lush ✘ and if the man can't dance he gets no second chance

[heyeresque]

Bellamy is not sure at what point the night began to slide sideways out of his control, but he's confident that when he reassesses in the cold, sober light of day it'll absolutely not be his fault.

Case in point, he leans against the front door of his Chelsea flat and pats himself down with one hand for his keys...which aren't there, meaning they're still in the inner pocket of Nic's jacket. Nic, who was meant to be the designated driver this evening and instead is the reason that he had to call Hasi from a hotel in London and request a rescue; Cypra would either be busy or laugh too hard, he explained. Nic, who decided to go ambling off with other friends after Bellamy turned in and will be all the more difficult to get a hold of until probably late tomorrow afternoon.

"Hasi," he says, admirably clearly for his inebriation, "I have a small problem."

Comments

[norea]

"In that case- they're the most fun ones, back when Garbo and Norma Shearer could do whatever they wanted. Come and sit down, why don't you?" Hasibe's aesthetic is so completely different to the 20s and 30s films she loves so much (long hair vs short, full-lipped vs the bow-mouth, olive-skinned vs pale), but sometimes she still kind of wishes she'd had a shot at growing up back then. Not for long, because she likes her comforts, but- still.

[heyeresque]

"All right." Bellamy adjusts his collar from the back, which has the side effect of putting it back exactly to where it was before she started straightening it, and comes around the sofa to sit with his ridiculous legs stretched out in front. "I always liked Greta Garbo's name; the shape of it." Yeah, okay, word guy.

[norea]

"The alliteration's nice," she agrees, climbing halfway over the coffee table in front of them to lean over the edge of it (in her chemise and his jacket, which doesn't cover that much of her, especially not when she crawls), reaching the DVD player.

"A lot of the pre-code movies are lost," she says, a little muffled at this angle, "because they were made illegal and condemned - there's one I'd absolutely do anything to get, it's called 'Kismet' and it's based on an Arab play."

[heyeresque]

The passing thought that he should find it is permitted to just pass, because there's spontaneous and there's plain stupid and Bellamy thinks he's generally pretty good at not attaching himself too much to the latter. He doesn't have time for that kind of a search. (That's what's wrong with that.) "I can see spending time with you is going to be an educational experience."

[norea]

She grins, bright-eyed, over her shoulder. "Stick around, Inspector, I'll teach you all sorts of things."

...maybe things like that are why she likes the vamps of the early 1930s. She picks through her DVD collection, deciding she'll go with only two, but she's got to narrow down a pretty sizable list. "Any preferences?"

For movies, or for 'sorts of things', she leaves that up in the air.

[heyeresque]

Something about the way she says 'Inspector' makes him grin back, despite himself. "Not a comedy," he requests, apparently choosing the safer of the two options.

[norea]

When she finds a Harlow movie called Red Dust, she initially looks it over without much recognition- but when it strikes she drops the DVD like it's burned her. The moment goes without comment, though, and Hasi reaches for another one immediately, ignoring the pause.

"No Mae West," she says, "got it."

[heyeresque]

The moment goes, but Bellamy doesn't fail to notice it and it seems briefly that he's not going to ignore it; his head tilts and he watches her closer than is really necessary, on the very edge of motion. That passes, too, though, and he smiles faintly instead. "The last movie I saw was Il y a longtemps que je t'aime."

[norea]

(She's glad he lets it go; she doesn't know what she'd say.)

"So your tastes do tend toward the soul-crushing," she says, entertained he said it in French. "Do you want a tragedy or just a drama? I'll warn you if you pick the former, I cry a little at everything. It doesn't mean anything, but I do."

[heyeresque]

His is just schoolboy's French and he watched it with the subtitles, but he considers it polite to say the title in the correct language; possibly he is ridiculous. ('Possibly'.)

"I thought it was sort of optimistic at the end," he says, mildly. "But don't let me make you cry."

Bellamy, you could've just said 'drama is fine'.

[norea]

"Oh, I think in this case, Lionel Barrymore would be the man responsible," Hasibe says, ruefully, and puts in a DVD, finally. When she returns back to the sofa, apparently she intends to lean on Bellamy- despite it being a very large sofa. If asked she will inform him he just looks good to lean on, it's his own fault for being that tall.

"'Baby Face,'" she tells him, "this one is why they put the decency code in in the first place."

[heyeresque]

Opting not to question or protest, Bellamy shifts to accommodate her instead. It's more comfortable than sitting awkward and unaffected; just a little adjustment makes 'on' more like 'with'.

"There's always something." Someone has to break the unwritten rule before anyone else gets around to writing it down, or something like that. "I think I might've heard of it."

[norea]

"It's riffed a lot, pop culturally- but everybody forgets where it got started." She is quite comfortable like this, but it doesn't escape her how easily he settled in right back- which doesn't mean she's extrapolating any more from it than she is, but so much of the communication here is nonverbal when they talk around each other all the time.

[heyeresque]

"It's the nature of the beast," he remarks- quietly, for the sake of movie watching; his habitual quiet makes any extra softening of his voice laughably unnecessary but not, it seems, impossible to do. Verbal communication, on that note, is not something that's ever been a strength for him and he shows no signs of this changing in the near future. Whether or not he's better or worse nonverbally remains to be seen.

[norea]

There's something bizarrely- not domestic, but maybe not quite conventionally friendly (or would it be, if they weren't attracted to one another?)- about all of this, Hasi thinks, turning her attention to the picture on the screen as the credits roll and the band plays brass loudly. The factory setting it sets up is appropriately bleak, and makes her half-smile anyway, because she gets nostalgic for things she's never lived.

[heyeresque]

In the past, Bellamy has spent afternoons similarly with friends that were nothing like this and no, Cypra, you don't have to explain subtext to him; he understands the difference even as he endeavours to ignore it in favour of Barbara Stanwyck. It's a little odd to acknowledge to himself that he's dodging anything, considering the generally laidback approach he has to his private life - he mistrusts something here that he can't properly identify.

[norea]

Hasibe is mostly quiet, close enough that her cheek is against his shoulder- the jacket she's wearing (his jacket) has slid off her shoulders and is still wrapped mostly around her waist, but her upper arms are bared. While Barbara Stanwyck handles a little situation for herself and her friend Chico by simply sleeping with the conductor (they were stowaways on board a train, you see), Hasi laughs quietly, mouth close to Bellamy's ear when she speaks.

"I don't think that would work on public transport out here."

[heyeresque]

"British Rail has always had performance issues." ...he could've made a crack about the sandwiches, and that probably would've been even worse, all things considered.

[norea]

This time her laugh is muffled - momentarily! - into the place where his neck and shoulder meet, but she resettles soon enough, at least.

[heyeresque]

"The sandwiches are terrible," he adds, seriously, once she's settled.

[norea]

She digs her nails into his arm a little, trying not to smile. "Watch the movie, Quippy."

[heyeresque]

Chuckling, Bellamy subsides obediently and pulls one foot in so his heel's against the sofa, at a loose angle; he's very good at being comfortable, for someone who sticks so carefully to some kind of reserve.

[norea]

The movie shifts into the young heroine - Lily Powers - settling into a new job in a bank's filing office, which she gets largely based on her sex appeal. She first has an affair with one man, then another, then deliberately schemes to have the second man's girlfriend catch them in an embrace- said girlfriend's father happens to own the bank.

"This is why I stick to acting," Hasi murmurs, "everyone expects us to be terrible maneaters; they know what they sign on for."

[heyeresque]

"Are you a terrible maneater?" he inquires, in a tone so as to imply that this is a perfectly reasonable question based on the progress of their conversation.

[norea]

"Want me to bite you so you can find out?" She looks up at him with big-eyed innocence, one hand on his knee, smiling just enough.