Of course, he would concern himself greatly with it later.
Once he pressed past the stall, Isaiah propped himself against the thin metal divider between stall doors to catch breath and reestablish himself. Pants were adjusted, hair combed through with bare nails, and a breath taken to dispel some of the residual euphoria that placated him so. He hardly noticed the girl that followed him out, lipstick smeared across her mouth in ridges, or the smile she flashed to him in passing. She stopped at the counter only long enough to reapply makeup and remedy the damage done to her electric blue pixie cut. Afterward she left without a word and the door fell shut behind her in such a clatter that he would’ve startled were it not for his condition.
Finally Isaiah pushed himself from his support and crossed the bathroom to examine the mess of himself in the mirror. Deep bruising mottled his neck and shoulder, around the area where his mesh undershirt was stretched to the point of rippling. The tank top of rivets and leather strips needed adjustment where it twisted up and around, but his pants retained their same painted-on state. The makeup worn sustained very little damage from the encounter, and he found no reason to fix it. His hair looked a rat’s nest in the back, but a few careful teases of practiced fingers righted the majority of the mess. A final glance confirmed his repaired appearance and
he drew breath to a ghost in the mirror.
She'd come in to use the facilities, but it had been the noises she'd heard next door that had stopped her from leaving.
People making out in the club bathroom was nothing new. It was practically expected in places like these. Sid had heard it, and participated in it, more times than she could remember. Everyone was just out for a good time, nothing wrong with that.
If she'd had dog ears they would have perked when the first raspy breaths started up, slender fingers on the tab that held her stall shut. She'd paused then, turning to press net covered shoulder blades to the metal wall and just enjoyed the audio show. There was just something exciting about observing other people in action... Known or unknown in your observation. She'd never deny how much listening to these two had affected her and when she heard the door to the next stall open, it was very tempting to see if either or both was up for a repeat performance.
One set of boots passed, followed by the click clack of stilettos, hinting her fellow club goers were probably male and female. A smile curled crooked over Sid's pierced lips and the latch grated as she turned it and slipped out of hiding.
"You two make a hot duet." She chirped as she flounced towards the sinks and mirrors, her hands braced on skirt-covered hips. "Don't suppose you're up for making it a trio....?"
The girl seemed to have disappeared back into the club, but the man had remained still to fuss with his dark, mussed hair. She had a moment's appreciation for a hottie with dark goth makeup before something clicked and she came to an abrupt halt, boots scuffing the dirty floor. Apprehension came crashing down as the DJ stared wide-eyed, trying to process the dark specter in the mirror. It wasn't like she didn't recognize him, but it just refused to compute that he would be here, of all places in the entire world. She'd left Isaiah Zähne firmly in New York.
"Ice?" She said, half hoping she was simply mistaken. Ice hadn't worn makeup when they were together, but she suspected he would have been ******** hot in it if he had.
The voice confirmed it, long before she said his name. Years spent living in a partnership with someone did not dull in the short span of a half-year; his memories of her remained miserably sharp to the point where every spoken word flayed skin. So there he bled for her, mascara brush in hand and poised not far from his eye, over the sink where all their tender little moments might drain into a pit of hair and clot and disease.
This doesn’t have to happen, he reminded himself. As he stood leaned over the counter, looking up at the ghost in the mirror, he knew that recognition wasn’t fully confirmed. You don’t have to do this. It’s easy enough to leave out those doors. To disappear in a crowd. You could leave as Scholomance. She won’t recognize you.
The fact is, you can leave behind an ugly past.
As he capped his mascara, he remembered a few scanty moments of dull mornings when he barely roused from falling asleep at his desk. Fingers trailed along his, meeting only for a faint kiss of pressure, and the moment froze like a mist over the window of memory. He knew, afterward, that a comment would follow on about charcoal stuck to his face, but the touch so often enunciated more than her words. The mascara found pocket along with the memory. His stomach soured with the icy wretchedness of knowing that he faced her now, two parties separate with careful measures of bloody distance between them.
“Don’t think she’s interested. Sorry.” A thin, enigmatic smile came to lips. His gaze cast down into the black pit of the sink temporarily and he wondered about the stained mascara tears clinging to the bowl. Were they his, or someone else’s?
Pushing away from the sink, he started for the door. His cheeks lacked a chill. They weren’t his.
He spoke and the voice was achingly familiar. She knew, now, what that feeling had been, before. She'd heard that voice for years; saying her name, lilting in tease, rough with pleasure. She'd recorded it hundreds of times and it wove through her music still like a bright red thread. She probably heard it in her dreams still, except she never remembered her dreams.
His face looked frozen and unreachable, and it sort of hurt. She remembered his smile, in contrast, and the raw want when she'd teased him too much. This wasn't an Ice that she knew, looking far too much like his handle. But what had she expected? She had ******** him over, she knew that, but six months couldn't overthrow five years.
The mascara was capped shut with sharp motions and then Ice was striding towards the door with those long legs of his. Legs she always had to push herself to match. Memories of times he'd purposefully stretched, just to force her to trot to catch up, flitted across her mind. Other times he slowed so they walked together, his thin arm across her shoulders. He'd radiated warmth all down that side like an unspoken invitation to cuddle against him. Sid jerked into motion without thinking, shoving herself into the doorway and slapping a hand to the wall.
"Woah, hey, wait!" She laughed uneasily, her smile echoing the sound. She tried for relaxed, it came out stilted. "What... What are you doing here, Ice? I thought you were in New York." I left you in New York.
Shifting her stance, gaunt shoulders dropping down and back, she gave him a look up and down, taking in the changes six months had wrought.
"You, ah... You look good. Wearing make-up now. Suits you." Small talk was horrible. She hated small talk.
She had come here to escape his ghost and wouldn't you know it? She'd found the real thing to haunt herself with.
Isaiah halted when Sidney rushed to cut him off. Dark eyes closed, he breathed a slow sigh reminiscent of the times they shared a bowl, of the times he chased the dragon. He looked strained, while the situation ate years into his features. Why are you doing this, he wanted to ask her. What are you gaining by stopping me now? You wanted this six months ago. Are you trying to apologize again? Are you pawning off your shitty feelings onto me, like you’ve done so many times before? I want to hate you for everything.
I want to hate you for all the good moments we shared.
“We don’t have to do this.” He sounded exasperated already, as he had every time he asked Sidney for just a little more money. It’s just this once became once a month, once a week. Once for every time the cotton ball dropped onto the spoon. Once for every time they spooned. “I could walk out that door and we wouldn’t see each other twice. This isn’t New York City, but we can still lose ourselves. Isaiah Zähne would only be a fleeting reminder to the rising star DJ. That’s what you are out there, to them, isn’t it? And each one of them gets more interesting under the blacklight - with their makeup smeared, with their panties between their ankles, with e tabs beating through your system like a bass line.”
Once for every time his legs cramped uncontrollably. “You could let me go, and we’d be waking dreams to each other.” He actually wanted to go to Scholomance in that instant. He vastly preferred the world of ubiquitous desolation and buried bones over twice remembering the count of hours lost between each other on a filthy carpet floor. He wanted the reminder of the smooth lines of jawbones over how her skin sometimes drew taut beneath his fingers - how drug abuse sometimes wore sores into her lips.
He looked to her then, instead of staring at every wretched spot on the floor. She still maintained that rainbow of color somehow, and he found that he’d rather be watching the menstrual stains dry on one of the toilet lids. She looked gaunt, but he didn’t remember caring so much about it. Bones jutted where they should’ve smoothed over. She lost curves to corners - the few she had, anyway. Sidney James was a ghost, in or out of the looking glass.
Once for every time he cried. “Sid, you’re dying.”
"Do what? What, I can't say hi to the guy I spent five years attached to the hip to? C'mon Ice..." She cajoled as she leaned on that lifted arm, trying to play off her startlement with tilted hips and arched back. Her practiced smile faltered as he went on, acting like they were some kind of pariahs to each other. Like paradoxes that couldn't exist in the same space.
"C'mon... We spent five years together, you can't stand me for five minutes? All that time and we can't be civil to each other? ********." Her eye skated to the ceiling as she brushed off the hurt she could see, way down in him. It echoed too much in her, so she chose to cast her attention to a more shallow place, play off like she couldn't read him like a book. Don't see it, it doesn't exist. "And don't tell me you don't like them like that as much as I do."
She cast a pointed look past him at the last stall before bringing magenta eyes back. Sid tried to meet his hazel gaze, but found she couldn't and she ended up watching his lips instead for that flash of metal in his mouth. He still had those piercings... She'd always loved those.
Her eyes rolled at his melodramatic statement and she ran her hand through her hair, puffing out the riot of color she so adored.
"Everyone is dying every day of their lives, Ice. I'm fine. Not that I guess it matters, but I'm being careful. I'm not stupid, ok? Who was it that had to sit in the waiting room while you were in intensive care, huh?" Okay, maybe that was a little bit of a shot, but his comment had stung. Why did he have to bring up that s**t anyway? They'd always had a handle on it, before he suddenly hadn't.
"Look, I just wanted to know what brought you to DC, ok? Girl can't be curious? I had a friend out here, so I moved in with him. DC is fresh territory. For the pawn business too, I assume."
”No, we can’t be civil to each other. Are you really after civil, Sid? Civil is what I am to acquaintances I’ve held onto for the past five years. Civil is what you are to the mailman when you’re expecting a package. Civil has nothing to do with the woman who was going to be my wife.” He blinked several times, and each time loosed a little eyeshadow to his cheekbones. He remembered that they called it black stardust from their resident grunge line. He bought it because he liked the name.
Isaiah tried to swallow down the vitriol that roused at her comments. He thought about the ice cream he ate after he was released from the hospital most recently. He considered the calorie content. He ruminated on the milkshakes, the cold drinks, the yogurt. He thought about how it smelled in his bathroom for weeks afterward. He thought about all the rolls of plastic he threw away while the usual Trash Squad chatty samaritans stood around the trash receptacles and judged him quietly. He thought about the hospital bill that came in the mail afterward.
And he thought about the voicemail still saved on his phone.
While he did not cry, he could not conjure a proper response. He watched her fuss with her hair while his nails curled against the inside pockets of his jacket and dug into his ribs. Whenever he saw her, he wanted to chase the dragon. He wanted to remember discovering heaven.
“You were never interested in the pawn business, Sid. Stop ******** around with small talk. Say what you need to say so we can quit chasing each other around our shitty past.”
Sid dropped her arm from the wall and crossed both beneath her small chest, putting up her defenses as he snapped at her. Okay so, stopping him had probably been a bad idea. She should have just let him go, pretended like he’d been someone else, but it had been too hard to see him again and not… say something. Anything.
She hadn’t been looking for a fight, but he seemed bound and determined to have one. She probably couldn’t really blame him, but that didn’t make it hurt less. Yeah, she had ******** up. But it wasn’t like she hadn’t had a good reason for it. She hadn’t been alone on that ******** sinking ship. She really didn’t want to fight about this… she hated fighting with him. She hated dealing with this bullshit. This was Ice, all over. Couldn’t let go of anything, ever. Always had to ******** get up in there and rip it open to show all the guts and gore of ********, she needed a smoke really bad. Or maybe something better. This kind of stress was exactly why she’d moved out of New York.
“I didn’t ******** want to say anything, God…” She groused as she pulled away, pressing a shoulder to the wall as her eyes narrowed. “I just… wanted to know how you were. Is that so god damn much to ask? Like, I can’t be concerned for you, even if we didn’t work out? Why do you have to ******** be like this… You don’t get your way and you turn into a ******** Drama Queen, like no one else can have any problems too. You brought up our shitty past, Ice. I thought maybe we could be, I don’t know, friendly at least, if we’re not going to be friends. For all that time we put into this. But, if you just want to ******** throw that away, fine.”
Sid pushed herself away from the wall and shoved past him, back towards the stalls. She knocked him with her shoulder on purpose, tugging the strap of her mesh bag over her head as she went. Inside, she dug out her little wooden case with its little metal tube. ******** it. She shouldn’t be smoking in here, but if she didn’t take the edge off… she was going to cry or punch him or something, and she really just… did not want to deal with ******** leave, Ice. Your turn this time, huh?” She tossed over her shoulder as she ground the one hitter into the pocket on the other side. Her motions slowed once she slid into the stall, marker damaged metal safely between her and her long-missing Ex. Who could go jump off a ******** bridge if he was going to be such a b***h.
Metal rasped as she spun the wheel on her lighter, calling up a flame that would help her ease the rough edges.
”I have to be like this because I’m ******** miserable.” He offered no resistance to her clip, as she pressed past him to one of the stalls. Leaning against the wall, he breathed a sigh and pressed thumb to the bridge of his nose. Fingers curled about the underside of his jaw. “You’re right.” It felt easy to accept, to acknowledge that he was the garbage she dumped six months ago. Certainly he hadn’t changed much.
He still pissed on every halfway decent chance he got.
He considered telling her that he found a condominium here, or where he worked now so she knew where to avoid. There came to mind the prospect that he tried to die and therefore became Scholomance. The screaming train of half-digested passengers demanded mention. And what good had come to his life since leaving New York? He adopted a cat. He traded his vices for something more legal. He hadn’t contracted AIDS yet.
in reality, Isaiah Zähne is not worth knowing. All the stories, the real ones, they’re the tales that get passed up at bars. The ones that lose interest when Nicki Minaj tells it real. No one wants to know that you got dumped because the pair of you drifted apart and you weren’t willing to let go of the ideas you had in your head. Interest isn’t about the sordid tales that coat your ratty past, but the unique and intriguing nuances that brought life and wonder to the mix. There’s no mirth to this anymore.
I’m starting to think that people have mental lifespans in addition to their physical ones. After so many years of this slogging nonsense, you just lose all taste for life anymore.
“I guess it is.” His tone lacked the bite he maintained before. Isaiah did not rebuke her for her vitriol. Instead, the rivethead pulled open the bathroom door quietly, with the only cue to his exit being the swell of volume to the latest EBM song. The domineering bass burst into the room, demanding attention drawn over the shuffle of footsteps that rejoined a thriving crowd.
Smoke curled up over the top of the filthy bathroom stall as Sid blew it between her lips. Her hair hung in her face, but she left it like a curtain between herself and harsh reality.
Outside the safety of the woman's bathroom stall, she heard the driving music rise in volume to rattle the tile with the bass line. It was that one EBM song she set up to signal the nearness of the end of this playlist. Her break would be up soon and then she'd have to be up on stage again, smiling for the writhing mass of humanity below, looking to her for a good time.
Maybe if she was lucky, it would be like he said and she'd never see Ice again. It wasn't that small of a city. The thought of that though... It bothered her and she hated that it did. She'd supposedly made a clean break, this s**t shouldn't still be such an issue.
Digging into her bag, she pulled out a tiny ziploc bag and a bottle of water. By the time she left the bathroom, there was no ability left in her to feel anything but good and she took the stage with a flourish, sending the lights into a spasming riot as she set a new, hard, driving beat through the speakers.
Whimsical Blue
for logging purposes~