#jehster

The confused cacophony of a city awake past its bedtime floated up and lingered like storm outside the building’s top floors.   None of the calamity sounded far away. Sirens hooted,  cars screeched,  and voices hollered all as if they were all just on the pavement below or about to come around the nearest corner.   There was a sense of pressure,  of deliberate concentration here   —   the city in its entirety funnelled through a stethoscope’s limber body and poured out as pure chaos into the ears of anyone who would listen.   In one window high above,  there stood a body,  but was it listening?

IT ALWAYS SOUNDS GOOD AT ONE IN THE MORNING, LAID UP IN DRINK WITH A HANDSOME MAN, DOESN'T IT?   escape, primarily.   but most everything else, too.

if the human condition is to hypothetically remake one's whole life while staring — sleepless — up at the shades of a dark ceiling at midnight,  than it's the shared disorder of two people — locked together in the swells of an overlarge party at an even later hour — to do something very similar after staring long enough at one another. that isn't to say that to @jehster's eyes are dark; they are, on the contrary, presumptuously blue; but rather that dove and clark callaway have been looking into one another's eyes for some time now, and subsequently starting to see shapes move within them, the way one does after peering at shadows for too long. forms and frames of something if not better, than at least different. the abyss may gaze back, but so does shangri-la.

it isn't either of their faults, really. in a time that is either before or after this or somewhere in an unclear adjacency, there is a book and a woman in it that will say i like large parties.   they're so intimate. and that is as accurate as anything else that could be said. the pair has not so much as been left to their own devices as kept to them purposefully, suspended in a little champagne cabal. above the penthouse they're billeted within, the summer moon is a big paper thing cut out by a child's loving hand. it fits thematically with all the well-dressed people in their well-tailored clothes, dressed as if by a doll-player's hand, and seems particularly appropriate to all the dustings of white powder and greasy spots of spilled liquor ⸺ eraser shavings and juice stains left behind on the edge of the artist's desk. a dream of an evening constructed by a hungry, spoiled infant.

that is, above everything else, what hollywood is.

( and this isn't the city of angels, but i digress, because hollywood is a noun, and therefore can be used to fit the definition as we've written it here tonight ⸺ )

they sit in the same plush chaise that they've occupied for the last two hours, elbows and shoulder-tips overlapping the way casual things do, or in the way that things which are not casual pretend to be.  

"mm," is that all that vermont is ⸺ one purposeful night away? it seems very much to dove that a place like that should, by principle, sit somewhere farther out. harder to reach. her gaze rolls away from clark and down to the white crêpe of her gown, along the crest of one foot. with her legs crossed, it hovers very close to clark's shin. the heel, in fact, may be partially submerged under the folds of his trousers, but the angle makes it impossible to tell. "but we wouldn't get very far, would we?

i'd make you pull over at the first roadside marvel for pictures, and then you'd want for the bar," for an implausible whim it's awfully appealing, and that's why dove presses on the lining of the urge carefully, with pearl-tipped fingers, hoping it will shrink ⸺ downsize into something manageable which she can slip back into her purse or clark's pocket. her neck lays against the overstuffed backing of the couch, rested as one might in bed. conspiratorially — or perhaps conciliatorily — her hand moves from the box of the urge to clark's lapel. or is that urge to urge, whim to whim?

girl gone wild, girl grown up: the patron saint of unbelonging leans against cold brick, a silk silhouette in chilly air. a cigarette burns by her waist, one she bummed from a passing waiter. she had her manager scratching and clawing in his inbox for a formal invitation ( sure, mara's crashed more than a few parties in her day, but every once in a while she and her team of one like to shoot for legitimacy. it's a dress-up game, made up like her mother only if for a night, a real actress with real poise and real dreams. anyone half-paying attention sees right through the facade, but mara looks pretty in its glimmer anyway ), but before the end of the night she's wandered out the back door, disowned by a sea of sparkly net worths and diamonds. it isn't all jello shots and blown out speakers, it's split-second glances that smolder her skin.

with a pitter patter comes a gale , with a gale comes a tempest . sneaks up on them and , out of nowhere , they must now cover their perfectly manicured heads , unless they want gel bleeding down their necks . arthur knows this all too well . over the incoming brigade of rainfall , he yells , ❝ c'mon ! y'can't get yer hair wet ! ❞ for he knows , just like any other night , america's best man shouldn't look anything less than perfect to the world . he grabs him , practically sacrifices his own hair as his hands become full only of a man's perm - pressed finery , manhandling him towards the closest storefront , a cafe or some kind of bookstore . whatever it is , it works , for bold and burly lettering overhead shields them just enough to allow them to huddle close and avoid the downpour just for now .

though , with nearby waterfalls accumulating , it's like they're on top of one another , not choosing to get clipped by the backsplash of heavy droplets . fortunately , a newstand is on standby . when arthur catches it out of the corner of his eye , he doesn't waste time grabbing the daily feature . he spreads it open like wings and hauls it over their heads , letting dead trees moisten into what will only become gray pulp . soon enough , but now . for now , it just so happens to be the driest thing on their person . funny .

even in the gap of time , alcohol still seems to be something that hangs in the shadows , looming over the heads of men , including himself . he's never been reliant , never been the addictive type , for finding comfort in the hole never felt useful enough for him to stir around in it . he's well aware of the consequences that behold . but also , well aware of the feeling that takes place in the before , and how it takes the edge off . after all , his one able hand — it isn't shaking . he watches it as absent fingers trace the lined etches of his whiskey glass , his limb slack against the table as he sits adjacently . he ponders heavily , though feels like he's fading . when the other speaks , at first thinks the words could be an echo of his own inner monologue .