zg_shadows | (no subject)

This came about after walking around Camden and pondering how people interpreted things and how they might view Exalted or anyone else wandering around with traits which are double or treble human average. Also Jez is evil and it was funny.

Claridge’s.

He had that aura about him – the pleased and open look of a man who had just been struck by A Thought of (naturally) Unsurpassed Brilliance. He leant towards her, keen to share his genius. “I’ve had a simply perfect notion. If I’m to help you save the world and meet with this Petra girl, then you should do something for me in return.” He smiled, a little boy who’d been clever sort of smile.

She schooled her face to blankness. Everything had a price, everything was a battle. He had no real reason to refuse to meet with Petra – it served his own goals too – but he would gain what boons he could in the mean time. She was so damn tired and sick of everything right now she barely cared – this game was just another price and another sort of battle. If she really wanted to try to save the world she would have no choice but to pay it.

“And what would that be?” the six-tails asked carefully.

Rkleish told her.

=====

Covent Garden.

Lauren, the pretty sun-blonde assistant with perfect make-up and artfully scruffy hair, was used to celebrity spotting. No one other than the rich could afford the clothes and no one other than celebs wanted to wear them - which narrowed the shop’s clientele list somewhat.

She fussed over a collection of belts and peeked at the couple again. There was something about them both, but she couldn’t put her finger on what they were famous for. Was he a rock star? He had that slightly ‘unhinged at the edges’ feel to him. Was she a model or a B-list actress? – she had the grace and looks for either. Lauren chewed at her lip, calling her mind back to the shop, her job, the clothes and customers... Her ears slyly attempted to tune into the couple’s conversation. They seemed to be arguing. Not in a strident, public way, but haphazard and lagging. Lauren felt a spike of irritation - they were beautiful, successful and rich – what the fuck did they have to be arguing about?

The man was focused, letting his gaze pass briefly but intently over all the clothing arranged in each section of the shop before selecting some piece or other and attempting to guide both girl and garment into some sort of meeting. The girl for her part looked like she would rather chew steel tacks than be here. Although occasionally, despite herself, a smile would hide in the corner of her mouth or she would give attention to a piece of clothing rather than behave as if the man had just tried to hand her an eviscerated frog.

It was only a matter of time before they came to what Lauren thought of as the ‘inner shrine’ where the best pieces were displayed. The man’s pale eyes had lit up when he’d seen Lauren’s favourite, the Ice Dress. He’d said something that sounded both wistful and complimentary: it was clear this was the sort of thing he had in mind for his companion. She drew closer, wanting to hear the young woman’s reply.

She needn’t have bothered. The red-head raised her voice (American sounding; rugged like she smoked fifty a day and as hard-arsed as you could get). “I refuse to wear some rockabilly housewife Chanel shit,” she told the man and the world in general.

The man’s voice was puzzled, bordering on hurt. “But it’s highly suitable, surely?”

Lauren circled closer, one ridiculous wrought iron hanger in hand to prove she had a reason to be there. Bloody right it was suitable – that dress was silk and shot taffeta in milk and azure hues – so totally this season.

“Sixty fuckin’ years ago,” rejoined the girl scathingly. She said something else more quietly, something about being with crazies at the bottom of a puddle for too long.

Walking round one of the rails Lauren could see the man; his look and posture showed consideration of the matter, like an old scientist being forced to evaluate a new-fangled theory. “But you must admit the piece has a certain timeless elegance...” He moved closer to his companion, holding out the dress as if trying to net her with it. He lowered his voice, all honey and charm. “And it would make me very happy to see you wear it...”

Lauren tried to concentrate on straightening imaginary flaws in the clothes she tended. Light and movement caught the edge of her vision as well as the swift sibilance of cloth moving and then a particular hollow sound. What the bloody hell...?

The man and the girl stood oddly, like people intent on winning a party game when the music had just stopped. A lock of the girl’s hair slipped its pins and fell loose as if mussed by some action or exertion. The man looked amused, the girl irritated. Very purposefully, the man raised a hand and straightened his glasses on the bridge of his nose; they must have been knocked or slipped somehow for they sat crooked.

“I shall take that as a veto,” he said with regret. “You only get one though,” he added, glancing once more at the dress with a mournful countenance. “I really can’t imagine why you object to it so strenuously.” He sighed. “I suppose... I suppose in that case I should stick with what I’m familiar with. Early Pictish perhaps...? Yes. With some of that stuff the boys are so fond of with the leather straps and... It’s not the colour is it?” he asked suddenly, solicitously. “I hope you don’t dislike the blue – it’s a marvellous shade. Dead winter skies and frost-rimed lips...”

The rock star had moved close and leant his head down so his chin brushed the girl’s shoulder as he spoke; his hands rested on her waist just above her hips with the easy familiarity of a lover. Lauren wondered at the girl’s mood: her posture was tense and self contained but her head was tilted back and to the side a little, baring more of her neck towards the man’s mouth.

“...Like woad and bruises, like the delicate veins of corpses...” The man’s lips whispered across the girl’s neck as he spoke. Lauren looked away, embarrassed to be watching and not wanting to hear any more off-putting descriptions of the colour blue. She fussed over a display set, even though it was perfect, stuck where she was because to flee with an air of hurry or guilt would show clearly that she’d been eavesdropping.

Her ears tuned in the conversation again. The man’s voice was odd; cultured and slightly plumy tones sanded down into a growl - it was kind of sexy. His words were very quiet now; she wondered what endearments he murmured between kisses when he was the sort of man who admired the best dress in the shop and described its colour in the terms of the dead.

She sneaked another look at the two of them. The girl’s eyes had been half closed but now they snapped open, brimful of rage. Her arms moved – fast, so fucking fast it was like a strobe light in film. One moment she stood still, her hands by her sides, the next moment her arms (with momentum stolen from god knew where) had snapped out and back, scything simultaneously into the man’s kidneys with the force of a car crash. Then the girl was moving, stalking forward towards the door as if nothing had happened, her demeanour calm, her body language unconcerned.

Lauren blinked, unsure what she’d just witnessed. The man was standing – not curled over in an attitude of pain or surprise but straight, his shoulders slightly stooped, like the girl had just flipped him the finger, not tried to give him internal bleeding. His face was passive, but a private smile lingered in his eyes.

He gave an exaggerated sigh and then looked straight at Lauren who felt as if a hundred megawatt searchlight had just swivelled to shine in her face. “Thank you for your time, young lady,” he said in his strange torn-throat voice, poise and words perfect Victoriana gentleman. “It would appear we shall be leaving now.” And he smiled – not unpleasantly - but Lauren’s flesh twitched like she was a rabbit he’d just skinned.

She smiled back, bright and false, wishing the crazy young woman would come back and take his attention again... Just like that the megawatt beam turned off. Lauren watched as the man with the ash-blonde hair and the well cut tweeds walked out of the shop. He hurried his steps and raised his hand to signal ‘wait!’ (the epitome of the bimbling school master) as he chased the woman with the red hair and the shop door closed behind him.

On the display table close to where the two had stood was an arrangement of birch and willow switches and an opulent collection of fat hothouse flowers in bloom. With the softest of sounds, the flower heads on the right all dropped off in the door’s draft. Their stems had been cut with something so sharp and fast they had remained, severed yet balanced upon their stalks, until the air disturbed them.

=====

Soho.

There were three types of people who came to Dmitri.

Connoisseurs – true connoisseurs of perversion who had been recommended his work and who appreciated it. (The Englishman in the pale wool jacket, he was such, looking over the merchandise with a practiced eye, mumbling little exclamations of ‘ah!’ in familiarity as if greeting a set of distant relatives.)

Others who came to Dmitri were lackeys. Those who did not appreciate or indulged in the arts, but worked for someone who did. The lackeys tended to be stone-faced bruising bastards who didn’t shock and rarely spoke – they were just doing a job after all.

The last set of people who came to Dmitri... well, they weren’t customers. They were just a different sort of merchandise, headed through the shop to the flat above and from there, eventually when they wore or bled out, to their final reward at Serge’s dogfood factory. What they thought didn’t matter.

It was fair to say that Dmitri’s little toys tended to provoke a reaction when viewed, let alone used. This pleased him; he had worked hard to earn his reputation and people’s reactions fuelled pride in his work... Everyone had a reaction. Everyone except for this henna-haired bitch. He had wondered if perhaps she was stoked on ketamine - but her balance wasn’t shot. Indeed she moved with such poise and purpose that she seemed to be encased by her own world, a world without the likes of Dmitri. Her face was also startlingly expressionless; not the pathetic blankness of one trying to hide shock or fear, but something more like bored patience. He mentally wrote her up as a jaded porn star – she certainly had the body for it – and he couldn’t imagine how she looked at some of the things on display otherwise...

The man in the bone and grey tweed held up a velvet collar in one hand, a brass choke pear in the other. “Which do you think?” he asked the girl earnestly.

The girl’s eyes flicked in his direction and, “You want to look like a house cat or be unable to talk all evening that’s your look out,” she told him with finality.

It was obvious to Dmitri he had meant them for the girl and it was equally obvious she wasn’t going to demean herself by even considering either option. “Ah. Hm, yes, something in leather then,” the man muttered, discarding both and pottering over to the leather restraints. He held a collar up for scrutiny, looking at the girl too as if to measure it against her. “How about a chain?” he asked.

Something about the girl went very cold and dangerous. Dmitri had been idly imagining her as a snuff star - but in that moment he knew with utter certainty that if she was ever in a snuff film, then everybody else would die.

“I am not wearin’ a chain,” she announced in that husky Southern growl, “for you or anyone else in this world.”

The man peered over the top of his glasses at her with his strange pale eyes, apparently unaffected by the warning signs that made Dmitri want to wet himself. “Ah, well, that answers the question of whether your preferences lean towards the dominant or submissive I suppose. Hm. Are you certain you can’t be persuaded?”

“You get a chain an’ you can wear it,” she told him shortly, the air around her deceptively inert - like an open powder keg.

The man shrugged his shoulders in something approaching a sigh. “You really are making this difficult,” he grumbled to himself. “I suppose a slave ring will suffice...”

When the man paid for his purchases, thanked Dmitri cordially and left, the girl lingered a moment longer. She gave him a long look and suddenly it seemed to the Soho Meatman that she was not a girl at all, she was instead something bloody and terrible playing dress-up in a woman’s skin; something with a predator’s eyes and a predator’s merciless smile that had marked him as prey.

It was only when the door slammed closed behind her and Dmitri remembered how to breathe that he realised the warmth and wetness down his legs and the sharp tang of ammonia signalled that he had in fact pissed himself.

=====

LKG Hardware & Building Supplies.

Josh had been considering a cigarette break when the two walked in. Other than the smack-head psycho who’d raged in last summer and that little demented grandma who’d been looking for her goldfish he couldn’t imagine a couple less suited to DIY – if they were a couple.

At first Josh wondered if they were performers – magicians or installation artists or some other crazy shit. A minute or so later he wondered if in fact the bloke was on day-release and the girl his minder – just his luck to get care in the fekking community on his shop floor at four o’fekking clock when all he wanted was some baccie...

The bloke (who looked something like a short-sighted Johnny Rotten as written by P G Wodehouse) was contemplating rivets, nails and industrial staples. “Which is better?”

The girl (who was pretty damn hot even if she did have unbelievably red hair) looked at him with hard won patience. “For what?”

“Well...” He shrugged vaguely, like a man who had lost something and was trying to recall where he had it last. “They’re usually incorporated into the outfit somewhere – they can make quite an effective contrast with the leather and the blood and such, you know...” A pause as the bloke gave the girl a thorough look. “I imagine it would look especially startling against your skin...” he told her.

The girl sighed, seeming neither perturbed nor surprised by the man’s suggestion of gross bodily harm as some sort of fashion statement. “You want me to walk about all evening with metal punched in me?” Whilst her voice made it clear she considered this dumb beyond belief, if the man said ‘yes’ Josh could see the girl simply rolling her eyes and shoulders in a lazy shrug and picking up a tack-gun.

The man frowned, apparently giving consideration to all the girl wasn’t saying. “Not that sort of occasion, you think?” he hazarded. “Will you be putting razor blades in your arms so when I hold you..”

“I calculate not,” she told him blandly.

“Right,” said the man, seeming cheerful now that the (literally) torturous question of social etiquette had been resolved. “Onward then!”

After they had left Josh spent ten minutes awaiting the candid cameras to ambush him and laugh at his expense. After twenty no film crews had emerged, so Josh went off on his ciggy break.

=====

Camden.

The ex King of Hell was smiling fit to split, the excited look of a man whose project was near completion. Ash for her part was tired but curiously thankful the day hadn’t been as bad as she’d expected.

She looked at the garment he was holding out to her; from Ash’s point of view it was slightly ridiculous, but he no doubt was trying to offer things which were ‘low key’. Then again it didn’t contain industrial hardware for use in foreplay so it probably was low key... She took it from him and turned towards the changing rooms.

“Ah, do you require any assistance with the lacing?” he asked hopefully.

She swung back on her heel and looked at him, one eyebrow raised.

His expression approached wounded surprise. “No, no – I didn’t mean to suggest that I would aid you in the matter – there is that young lady to your left employed here whose very job is, is to help...” His words trailed somewhat under the force of Ash’s blatant disbelief. Professor R K Mckleish looked at the floor, took off his glasses and polished them. “A gentleman would never dream of such a thing,” he announced quietly, head still bowed.

Ash gave a derisive snort signalling he was no gentleman and she didn’t want to know what he dreamt, then she headed to the changing rooms.

Rkleish raised his chalk white eyes to watch her go, and smiled.