Deus Ex Machina @ 5:13PM
Izzy Montoya, welcome to The Seven Hills
Deus Ex Machina @ 5:19PM
Sid Chavez, welcome to The Seven Hills
Sid Chavez @ 5:35PM
He dreams he’s some crazed engineer locked up in a workshop that defies laws of common sense and reality, the entire room made of metal and hissing of steam, and when he jerks awake the second or third time, the echoes of an insistent pounding on a portal rings in his ears.
The man sleeps face-down, arms splayed, so when he realizes he’s conscious, it isn’t much of an effort to hoist himself up his elbows to survey his surroundings.
“This isn’t my bed,” he says, his voice rusty from a few hours’ disuse.
That confirmed, he flops back down onto the mattress. With his clothes peeled off, the tattoos he has on his arms and chest made an appearance sometime during the night. None of them are glyphs, or names, or anything of any great esoteric significance. He has no claw marks on his body, no other injuries that left behind scars.
This may as well be a normal fucking human being Izzy took home last night, but if she jokingly refers to him as a machine in the future, it wouldn’t be too far from reality.
Izzy Montoya @ 5:45PM
She isn’t one to cuddle, though as early as a week ago, she had been known to do exactly that. Not here, though. Not now. In fact, when Sid jerks away for the third time, he’s alone in the bed, as she’s been awake since the first.
She isn’t far away, however. Not that it’s difficult, considering the shoe box she currently lives in – the living space contains everything living/sleeping/work required, with a kitchen at the front end, next to a closet and the bathroom down the hall by the front door. She’s sitting on the window sill, a naked silhouette in the sunlight, smoking a cigarette. She doesn’t seem to care that anyone on the street that looks up and happens to find her window will find her naked form sitting there, either.
She certainly doesn’t care if he sees her either. Clearly. After all, he’s examined every inch of her pretty thoroughly at this point in the search for more scars. He’s seen all she has to give.
And nothing more.
This isn’t his bed, he confirms to himself, and she makes a sound that is likely amusement and agrees. “Nope, its mine.”
Sid Chavez @ 5:53PM
Unlike the average person who has places to be when his eyes open, Sid doesn’t check around to see if there’s a clock beside the bed. He doesn’t wear a watch, though there are an array of leather wristbands still clapped to his right arm. All of that shit is for decoration. It says something about him, that he doesn’t wear a watch. It’s as though he either believes himself to have all the time in the world, or doesn’t see how it’s relevant to his daily existence.
Turning his head toward the sound of her voice, he finds her sitting nude in the wan daylight, smoking, and he watches her a moment, as though he were the one who was drunk when they got back to her place last night.
If anything, he was buzzed, not from alcohol but from pot, but that didn’t do much to explain the fact that he’d stopped dead just before the threshold of the front door, the quickness of his wit confirming that that was fucking weird and he had better school his expression before Izzy turned around to ask what the problem was.
That was the last hitch they experienced, was him lingering on the front stoop and cracking a joke, but between that and his reaction to church bells, it’s a wonder he doesn’t insist on getting home before daybreak.
A stream of anemic light is touching his arm and he isn’t sizzling or bursting into flames, so at least we’ve ruled out that he’s a vampire.
“Right on,” he says. Sid looses a yawn that he does nothing to stifle, then starts to extricate himself from the sheets.
Izzy Montoya @ 6:00PM
She was far from drunk herself, and she remembers the little hitches, and there is something niggling at the back of her mind that he might be more than he seems, but so far, he hasn’t burst into flames, or filled with rage, or beaten her to a bloody pulp, or anything that would trigger anymore more than a vague curiosity that she doesn’t quite feel. The fact that she has suffered worse at the hands of the Nation is a factor too. Somehow, the strangers are always safer… always.
He starts to untangle himself, and she nods toward the kitchen. “There’s coffee. Or more beer if you want. I can’t cook worth shit, but your welcome to anything you find if your hungry. being as I moved in yesterday – you’ll likely find beer and last nights takeout leftovers. I don’t really remember.”
So hospitible, Izzy. she turns her gaze back to the window, and exhales out into the sunlight before she turns back to watch him untangle himself from her sheets. She isn’t shy about it, either.
Sid Chavez @ 6:11PM
He’s no Adonis, but it’s clear that whatever occupation he’s chosen for himself has him doing something besides sitting on the couch all day eating Doritos and watching cartoons. Last night’s conquest is solid, though cannot possibly be mistaken for ripped, and he doesn’t have a young man’s build. This wasn’t a kid she brought home last night, even if he has the social grace of one.
“I’m alright,” he says, and despite the fact that they weren’t exactly careful tearing off each others’ clothes last night, he doesn’t have to fumble or search for his pants. They’re right where he remembers them landing.
It helps that he doesn’t have to look around for undergarments.
“So…”
Whatever he’s about to ask makes him laugh at the impending awkwardness of it, and he pauses until he’s got his jeans up around his hips and zipped up. He’d already gotten up and showered at some point this morning, as though he were on autopilot.
“I forgot my line.”
Shirt. Flung so that it caught on a door handle, of course, that’s the first place anyone would look.
Izzy Montoya @ 6:15PM
that brings another one of those huffs of amusement as she takes a final drag, and exhales while putting out the cigarette in the ashtray resting on the sill by her hip. She stands then, and closes the window, leaves the tray where it is next to her pack and lighter, as she stretches, slowly.
“See. That’s where you’re fucking lucky I am who I am. I’m not expecting a line, or anything at al, while your dashing about trying to make a quick exit in case I decide i want to keep you as a pet, and go all stalkery on you. It was fun, it is what it is, it may or may not ever happen again. You don’t have to say anything at all if you don’t want.”
She offers him that same little amused smirk as she finishes, and heads past the end of the bed toward the kitchen, where her lifeline of coffee awaits.
Sid Chavez @ 6:26PM
It wouldn’t do for either of them to explain the circumstances that had them having meaningless sex last night, to attempt to reason out why it is that going to a bar with someone who, for all they knew, could be a serial killer or psychotic or otherwise not screwed together all that tightly. Sid climbs back into his shirt as she explains, in no uncertain terms, that there weren’t terms and conditions that came along with what they did last night.
His hair is knocked askew as he pulls his shirt over his head, and he doesn’t bother combing it out of his face. Before he can come up with a reason why on earth he ought to tell her that he doesn’t know what’s going on with his life lately–and how would that sound, to a woman who’s got her shit together: I think I’m insane and no one’s bothered to tell me since the psych ward kicked me out when I was eighteen and these headaches I get are really weirding me out did I say anything about pointed-eared guys with iron swords trying to kill me last night?–she starts out of the room.
In the time it takes her to reassure him that she’s not going to show up at his house when a pot full of dead pet rabbit, Sid has pulled on his socks and laced up one of his boots. This apparently required him to sit down on the edge of the bed.
“You got a pen?” he asks, before she’s gone too far.
Izzy Montoya @ 6:35PM
“Hm? Sure.”
thing is, if he wants to tell her those things, if he decides that he has reason enough, she’d listen. After all, her life is currently in shambles, and she still has to step around boxes she needs to unpack, and the one person she ever let inside her thoughts, her mind, her heart, has utterly destroyed her within the last 72 hours. She has nothing together.
Except, apparently, for her desk, which is about 3 feet from the bed. There’s boxes on top, but her laptop is set up, and in the center drawer she finds where she’d emptied the box of the misc. writing instruments. And, miracles upon miracles, a pad of sticky notes too. She grabs a pen and the pad, and returns to the bed to offer them to him.
He’s all but dressed, and she’s not even bothered with a robe at this point. Despite the scars, she is comfortable enough in her skin – all but for the fact she’s unarmed. It’s a shoebox, though, and chances are she’d placed her guns within reach no matter where she stands, automatically.
“Here ya go.”
Sid Chavez @ 6:47PM
“Oh, shit, they still make these things?” when he sees she has Post-It notes.
As though he remembers where he was when they were released on the market. Given that he doesn’t remember much of anything, anyone who knows anything about his kind wouldn’t be too surprised to find that childhood memories are more vivid than anything he can parse out of his adult life. All of the stories he can readily recount involve being drunk, as though that somehow made it easier to recall what the hell he’s done throughout his life.
Of course, nearly every time Sid opens his mouth, it’s to crack a joke. For all Izzy can tell he’s just screwing around.
He puts the pen in his left hand, then frowns and switches it to his right. His writing is atrocious when he writes with his right, so he tears off the first note, crumples it, and starts over with his left hand. That has clearly weirded him out, but the writing is about as legible as one could hope for.
A pause to tie up his other boot, and he rises, sticking the note to the stovetop.
S. Chavez is how he wrote his name, below the phone number. He hasn’t gotten around to changing his cell phone number; it’s a 323 area code.
“Alright,” he says, as though that seals it, but he stands facing her in the kitchen area of the studio, a ringless hand resting on the countertop as he looks at her. His fingers drum a bit, his mouth screwed up in almost comical thought, and then he darts forward and kisses her.
Oh, what the hell.
He kisses her again, slower, as though he isn’t in as big a hurry to get back to reality as he tried to make himself think he was.
Izzy Montoya @ 6:54PM
They still make these things? “Can’t live without’em.” She chuckles and makes her way to the kitchen again, with it’s open spaces and the life-giving coffee. She rummages around until she finds a coffee cup, and pours herself a cup as she watches him write the note. A brow arches, slightly, as she notes the way he switches hands, curious, but she doesn’t ask. she simply notes it, as she notes so many other things.
His hand sticks the number to her stove, and she studies it a moment, her lips curved into that same little smirk that seems to be her default expression, to varying degrees. Alright he says “Alright.” she answers.
His fingers drum, and she takes a sip of her coffee, before sitting the cup on the counter – just in time for him to dart in for a quick kiss. It takes her by surprise, but by that time, he’s kissing her again, and she sighs against his lips, her coffee-cup warmed hand sliding up around the back of his neck, as she turns into him, lean form molding against his willingly enough. Her other arm slides around his waist, under the untucked shirt to smooth her fingers across his skin…
Reality can wait..