The Stocking Sock (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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bakerstreet2012-03-14 04:02 pm
stalkingsocks) wrote in bakerstreet2012-03-14 04:02 pm
Baby, I just can't sleep.
It happens to everyone - sometimes, you have nights where you just can't fall asleep, no matter what you do. It could be for a number of reasons, or no reason at all. And this is what's happened now: you've been laying in bed for what feels like hours, just tossing and turning, and nothing seems to help. So what's left to do? Get out of bed and go wake someone else up, of course. If you're not getting any sleep, then why should they?
i n s t r u c t i o n s
• Post with your character (note the name and fandom in the subject).
• Other people reply to you by generating a number from 1 to 10.
• Have fun!
o p t i o n s
01 • FEAR. Maybe you're hearing strange, indeterminable noises; maybe there's a severe storm happening outside; maybe you watched a scary movie before bed? Whatever the reason, you're terrified and it's keeping you awake. You just want to wake someone else up so they can protect you from the monster in your closet.
02 • HUNGER. Your stomach is growling and it just won't stop. Or perhaps your throat is so dry you could cough up a tumbleweed? Well, you've gone to the kitchen to remedy this and hey, that was a pan that just dropped on the floor. It was loud enough to wake the dead! Oops.
03 • PAIN. Your body is completely worn out, be it from exercise, battle, sickness, or what have you. Either way you're in enough pain to keep you from sleeping, so maybe someone else has a home remedy or something, or can at least help you take your mind off of it.
04 • SOLITUDE. For some reason, your bed just feels so empty at the moment. You're feeling terribly lonely and really just want someone to keep you company for a while. Maybe it'd be easier to fall asleep if you're with them...
05 • DISCOMFORT. Your room is an oven. Either that or a freezer. Or maybe this bed is just really uncomfortable? Who knows why you can't get to sleep, it feels like it could be anything. Why even bother trying? Maybe someone else can preoccupy you until you feel tired enough to ignore your discomfort.
06 • PENSIVE. Something's on your mind, and no matter how hard you try to focus elsewhere, it's just not going to work. Your body may be tired, but your mind is incredibly busy and it's virtually impossible to get to sleep. Surely, talking it out with someone else will help?
07 • SADNESS. Something terrible has happened that day, perhaps; or you could just be severely depressed. Either way you're trying your hardest not to cry yourself to sleep, and it's not working at all. Better find a way to get it out of your system somehow; you need a shoulder to cry on.
08 • ANGER. You are just... fuming. Who knows why - that annoying dog is barking again, or maybe the people next door are getting busy and keeping you awake. Whatever the reason for your ire is, you'd better put an end to it so you can get some damn rest already! Go wake up a friend so you can complain to them.
09 • RESTLESS. You're far too energetic to sleep right now. Maybe you're just trying to do so out of necessity - you have to be up early tomorrow! But you just don't think you'll be able to fall asleep for a while now, so why waste the time trying to sleep when you could be doing something else? Namely bothering someone else - you're totally jealous because they're getting more sleep than you.
10 • WILDCARD. Choose one of the options above, or make up your own scenario.
no subject
It's not that she's in love or anything like that, just that she could have been. Just that Mélisande is so watchful and quiet and clever, sweet and soft, uncatchable and indefinable, and capable of shooting a man because of family. Just that she's warm and close and is holding onto her like she needs her and Irene needs to be needed. Just that Irene hates to be alone no matter what. Just that brunette suits her, really, she'll have to tell her, though it does make her look older.
And it's just that suddenly she'd quite like to go back to the nonsense of Paris, the coffee shops and the silly text messages and Irene's dreadful French and all the inconsequential things far away from the inevitable end.
One more safe place ransacked. Bloody typical, she thinks, some sudden surge of anger rising in her. She almost wishes Mélisande hadn't come at all- I barely thought about you I'll have you know, I only said your name once with a blonde and I was exceedingly drunk when I did it, so there- but that isn't fair, isn't it?
Neither of their lives is predictable, and they both strive and struggle to take charge of it- or she does, at least, and she assumes everyone else must do the same. You try and you try and take your respite where you can and then you cut ties- and it always ends up with trying not to get blood everywhere, doesn't it? Wonderful. Typical. Well, not this time. Irene holds on tight to Benevenuta. Her robe can go to hell for all she cares.
She rests her cheek against Mélisande's hair, closes her eyes, one hand at the back of her neck now, keeping her close, supporting her, we're both still here, think about now. "Would you like help?"
With anything, Irene pointedly doesn't say, letting the huge, absurd offer hang in the air even as she realises that she's probably only making things worse by showing Mélisande what she can't have, not if she's practical- and Irene thinks she is. Irene thinks they're both very, very practical, which is sometimes an absolute curse.
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No one else was supposed to touch the moment in time that contained the two of them. She has to rewrite it into something else, something better, something-- that still comes down to something final, because her pragmatism is sometimes brutal, and her idealism is never overwhelming. Even if she remembers working on the notes for her next novel (romances, under a penname) in bed next to Irene in that tiny little flat she used to have, and how wonderfully silly it had felt, the romance novelist and the dominatrix. Peddlers of fantasy. Different kinds. Here they are with the truth, finally, and maybe that's the poignancy of their ending; this artlessness that still isn't, quite.
“I'll take a shower,” she says, in a tone that means if that's all right, “and-- can I stay? Tonight?”
no subject
She wonders why she isn't frightened of that. She feels like she should be. She walks a fine line between a hatred of solitude and a fear of cages. Not that defining romance in terms of fear and hate is a terribly positive habit, admittedly.
She kisses her hair very gently, as if trying to wake her up without startling her, and steps back but keeps their hands clasped. "The bathroom's this way. Well, one of them is. Come on. You can admire my decor on the way- suffocatingly pretty, isn't it?" Gentle, real amusement, a refusal to be sad just yet. She squeezes her hand, and leads on.
no subject
A body that heals isn't a body without tension, and hot water rinses away more than just blood. She came here for a goodbye but it's refuge, too, and she lets herself be nothing but the steam around her. She doesn't think, for a while.
Which is where all this artlessness gets you; careless. Her coat is still in the sitting room, with her clutch-purse.
no subject
But when the idea does hit her, she doesn't even consider doing otherwise. She's just mulling over whether she could give her a keepsake, what she could carry in those pockets of hers- and then almost before she thinks, she's padding downstairs in her bare feet once more.
Knowledge is power; information is what the world runs on. And she's picking up her coat, slipping her hands into the pockets, opening the clutch, dismantling Benevenuta's disguise as best she can.
She doesn't feel guilty or nervous. This is second nature to her by now. She can hear the water running; she's safe, she'll have enough time to reorganise things before her guest ever comes down, if indeed she ever comes down. She may prefer to go straight to bed.
And wouldn't that suit Irene?
But she's not doing this for money or power this time. She's doing it- to grab hold of a situation slipping ever more precariously out of her grasp. She's doing it because she hates to be underinformed.
A picture. Mélisande- well, no, someone who looks like Mélisande- blonde, with pin curls, standing beside a dreadfully dashing young soldier. WW2. A note with an address in Scotland for K Greene. A man's wallet- Irene checks the cards and decides she must be staring at the man who followed Mélisande. It's the only thing that makes the next few items make sense (as if any of it makes sense) because they're duplicates. (Breath evenly, don't let your hands shake, keep an ear on the sound of the water, you've done this before). Two phones; one has her number in it, and William's; naughty boy. No, really. She doesn't like the idea of him bragging about her. Is he useful enough to justify it? She'll consider it later; right now, she can have no distractions. Another gun. No ammunition.
So he came for her with a gun, she thinks numbly.
She snaps pictures on her phone with a practical briskness, brows drawn, as far away from the dramatic, smirking, lady-of-leisure persona she's crafted for herself as she could possible be.
It's not until everything is put back in its proper place and she's flicking through the photos on her phone with that same ferociously thoughtful expression, wondering why it is that the photo unnerves her more than the cards and the weapon and coming to the conclusion that it's because she can't explain it, that she suffers a brief perspective shift and wonders what she's doing.
Snapping photos of the private belongings of a woman she hasn't seen in three years? It's not that she feels guilty, just stupid, desperate and as if she's jumping at shadows, making links where there are none.
Another glance at the phone and she ignores her doubts. Trusts her intuition.
She'll research later. When Mélisande is gone.
And then she's in the bedroom while Mélisande is in the en suite as if everything is totally normal, like they're playing house in Paris again. She puts the phone on the bedside table after a brief moment of panic- where was it, where do I normally put it, do I normally hide it, what's going to make her suspicious, will she even remember it, oh of course she will, I was permanently attached to it- and takes off her robe before situating herself elegantly on the side of her bed. (A few touches of blood, nothing drastic).
"Do you want anything to sleep in?" she calls, like they're on an unplanned sleepover and planning to spend the rest of the night braiding each other's hair and giggling--
--which doesn't actually sound bad, no, but nevermind.
That picture. A relative, surely. Obviously. It's because of family...
no subject
(There are always flaws - unanswered questions. Irene has never struck her as somebody willing to accept something she can't know, and so much of that, that tenacity and that seemingly effortless skill, the way that she is so many steps ahead that she's already stopped playing chess and found some other, better game-- Benevenuta half expects that if she starts to look, then one day it'll be Irene on her doorstep at the German house that no one knows about, except she'd probably come in the window.)
It's a blind spot, that she doesn't think to worry about those phone numbers or that address or the photograph; instead, she leans in the doorway between the en suite and the bathroom, in laser-cut leather and mesh Gaultier for La Perla, turning the underbust corset that matches it over in her hands, studying the bloodstains with the slightly mournful expression of someone who is going to spend dedicated time to getting them out again, later. Damned if she's parting with this, too.
“I'd like that,” she says, looking up from it.
no subject
For a moment, then, Irene's mouth goes dry. Beautiful women don't make her nervous or jealous- but she's glad that the years and her numerous conquests haven't robbed her of her capacity for speechlessness. She's not that jaded.
"Marvellous," she says after an undisguised moment of admiration, getting up to her walk-in wardrobe and sorting through silk, lace, sheer mesh...
She likes the idea of getting to dress Mélisande up; as a little girl, yes, she had an enormous collection of Barbies (for her street, at least- she'd been so popular for that, had enjoyed all the other girls having to come up and promise to be her friend if they got to play with the one with the princess dress). And a lot of things Irene does are edited versions of her childish hobbies and dreams: when I'm rich and grown up, I'm going to wear party dresses every day...
"Here, darling," Irene says, drawing close to Benevenuta with her hands full of cream silk, a negligee; for a moment she wonders if it will be too big on her, before she remembers that, for all her seeming (deceptive, she thinks- no one who panics remembers to take the gun and ID of the aggressor she's just shot) fragility, Mélisande is actually slightly taller than Irene. Hm.
"Brunette suits you," she says, remembering her earlier resolution. "I'd have said earlier, but there wasn't exactly an appropriate moment. For the sake of scientific inquiry, you having more or less fun?"
...perhaps, the thinks, considering the fact that Mélisande never turned up on her doorstep blood-stained at three AM when she was blonde, maybe they do have more fun.
no subject
(The cream makes her feel slightly sacrificial. About to be reborn, maybe; she remembers the white dress she wore the last day before the first day, the way the knife in her chest felt like the first exhalation all week. Would she trust Irene to plunge a knife into her? She thinks I don't know instead of no and it's the ache of possibility.)
“I was going to call, you know. For coffee.”
The two statements aren't really separate thoughts.
no subject
And either with a new hairdo you've figured out what to do with an unconscious and wounded opponent, or you always knew.
The first time anyone died because of Irene, she cried- not out of guilt so much as not having any other reaction to this chain of events, the shock of how did things end up this way? The second time, she spent a long sleepless night fretting. And the third time, she was fine. Cold. Distant. These things take practice.
Not that Mélisande has killed anyone.
She thinks about that blood spatter.
Not that Mélisande says she has killed anyone.
But she says she was going to call. Is that true? Irene has no idea, but it's such a nice thought. "You were?" She watches the silk slide over Benevenuta's skin, struck by how beautiful she is, and how dishonest, and how both those facts play into each other. "I wish you had." Yes, well, that's not a lot of use. "I'd have said yes, of course. I suppose we can have coffee tomorrow."
No; that sounds stupid, over-optimistic, as if she thinks they can pick up again after tonight.
"...If we get up early," she amends dryly; I was joking.
She hadn't been, really, but it's a decent disguise.
no subject
It feels like the way they began, three years ago, when she'd said in distinctly learned English that you're beautiful, and I want to kiss you; I hope that is all right. Irene was the deep end and Benevenuta had jumped in both feet first and...then they hadn't made any promises, and they'd fallen out of touch, and she'd gone back to dating men who demand things of her because she forgets to be needed if she isn't told.
“I missed you,” she says, and it sounds like I'm going to miss you.
no subject
She drags herself away, to the bed, sitting down and holding out a hand. Come here. She thinks about how they must look; her in black, Mélisande in cream, and it would be better, from a purely aesthetic point of view, if Mélisande's hair were still blonde so that they could be dark and light- but then again, that particular bit of symbolism isn't so clear cut anymore, is it? Mélisande's more like Irene than she's been letting on. So perhaps it works.
It takes a special kind of person to think about their own life in terms of dramatic devices and staging. It's easiest that way, though. It makes it seem more romantic and less real.
"I missed you too."
no subject
“Is that the confession, Irene?” She stops at the side of the bed, lacing their fingers together and stepping between her knees, just close enough. “It's a good thing, I think, absolution is not your style or mine.”
no subject
--did she just offer to tell the truth? Whoops. That might be going a bit far.
"But not for absolution's sake, of course." And it's not. If she wants to reveal some part of herself it's part of some tactic or another- or it's showing off- or it's a last-ditch effort to connect in a way that isn't staged or planned.
no subject
...and that - that right there - was her confession. The knowing underneath that wry, intimate inquiry; the understanding. The sense-memory in the words of a thousand times she didn't know how to tell the truth not because the truth was such a terrible thing but because she wasn't in the habit, because her instincts disagreed with what she was trying to make herself do, because she was thinking damage control before she'd made the mess.
no subject
You too, then.
She almost wants to tell her to stop it, stop it because it isn't fair and no one gets to her, thank you very much, and most particularly no one shows up on her doorstep after three years and then manages to get to her in defiance of everything.
But it's apparently not true.
Then again, that's never stopped either of them.
"Oh, both of us," she says, faux-airy. It's very much like Mélisande's apologetic afterthoughts, but in reverse; if Mélisande apologises for being too intense, too strange, then Irene covers up for being momentarily far too human with a dismissive wryness, a wolfish grin, a reckless sort of expression which implies she lives a life far beyond human imagination and you, yes, you, just as you are, are invited. You lucky, lucky thing.
It's not as convincing as her acts usually are, so she relents slightly, licking her lips, reckless, ruthless smile turning rueful but still strangely defiant- I'm not sorry, I just wish I didn't have so many things to be so adamantly not sorry about.
"How did it go?" she breathes, and Benevenuta might feel her pulse hammering. "'You're beautiful and I want to kiss you.' You romantic."
She could make those last two words wry, joking, we're so above romance or at least I am, but she doesn't. Instead, her voice is tinged with wonder.
no subject
When she cups Irene's face in her hands and kisses her, it's so sweet that it almost feels like some kind of shared transgression - they shouldn't be able to, wretched with deceit and electric with danger, but they are, just this once. With the right players, it's kinkier than the leather or the crop, this last lone she loves me not petal of a kiss.
I wanted to be romantic about you, Irene.
There's nothing else to add to that. She kisses her again.
no subject
Irene's hands find her waist, giving up on one clutching her there, one travelling to her back, up her spine, long fingers spreading out on the cool, borrowed silk and feeling Benevenuta's warmth beneath it. By the second kiss, breathless as it is, she has found her feet, and decided that she will not go quietly, never.
They can be as romantic as they want to be. For now, in this suspended moment in between one escape and the next, a bar's rest before a frenzied crescendo, they can define themselves as whatever they want, not as whatever will keep them safe or whatever will prove to be advantageous. So: romance. How is this done, again? When you're not scripting it, that is, angling for something, when it's its own reward?
"Mélisande."
A fake name, muttered against the corner of her mouth, about three years out of place and spoken- why? An exclamation, a sigh, a lament, punctuation? Maybe it's just better than quiet.
no subject
Me. She can give her everything underneath that, for a while. The anatomy of meaning stripped bare of its definitions.
“And you,” and it's like a sigh, a promise-for-tonight.
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"Of course," she breathes.
And maybe even the bare bones of this particular affair will be too much. To be quite literal, she's already having a hard time breathing.
She presses her mouth to Benevenuta's jaw, her cheek against hers for a moment, wondering how they went from being estranged to this in the space of hours, if it's been hours- she can't tell. Nothing seems quite real, which suits them. She's almost waiting to wake up.
She could say do you promise but of course, the answer is no and it's probably best that way.
Her hand has found Mélisande's damp hair, now, instead of her waist, fingers raking over her scalp- and there's something so possessive in everything she does with her, something that chants mine, which is ironic because Irene could have nearly anybody she wanted, and...not her, not like she wants her.
But she'll try, though it's pointless, holding her ever closer, ever tighter. Mine. For a while. Long enough to say goodbye, if not long enough.
no subject
It hurt, unexpectedly, to have to leave behind even possibility. Her hands and mouth and heart here are dragging Irene into that hurt with her; want me, need me, lose me as I am losing you, remember the way we ended, remember the edge of my reality and not the girl we dreamed me being. The story she's telling, rewriting--
--this isn't what she planned when she came to the door, but it is exactly what she wanted, sinking down to Irene's bed with desire that includes but isn't limited to the way she wants to leave a mark on Irene that can't be mirrored on her own untouchable, unmarred skin. That includes but isn't limited to this moment at all, that is the fierce claiming of a hundred moments later when she'll be gone, living in Irene's memory the way she might not have if she hadn't come.
She is not going to be a fleeting regret over a fucking blog post a week from now. She'll be a fist around her heart and a hand on her mouth, that is how the story (ends).
(Ends. Does it?)