Logs:For I am ready to fall, and my pain is ever with me.
| For I am ready to fall, and my pain is ever with me. | |
|---|---|
| Dramatis Personae | |
| In Absentia | 2024-10-04 "{Why the fuck would you even tell me about this?}" |
| Location
<NYC> Porto - Astoria / <NYC> Ryan's Suite - Le Bonne Entente - Astoria | |
<NYC> Porto - Astoria This hip Mediterranean restaurant sits in the hull of what once was a tallship, long since grounded now and slotted here along the river with a spectacular view of the Manhattan skyline (still fuzzy with the scaffolding of its post-invasion regrowth.) The deck has been lushly planted into a patio garden, today glittering with elegant decor and luminous with the many stars who have turned up to this exclusive party. Does Ryan even know the starlet whose birthday it is today, unclear. Maybe he's been invited for the shock value, maybe for the progressive cred. He is right now in the middle of a small knot of Very Famous faces, brightly visible in a jaunty suit in metallic blue with a bold pink sheen from certain angles, its lapels wide and hems flared, an only slightly translucent but nevertheless form-fitting shirt underneath, and black dress boots that match the braces that his generous trouser cuffs cannot fully hide. He's leaning partially up against the ship's railing, partially up against one forearm crutch. There's a very bright-wide animation to his expression that is probably not entirely accountable to his company or the party -- he's spilling just a little bit of sharp-edged energy in frizzling fits and starts into the group around him. The story he is telling is punctuated with expansive gestures of the mostly-empty drink in his hand. "-- can back me up! I mean, we're a little bit banned from going back but, totally worth it." "Going back to that hotel --" one of his companions is asking, a little incredulous, but another cuts in with a laugh, "-- going back to Austria." Leo was definitely absolutely not invited to this party, but for some reason the poor beleaguered security at the door seem a little bit gunshy about keeping him out. He is not dressed for swank celebrity hobnobbing, a little more casual in a slim black sports jacket, colorblock button-up in shades of red, orange, and yellow, lightly distressed cigarette cut blue jeans, and black penny loafers. It's easy to track his path through the room by the conversations that are going silent around him; he's paying this little attention, just beelining towards Ryan. His head dips, small and apologetic as he cuts into the other man's conversation. "Apologies," he's offering more to Ryan's companions than Ryan, and though his gentle voice is very calm, to Ryan's senses it's heavy-fraught with an anxious grief, "I need to borrow --" His eyes lock steadily on Ryan. "{Lucien said I would find you. Here.} Can we. Do you have a minute?" Ryan glances across the room with a small smirk at the spreading awkward silences. He tosses back the rest of his drink, straightening up before Leo has properly reached them. "{He does tend to know. For you I got several.}" He sets his empty glass aside on a table so that he can pick his second crutch back up, peeling away from his group. A tight blanket of silence falls over them, shutting out the background noises of music and conversation and city and river rushing by. His own fierce jittery energy has only grown more intense for it, though. He's moved them off to a corner table by several lush bushes, his brows knitted tight. "{Boy, if you've just come here to give me bad news I'm sure everyone'd be just as dead when I got home.}" Leo is glancing around as he trails after Ryan -- his eyes stutter on one knot of people whose eyes have mostly also stuttered on him. "Is that --" He's been almost halfway distracted from the anxiety by a startled excitement but he does not finish this question. He does steal himself a small plate of excessively fancy hors d'oeuvre from a passing waiter because why not -- and brings it to sit at the table, pulling his chair in a little closer to Ryan's entirely unnecessarily, with this imposed Cone of Silence. "I don't -- know. It's news. {They aren't dead.}" He does not feel particularly thrilled about it. Ryan glances off in the direction Leo was looking. "{Yeah. He's a dick. Really hates freaks}," has an almost gleeful edge to it, "{I'll introduce you.}" His brows hike up. "{What the hell trouble they find this time?}" Leo bows his head, though from beneath his fringe of neat black hair he is stealing another quick peek across the patio. He pulls his eyes back, fixing on Ryan's hands, his own picking up the jittery energy to fidget with a napkin. "{Lucien is working on bringing them home. I think that -- is the important thing.} I am saying myself that is the important thing. {If you want to come back with me I can tell you more, I'm just not sure...}" He's glancing around the chic and crowded party a little uncertainly. "{This is maybe not the best...}" Ryan's eyes narrow. He's sitting up in his seat, and the small prickly jitters are pulling back firmly. There's a definite snapping heat in his voice to replace the missing empathic touch, sharp and irritable: "You don't have to walk on fucking eggshells around me, I've been holding it together fine since Jax --" Beneath their feet the deck/floor is rumbling juuust a little and Ryan looks down quick. Out at the crowd around them conspicuously trying to appear like they are Not Looking. He flushes. The brief soft classical trill that flutters around them carries a feeling both abashed and apologetic. "-- thanks. Let's go." Leo sits, quietly. He's taking slow small bites of his appetizer through this outburst, his expression very impassive. He sets the plate aside once Ryan -- and the rumbling -- both calm, and gets to his feet first before offering the other man his hand. "{Besides, you're going to be wanting a lot more booze.}" --- <NYC> Ryan's Suite - Le Bonne Entente - Astoria Ryan has just poured this glass of tequila but he is draining it entire, rubbing hard at his eyes with the backs of his knuckles. "What the fuck," he's saying, not for the first time. He's out on the balcony of his suite, leaning back against the balcony railing and glaring daggers up at the sky as if this will hasten the rescue process or at the least, maybe, direct a little extra hatred in an extradimensional direction. "Of course they get the insane Squid Games aliens, why not the aliens who watched too much Great British Bake-Off?" Leo is tucked along the railing beside Ryan. He's working far more slowly on his glass of wine. He's kept one hand on Ryan's side free with a vague nervous hovering that suggests his calculations about Ryan's alcohol consumption and spinal injury and proximity to the railing are not summing up to a comfortable total. He is at least trying not to be too jumpy about it, keeping his eyes mostly forward and only darting infrequent anxious looks in Ryan's direction. "I think," he muses, "if they got kidnapped and enslaved into cooking, they would still be kidnapped and enslaved." "Yeahsure but there's degrees of this shit, you really telling me if you had to choose between a nice cushy --" Ryan looks over at Leo here and rapidly shuts the fuck up. His head rolls back, his posture a little wobbly as his eye squeezes shut. "Just sounds like hell, man. Do they think..." He exhales slowly. His fingers are clenching at the empty glass. Easing. Clenching again. "{What the hell do we do? This is way out of my wheelhouse, I don't -- They're just -- out there? And I can't do shit? Why the fuck would you even tell me about this, like -- to do what. Just sit here and -- know --}" His voice has not been rising, exactly, but there's a quiet strain to it that suggests it's very much a struggle not to; under the low pained clench of his words there's a soft humming that thrums faint through Leo. It culminates with a shattering, the glass in his hand breaking into tiny shards and falling to the floor. He grimaces, flicking his hand in the air to rid it of most of the pieces of glass. "Fuck." A small, wan smile ghosts across Leo's face, his eyes a little wider and his soft heh of laughter thick with a discomfited queasiness. His shoulders ease when Ryan wisely reconsiders this question. He takes a small sip of his wine -- mostly performatively, it barely crosses his lips and he swirls slowly at the glass after, just watching the legs drip as the tirade predictably rises and predictably falls. The shattering of the glass does startle him, a sudden twitch of shoulders, a sudden hitch of breath. "Maybe..." he ventures, uncertain. "{Luci found them a while ago. Found where they were, but he couldn't -- reach them. He didn't want to tell you until there was some hope, and I --}" His next breath is shakier, and the exhaustion and guilt in his words are heavy. "{Kitty's there and Joshua's there and I just wanted someone who --}" Now he does take a longer swallow of his wine. "{I'm sorry. Maybe I should not have. Said. I hate it, too. Sometimes there is nothing.}" "He found them when --" Ryan is starting all over again, but he does at least catch himself this time before it can spin into any further bite. He flicks again at his hand, and brushes his palm lightly against the balcony railing. Squints a little blearily at it before brushing it there again and doing another tipsy inspection before satisfying himself that he is neither bleeding nor imminently about to be bleeding. He sinks back against the rail (wobbly) once more, and now his laugh, a little too sharp, spills over messy with stress and fading-cocaine-buzz and not-at-all-fading inebriation and anger and grief and a dizzy kind of hysteria. "Ain't that a bitch. All the power in the gotdamn world and -- fucking -- none of it." Ryan picks up one of his crutches, settling it carefully, though somehow the process of pulling away from the railing makes him look considerably less stable than he was before, teetering very unsteadily where he's standing now. "I'm glad you did. I mean, thank you. Can be -- miserable together." "{Yes. It's consistently disappointing how many situations there are where starting an apocalypse entirely fails to come in handy.}" Leo's eyes go wide, and he is stepping rapidly in to close the distance between himself and Ryan, his arm curling around the other man to steady him. "Only so miserable please. I think Luci is enough busy without you splattering all over his fancy hotel." "I have no idea how you do it," Ryan admits, low. "The number of days I want to burn the whole world down --" He leans harder against his crutch, his grip clenching down somewhat unnecessarily fiercely. He's regained his balance by the time he eases his grip on the crutch, but he does not pull away. He transfers a small amount of his leaning to Leo, his other arm lifting to curl around the other man tight. "Could be less miserable together, too." Leo's cheeks have darkened, and though Ryan has steadied, he is not letting go, either. Once again his heh is very quiet, and once again it comes with a hammerblow of feeling -- guiltsick pain, a fierce shiver of fear. "Maybe," he replies, so-light and so-gentle, a faint half-smile on his face and a rage clawing up through his softly amused voice, "I am just a kinder person than you." His fingers curl hard in against Ryan's back. He sets his wine glass aside and takes a slow breath, and then another. The third breath continues to do nothing at all to calm the wrenching he is feeling and he stops trying, just presses his mouth to Ryan's, hard. It's not very clear if there is less misery, in the low tremor of his breath (still stamped with guilt and pain) or the soft words he breaths out (written through plenty with anger in among the heady desire). "We can just be." | |
