Nick sulked home after the confrontation on 34th Street. He took the scenic route home, through the more tree-lined avenues of Frazier’s Glen. A lot of people were surprised that Nick lived there, he’d always found. His rebellious nature, cheap magic tricks, and pristinely maintained unkemptness were all clearly very effective at making people think he was poor.
Or at least, Nick imagined they were surprised. He had thought that he had cultivated an aura, an image, a certain Celtic rustic quality, that was at odds with Frazier’s Glen. Maybe it was presumptuous of him to think it actually worked. Maybe it was some low-level attempt at problematically appropriating and commodifying relative poverty. Maybe. Wouldn’t surprise Nick. He was an arsehole, after all, as the events in town had so acutely reminded him.
He needed to get home early, but there was no reason to be hurried. While it was hard to try and think rationally in this time, Nick knew that the smart thing to do, the first step in damage control, was to break the news to his family on his own terms. Nick’s parents, esteemed university professors with a line in pompous ivory tower academics that had never quite been his forte, had taken every effort to be courteous and community-minded, and would probably not take too kindly to the idea of their son throwing coffee on the school’s queen bitch.
He wondered how he’d break the news to them. It’d get around the grapevine quickly. His younger brother Will would probably get nose of it sooner or later, being a passive receptor for gossip rather than an inadvertent generator, and Willie had a knack for thinking that mum and dad had the experience and sagacity to help solve all of Nick’s problems. He wasn’t a snitch, not really. Wasn’t moralistic enough for that. Had kept Nick’s secrets before. But there was a certain paternalistic timbre to how he looked upon his older brother, which was even more infuriating for Nick.
He had paused once on the way home, to sit on a bench, in a small park across the road from the cul-de-sac that his parents called him. He regretted his choice of seat almost immediately, after realising he was sitting next to one of those trees that smelled like cum.
He looked up at it. Ah, the linden tree. Nothing else in nature could quite remind him of that one time he accidentally blew a load in his pants. Still, if it ever happened again, he could just stand by these trees and nobody would notice. He looked at the ground, mentally replaying that relevant Mitchell and Webb sketch in his mind, mouthing as much of the dialogue as he could remember to himself.
It was procrastination. Eventually, with a sigh, he leaned back. Pulled out his phone. “Sorry I was a cunt,” he typed up, in a message addressed to Bret. He paused. Pressed back. No. Sounded sarcastic. His attempts at conveying the depth of his regret, to the only person in that whole scene who probably had acted justly, just came across as rubbing salt into the wound. He tried again. “I flipped out today and I’m really sorr-” Nope. Bret wasn’t his fucking therapist. Maybe there was a standard message for this sort of situation? No hard feelings? Let’s put this behind us? Agree to disagree? Nope, no cliche was up for the job.
Why was he even trying to do this? After all, it’d been Ivy and Myles that he’d assaulted, and while Bret wasn’t quite the same level of turd-flavoured wankstain as his brother, he wasn’t exactly a bloke deserving of sentimental apologies. Maybe it was some kind of mea culpa, some futile hope that he could prevent a backlash to this.
Nick sighed.
“Fuck it.” He gave up on that endeavour, and then spent the next couple of minutes idly scrolling through his social media feeds. Saved a couple of posts from illusion pages he followed, with the intention, but not the expectation, of doing some productive research later, and scrolled through the comments on a reality page meme site to check his favourites were still in vogue, but mainly he was keeping an eye out for any notifications, any messages, any status updates from sworn foes. Anything to let him know if this story had spread yet.
Nothing yet. And if there was, Mark Zuckerberg’s algorithms had decided that Nick would rather see Drag Race memes and word game adverts instead of updates on his imminent social downfall.
Eh, the algorithm was right on this one.
Nick went home. Luckily his parents were both out. His mother was returning from Durham that evening, and his father was attending a business conference in downtown. His sister and brother were the question mark, though. As he entered the house, it was silent, but they were both fans of their afternoon naps, so that didn’t exactly mean anything. Nick frowned. He’d wanted to slouch around downstairs, but that would just lead to more stress if Joanne or Willie came downstairs and started asking about his emotions, like he’d want to actually talk about that.
Nick slammed the door to his room shut. Not deliberately or anything. Just, for a moment, forgot his own strength. He looked at the door for a moment, as if expecting it to fight back or insult him or something. He sighed. Slumped back on his bed.
And then the gentle rapping of knuckles on his door, followed by a slightly higher male voice with the same accent asking “you okay, Nick?”
Nick’s reply was, driven by an instant impulse and a merciless instinct, swift. “Fuck off!”
His brother’s sigh was audible, as if deliberately so. “Nick, man, you-”
“Fuck off!” Nick jumped up, opened the door, only so he could have the pleasure of slamming it all over again, savouring it this time, enjoying the sadism from throwing it shut in his brother’s face. “Fuck off!” he repeated, too blind with fury to think of anything more constructive. He heard his brother audibly sigh again, try and start a few other sentences, before leaving with a pitying and sympathetic murmur that only served to make Nick even angrier and feel even guiltier.
Nick brought his fist to the door, followed by a couple of swift headbutts, making sure to step back just far enough to get some nice momentum going. He heard his brother stop walking. Could imagine exactly what he was doing. Standing there, waiting to hear if Nick followed it up with a third one, just in case there needed to be some intervention. Nick didn’t give him the satisfaction. He rubbed his slightly sore forehead with his palm, and fell back down onto his bed, knowing now that the tone of his mood had been well-established.
He should tell Beryl. And Tristan.
Nick was happy with the way this unconventional three-way relationship was going. He had to be. Weren’t much else to be happy about, so had to make this work. Had to prove that he was actually stable enough and selfless enough to take care of two partners. And he liked to think he was succeeding. They’d had some great times together. Had similar worldviews, compatible personalities, a natural sizzling chemistry, and personalities suited to polyamory. At least, Nick thought so. Sure, he’d spent the first half of the relationship calling it polyphony, but the way they all riffed off each other and joked about and exchanged easy banter, that was just...y’know, it was what Nick had wanted?
He should call them. They needed to spend more time together, and wasn’t this sort of emotional support and no secrets ethos the secret to every long-lasting relationship ever? Well, except when those relationships were only held together by economic insecurity or oppressive divorce laws, but that didn’t count.
They had terrible taste in friends, though. Beryl liked Ivy, for one. And Tristan...yeah. Okay, so, Nick had known that, in an open relationship, non-optimal situations would emerge, and he knew that there was a high chance Tristan and Myles would sleep together. They had that chemistry, after all. Not as potent a chemistry or as romantic a one as the trio shared, but still. It was there. But the fact that Myles thought he could weaponise his sleeping with Tristan, use it to hurt Nick...did that mean anything?
No. No. Don’t think like that. Nick ran his hands over his beard, trying to soothe himself, but to no avail. He told himself to put that unpleasant train of thought aside, and instead decided that, while he would call Tristan first, it was because Beryl’s friendship with Ivy was more poisonous. There. That made sense. It certainly wasn’t ludicrous or self-defeating to think that, definitely not to act on that belief. No way.
And just as he was about to press the button to call Tristan, his phone began to vibrate. Beryl was calling him. So much for that plan.
Every Silver Lining Has a Cloud
A Very Private Meltdown
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General Goose
- Posts: 731
- Joined: Mon Aug 13, 2018 4:02 pm
-
General Goose
- Posts: 731
- Joined: Mon Aug 13, 2018 4:02 pm
Nick had been startled when his phone began to ring. It was Beryl. He shouldn’t have been startled - they called each other a fair amount, and Beryl was an eager conversationalist, happy to listen to every meandering monologue and explore every esoteric thought and indulge in every rambling digression. Sometimes Nick needed a conversation like that. But not now. Not with her.
He heard footsteps outside his door. Probably one of his siblings nosing about, in one of their intrusive attempts to help out. That was enough to spur him into action - impulsively, granted, rather than out of a deliberate strategy. “Hey Beryl,” Nick answered, stretching out each syllable in some futile attempt to appear relaxed. “How...may I help you today?”
“Pause for effect,” she slowly mimed, though her voice was no slower or sleepier than it usually could be. “I missed you. A lot, it seems. Maybe saying hi takes too long for me.”
“Hi Beryl,” Nick repeated, because repetition and small talk was a lot easier than big talk. Or even medium talk. Normally Nick thrived on pleasantries and mindless chatter - there was no greater diversion tactic in the illusionist’s arsenal, and it was a good psychological warfare tactic when playing Scrabble - and right now was no different. But it would be best to rip this plaster off now.
“So, Beryl - missed you too, hen - have you heard any...news about me? Because something about me is going to be going around very soon and I’d rather you hear it from me.” Nick sighed. “But if you’ve already heard about it, well, that means we can skip the awkward bit where I tell you.”
“Hi Nick.” Beryl repeated. “I missed you too.”
And then, the dead air.
“... I’ve heard, yeah.. Heard a lot about it. That said, y’know. I do want to hear it, still. From you.”
“They…” Nick frowned. Then he sighed. He couldn’t decide between a longer version, laced with justifications and explanations and a fair dosage of mea culpas sprinkled throughout, and a shorter version, one that would get to the point of what his defence was. Okay, not a defence. Nick could not defend or justify his actions. But he did want to say that he wasn’t a bad person because of this.
In the end, he settled on the shorter version. Not for any pragmatic reason, mind. He just wanted to hear what Beryl had heard, how the story had been conveyed. “Fuckers called me a bad friend. Because of some shit Gaelan was doing, and because I’m apparently supposed to be his fucking babysitter. I freaked out, yeah, but they...the shit they said cut deep, you know?”
“What I was told was.. something something, unreasonable conduct, and, I don’t really, uh. Remember the specifics.” Beryl’s voice gently fuzzed out into a blip of static, then back into the gentle, oddly loud lull of her slow and deep breath. “You’re not a bad friend, at any rate. And, at any definition. I’m surprised that.. they used that kind of phrasing.”
Okay. Beryl didn’t sound too angry. Seemed quite understanding. Maybe she didn’t know the real details yet - her friendships would certainly complicate things. Competing loyalties and all that stuff. So Nick decided to pull off the bandage, and just give her the most brutish details, gauge her reaction then. “I threw lukewarm coffee on Ivy and a coffee lid at Myles.” It sounded even more ridiculous when he said it out loud. “Then Bret grabbed me and threw me against the wall - and I can’t really blame him for that, you know - and Gaelan threatened Bret with police action or something and I told Bret ‘choke me daddy’ and that was that.” He left out how Myles had turned that last comment into another opportunity to insult him.
Nick swallowed. His throat was still a bit sore, but that may have been more from shouting than anything. “I sound pretty shite when I say it out loud.”
Little noises of affirmation followed, gentle murmurs of syllable as Nick detailed what and when and where had been wrong. A little ditty of a composition, as if Beryl had been hired to compose the soundtrack to her boyfriend’s woes and misery.
“I could blame him for that,” Beryl mused in her usually hushed cheer. “.. Though ending it with a come on seems, I don’t know? Like mixed signals. I kind of like it but, not sure if that’s what you were. You know, intending.”
Breath. “You sound.. tired. Pained. Want me to bring something over?”
Nick sighed. Beryl was, as always, helpful and considerate and far more supportive a girlfriend than Nick had any right for her to be. She wasn’t being judgemental, or angry, or inconsiderate, even though Nick had given her every reason to be so.
“Couldn’t resist ending things with a joke, you know,” Nick mumbled, in defence of his ‘choke me’ comment. Her offer was too kind. Really, too kind. Especially as Nick had already been about to call Tristan, that he’d made an increasingly indefensible judgement that Beryl’s relationship with Ivy would make for a poor shoulder to cry on.
“I was gonna just…” Nick paused here. His real plan was to go to the riverfront and drink profusely. “Have a quiet night in. If you wanna bring something over, I won’t stop you, but no obligation.”
“I would have thought that it was funny..!” She’d seemed eager to interject, having clipped her voice right on top of Nick’s. "I think I’ll bring.. a salve, of some sort, something deep as the sea. Refreshes, and, rejuvenates.” Beryl’s concoctions could get a little odd. Burn the skin slightly, sometimes, much as she seemed to know what to do with things fresh of the earth. “But,” she concluded slowly, with some random bit of consideration. “.. Whatever you want to do. I know being in Ivy’s attentions… taxes the soul.” A soft, breathless, monotone giggle.
Nick leaned back, against the wall by his bed, staring at the ceiling as he just listened to Beryl talk. It would almost be like a normal conversation between the two, Nick thought, in an attempt to comfort himself, to distract from how unusual this all was. That delusion only worked if he ignored both the content and the tone of Beryl’s words, though, so it was of limited effectiveness. “That sounds...lovely,” he murmured, in response to the idea of the salve. Wasn’t really his thing - hell, even after all this time with Beryl he still barely understood her when she talked about stuff like this - but he wasn’t averse to it.
“I may be out, though. Going for a walk.” That was a nice, workable euphemism for ‘getting royally pissed in public’. “But Willie’ll be in if I’m not there and you wanna drop it off.”
She said something negative about Ivy. At least, it sounded negative. Was it an invitation to bitch about her? Or was it just a friend acknowledging nobody was perfect? Nick was too exhausted to rant about her, but he was also too exhausted to tread lightly around the subject. “Ivy was a bitch. I stuck up for my friend. That was all I was doing. And then Myles...that little shit-weasel. Shoulda snapped him in fucking half. Not like he’d notice being any shorter.”
“Okay..! I might still be there. When you come back, I might still be garden rambling at Willie.”
A pause’s worth of dead air, then:
“Hm…” Gentle giggle, barely audible. Cut short, abrupt, the tape replay snipped cleanly and out of context. Her odd version of a laugh, never quite coherent enough to really be called one. “They’re both good at making… the best offense, out of good defense. And, uh. So on.”
Nick could believe that Beryl and Willie could spend hours rambling at each other. It may not have been lucid enough to actually qualify as a conversation, but they shared some interests and shared an ability to talk disjointedly at laugh that meant that, in terms of Nick’s family and significant others, Willie and Beryl got along the best. Hopefully Willie wouldn’t give away how foul Nick had been when he got home. He wouldn’t do it deliberately, but his tongue might slip, or he might reveal something sensitive in a misguided attempt to be helpful.
His face twitched with anger at the thought of that.
Beryl was trying to be diplomatic in how she handled Ivy and Myles. He saw that now. “Well. Fuck ‘em both, that’s what I say. Fuck ‘em both with a rusty screwdriver.”
“I could.. possibly be down for that.” Beryl adjusted the phone, with all the loudness of her grip crumpling over the receiver, fingers folding one way than another like origami. “I like Ivy.. in spite of things, not because of them. She is bad people, but she does a good job at it… Unfortunately? I guess.”
There it was. The elephant in the room. Beryl acknowledging the very thing that had made Nick reluctant to call her, the fact that made him worry about how she’d respond. At least she acknowledged Ivy was bad people. Then again, liking bad people was Beryl’s whole aesthetic. Just look at Nick.
A thought came to Nick. That he was obsessing over Beryl’s friendship with Ivy as a way of ignoring the far more...extreme manner with which Myles and Tristan were connected. No. Couldn’t be that. A friendship probably meant more than just casual sex, right?
Except Myles and Tristan were friends as well as just fuck buddies. Couldn’t have fuck buddies without buddies.
Fuck.
“Beryl...what about Myles? What do you think of him? Because he was the more vicious one.”
“You,” she paused, for possible effect, for the suddenly sultry and low purr in her voice to percolate… “Can be very vicious yourself..! Where it counts.” That little wet gunshot pop of her lips at the end was her mimed air kiss: a little dry and small in person, but usually a favorite way to put periods on her sentences when ‘hot’ was the temperature under her collar.
Well, maybe. She’d unfortunately never strived to be the paragon of consistency.
“Myles seems very calculated. In all the ways, for better, for worse.” A pause. “I, ah. Like him well enough. Tristan does and then some, if I recall.. Correctly.”
Nick was about to respond to that come-on with his own irreverent flirtation, and a healthy conversation came this close to appearing, but then she said that about Myles, and it was like being punched in the gut twice. “Fucking hell, you don’t think I know that Beryl?” he snapped. “You don’t think Myles, in all his infinite fucking wisdom, tried weaponising that? Jesus fucking Christ.”
Beryl refused to take to Nick’s swerve of tone with any sort of particular reaction, she continued to sludge through her own mental molasses.
“I am positive he tried weaponizing it, hmm?” Little questioning lilt. So unnecessarily innocent. “Life bristles weapon-like. Or, like.. a briar patch. And like a briar patch there’s cozy little pockets everywhere to hide away.”
There were some moments - many moments - where Beryl made absolutely no fucking sense. None whatsoever. It was sufficient to replace Nick’s anger with confusion. He doubted it was a deliberate method to calm him down, but it worked. He had a moment to pause, to exhale, to feel bad about snapping at her. “Sorry...just, he’s a bully. He’s a fucking bully.”
She took a moment longer than he.
“Everyone can become a bully in the right circumstances, I think. For you, the wrong place.. wrong time. I guess.”
So he wasn’t a bully, just in the wrong place at the wrong time? Nick couldn’t accept that. Wouldn’t accept that “No, no, he came over. He got involved. This was malicious. Forethought. He is a calculating little shit.”
“He is,” Beryl murmured in a humorless drone. “It’s his right to be. Natural, legal. As it’s your right… to fight back. That one part surprised me about you, the first time.” Her soft smile was static buzz, but audible.
Nick was, as so often with Beryl, confused, and right now he found it more aggravating than endearing. However, it did distract him from the more intense negativity. “What, that I fight back surprised you?” It was more for clarification than anything.
“I like it,” she offered simply.
Nick stuttered. “Thanks, I guess?”
“Usually I’m the one guessing,” Beryl murmur mused. “I still want to come over but at the same time, I don’t know.. For example.” Beryl sounded sleepy, but then, that was par for the course. “I want you to fight.. fight back with Myles, or with people like him. People like him, but at the same time, I like people like him.”
Also the par for the course.
Nick made a strange noise at that, half-chuckle, half-sigh. “Well, at least you’re honest when you’re sending mixed signals.”
“We’ve gotten this far..!” The soft simpering of nature, wind and brush rustling, became the ambience during her moments of pause. Her shoes gently applauded against pavement. “I don’t know. But, you know you can ask me for anything.. and I’ll try my best. As usual.”
Nick opened his mouth. He tried to think of something to say. “I...I dunno. Is there anything you want to do?”
“You,” she said without hesitation. Then, another gentle gallop of a giggle, then an abrupt silence. Then, “I had no plans, but I’m not sure… not sure, if our plans will align tonight. Perhaps you don’t need to hear, specifically, what I feel I have to say. Not yet.”
Nick giggled at her joke, but, surprising himself, it was more perfunctory than anything. He wasn’t in mind for teasing flirtation, he supposed. “Alright. Well. I guess I’ll go out and...let me know if you pop around at all, I suppose?”
“Willie probably will.”
And, somewhere in the vicinity of an afterthought, “I miss you. Let’s get together soon.” The phone clicked silent, sans further ceremony.
Nick was going to reply. By the time he had something thoughtful to say, it was too late.
He heard footsteps outside his door. Probably one of his siblings nosing about, in one of their intrusive attempts to help out. That was enough to spur him into action - impulsively, granted, rather than out of a deliberate strategy. “Hey Beryl,” Nick answered, stretching out each syllable in some futile attempt to appear relaxed. “How...may I help you today?”
“Pause for effect,” she slowly mimed, though her voice was no slower or sleepier than it usually could be. “I missed you. A lot, it seems. Maybe saying hi takes too long for me.”
“Hi Beryl,” Nick repeated, because repetition and small talk was a lot easier than big talk. Or even medium talk. Normally Nick thrived on pleasantries and mindless chatter - there was no greater diversion tactic in the illusionist’s arsenal, and it was a good psychological warfare tactic when playing Scrabble - and right now was no different. But it would be best to rip this plaster off now.
“So, Beryl - missed you too, hen - have you heard any...news about me? Because something about me is going to be going around very soon and I’d rather you hear it from me.” Nick sighed. “But if you’ve already heard about it, well, that means we can skip the awkward bit where I tell you.”
“Hi Nick.” Beryl repeated. “I missed you too.”
And then, the dead air.
“... I’ve heard, yeah.. Heard a lot about it. That said, y’know. I do want to hear it, still. From you.”
“They…” Nick frowned. Then he sighed. He couldn’t decide between a longer version, laced with justifications and explanations and a fair dosage of mea culpas sprinkled throughout, and a shorter version, one that would get to the point of what his defence was. Okay, not a defence. Nick could not defend or justify his actions. But he did want to say that he wasn’t a bad person because of this.
In the end, he settled on the shorter version. Not for any pragmatic reason, mind. He just wanted to hear what Beryl had heard, how the story had been conveyed. “Fuckers called me a bad friend. Because of some shit Gaelan was doing, and because I’m apparently supposed to be his fucking babysitter. I freaked out, yeah, but they...the shit they said cut deep, you know?”
“What I was told was.. something something, unreasonable conduct, and, I don’t really, uh. Remember the specifics.” Beryl’s voice gently fuzzed out into a blip of static, then back into the gentle, oddly loud lull of her slow and deep breath. “You’re not a bad friend, at any rate. And, at any definition. I’m surprised that.. they used that kind of phrasing.”
Okay. Beryl didn’t sound too angry. Seemed quite understanding. Maybe she didn’t know the real details yet - her friendships would certainly complicate things. Competing loyalties and all that stuff. So Nick decided to pull off the bandage, and just give her the most brutish details, gauge her reaction then. “I threw lukewarm coffee on Ivy and a coffee lid at Myles.” It sounded even more ridiculous when he said it out loud. “Then Bret grabbed me and threw me against the wall - and I can’t really blame him for that, you know - and Gaelan threatened Bret with police action or something and I told Bret ‘choke me daddy’ and that was that.” He left out how Myles had turned that last comment into another opportunity to insult him.
Nick swallowed. His throat was still a bit sore, but that may have been more from shouting than anything. “I sound pretty shite when I say it out loud.”
Little noises of affirmation followed, gentle murmurs of syllable as Nick detailed what and when and where had been wrong. A little ditty of a composition, as if Beryl had been hired to compose the soundtrack to her boyfriend’s woes and misery.
“I could blame him for that,” Beryl mused in her usually hushed cheer. “.. Though ending it with a come on seems, I don’t know? Like mixed signals. I kind of like it but, not sure if that’s what you were. You know, intending.”
Breath. “You sound.. tired. Pained. Want me to bring something over?”
Nick sighed. Beryl was, as always, helpful and considerate and far more supportive a girlfriend than Nick had any right for her to be. She wasn’t being judgemental, or angry, or inconsiderate, even though Nick had given her every reason to be so.
“Couldn’t resist ending things with a joke, you know,” Nick mumbled, in defence of his ‘choke me’ comment. Her offer was too kind. Really, too kind. Especially as Nick had already been about to call Tristan, that he’d made an increasingly indefensible judgement that Beryl’s relationship with Ivy would make for a poor shoulder to cry on.
“I was gonna just…” Nick paused here. His real plan was to go to the riverfront and drink profusely. “Have a quiet night in. If you wanna bring something over, I won’t stop you, but no obligation.”
“I would have thought that it was funny..!” She’d seemed eager to interject, having clipped her voice right on top of Nick’s. "I think I’ll bring.. a salve, of some sort, something deep as the sea. Refreshes, and, rejuvenates.” Beryl’s concoctions could get a little odd. Burn the skin slightly, sometimes, much as she seemed to know what to do with things fresh of the earth. “But,” she concluded slowly, with some random bit of consideration. “.. Whatever you want to do. I know being in Ivy’s attentions… taxes the soul.” A soft, breathless, monotone giggle.
Nick leaned back, against the wall by his bed, staring at the ceiling as he just listened to Beryl talk. It would almost be like a normal conversation between the two, Nick thought, in an attempt to comfort himself, to distract from how unusual this all was. That delusion only worked if he ignored both the content and the tone of Beryl’s words, though, so it was of limited effectiveness. “That sounds...lovely,” he murmured, in response to the idea of the salve. Wasn’t really his thing - hell, even after all this time with Beryl he still barely understood her when she talked about stuff like this - but he wasn’t averse to it.
“I may be out, though. Going for a walk.” That was a nice, workable euphemism for ‘getting royally pissed in public’. “But Willie’ll be in if I’m not there and you wanna drop it off.”
She said something negative about Ivy. At least, it sounded negative. Was it an invitation to bitch about her? Or was it just a friend acknowledging nobody was perfect? Nick was too exhausted to rant about her, but he was also too exhausted to tread lightly around the subject. “Ivy was a bitch. I stuck up for my friend. That was all I was doing. And then Myles...that little shit-weasel. Shoulda snapped him in fucking half. Not like he’d notice being any shorter.”
“Okay..! I might still be there. When you come back, I might still be garden rambling at Willie.”
A pause’s worth of dead air, then:
“Hm…” Gentle giggle, barely audible. Cut short, abrupt, the tape replay snipped cleanly and out of context. Her odd version of a laugh, never quite coherent enough to really be called one. “They’re both good at making… the best offense, out of good defense. And, uh. So on.”
Nick could believe that Beryl and Willie could spend hours rambling at each other. It may not have been lucid enough to actually qualify as a conversation, but they shared some interests and shared an ability to talk disjointedly at laugh that meant that, in terms of Nick’s family and significant others, Willie and Beryl got along the best. Hopefully Willie wouldn’t give away how foul Nick had been when he got home. He wouldn’t do it deliberately, but his tongue might slip, or he might reveal something sensitive in a misguided attempt to be helpful.
His face twitched with anger at the thought of that.
Beryl was trying to be diplomatic in how she handled Ivy and Myles. He saw that now. “Well. Fuck ‘em both, that’s what I say. Fuck ‘em both with a rusty screwdriver.”
“I could.. possibly be down for that.” Beryl adjusted the phone, with all the loudness of her grip crumpling over the receiver, fingers folding one way than another like origami. “I like Ivy.. in spite of things, not because of them. She is bad people, but she does a good job at it… Unfortunately? I guess.”
There it was. The elephant in the room. Beryl acknowledging the very thing that had made Nick reluctant to call her, the fact that made him worry about how she’d respond. At least she acknowledged Ivy was bad people. Then again, liking bad people was Beryl’s whole aesthetic. Just look at Nick.
A thought came to Nick. That he was obsessing over Beryl’s friendship with Ivy as a way of ignoring the far more...extreme manner with which Myles and Tristan were connected. No. Couldn’t be that. A friendship probably meant more than just casual sex, right?
Except Myles and Tristan were friends as well as just fuck buddies. Couldn’t have fuck buddies without buddies.
Fuck.
“Beryl...what about Myles? What do you think of him? Because he was the more vicious one.”
“You,” she paused, for possible effect, for the suddenly sultry and low purr in her voice to percolate… “Can be very vicious yourself..! Where it counts.” That little wet gunshot pop of her lips at the end was her mimed air kiss: a little dry and small in person, but usually a favorite way to put periods on her sentences when ‘hot’ was the temperature under her collar.
Well, maybe. She’d unfortunately never strived to be the paragon of consistency.
“Myles seems very calculated. In all the ways, for better, for worse.” A pause. “I, ah. Like him well enough. Tristan does and then some, if I recall.. Correctly.”
Nick was about to respond to that come-on with his own irreverent flirtation, and a healthy conversation came this close to appearing, but then she said that about Myles, and it was like being punched in the gut twice. “Fucking hell, you don’t think I know that Beryl?” he snapped. “You don’t think Myles, in all his infinite fucking wisdom, tried weaponising that? Jesus fucking Christ.”
Beryl refused to take to Nick’s swerve of tone with any sort of particular reaction, she continued to sludge through her own mental molasses.
“I am positive he tried weaponizing it, hmm?” Little questioning lilt. So unnecessarily innocent. “Life bristles weapon-like. Or, like.. a briar patch. And like a briar patch there’s cozy little pockets everywhere to hide away.”
There were some moments - many moments - where Beryl made absolutely no fucking sense. None whatsoever. It was sufficient to replace Nick’s anger with confusion. He doubted it was a deliberate method to calm him down, but it worked. He had a moment to pause, to exhale, to feel bad about snapping at her. “Sorry...just, he’s a bully. He’s a fucking bully.”
She took a moment longer than he.
“Everyone can become a bully in the right circumstances, I think. For you, the wrong place.. wrong time. I guess.”
So he wasn’t a bully, just in the wrong place at the wrong time? Nick couldn’t accept that. Wouldn’t accept that “No, no, he came over. He got involved. This was malicious. Forethought. He is a calculating little shit.”
“He is,” Beryl murmured in a humorless drone. “It’s his right to be. Natural, legal. As it’s your right… to fight back. That one part surprised me about you, the first time.” Her soft smile was static buzz, but audible.
Nick was, as so often with Beryl, confused, and right now he found it more aggravating than endearing. However, it did distract him from the more intense negativity. “What, that I fight back surprised you?” It was more for clarification than anything.
“I like it,” she offered simply.
Nick stuttered. “Thanks, I guess?”
“Usually I’m the one guessing,” Beryl murmur mused. “I still want to come over but at the same time, I don’t know.. For example.” Beryl sounded sleepy, but then, that was par for the course. “I want you to fight.. fight back with Myles, or with people like him. People like him, but at the same time, I like people like him.”
Also the par for the course.
Nick made a strange noise at that, half-chuckle, half-sigh. “Well, at least you’re honest when you’re sending mixed signals.”
“We’ve gotten this far..!” The soft simpering of nature, wind and brush rustling, became the ambience during her moments of pause. Her shoes gently applauded against pavement. “I don’t know. But, you know you can ask me for anything.. and I’ll try my best. As usual.”
Nick opened his mouth. He tried to think of something to say. “I...I dunno. Is there anything you want to do?”
“You,” she said without hesitation. Then, another gentle gallop of a giggle, then an abrupt silence. Then, “I had no plans, but I’m not sure… not sure, if our plans will align tonight. Perhaps you don’t need to hear, specifically, what I feel I have to say. Not yet.”
Nick giggled at her joke, but, surprising himself, it was more perfunctory than anything. He wasn’t in mind for teasing flirtation, he supposed. “Alright. Well. I guess I’ll go out and...let me know if you pop around at all, I suppose?”
“Willie probably will.”
And, somewhere in the vicinity of an afterthought, “I miss you. Let’s get together soon.” The phone clicked silent, sans further ceremony.
Nick was going to reply. By the time he had something thoughtful to say, it was too late.
-
General Goose
- Posts: 731
- Joined: Mon Aug 13, 2018 4:02 pm
And now for the difficult one. Nick had been lying to himself that Beryl would be the tricky one, that Beryl would be the one with divided loyalties, but that was just deflection. Or maybe, or maybe, he had been right, and Beryl had been the difficult one, and talking to Tristan would end up being a breeze!
Okay. Probably not. But here he went.
It took about ten seconds of ringing before Tristan picked up.
The moment the ringing stopped, and Nick was through to Tristan, he was already midway through an unwieldy attempt to explain what had happened. “So, hello Tristan, I’ll skip the pleasantries and say that I was out on 34th Street today, cutting about with Gaelan, wasting time, y’know, when we saw Ivy and Bret, and Ivy and Gaelan started arguing because arguing with each other is what they were put on Earth to do, and it got quite feisty, then Myles came around and insulted me, and I may have thrown lukewarm coffee at Ivy and a coffee lid at Myles.”
Nick paused, having been previously unable to stop that deluge of explanation. He bit his lip, trying to think over his words to see if there was anything that could be misinterpreted, only to find out he’d already forgotten the exact words he’d said. He made a mental note to get angry at Tristan and assume it was his fault if he misunderstood anything.
“So, yeah. Do with that information what you will.”
Tristan picked up the phone after around 10 or so seconds of ringing, a cool and collected tone that, like Beryl’s, showed his comparatively more stable emotional state. After Nick’s ramble, he paused, clearly placing more thought into his words than Nick ever did.
“Okay. What was it Myles said exactly?”
Nick was not expecting that question. He wasn’t sure why. It was perfectly reasonable, and for all his foibles and idiosyncrasies, Tristan was not an unreasonable bloke. “They…they called me useless. As a friend. They called me a useless friend. And that shit just isn’t on.”
“That sucks. But it’s like you said. Gaelan and Ivy arguing is a constant thing. Ivy and Myles throwing little jabs out is a constant thing. It’s not surprising and it’s to be expected. So why did you stoop to their level?”
Oh, get off the fucking fence, Tristan. Get off Myles’s dick. “I didn’t stoop to their level, man,” Nick continued, not bothering to hide the resentment in his tone. “I stood up for a friend, and then they just pressed my buttons. I wasn’t getting in the middle of their shit.”
“Okay. I’m glad you told me and I hope you feel better soon. Is there anything else you wanted to talk about?” Tristan sounded...done. Resigned. Bored. Calm and collected still, but to an unreasonable degree. And Nick didn’t want calm and collected!
Nick blinked. “Is...is that it?”
“I… what do you want me to say, Nick? What can I do right now that will help?”
“Just...Christ, man, just something. Just, you can’t not have an opinion, man. You can’t not have questions.”
There was another pause before Tristan next spoke. “It’s shit that they did that and it’s shit that it made you feel that way. I hate knowing that people I care about have hurt each other. Is that not an opinion, Nick?”
“Well, you weren’t exactly saying that before, was my point.”
“It was a lot. That was a lot to take in, so I needed a little while to gather all my thoughts. But I mean it. I want to help you feel better.”
“Okay. Thanks.” Nick swallowed. There was something he really wanted to know - but he knew asking it would be death. He paused, clicking his tongue and umming and ahhing to hold the floor, trying to think of a sensible way to probe at it. “What’s…” Fuck it. Might as well be direct. “Just so you know, Myles, he...he weaponised your history together. Like, used it to attack me.”
“‘Weaponised’... What did he say? Exactly, I mean.”
Nick opened his mouth. He had not been expecting that question. No matter what he responded, he would either sound flippant - by giving the long version of the story, irreverent daddykink joke included - or over-sensitive. Or both. He frowned. Decided to talk about how it made him feel. “I can’t remember the exact wording, but it was after everything had simmered down a tad and we were all about to go our separate ways, and then Myles threw in some cheap parting shot about you two sleeping together. And whatever, open relationship and no judgement and all that, but he tried using it to attack me and...fuck, man, I dunno.”
“What happens with Myles is, like, God... it doesn’t affect how I feel about you. Things with me and him are... just a bit complicated. If it upsets you, I can stop. No problem. I did make a commitment to you and Beryl, after all.”
Why was Tristan so bloody reasonable? Why was Beryl so bloody reasonable? Why was Nick the only one who seemed phased by this all? Jesus fucking Christ, he felt like such a prima donna piece of shit right now. It was fucking aggravating. “I don’t care who you go with, just...I don’t want that fucking Oompa Loompa weaponising it. That’s not unreasonable, right? Or am I just crazy?”
“You’re not crazy, Nick. It’s not okay for him to take something that should be special and wonderful and use it to piss you off.” Tristan paused, again, on edge, showing some more emotion, the slightest hint of panic. Nick didn’t enjoy the fact that Tristan was in discomfort, but that they were sharing this moment together meant something. It was the point of a relationship, after all. “Fuck, I don’t like you being upset. Do you want me to come over? I can… help make you feel good again.”
Nick should have, in that moment, said thank you. He should have graciously accepted Tristan’s offer, used the opportunity of intimate social and physical contact he was clearly craving. He should have called Beryl back, apologised for being short with her, invited her to join in too. But no. No, that would have been the reasonable approach.
Nick was not reasonable.
“You sure, mate? Or are you gonna go fuck another one of my mortal enemies first?”
Nick knew he’d been a dick the moment the words left his lips.
“Fuck you, Nick.”
Nick blinked. He knew Tristan was entirely justified in his response. He knew that everything since spotting Myles and Ivy and Bret in town had been some horrendous campaign of social self-harm. He knew all that. And yet, he was still angry.
So he dug deeper.
“I can give you their numbers if you want. Maybe you can fly over to Scotland, fuck everyone there I didn’t like too?”
There was another pause before Tristan replied. And he once again sounded calm and collected. And cold. He’d never heard Tristan use this tone before.
“I always thought you were different, Nick. I don’t date people. I don’t like relationships. I don’t like getting all those feelings involved and I fucking hate feeling vulnerable. But with you it felt different. It felt like it was worth it because you respected me and let me be myself and didn’t judge me for it. Because you are the first person who hasn’t called me a slut or hasn’t used the fact that I can’t keep it in my pants against me. Guess I was pretty naive then, huh?”
Nick listened. Because, hey, Tristan was being right. He’d known all of this about Tristan. Knew that the lack of judgement, the lack of prudishness, was the one thing that the trio had going for them. And Nick had thrown that away, for a brief moment of cathartic release. He hadn’t meant it like that. He really hadn’t.
But he had been the victim here, so he wasn’t going to apologise.
“You know I didn’t mean it like that, Tristan.”
“What did you mean, then?”
“I meant that...Myles, man. Come on. Myles.”
“Myles is a dick. Myles is nasty and conceited. But guess what? Myles makes me feel good, Myles finds it in himself to treat me nicely, and honestly? That’s so much more than what you’re doing to me right now.”
There was nothing Nick could say to that. So he decided to continue being a cunt. “Well, why don’t you go feel good with him then?”
"Get fucked, Nick. I'd offer, but my standards just went up."
“Your standards just went up, eh? Guess that means you’re too - your standards are - guess that means that you’re - fuck off!” He wanted to say something along the lines of ‘well, if I’m too low for your standards, then so are you’, but he had failed in his attempts to be witty.
“Goodnight, Nick.”
Tristan hung up.
“Goodnight, Nick” Nick repeated, in a high tone mocking voice.
Willie knocked on the door. “Tea,” he politely offered, and Nick grunted in agreement as he buried his head in his hands.
((Nick Ogilvie continued elsewhere.))
Okay. Probably not. But here he went.
It took about ten seconds of ringing before Tristan picked up.
The moment the ringing stopped, and Nick was through to Tristan, he was already midway through an unwieldy attempt to explain what had happened. “So, hello Tristan, I’ll skip the pleasantries and say that I was out on 34th Street today, cutting about with Gaelan, wasting time, y’know, when we saw Ivy and Bret, and Ivy and Gaelan started arguing because arguing with each other is what they were put on Earth to do, and it got quite feisty, then Myles came around and insulted me, and I may have thrown lukewarm coffee at Ivy and a coffee lid at Myles.”
Nick paused, having been previously unable to stop that deluge of explanation. He bit his lip, trying to think over his words to see if there was anything that could be misinterpreted, only to find out he’d already forgotten the exact words he’d said. He made a mental note to get angry at Tristan and assume it was his fault if he misunderstood anything.
“So, yeah. Do with that information what you will.”
Tristan picked up the phone after around 10 or so seconds of ringing, a cool and collected tone that, like Beryl’s, showed his comparatively more stable emotional state. After Nick’s ramble, he paused, clearly placing more thought into his words than Nick ever did.
“Okay. What was it Myles said exactly?”
Nick was not expecting that question. He wasn’t sure why. It was perfectly reasonable, and for all his foibles and idiosyncrasies, Tristan was not an unreasonable bloke. “They…they called me useless. As a friend. They called me a useless friend. And that shit just isn’t on.”
“That sucks. But it’s like you said. Gaelan and Ivy arguing is a constant thing. Ivy and Myles throwing little jabs out is a constant thing. It’s not surprising and it’s to be expected. So why did you stoop to their level?”
Oh, get off the fucking fence, Tristan. Get off Myles’s dick. “I didn’t stoop to their level, man,” Nick continued, not bothering to hide the resentment in his tone. “I stood up for a friend, and then they just pressed my buttons. I wasn’t getting in the middle of their shit.”
“Okay. I’m glad you told me and I hope you feel better soon. Is there anything else you wanted to talk about?” Tristan sounded...done. Resigned. Bored. Calm and collected still, but to an unreasonable degree. And Nick didn’t want calm and collected!
Nick blinked. “Is...is that it?”
“I… what do you want me to say, Nick? What can I do right now that will help?”
“Just...Christ, man, just something. Just, you can’t not have an opinion, man. You can’t not have questions.”
There was another pause before Tristan next spoke. “It’s shit that they did that and it’s shit that it made you feel that way. I hate knowing that people I care about have hurt each other. Is that not an opinion, Nick?”
“Well, you weren’t exactly saying that before, was my point.”
“It was a lot. That was a lot to take in, so I needed a little while to gather all my thoughts. But I mean it. I want to help you feel better.”
“Okay. Thanks.” Nick swallowed. There was something he really wanted to know - but he knew asking it would be death. He paused, clicking his tongue and umming and ahhing to hold the floor, trying to think of a sensible way to probe at it. “What’s…” Fuck it. Might as well be direct. “Just so you know, Myles, he...he weaponised your history together. Like, used it to attack me.”
“‘Weaponised’... What did he say? Exactly, I mean.”
Nick opened his mouth. He had not been expecting that question. No matter what he responded, he would either sound flippant - by giving the long version of the story, irreverent daddykink joke included - or over-sensitive. Or both. He frowned. Decided to talk about how it made him feel. “I can’t remember the exact wording, but it was after everything had simmered down a tad and we were all about to go our separate ways, and then Myles threw in some cheap parting shot about you two sleeping together. And whatever, open relationship and no judgement and all that, but he tried using it to attack me and...fuck, man, I dunno.”
“What happens with Myles is, like, God... it doesn’t affect how I feel about you. Things with me and him are... just a bit complicated. If it upsets you, I can stop. No problem. I did make a commitment to you and Beryl, after all.”
Why was Tristan so bloody reasonable? Why was Beryl so bloody reasonable? Why was Nick the only one who seemed phased by this all? Jesus fucking Christ, he felt like such a prima donna piece of shit right now. It was fucking aggravating. “I don’t care who you go with, just...I don’t want that fucking Oompa Loompa weaponising it. That’s not unreasonable, right? Or am I just crazy?”
“You’re not crazy, Nick. It’s not okay for him to take something that should be special and wonderful and use it to piss you off.” Tristan paused, again, on edge, showing some more emotion, the slightest hint of panic. Nick didn’t enjoy the fact that Tristan was in discomfort, but that they were sharing this moment together meant something. It was the point of a relationship, after all. “Fuck, I don’t like you being upset. Do you want me to come over? I can… help make you feel good again.”
Nick should have, in that moment, said thank you. He should have graciously accepted Tristan’s offer, used the opportunity of intimate social and physical contact he was clearly craving. He should have called Beryl back, apologised for being short with her, invited her to join in too. But no. No, that would have been the reasonable approach.
Nick was not reasonable.
“You sure, mate? Or are you gonna go fuck another one of my mortal enemies first?”
Nick knew he’d been a dick the moment the words left his lips.
“Fuck you, Nick.”
Nick blinked. He knew Tristan was entirely justified in his response. He knew that everything since spotting Myles and Ivy and Bret in town had been some horrendous campaign of social self-harm. He knew all that. And yet, he was still angry.
So he dug deeper.
“I can give you their numbers if you want. Maybe you can fly over to Scotland, fuck everyone there I didn’t like too?”
There was another pause before Tristan replied. And he once again sounded calm and collected. And cold. He’d never heard Tristan use this tone before.
“I always thought you were different, Nick. I don’t date people. I don’t like relationships. I don’t like getting all those feelings involved and I fucking hate feeling vulnerable. But with you it felt different. It felt like it was worth it because you respected me and let me be myself and didn’t judge me for it. Because you are the first person who hasn’t called me a slut or hasn’t used the fact that I can’t keep it in my pants against me. Guess I was pretty naive then, huh?”
Nick listened. Because, hey, Tristan was being right. He’d known all of this about Tristan. Knew that the lack of judgement, the lack of prudishness, was the one thing that the trio had going for them. And Nick had thrown that away, for a brief moment of cathartic release. He hadn’t meant it like that. He really hadn’t.
But he had been the victim here, so he wasn’t going to apologise.
“You know I didn’t mean it like that, Tristan.”
“What did you mean, then?”
“I meant that...Myles, man. Come on. Myles.”
“Myles is a dick. Myles is nasty and conceited. But guess what? Myles makes me feel good, Myles finds it in himself to treat me nicely, and honestly? That’s so much more than what you’re doing to me right now.”
There was nothing Nick could say to that. So he decided to continue being a cunt. “Well, why don’t you go feel good with him then?”
"Get fucked, Nick. I'd offer, but my standards just went up."
“Your standards just went up, eh? Guess that means you’re too - your standards are - guess that means that you’re - fuck off!” He wanted to say something along the lines of ‘well, if I’m too low for your standards, then so are you’, but he had failed in his attempts to be witty.
“Goodnight, Nick.”
Tristan hung up.
“Goodnight, Nick” Nick repeated, in a high tone mocking voice.
Willie knocked on the door. “Tea,” he politely offered, and Nick grunted in agreement as he buried his head in his hands.
((Nick Ogilvie continued elsewhere.))