Logs:Lost the Plot
| Lost the Plot | |
|---|---|
| Dramatis Personae | |
| In Absentia
|
2024-03-18 *(Desi --> Gaétan, Sera): There has to be a rational explanation for this |
| Location
<NYC> Gaétan and Nanami's Apartment / texts / Chez Tessier | |
<NYC> Gaétan and Nanami's Apartment The weekend has passed, but it's still feeling veeery much like Slacking Time in here. Maniac is playing on the television, and the coffee table is covered with an eclectic remains of -- is it breakfast? Lunch? Time has probably stopped being meaningful several drinks ago, but there's both Malaysian takeout cartons and a large pizza box tucked amid several bottles of liquor in various stages of drunk. Nanami, in soft pink pajama pants and a babydoll tee is upside down on the couch, not terribly drunk though she is working on it with a bottle of Koloa Kaua'i Coffee Rum. "I don't know if I'm too buzzed or not buzzed enough but I have lost the plot here." Sera is wedged into a corner of the couch in denim overalls and a soft green and gray long-sleeve raglan shirt with a book tucked into the crook of one elbow. Though she's not evidently been paying a great deal of attention to the show herself, she ventures an uncertain, "I think the Medication of the Week is making them hallucinate about...stealing a book that controls people's minds?" She's un-wedging herself now to pluck a bottle of -- what is that, anyway? -- from the table. "You're probably not buzzed enough. I'm not buzzed enough." Gaétan is on the floor, back propped against the base of the couch between the two girls. He has, for the moment, traded his bottle of Fireball for a tall glass of water. He's drinking neither, instead poking only slighlty uncoordinated at a container of bok choy with a pair of chopsticks. "Prometheus would have been way more fun if we got to be tripping balls all the time, that's what I'm getting." His head rolls back against the cushion, and he's looking blearily up between the other two rather than at either one. "You could pick something else if you want to watch this while more --" Sober? More drunk? He doesn't settle on either option, just repeating, "-- more." "Then we need fo make one other decision, how long it wen take us to decide on this." It doesn't sound like a very serious complaint. Nanami is reaching for her phone, presumably so the internet can provide some binge-watching assist. She doesn't even get as far as googling, though. She's just opened a new browser tab but before typing anything is staring at the list of news articles Google has suggested for her to read. Her eyes scrunch tight, then stare again. She opens up another browser tab, kind of testing, and finally, tentatively, clicks when this one provides the same articles. "Um..." Her head has turned to the side to regard the two Tessiers. "Guys, is this --" Her voice has gentled out of her usual coarser cadence, very much now the softer tones she uses liberally with teachers, Annoying White People, and jailhouse men she is trying to seduce into Favors. "When did you -- Is your brother -- this can't be right." Sera closes the book (A Tempest of Tea, by Hafsah Faizal) she'd probably not really been reading, either. "We could always just watch the first thing it says 'you might like'?" She flails one hand, vague and uncoordinated, in the direction of the screen, but the suggestion itself suggests she might have had one drink too many even as she unscrews the bottle of Firefly vodka. The change in Nanami's voice makes her sit up and lean over to squint at her phone. There's a full second's delay before her eyes go wide. She claps a hand over her mouth to stifle her cry of dismay, but that does nothing to dampen the horror and grief that spills from her. The wave of emotions slams into her companions like a physical force that crushes them down even as the ground falls away beneath them. "Mmm." Gaétan is waggling a chopstick in Sera's direction in agreement. He starts to reach toward the remote, but Nanami's shift of tone pulls his attention away. He wiggles further upright, craning over to peer at the phone as well. His chopsticks clatter from his hand and to the floor just a second before that wave hits, strong enough that his own suddenly reeling grief might well be lost in the tide. His eyes close, and he sinks lower against the floor. He gropes for his own phone but then rather than unlocking it just holds it tight. ---
--- It's not their mother or their brother who first greets the lamentation of Tessiers returning to the house. Instead, it's a pair of buff young men engaged in hauling the futon out of Lucien's bedroom. Elie is trailing them and the futon out into the hall, eye-catching in a figure-hugging black pencil dress and elegant black funeral hat with a birdcage veil. Despite the mourning clothes, warm smile lights her face as she spies her children. "{Oh, my loves,}" she's descending upon them in a faint haze of rosey pink pepper-y perfume to deposit a kiss on each of their cheeks in turn. "{I'm so glad you've come, it's been an utter chaos here. There's so much to deal with after a death and Matthieu has been having a difficult time deciding about where to donate Lucien's things, I'm sure you all will be able to think of something appropriate, no? You do know the city much better than I.}" Sera has only barely held herself together on the trip over, and at the sight of her mother (not really her mother but that's not important, is it?) she looks just about on the verge of bursting into tears. "{Mama!}" she cries in equal parts relief and renewed agitation. But even as her power slips her tenuous and alcohol-addled control again, the panicked confusion that had started to balloon out from her deflates and leaves a deep grief that she reels handily back in along with faint incipient embarrassment at her lapse. She lingers by Elie as though she would really like to throw her arms around the woman who definitely neither birthed nor raised nor really even made any effort to bond with her. Maybe she's getting too old for such an undignified display. "{Oh Mama, why didn't you tell us sooner?}" is merely plaintive, now, as she settles for leaning against Elie's side, sans glomming. Desi does break into a quiet spill of tears, but there's no messy undignified display here, either. She steps back to allow the movers room to pass, arms wrapping around herself in visible distress before drawing a deep breath and relaxing them again. "{Mom had a lot on her plate already,}" she chides Sera gently. "{But we could have been helping. Whyever didn't Matt--}" This breaks off into a sob, perhaps because she was genuinely overcome with grief and perhaps because she recognized almost too late she was on thin ice, but more likely both. Instead, she settles for, "{We ought to have been helping, and we will, I just...}" She watches the futon on its way to the door, then turns deliberately away. She curls one arm around Elie and the other around Gaétan, and doesn't actually sound all that incredulous when she murmurs, "{I can't believe he's gone.}" The disorientation and grief that Gaétan has been feeling wind higher into a deep fury when he sees the movers. In contrast to his sister he's immediately moving to block their path, eyes narrowing. As Elie swoops in the chaos begins to recede, leaving behind a far quieter hollow feeling. He moves out of the way, sinking briefly against Desi's side as his eyes follow the piece of furniture out the door. But he's pulling away after this with a small numb nod of acceptance -- who this is in response to his unclear. His shoulders sink, one hand bracing against the hallway console as his other drops, slow and deliberate, to remove his shoes. | |
