had changed his existence in a way no one else could have, not even other iterations of the soul she carried within her; they had found one another and, as it turned out, had fallen irrevocably in love without any knowledge of their affection’s past manifestations. He had been hers the moment they had exchanged words in that humid twilight dawn, and nothing—not even his own reservations, his own bitter determination—had been able to halt the blissfully inevitable.
The dark-haired Sandman caught sight of Geoff just as Scarlet shouted for the man’s attention, and he stiffened for the briefest of moments—the kind music store entrepreneur had been roped into Alair’s surprise, and he had not intended to run in to the dreadlocked repairman before the night of their show. The man’s exceptional musical talent inarguably spanned multiple instruments, but his ability to play the keyboard was not the sole reason the Sandman had reached out to Geoff. The repairman had a rapport with the redhead that betrayed how much they cared for one another, particularly Geoff’s genuine concern with her well-being. The mismatched pair had shared the bond of friendship long before Alair had entered the picture, and Sleep knew his surprise performance would be all the more poignant with Geoff smiling down above black and white keys as the melody swelled.
Thankfully, the man did not let on that anything was out of the ordinary. Alair grinned as the man wrapped Scarlet in a bear hug. “Hey, man,” the Sandman greeted, shaking the repairman’s hand. “Good to know you get some fresh air on occasion.”
Geoff snorted, then beamed. “The AC’s getting fixed as we speak. Supposedly, anyway.” He adjusted the cymbal case that hung heavily from his right shoulder, then leaned in with a wink to address Cas and his ego. The fact that the store owner had used Cas and ego in the same sentence was comical enough, and Alair laughed.
“He’s not going to be thinking about that girlfriend of his when he gets up in front of ten thousand people,” the Sandman said, resting his elbow on Scarlet’s shoulder as a silent gesture of reassurance.
Geoff shook his head, amused. “I don’t really think he knew what he was getting himself into when he agreed to take that slot.” He exchanged a glance with Alair, who gave him the smallest of nods in acknowledgment. If the Sandman was at all nervous about performing in front of such a large crowd, he certainly didn’t show it. Geoff admired his nerve. He cast his gaze warmly—though conspiratorially—to Scarlet, looking away when she turned back to face him.
“Caspar’ll be fine.” Alair shrugged, glancing over Geoff’s shoulder. “Hey, I think those guys need your expertise,” he announced, nodding to a trio of lanky young men, one of whom was waving meekly in the repairman’s general direction. “We’ll see you later, all right?”
As Geoff sighed wearily and departed to reorganize the chaos, the Sandman returned his attention to Scarlet. “Let’s go grab a program,” he suggested, leading her towards the stage where half-opened boxes of glossy booklets awaited distribution. “See where Cas falls in tonight’s lineup. Tomorrow night’s supposed to be the most crowded. At least he gets a warm-up.”
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
“Fuck… maybe he really didn’t know what he was getting himself into,” she murmured, shaking her head. So preoccupied was she with thoughts of her roommate’s struggles that she completely missed the conspiratorial glances that the Sandman and their new mutual friend exchanged. Whatever they had planned, she certainly was none the wiser. “Maybe I should go talk to the guys in charge of lighting. They can’t be too bright, or it’ll throw him off, and then he—”
“Whoa there, Red.” Geoff’s tone was as reassuring as the hand on her shoulder. “Believe me when I say that thanks to all your support that’s brought him this far, that brother is gonna be just fine. But… I think you can start worrying after yourself, now. You both can focus on what makes you really, truly happy… you know what I’m sayin’?”
Scarlet did understand, loud and clear, what her friend with dreadlocks was trying to convey. A month ago, she wouldn’t have wanted to hear it; in fact, the notion might have come very close to doing her in. Hell, even a week ago she’d have changed the subject, were anyone to so much as suggest that it was time to let Caspar go, to discontinue her weight on him as a crutch. But the truth was, he had moved on from her the moment he’d met Marissa; and she was just lucky to have found the person with whom, and to whom, she had truly belonged at that very same time. Even the stars hadn’t predicted such a twist of fate, because it had already been written long ago, in time and in this over-arching, permanent destiny of her recycled soul, that she and Sleep were the missing halves from one another lives.
A part of her might miss Caspar, yes; he had been there for her, her constant companion and reliable friend, for the past five years. But there was no need for her to grieve him, not when she hadn’t left her empty. Finally, she was able to feel happy for his happiness. Even if she still secretly thought Marissa was something of a twit.
Offering a shrug, Scarlet met Geoff’s eyes with a smile. “You’re right. Hey, who knows, maybe this gig will be the beginning of his ego. God only knows the guy needs one.”
As the musician and repairman left to continue others with their set-up, Scarlet found the warmth of the Sandman’s palm against her own, and headed towards the main stage to take Geoff’s advice and take a look at the weekend’s program.
Sure enough, the electric blue folds of paper sat in a pile on top of one of the massive amplifiers, outlining the headline and supporting act for the festival. Geoff had been right about the line-up being eclectic; lots of bigger, local names, and some of the lesser known rising stars. There was, of course, a handful with which Scarlet wasn’t familiar, musicians who had traveled out of state to attend. There was, however, one odd coincidence…
“Wow… the hell? Take a look at this.” Leaning against the amp, Scarlet turned the piece of paper towards Alair, holding it up with her thumb beneath one of the headlining acts. “Danil Aleksei, Master of Performing Arts; acoustic and electric violin. What are the chances of that? And here I thought I was fuckin’ special, strutting around with a foreign last name.” She shook her head, the novelty of the coincidence wearing off in seconds. “Well, no ‘master performer’ or whatever is related to me, that’s for sure. Otherwise that would mean I might actually have talent. But anyway; looks like Cas got lucky. He opens at five tonight for Mister Violin, there, and then has a longer set as a headlining act tomorrow night at eight. Lucky bastard is only one of four acts that gets to play both nights.”
A satisfied grin pulled lazily at the corners of her mouth as Scarlet put the program down, then stood on her toes to wrap her arms around Alair’s neck. “That means we don’t have to feel guilty if we get stick of Staring at Marissa, gawking at him from the front of the stage tonight; we can always make the next act. Plus, we have that fucking time machine of a tent we need to pitch, if it comes down to excuses.”
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
But as close as the repairman and the redhead were to Caspar Brighton, they knew the guitarist in an entirely different way than did the Sandman. Alair had experienced his subconscious, seen and even manipulated the fabric of the musician’s dreams. And for all Caspar’s insecurities, for all his crippling anxiety and constant (though publicly well-hidden) self-doubt, there was a part of him that recognized the talent his body housed. It was something the two men shared despite their comical differences in self-assurance; music comprised a large portion of their respective souls, so engrained in their existences that the connection was impossible to deny. If Caspar couldn’t find confidence in himself, he could at least cling to the thread of the inevitable—a piece of himself that was factually present, regardless of how he felt about it.
“He’ll be fine,” Alair claimed dismissively, waving a hand. “He’s a tough one, even if he doesn’t look it.” He winked, eyes shining with mirth. “At least he has tonight for a warm-up. Tomorrow’s set is longer.”
They bid farewell to the dreadlocked shop owner and headed to the stage, thumbing through the glossy program pamphlets with increasing excitement. The breeze picked up, tossing the pages between his fingers until it conveniently landed on the first day’s lineup, and he chuckled as Scarlet spoke. “You are fuckin’ special,” the blue-eyed man confirmed, bending over playfully to plant a kiss on the top of her head. “Who knows who this guy is. It’s probably a stage name anyway.” He chuckled. “And hey, at least you have a last name. Some of us aren’t blessed such luxury.” He spread his hands dramatically, his pursed lips quickly giving way to a telltale smirk.
He leaned into her as she wrapped her arms around his neck, cradling her slender waist with his hands. “Speaking of time machines,” he said, arching a brow, “think we have time to tackle it before Cas plays tomorrow night?” A laugh shook his shoulders, and he glanced to the periwinkle swatch of sky that hovered brightly above the wide open pasture in which they stood. “We should probably track down some firewood before we head back anyway. Before it gets dark and we freeze to death. Or you freeze to death,” he corrected teasingly, planting a kiss on her forehead.
He ran his hand down the length of her arm, entwining his fingers through hers as they made their way back across the field. Following the well-trodden patches of grass, they strode past the mix board, now fully assembled, and Alair performed a double-take to rival those of vintage cartoon fame. Sure enough, the shock of red hair—a red that was far more orange than Scarlet’s crimson—that he thought he’d seen was indeed there. The young man to whom the tight curls belonged was a twenty-something of average build, perched unsteadily on a rickety wooden stool as he pored over the impossible array of switches and knobs. Through his thick-rimmed glasses, his light eyes appeared twice their size, loaning him the appearance of a teenager—and the Sandman, upon calling his name and catching his attention, had to laugh.
“Keeler!” he called with a grin, tugging Scarlet suddenly to the side. “What the hell are you doing here, man? I thought you were in Philadelphia.”
“Fuck,” the redhead man breathed, a gawky but handsome smile brightening his smooth features. He wrapped his arms around Alair in as much a bear hug as the small fellow could muster. From his fingertips dangled a hand-rolled cylinder of less-than-lawful substance, and he took a self-satisfied puff. “Alair. Should have known you’d be here.”
“Jesus. I see Philly hasn’t changed you a fucking bit. This is Scarlet,” the Sandman introduced, gesturing to the young woman at his side. Alair squeezed her hand. “Scarlet, this is Keeler. The geekiest person you’ll probably ever meet. And maybe the smartest, when he’s not in the clouds.”
“Right on. I have to smoke to keep the smart under control,” Keeler professed cheerfully, pushing his glasses up onto his head. It was difficult to discern from his tone whether or not he was joking, but Alair knew all to well that he was not, and it brought another affectionate smile to his face.
A gruff-sounding man shouted from across the field, and Keeler turned suddenly, peering towards a portly figure standing on stage. The red-haired man raised an arm above his head and gestured to the left, nearly smacking Alair over the head. “We’ll catch you later, all right, Kee?” the Sandman said, taking a few unnoticed steps away from the distracted young man. When he didn’t answer, Alair just laughed, continuing with Scarlet until they were back on the secluded path to their campsite.
“I take it you’re not going to want a second swim,” he said teasingly, ducking under a low branch. “I’m thinking s’mores sounds like a good alternative. Maybe as a reward for pitching the damn tent.”
Posted: Thu Jan 30, 2014 2:26 am
Her small shoulders shook with a chuckle, arms falling from his neck to encircle his waist as a small groan hummed in her chest at his mention of their insufferable ‘time machine’. “Do we have to? Maybe the forest elves will take pity on us and put that impossible piece of shit together. I mean, they make shoes, so… why not tents? And don’t try to tell me there aren’t forest elves if there’s a fuckin’ Sandman. Don’t even try.”
If it wasn’t already clear, Scarlet was positively giddy on glee and high on life. Perhaps it could have been attributed to the mountain air and its thinner oxygen as a result of the altitude, or her decided lack of sleep following that strange nightmare. More than likely, though, it was the harmoniously married couple of music and nature, and the single most important person with whom she’d want to share the experience. Scarlet couldn’t imagine any differently; no more than a few eventful weeks into her, and she couldn’t filter Alair out of her thoughts and plans. It was like he had, in a strange and impossible way, always been there. Before she’d even known him in this lifetime.
Pressing her cheek to his chest, the subtle and steady rhythm of his heart like a lullaby in her ear, the redhead was reluctant to release him and admit he was right about their need for firewood. As evening approached, the air would only grow gradually cooler, and her long, thick hair could easily remain touched with dampness well into the night (it was no wonder she’d packed her hair dryer on impulse). “Oh, don’t act like you don’t get cold. You might have more insulation on your bones than I do, but I saw the way you shivered, crawling out of that fucking arctic lake.” She prodded his chest with her index finger, resigning to turn and let one if her hands fall along the small of his back and rest at his hip as she turned to face the same direction he did. “Come on, then. Let’s find some firewood while we let the magical forest elves… well, do their magic.”
Dropping her hand from his hip, she found his palm instead, lacing her fingers between his as they started across the field. When Alair failed to communicate his sudden intent to stop, and Scarlet stepped forward without the Sandman at her side, she near lost her footing, stumbling backward into his shoulder with a sight of displeasure. “You get stuck in quick sand or something?” She teased flatly, turning to see what—or, as it turned out, whom—had suddenly captured the Sandman’s full attention as Alair pulled her flush against his side.
Before she knew it, Scarlet was sharing her Sandman (reluctantly, mind you) with a young man; and a natural red-head, at that. Kind of on the nerdy side, but she wasn’t about to judge Alair on his choice of friends. Even the ones who unabashedly sported a joint, way out in the open. Although, to be fair, that probably wouldn’t be the last one either of them saw before the weekend was over… Events such as this tended to draw in that sort of crowd.
“Nothing wrong with geeky or smart. You already know Cas is a closet-nerd; I didn’t buy the fuckin’ Super Nintendo and Mario Kart.” Lips stretching into an amused grin that dimpled her cheeks, she held out a hand to Keeler and shook his warmly. “Nice to meet you, Keeler. Just be sure you do yourself a favor and hide the goods when security comes snooping around.” Judging by the already relaxed pace of the set up, however, she wouldn’t have been surprised to find security just as ‘touched’ with substance, if not moreso, than the kids they were supposed to bust. That was just the way these things tended to swing.
Waving goodbye to the endearingly nerdy young man, Scarlet resumed her pace next to Alair as they made their way back to the campsite. “How dare you not tell me I’m not the only redhead in your life. And a natural one, at that!” She smirked, mock exasperation filling her voice. “Maybe I’ll swim with you again when my heart mends from this atrocity. Or when you make me a s’more. Hey, what can I say; my feelings are bought off pretty easily.” Laughing she grabbed the Sandman by his sweater, halting him temporarily to brush her lips quickly against his in a kiss. “Seriously, though: it’s gonna take a lot of fucking convincing to get me back in that ice-lake. I’m not well equipped for cold-temperatures.” A thought that only made her feel all the more ridiculous for failing to take the change in mountain temperature into consideration, and forgetting to pack a sweater. Alair would have to fight her to get his own warm pullover back from her, now.
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
The very idea summoned another wave of chuckles to spill from his lips, and he squeezed Scarlet’s hand playfully as they picked their way back through the thicker, less well worn section of the trail. Alair had not known Keeler terribly long, but the two had become fast (if somewhat unlikely) friends. The gangly young man with the curly red hair looked half his age and operated on an intelligence and wisdom greater than the most world-weary of mortal men; it was a combination rarely encountered. The Sandman had taken an immediate liking to the strange and questionable methods of Keeler, more than partially due to the unconventional common ground they shared—after all, dreams were not quite so different from hallucinations, including the young man’s use of alternative substances to enhance the senses he already possessed. Alair had felt so at ease with the natural redhead that it had not taken long for him to disclose his identity as Sleep (a fact that Keeler likely only half-remembered at any given moment since). In fact, it had perhaps been his quickest revelation until his introduction to Scarlet.
“I don’t think I’m ready to brave the lake again either,” he admitted as they crested the small hill that hid their campsite from view. As they pushed through the trees to break the clearing, Alair had to laugh at the sight that greeted them—a small but decidedly chaotic scene, with a fire whose orange embers had turned to lifeless gray ash and blown from their hearth, a splay of damp blankets and towels, and, of course, the pile of hastily discarded tent poles and tarpaulin. “Looks like the time machine couldn’t even put itself together,” he declared, letting go of Scarlet’s hand to toss aside the blankets and towels. He frowned down at the pile, but his blue eyes twinkled mirthfully. “No time like the present?” he suggested facetiously, lifting one shoulder in a half shrug before collecting all the poles in a single pile. “What do you say?”
He reached over with one of the longer cylinders and bopped her on the shoulder, lowering himself to his knees in front of the deflated tent pieces. When she reluctantly joined him (courtesy of him grabbing her arm and forcing her to the ground next to him), they made some progress relatively quickly—until their valiant attempt collapsed in on itself, inspiring another round of curses and laughter in quick succession.
“Okay,” he said, shaking his head. “Firewood time. Let’s give this fucker time to think about what it’s done.”
Alair combed the area around the campsite for dry fallen logs, stumbling across a few hearty contenders that he carried back two at a time to stack next to the ring of containing stones. When they had a suitable pile to last them at least until the following night, he shifted his attention back to the impossible tent and groaned melodramatically. “This time for sure,” he declared, determination furrowing his brow. They set about wrestling its uncooperative materials until they finally bent to their iron wills, and as Scarlet placed the last pole to secure it firmly in place, the distant sound of familiar chords reached them on the breeze.
“Shit,” the Sandman said, combing his fingers through his hair. “I didn’t realize it was five fucking o’clock already.” He looked to Scarlet, pulling her into a proud embrace. They may have missed the first of Caspar’s songs (did it really count as ‘missing’ if you could technically still hear it?), but at least they had snapped their time machine into submission. “I’m starving. What are you up for? Festival food? We might be able to catch the tail end of Cas’s act.” He planted a kiss on her head. “Or we could stay here. Roast some weenies. Gloat over that fucking tent.”
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
Apparently all weirdness and uncanny occurrences had their limits, for there was no miracle where their pile of tangled, partially bent and raged-upon tent parts sat, just where they’d left them. Scarlet heaved a sigh greater than the task before them, shoulders sagging at the unwelcome sight. “Do we have to?” She didn’t even bother trying to disguise the whine in her voice, planning her feet defiantly where they were while Alair wandered over to the hateful mess of plastic, metal and tarpaulin. “I mean, is roughing it under the stars really so bad? If it gets a little chilly, I’ve got you for warmth, and you’ve got… me to steal your warmth.”
Her mouth twisted to the side in a cheeky little smirk as the Sandman grabbed her arm and hauled him down to the ground with him, earning him a soft groan. “Fine, fine. Let’s just get this done so we’re not late for Caspar’s set. I’m still not convinced the guy’s gonna be like a fucking deer in the headlights when he sees the amount of people out there…” It wasn’t as easy as Geoff put it; sure, Cas had Marissa now, to whom Scarlet couldn’t really compare, in the same way that her musical roommate couldn’t compare with her musical soul mate. But that didn’t mean she didn’t still care; it didn’t mean she didn’t still worry.
What it did mean was that they had to get this piece of shit of a tent up so that she wouldn’t have a reason to worry later on. Working together, the task was far more efficient, where Alair could work out things upon which she’d given up, and vice versa. But just when it appeared to be a job not-so-tiresomely done…
“Alair.” The redhead seethed, glaring daggers at the dilapidated piece of shit tent before them. “Alair, I think I’m going to need anger management. ASAP.”
So the young woman did the best thing that she could think of to cool her temper and walked away; not for long, just in the time it took the Sandman to arrange logs around the fire. When she returned, her cheeks were considerably paler than her hair (where they’d practically matched the shade ten minutes before), and instead of a thin-lipped scowl she ventured a smile. “Once more. For good measure.” She agreed, turning her attention to the tent; or, rather, the pieces of the tent. “One more time, and if it doesn’t work, then after I tear my hair out and have a temper tantrum, I’ll make the sleeping bags and blankets extra cozy, ‘cause that’s all we’re gonna have.”
Finally, their fourth time around, it stood. Not only did it stand, but it didn’t topple over, and Scarlet could have wept with the joy of their hard-earned success. “About fucking time.” Leaning into Alair’s shoulder, she snaked an arm around his waist, feeling considerably lighter with the weight of this arduous endeavor off of her shoulders. “But we’re late for Caspar’s set! Come on, we can grab some overpriced festival food. I don’t want to fucking look at that tent until we have to sleep in it.” Swinging around to face him, the young woman stood on her toes, brushing her dark-haired companion’s lips with a triumphant kiss before she caught his hand and hauled him down the subtle crest of the infrequently trodden path. The music was already a layer in the atmosphere, rustling the leaves on the trees in the absence of any gale or breeze, the familiar vibrations of Caspar’s favourite electric moving more than just the crowd.
And was it ever a crowd; the field wasn’t even packed shoulder-to-shoulder with people yet, but there was no mistaking the number of bodies spanning yards and yards across from the main stage. A staggered series of lights lining pivoting at either side of the stage painted the field and the bodies occupying it in psychedelic kaleidoscope patterns, and at the center of it all—face projected on large screens at either side of the main stage—was Caspar Brighton, with more vibrant a presence than Scarlet had ever witnessed.
He was better than fine; he was fucking amazing.
“Guess he doesn’t need his auxiliary support system, after all.” Scarlet smiled, squeezing Alair’s palm. “Geoff is always fucking right about everything.”
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
He was happy. And that was perhaps the most dreamlike—the most unbelievable, the most unanticipated—thing of all.
The reverberating guitar riffs shot through the early evening twilight like swift arrows through the trees. As they breached the junction between hardly-trodden path and paved recreational trail, the dense greenery gave way to a wall of rich sound that enveloped the pair like a dear embrace following a long absence. They could hear the cheers and whistles of the dense audience even above Caspar’s characteristic musical progressions, and it coaxed forth another smile to the Sandman’s lips. He and Geoff had been right in their reasoning; regardless of where the lanky guitarist’s motivation and confidence had come from—some innate connection to his talent, as Alair theorized, or the repairman’s reassurance that it was his newfound support system in Marissa—the performance was raging on as though the man had never housed a worry in the world.
Alair returned Scarlet’s squeeze of his hand as they wove their way through the crowd, pausing at the back as Caspar’s song grew to its climax. “Geoff is always right about everything?” he retorted with a laugh, leaning in to be heard as his lips playfully brushed the tip of her ear. “What about me being right about everything too?” He nudged her side, then pulled her back to him by the hand when the momentum of his gesture threatened to separate them. “He’s doing pretty fucking well. That bastard,” he commented, his blue eyes shining playfully with the affectionate and ultimately good-natured insult. The song came to a dramatic end, and the crowd’s cheers brought a bright smile to Caspar’s projected face on the screens flanking the stage. Alair nodded at him as though he could be seen, then turned back to Scarlet.
“Food?” he asked, nudging her in the direction of the vendor tents to the side of the lawn. Smoke from large portable grills filtered upwards on the light breeze, billowing in soft, wood-scented clouds towards a clear sky whose western canvas was swathed in the mountain sunset’s orange and pink. They wandered down the aisle, dodging half-drunk patrons sloshing booze from red Solo cups as they hurried back to their friends, at last settling in the shortest line of a green and white striped awning.
“What even is this?” Alair asked Scarlet with a chuckle, digging a fist full of dollar bills from his jeans pocket and straightening them into a neater pile. “Oh,” he said, watching as the women in front of them in line walked away, “cheeseburgers. At this rate I’m going to need at least fifty of those. My stomach’s growling loud enough to drown out Cas’s bassline.”
He placed his order, waited for Scarlet’s, and handed the man his cash in exchange for an overpriced and slightly overcooked meal that probably tasted every bit as delightfully greasy as festival food should. “There’s some empty tables over there,” Alair suggested with a gesture, balancing his soda in the crook of his arm as they took their place to the side of the stage just behind the stacks. With the loudest of the sound projected in the opposite direction, they had a less filtered experience of Caspar’s band, and they could watch the musician’s backs as they prowled across the stage. The audience, too, was in view, too distracted by the spectacle and lights before them to notice the couple staring back with mouths full of terribly-good food.
“Hey, look,” Alair said between mouthfuls, nodding towards the clearing behind the stage’s back structure. A young man stood with his back to them, a violin tucked under his chin. “Suppose that’s the fancy-ass violin prodigy dude? I’m surprised he can hear himself well enough to tune back there while Cas is playing. Keeler’s got him cranked.”
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
Not too long ago, Caspar Brighton had been the most phenomenal musician that the young woman had known. His melodies had haunted her from the very first day he’d played for her, their apartment had been perpetually flooded with his cadences and crescendos, his riffs and sweet descants when he played over the radio. She was easily his biggest fan, never missing a show or even a practice, hanging on every note, ever phrase, every word of every song. She’d truly thought him the best of the best, to the point where there’d been a time when she’d have challenged anyone who thought they could top his musical styling.
And, at an event like this, she’d have been his biggest cheer leader. But things were different now…
He was good; that hadn’t changed. Scarlet might have toyed with his destiny a bit, but his talents were all his own, and she was proud of him. In a way, this music fest almost felt like the bittersweet ending of a chapter; where Caspar’s wings were finally spread to their full capacity, and Scarlet had—albeit, through biased measures—found a new favourite musician. After all, music touched you in almost all the same places as did love. And she had found her musical connection, all entwined with a cosmic and eternal love, with Alair.
“Yeah.” Scarlet said at last, leaning into Alair’s shoulder as she looked on at Caspar, spotting Marissa in the crowd without an ounce of jealousy. “He is fucking amazing.”
In all the excitement of this weekend escapade, Scarlet had nearly forgotten that it had been hours since she’d last eaten, and it wasn’t until her dark-haired companion expressed his impatience for sustenance that she recognized the sharp pain in the pit of her own stomach. “Oh. Right. Eating should happen at some time, I suppose.”
Since Cas appeared to be tying up the loose ends of his set, she let Alair lead her to the overpriced food vendors. When a guy was hungry, he was willing to pay just about anything for a bite to eat. “You know, we could have just brought some of the food we packed. Like those bags of chips or some fruit; do you have any idea how much they’ll charge you for a fucking cheeseburger at these things?”
Well, if Alair didn’t know, then he found out soon enough when he realized how much it came to, for a couple of burgers and drinks. “Do I get to say I told you so?” Scarlet joked, as they made their way over to a table. The two of them sat down just in time to watch Caspar’s band pack up, making room for the next act. “Okay, so if he asks: we were both here the whole time, and heard the whole thing. Got it?” She chuckled, knowing full well that her roommate would never hold it against them if they happened to miss a couple (or most) of his songs, but there was no negating that this was a big deal for the musician. The biggest venue, with the biggest audience… If push came to shove, she could easily tell him that the extra thousand cheers throughout his entire set would easily making up for her missing voice.
Alice was just polishing off the last of her burger (once again, practically inhaling it; apparently she’d been hungrier than she’d thought) when the Sandman spoke up and pointed to the next act setting up on stage; a young man, dressed smartly but with enough flair to suggest he wasn’t stuffy, was doing sound checks with a violin tucked under his chin. “Huh. Maybe.” Giving a shrug of her shoulders, she bunched up the napkin and pulled her legs up, stretching them out across the picnic table’s bench. “I mean, prodigy or not, I’m not really into violin. Maybe we could go see if we can find Cas, and…”
Scarlet’s words trailed off, just seconds after this Danil Aleksei was introduced, and he began to play. She hadn’t been lying when she’d said she wasn’t a fan of the violin, but this… This was different. The man accomplished with the violin what Alair could do on the guitar, taking the instrument to heights that it shouldn’t even be possible for it to see. The stage disappeared, and all that was left was the young man and his instrument, captivating and conquering the audience with a melody that was in its entirety upbeat, suspenseful, and hauntingly languid. It wasn’t music; it was magic.
“…fuck.” The redhead breathed, raking her fingers through her crimson locks. “Okay, I think I’m officially converted. That guy has fucking earned the title of prodigy.” Playfully nudging Alair with her elbow, she then added, in an equally cheeky tone, “You should snag a spot in the spotlight at some point this weekend; between this guy and Caspar, I’d say you’ve got some solid competition, Magic Man. Maybe you should show them up.”
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
The Sandman may not have been able to dream on his own, but the warmth and closeness of Scarlet in his arms was bliss better than any sensation produced of slumber. She coaxed from deep within his battered soul a tendril of healing fire he’d long thought extinguished; she brought forth a euphoria in which he could forever bury his doubts and his troubles, drowning them in what was rightfully his and theirs—hard-won happiness, a deep, long sought contentedness that life so often kept from his grasp. And what was more was that it was real—she was real—and that made their togetherness all the sweeter. Scarlet was his one and only dream, the only one he ever wished to know.
As Caspar’s act drew to a close and the lanky guitarist took his final bows, Alair broke from his temporary stupor and squeezed his companion’s shoulder with affection. He had already finished his two cheeseburgers (and probably could have downed two more) but there was still a pile of fries in the paper basket; he reached around her shoulder, popping one in his mouth before holding another before her lips in playful offering. “Got it,” he said upon swallowing, crumpling his napkin in a heap and clutching it in his fist. “We were here the whole time. I mean, technically we heard the first part of his set, right?” He chuckled. “He’d probably buy it if we said we wanted to experience the sound in a more natural setting. Keeler would back us up.”
The thought alone of the high-as-a-kite roadie was enough to draw more laughter from his lips. He draped his arm over Scarlet’s shoulder, eyes scanning the sky as it slowly began to darken. The western horizon, though jagged and obscured by distant mountaintops and hillcrests blanketed with tall trees, was painted in bright splotches of peach and orange, a blazing fanfare of color that provided a disproportionately picturesque backdrop to the towering, industrial festival stage. Caspar had concluded his first performance in brilliance of music and nature alike, and judging from the reaction of the crowd as the band had taken their exit, he would not be perturbed that Scarlet and Alair had not been physically present for the first half of the set.
Lost in thoughts of the opening act, the Sandman was not prepared for the sound that suddenly filled the evening air—the soft, tender voice of a violin sliced through the impending night as though it were both beckoning and fighting the darkness at once. Intrigued, Alair straightened his posture and leaned into Scarlet, who was just as transfixed by the unexpected performance as he. Despite the unconventionality of his repertoire, there was something about this young man’s playing that was the result of mastery beyond his years, and the contradiction struck the Sandman as strangely—profoundly—mournful.
“Me, in the spotlight?” he replied as the audience cheered the violinist’s final number. He turned to her and quirked a brow, then leaned in to steal a quick kiss on her lips before his playful smirk could betray him. “I don’t want to make everyone feel bad about themselves. That wouldn’t be very considerate at all! Especially considering our dear Caspar’s newfound confidence, yeah?” He grinned, rising to his feet and gathering their trash to deposit in the nearby bin. “So what’s next, alpha?” he inquired, planting a hand insistently on his hip while the other arm snaked its way around her slender waist. “Another dip in the lake?”
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
Alair’s typical display of inflated ego made Scarlet laugh, and the redhead extended her hand to lightly whack him in the arm. “Oh, get over yourself, Magic Man. I think Mr. Violin up there could take you on in a music-off.” And by the sound of the crowd cheering, and the standing ovation that they guy got at the end of his very first song, she was willing to bet that the Sandman could have met his match; guitar to violin. Secretly, she pitied anyone else who’d happen too play after the guy was finished his set; and here she’d thought no one could live up to the great and popular Caspar Brighton… This Danil Alexei had already effectively stolen the night.
For that reason alone, Scarlet wouldn’t have let Alair step onto that stage, even if he’d wanted to. Not because his music was not phenomenal, or could not rival that of the violinist’s, but because when the man she loved did take the stage, she didn’t want anyone or anything to draw away from him. It was the same care she had always taken with Caspar, when scoring him gigs; never suggesting he take an opening act if the main band would overshadow him. It had built his confidence, and now he had no trouble captivating any audience.
But with Alair, it was different… and, perhaps, part of her idealization was borne of selfish motives. Not only did she want Alair to be the best, to sound the best and to shine the brightest, but she wanted him to be the only star in the sky—and to shine for her alone.
“Come on, let’s head out before the acts just keep getting better and we get increasingly insecure; I’m just hoping that Caspar wasn’t around to hear that guy. Because if he did, then I really hope Marissa has a few clues as to how to boost the poor boy’s ego. To, like, you level of arrogance.” She was only joking at that last bit, a teasing smirk playing on her lips as she leaned into him. “Come on. Let’s get back to see if our time machine is still standing; I’m willing to bet that son of a bitch collapsed in on itself again.”
Scarlet pressed into Alair’s side and gave his waist a squeeze, before her hand found his and they were once again linked by the fingers, her small hand encircling his own as the two of them made their way from the rowdy and excited crowd, the lights and the sounds of the main stage. Returning to the relative solitude of the woods was always a welcome and coveted feeling, even when expecting to be caught up in the excitement of a gathering of bands. Even gregarious extraverts such as Scarlet and Alair (the latter moreso than the former, however) needed their solitude, their privacy, and their time alone together. No doubt Marissa and Caspar would be taking some time away from the fans and other bands, before the night was through… Something upon which the redhead didn’t particularly want to dwell, because it was Caspar, and he was like her brother, and it just felt weird.
To her (and likely, Alair’s) great relief, the tent was still standing by the time they got back to their little secluded campsite. It drew a smile on Scarlet’s face as she turned towards Alair, slipping her hand out of his to plant both firmly on his shoulders, standing on the balls of her feet to add an inch or so to her height. “You’re fucking kidding me, right? Back in that lake, where it’s likely colder now than it was before?”
The breeze had subsided, but with night quickly approaching, the atmosphere of the site had already grown significantly cooler. Scarlet had to suppress a shiver, as the mountain cold tried to pick its way through the fabric of the sweater she’d stolen (er… “borrowed”) from Alair. “You know, if you just wanted to see me in my bikini… all you need to do is ask, Magic Man.” A familiar, teasing smirk tugged her lips to one side, before she pressed them to Alair’s, in a kiss that was light but lingering. “…but only if you agree to keep me warm. It’s only just gotten dark, and I’ve already got goosebumps.” She turned her attention briefly to her legs, partially exposed from her capris shorts just below the knee, where the skin had pulled tight and tiny bumps had risen.
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
“Don’t worry, I’ll keep you warm, alpha.” Alair, his affections newly ignited by the blissful privacy in the surrounding woods, clasped his hands at the small of Scarlet’s back and pulled away from their embrace just enough to bring his lips to her ear. “You know, I could keep you warm in less than your bikini,” he whispered devilishly, burying his face playfully in her neck. Pointedly ignoring any protests, he squeezed her tighter and lifted her feet from the ground, swinging her gently around to stand at the rocky barrier that fenced in their hours-dead fire. “But in the meantime,” he went on, raising his voice to a facetious shout in the freeing void of their mountain isolation, “we should revive the fire. We’ll still probably need blankets, though.”
He tossed several medium-sized logs from the stockpile they’d gathered earlier into the remaining ashes, then arranged them into a pyramid around the smaller kindling. Before long, red-orange flames licked the sides of the dry wood and stretched in bright bursts towards the blackening sky. As the sun continued its retreat, so too did their mild temperatures; even Alair, who had dressed for the occasion and sat close now to the campfire, could feel goose bumps on the skin of his arms. And if Sleep was feeling the chill, then Scarlet had likely already turned to living ice.
“Get over here before you freeze, alpha,” the Sandman called good-naturedly, extending an arm as she slid in next to him. He wrapped his hand around her shoulder and pulled her close, reaching with his free limb to help arrange the blanket over their laps. As if in approval, the fire crackled loudly, sending a flare of yellow sparks spiraling upward towards the emerging stars. Alair chuckled. From their distance, the pulsating rhythm of the festival’s evening session was just audible enough to seem dreamlike, a surreal synthetic soundtrack to an otherwise organic scene. But it was precisely that juxtaposition that revealed their reality, and he sighed softly, more content than he had been in recent memory.
Scarlet’s hair shone a brilliant vermillion in the glow of the fire, and it was several moments before he realized he was staring—and smiling like a fool—at the young woman who was nestled into his side. “Hey,” he said, a little more softly than he intended. When she turned to look at him, he pressed his lips, still upturned in a crooked grin, to hers. “Feeling any warmer yet?”
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
Scarlet’s muffled chuckles were all that disturbed the stillness that otherwise surrounded them, her ear unusually ticklish when caressed by Alair’s murmured words.
“Yeah?” She murmured right back, a top canines pulling at her lower lip in a way that was unintentionally cheeky. “I hold you to that challenge, Sandman.”
A laugh erupted from her constricted lungs as he spun her around, and she inhaled an exaggerated gulp of air when he let go to set her back upon her feet. “Fire?” Her blue eyes cast their disproving glance at the dying put, and she arched an eyebrow at her ambitious companion. “I mean, I may be cold, but do we really need that with something as hot as me around?”
Scarlet stuck her tongue out and snickered, jovial and teasing, and tossed a log playfully in Sleep’s direction before taking it upon herself to contribute to the task at hand. Graciously, starting a fire wasn’t as beyond her realm of capabilities of pitching a tent (she still maintained the piece of shit was as complicated as a fucking time machine, and nothing anyone said could change her mind), and it wasn’t long before her shivering knees were pressed against the coarse denim of Alair’s jeans, and her torso tucked into the secure encirclement of his warm arms. The thick, woolen blanket arranged over their laps staved off the evening chill that made her regret wearing shorts after sundown, but when the wind shifted directions, it carried away the faintest mist of their breaths to mingle with the mountain air.
But it was a solid ten or fifteen minutes before she so much as took notice. As Alair’s attention was captured by the amber of her locks against the firelight, Scarlet’s had been seized by the crimson, vermillion and fuchsia of the sunset over the dark spikes of treetops. For someone with a circadian rhythm as skewed and abused as the redhead’s, this was nothing new; the brilliance of the colours and this composition of nature’s finest artwork, however, was another story. “You don’t really see this in the city, do you?” She murmured to the Sandman without taking her eyes from the sky. “Not like this, with all the pollution… I’ve seen endless sunsets. But nothing compares to this, does it…”
Alair didn’t respond right away, and she assumed that he was just as entranced with the majesty of pink and orange clouds as she was. When he finally ventured to break the silence again with a single quiet word, she should—by now—have expected it to be the foot in the door for another kiss.
“Warmer?” Scarlet meditated on the word for a moment, the corner of her mouth slowly curling upwards as the answer began to form. “Well… the air’s cooled off quite a bit. This fire is shooting all of its heat skyward, the blanket only covers part of my legs, and the sweater you gave me is getting all damp from the humidity…” She pouted and ran her fingers over one of the sleeves in emphasis. The pout wasn’t long-lived, surrendering to a coy smile as she reached with one hand to slip her fingers around the back of his neck, pulling him dangerously close for the whisper of a kiss. “I dunno, Magic Man. I’m not as warm as I’d like to be…”
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
He laughed at her proclamation that she wasn’t as warm as she wanted to be, but the chuckle was more mischievous than amused. The sound transitioned to a playful growl in his throat as he closed the small distance between their lips, his teasingly forceful kiss functioning as a method of distraction for the fact that he was pulling her not so subtly towards him. In one swift movement, he had one arm under her knees and the other around her shoulder, his eyes sparkling with mirth as he tipped her backwards from their seat and lowered her to the carpet of green grass. With his knees still hooked over the log-turned-bench, he propped himself up on an elbow at her side and leaned down to plant several gentle kisses along her neck.
The wool blanket, which had tangled around Scarlet’s feet in the rapid and unconventional descent backwards from their previous position, fluttered against the wind’s breath. Alair rocked forward to grab it, pulling it back down over their prostrate forms before relinquishing its control to the redhead. “I can think of a few methods to generate heat in a setting like this,” he murmured, rolling to his side to face her. Beneath the cover of the wool, the Sandman’s roaming hands brushed against the skin where her shirt met denim, his fingers slipping beneath the fabric to cradle her slender waist. “It starts here…” he said breathily, quirking a brow before disappearing beneath the blanket to press his lips above her bellybutton.
His kisses trailed upward, one hand gradually easing up her shirt as he ascended until it reached her shoulders. With a grin, he repositioned himself so that he straddled her legs, tugging her upright so that he could pull her shirt—and the cardigan of his she’d borrowed—free of her limbs. Greedily, he once again found her lips with his, and he propped himself over her with one hand while the other tangled itself in her wild locks.
“Feeling warmer yet, alpha?” he breathed, taking her lower lip gently between his teeth. “Or do we need to keep fiddling with the thermostat?” As he spoke, he lifted one of her hands to the buttons on his own sweater, which quickly came unfastened and discarded along with the previous clothing. They fumbled together in an uncoordinated mess of hands and fingers to pull his t-shirt over his head as well, and soon their torsos were pressed against one another’s in the chill of the young night. The crisp air caressed his bare skin with a tenderness to accompany Scarlet’s feisty heat, and with the mattress of soft, dewy grass beneath them, Alair felt positively alive.
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
"Yeah?" The word escaped her in a breath, and her eyes--mirthful and ambitious as Alair's--twinkled with mischief at his suggestions pertaining to 'generating heat'. All of which, quite obviously, had nothing to do with starting a fire. "Then you'd better enlighten me, Magic Man, because this grass is..."
Whatever pseudo-complaint her snarky mind had been considering was lost to an abrupt intake of breath, incited by the firm warmth of Alair's fingers beneath the cloth on her body, and punctuated with a kiss near her navel that prompted a soft sigh. Perhaps he could tell, or perhaps not, but the redhead could already feel her blood spike a few degrees higher.
It was all so painfully familiar, and in the best of ways. Instead of her aged apartment, they were graced with the isolated expanse of nature; instead of the ratty, second-hand (or third, or fourth-hand) sofa from the 80s, they had the grass and soil. But the kisses along her upper body, the way her skin and the blood beneath it climbed in degrees in the absence of the T-shirt and cardigan, and all the more when Alair's firm abdominal muscles met the marginally softer give of her torso were all the same, if not a little more powerful, more exciting and--after being interrupted that first time--far more desired. While, had life been fairer, this should have been an encore, it was the postponed moment that the two of them deserved.
After all, in all technicality, it had been... what? A couple centuries, a millennium, since (in one incarnation or another) they had found the opportunity to give themselves over to one another completely?
Scarlet's hands greedily sought to tangle in Sleep's dark locks as soon as they had finished with his shirt, when their lips met in a feisty kiss; a grin played on her mouth in response to his question. "Hey, Sandman; I'm an Aries, remember? Fire sign?" Her eyebrow spiked upward to punctuate the reminder. "And this grass is still fucking chilly. Do you know what it takes to really keep a fire sign warm? Because..." Her lips trailed to his ear, planting a trail of kisses along his jaw on their way. "I'd be more than happy to show you."
Tugging gently on his earlobe with her teeth, one of the young woman's hands trailed from the back of Alair's neck to her own midback, where--with expert dexterity and fine motor skills--she tugged free the knot at the back of her damp bikini top, and, subsequently, the shoddy tie at the back of her neck. The damp piece of negligent material fell away like a useless leaf on the wind, and with nothing between their upper halves, Scarlet propped herself onto an elbow and closed the distance between them. "If you're gonna keep me warm, like you promised," she murmured, her words interrupted only by the hungry kisses she pressed to his lips, "Then there can't be anything between us. Nothing. You catch my drift?" And, just in case he didn't, she trailed sly fingers down his chest and over his hips, until they came into contact with the cool metal of his jeans' zipper.
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
Scarlet and their mutual desire had coaxed from his senses an intense awareness that, for the first time in more ages than he cared to recall, succeeded in making him feel simultaneously human and preternatural. He could feel the humming existence of humanity’s collective unconscious—the ubiquitous vibration of a million dazzling dreamscapes—as surely as he could feel the redhead’s charged kisses against his neck. Yet never before had he felt so grounded, so utterly rooted in the flesh and blood and bones that he called his own and that Scarlet, too, was claiming now. The magic she detected in him was mirrored perfectly in her, and together they were a part of a vast, mystical scheme of nature greater even than the surrounding mountains could contend.
His laughter bubbled from his lips like audible lighthearted kisses, but the expression in his bright blue eyes gave away the desire that lurked beneath their playful banter. “I think I catch your drift,” he responded huskily, trailing his fingertips down the length of her arm until his palm overlaid the fingers that hovered at his zipper. As if to confirm, he briefly pressed her hand against the length of toothed metal before deftly unfastening the button at the waistband and leaving her to complete the task. “I might need a little help, too, if you don’t mind…” he breathed into her ear, following her example and taking her earlobe gently in his teeth. He gave it a small bite before his hands wandered down and over her chest, at last settling on each of her hips.
“Nothing between us,” he reiterated, his hungry smile lopsided. Hooking a finger in each of her jeans’ belt loops, he pulled her hips aggressively closer. There was no hesitation in the way her buttons and zips lost their hold at the mercy of his eager hands, and before long their denim garments had been discarded, unneeded, alongside the sweaters thrown in the underbrush. Even their coveted wool blanket had worked its way from their fiery bodies and lay forgotten in the dewy grass, a puddle of crumpled fabric in the flickering shadows of their moving forms. Alair grabbed one of its corners and tossed it over the emerald lawn, grasping Scarlet by the shoulders to roll playfully over one another until their bodies lay atop its soft plaid.
The familiarity of their united bodies, free at last of the restraints of clothing, outdated sofas, and unannounced guests, resonated in the Sandman’s bones like the chords of their first musical experience together in Geoff’s quaint shop. It was time now for the long-awaited duet of a different kind, a pas de deux of primal desire and ancient love, the tempo of their adoration synchronized with their pounding heartbeats and the colossal movement of the earth.
Alair, his dark hair tousled and blue eyes glistening in the firelight, reached up to place two fingers tenderly on Scarlet’s lips. Affection and mischief flitted in quick succession across his face, and he pressed a kiss to his own digits in a gesture reminiscent of a shared moment on the playground in the rain…
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
Scarlet had never been so grounded in a moment before; nothing felt so natural as to rid her body of its last bit of clothing, or to discover her soul mate’s beneath his, the two of them void of shame or self-consciousness. The chuckle that shook her shoulders as they rolled onto the woolen blanket was light and childlike, with none of that characteristic snark or irony, something that surprised even her own, familiar ears. Until now, it hadn’t occurred to her that Alair wasn't just an anchor to her in her dreams, warding off the daggers of her own harsh subconscious mind, but he was a pillar to the very earth upon which she tread, a weight that kept her floating away into uncertainty.
Alair had been her distant past. If she had things her way, he’d also be her future. But, at the very least, he was her now. And nothing was going to interrupt this here and now; not this time.
Pressing a kiss to the two fingers that touched her lips, the fiery redhead’s cheeks tinted with their own inner fire, that warmth that spread through her body and reached places that no campfire or blanket could. Places that, mentally, emotionally, physically—even spiritually—only Alair could touch.
And at that, she reached to cup his face in the palm of her hand and seize his mouth in a slow but yearning kiss. This was their moment, their night, and there was no rush.
She met his eyes, blue gazing upon bluer, and the only warning the Sandman got was the subtle curl of the corners of her mouth before she shifted her position, straddling his hips and looking down upon him with the starry sky above her before he comment.
“Alair…” His name on her breath, carried on the breeze, appealed to her ears more than the thrum and hum of music in the distance. With her elbows on either side of his head, a cascade of thick, crimson tresses tumbling from either side of her shoulders, she fixed her eyes on his, fixed her lips on his and murmured on voiceless fricatives: “I love you.”
It needn’t be spoken; the truth, the sentiment, was all around them, such that it was part of them. But the words slipped past her lips without a thought. Like everything else in the moment, they had orchestrated themselves, no thought required, because it reached beyond thought. There was no hesitation, no contemplation, no uncertainty when Scarlet—inexperienced even as she was—slid her hands from the sides of his face, trailed them feather-light down his chest and secured them just below his waist. No hesitation, no contemplation, no uncertainty when, with great care, she adjusted her own position on his hips. And no second-guessing when, with a steadying inhale, she straightened her spine, and began to move.
And that was the moment when she became glaringly aware of how intimately she and Alair already knew one another.
This wasn’t difficult or awkward because, Scarlet realized, it was nothing new. She’d known this body, this person, this very soul for centuries. Millennia. That this might have been Maryana Aleksei’s first meaningful intimate encounter was irrelevant; in a past life, long since lost on her, she had held Alair like this before. She had moved with him, in sync in this sacred dance (because how could you not divine the mirror movements of someone you’d known and loved for so long?) many times before, perhaps even under the canopy of trees and stars. Scarlet knew him, knew how to touch him, knew how to be touched in spite of all of the hands that had ever hurt her.
For the first time in her current life, she knew—really, truly knew—what it meant to love, and to be loved.
Counting her breaths, thoughtfully measured, the redhead felt her posture give way to the energy throbbing in her core and spreading throughout her limbs. Catching herself on her elbows, she pressed her forehead to Alair’s shoulder, giving herself over more and more with every sway of their rhythm. She could feel his pulse in tandem with her own through their feverish skin, could hear their vitality in the music on the air, and she gave way to it, eyelids fluttering closed and lips slightly parted.
There was no fear in getting lost. Not when she knew she was in the right hands to guide her back to where she needed to be.
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
It was no secret to either of them that they had shared moments like this before, lost in the current of time and buried beneath grief too dark and too thick to allow their light to shine through. And as their breathing grew heavier, their touches more insistent, their kisses hungrier, the dark-haired Sandman could feel the black residue of former loss melting away, dissolving the cold fortress his mind had constructed against the painful glow of happier memories. Like golden rays of sunlight piercing through dense clouds after the threat of rain had passed, the recollections of former togetherness shone in to illuminate the shadowed recesses of details long forgotten.
The gleam in her eyes, the warmth and tenderness of her caresses, the soft curve of her body beneath his palms—the shock of bright crimson hair may have been new, but the life force behind Scarlet’s vibrant blue eyes was precisely the same as the one his own soul had bonded with all those millennia ago. They were cut from the same cloth, she and the Sandman. She was his dreams when he had none for himself; he was the rock upon which she found stability in a life that too often trembled. She, the cause and the reason alike that he pushed through his depression; he, the dark stranger constant that followed her across centuries. Their relationship was one to shatter the mountains upon which they moved. They—she—was the reason he knew atoms contained galaxies.
The cushion of grass beneath the hastily spread blanket gave softly beneath their shifting weight, and the warmth of the crackling fire combined with the chill of the night’s breath made him crave her closeness all the more. He hummed with pleasure when their bodies met bare, and his breath caught in his throat as the redhead pressed his shoulders to the ground and positioned herself atop his prostrate form.
Whoever said the wisdom of the universe lay in the imagination had never experienced ecstasy as exceptional as what reality presented them with now. Alair reveled in the sensation, his eyes aflame with azure as brightly as his cheeks were painted rose, feeling an electric relief that calmed him as much as it excited him. He gazed lovingly upwards as she established her rhythm, and they rocked together while the emerging stars looked on through the web of intersecting branches above.
Deftly he trailed his fingers up her arms until he grasped the sides of her shoulders. In one swift movement he sat quickly upright, flipping her to her back with a hand cradling the small of her neck as he lowered her to the ground in turn. With the other arm supporting the weight of his torso, he leaned in to her neck, exploring the tender skin along her jaw with tongue and kisses until he found her lips again, all the while moving steadily with the tempo of their shared pulse. Their synchronized bodies glistened in the shifting firelight, the cold of the evening forgotten completely in favor of the charged heat they shared. It was passion sustained in tandem, adoration made manifest in simple action—a new memory they were forging together, swaying to the beat of a joined existence meant to be.
The words came from his lips in a slurred murmur as his mouth brushed her ear. “I love you,” he heard himself say, eyes half closed as he bowed his head into her vermillion tresses. Her scent was as intoxicating as her body, and he breathed in her unique perfume with a faint moan, euphoria temporarily seizing control of his limbs as their improvised dance escalated in friction and fervor.
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
Though confident and established to have Sleep beneath her, drinking in the depths of those azure eyes as they clouded with desire and satisfaction at their synchronized rhythm, the fiery redhead made no move to resist when she suddenly found herself beneath him. The blanket met her glistening skin, with the gleam of the starry sky almost indistinguishable from the sparkle of Alair's vivid eyes, and--needless to say--she had no reason to complain of the cold anymore.
The heat of his body warmed and invigorated her, every inch of contact infusing her with electricity as striking as her lover's irises. Scarlet lost herself, along with her composure and her control, to the powerful spell of the kisses he planted along her jaw. And she lost herself further to their shared tempo, one that set her senses alight with passion more than the percussion of the most soul-consuming music she'd ever heard.
The Aries-born, the fire sign, had found the flame that she craved, the flame to sate her desire, and it was all a matter of reaching it, letting it consume every inch of her being--and taking Alair down with her.
Sighs unbidden escaped the young woman's parted lips and she arched her back to meet him chest to chest, hooking a single hand around the back of his neck while the other gathered a fistful of blanket on some unconscious impulse. But when the pressure climbed, and her feverish skin grew warmer as that flame burned hotter, nothing sufficed but the warmth of Alair's skin, gleaming with a lustrous sheen, beneath her hands, against her chest, against the taut muscles of calves and curled toes. She stole kisses from his mouth and along his neck, leaving tiny impressions of her teeth when she felt herself get carried away. And when their tempo hit just the right note at times, in tandem with the rhythm of her energy and her pulse and her frantic inhales, the dull half-moons of her fingernails--mercifully short--left their own impressions along his shoulder blades and at the back of his neck. All completely unintentional (at least, that was what she would say if ever asked), and certainly with no apology, but nonetheless a palpable indication of how he made her feel.
And she preferred to show, rather than tell.
"Alair..." Scarlet breathed his name into his ear in a subtle hum of ecstasy, hot breath tickling his neck with the quickening of their conjoined pace, not realizing until she'd spoken that she hadn't anything of substance or consequence to say in that moment, but that her voice betrayed only what was consuming her, body and mind--which was, of course, the Sandman himself. Her chest heaved with increasingly heavy intakes and exhales of breath. Her dull fingernails relinquished their loving assault on his shoulder blades in favor of her palms pressing against his pectorals, where they appeared happy to come to rest.
Don't stop, she wanted to tell him, but wasn't sure her tongue could articulate a two-word sentence. Though pressed against the soft give of blanket and grass, she felt like she was climbing higher, higher with every movement they shared and every breath she took, and she didn't want it to stop, didn't want it to end until that fire consumed her--consumed the both of them--completely, and there was nothing left but to come back down to Earth.
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
The trick was not to look down. It was age-old, straightforward advice born of logic and reason, meant to obliterate the fear of falling for those trembling high above solid ground. But for Alair, the exhilaration of the view was what kept him going. He might once have been hurtling towards a dangerous end, but with Scarlet, he felt as though he were flying. She was a set of fiery wings spread wide against the wind, scooping him from his descent to soar in the golden glow of the sun. Together they rode the spiraling updraft until the world fell away, too small to distinguish its features; they existed as one mystical entity amongst the clouds and the stars, forgoing a landing altogether in favor of dancing amidst the glittering firmament.
As their heaving chests met, Alair released a sigh, burying his face into her shoulder as her nails bit lovingly into the skin of his back. More, her prying fingers seemed to say, and coupled with the longing gleam in her blue eyes as she met his gaze, he began a gradual, glorious accelerando. The cadence of their escalating velocity raised the experience to yet another level, a previously undiscovered dimension that had every inch of his body quaking to satisfy a deep-rooted ache, a need, a craving so acute that it formed on his lips in a husky, yearning whisper: “Scarlet…”
And all at once came the release, the bursting of floodgates so long closed that it was all he could do to contain the relief of his blissful anguish in a long, loaded sigh. Pleasure inundated his veins as though ecstasy were the only substance coursing through his vascular system, detonating in an explosion of accumulated emotion that left his nerves and thoughts simmering with the same euphoric heat.
The air that filled his lungs after that spell of prolonged rapture felt like a drink of fresh mountain water on a parched tongue, easing the transition from the sublime high to the hazy, dreamlike aftermath that rendered him awed and panting. Pressing his lips firmly to the redhead’s, he kissed her slowly and deeply, easing himself to his side as one hand brushed away a lock of bright hair from her glistening forehead. The outspoken Sandman felt no compulsion to disrupt the moment with speech; instead, he gazed at her lovingly, the azure of his eyes sparkling with his unspoken and undeniable affection. His fingertips slowly traced the contour of her jaw to the outline of her clavicle, trailing down her chest to rest lazily across her abdomen.
At last, with the breeze sending murmurs through the thick forest canopy, he drew breath for words of his own, donning a lopsided smile that spelled nothing but mischief. “Well,” he said raspily, leaning down to rest his forehead against her temple, “are you warm enough now?”
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
Scarlet wanted more; Alair gave her more, without the plea ever passing her lips, and the rhythm built from a steady and safe sway to something hungrier and full of yearning, a crescendo that sought a peak, a climax. That was the moment when the fiery redhead relinquished whatever tendrils of control clung to her composure like a lifeline, severing every thread of doubt or insecurity that held her back, and gave way to the deluge of ecstasy that filled her heart, filled her veins and activated every neuron in her skin, and then some. At that peak, she forgot how to inhale; and, on the decline, she remembered in a rush, and drew air slowly into her lungs like she was learning to breathe for the first time.
Once the electricity dissipated, diffusing through her skin and back into the earth from which it was born, her fingers eased their desperate grip on Alair's shoulders and fell away from his form, her knuckles brushing the soft fibres of the woolen blanket beneath them. Bathed in starlight, perspiration and beatific exhaustion, Scarlet's blue eyes--for the first time in a very long time--regarded the celestial bodies overhead with indifference. She didn't need them to divine her fate and fortune; not when everything surrounding her, everything this moment was made of, reassured her that this was precisely where she needed to be,
And that Alair was--and, in a sense, always had been--part of it.
Averting her gaze from the sky, the Aries-born young woman followed the path of Sleep's hand with her eyes in lazy satisfaction, resting one of her own atop of it when it came to rest on the flat of her abdomen. "Mmmm... for now," came her sly answer, the corner of her mouth quirking upward to match the mirth in his own smile. She brushed Alair's cheek gingerly with the back of her knuckles, taking curious note of the red chafes and scrapes at his neck and collarbone. Naturally, she first leaned towards concern, until she remembered not only how quickly he healed, but that their origins could serve as interesting conversation starters. Her wicked streak, for that reason, coaxed her not to mention them, for now.
"But, if we lie out here for too long, we're eventually going to freeze our asses off," she mentioned casually. "So unless you're raring to go all night, I suggest a sleeping bag, in the tent. I, ah... might have forgotten to pack two." Nothing about her mischievous expression or that sly flicker in her pale eyes suggested that she had unintentionally forgotten anything. "What? I think we can swing it; I don't take up a lot of space, and I'm flexible. Anyway, we fit together just fine." In cheeky emphasis of the remark, she turned on her side and pressed her body into his, front to front, pliant skin conforming neatly to his musculature.
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
“Are you raring to go all night long?” the Sandman returned, propping himself up with his elbow to look at her. He quirked a brow and tucked his lower lip playfully behind his top teeth. “Because you know I am.” He sat up by tucking his knees beneath his chest, then rose to his feet to face the campfire. With his skin still glistening, he stood before the flames, watching as the kindling shifted and sent a burst of red-orange sparks soaring upwards toward the stars.
“I’m the fucking Sandman, Scarlet, I don’t even need to sleep,” he said, planting his hands on his hips. He turned around to face her, wearing nothing but a broad, mirthful grin whose sentiment was echoed in his blue eyes. The small half-moon scratches along his collarbone and shoulder blades were all but invisible in the dense darkness of the mountain night, but he nevertheless wore them with pride—a quality that he certainly did not lack in general, given his unabashed nakedness and easy posture. Their passionate consummation was something absolutely sacred, something to be revered, and the intimacy they now shared as a result made him all the more comfortable in Scarlet’s presence.
He chuckled once again, extending both hands for Scarlet. He pulled her to her feet with a little too much enthusiasm, and he carried her momentum forward into a loving—and this time vertical—embrace. She was right; they fit together without a trace of imperfection, both corporeally and spiritually. “Let’s go see about that sleeping bag, then,” he said, his voice muffled somewhat by her thick hair. If he harbored any resentment about the “forgotten” item, he failed to show it. In fact, he looked downright amused as he led her hand-in-hand to their tricky time machine, unzipping the door flap in two quick gestures.
Releasing her hand, he leaned down, fished a pair of boxer shorts from his backpack, and slid them over his hips along with a pair of plaid pajama pants. Leaving her to whatever dressing she might want to do in turn, he slipped into the tent, relieved to find that it was somewhat warmer within its vinyl walls than the chilly outdoor night just beyond.
“Hurry up!” he called teasingly, patting the unzipped sleeping bag like an impatient child until she joined him. He cozied up to her immediately, tossing the other side over them both before wrapping one arm around her stomach and pulling her tightly against his bare chest. “Can you zip us up?” he asked, giggling despite himself. “I can’t reach.”
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
And yet, he didn't sleep, although he'd pass the nights with her. The paradox of his seemingly unlimited supply of energy gave her a headache to consider, and in response to his staged hubris, Scarlet only wrinkled her nose.
"And who says I need sleep, Magic Man?" She countered, sitting up to take his hands. A startled laugh tore from her lungs--still breathless from their engagement in physical activity--when he pulled her close to his chest, meeting his striking eyes with her own, and rivaling his mirth and challenge. "You're talking to someone who hasn't had a normal circadian rhythm since I was, like, thirteen." As a final, tantalizing embellishment, she stood on her toes and trailed her hands to his hips, as her lips trailed to his ear to murmur: "Just wait 'til we're home and not so at risk of being caught with our pants down. I'll show you a thing or two about pulling all-nighters, Sandman." And this time, she'd make damn sure to lock the fucking door.
Tugging gently on his ear with her teeth, Scarlet laughed and took his hand, unabashedly treading the solitary campground wearing nothing but joy and contentment on her way to the duffle bag she'd packed for the two of them. Feeling, frankly, overheated and still glistening with a light sheen of perspiration, she hastily came to the conclusion that a pair of underwear and a loose, ribbed tank-top would do. Especially considering how the temperature escalated again, once her lithe form was pressed against Alair's bare chest again.
"Just so you know, we're both going to wake up suffocating from mutual body heat," she warned him with a chuckle, reaching behind her to zip the sleeping bag up to their shoulders. Lips still mildly swollen from their fervent kisses and eyes half-lidded with a fatigue to which she refused to admit, the corner of her mouth twitched into a grin. "But, y'know... need to shed a few layers to cool off, then by all means. That's cool, too."
The fiery redhead wasn't even aware of the depth of her own weariness, however. Between getting up so early, followed by an event-packed day, and with such a finale as she and Alair had shared... She was, truthfully, spent, with nothing left to give. And not five minutes after her eyes closed, she plunged into a deep, contented and--mercifully--dreamless sleep.
The unforgiving aspect about camping was that nature never allowed you to sleep in. By 4am, the birds were awake and alive, and through the thin shelter of their tent, bright, striking sunrise made no attempt to hide.
One leg hooked over Alair's hip, with her forehead pressed into his shoulder, Scarlet gave up the battle of pretending to be asleep and finally stirred, feeling stiff and hot but, oddly, refreshed and rested. "Hey," she prodded the groggy Sandman in the shoulder, then planted a kiss on his temple when the first nag failed to rouse him. "'He who does not sleep': let's get the day started. I'm about ready to go wreak havoc on song sparrows, and am in desperate need of coffee. Or something resembling caffeine."
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
As the Sandman, the preternatural human embodiment of Sleep, there was no sensation of falling into slumber’s clutches; he could sleep at will, triggering the change as easily as blinking his eyes closed. So he waited until he sensed Scarlet’s slow descent, smiling tenderly against her hair as her body relaxed into his. This was what life was all about—the utter loving surrender of one heart to another, the wholehearted trust to display personal vulnerabilities while knowing beyond any doubt that their counterpart was there to protect and to cherish, not to harm or to judge. Alair may have seemed a stranger to insecurity, but in truth his cheeky arrogance was largely an act. Confidence was not equate with fearlessness, after all. And after centuries of repeatedly finding and losing the one piece of his life that made him whole, apprehension was a very real plague.
His sleep, as ever, was dreamless. And though his body did not need the rest after so relatively little expenditure, it nevertheless refreshed him. The streaming rays of a cheerful sunrise heralded the arrival of morning, announced to the remainder of the world by the chatter of happy birds. He was vaguely aware of Scarlet moving against him, but until she spoke he remained still.
“Just because I don’t have to sleep doesn’t mean I don’t want to,” he murmured groggily as she shoved him awake, wrinkling his nose and burying his face in his pillow against the assault of bright morning light. It was all for show, however, and Scarlet knew that very well; he rolled over complacently and smiled up at her, his dark hair matted to his forehead and sticking out in all directions. “I should have known the reason for the rush would be coffee,” he said sleepily, chuckling. He reached out and wrapped his hand around the back of her neck, pulling her in close for a lazy kiss despite any protests.
Stifling a yawn, he sat up on the crook of his elbow and rubbed his eyes with his fists. “We’ll need to start the fire up again,” he said. “The percolator should be in the bag.” He reached his arms high above his head, stretching as he prepared to crawl from the tent and back into the open air. The breeze had already warmed considerably since the previous night, but against his bare torso it was still somewhat chilly. Suppressing a shiver, he picked up the forgotten blanket from the grass and wrapped it around his shoulders like a cape while he resurrected the fire.
Positioning an old metal grate left over from the abandoned campground’s heyday above the flames, he took the retrieved percolator from Scarlet and placed it atop the dusty iron. “Please tell me you were better at packing thermoses than sleeping bags,” he told her impishly, shrugging away his guilt in favor of a hopeful smile. "Because I'm pretty sure I forgot them on the counter by the sink."
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
This was how you knew something was right. Or, more specifically, when you knew someone was right.
Zipping down the sleeping bag to free their constricted bodies from its warm confines, Scarlet was the first out of the tent, and the first to break the morning with a whisper on the cusp of profanity when the early morning air clung to her skin, damp from humidity and the closeness of Alair's body all night long. Stepping outside in nothing but a flimsy tank top and underwear printed with some generic sultry phrase on the back might not have been the wisest move; if she hadn't been awake before, she sure as hell was not. "Fuck it's cold," the redhead whined, contrary to Alair's quiet observation pertaining to the rise in temperature. "Why do you get to hog the blanket, huh?"
Shaking her head, she returned to the duffel bag to retrieve the thermoses and premium coffee grinds (like hell she'd drink that instant, even when it came to camping) along with the percolator and handed the latter to the Sandman. "Pfft. Did I remember to pack thermoses? Remember who you're talking to, Magic Man," she chuckled, setting the two silver containers aside next to the fire pit. "I might forget sleeping bags, but when it comes to coffee, I am fully prepared. And... damn, do I need it."
Pressing her fingers into her temple, she leaned against Alair's shoulder, fighting off the threatening pulse of a headache. Up too late and up too early, two days in a row... After a while, it began to takes its toll, especially now that her nights were more restful and fulfilling in terms of sleep and she was falling into a slightly more human circadian rhythm. Her body had gone from straddling the fence of barely functional, slumber-deprived state, to downright spoiled and relishing in longer, deeper rest.
It had been a while since her last nightmare, as well, not including that fateful night when she'd relived memories that hadn't really belonged to her. Alair wasn't only her soulmate: he was an all-encompassing cure, for so many aliments she'd suffered, some which she hadn't even realized had been a problem until his presence had evoked such radical change in her life--and, judging by how Caspar was moving on from her, it couldn't have happened at a better time.
"So, like... you can magically dull pain, put people to sleep... Where's your ability to wake people up, Magic Man?" She gave Alair's shoulder a playful shove and kissed his cheek, stifling a yawn against the back of her hand as she watched the percolator do its magic with heavy-lidded eyes. "Because that would be pretty fucking handy right about now... I don't know if I can stay awake long enough for that coffee to brew. Maybe I should throw myself back into that cold-as-hell-frozen-over lake."
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
“That’s the problem with sleep,” he drawled, quirking a brow and stifling yet another yawn of his own. “The more you get, the more you want. And also the less you get, the more you want. Basically, I’m in high demand.” A self-important grin lit up his features, and a hearty laugh shook his shoulders at the ridiculousness of how he sounded. “Clearly I need to work on the ‘waking up’ part. You just can’t get enough of me, can you?” The jibe came with a teasingly suggestive sidelong glance, and he braced himself for the impact of a playful fist. He draped his arm around her shoulders affectionately, repositioning the blanket as he moved.
Despite their physical proximity, he suppressed a shiver as the percolator began its cycle, watching as the steam mingled with the campfire’s white-gray clouds and spiraled upwards into the bright sky. Soon enough, the enticing aroma of strong brewing coffee filled the air as potently as the smoke. Though like aspirin, alcohol, and most other chemical substances meant to alter the human experience, caffeine had little to no real effect on the Sandman; nevertheless, he found himself just as much a slave to the morning ritual of java consumption as the red-haired woman at his side. Despite his occasional indulgence in a Venetian café-au-lame (as Scarlet so lovingly put it), the bitter flavor of plain, strong coffee was what he preferred, if only because its startling taste was enough to refocus his thoughts. Now, though, he associated it so strongly with the redhead he doubted he could ever separate the two again.
The subtle, bubbling hiss from the silvery, hourglass-shaped percolator indicated the eagerly anticipated beverage was ready for consumption. Using his discarded t-shirt as a makeshift potholder against the hot handle, he lifted the device from the old trivet and used his thumb to tip back the cover. “Here,” he said, filling both thermoses to the brim before returning it to the flames. “Hopefully that’s hot enough for you. Our warming up method doesn’t, uh, work so well on coffee.” He tossed her a wink and nudged her with his elbow, sloshing his own thermos over the rim in the process. Scowling, he took a sip, doing his best to play it cool at the outrageous temperature.
“I should throw you into that fucking lake for how hot you make me take my coffee,” he teased, his face contorting into a melodramatic grimace as the liquid burned its way down his throat. He gave in to it quickly, however, and soon even Sleep was raring to start the day. He may not have possessed the power to make someone else more alert, but he clearly had no difficulty in shaking the residue of slumber from his own bones. “Cas is headlining tonight, right? Do you remember what time he goes on?” He dug through their shared duffel bag and pulled out a fresh set of clothes, fully aware of the festival's—and Caspar Brighton's—musical schedule. A flicker of excitement pulsed through his chest. Tonight was the night for his own turn in the spotlight, and he'd be damned if he let Scarlet find out his intentions beforehand.
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
"Technically, if you're gonna parallel yourself with the actual act of sleeping, then I've hated you for a hell of a long time." Scarlet remarked, her face deadpan for a handful a seconds. The façade was shattered, predictably, by a wide smirk and a quirked eyebrow. "But... I guess I'm happy I didn't actually kill you. Y'know, by poisoning you with human pharmaceuticals that don't even have a freaking effect on you. And in my dreams, at that."
Giving his shoulder a light and playful shove for good measure, she happily accepted the steaming thermos of merciful, smoky caffeine, not hesitating for even a second before allowing the scalding liquid to slide down her throat. The dull throb in her temples eased almost instantaneously the mild drug working its way through her bloodstream like an internal salve. Slowly, but surely, her senses began to come alive with the golden-hued morning.
Settling beneath the blanket next to her preternatural companion, she arched an eyebrow at his comment that very nearly made her choke on her beverage with a laugh. "What can I say?" The cheeky young woman drawled at his exaggerated grimace, resting a suggestive hand upon his thigh. "I like my coffee as hot as I like my sex." Planting a kiss on his cheek (and knowing full well that was not a statement he would not care to refute), she stood and made for the tent again. Already, she was missing that inner fire that Alair had ignited at her very core the night before, in the face of the cool morning air on this mountain. No borrowed cardigan or woolen blanket could compare.
"Cas is on at 8PM, last I checked," she called, sifting through piles of unkempt clean clothes. Realistically, she was going to be cold regardless of what clothed her skin, and in the end she settled for the jeans she'd worn the day before and a fitted blue T-shirt--and Alair's sweater tucked under her arm, when she emerged, just in the even that she decided she needed it. "Which means he's probably gonna start preparing at, like, 5. This is the guy's biggest gig... I'll be damned if he wasn't stressing about it all night. Marissa had better remember to prompt him to take his meds if it looks like he's gonna have a full-blown panic attack..." In spite of the distance that established between the, Scarlet couldn't not worry. Cas had been there for her a long while, until just recently; a part of her would always care. Not the same way she cared about Alair, but their relationship had little impact on the sibling-like bond between her and her roommate.
Knocking back the rest of her still-scalding coffee in just a few mouthfuls, Scarlet ran a brush through her unruly crimson locks in an attempt to look somewhat presentable. Her usual eyeliner and light foundation wasn't an option where there wasn't a mirror to apply it; she had to rely on intuition (and Alair) to assume she at least looked presentable. "Come on, Magic Man, let's get moving; I think they're doing pancakes and waffles down where the vendors are set up. I don't even care how much it costs, because pancakes sound fucking amazing right about now."
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
Relinquishing his hold on Scarlet, he poured a bottle of water on to what was left of the fire. It hissed its protest, and he chuckled. “Worked up an appetite last night, did you, alpha?” he teased, threading his fingers through hers and giving her hand an affectionate squeeze. With his opposite hand he brought the thermos to his lips, taking a tentative sip as they set off towards the festival grounds. “Maybe it’s good we’re letting someone else cook. At least at home you’d only burn down the apartment building. Here, it’s an entire national park. Kind of a bigger deal.” He nudged her mischievously as they walked, keeping tight hold of her hand so as to avoid another playful smack (since her other hand, thankfully, clutched her own container of coffee).
While the Magician and the Moon snaked their way through the dewy forest in search of a sweet breakfast, the sleepy-eyed festival crowd already in attendance milled about the vendor square unaware that two new preternatural presences had joined them at sunrise. They were too distracted (and likely too hung over, from the looks of a good many squinting patrons and uneven gaits) to take notice of the fresh shock of cold on the breeze, or the way the atmosphere suddenly buzzed with renewed excitement. It was business as usual, it seemed, and the unusual pair wouldn’t have had it any other way.
Death strolled hand-in-hand with Life through the thickening throng of attendees, weaving among them as though they belonged to their ranks. With his icy skin pressed tightly to her warm palm, he squeezed his beloved’s fingers and nodded to their left. “Belgian waffles,” Amrial stated simply, his baritone at once soft and hard but his tone unmistakably eager. He smiled down at her, the saccharine sweet aroma of maple syrup and cooking oil overtaking his olfactory senses. “Shall we get in line?” he suggested, arching a brow. “I’m hungry.”
It was perhaps no coincidence that Sleep’s stately elder brother had chosen to queue at a vendor near the edge of the gathering. He sensed Alair’s approach before he caught sight of him, and he looked to Roesaleine with a wink, knowing she had likely detected him too. And sure enough, the awaited couple emerged through the trees as if on cue, strolling obliviously towards them.
Alair, meanwhile, was too absorbed in Scarlet to notice the familiar change in the air as they neared their destination. It wasn’t until he locked eyes with the stormy cobalt of Amrial’s stare that he recognized the man and woman who stood not fifteen paces before them, and the expressions they wore indicated this encounter was no accident.
“My brother,” Alair said to Scarlet, startled. He faltered for a moment with surprise, then cleared his throat as they stepped up.
“Hello,” Amrial greeted with a smile, gaze shifting to the red-haired young woman at his brother’s side. “It’s nice to see you again. We were about to get some waffles, would you care to join us?”
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
A few pancakes would do her good, if anything. She was liking these new, subtle curves.
"So what if I did work up an appetite?" Scarlet challenged right back, lifting her chin to make it clear she walked without an ounce of shame. "Don't pretend like I'm the only one who's a little exhausted and in some need of sugar and quick carbs. Hey, what's with this? You prepping to get pancakes or build a fucking snowman?" She tugged playfully at the scarf before he took her hand, and the cheap shot at her hazardous cooking habits drew her eyes into narrow slits. Predictably, she looked as though she might whack him one, before realizing her only free hand was occupied. "...you are so asking for it, Sandman," came her vague warning, carried on a low monotone. "When I decide exactly what 'it' is."
Certainly, it was no accident that Life and Death were walking the campgrounds of this annual music festival in their corporeal manifestations, but the event was coincidentally appropriate for the former, whose very essence was so intertwined with music that they were not mutually exclusive. Roesaleine was thrilled to attend a festival celebrating music, and even moreso that she attended it with her true love at her side, her other half that completed her soul as much as he completed the cycle of existence.
Clad in dark denim jeans and a crew neck sweater, her long, ebony tresses pulled back in a high ponytail, she and Amrial looked like any other chic couple crowding around the vendors. The only reason they might have stood out at all was for the fact that clearly weren't battling hangovers, like the majority of attendees surrounding them.
"Waffles sound fantastic," she smiled and squeezed her beloved's hand in turn, just in time for that mutual sixth sense that opened Roesaleine's eyes to her surroundings. She acknowledged Amrial's wink with a broad smile, and it wasn't long before her prismatic eyes fell on a familiar dark-haired sandman, and his crimson-haired companion.
Scarlet couldn't understand why Alair had halted in his steps so hastily, like a deer caught in the headlights, and cast him a look of concern. "You okay, there, Magic Man?" She asked, at the same time that he uttered the words: my brother.
Neither of them had time to react before Life and Death stepped out of the line for waffles and approached them.
"Uh... hi," Scarlet eyed Amrial and his lady uneasily, recalling the events that had taken place the last time this duo had shown up. As a result, she squeezed Alair's hand tighter, in case he had any thoughts of storming off again. "We sort of had the same idea...the waffles, I mean..."
"Then join us, both of you." Roesaleine piped up, her smile reaching miles as she looked from Alair to Scarlet. "It's wonderful to see you again, Scarlet. You look well. Come, if we're quick, we can reclaim our place in line!"
Posted: Tue Jul 08, 2014 12:10 am
Because Alair was happy. And the drawn-out pain of the past didn’t ache so much anymore.
So he smiled—a delicate, tentative expression that crept slowly at first across his features, touching his azure eyes last as his posture relaxed. In turn, Amrial’s calculated gray stare softened and warmed, and he reached out, draping a cool hand on his younger sibling’s shoulder. It was a small gesture that meant far more than its outward simplicity. Alair’s stubborn resolve gave way to feelings of genuine affection for his brother, a sensation that only blossomed when he looked over to meet Roesaleine’s eager prismatic gaze.
It all happened in an instant, a moment of any regular conversation’s time; but for the two dark-haired preternatural brothers, this occasion of peaceful impasse was virtually unprecedented since their divide all those years ago. With only a hint of reluctance, Alair wrapped his arms around Amrial’s broad shoulders in an embrace, one that was at once grateful and uncertain. Death returned the hug with far less hestitation, pulling away only to be replaced by Life, whom Alair clasped tightly and without words.
“Right,” the Sandman said, clearing his throat to hide his uncharacteristic social unease. He threw his arm around Scarlet’s shoulder. “Waffles?”
He followed Amrial and Roesaleine back to the queue, which moved in short bursts as large batches of golden-brown Belgian waffles flew fresh from the slotted irons to the awaiting paper plates along the table. The Sandman planted a kiss atop Scarlet’s head as they received their servings and stepped up to the toppings bar. He shoveled several helpings of hot maple syrup and a generous dollop of whipped butter atop his stack. “What? I’m a waffle purist,” he said when he caught the redhead’s eye, nudging her playfully. “Where’d my brother go?”
Looking over his shoulder, he caught sight of them heading to an empty picnic table beneath a small grove of particularly tall evergreen trees. He waited for Scarlet to finish before they traipsed after them and slid in on the bench opposite.
“Amrial, that is…a lot of waffles,” the Sandman said bluntly, arching a brow at the plateful of enormous gridded pastries stacked in front of his brother, sporting a sample of each fruit available at the vendor and topped with whipped crema. He looked to Roesaleine. “Is this a normal thing, or what? I don’t remember him being so…voracious.”
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
But the effect they'd had on her azure-eyed Sandman, and the flight he'd so quickly taken...
Those worries evaporated just as quickly as they'd descended, when the two brothers stepped forward and embraced. Scarlet's shoulders slumped in subdued relief, while Roesaleine's prismatic eyes beamed with happiness and pride. It was a look that confused the fiery redhead, primary, but was quick to blossom into something else--the stirring of a hot sort of bitterness--when the man she loved relinquished his hold on his brother, only to gather beautiful life in his arms. Life, who wrapped her slender arms around his neck and lovingly embraced him in turn.
It shouldn't have bothered her. But it did, and only the tendrils of Alair's happiness that grabbed her and warmed her like the early morning sun, encouraged her to keep it to herself.
Her tight lips stretched into a smile as she accompanied Alair and his brethren back to the line, and by the time she began to adorn her waffles in syrup, butter, fruit and whipped cream, that discomfort at the pit of her stomach dissipated. Maybe it was the heap of sugary breakfast on her plate; or the fact that Life and Death had left to find a spot for the four of them to sit.
There was no place for petty jealousy on a morning like this, following a night like before. Alair was happy--so happy... She'd never forgive herself for an ounce of negativity, should it spoil his high spirits.
"Pfft. 'Purist'." She rolled her eyes playfully and bumped Alair with her hip; her own waffles were the food equivalent of someone who didn't know what to wear, so they simply put on all of their clothes, in hopes that it worked. "I'm going to inhale these and make you look bad. Actually... no I'm not. Holy crap."
It was all Scarlet could do to not let her jaw drop to the floor at the masterpiece (there was no other word for it) in front of Amrial, who sat back like it was nothing out of the ordinary. Neither did Roesaleine seem perturbed or very much in awe, simply picking away at her own two modest waffles, not unlike Alair's 'purist' breakfast. "He had a lot to take care of in a short amount of time before I was able to convince him to attend this event with me," Life explained, wearing a placid smile that was quick to turn curious. Her prismatic eyes examined Sleep's scarf a handful of seconds before she mentioned: "I hope you don't plan on sporting that all day long. According to the man on the radio, the temperature is supposed to climb exorbitantly in just a few hours, with no breeze. Even atop a mountain, it'll be enough to dissuade anything aside from sleeveless shirts and cropped pants."
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
“Waffle purists think they know everything,” said Death between mouthfuls, sliding his knife rhythmically through his outrageous stack of waffles until the plastic blade dully struck the paper plate. His gray eyes, amused, rested on the redhead sitting opposite. “Surely I don’t need to tell you that.”
Alair wrinkled his nose and took a syrupy bite, smiling sarcastically with closed lips as he chewed.
“Scarlet,” Amrial continued, pointedly ignoring the antics of his younger sibling, “just because Alair doesn’t need to sleep doesn’t mean the rest of us do not. That’s likely the reason his most effective method of recuperation is slumber, as he does not regularly partake in a sleeping ritual.” He pierced a layered morsel with his fork and held it up, indicating the saccharine sample on the plastic prongs. “I think my extreme appetite stems from the idea that food provides fuel—energy—for the body, and death is the dissipation and ultimate absence of that energy.”
“Whoa, whoa!” Sleep protested with mock offense. “Now who’s the know-it-all?” He threaded his arm through Scarlet’s and pulled her closer against his side. “See, it’s a good thing you don’t have siblings, alpha. This is the kind of philosophical crap you have to put up with.” Alair’s tone, however, indicated that he was not at all annoyed with the pale man stuffing his face with a ridiculous breakfast; in fact, it was the most genuine expression of affection he’d mustered towards his brother in some time. It surprised him how much he had missed Death’s company in spite of it all.
Sleep’s smile broadened when Roesaleine mentioned his scarf, his bright blue eyes suddenly alight with mischief. “Nah, I wore it for later when it gets chilly tonight,” he replied, unwrapping the long strip of fabric from his neck to pile it in his lap. The exposed skin at his collarbones and shoulders was suddenly on display above his shirt collar, his flesh bearing the lingering red marks of Scarlet’s passion like an ivory canvas painted with short swaths of crimson. From his haughty posture and look of pride mixed with mirth, he knew exactly what he had just revealed; despite his tendency to heal quickly, the handful of hours between infliction and breakfast had not been enough to erase the evidence of the previous night's intimacy. He met Roesaleine’s gaze, grinning, and tightened his grip on the redhead's arm in reassurance.
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
Having assumed the scarf around her lover's neck was but another accent of his unique style, the vibrant redhead hadn't paid it much heed, past teasing him affectionately for having packed a scarf for summertime camping. As soon as Sleep unwound the accessory from his neck, however, its purpose became abundantly clear, standing out as glaringly as the tiny red marks that adorned his neck and collarbone. As red as Scarlet's hair; as red as her face, as the smug grin Alair wore.
"Alair..." Sleep's crimson-haired companion hissed in his ear, purposely digging her blunt fingernails into his arm. "Really? Do you really need to showcase... that? To your brother and his girlfriend... wife... whatever?"
"Scarlet." Roesaleine's soothing cadence interrupted the other young woman's bashful tirade. The twinkle in her prismatic eyes, however, mirrored the satisfied gleam in Alair's everblue irises. "If you're expecting harsh judgement, rest assured, you'll find none here; especially not from me. New life has the chance to blossom through the very passion you and Alair have evidently shared... How could I, of all people, possibly look down upon something so sacred?"
"Oh, hey, you know what would be cool right now? A topic change." Scarlet's cheeks were positively glowing with a sudden rush of blood, as she turned her blue eyes to her waffles. Like breakfast was suddenly the most interesting thing in the world. "These waffles are really good. How are yours, Amrial? Think it'll do the trick and fill whatever void you need to replenish whatever energy got depleted from... doing whatever the hell it is you do? Sorry, not gonna try and understand how death works."
Roesaleine's grin only grew a little wider. Life winked at Sleep, resting her hand lightly in the crook of Death's elbow joint. His face was placid and stoic, seemingly unfazed by the previous topic of conversation. The young singer, however, knew far better than what Death chose to convey in front of his brother and his brother's beloved, and she couldn't wipe the smile from her face if she tried.
"Alair," Scarlet hissed again, nudging his ribs hard with her elbow before she leaned in, lips grazing his ear; "Put the scarf back on, or those will be the only marks you have to show for anything for a very long time." It was, of course, an empty threat. But likely an effective one, no less.
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
His smile broadened to such a degree that he had to fight back a peal of laughter when he turned to Scarlet to see her cheeks living up to her name. When his twinkling cerulean gaze caught Roesaleine’s similarly-gleaming glance, he quirked a brow suggestively and tossed Life a wink—one he knew she would appreciate. To Scarlet’s hissed threat, he had only raucous commentary that showed just how little he cared that the present company learn of the previous night’s exploits. “Come on, alpha, listen to Roesaleine!” he said loudly and enthusiastically, linking his arm through the redhead’s and giving her forearm a tender squeeze. “And no, I absolutely will not be putting the scarf back on. Unless it’s the only thing I have on.”
Amrial, whose white marble skin and statuesque posture told an outward tale of reservation and placidity, chose this moment to contribute to the conversation. “You heard Roesaleine,” he said, his voice so steady and matter-of-fact that it bordered on comedic. “It’s going to be warm today. This is no time of year for excess midday accessorizing.”
Alair, taken aback, paused for a moment before dissolving into a fit of laughter. Amrial produced only the smallest of smiles, one he was certain his beloved would catch, and in acknowledgment of his accidentally-on-purpose entendre he tensed the muscle in his arm that rested beneath her touch. The couple across the table knew little of Life and Death’s personal life—including the Sandman, who seemed to enjoy thinking that with his antics he had a chance to shock Death, of all beings—which made the present exchange (Alair’s charming haughtiness included) all the more entertaining for Amrial and Roesaleine.
“Brother, I think you’d be the last one to want to see me parading around naked in a group of thousands,” the Sandman continued, oblivious to Life and Death’s silent exchanges. He raised his chin somewhat, being controversial now for the sake of goading a reaction out of Amrial. But when it became clear that it wouldn’t work—Amrial simply stared at his younger sibling, his stormy eyes utterly unreadable—he sobered up quickly and polished off the rest of his simple stack of waffles.
“Fine. I’ll put the scarf back on.” The Sandman draped the accessory around his shoulders, then followed suit with his arm around the small of Scarlet’s back. He pressed a kiss to the side of her head in apology, but as he pulled away he caught Roesaleine’s eye again—and he couldn’t help but smile. “Better?”
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
It could have been worse... But it certainly didn't excuse Alair for bringing it up. Not in Scarlet's mind.
"The world is not ready to see you parading around in the nude, Sandman," the young woman murmured, shoving her elbow into his ribs, just barely enough to hurt. "You keep the scarf off, and I refuse to be seen with you for the remainder of this trip." After all, any idiot could discern a bite mark or a hickey, and with a young woman at his hip, the source of the crimson marks would be abundantly obvious--and, for her, beyond embarrassing.
But for all of the reactions from the supernatural trio and her general discomfort, Amrial's nonchalance was by far the most shocking. Scarlet's eyes widened at Death's logical appraisal of the day's climbing temperature, hinting towards the suggestion that his brother keep the scarf off. "...really, Amrial?" Was all she could manage, staring at Death and his statuesque features as if she didn't recognize. To say she had no idea how his mind worked, or his sentiments towards the topic of conversation, was a gross understatement.
"Scarlet." Ever reassuring, Roesaleine reached across the table and set her hand atop the redhead's, meeting Alair's gaze only for a split second before returning her attention to his companion. "Be honest, now: how many couples here, at this festival, do you think abstained from a little intimacy, given the opportunity of privacy in the mountains? Do you think Alair is really the only one walking around with a few benign marks on his neck? I am willing to bet that the answer, in both cases, is no."
Life, of course, had a point; and something about pointing out that reality that calmed Scarlet's nerves and put things in perspective. While her pout didn't fade, the young woman reached toward her blue-eyed companion and unwound the scarf, pulling it away from his shoulders with a quirked brow. "Guess I can't have you overheating, just because I left a few marks." She amended, flashing a quick, albeit bashful smile as her fingertips grazed one of the spots near his collarbone. "And now that you've smugly showcased it to the world; how about we move on to bigger and better things, hm?"
"Speaking of bigger and better things," Roesaleine spoke up again, in between bites of her waffle, only glazed with butter and topped with fresh fruit. "I hear your roommate and his band have managed to secure a leading time slot, this evening. He deserves the utmost congratulations."
Scarlet nodded, already halfway through her second waffle. Alair had been right; their antics the night before had certainly left her feeling hungry. "Right. Yeah. Cas is gonna steal the show this evening," he said with a proud smirk. "That'll be a difficult act to top, believe me. The crowds love Caspar Brighton; I feel sorry for anyone playing immediately before or after him."
But what Scarlet didn't know was that Caspar had already agreed to collaborate with another very talented act that evening; one that was bound to leave her speechless, breathless, and loved.
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
As if on cue, a sudden muffled buzz resounded from his pocket, and his pulse skyrocketed with eager anticipation. Fishing out the vibrating phone, he glanced at the caller ID and coolly pressed a finger to the screen. “Cas!” he greeted, no more or less enthusiastic than usual. “What’s up, man? You ready for toni—oh.” Alair glanced to Scarlet and pulled a lighthearted face, a wordless gesture for her not to worry. “Well, yeah, man. Of course I can help. No, no, I get it. Definitely better safe than sorry. When should I head over…? Oh.” He glanced to Amrial, to Roesaleine, and then to Scarlet. “I…yeah, yeah, I can come now. Seriously, no worries. Be there in a bit.”
He hung up the phone and looked sheepishly to Scarlet. “Before you freak out, don’t,” he instructed, turning to face her and planting one hand on each of her shoulders. “He’s fine. But they’re on a tight rehearsal schedule this morning and his rhythm guitarist is having a little trouble with the instrument pickups. Geoff’s tied up getting ready for the noon shows at the side stages, so Cas wants me to come sub in for rehearsal until Geoff and Keeler can take a look.” The Sandman leaned forward and pressed a light kiss to the redhead’s nose, then planted one unabashedly on her lips. “Think you can babysit Amrial and Roesaleine for twenty minutes or so?”
Amrial, who had been sitting stoically throughout the entire conversation, let out an unexpected chuckle. “I think Alair forgets who is the elder sibling,” he said lightly, taking the last swallow of his mountain of breakfast. “I know I speak for both Roesaleine and I when I say it would be an honor for us to get to know you better, Scarlet,” he continued, gray eyes warmly searching the young woman’s expression.
Alair stood, tucking his phone back into his pocket and picking up his empty plate. “I have to run back to camp to get my guitar, but I shouldn’t be long,” he promised, squeezing Scarlet’s slender shoulder from behind. “I’ll scope him out for you, too. Let you know if he needs you to come bring him back to earth.”
As the Sandman turned to leave, however, he heard Roesaleine call after him—and somehow he was not surprised to find Life suddenly accompanying him on his trek back to the tent. But he was grateful for her company, he realized quickly, and he greeted her with a grin as they stepped into the forest.
Amrial smiled softly as his beloved strode away with his brother, then turned his full attention to the redhead who did not seem entirely comfortable with being left alone in Death's company. He chuckled sympathetically and slid over to sit directly opposite her, tilting his head curiously as he regarded her fine features and brilliant mane of hair. “I feel our last encounter might have painted me in an unfavorable light,” he told her, tone matter-of-fact but conversational. “I encourage you to give me a chance beyond what Alair might have described of me.” Death grinned at his own self-mockery. “His bark is much worse than my bite. Really.”
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
"Huh. Didn't realize you and Cas were so tight." The redhead struggled to sound casual, but the touch of wariness in her voice was impossible to fully omit. The entire mood at the table had been testy since Sleep had exposed their passionate evening for what it had been, and just as her embarrassment was ebbing and her state of mind was returning to comfortable neutrality on the subject, he had to get up and leave. Maybe that was what bothered her more, even if it was only twenty minutes.
Shrugging her shoulders, in a gesture that she hoped came across as more casual than she felt, Scarlet added quickly, "I think I can make sure these two don't get into trouble. But don't keep me waiting too long, you hear?"
"Alair! Hold on a second." Before Scarlet could utter her surprise, Roesaleine was on her feet, hurrying to catch up with the Sandman without sparing so much as a glance at her beloved, or the confused redhead sitting across from him. The fiery young woman could only look on, perplexed and--guilty as charged--jealous as beautiful Life with her prismatic eyes put a hand on Alair's arm and leaned close to his ear, to utter words that Scarlet could not make out.
It was Death who, adjusting his proximity to appear more inviting as he addressed her, pulled her out of the hot jealousy that painted her cheeks pink. The storm in Amrial's eyes had calmed to a gentle gale, his tone sincere and inviting, somehow dissolving the wall of tension Scarlet had recognized between them since the night they'd met at the wedding reception where they hadn't really belonged. He wasn't an antagonist; and he deserved better than her silent indifference.
Roesaleine, on the other hand, would likely have to wait longer to receive that change of heart.
"Alair hasn't said anything bad about you, don't worry." She assured him, toying with the last piece of waffle on her plate, with no intention to eat it. "I mean, he doesn't really say anything about you, if that tells you anything." At that point, it was impossible not to share in Death's grin. She knew first hand how stubborn Alair could be, and deep down, intuition reassured her that Amrial and Roesaleine were not bad people.
Although the latter currently had her suspicions stirring, and before she could stop herself, she blurted out, "But... okay, can you tell me what the heck your girlfriend is doing, hanging off my boyfriend like that?" She indicated the way Roesaleine had linked her arm through Alair's as they'd retreated, sharing conspiratorial smiles and the like. "I mean, I thought they didn't get along? Or that Alair didn't get along with her particularly... So what's going on? Should I be worried that I can't compete with eyes that change colour in the light and a body that can pull of anything and make it look classy?" Though it hadn't been her intent to open up and spill herself to Amrial's calm brother who she barely knew, but the factors stemming from the morning's conversations had triggered a nerve, and now she found she just couldn't shut up.
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
Happily returning Scarlet’s smile, Amrial’s gray eyes took on a dark bluish hue as he regarded the bright-haired young woman sitting opposite. In spite of the conflict dividing the brothers for all those centuries, Death had never once ceased his efforts to reconnect with his hot-tempered sibling—even if all genuine attempts had been met with heartache’s immovable hostility—and now that he had finally been allowed back into the Sandman’s life, he was thrilled with the opportunity to explore the world as it belonged to his younger brother. It was a chance he’d begun to think Alair would never afford him, and now that it was here, he was determined to make the most of it.
But the vermillion-haired girl, however, was perhaps not so easily convinced that Death’s feet deserved to tread on this particular terrain. Whatever she may have said regarding Alair’s silence on Amrial and their prolonged feud, it seemed that was not a key issue for her concern. He regarded Scarlet curiously, propping his elbows on the edge of the table and threading his fingers together thoughtfully. “You feel threatened by Roesaleine for my brother’s affections?” he said, not bothering to mask his lighthearted incredulity. Despite himself, and despite the suspicious frown on his new companion’s face, he smiled. “Scarlet, let me assure you that the bond between my brother and my beloved is no more a physical or romantic relationship than the bond between you and I, or myself and Alair.”
He cleared his throat, his expression becoming serious. “Alair has been in pain for a very long time. Roesaleine is like a sister to him—she has been a confidante as often as she has been an enemy in my brother’s eyes, depending on his mood. She is thrilled to see him so happy, Scarlet. And you are the reason for that joy.”
Though Death trusted Life with all his being, subconsciously he ran the index finger of his opposite hand over the patch of skin inside his wrist. Beneath the pad of his finger, the flesh bore a small white tattoo, a powerful—if nontraditional—symbol marking the union of Amrial and Roesaleine as belonging eternally to one another. He shook his head to himself and looked up, hands dropping to his lap. “I trust both of them absolutely,” he told Scarlet reassuringly, but his eyes strayed to the clearing in the forest brush where Roesaleine had disappeared with Sleep only minutes before. A crooked smile upturned one corner of his lips, and for a moment, his resemblance to Alair increased tenfold. “It’s perhaps not so wrong to carry a bit of jealousy, however, as innocent as our respective partners’ intentions may be.”
“I’ve missed this, Roesaleine.” Alair’s voice was warm with affection as the pair walked side by side through the dense greenery of the mountain woods. A month ago, the Sandman would never have admitted such a thing, either to himself or to Life; now, however, as they strolled together towards the distant campsite, he realized just how sore he had been for something like this. He’d missed her. Missed his brother. Missed the unwavering support, their companionship, the years of history between them that had nothing to do with his personal grudges.
A complex swell of emotion rendered him momentarily speechless. He knew Roesaleine understood; she had always been good at reading him, far better than Amrial ever could, and if the conversation over breakfast hadn’t been proof enough, he never feared being judged in her company.
“You know I’m not really going to sub for Cas’s bandmate.” It wasn’t a question; he knew that she knew, or at least that she had suspected an ulterior motive for his sudden departure. The blue-eyed Sandman grinned ear-to-ear, turning to toss a wink in Life’s direction. “It’s for Scarlet,” he explained, though he didn’t have to. “Cas has generously agreed to loan me five minutes of his time slot. I wrote a song for her.”
His smirk softened to a bashful smile reminiscent of a schoolboy admitting to a crush. “Think you can keep it a secret until the proverbial curtain call?”
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
But Amrial was right; Life and Sleep's amicable relationship did appear qualitatively different from that of him and the young redhead's. For one, their affections were not the same; far more casual and not nearly as deep. The way that Alair looped his arm through Roesaleine was not with the same reverence as when he slung it across Scarlet's shoulders, and the smiles they shared were teasing and friendly, they did not cut as deep as the way the Magician and the Moon smiled at one another. No less significant, but different.
And no reason, she realized, to feel threatened.
"Yeah." Scarlet shrugged her shoulders, eyes cast downward at her plate as her thoughts tumbled over one another. "I guess I just worry that it's only a matter of time before he finds someone better than me."
And there it was: that looming insecurity that persisted, despite her reincarnated presence throughout the Sandman's life. It was also what had spurred her edginess around Caspar, when the stars would no longer reveal to her the paths destiny had in store for him; likewise, Alair's fate was just as invisible. "And," she added, more quietly, staring through her plate rather than at it, "I don't know what I'd do if he turned away from me now. I know that sounds irrational, but I can't... I don't want to be alone. Not ever again. I love him."
Roesaleine had spent more than adequate time with her brother--for all intents and purposes--the Sandman to detect deceit in the cadence of his voice, and the creases of his face, hear his lips and his eyes when he smiled. And the moment he had decreed Caspar Brighton required assistance for some pre-show practice, Life's internal lie detectors went off, immediately piquing her curiosity such that she felt impelled to follow Amrial's endearing younger brother to see what exactly he was up to.
"Ah; I figured as much," she smiled, prismatic eyes twinkling. The grin only grew when he divulged his true motives for sneaking off.
"A song? Alair..." Roesaleine slid her hand from his arm to capture his fingers in both of her hands, searching his face until their eyes met. "I can't even begin to describe how happy I am for you and Scarlet. And I would not for the world leak a word of this, lest it reach her ears. But, I do request to be part of the audience to catch her reaction, for myself. If that is quite all right with you."
None of this, of course, should have come as any surprise to Alair, who knew as well as Amrial the extent to which Life was a hopeless (or, more accurately, hopeful) romantic. And by the way her face lit up at the mention of this conspiracy between Alair and Caspar, there was certainly no hiding it. "Scarlet's feelings towards myself and Amrial remain cautious and tentative, at best. But I think the more she realizes she is loved, the more her walls will thin, and the lower she will drop these stubborn defenses." With a half-grin, she added, "I'd rather like her to warm to me, eventually; it's been ages since I had a female companion with whom to relate."
Unlike Alair's extroverted lifestyle, the existence of Life and Death was rather self-contained; they had and loved one another, and often, that was enough. But while Amrial was blessed with the opportunity to associate with his younger brother, Roesaleine was without siblings or womanly companionship. And, at this point, she was willing to do whatever it took to win over Scarlet's trust, and see her as the sister she never had.
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
Reading someone with whom he had not conversed longer than a few minutes in a terse haze, however, was another story entirely. As intently as he watched Scarlet, Death could not quite decipher the expression she wore on her pretty features. It was not petty jealousy that plagued her, though her own self-deprecation she thought otherwise. Amrial smiled, softly this time, and hesitated for a moment before reaching across the sticky picnic table to drape a cool hand on her forearm.
“My dear Scarlet,” he said warmly, “you are in love. And you wish to do everything in your power to protect that love. It is a perfectly normal, rational, human response to something that utterly defies logic in so many other ways.” He broke their touch by lifting his fingers, leaning back to fold his arms across his chest. “My brother would be hard pressed to find anyone more deserving of his affections than you, Scarlet. He is the happiest I have ever seen him, and I am grateful to you for bestowing that gift upon him when he has so long rejected our efforts to repair the rift in his heart. His suffering has at last come to an end because you have guided him to the light, and of course only you could have been the one to do it. If you don’t believe the words he surely has spoken to you himself, then listen to me: He loves you entirely as much as you love him.”
Death cleared his throat, reaching over to stack Scarlet’s nearly-empty plate atop his own. “What do you say we take a walk while we await our beloveds returns?” he suggested, rising to deposit their trash in the nearby receptacle. He chuckled as he returned, and offered the crook of his elbow to the bright-haired young woman.
The Sandman’s cheeks flushed when he met Roesaleine’s searching gaze, not because he suffered embarrassment but rather due to the rise of excitement and emotion in his swiftly coursing blood. Apart from his musical co-conspirators, Life was the only other person with whom he desired to share his covert plan—and, apart from Scarlet herself, the only other person whose opinion mattered on the subject. Death’s beloved shared a bond with music not unlike the Sandman’s, after all. Where Alair’s connection to melody and song was strongest with his guitar, Roesaleine’s talents were far more enchanting; her voice was an instrument all its own, more beautiful and haunting than any other earthly expression.
“I’d be honored if you were there,” he admitted, giving her fingers a squeeze. “Someone’s going to have to keep Scarlet from killing me in the meantime. She’s not going to be happy that I up and deserted her for the majority of the day.” Alair’s eyes sparkled, but this time it was with affection rather than mirth. His thoughts were clearly on his crimson-haired companion.
They stumbled through the brush to the campground, the site a mess of tossed-aside clothing and blankets from the night before. The Sandman, unabashed, stepped to the tent and pulled out his guitar case. “You don’t think I’ll make a fool of myself, do you?” he asked suddenly, although by the way he delivered the query it wasn’t clear whether or not he was joking. Alair was normally the picture of self-assured confidence, and admitting uncertainty in regards to himself was unusual. “I mean, I can put on a show. It’s not like that. I just… She’s worried about Cas, and I think she’s even worried about you and me being together like this…” He chuckled, plopping down on the log-turned-bench near the pile of gray ashes from the fire. “I want her to like it, you know?”
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
He loves you entirely as much as you love him. The words would not have been spoken, had there been so much as a shadow of doubt. For what was perhaps the first time, Scarlet was very happy to be in Amrial's presence.
"Sure; why not." Rising from her seat, the young woman hooked her arm through Amrial's. She could feel the subtle cool of his skin, even through the fabric of his shirt. "Oh, hey; that's a cool tattoo. The one on your wrist. Does it have any special meaning?"
"Never lose faith in your elder brother's capabilities." Roesaleine winked at Sleep's worried expression. and gave his arm a reassuring squeeze, prismatic eyes sparkling. "You do inherit your good looks honestly, you know. Handsomeness aside, however, Scarlet can act as resistant as she likes towards him, but I think you and I both know that it doesn't take long for Amrial to read a person and appeal to just what they need at any given moment. It is only one of the many reasons why I find myself so in love with him. He'll find ways to distract her and hopefully convince her to continue to hold you in good graces, despite that you promised you'd only be 'twenty minutes'."
Not so much as blinking at the discarded clothing and the tangle of blankets, Life smiled when he dug out his guitar; an instrument so old that it was practically part of him, as much as Roesaleine's voice was part of her. "So yes; I do think Scarlet will love and treasure what you're doing for her, and no, you will not make a fool of yourself. At least, not with your music." A telltale smirk stretched her lips as Roesaleine reached up with a deft finger to touch a blossom of red on his collarbone. "You should talk to your brother; he can give you a few tips on keeping these concealed without wearing a scarf."
Twenty minutes, Scarlet wouldn't have minded. A half hour or even an hour wouldn't have fazed her. But when hours passed, and she remained in the company of Alair's brother as opposed to Alair himself by the time evening rolled around, the young woman was all but out of her mind. Her hold on Death's supportive arm had tightened increasingly, until she gave up and insisted they look for Alair--who, incidentally, they did not find.
"Where could they be? Did something happen to them? If you're death, would you know if something happened to them?" At last they found themselves at the mainstage, only because Caspar was scheduled to go on with his band soon; and, Alair or no Alair, Scarlet had promised she'd be there for him. The only reason Scarlet wasn't pacing fervently was due to the density of the crowd, all listening or rocking out to an alt rock band that currently secured the spotlight. "For fuck's sake, he hasn't even been answering my texts! What gives? He hasn't been this elusive since we had that fight, once upon a time..."
It was becoming increasingly more difficult to resist the alluring promise of subdued tension from the bar that was set up in one of the tents. Scarlet hadn't craved vodka shots so desperately as she did then and there, in many years.
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
“My tattoo?” he repeated, eyebrows rising in surprise. His gray eyes flicked down to his inner wrist instinctively, and he donned a lopsided smile. The white ink against his pale skin glowed silver like moonlight, the faint blue hue of his veins beneath the surface adding to its surreal appearance. Though small, the mark itself was an intricate Möbius, a diagram of interlocking lines reminiscent of ancient Celtic knot patterns known for their unfathomable complexity. “It is a symbol of Life,” he explained fondly, his expression thoughtful. “The lines complete a woven circle—complicated, but without end.” A smile brightened his face. “I wear my beloved’s, and my beloved wears mine. Think of the exchange of marks like an exchange of wedding bands in Western cultures.”
They continued their stroll until they had circled the festival encampment, the stretches of silence between friendly conversation filled not with tension, but rather with renewed understanding of one another. But as time continued to pass, Amrial detected subtle changes in Scarlet that betrayed her anxiety—her tightening grip on his arm, her continuous searching of the crowd for the familiar face of his brother and Roesaleine, the furrowed brow when checking her phone yielded no new messages. Death, too, wondered what was keeping their companions. Though perplexed, he remained unconcerned; he knew both Roesaleine and Alair quite well, and knew that when together, any prolonged absence had to be the result of some type of scheming. Clearly, it was not his place to ask questions. He had not been included either, after all. But without question, something was going on…and he had the distinct feeling his ignorance was meant to assist in the ruse.
“I would know if anything had happened to them, yes,” Death confirmed, pursing his lips in a combination of amusement and bemusement. “They’re safe. They’re just playing hard to get, apparently.” He followed the redhead’s gaze to the liquor tent. “Would you like a drink?” he asked tentatively, gesturing to the red and white striped awning where already-tipsy festival goers were tripping away with matching crimson Solo cups and dark brown bottles. A grin broke his even façade. “My treat, as an apology on behalf of my blue-eyed dolt of a brother?”
At Roesaleine’s wink and mention of his elder brother, Alair laughed, the tension of uncertainty in his shoulders dissipating immediately. “You’re right. He’ll get it,” he said with a nod, slinging his guitar case over his lap and staring thoughtfully into the pile of ashes at his feet. “I mean, come on, what better creature is there to handle the wrath of Scarlet than Death?”
He flipped open the buckles on the hard shell case and took out the guitar, plucking its strings experimentally and making a face when the reverberations came back out of tune. “Damn temperature fluctuations,” he cursed with a smirk, turning the knobs quickly until the chords beneath his fingers rang true. Glancing to Roesaleine, he put the instrument back in its case and stood, ready to seek out Caspar Brighton.
“Hold up…” he said, quirking a brow as Life’s warm touch grazed the marks along his clavicle. “Amrial has tips? What is he now, a makeup artist? Did he get that bored?” The Sandman’s scoffs were entirely unwarranted, of course; he had no way of knowing that Roesaleine told the absolute truth, and he missed her suggestive smirk as he attempted to suppress an incredulous guffaw.
“Care to join me for rehearsal?” Alair asked when he regained his composure, gesturing in the general direction of civilization. “I would appreciate your ear. And so would the guys, whether they’d admit it or not.”
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
Life smiled fondly at the thought of Amrial (as she often did when thinking of him), fingers tracing the dark tattoo on her wrist which bore the symbol of his existence, as his own pale flesh bore the symbol of hers. She was the only one, really, who knew him inside and out, beyond his secrets and facades.
If only Alair knew... The look on his face would be priceless, were Sleep ever to find out his elder brother was not the stoic prude that he was so convinced he was.
"I would love to attend your rehearsal," came Roesaleine's sincere reply a moment later. She placed her hand lightly upon Alair's arm and leaned in to plant a chaste albeit loving kiss upon his cheek. "Perhaps it is only a matter of personal opinion, but when you are in love, I am convinced it shows in your music. You play with such ease and happiness that it practically becomes contagious." And before they set out to leave the camp, Life stood on her toes to wrap Sleep in a quick but sincere embrace. "Alair," her prismatic eyes reflected her genuine glee. "You have no idea what it means to me and your brother to find you so happy again."
"What the hell kind of reason would they have to play fucking 'hard to get'?" Scarlet couldn't determine if she was angry, or sad, or worried, or some disgustingly overwhelming combination of the three. Regardless, Amrial's reassuring cadence couldn't even pacify her, at this point. "He said twenty minutes, right? Did I hear correctly? Because it's been all fucking day, and unless he jumped in the river with his goddamn cell phone and got it waterlogged, he's ignoring me, Amrial!"
Sad--definitely sad. And hurt. Those were the source feelings beneath her outburst, and as soon as Death offered to buy her a drink, she was far removed from the inclination to politely refuse. "Yeah. I think I could really use a drink right now. Vodka shots would be amazing."
Amazing, but perhaps not entirely practical or wise, considering it had been hours since she'd last eaten, and the waffles they'd consumed for breakfast that morning. But Amrial seemed to know better than to argue, for the moment, and the two tiny glasses of liquor were hardly in her hands for a second before she knocked them both back.
"Okay... okay. Yeah. I really needed that," The fiery redhead sighed, and followed up with grabbing a Caesar before leaving the line-up; more vodka, but at a slower pace, now that her veins were already warm with the stuff. "It's just, last time I didn't hear from Alair for hours, he was angry at me, and I didn't know what to do... Is he angry at me, Amrial? You think that's why he's not responding? Was I too hard on him for bringing up the hickeys on his neck?" Her hand found Death's arm again, and the crease between her brows deepened in correspondence to a sudden tangent: "Why are you always so cold? Is that even healthy? Does it ever bother Roesaleine when she sleeps next to you? I mean, I'm only assuming she does, but maybe I'm wrong. No offense, Am, but you kind of come across as a bit of a prude. Nothing wrong with that, just... okay, I think I might be drunk already."
And such was how Amrial experienced first hand just how the redhead tolerated (or, in this case, didn't tolerate) copious amounts of alcohol.
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
“I don’t need to be modest,” Alair scoffed, choosing not to focus on the intrusive mental image of his brother in the bedroom. “Modesty is a cover for inadequacy.” He grinned, winking at Roesaleine. The Sandman was undeniably confident, but his arrogance was typically kept on a short leaf; he prided himself in not being a jerk, after all. But Life was his dear sister-in-law, and his jests were delivered and received in full knowledge that purposeful exaggeration were to provide the comedic effect.
They made their way to Cas’s makeshift rehearsal space—far from the official side-stage of full-equipment sound checks and mixing boards—in very little time. Scarlet’s lanky roommate greeted him with a clap on the back and a grin. Geoff, too (who was not, as the Sandman had claimed, assisting at the lesser festival venues), met his eyes with a broad grin from his curtain of dreadlocks behind his electric keyboard. After briefly introducing Roesaleine, Alair quickly and easily took charge, pulling his guitar strap over his shoulder and initiating a re-tune for the cool morning air.
With a dark brown bottle in one hand and a basket of blistering hot French fries in the other, Amrial returned to his table with Scarlet and greeted her with arched brows. Judging by the rosy tint to her fair cheeks, the initial swallows of alcohol had already begun to affect her. Death smiled crookedly. “Here,” he said, pushing the basket of delightfully greasy potatoes towards her. “You need something in your stomach.”
He took a golden brown fry and popped it in his mouth, washing the scalding morsel down with a swig of locally brewed beer. “Alair is not angry with you,” Death reassured, cradling the glass container of booze with both cool hands. “My brother is not one for subtlety, as I’m sure you’re already aware. If he was mad at you, there would be no question in your mind as to the reason for his absence.” He shook his head, chuckling. “Trust me, he’s been furious with me for centuries. Our last visit was a prime demonstration of that, if you’ll recall. And besides, as I remember it, Alair brought up the hickeys on his own.”
The redhead’s spiraling antics both did and did not bode well for the remainder of the evening—on one hand, the vodka seemed to be loosening the tension from her system. On the other, getting too drunk would dull the effects of the evening and likely make her feel physically worse in the long run. “That’s the last Caesar for you, dear Scarlet,” Amrial said affectionately, although there was conviction in his tone. “There will be time for more drinking when the sun sets, I should think. Besides, what would my brother think if he returns to find me liquoring you up?”
He finished his beer with one more swallow. Like Alair, alcohol in such low concentrations as those in conventional adult beverages yielded virtually no effect, regardless of quantity or speed of consumption. It was absinthe, with its outrageously high proof and the unusual, mystical properties legend claimed it possessed, that was capable of inebriating Death. Thus far in the evening, Amrial had resisted the call of that particular emerald fairy—but now, with the evening deepening and still no sign of his brother or beloved, he felt a twinge of guilt for letting Scarlet, in a way, drink alone.
When he lifted his bottle to his lips once more, it was full again—this time with a distinct green substance camouflaged by the dark brown of its container. Warmth spread through him almost immediately, the sensation intensified by the natural chill of his body. He smiled.
“Appearances can be deceiving,” he informed Scarlet, taking another handful of fries. “As can prudence, like so many other characteristics.” Death grinned. “I do indeed sleep next to Roesaleine, when our schedules permit us to spend nights together. My temperature is something of a mystery. Beyond the obvious, of course, that ‘Death should be cold.’ To my knowledge there is no scientific reason for it, and so far it seems to be a quirk rather than a symptom of some larger ailment. Besides, again, Death, which may or may not constitute a real explanation.”
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
A giggle rose in her throat, and the redhead found herself struggling to stifle it as Death calmly explained that, yes, he did in fact sleep next to Life. As heartwarming as it was to picture the two dedicated lovers in one another's peaceful embrace, the idea that Alair's brother was not necessarily the prude that he led everyone to believe struck her as comical--simply because it was such a difficult possibility to consider. "I don't think anything about your or Roesaleine or Alair constitutes any 'real' explanations." She shook her head, sipping on her Caesar now that her heady was foggy. "But that's what I like about you guys. Fuck science and logic and sciencey logic shit, you're just... you just are. Must be cool not having to justify your own existence."
It was no wonder she couldn't find Alair's destiny in the stars: those celestial bodies had nothing to say about someone whose existence was eternal, without end, and with unconditional justification.
"But... If he's not angry with me, and he and Roesaleine are as chaste as you say they are, and nothing bad has happened to either of them, where they hell is your brother, Amrial?" Scarlet stared at her phone again, waiting expectantly for that name that wouldn't appear in her incoming text messages folder. Why wasn't he answering? "Okay, I get it, I'm insecure and shit. But I wouldn't be freaking out if he'd at least explained to me why he was going to abandon me for an entire fucking day! Like, what is that?"
"Well, now. Looks like the two of you have started the party without me."
The soothing and welcoming cadence of Amrial's beloved carried on the breeze behind them. Rosealeine leaned over the side of the picnic table and lay a gentle hand on each of their shoulders and ave an affectionate squeeze before taking a seat next to Amrial, around whose waist she slipped an arm. "Drinking already? It isn't even eight-o-clock yet."
"Yeah--speaking of the time," Scarlet was quick to turn on the dark-haired woman, the Caesar she was sipping all but entirely forgotten when she saw the opportunity to ask after her absentee lover. "Where have you been all day? And where is Alair? The last I saw of he jerk, you guys were wandering off. Twenty minutes... he said twenty fucking minutes! I might be drunk, Roesaleine, but something tells me it's been a little bit more than twenty minutes."
Life was, of course, completely unfazed by the redhead's outburst. Scarlet was, after all, rightfully angry; Alair had told a little fib. But she hoped that the reason behind his innocent deception would be quick to change her mind on her attitude. "Your roommate evidently has something very last minute and unexpected planned for this audience," she explained calmly, covering one of Scarlet's hands with her own. "Rest assured, Scarlet, he has not forgotten you--far from it, in fact, I can guarantee you are the single most prominent thing on his mind right now." With a sly smile, then, she leaned in and added, "Keep your ears alert for your roommate's band."
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
“Justification aside, though, I do think everything deserves an explanation,” he continued, taking another sip of the burning green liquid. “On some level, at least. And that includes the actions of my brother and your beloved.” He furrowed his brow, but his mouth was pulled into an easygoing smile. “They’ll turn up soon. And if they do not, well…I suppose we could get back at them somehow. Any man, my brother included, should quake with the knowledge his irate girlfriend has teamed up with Death for vengeance.”
The thought summoned a chuckle, and he locked friendly gazes with Scarlet just as the dulcet tones of Roesaleine’s warm voice reached his ears. Anticipating her warm embrace as she slid in next to him, he wrapped his arm around Life’s shoulders, giving her upper arm an affectionate squeeze as she leaned into his cool form. “My dear,” he purred, eyes narrowing with a positively feline combination of affection and mischief, “wherever have you been for this short eternity?”
Her subsequent explanation was satisfactory enough for Death, who knew very well that his brother was capable of all kinds of theatrics—and just as capable of losing track of time. But Roesaleine’s succinct description had clued him in just enough to suspect that the Sandman’s prolonged absence was not the result of ignoring his watch, and, sensing his beloved’s excitement, felt his smile broaden considerably with newfound excitement. Alair had never done a thing in his life that was not above and beyond what was expected of him. In a setting like this, where his cunning and showmanship could truly (if not literally) shine, it was bound to be an unforgettable night.
“Come, Cerise,” Amrial said to Scarlet, rising to his feet alongside Roesaleine in perfect synchronization, as though the two had had the same thought simultaneously. He extended a hand to the red-haired young woman. “Cas will be on soon. Alair or no Alair, it would be poor form to miss your roommate’s performance on his biggest night.”
They wove their way through the thickening crowd from the striped awning surrounding the movable bar to the even more densely populated area directly in front of the main stage. The previous band had wrapped up their act ten minutes before, and the stage was a flurry of dark activity as the black-clad stage hands and sound engineers prepped for Caspar’s appearance. With Amrial leading the way—he was quite good at cutting through a throng of people, as it turned out—they landed front and center against the metal guardrail separating the audience from the elevated platform.
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
Life couldn't repress a delighted laugh at Alair's beloved's misreading of Amrial's harmless and elegant nickname for the young woman. Patting Scarlet's arm reassuringly, she looped her elbow through her only female companion's and guided her away from the food kiosks and drinking tent. The redhead could certainly use the aid in stability. "Scarlet, cerise is simply a synonym for red," she explained gently, tucking a crimson lock of hair behind Scarlet's ear. "An elegant substitute for your already lovely nickname."
"If it's so lovely, it doesn't need a substitute." The redhead muttered, but there was no malice in her voice, placated by the reassurance that Amrial wasn't poking fun at her. With little other choice, she stumbled along at Roesaleine's side, with the dark-haired woman's support and Amrial's guidance towards the festival's main stage, where Caspar Brighton and his band were scheduled to play in the next half hour.
Even under the heavy blanket of alcohol influence, it struck the fiery redhead as a little strange (and rather impressive) to see Death part the condensed throng of people with his mere presence. Nobody seemed to even realize that their corporeal bodies responded to Amrial's presence; perhaps it was that simple aversion that living beings had to the brush of death.
But now wasn't the time to contemplate the implications of Amrial's existence and its affect on the living; up ahead, the stage lit up, and the familiar presence of her talented roommate and his band drew cheers from the crowd.
Scarlet's heart swelled with pride, so full that she temporarily forgot that she was just a little drunk. Cas looked so comfortable, so excited to be surrounded by a bigger spotlight than he'd ever harnessed in his entire life. "Ladies and gentlemen, good evening!" He beamed, punctuating his greeting with a reverberating chord on his guitar. The cheering swelled in response. "Looks like the liquor tent has been open for a few hours now, judging by the less than stable state of some of you." At that, Scarlet couldn't help but blush. "Well, I hope, for your sakes, that you've saved enough neurons for this gig; because me and my boys here are going to blow your fucking minds!"
More cheering rose, drawing Scarlet's mouth into a grin, and as the contagions caught, she cheered as well. Her voice died down with the rest of the crowd, eyes bright with anticipation as she noted the excitement in Caspar's eyes. "But before we begin, I'd like to invite a special guest to the stage to start us off. So allow me to stop hogging the spotlight for a second, and welcome my very good, and very fucking talented friend to wake up your tipsy minds--and potentially make me look very bad for the remainder of my performance."
Scarlet's grin faded, confusion seizing her mind as she looked to Roesaleine. "Do you know anything about this? What's going on? Cas didn't say anything about a guest, did he?" Why would he want to share his chance at such a huge spotlight by sharing it?
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
The raucous cries of the crowd quieted only when, from the curtain of the blackout’s absolute darkness, the first few plucked strings of an acoustic guitar soared from the amplifiers, its notes like wings spread wide to take flight on the breeze.
“If I could write out my own dream for the next time that I sleep,” a familiar voice sang, “you’d be the first one that I see, and I, the last one that you keep…”
A single spotlight faded in to illuminate a solitary figure perched on a wooden stool in the center of the stage, a patchwork acoustic guitar slung over his knee.
“And the dream would go on and on while we swayed, against all the things thrown our way,” Alair continued, his eyes lightly closed as he played. “And the morning would be so cruel when it came, with sunshine and warmth to blame for announcing the end of my sweet dream…
…for announcing the end of my sweet dream.”
His deft fingers carried out the phrase until a piano’s voice made its entrance, a red spotlight descending upon the solemn dreadlock-sporting keyboardist. Alair stood, handing the stool to a waiting stage hand, and stepped up to a waiting microphone on the very edge of the platform while Geoff opened the song with haunting instrumental. The Sandman cradled the silver mic in both hands, guitar suspended at his hip from the leather strap around his shoulder. Cas and the remainder of the band remained shrouded in darkness, excitedly awaiting their cues.
“If I could find assurance to leave you behind, I know my better half would fade,” Alair sang, his voice thick and warm with emotion. “And all my doubt is a staircase for you, up and out of this maze. The first step is the one you believe in, the second one might be profound…”
The lights exploded in blinding white as the drums pounded their entrance. Caspar Brighton leapt forward with his electric guitar, beaming as the song swelled to its first chorus.
“I’d follow you down through the eye of the storm, but don’t worry, I’ll keep you warm,” Alair continued, “I’ll follow you down while we’re passing through space. I don’t care if we fall from grace. I’ll follow you down…”
Whatever nerves Alair may have expressed to Roesaleine earlier that day had long since dissipated. The Sandman was precisely as confident as he looked—and of his self-assurance there was no question. With Cas and Geoff at his side like royal advisors—two of Scarlet’s most supportive friends—he commanded the stage as though he’d been born upon its raised platform, and all eyes in the audience were affixed to the dark-haired king. The music that he and the band made together pulsed through his veins like warm lifeblood, fueling a heart that beat solely for Scarlet, for Maryana. And with emotion that powerful, it was simply not possible to be in possession of doubt. This was it. This was for her.
The second verse began gently. “You can have the money and the world, the angels and the pearls, even trademark the color blue…” The front rail lights trailed in and downwards, transitioning from yellow-gold to pure, cerulean blue to match the lyrics. The startling hue caught his glimmering eyes as, for the first time in the performance, he looked down and over—catching his own beloved’s wide-eyed stare in the front row. His heart leapt. “Just like the tower we never built in the shadow of all the guilt, when the other hand was pointed at you,” he went on, smiling now through the words, his strong hands strumming his ragtag acoustic guitar in the many layers of piano, percussion, electric guitar, and bass.
It was a profession of love, proof of his age-old devotion; it was a display that was at once public and private, a flashy spectacle befitting the Sandman’s outgoing personality, an elaborate show that echoed anew through the many ages with every shifting chord.
The set came to an elegant close in the same fashion in which it had commenced. The instruments slowly faded out, leaving Geoff’s keyboard and Alair’s husky vocals to conclude the Sandman’s rocking ode. And with that, the lights once again went black to a screaming, applauding crowd begging for more—which Caspar Brighton was about to deliver.
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
Scarlet breathed her astonishment on a sigh when familiar vocals dominated the stage, starting off soft, a lullaby carried on gorgeous lyrics. She did not, however, need the within-song cues or hints to guess at the man behind the singing, and as soon as the spotlight illuminated the lead singer's form, along with the silhouette of who looked to be Caspar's skilled and loyal keyboardist, what she already knew was visually (along with auditorially) confirmed.
"He's... what is he..."
"Shh." Roesaleine's hand fell upon the redhead's shoulder in a supportive caress, as she brought her mouth close to her ear, whispering, "You are about to see what the man you love--and who loves you very much in return--has been up to all day."
It shouldn't have come as so much of a shock to Scarlet: Caspar and Alair had been friends long before she and Alair had become lovers. And Caspar Brighton, considerate as well as talented, was precisely the sort of person who would share the spotlight will a friend and fellow musician--and, in truth, that wasn't what stalled the breath in her lungs. Nor was it the invigorating power of the Sandman's voice and skills on the acoustic guitar which Geoff had tended, the very musical talent which had once lulled her back to sleep after yet another a horrifying nightmare that ravaged her unconscious state.
It was Alair's presence, or rather, something about it, that drew in all of her attention. It was the song (clearly an original, or at least, not one she'd ever heard), and the words, and the way his eyes found her in the crowd that sped up the pace of her heart.
"It's... it's for me." She met Roesaleine's eyes first, turning her head after the woman's confirming smile to seek the stormy depths of Amrial's eyes. She'd never noticed before how they were at once so intense and yet so gentle. "He's singing... he's playing... this is for me." Just like Caspar had played for Marissa at the wedding shower, Alair was singing for Scarlet alone, singling her out in a crowd of thousands of people as someone special. Someone loved, and worthy of being loved.
Without an inkling as to what else to do, the fiery redhead moved forward, pushing through the throng of cheering and swaying bodies until she secured a spot in the very front row.
"I'll follow you down, while we're passing through space..." Scarlet sought his gaze and found it, captured it, and watched those everblue irises sparkle. When he saw her and smiled, it brought a smile out of her as well, and she didn't dare look away. She didn't dare blink. "I don't care if we fall from grace, I'll follow you down."
As the climax petered off, and segued back into the diminished combo of piano and vocals, only then did Scarlet remember how to breathe. But she didn't take part in the cheering and clapping as the Sandman took a bow and turned the stage back over to Caspar, because it all felt too trivial. Instead, she waited until he eased himself down from the stage, acoustic guitar safely slung across his back, to begin her tirade.
It started with her arms around his neck as she pulled him into a meaningful, lingering kiss that stole the air from both of their lungs. "You left me to fucking wander around with Death all day long, you know," she began, intense gaze fixed on the contours of his face. "So that you could... you could... do what you just did..."
"You just bore witness to the talents of my good friend, Alair; and in case your evening hasn't begun with an adequate dosage of power ballads," Caspar's voice boomed in the microphone as he addressed the cheering crowd, "I've got another one here for you all. So grab the person you care for the most--or your drunken pal who needs a hand standing up, I don't fucking care. You're not done being blown away yet!"
Loud as the microphone was, or the bombastic intro to a song that, up until now, she had only ever heard Caspar play acoustically, however, nothing was louder than the sound of her own heartbeat in her ears, and nothing as vibrant as the Sandman's blue eyes before her. Inhaling a shaky breath of air, her hands moved from the back of his neck to rest upon his shoulders. "Cas and I have been close friends for five years. He's never played for me..." She said, drawing herself close to him to ascertain he heard over Caspar's enchanting lyrics: And I just cannot leave, I keep on burning from the heat. I'm blinded from the spill, of light here she shines on me... "No one has ever played for me before. You're the first... you're the first."
When tears gathering in the corners of her eyes threatened to fall, she stood on her toes again and fervently pulled her soulmate into another kiss, the gesture saying more than she could ever covey with words.
"Oh, she's bringing in, she's bringing in the light. And I'm getting it, I get it, I'm alive. So don't count on your satellites to say she's here tonight. Just know she's bringing in, she's bringing in the light."
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
He was proud of his brother. It wasn’t just that Alair was an exceptionally talented musician; his younger sibling had proven tonight that he could love again. Death’s protective nature had played an undeniable role in the Sandman’s pain through the ages, but now that concern was beginning to fade. It was one thing to possess emotional strength, but another entirely to move forward from tragedy—and Sleep, bathed in blinding spotlights, had demonstrated much more than his skill at the microphone this night.
But Death’s instincts were not always correct. For all his wisdom, he possessed no power of foresight, and when it came to his brother he had been conditioned toward optimism in an attempt to keep the peace. As Scarlet stood transfixed, the shifting stage lights moving over the audience, Amrial caught a glimpse of something—someone—he had seen before, deep within her glittering eyes.
The realization came with a barrage of images from dusty memories he’d thought he’d forgotten. His throat tightened, the music falling away as his heartbeat thumped loudly in his ears. It was her. He’d found her again. And as Alair continued to play, it became increasingly clear to Death that Sleep was indeed entirely aware of Scarlet’s identity. There had been no ‘moving on,’ no ‘loving again’; it was the same vicious cycle playing out once more, as it had dozens of times already.
Startled as he was, he couldn’t tell Roesaleine—not yet. She was still watching Scarlet with hope and fondness, her gaze darting from one to the other until the performance came to its conclusion. Biting his tongue and taking a breath, he squeezed his beloved’s hand and whistled with the crowd as the audience erupted in cheers.
The Sandman, a thin sheen of sweat coating his brow, descended from the stage via the back stairway, his guitar bouncing against his shoulder as he headed towards the crowd. But he barely heard the crowd’s enthusiastic reception; he couldn’t hear the screams and whistles, couldn’t see their beaming faces and bobbing arms. All he saw as he rounded the tower of speakers and amplifiers was her—the softness of her face, the blaze of crimson hair befitting her nickname, the entrancing light blue of her glistening eyes; everything else faded to inconsequential nothingness as she approached, the safety and familiarity of her encircling arms transporting them both to a dimension that only included the other.
His characteristic lopsided smile was softened by the absolute affection shining in his cerulean gaze. He locked eyes with his beloved, and he shrugged gently into her palms as her hands traveled from his neck to his shoulders. “I always play for you,” he said, leaning down to murmur the words breathily in her ear. “Always.” The kiss that ensued was nothing short of magical, stealing the breath from his lungs with an explosion of emotion that had tears threatening to form in his eyes as he pulled away. He studied her face and reached up to run a hooked finger down the gentle curve of her cheek.
With the soaring melody of Cas’s opening ballad reverberating through the mountains and hills, Alair snaked his arms around her waist and pulled her close. They swayed together to the music’s pulse, their heartbeats synching to one another’s as the intricate layers of instrumentation and vocals increased in fervor. Their universe existed to the side of the stage as their own little pocket of shared bliss. Amongst the chaos of the festival, it was a reminder that each existed for the other—that anywhere, always, they were home in one another’s arms.
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
Always.
He wasn't lying, wasn't even exaggerating. From the moment they'd become amicable (in spite of their decidedly rocky start), each and every time the Sandman had picked up his beloved instrument, he had been playing for her. At the bar, after which he'd had to help her home for having consumed a few too many Caesars. In the night, to soothe her back to sleep after perishing in yet another of her agonizing nightmares. When she was ill, her body wracked with a high fever. At Geoff's little shop, after she'd broken his age-old musical companion. Even in the dead of dusk, when she hadn't been awake to hear, on his revelation as to her true identity.
This was not the first time he had played or performed for her--not by a long shot. It was not the first song he had written for one Maryana Aleksei, and there was nothing to say it was any more remarkable than before. It was something about the song, maybe; the way it embodied everything she'd feared and hoped for since Alair had become a part of her life, summing it up so beautifully that she realized, for the first time in her life, she was doing something right.
That, and perhaps seeing her two favourite boys, the one she loved like family and the other she loved with all her heart, might have sparked more of a heartfelt emotion.
Arms wrapped around his neck, Scarlet swayed to Caspar's beautiful power-ballad, and all of those that ensued. The set was over an hour long, yet not once did she pull away from her blue-eyed Sandman, pressing her body to his like it belonged there. Because it belonged there, in his arms, safe and secure after a lifetime of thinking such a feeling was impossible.
So tethered were the destined two to one another that Roesaleine, only a handful of meters away in the crowd, decided that the rest of the evening should belong to the lovers alone. "Come--this night is theirs," she told Amrial, squeezing her beloved's hand and gazing at him with the same happiness and relief upon which she looked at his little brother, and the girl he so loved. "We will see them another time. With any luck, they will be all the more pleased to see us, next time."
Planting a kiss on Death's strong jawline, Life took him by the hand, all together missing the tightness around his eyes that suggested all was not well.
When Caspar's set came to completion (with demand for an encore of the last song), and the night of music was drawing to a close (all save for karaoke, in which Scarlet couldn't be farther from interested), the fiery redhead took Alair by the hand and indicated she was ready to return to their campsite. After brushing off a few half-hearted attempts on the Sandman's part that she should try her hand at karaoke, it wasn't difficult to twist his rubber arm into making their way back to the tent, which--to her great surprise--was still holding up.
For now.
No sooner did they leave their sneakers outside and crawl into the waterproof shelter of the 'time machine' that Scarlet seized her musical companion's mouth in a fervent kiss, hands greedily pulling his sweater and shirt from the torso it clad, and tossed them both aside. She didn't bother explaining herself because she didn't need to, not even when she shed her own layers, and was quick to instigate falling into the same mutual rhythms and passion that they had the night before. Her fingers grasped at him more desperately, and otherwise threw caution entirely to the wind, but bursting with emotion the way she was, the impulse was unavoidable.
And when their energies were both spent, and they stared through the mesh roof of the tent to the stars above, the young woman wrapped her arms around his waist in their shared sleeping bag and rested her chin on his shoulder. "I love you, Alair." The words were whispered like delicate petals on the breeze, under the threat of being shredded by the faintest hint of rejection's thorns. "More than I can even express, but I want... I need you to know that. No matter what. Maybe if I actually become talented, write a poem about it one day, or something."
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
For now, he hadn’t the strength to feel anything but that gnawing pang. The frustration, he knew, would take root later, perhaps after he’d had the chance to relay his realization to Roesaleine. Alair’s re-encounter of his reincarnated love, however circumstantial this time around, meant a lot of things—not least of which that Scarlet’s recycled soul was likely on its last supernatural threads. Death also knew his brother better than Sleep liked to admit. And as much as he disapproved of Alair keeping the redhead’s identity from him, Amrial knew the blue-eyed Sandman was similarly ragged from previous heartbreaks.
He allowed Roesaleine to lead him away, his gray eyes darkening like an impending storm as they broke from the crowd and made their way into the surrounding woods. Alone now, with Caspar’s performance barely a murmur in the background, Amrial took both his beloved’s hands in his own and faced her. He sighed. Her delight from seeing Alair and Scarlet so exquisitely happy quickly faded to concern, and from the way she searched his expression, he knew he was no longer succeeding at disguising his distress.
“I bore witness to something tonight. Something I did not suspect,” he began slowly, casting his gaze downward for some moments before he looked back up to meet Roesaleine’s prismatic eyes. “My beloved, it seems my dear brother has not moved forward from the past as we had hoped. It became clear to me tonight that Scarlet…” He faltered, shaking his head as though he somehow possessed a share of the blame. “It’s her, Roesaleine. The cycle has continued.”
Alair was riding on a high. It was not the familiar elation of a performance well sung, although the crowd’s roaring cheers and whistles had certainly validated his musical talents. No, this was something else entirely, an ecstasy that could only be brought on by the red-haired young woman who had awaited him on stage right, the woman to whom he had dedicated every note he ever strummed, sung, or hummed. They rejoined the audience to hear out the remainder of Caspar Brighton’s production, but the Sandman barely heard a chord of the set.
He basked in the shared warmth of their mutual affection, standing behind Scarlet with his arms wrapped around her middle and his chin propped on her shoulder. When at last the indicated her desire to return to camp, he happily obliged, gripping her fingers tightly as they pulled one another through the dark woods to the solitude of their isolated campsite.
With the chill of the night air upon them, they climbed eagerly back inside their impossible time-machine tent, toppling over in tired chuckles on top of the blankets and sleeping bags beyond the waterproof canvas. The light-hearted jests soon quieted to whispers as one-by-one they shed their clothing, their mouths greeting one another in kisses rather than words. All the emotion, all the passion, all the bliss that had built up to that pivotal moment on the grandstand now rushed forth in a softer, gentler way. They could express their culminated sentiments in privacy now, rejoicing only in the company of their alternate half, uniting mind and body in a way that only destined souls could know.
Bare skin glistening, the matched pair at last tumbled to their backs, exhausted, staring with half-lidded eyes through the tent’s fine mesh. Beyond the leafy branches above, stars twinkled their approval. He pulled Scarlet closer to him, pressing his cheek to her soft red tresses. “I love you too, Maryana,” he whispered, eyelids fluttering closed. “Please never forget that. I don’t need poetry. I just need you.” Tilting his head, he planted a featherlight kiss upon her temple. “I just need you, okay?”
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
"Are you sure? Can you be so sure?" Roesaleine searched Death's face, his somber expression, for any hint that he thought he could be mistaken. But Death was never mistaken, and it was a heavy sigh that Life's shoulders sank. "But he has stopped looking for her, Amrial. It has been... what, well over a century? You brother has moved on... surely he has. He would be the first to know if Scarlet was, in fact, his reincarnated kindred spirit, and he would know better than to pursue her, if that were the case... wouldn't he?"
Would he? For eons, Sleep had remained hopelessly devoted to one woman, and one woman alone, over and over and over again. Her face had changed, her eyes, her hair, ethnicity, and even her personality. She was never the same person, but always the same soul, returning each time to earth weaker than before. Reincarnation was just as natural a phenomenon as life and death, but not in the case of Alair's beloved. Not when Life herself had tampered with the very fabric of the universe's cyclical nature, in order to bring this woman back to her own eternal partner's brother, again and again and again.
Had she known how it would only prolong Alair's suffering, she would never have agreed.
"But he's so... Alair is, for the fist time since..." Since his lover's last reincarnation. There was little wonder as to the light that shone in the Sandman's eyes. "Amrial... what are we going to do?"
"You have me," Scarlet murmured, sinking into slumber as her body relaxed in his arms. "You'll always have me..." There wasn't a single negative or uncertain thought on her mind as she drifted off. She didn't wonder if she'd find herself falling to her death or getting crushed by thorny vines, or if Alair would be there to save her. Because for the first time in her rough life, Maryana Aleksei realized she was already safe. Time and circumstance hadn't come between them in the eons her soul had sough him out; that wasn't likely to change anytime soon.
To her own naive belief, that is.
It wasn't a typical dream; in fact, it didn't feel like a dream at all, no like those familiar terrors that pulled her under water or bled her out or had her fall to her seemingly imminent death. It was a night like any other, from her perspective. The street glistened with newly fallen rain, traffic and noise pollution no more than the usual white noise in the background. What was off was the heavy feeling in the air, a tension that suggested not all was right, not all was well.
Scarlet found herself standing in the middle of it all, hair damp, cheeks flushed and out of breath, as if she'd been running, but she couldn't remember why. Turning this way and that, it took her a moment to realize the figure standing just feet away with his back to her. She was only able to recognize them from their clothing; a worn, beige bomber coat with a large guitar patch stitched down the middle of the back, tears in both elbows that further exhibited its age. He'd told her it had belonged to his father when he was a teenager, and that he'd adopted the retro fitted garment in succession.
"Caspar?" She breathed, the called louder. "Cas, are you all right?"
"You tell me; you always know before I do, anyway. Isn't that how it works?" When the lanky musician turned towards her, he hardly looked like himself. His eyes were bloodshot, and his face dark with rage. "How could you..."
Taken aback, Scarlet hardly knew what to say. This wasn't the Caspar that she knew. Or, at least, it was a side of him that she'd never seen. "Cas, I..." But she only realized after opening her mouth that she had no idea what to say. Because she had no idea what was going on, whatever had driven him into this seemingly blind rage. "Talk to me. Please."
But Caspar Brighton was beyond words by now, whatever anger that had come over him having festered to a point where he seemed poisoned and seeing only red. When his eyes fell on Scarlet again, it was not with the usual affection and understanding that characterized the young man. Rather, it was like he wasn't even seeing her at all.
Before she could open her mouth again, the chemical redhead was thrown against a hard, stone wall, the back of her head hitting so hard that stars exploded in her vision and she blacked out for a good handful of moments. While her vision took a moment to readjust, she was immediately aware of a sudden, terrifying paralysis that wracked her body, head to toe. It was as if her back were glued to the wall; no matter how she struggled, not a limb would move. Had she hit the wall a little harder, she might have suspected a spinal cord injury... But one look at Caspar Brighton, the telekinetic young man who seldom to never delved into his preternatural abilities, and it all became clear.
"Cas... Casper," A sob died in her throat, tears pricking the corners of her eyes. "Please..."
"You ruined my fucking life!" The young musician cried, teeth bared and hands clenched into fists. "You deserve this. You deserve worse than this."
He was so fast, she felt it before she saw it; that piece of shrapnel, abandoned in the alleyway in which they stood, had been content with its nondescript presence on the damp pavement. Now, it was lodged in her abdomen, with such force that it actually pierced the back of the stone wall. There was pain, so much pain, and then, there was, there was...
There was nothing.
There had been endless accounts of Scarlet waking up from her dreams with a start, screaming or kicking or yelling or even hyperventilating, but seldom had she woken up crying. When the redhead opened her eyes, it felt as though she'd been sobbing for hours, her heart racing and her face saturated with salty tears. Shaken, she sat up, hugging herself from the chill that had come over her skin, and turned to Alair, who already looked to have been wide awake for a while... how long had she been suffering and crying from that nightmare?
"I'm fine; I promise," she assured him, wiping her face dry, her throat tight and words constricted. "I just... it was just a dream. But you weren't there..." Meeting the Sandman's bright, azure eyes, it was with regret and a note of failure that she added, "It felt... different. I couldn't pull myself out of it..."
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
“But, my love, I would recognize that soul anywhere,” he continued solemnly. “It bears the scars of our interference, and it trembles with exhaustion under the weight of so many lives lived. But, frayed and damaged though it is…” He trailed off, searching for Roesaleine’s reassuring gaze. “If we did not see it at first, then I don’t believe my brother would have, either.” Death shook his head, lowering his cobalt eyes. “I do not think this was an intentional reunion. Which only makes it all the more difficult…all the more painful. He had made such strides to move on, and this will knock him backward again—with devastating consequences, I fear. I have never seen him so happy.”
The distant roar of the festival crowd indicated the night’s events had progressed to their conclusion. Amrial paid the background sound little heed, absorbed as he was in his thoughts. What could they do? Scarlet’s tattered soul was destined for tragedy as the pattern went, and this time, Death feared she would be unable to return. And he could only imagine what that would mean for Alair.
“Do we speak with them? Is it our place?” he asked quietly, reaching up to brush away a loose strand of Roesaleine’s dark hair. “Convince them that remaining together will only end in disaster, in unavoidable emotional pain?”
With the excitement and adrenaline of the evening at last ebbing away, the blue-eyed Sandman found himself more relaxed than he’d been in a very long time. But it was not with exhaustion that he settled in; with his red-haired companion nestled cozily into his side, he felt rejuvenated, renewed—as though his long-drained batteries had been completely recharged. He felt safe, he felt satisfied, he felt happy…and suddenly, all the millennia of heartache was worth the startling anguish. He had stopped searching for his lost love and been reunited with her anyway. If that did not cement his long-held belief that they were kindred beings, meant to be, then surely nothing could.
He felt Scarlet drift peacefully to sleep, listening as the rhythm of her breathing steadied and deepened. His lips upturned in a soft smile while the stars winked at him overhead.
But all was not well. As soon as Scarlet’s inhales began to deviate from her usual pattern, growing faster, deeper, irregular, the Sandman knew she had descended once more into the nightmares they had worked so hard to banish. Confused and concerned, he immediately reached out to her with his mind, following her path of buried consciousness to step into the kingdom where her dreams dwelled.
But something stopped him at the threshold, and he was knocked back with such force that he lost the thread of her completely, landing back in his own conscious skin. Alarmed, his pulse hammering in his ears, and he propped himself up on his elbow at her side. Never before had he been denied entry to a person’s sleeping subconscious—he was the Sandman, this was the domain that he ruled like a king. Desperate to soothe her fear, putting his bewilderment behind his worry for her wellbeing, he reached out, gently cupping her cheek with his palm. His thumb wiped away the tears that began to leak from beneath her long eyelashes. He was helpless when he should have been helpful, stymied when he should have been a solace. And he did not know what else to do but comfort her while she rode out the internal storm alone.
When her eyelids flew open and she abruptly sat upright, Alair wrapped her in the embrace he wished he could have done during the nightmare. “Jesus, Scarlet, you’re not fine!” he returned fervently, brows knitted together with horrified concern. He released her just enough to meet her gaze, keeping one hand planted firmly on her shoulder as if to ground her now in a way he could not then. “I couldn’t get to you. I tried, but something blocked me…and I’ve never had that happen before, ever. I couldn’t wake you.” Leaning forward, he planted a tender kiss on her glistening forehead. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2015 4:33 pm
She wished it were true. If only...
"If we confront your brother about this, I can't imagine anything but resistance on his part... it is the way he has always reacted." Life sighed and gently pulled away from Amrial, pressing her lips together in contemplation. "But he needs to know; and, if he already knows, than as much as it might hurt him, he needs to understand--or be reminded--that he is investing in a dead end." She visibly flinched at referring to Scarlet as a 'dead end', but while the young woman was so much more than that, especially to the Sandman, the fact was inevitable.
Further thought of Scarlet and everything she meant to Alair suddenly spurred an idea in Roesaleine's remorseful mind, and she met Amrial's dark gaze to seek his opinion. "Perhaps we have not been approaching this in the right way, in the past... We have always brought it to the attention to your brother, that is. But what if we brought it to Scarlet's attention, instead? I regret that it would be a heavy burden for her to bear, in a lot of ways, but... perhaps it would be enough for her to convince them that they should... well, that they are sadly not destined to see this through. There is no easy way to convey this information, regardless of who tells him, but I feel Alair would be more apt to listen to her than to us... but he is your brother. What do you think?"
Scarlet happily let her trembling body be pulled against Alair's, the warmth of his skin and the sound of his heartbeat reassuring as she once again engrained herself in reality. As the images of her dream began to fade, her pulse slowed, and her breathing returned to the deep, even rhythm, of someone awake and calm, and she managed to regroup enough to find the words she needed to explain. "It was weird... I was with Caspar, but he was... he wasn't himself. He told me I'd ruined his life and he... h-he was using his telekinesis--he never uses it!--and he... I think I..."
It was difficult to acknowledge she'd 'died' in a dream when she had Caspar and his unearthly powers to attribute to it, even when dying in dreams was no new occurrence for her. He had always (until of late, at least) been a source of her solace, not her ultimate destruction... It was so out of character for him, the event so unbelievable that she struggled to believe her subconscious mind could dream him up in such a capacity. That Caspar Brighton, the gentle and slightly awkward musician who used to get panic attacks from his stage fright, could be an enemy to anyone but his own self-esteem was completely unfathomable... But what bothered her the most was what her dream-self must have done to incite such blind rage.
"What do you mean you couldn't get to me?" The redhead's eyebrows knit together as she met the Sandman's azure eyes, unsettled by the concern she found in their depths. "But you're the Sandman... Doesn't that give you a free ticket into all dreams? Hell, you still managed to invade my head even before I decided you were an okay guy. I don't think I could shut you out if I wanted to..." So not only was her flatmate a demon in her subconscious mind, but it wouldn't even grant the Sandman access... Was this all a horrible fluke, or was there something beneath the surface of which even she wasn't aware?
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
His dear brother, on the other hand, was not so fortunate. Scarlet’s presence in his life had only granted Alair short bouts of temporary solace, punctuated by long spells of tortured sadness. Roesaleine was right—there was no easy way to approach the issue, especially when the news came from either of them. Neither Life nor Death, in all their wisdom, could possibly understand the depth of the Sandman’s distress.
“We should approach her.” Amrial’s voice was collected, but the expression in his gray eyes was melancholy. Nevertheless, he nodded his agreement. “Scarlet must know. We may not have another chance to break this news to my brother again, and you are right. Perhaps it is time to put our faith in the young woman. She knows him in a way we do not. And cannot.”
Death sighed again, wrapping his arm around his beloved’s shoulders and pulling her close. “How I wish we could make this well. For both of them,” he said sadly. “I think perhaps the news might come best from you, my dear. As reluctant as I am to give this messenger’s burden to you alone, the matter is delicate and I fear I may fumble.” He angled his head and planted a kiss atop her soft dark hair. “How long do we give them before we shatter their world?”
Unbeknownst to Amrial and Roesaleine, Scarlet and Alair’s world was already showing signs of its impending fracture.
The Sandman searched Scarlet’s gaze in the darkness, seeking answers he knew he wouldn’t find. For the first time in his preternatural life, he did not feel like himself. He did not feel like Sleep, like the Sandman. He was as helpless, as powerless, as any mortal-born human that strode the streets. Never before had he been shut out of a dream he wished to enter. Hell, his very essence was comprised of dreams and sleep, of the very stuff most could only enter through the gateway of their subconscious—and that was how it felt. It felt like he’d been barred from a part of himself, like some trauma had cut off the input of a vital bodily sense.
“It’s never happened before,” he heard himself repeat, dumbfounded. “I…I don’t know. It’s almost like…it’s almost like you weren’t asleep. Like you weren’t dreaming.”
It sounded as ridiculous said aloud as it had in his mind. But that only served to frighten him further, rattling much more than just his confidence. Whether the problem lied with him or with her, the incident had shed light on something—but he was too engulfed in the shadow it cast to see through the blinding revelation. Scarlet could feel it too, he was sure of it. She had depended on the Sandman’s presence in her slumber to guide her through her nightmares, and this was the first time since their chance rooftop encounter that he had failed to be there for her in her distress.
He hoped desperately that she knew his spiritual absence that night was not purposeful.
“Was there something different this time? Could you tell?” he asked quietly, pressing his mouth to her forehead. “I don’t think I can bear that happening to you again…”
Re: [r. astro] wide awake from looking back [18+]
How long, indeed...
Turning like a wilted sunflower towards a sinking sun, Roesaleine cast helpless eyes on her lover and eternal partner, loathe to make any suggestion following such a dreadful question. But if fate continued to play out as it always had, over decades and centuries and eons, then they were doing no favours to anyone--Scarlet and Alair, especially--by refusing to act. And for Life, who sought to preserve heartbeats and the intake of breath for as long as what was reasonable, it was within her best interests to break a few hearts in order to prolong a pulse. There was no changing the fate of Alair's relationship with his beloved soulmate; it would never endure. But, although sorrow would eat away at him as it always had, time and again, survivor's guilt would not play a part in his suffering this time around. And she could endure an eternity of his scorn, much like a mother to a child who did not understand that rules were made in his best interests, if it meant that he would suffer just a little bit less than all those times before...
"This trip... this is for them," Life sighed at last, shoulders rolling into a defeated slump. "This is the pinnacle of their relationship, and the one and only crescendo of their love. And I know that time is of the essence, but this... it is not for us to ruin. Not now; not yet." Drawing her rouged lower lip behind her teeth, Roesaleine braced herself to propose her heartbreaking decision. "Let us wait, until they return from their reprieve from reality. They deserve as much... some time to be happy. But, tell me..." Facing Amrial full on, she rested her hands lightly upon his shoulders, dreading the question she was about to as: "How much did you intuit? How long before they... before she... if we do not intervene?"
"Well, maybe it's... a fluke. Maybe it doesn't mean anything." Scarlet's mind was, in fact, reeling for answers, for an explanation, just as much as Alair's, and at a loss to fit any logic and reason--no matter how preternatural--into this wayward occurrence, she found little else to offer than a farfetched write-off to assuage her own uneasy trepidation. Swallowing a gulp of air down her dry throat, she raked her fingers through her chemical-red hair, damp at the roots from perspiration. "I mean, obviously, I was dreaming--I mean, I was asleep, wasn't I? What other explanation is there? You might be the Sandman, but how many dreams can you infiltrate at once? Maybe it just wasn't pressing enough, or something... just another stupid nightmare."
Except, it had not had the quality of all f her other nightmares. All of those surreal metaphors and elements drudged up from the bleakest depths of her unconscious mind, flashbacks that she could never quite understand because it was so seldom that she actually remembered her nightmares...
And yet, she had remembered this one. As if it had actually happened to her, just moments ago. From the pain in her body to the creases of hatred in Caspar's face...
Turning her face upward, looking through the skylight of the tent and onto the star-spackled night sky beyond, Scarlet sough the guidance of her stars for an answer, begged them to make sense of what had just happened, to give her some sort of clue as to whether or not it was something that either of them should expend the energy worrying about. But the stars remained silent; they didn't even whisper.
"It was just another stupid nightmare." Scarlet rubbed at her eyes with the ball of her hands, inexplicably weary, as if she had not gained an ounce or rest from that restless sleep. "Just 'cause you weren't there doesn't make it out of the ordinary. Hell, I've already had a shrink tell me I've got a sleep-anxiety related disorder, or some shit. Being the Sandman isn't going to change that, Magic Man." Meeting his everblue eyes, she reached up and rested the damp palm of her hand against his chiseled jaw. "Forget about it, okay? I'm fine, just overreacting, as usual. Don't pretend like you're just learning that I'm a basketcase." The smirk that curled her lips was uneasy, at best, as she returned to a horizontal position in the sleeping bag, staring defiantly up at the stars that had suddenly become so secretive. "I'm going to try and get back to sleep, if you'd care to join me in my next dream. Though I think it's a given now to tell you to 'proceed at your own risk'."
