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]

"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.

[heyeresque]

"I'll pass," he demurs, his placidly amused gaze sliding away from her and back to Lily's exploits.

[norea]

"Scared," she teases, but she tucks herself back against him with a certain smugness.

(Still- she wonders what he'd do if she did bite him. Not everyone likes that.)

[heyeresque]

"Cannibals are terrifying," he says, blandly sidestepping any kind of point in the way he's so fond of doing.

[norea]

"I think we both know that if I sank my teeth into you it wouldn't be to tear," Hasi says, lightly, "but not everyone plays quite the way I do, I'll concede that."

And onscreen, Lily cuckolds her young man with the girlfriend in favor of said girlfriend's father, who sets her up in a beautiful new apartment as a kept woman. Said young man doesn't quite realize what's happened yet, poor guy.

[heyeresque]

Refraining from commenting on how he 'plays' - having all that hot wax in the flat sometimes got interesting, that's all he's not saying - he observes of what's onscreen, instead, "That's the sort of thing my dad used to get up to before he was married, rumour has it." 'Rumour' is also known as 'I've asked you to stop telling my son these things, Martel'.

[norea]

"That sounds like the sort of thing that would be mildly awkward to know," she says, noticing not for the first time how he uses family talk as sort of a shield. "Or hilarious. A little of both?"

[heyeresque]

The shenanigans of Bellamy's extended family do make it easier to hide himself in; it's something he noticed and began making use of quite young. "It can always be worse." Yes, there are things he knows and doesn't know about his parents that are much more awkward.

[norea]

"That much I know," she mutters, wry. Onscreen, Lily's young man discovers her older man, flips out, shoots the other guy, and then himself. Lily is not exactly griefstricken, but somber, as she calls the police- Hasi is silent, watching with an expression that's hard to read.

[heyeresque]

Bellamy winces, obscurely discomfited, but not in any outward way worth really commenting on; when he shifts his position on the sofa, it's just because he's been still too long.

[norea]

"Men are always trying to do away with themselves for girls in old movies like these," Hasi says, "makes me wonder if I'm doing something wrong. Or something right."

[heyeresque]

"Life's a bit of a challenge when your emotions have a blast radius," he notes, absently (it is, not must be, or probably, or he imagines), "but that's a little too ambiguous for me to guess." Not that he's inviting clarification, per se, just sort of apologetically unable to speculate.

[norea]

"Mmm." Her hand is on his knee again, tracing little patterns with her fingertips, idle. "I think people are just more disposable to one another. Lose one girl- or guy- and get another. People don't get as attached as they used to, they don't live as desperately."

Hasi pauses. "Being only twenty-five I'm willing to consider that I'm completely wrong, but that's what I think."