The Negative Confessions
May. 21st, 2009 12:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
serindranaTitle: The Negative Confessions, pt. 1/9
Authors:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
serindrana, also known as skepticallittledarling
Series: Last Exile
Characters: Alex, Vincent, Sophia
Words: 3513
Notes: Modern-day AU, focusing on Sophia’s relationships with the two men in her life against the backdrop of family drama. Currently PG.
.I. I have not wrought evil.
Maybe it was her fault.
She had expected this to happen maybe thirty years down the road, if she were lucky. Maybe twenty, maybe ten, but certainly not this early. She wasn’t supposed to be sitting there, touching the little skin left uncovered by bandages and casts and grafts and burns, just out of college and already facing the potential loss of him - the man who had existed for so long only in what-ifs and dreams. They had come so very close to something strange and new and intoxicating yet, oddly for him, healthy. And now, now she had to sit in a hospital day in and day out, hoping he would wake up and hoping he would remember her when he did.
This was hell.
The flames were creeping higher.
.II. I have not caused anyone to go hungry.
It was too loud. It was too loud - but everything was too loud, he reminded himself, and he kept moving. There wasn't too much old, residual vomit on the floor and he took that to be a good sign, even if the music was too loud and his head hurt. There was even the scent of decent alcohol on the stale air, still filled with cigarette smoke even though that law was passed last year that promised they'd all have to stand outside in the cold, winter nights for their fixes. It was just the sort of smell that stayed with people, that stayed with things, clung to everything and never let go. He liked that sort of smell.
There was a lull in the noise, the new void filling quickly with conversations growing louder and more entangled the longer the music stayed quiet. Alex finally found a seat near the bar, ordered something - hard to remember what he ordered, since it always tended to slip out of him before he could give it conscious thought these days, but it was definitely something straight and suitably not girly - and sat back. The new band was setting up in the chaos of the first band packing up and leaving. Alex made out a white button-up shirt, curiously fastened high with an even stranger (and more pretentious) wing-tip collar. It made Vincent look like a butler or some other ground-kissing idiot (which he certainly could be at times). The carefully combed back hair didn't help either, Alex decided with a grunt.
He had come without much in the way of expectations except that this would be boring at best and horrendous at worst. At the very least, he knew Vincent, knew that Vincent was only really good at writing those popular science articles that he refused to admit that he enjoyed writing. And he knew, sadly, that these songs were not going to be about evolution or tidal forces on the moons of Saturn and that they were, in all likelihood, going to be about love. And love was the one thing Vincent had always completely fucked up at writing about.
Alex hoped the songs wouldn't be about love.
He barely noticed the girl up there with Vincent, some generic brunette with a penchant for fifties pin-up looks in a green dress trying her best to look like a lounge singer (and failing), until the music actually started (with a bit of a shudder and cough - it was obvious that the music was new and the band was a little rusty) and she opened her mouth and let smooth-flowing warm honey out. Vincent was on piano, accompanied by guitar and drums, but Alex was transfixed by her red painted lips sounding out sounds of a rich, low timbre with a slight southern edge that might have been fake, might have been real. The words came second to how that strange flavor of her voice worked its way into his chest and vibrated there, even when she didn't quite hit a note and it was obvious that she was good but not that good. But the lyrics were good, and so not Vincent's because nothing Vincent wrote about love was good. These words were poetic and married to one another in a way he didn't often see the English language joined anymore. There were hints of silly old love songs, but they were gilded with a layer of soft-spoken, shy brilliance. There was sadness there, metaphor and meaning under the words of confusion, the tales of being lost without a map or a star. There was everything that Vincent never had but he had - everything Alex was slowly losing. He sat forward in his seat, drink sitting forgotten and only half-empty beside him at the bar.
And oh god, but she was referencing poems he knew, going back to writers and pulling their styles into her songs, ignoring musical history and going straight for the literary. He had to keep from standing up when a line of pure poignant pain with that peculiar Sylvia Plath bite hit him just a little off-center. He finished his drink then because he wanted to, had to, because it met that off-center wound and throbbed with it, warmed it, patched it up as quickly as it could. It helped him ignore all but a few of those subtle references that arrived without fanfare and without pretension and blocked out completely the sway her hips had taken up in time with the music and the ululations of the back-up singers otherwise known as the band.
He had nearly extricated himself from her winding, embracing songs when another song started up without any trace of piano and without any trace of her - the Euterpean siren, both too ethereal and too horribly real - replaced instead with a more usual beat and the startlingly grating sound of Vincent attempting to sing.
Alex grudgingly admitted that he was as good as most people who sang in this little bar, café, hipster paradise, and ordered another drink to last him until the girl with chestnut hair and a delicate throat started to sing again.
"Good show?" Vincent asked, grinning as he rolled up the cuffs of that ridiculous shirt of his. Sophia shrugged, pulling on her coat in an attempt to hide the equally embarrassing (in her opinion) dress she'd been talked into wearing yet again.
"I think so. At least average," she responded as she fished her glasses case from her right pocket. "They all seemed to like the new songs."
"Your new songs." Vincent grunted, shrugged, put on his customary smile again. "They're wonderful - you deserve all the praise they get. I can’t say that I like how little sleep you’re getting writing them, but they’re definitely wonderful."
Sophia ignored the veiled censure. "I can't believe they asked for an encore." She shook her head, turning away to hide her blush and grab up her bag. “I don’t know why you had us go back out.”
He laughed, reached out to touch her elbow, pull her closer. She resisted a moment before giving way, turning to face him once more, trying to keep the lingering doubt from her face. She had practice. They had met about three years ago, her in her second semester of college, him a guest professor for one year, teaching a class that she happened to fall into. He had been fascinating, she had been duly fascinated. He had asked her out to dinner. She had- well, she hadn’t exactly said yes, but she’d made sure it wasn’t a date. It probably had been, looking back on it, because from then on they had been somewhat inseparable no matter her opinion on the matter.
She didn’t mind him - in fact, she might have loved him - but it was so strange being swept up into what had become an expected thing. Nine years difference had translated to somebody capable of taking care of her in the future, not into something strange, something unnerving, and her uncle (and even father, when he decided to talk to her about it) sat in approval of the whole affair. She might have loved him, but it was the nights where they had performed upon a brightly lit stage and she just couldn’t say that she was tired of singing when she could be writing things longer than a simple song, that were strange.
“There’s somebody I want you to meet,” he said, after a flatteringly silly and maybe endearing explanation of why she had to go back out and see that all those people really did love the way she put word to word. “He’s an old friend of mine - I invited him to the performance tonight, so he should still be lurking out by the bar, if I know him.”
She nodded, let him lead her not into the cool night air that she wished for (though it led to his car that smelled of him and of the future and of everything she was fairly sure she wanted to be but maybe not just yet) but into that stale smoke room she’d closed her eyes and sung out into. She couldn’t hear the fragments of sound out here. The smoke swallowed it up whole, left nothing but dingy walls and dimmed lights.
Vincent pressed through the not-quite-there crowds, smiling and thanking the praise of the sometimes fans that were lingering, hand on her hand pulling gently until they reached the bar. She looked up, refocused her eyes when they stopped moving, when Vincent started speaking again. “Alex,” he was saying, addressing a man who wasn’t really looking at them, who had lanky, almost oily black hair that hung down around his jaw- “Alex,” he was saying, “this is Sophia.” And Vincent was grinning his jocular grin that came from a world of never-go-wrong while Alex was turning his head slowly, mechanically, eyes hanging half-shut from lack of effort, skin yellow-cast and dark around the eyes.
He drank a lot, Sophia thought.
“Mm,” was what he said.
Vincent was looking between them with excited anxiousness and she turned on her convivial charm, holding out a hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet-” But she trailed off, eyes narrowing for a moment, lips pursing. Then they widened a little, all of them, and she turned an unflattering shade of red. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Rowe,” she murmured, suddenly scuffing her toe against the ground like she always used to do, hiding behind her uncle or her cousin or for a while, even her mother, when she was eight or less.
“Mm,” was what he said.
“... You know each other?” Vincent guessed, wiggling his way between them by sitting down on a bar stool, drawing Sophia’s eyes away from the floor and back to him. She reached forward and unbuttoned that ridiculous shirt one more button so it could almost pass for something normal.
“Yes,” she said, glancing only briefly at that man over there, with his hand around a glass of who-knew-what. “He’s published through the same company I work for.”
“You know both of us,” Alex murmured, looking only at Vincent and not at the serpentine, loose curls swinging over the back of Sophia’s coat. “That’s a rather obvious thing to miss.”
Vincent could only laugh sheepishly and shrug, looking between the two of them again, searching for the next lead in that would have a chance of working. “Yeah, well, I don’t keep track of who’s putting out your books-”
“One book in the last three years,” he corrected. “And you stopped reading them five years ago.”
Vincent, derailed again, could only laugh. He did that, Sophia reflected, whenever he couldn’t quite answer in words. He laughed. He laughed a lot. “I’ve just been busy. You know, article-writing, trying to get my novel published, playing in a band-” He stopped when Alex grunted and turned back to the bar proper, finishing off whatever number that glass was.
“Doesn’t matter.”
Sophia, moving next to Vincent, looked at Alex now that his face was turned. She had read his books, every one, even though the last one hadn’t been the best and he’d gone silent since, even when Mr. Ecklestein would yell at him for showing up again with nothing more than a few hastily written words, usually to the tune of Fuck you. And then Mr. Walker would poke his head into that frosted-glass-walled office and leave with Alex in tow at the promise of free booze.
He drank a lot.
“So, did you like the show?” Vincent was trying again, leaning one elbow on the bar and trying to catch his eyes. Alex raised his head again, but this time his eyes bypassed Vincent’s and went straight to Sophia’s lipstick. She couldn’t help but chew on her bottom lip in response.
“You shouldn’t be the one singing,” he said, glancing only briefly at Vincent. “She’s better. And she writes a hell of a lot better than you do.”
There was that unflattering shade of red again, which she hid by fishing in her bag for a hair clip. The curls were bothering her.
Vincent was laughing again, and she may have nudged him in the side to get him to stop as she straightened up, pulling her hair into a rope and fastening it as best she could in a loose bun. Alex was watching again, though his eyes were somewhat glassy and focused far away.
Vincent couldn’t find anything else to say.
“Thank you,” Sophia said, trying to finish that exchange, to move on to the next abortively short attempt. Vincent seemed to relax for it. He tried to take her hand. She stepped aside as if she hadn’t noticed at all.
“Ah, yeah- thanks. I’m glad you showed up at all, really.”
“Surprised I showed up at all.”
He may have exploded at all the corrections, but he managed to keep it in and stuffed down with a brief closing of his eyes and the pop of a neck joint as he turned his head a little. “Both, I guess. But I am happy, Alex. That okay with you?” It was the only bit of hurt, of lashing out that he let slip by, but it was hard to miss. Alex was smirking a little, while Sophia began toeing the ground again.
“Well, I came. Is it time to go yet?” Alex asked, stretching and only moving to push his glass back along the bar. “Have I given you your validating critique?”
“Time to go? Oh, yeah, I guess. Actually, though,” (he shot a glance at Sophia, as if asking her a question she had a chance of understanding) “we,” (there was that plural he was getting fond of using) “were wondering if you wanted to have dinner with us? We usually go out and get something after shows, and it’d be a bit of a waste for you not to get food out of us.”
“I assume you’re paying, then,” Alex said by way of acceptance, stepping down from his seat. He was taller than Vincent, over six feet by just a hair even though he stooped a little, shoulders bowed, eternally looking at the ground. He didn’t wait for them to start moving and they moved in startled quickness to catch up, Sophia trailing behind the two men. Vincent was explaining where they were going - some Italian place about four blocks down, but he had to get something from the car and would Sophia come with him for a moment? She shook her head, smiling and coming back into the conversation long enough to nod, acknowledging that he’d been addressing her for that split second.
The night air was as cool as she had wanted and she was grateful that the addition of Alex meant they were going to walk. Still, as Alex lingered by the door of the club and Vincent led the way back to his car, she could still smell those faint threads of never-go-wrong and future-to-be. She walked in her normal post-gig haze, still deafened by the music and the cheering and the singing, still overwhelmed by all the little things she would usually ignore. It took her a moment to register that Vincent was talking again, this time taking her hand and pulling her closer so he could whisper, as if the alcoholic on the other corner of the block would hear.
“What do you think of him?”
She shrugged. “He seems nice, if a bit... washed up.”
“Yeah, well- he’s had a lot of shit happen to him. He’s my best friend - has been since high school. Did you know that?”
“You’ve never mentioned him.”
“Yeah, well...”
Vincent had the car door open, was pretending to be searching for something. A quick glance told Sophia that Alex couldn’t care less to watch them.
“I want us all to be good friends. That’s why I asked him to dinner with us- hope you don’t mind.”
“Not at all.” She leaned against the side of the door, coming back to herself finally and looking back towards Alex at the corner. “Like I said, he seems nice, in a sarcastic kind of way. I don’t mind.”
“Good.” He rummaged around a moment longer before sighing, going still. “But there’s something I’m going to have to tell him that might piss him off.”
“Can it wait? I’d rather have a decent dinner.”
“I guess it could, but given that it has to do with you-” He was standing safely outside of the car now, so she slammed the door shut, rolling her eyes.
“Well, are you going to tell me what this terrible thing is about me? Vincent, we talked about this last week - you and the making plans for me and deciding things without asking.” We aren’t dating.
He looked down, ashamed. “I know- I’m sorry. It’s just that dealing with Alex- well-”
“Tell me what it is about me that he’s going to hate.” She tapped her foot. He watched it for a moment before standing up straight and clearing his throat.
“It’s just the fact that you’re Marius’s niece. That’s all- there’s history there.”
“And why do you need to tell him tonight?” Vincent almost seemed relieved that the faint note of authority had come back into her voice again. She always lost that note when she sang.
“Well, it’s complicated.” At her exasperated sigh, he glanced at Alex, then back at her. “You remember how Euris got engaged straight out of high school and how Marius didn’t approve from the start?” She nodded, must have nodded, though Euris’s name always made her heart sink and her eyes darken. “Yeah, well, he’s the boyfriend. And I was the friend that was sometimes around, which is why Marius knows me.”
“That explains a lot,” she murmured, but her mind was too busy putting pieces together to really respond otherwise. Alex and Euris, Alex, the quiet, sad-looking teenager whom she met that day when she went to go congratulate her cousin. Alex, who was kicked out of Euris’s hospital room by Marius after the accident happened because he had made it and Euris probably wouldn’t. He had cried out in the hallway for half an hour. The bandage over his head and eye had gotten wet. She had watched him from inside the room, peeking around the corner because at nine years old she couldn’t really understand what was happening except that her cousin was gone. Euris with her long hair and her sweet face and her stories of monsters and pirates. And then she’d been taken away by her father, who walked next to a pale woman with pale hair who smelled of roses and came by the house for the next few months until Sophia had screamed at her to leave. And somehow, somehow all of this came flooding back, making her slump back against the car and making Vincent take her arm, then her waist, and she didn’t say a thing about it in protest.
They waited until her head cleared, even though Alex was still waiting by the corner. Vincent took her hands when she could stand again. She shook her head, telling herself to keep it away until later. And she said, quietly, “Why tonight?”
“Because he should know that you’re her cousin. It’ll matter to him, and I’d rather he find out now instead of ten years down the line.”
His logic should have made sense, promised it would in time, but she shook her head. “No,” she said, “he doesn’t need to know tonight. Tell him tomorrow. Tell him it slipped your mind. But don’t tell him while I’m here, because even I can’t think about it now.”
Vincent watched her, following the line of her nose to the sad, downcast lids of her eyes. He nodded after a long moment, beginning to move back towards the club, towards Alex. “It can wait until tomorrow.”
Authors:
serindrana, also known as skepticallittledarlingSeries: Last Exile
Characters: Alex, Vincent, Sophia
Words: 3513
Notes: Modern-day AU, focusing on Sophia’s relationships with the two men in her life against the backdrop of family drama. Currently PG.
Maybe it was her fault.
She had expected this to happen maybe thirty years down the road, if she were lucky. Maybe twenty, maybe ten, but certainly not this early. She wasn’t supposed to be sitting there, touching the little skin left uncovered by bandages and casts and grafts and burns, just out of college and already facing the potential loss of him - the man who had existed for so long only in what-ifs and dreams. They had come so very close to something strange and new and intoxicating yet, oddly for him, healthy. And now, now she had to sit in a hospital day in and day out, hoping he would wake up and hoping he would remember her when he did.
This was hell.
The flames were creeping higher.
It was too loud. It was too loud - but everything was too loud, he reminded himself, and he kept moving. There wasn't too much old, residual vomit on the floor and he took that to be a good sign, even if the music was too loud and his head hurt. There was even the scent of decent alcohol on the stale air, still filled with cigarette smoke even though that law was passed last year that promised they'd all have to stand outside in the cold, winter nights for their fixes. It was just the sort of smell that stayed with people, that stayed with things, clung to everything and never let go. He liked that sort of smell.
There was a lull in the noise, the new void filling quickly with conversations growing louder and more entangled the longer the music stayed quiet. Alex finally found a seat near the bar, ordered something - hard to remember what he ordered, since it always tended to slip out of him before he could give it conscious thought these days, but it was definitely something straight and suitably not girly - and sat back. The new band was setting up in the chaos of the first band packing up and leaving. Alex made out a white button-up shirt, curiously fastened high with an even stranger (and more pretentious) wing-tip collar. It made Vincent look like a butler or some other ground-kissing idiot (which he certainly could be at times). The carefully combed back hair didn't help either, Alex decided with a grunt.
He had come without much in the way of expectations except that this would be boring at best and horrendous at worst. At the very least, he knew Vincent, knew that Vincent was only really good at writing those popular science articles that he refused to admit that he enjoyed writing. And he knew, sadly, that these songs were not going to be about evolution or tidal forces on the moons of Saturn and that they were, in all likelihood, going to be about love. And love was the one thing Vincent had always completely fucked up at writing about.
Alex hoped the songs wouldn't be about love.
He barely noticed the girl up there with Vincent, some generic brunette with a penchant for fifties pin-up looks in a green dress trying her best to look like a lounge singer (and failing), until the music actually started (with a bit of a shudder and cough - it was obvious that the music was new and the band was a little rusty) and she opened her mouth and let smooth-flowing warm honey out. Vincent was on piano, accompanied by guitar and drums, but Alex was transfixed by her red painted lips sounding out sounds of a rich, low timbre with a slight southern edge that might have been fake, might have been real. The words came second to how that strange flavor of her voice worked its way into his chest and vibrated there, even when she didn't quite hit a note and it was obvious that she was good but not that good. But the lyrics were good, and so not Vincent's because nothing Vincent wrote about love was good. These words were poetic and married to one another in a way he didn't often see the English language joined anymore. There were hints of silly old love songs, but they were gilded with a layer of soft-spoken, shy brilliance. There was sadness there, metaphor and meaning under the words of confusion, the tales of being lost without a map or a star. There was everything that Vincent never had but he had - everything Alex was slowly losing. He sat forward in his seat, drink sitting forgotten and only half-empty beside him at the bar.
And oh god, but she was referencing poems he knew, going back to writers and pulling their styles into her songs, ignoring musical history and going straight for the literary. He had to keep from standing up when a line of pure poignant pain with that peculiar Sylvia Plath bite hit him just a little off-center. He finished his drink then because he wanted to, had to, because it met that off-center wound and throbbed with it, warmed it, patched it up as quickly as it could. It helped him ignore all but a few of those subtle references that arrived without fanfare and without pretension and blocked out completely the sway her hips had taken up in time with the music and the ululations of the back-up singers otherwise known as the band.
He had nearly extricated himself from her winding, embracing songs when another song started up without any trace of piano and without any trace of her - the Euterpean siren, both too ethereal and too horribly real - replaced instead with a more usual beat and the startlingly grating sound of Vincent attempting to sing.
Alex grudgingly admitted that he was as good as most people who sang in this little bar, café, hipster paradise, and ordered another drink to last him until the girl with chestnut hair and a delicate throat started to sing again.
"Good show?" Vincent asked, grinning as he rolled up the cuffs of that ridiculous shirt of his. Sophia shrugged, pulling on her coat in an attempt to hide the equally embarrassing (in her opinion) dress she'd been talked into wearing yet again.
"I think so. At least average," she responded as she fished her glasses case from her right pocket. "They all seemed to like the new songs."
"Your new songs." Vincent grunted, shrugged, put on his customary smile again. "They're wonderful - you deserve all the praise they get. I can’t say that I like how little sleep you’re getting writing them, but they’re definitely wonderful."
Sophia ignored the veiled censure. "I can't believe they asked for an encore." She shook her head, turning away to hide her blush and grab up her bag. “I don’t know why you had us go back out.”
He laughed, reached out to touch her elbow, pull her closer. She resisted a moment before giving way, turning to face him once more, trying to keep the lingering doubt from her face. She had practice. They had met about three years ago, her in her second semester of college, him a guest professor for one year, teaching a class that she happened to fall into. He had been fascinating, she had been duly fascinated. He had asked her out to dinner. She had- well, she hadn’t exactly said yes, but she’d made sure it wasn’t a date. It probably had been, looking back on it, because from then on they had been somewhat inseparable no matter her opinion on the matter.
She didn’t mind him - in fact, she might have loved him - but it was so strange being swept up into what had become an expected thing. Nine years difference had translated to somebody capable of taking care of her in the future, not into something strange, something unnerving, and her uncle (and even father, when he decided to talk to her about it) sat in approval of the whole affair. She might have loved him, but it was the nights where they had performed upon a brightly lit stage and she just couldn’t say that she was tired of singing when she could be writing things longer than a simple song, that were strange.
“There’s somebody I want you to meet,” he said, after a flatteringly silly and maybe endearing explanation of why she had to go back out and see that all those people really did love the way she put word to word. “He’s an old friend of mine - I invited him to the performance tonight, so he should still be lurking out by the bar, if I know him.”
She nodded, let him lead her not into the cool night air that she wished for (though it led to his car that smelled of him and of the future and of everything she was fairly sure she wanted to be but maybe not just yet) but into that stale smoke room she’d closed her eyes and sung out into. She couldn’t hear the fragments of sound out here. The smoke swallowed it up whole, left nothing but dingy walls and dimmed lights.
Vincent pressed through the not-quite-there crowds, smiling and thanking the praise of the sometimes fans that were lingering, hand on her hand pulling gently until they reached the bar. She looked up, refocused her eyes when they stopped moving, when Vincent started speaking again. “Alex,” he was saying, addressing a man who wasn’t really looking at them, who had lanky, almost oily black hair that hung down around his jaw- “Alex,” he was saying, “this is Sophia.” And Vincent was grinning his jocular grin that came from a world of never-go-wrong while Alex was turning his head slowly, mechanically, eyes hanging half-shut from lack of effort, skin yellow-cast and dark around the eyes.
He drank a lot, Sophia thought.
“Mm,” was what he said.
Vincent was looking between them with excited anxiousness and she turned on her convivial charm, holding out a hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet-” But she trailed off, eyes narrowing for a moment, lips pursing. Then they widened a little, all of them, and she turned an unflattering shade of red. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Rowe,” she murmured, suddenly scuffing her toe against the ground like she always used to do, hiding behind her uncle or her cousin or for a while, even her mother, when she was eight or less.
“Mm,” was what he said.
“... You know each other?” Vincent guessed, wiggling his way between them by sitting down on a bar stool, drawing Sophia’s eyes away from the floor and back to him. She reached forward and unbuttoned that ridiculous shirt one more button so it could almost pass for something normal.
“Yes,” she said, glancing only briefly at that man over there, with his hand around a glass of who-knew-what. “He’s published through the same company I work for.”
“You know both of us,” Alex murmured, looking only at Vincent and not at the serpentine, loose curls swinging over the back of Sophia’s coat. “That’s a rather obvious thing to miss.”
Vincent could only laugh sheepishly and shrug, looking between the two of them again, searching for the next lead in that would have a chance of working. “Yeah, well, I don’t keep track of who’s putting out your books-”
“One book in the last three years,” he corrected. “And you stopped reading them five years ago.”
Vincent, derailed again, could only laugh. He did that, Sophia reflected, whenever he couldn’t quite answer in words. He laughed. He laughed a lot. “I’ve just been busy. You know, article-writing, trying to get my novel published, playing in a band-” He stopped when Alex grunted and turned back to the bar proper, finishing off whatever number that glass was.
“Doesn’t matter.”
Sophia, moving next to Vincent, looked at Alex now that his face was turned. She had read his books, every one, even though the last one hadn’t been the best and he’d gone silent since, even when Mr. Ecklestein would yell at him for showing up again with nothing more than a few hastily written words, usually to the tune of Fuck you. And then Mr. Walker would poke his head into that frosted-glass-walled office and leave with Alex in tow at the promise of free booze.
He drank a lot.
“So, did you like the show?” Vincent was trying again, leaning one elbow on the bar and trying to catch his eyes. Alex raised his head again, but this time his eyes bypassed Vincent’s and went straight to Sophia’s lipstick. She couldn’t help but chew on her bottom lip in response.
“You shouldn’t be the one singing,” he said, glancing only briefly at Vincent. “She’s better. And she writes a hell of a lot better than you do.”
There was that unflattering shade of red again, which she hid by fishing in her bag for a hair clip. The curls were bothering her.
Vincent was laughing again, and she may have nudged him in the side to get him to stop as she straightened up, pulling her hair into a rope and fastening it as best she could in a loose bun. Alex was watching again, though his eyes were somewhat glassy and focused far away.
Vincent couldn’t find anything else to say.
“Thank you,” Sophia said, trying to finish that exchange, to move on to the next abortively short attempt. Vincent seemed to relax for it. He tried to take her hand. She stepped aside as if she hadn’t noticed at all.
“Ah, yeah- thanks. I’m glad you showed up at all, really.”
“Surprised I showed up at all.”
He may have exploded at all the corrections, but he managed to keep it in and stuffed down with a brief closing of his eyes and the pop of a neck joint as he turned his head a little. “Both, I guess. But I am happy, Alex. That okay with you?” It was the only bit of hurt, of lashing out that he let slip by, but it was hard to miss. Alex was smirking a little, while Sophia began toeing the ground again.
“Well, I came. Is it time to go yet?” Alex asked, stretching and only moving to push his glass back along the bar. “Have I given you your validating critique?”
“Time to go? Oh, yeah, I guess. Actually, though,” (he shot a glance at Sophia, as if asking her a question she had a chance of understanding) “we,” (there was that plural he was getting fond of using) “were wondering if you wanted to have dinner with us? We usually go out and get something after shows, and it’d be a bit of a waste for you not to get food out of us.”
“I assume you’re paying, then,” Alex said by way of acceptance, stepping down from his seat. He was taller than Vincent, over six feet by just a hair even though he stooped a little, shoulders bowed, eternally looking at the ground. He didn’t wait for them to start moving and they moved in startled quickness to catch up, Sophia trailing behind the two men. Vincent was explaining where they were going - some Italian place about four blocks down, but he had to get something from the car and would Sophia come with him for a moment? She shook her head, smiling and coming back into the conversation long enough to nod, acknowledging that he’d been addressing her for that split second.
The night air was as cool as she had wanted and she was grateful that the addition of Alex meant they were going to walk. Still, as Alex lingered by the door of the club and Vincent led the way back to his car, she could still smell those faint threads of never-go-wrong and future-to-be. She walked in her normal post-gig haze, still deafened by the music and the cheering and the singing, still overwhelmed by all the little things she would usually ignore. It took her a moment to register that Vincent was talking again, this time taking her hand and pulling her closer so he could whisper, as if the alcoholic on the other corner of the block would hear.
“What do you think of him?”
She shrugged. “He seems nice, if a bit... washed up.”
“Yeah, well- he’s had a lot of shit happen to him. He’s my best friend - has been since high school. Did you know that?”
“You’ve never mentioned him.”
“Yeah, well...”
Vincent had the car door open, was pretending to be searching for something. A quick glance told Sophia that Alex couldn’t care less to watch them.
“I want us all to be good friends. That’s why I asked him to dinner with us- hope you don’t mind.”
“Not at all.” She leaned against the side of the door, coming back to herself finally and looking back towards Alex at the corner. “Like I said, he seems nice, in a sarcastic kind of way. I don’t mind.”
“Good.” He rummaged around a moment longer before sighing, going still. “But there’s something I’m going to have to tell him that might piss him off.”
“Can it wait? I’d rather have a decent dinner.”
“I guess it could, but given that it has to do with you-” He was standing safely outside of the car now, so she slammed the door shut, rolling her eyes.
“Well, are you going to tell me what this terrible thing is about me? Vincent, we talked about this last week - you and the making plans for me and deciding things without asking.” We aren’t dating.
He looked down, ashamed. “I know- I’m sorry. It’s just that dealing with Alex- well-”
“Tell me what it is about me that he’s going to hate.” She tapped her foot. He watched it for a moment before standing up straight and clearing his throat.
“It’s just the fact that you’re Marius’s niece. That’s all- there’s history there.”
“And why do you need to tell him tonight?” Vincent almost seemed relieved that the faint note of authority had come back into her voice again. She always lost that note when she sang.
“Well, it’s complicated.” At her exasperated sigh, he glanced at Alex, then back at her. “You remember how Euris got engaged straight out of high school and how Marius didn’t approve from the start?” She nodded, must have nodded, though Euris’s name always made her heart sink and her eyes darken. “Yeah, well, he’s the boyfriend. And I was the friend that was sometimes around, which is why Marius knows me.”
“That explains a lot,” she murmured, but her mind was too busy putting pieces together to really respond otherwise. Alex and Euris, Alex, the quiet, sad-looking teenager whom she met that day when she went to go congratulate her cousin. Alex, who was kicked out of Euris’s hospital room by Marius after the accident happened because he had made it and Euris probably wouldn’t. He had cried out in the hallway for half an hour. The bandage over his head and eye had gotten wet. She had watched him from inside the room, peeking around the corner because at nine years old she couldn’t really understand what was happening except that her cousin was gone. Euris with her long hair and her sweet face and her stories of monsters and pirates. And then she’d been taken away by her father, who walked next to a pale woman with pale hair who smelled of roses and came by the house for the next few months until Sophia had screamed at her to leave. And somehow, somehow all of this came flooding back, making her slump back against the car and making Vincent take her arm, then her waist, and she didn’t say a thing about it in protest.
They waited until her head cleared, even though Alex was still waiting by the corner. Vincent took her hands when she could stand again. She shook her head, telling herself to keep it away until later. And she said, quietly, “Why tonight?”
“Because he should know that you’re her cousin. It’ll matter to him, and I’d rather he find out now instead of ten years down the line.”
His logic should have made sense, promised it would in time, but she shook her head. “No,” she said, “he doesn’t need to know tonight. Tell him tomorrow. Tell him it slipped your mind. But don’t tell him while I’m here, because even I can’t think about it now.”
Vincent watched her, following the line of her nose to the sad, downcast lids of her eyes. He nodded after a long moment, beginning to move back towards the club, towards Alex. “It can wait until tomorrow.”
