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

[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."

[heyeresque]

"There are more - or different - freedoms that make that true of a lot of people. The luxury of not needing." He floats around his private life in much that way, usually, but it won't last and what he knows best, what he relates to, is the deep, intense, dangerous attachments they're talking about people not having any more. He's watched them all his life and has always been inclined to suspect he'll end up less like Ernest or Martel and more like Lily's young man.

[norea]

"I don't like it," she sighs while tipping her head back (throat exposed), which is a simplified way of putting it- she doesn't understand it, not when she cut out bits of herself and sacrificed and did everything to have her own real passionate obsession. (And then his obsession with and for her killed him, or rather she had to kill him before he could kill her, so- maybe it's not wrong for Bellamy to wonder, if not suspect. These things do happen.)

[heyeresque]

"Some people still live like that," he says, mildly, possibly with the intention of being consoling somehow. "I think I said something about hereditary diseases last night-" he's a little wry, here, but it really is more or less what he was talking about.

[norea]

"You did, and I know." She smiles at him, just slightly, appreciating the attempt at being reassuring, however strange the format is. "I don't live any other way. I earned it."

[heyeresque]

Bellamy, who lives deeply but in solitude and reads poetry instead of falling in love, smiles back. "That's a worrying thing to say."

[norea]

"You seem to think I'm a worrying kind of a girl," Hasi tells him. She also thinks, somewhere in the back of her mind, that he should just kiss her already but she knows that he won't and she's not going to start it up herself because she is trying to be good (as good as she's built to be, with her Jessica Rabbit frame of a mind), but her hand is still on his knee and she's still pressed so close on the sofa that a few more inches would put her squarely in Bellamy's lap.

But that's all she says, and she doesn't do anything except exist, presently.

[heyeresque]

No, he won't, and he isn't sure exactly what it is that's holding him back- just that she is right there and he can't. Maybe because next to her it feels a little too much like surrendering, and christ knows he's no good at that.

"Yes," he says, instead, unrepentantly. "I do seem to."

[norea]

Onscreen, Lily, caught in a scandal and forced to leave town, is sent by the bank's new president to work in Paris- Mr. Courtland, the man in question, notices but is unswayed by her appearance and charms. Eventually, he's impressed enough by the work she does in Paris that he falls for her, anyway, but it's harder to tell if it's reciprocal- but at least it's less dishonest than her earlier affairs in the film.

Hasi begins to wonder if she should have picked this movie, judging by how it corresponds to conversation. Oh, well, at least it's good.

"You wouldn't be the only one."

[heyeresque]

"Well, that's the only remarkable thing about me, I think; how unremarkable I am." -now he's not actually trying to sell this earnestly (it's to his credit that he's already discarded that idea with her), just trying to make her laugh.

[norea]

And laugh she does, though it's halfway a scoff- she digs her nails into his knee again.

"You're ridiculous, that's what you are. Stop distracting me from the movie!" Woman, half the time you start it. More than half of the time.

[heyeresque]

On cue: "You started it," he tells her placidly, because he is ten years old.

[norea]

"Well, now I'm finishing it. Be quiet or I really will bite you," she says, bossily, and unconsciously she may bring this out sometimes to see how he responds to her bratting in this fashion- but Hasi likes what she likes, and pushing up against people's personal tendencies until they snap back at her is, as she said, one of them.

Plus she really is just kind of a brat.

[heyeresque]

Bellamy mimes zipping his lips, maturely, and slouches lower on the sofa to better illustrate how well-behaved and dutifully subsided he is.

[norea]

"Good boy." One of these days he may actually get her back for all of this (...she certainly hopes so; it'd be a lot of fun, she thinks, but she hasn't quite discerned if he's got that type of nature or not).

[heyeresque]

His extremely serene response to this is to tug on her hair again, which doesn't require that he say anything.

[norea]

Hasibe murmurs something about pigtails under her breath a moment later, but she's paying attention to the movie. Really! No, honest, she does get pretty quiet eventually- she's tired, she didn't sleep much last night, and he is comfortable and warm to curl up with like this, however potentially inappropriate and terrible an idea it is.

[heyeresque]

Discretion being the better part of valor, Bellamy makes no comment in response to whatever it was he's sure he didn't hear her say and the rest of the movie passes in this companionable silence. It shouldn't be so easy and so comfortable, except that it is, and when the film is over he isn't quite sure whether or not he should check that she's awake or just- stay, like that.

[norea]

She is, in fact, asleep- not deeply so, but enough that she's out, lips pressed together, head against his shoulder, breathing even and deep. Her hair has fallen across one cheek in a dark sweep, and mostly she's just peaceful.

[heyeresque]

Bellamy waits until the DVD has played itself out before he moves - carefully, disentangling with the least intention of disturbing her - to go and take it out himself.

[norea]

Her lashes flicker, but she doesn't quite wake- she does make a sound like a sigh, though, but with more of a thread of noise in it ('kittenish' was used before and applies, still, now); she's almost docile like this, except for how someone - something - like her is never really that way.

But this is Hasi without her knowing, her veils and her innuendo: asleep. She'll probably end up waking up soon, since the sofa isn't hugely comfortable for someone as spoiled as she is, princess and the pea, etc.

[heyeresque]

While she dozes on, Bellamy takes the DVD out and puts it back in the case before perching on the sofa's arm to dig out his phone (not, as he'd suspected last night, with Nic and his keys) and see if he can't find out where said cousin has actually got to in the meanwhile.

[norea]

It's somewhere in that conversation (she's on her back by now, draped lightly over the sofa - her ability to do this with grace is borne out of being self-confident even while asleep) that she stirs, though it's not obvious at first- her eyes just open slightly, and she regards Bellamy from under her lashes while he's on the phone. She presses her foot against his knee, letting him know she's up, but doesn't interrupt.

[heyeresque]

Bellamy's eyes drop to her and he smiles, faintly, but he doesn't otherwise pause. "No, I had my contacts out."