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 Posted: Sat Apr 09, 2016 12:40 pm
Gwen, his now-girlfriend, his apparent fellow knight, lay in the hospital hooked up to a variety of beeping and whirring machines. Nurses woke her at intervals, he knew, for vitals and assessment of pain levels. Slowly she would grow greasy, a feeling Isaiah loathed endlessly, as she filled herself with bland hospital food. Chicken nuggets in the shape of dinosaurs, left over from the children's hospital. Mac and cheese complimented by aspartame-filled iced tea. Burgers made with all lean meat on impressively dry buns. Each of these meals were accompanied by sanitized, disinfected trays that smelled faintly of bathroom cleaner.
He knew where she was, yet she never texted him. Gwen may not yet be awake, perhaps still reeling from the amnesia and surgery that would've undoubtedly taken place. Exploratory, if not corrective of the damage done by the kris. His phone sat silently as he waited for the call, the heads up that informed Isaiah of Gwen's standing. It felt, somehow, far worse to endure the midmorning moments with Scholomance's information. Gwen was in the hospital, but Isaiah didn't know.
He tried to imagine her shopping. He tried to imagine her in a floral sundress, her hair down in loose pleats of braid, perhaps tied at the end with a cyan hairband that might compliment her eyes. Shoes with chunky heels, he imagined on her, like those bohemian woven ones with the canvas strips and open toes. He imagined she might be out shopping to restock their pantry of their slowly dwindling supply. He hadn't eaten much, and neither had she - it seemed they both grew busy with the second lives they kept from each other.
But there was no escaping the ruminations - not in imaginings, not in drawings, not in reminiscing over he and Kam's indulgences in one another. The carnal half-finished sketches sprawled over the coffee table to no relief of his anxiety.
Finally he reached for his phone and touched the familiar contact. He held it to ear and awaited the series of garbled rings. When it clicked, his voice sounded strained, but amiable. "Sid? Do you have a minute? I need a favor."
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Posted: Sun Apr 10, 2016 10:59 am
The voice on the other end of the line was a surprise, but a pleasant one. "Ice! Hey!" Sid chirped as she tucked her phone between her shoulder and her ear. "Yeah, sure. What's up?" The woman who's arm she'd been clinging to looked put out at having her date on a phone call with someone else. The brunette frowned as one stiletto foot began to bounce as they waiting in line for the Dolly, a fancy new club downtown Sid had found and wanted to try. The DJ ignored the show of temper and squeezed the arm she held, leaning into the taller woman. Things had been looking decidedly rosey with Ice since that house party, save for that night she'd found him with the red-head, Gwen. It was promising, to have him calling her and she found herself almost pitifully excited to hear his voice. He hadn't completely forgotten her for his new arm candy... and that was pleasing. Sid scuffed her boot against the ground, jiggling lightly in place to try and work up some body heat that was quickly lose through the short skirt and cropped top that was her usual ensemble.
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Posted: Fri May 06, 2016 1:33 am
Once Ice heard her voice, he breathed a sigh of relief and resignation. Perhaps those two descriptors weren't enough to identify all the emotions loosed with that single shaken breath, but he didn't care to identify all of them. instead he closed his eyes and cleared his throat.
The sun seemed too bright through the slatted windows. "I know it's been a while since we've talked about any of this. You don't have to do it if you don't want to, but... I need you to score for me. I can front you the money. Keep whatever's left over. Just get me a teener and some fresh gear. Get it sterile if you can. Think you can do that for me? I'll owe you big."
He knew where this road led. He knew it always ended in the same blackened abyss that he found himself in when he woke in the hospital. He knew it ended with tethers tied to his heart, his shoulders, his ribs. He knew it ended in a small, tinny voice on the other line singing a tired, old song. It ended in tears and heartbreak.
But was that any worse than now?
"Please, Sid. Maybe it'll be like old times." He hated using the phrase, since it was so much a manipulative play, but he knew that side of himself would soon grow numb for it.
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Posted: Sat May 07, 2016 12:30 am
She heard him sigh and her curiosity perked up, wondering.
I need you to score for me.
The DJ stilled in her bouncing, her arm loosening it's grip on the woman beside her as the smile slipped from her face to be replaced with surprise and confusion.
Ice had given up chasing the dragon months ago... a year or more maybe? He'd stood strong while Sidney herself had collapsed under the weight of the pain and stress that came with withdrawal and the removal of the only coping mechanism she knew how to use to deal with life in general. She'd left, because he wasn't her Ice any more, not while he was clean...
And after all this time, out of no where... I need you to score for me.
"W-what?" She stuttered softly. Already, she had a name in the back of her mind, a guy she knew had all the things Ice was asking for. She had his number in her phone, the phone she had in her hand that spilled Ice's familiar voice in her ear asking familiar things. "I thought you didn't do that any more..."
She remembered, fleetingly, what had happened last time. The terror, the pain, the guilt and regret...
Please, Sid.
"S-sure! Sure." She burst out before she swallowed thickly, her heart beating too fast and in her throat. Hope wound it's way around her heart and squeezed, making her chest ache with want, with need. "When do you want it? I can bring it over."
He was going to be her Ice again. All the time, all the distance and the pain and the want... None of it mattered in the least to her, right at that moment. He was going to be her Ice again and everything was going to be right. The way it was supposed to be.
Her date was completely forgotten as she hung on the voice coming from her phone, her eyes over-bright and staring at nothing.
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Posted: Mon May 09, 2016 5:45 pm
She sounded shocked, and Ice couldn’t blame her. „It wasn’t my choice,“ he replied cryptically. He needn’t drag her down with it. Sidney was famous to him as a perpetual font of lightheartedness, and he wanted to keep her that way. Even in the face of adversity, she maneuvered so easily, so delicately through pain and heartache and heaviness with that same foolhardy smile and joking manner that he knew so well. Nothing touched her, and he didn’t want anything to try.
Upon hearing her response to his ask, his stomach tightened into its own gnawing knot, and a sigh of relief found its way over the phone. His mouth tasted like bile. He promised himself against this, once. „Thanks,“ he answered carefully. „I owe you.“
I owe you and I owe myself.
„Sooner is better. I mean, if you’re in the middle of something…“ Ice trailed off then, for as much as he didn’t want to be a burden, he thought that Sidney’s affairs at current mattered less to him than getting what he needed. He took in a breath and shifted on the barstool, his foot darting side-to-side restlessly. Something in his legs itched deep in the muscles, like the crawl off fast-twitch fibers against one another in a keening almost-pain. „If you’re in the middle of something, I can pay to have it expedited. Convenience fee, you know?“ He was long familiar with the logic, and even as a stretch of many months separated him from old affairs like a buffer, all the tricks and loopholes came back to him with alarming clarity and speed.
It’s like I never left. He chewed the back of his lower lip in thought, in balancing one act against another and counting the total of it. Mental calculations stacked morality and trust and deception was subtracted against people in simple arithmetic. Relationships boiled down into their barest forms in interpersonal acrobatics. „Can you meet me here in a couple hours? I’ll give you the address.“
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Posted: Sun May 22, 2016 5:40 pm
Wasn't his choice? What was that supposed to mean?Not that it mattered, in the long run. There was no way she was going to tell him No. "Hey, what are friends and ex-fiances for?" Sid laughed, trying to shrug off some of the flutters that threatened to cramp up her stomach with excitement and nerves. "Oh! No, no I'm not doing anything I can't get out of, its fine." The woman beside her glared daggers as Sid pulled her arm free, already showing signs of working herself up into a fine rage. The DJ gave her an apologetic grimace, but her heart wasn't really in it. Sorry sweet heart, no one comes before Ice. Not even all these months later. Sid made no comment about a 'convenience fee', not even to wave it off. In all honesty, she was not so well off she couldn't benefit from a bit of extra in her pocket, and if Ice was willing to pay it... well, ********, she wasn't going to say no to that. "Yeah, I can meet you, just text me the place. I'll have everything when I get there." She said into the phone before she pressed it to her shoulder to muffle it. "Look, family emergency okay? Jesus christ, unknot your panties." Sid said to her date, offering her a playful smile. "I'll take you out next week to make it up to you, ok? My treat." "Sid..." The woman hissed. "This is an exclusive club, I had to pull strings to get us in here..." "I know, and I'm sorry! You go, enjoy! I'll just have to miss out, but family calls, you know? I will make it up to you, I promise!" The DJ drew a cross over her chest before she turned and fled, to the indignant huffing behind her. She wasn't too torn up about it really... what was one hot lay compared to Ice? "I'll see you in a few hours, ok?" She said into the phone before she hung up, already trotting to the corner to flat down a cab.
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Posted: Tue Aug 23, 2016 1:25 pm
“Sometimes people change, Sid. Sometimes they only think they do.“ With the phone pinched between ear and shoulder, he forced himself to contemplate exchange locations. Closing his eyes, he recalled parks, alleyways, and bars that each fit his needs. So much of Destiny City housed sketchy areas in the form of abandoned buildings and locales. He wondered, then, if there was much of a difference between the once-proud Detroit and DC. Perhaps not.
Perhaps people are only as good as the city they live in. If it’s garbage, they’re garbage.
„I know of a place. It’s this ugly parking garage on that long stretch of 31st street. It’s by the river. Ugly blue and yellow, kind of like Best Buy. Nobody ever uses it anymore. Meet me there?“
She knew where he lived, of course. She’d been there, she stayed there before it burnt to the ground. Now he lived with someone else, and he lacked the privacy he used to enjoy so thoroughly. No longer did he truly have ‚alone time‘ when Gwen had easy access to all areas of his domain. Besides, there was no luxury or glamour about his coming decisions; why would he expect a comfortable setting for it all?
„Don’t bring a lot. We’ll finish it there. I can’t take it home. Or take you home. Or go home.
„Come find me after work. Six or so. I’ll be around.“
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Posted: Mon Aug 29, 2016 3:47 pm
The parking garage was enough enough to find with its garish paint job and rusted out sign exclaiming 'PARKING' in big, bold, capital letters. There had been neon in them, but when they burnt out, no one had bothered to fix them. Her headlights careened off the walls as she made the spiraling circuits up to the roof. They caught on litter and un-namable trash as she passed, but Sid never even noticed it. She hardly even noticed the state of the garage, but then, it wasn't anything she wasn't used to. Places like this were common spots for stuff like this, she'd seen her fair share of them, and besides that, most of her mind was on the man waiting for her and the brown paper bag tucked into empty space inside the frame of the passenger door. Sky opened up above her as she drove out onto the top floor, gravel and who knows what else popping under her tires. There no stars, but there never were in a city like DC. Just a murky black fading to street-lamp orange, and Ice's care parked across the way. Sid pulled up along side, cutting the engine and the lights before she cracked her door and bounced out. "Eh. You alive in there?" She said as she tapped the backs of her knuckles on his window, her colorful bangs falling into her eyes. It was hard to keep the eager smile off her face, but she managed to tone it down to curls at the corners of her lips.
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