(no subject)
Characters: Grift (grinninggrifter and OPEN TO ALL
Date/Time: September 5th/Midnight
Location: ~IN YOUR DREAMS WHOOO~
Rating: PG-13 for Grift
Summary: Grift sleeps. Come see him in his dreams? And please feel free to alter the dream to your liking for a merging of dreams and all that or they can have weird era-blending adventures! Pime Taradoxes are allowed because dreamworlds don’t make sense! Hurrah! If anyone wants to log the next morning, that’s cool too.
Grift was beginning to tire of being homeless. It had almost been a novelty for the first little while, for he was not bereft of food or drink or even clothing. He put on entertaining magic shows for some money, did odd jobs for some more and stole the rest of what he wanted. None of that seemed to matter anymore, however, in the face of having no home. He sorely missed a bed without another body lying beside him, a place of solace to return to and to keep his belongings, a place to retire to whenever he liked. Oh, at times he went home with women, but the minute that he was out having sex in order to use their lodgings and not to satisfy his own primal urges was the minute that he wished to quit.
Besides, it often suited him to remain awake all night only to sleep during the day, but that was no longer an option. Even if the sun didn’t keep him up, the fact that others could see him while he slumbered did.
He didn’t like the fact that people could see him. Upon realizing his state, they looked at him with disgust, or worse, pity. He loathed that. Why was it that people looked down upon him when he was living by his own rules, but possessed no disdain for him when he gained a good living swindling and conning? Did a large home and a pressed suit mean that much to them?
Yes, he knew. It did. That was why he always took care to look presentable and maintain a sophisticated veneer all this time. And though Grift often told himself that he cared not what the outside world thought, the fact remained that he did. Besides, the weather was beginning to turn and he didn’t relish the thought of sleeping out in the rain.
He waited until it was well past midnight to settle down on one of the park benches, only the quiet sounds of nature and the occasional plodding footsteps of a night watchman surrounding him. He stared drowsily up at the sky and tugged a blanket he had purchased around him, the alcohol he had consumed earlier burning pleasantly in his gut. With that, his eyes slowly drifted shut.
They opened again on the familiar park bench, except this time there was a man standing above him in a suit, grey hair and muscle running to fat showing old age, but the authority in which he held himself and the powerful arc of his shoulders revealed strength beyond his reckoning. “The hell are you doing?” The man asked.
Grift blinked up at him a few times, unused to being spoken to in such a fashion, frozen to the place.
“Don’t you go starin’ at me like that. Jesus. You get fucked on something?”
“Did I get…” Grift shook his head and managed to sit up. He had not used curse words in casual conversation for a hell of a long time, but old identities died hard. “I don’t get fucked on anything,” he said.
“Then what’re you doin’, dozing off on a bench like this?” The man took a cigarette out of his pocket, lit it, took a drag. His suit was expensive, Grift saw, and so was his lighter. He was heavy with too much expensive food, but carried himself like a much lighter man. The people walking around them flitted away from them. There was the outline of weapons underneath his jacket. “You do this, you make us look bad, make us look like we don’t know how to take care of our own, you got that?”
“Just closing my eyes,” Grift said, smiling disarmingly.
The man grunted, not fooled in the least. “You make a habit of closing your eyes like that, boy, you make a habit of getting’ a hole in the head. Well? Stand up already. We got ourselves a little job. That means we got you a little job, and you’d know it by now if you didn’t fuck around on park benches. Makes you look like a homeless.”
Grift watched in awe as the familiar scenery of Edensphere changed beneath his feet, turning into a big, dirty old city, smoke billowing from the vehicles, buildings stark and grey and trees nowhere to be found. It was delightful. They walked down the street - no, they didn’t walk, the swaggered. They swaggered like they owned the place, because they damn well did, and people got the hell outta their way, because that’s just how you treated your betters. Yeah. This was how it was. Soon, they came upon a big old building which appeared to be a flowershop, but Grift knew better because it was too damn big to just be for flowers, and damn, it was so cheesy that he almost laughed aloud ‘cause it was always the flowershop. Nevertheless, they went through the back easy as that and went down the small staircase into the basement where a full fledged bar awaited them, structured nearly the same as Smoke’s was, oddly enough.
The clientele wasn’t the same though, not by a long shot. All girls in slinky dresses and men in suits and hats and they were all smoking and drinking up a storm and making eyes and generally being subtle, nothing at all like the crowd at Smoke’s that was all grinding bodies and thrusting hips. Nah, these were people with class. These were Grift’s people. There was a woman standing on the stage crooning a tune, real soft, real sweet. A red dress would have completed the set nicely, but she was decked in black. Her blue eyes sought them out under half lidded eyes decorated with charcoal.
“You need a cup o’ joe to get you properly awake?” Asked the man.
“A good shot’ll do the job.”
The man shrugged, rapped twice on the bar. “You know the drill, love.”
The woman behind the bar slid two whiskeys towards them, and Grift took a shot. Curiously, it didn’t burn on the way down.
“Now as I said, your job.” The man reached behind the bar and produced a suitcase. “Guns’re in here. Good ones too. I need you to take out a couple people for me. Couple o’ the boys will be tagging along.”
“A hit?” Grift said, mystified. “I’m well out of-“
“Well outta what?”
“The business.” Wasn’t he? He was homeless for god’s sake.
“Who said? You’re outta the business when I damn well tell you you’re outta the business, you hear me?” The man stared at him, serious as nothing else. The bar stilled, as if poised to kill. There was a rasping sound behind him, a knife upon a stone. He felt as if the world was opening up and closing in on him at the same time. His chest clenched. His fists closed. Beneath his hands, he watched the worn material of his suit turn from a worn grey to a clean, smooth black. Felt as the weariness washed off his shoulders. Felt as a spike of adrenaline or excitement or fuck, he didn’t know, something ran through his veins.
Grift was silent.
“You know where the house is. You get in there, you kill him, you grab what we need.”
“Don’t do hits.”
“What was that?”
“I said I don’t do hits,” Grift said, louder this time. It had come out of nowhere. Everything came out of nowhere. Usually he was the best at keeping his lips sealed, never said anything he didn’t want to, never felt the urge to, but he couldn’t stop himself from talking here. The smoke in the air made the features of the bar flicker and merge together. It made him dizzy. Or was that the smell? Sickly sweet perfume and the underlying scent of booze and sweat nearly swept him off his feet, cloying and bitter all at once. The women in the bar eyed him as he straightened up, the familiar swagger once again seeping into his bones. It wasn’t about the man, he reiterated to himself, relishing the appraising eyes upon him. It was about how he carried himself.
“You do this one. You do the spy shit, yeah? Well, we need a man of your subtlety, so you do this. You get paid real well for this one.” A beat. “No more fuckin’ benches. We’re talkin’ an apartment in the heart of the city here.”
Grift took the suitcase and stood up. He sucked in his cheeks. Things looked strange, real strange and something was seriously off in the way people spoke and moved, as if they were bouncing from one era to the next. So he stood, and he stared, and wondered where to go. The suitcase was heavy in his hand.
This was wrong, he knew it was wrong, but god, it felt right.
Date/Time: September 5th/Midnight
Location: ~IN YOUR DREAMS WHOOO~
Rating: PG-13 for Grift
Summary: Grift sleeps. Come see him in his dreams? And please feel free to alter the dream to your liking for a merging of dreams and all that or they can have weird era-blending adventures! Pime Taradoxes are allowed because dreamworlds don’t make sense! Hurrah! If anyone wants to log the next morning, that’s cool too.
Grift was beginning to tire of being homeless. It had almost been a novelty for the first little while, for he was not bereft of food or drink or even clothing. He put on entertaining magic shows for some money, did odd jobs for some more and stole the rest of what he wanted. None of that seemed to matter anymore, however, in the face of having no home. He sorely missed a bed without another body lying beside him, a place of solace to return to and to keep his belongings, a place to retire to whenever he liked. Oh, at times he went home with women, but the minute that he was out having sex in order to use their lodgings and not to satisfy his own primal urges was the minute that he wished to quit.
Besides, it often suited him to remain awake all night only to sleep during the day, but that was no longer an option. Even if the sun didn’t keep him up, the fact that others could see him while he slumbered did.
He didn’t like the fact that people could see him. Upon realizing his state, they looked at him with disgust, or worse, pity. He loathed that. Why was it that people looked down upon him when he was living by his own rules, but possessed no disdain for him when he gained a good living swindling and conning? Did a large home and a pressed suit mean that much to them?
Yes, he knew. It did. That was why he always took care to look presentable and maintain a sophisticated veneer all this time. And though Grift often told himself that he cared not what the outside world thought, the fact remained that he did. Besides, the weather was beginning to turn and he didn’t relish the thought of sleeping out in the rain.
He waited until it was well past midnight to settle down on one of the park benches, only the quiet sounds of nature and the occasional plodding footsteps of a night watchman surrounding him. He stared drowsily up at the sky and tugged a blanket he had purchased around him, the alcohol he had consumed earlier burning pleasantly in his gut. With that, his eyes slowly drifted shut.
They opened again on the familiar park bench, except this time there was a man standing above him in a suit, grey hair and muscle running to fat showing old age, but the authority in which he held himself and the powerful arc of his shoulders revealed strength beyond his reckoning. “The hell are you doing?” The man asked.
Grift blinked up at him a few times, unused to being spoken to in such a fashion, frozen to the place.
“Don’t you go starin’ at me like that. Jesus. You get fucked on something?”
“Did I get…” Grift shook his head and managed to sit up. He had not used curse words in casual conversation for a hell of a long time, but old identities died hard. “I don’t get fucked on anything,” he said.
“Then what’re you doin’, dozing off on a bench like this?” The man took a cigarette out of his pocket, lit it, took a drag. His suit was expensive, Grift saw, and so was his lighter. He was heavy with too much expensive food, but carried himself like a much lighter man. The people walking around them flitted away from them. There was the outline of weapons underneath his jacket. “You do this, you make us look bad, make us look like we don’t know how to take care of our own, you got that?”
“Just closing my eyes,” Grift said, smiling disarmingly.
The man grunted, not fooled in the least. “You make a habit of closing your eyes like that, boy, you make a habit of getting’ a hole in the head. Well? Stand up already. We got ourselves a little job. That means we got you a little job, and you’d know it by now if you didn’t fuck around on park benches. Makes you look like a homeless.”
Grift watched in awe as the familiar scenery of Edensphere changed beneath his feet, turning into a big, dirty old city, smoke billowing from the vehicles, buildings stark and grey and trees nowhere to be found. It was delightful. They walked down the street - no, they didn’t walk, the swaggered. They swaggered like they owned the place, because they damn well did, and people got the hell outta their way, because that’s just how you treated your betters. Yeah. This was how it was. Soon, they came upon a big old building which appeared to be a flowershop, but Grift knew better because it was too damn big to just be for flowers, and damn, it was so cheesy that he almost laughed aloud ‘cause it was always the flowershop. Nevertheless, they went through the back easy as that and went down the small staircase into the basement where a full fledged bar awaited them, structured nearly the same as Smoke’s was, oddly enough.
The clientele wasn’t the same though, not by a long shot. All girls in slinky dresses and men in suits and hats and they were all smoking and drinking up a storm and making eyes and generally being subtle, nothing at all like the crowd at Smoke’s that was all grinding bodies and thrusting hips. Nah, these were people with class. These were Grift’s people. There was a woman standing on the stage crooning a tune, real soft, real sweet. A red dress would have completed the set nicely, but she was decked in black. Her blue eyes sought them out under half lidded eyes decorated with charcoal.
“You need a cup o’ joe to get you properly awake?” Asked the man.
“A good shot’ll do the job.”
The man shrugged, rapped twice on the bar. “You know the drill, love.”
The woman behind the bar slid two whiskeys towards them, and Grift took a shot. Curiously, it didn’t burn on the way down.
“Now as I said, your job.” The man reached behind the bar and produced a suitcase. “Guns’re in here. Good ones too. I need you to take out a couple people for me. Couple o’ the boys will be tagging along.”
“A hit?” Grift said, mystified. “I’m well out of-“
“Well outta what?”
“The business.” Wasn’t he? He was homeless for god’s sake.
“Who said? You’re outta the business when I damn well tell you you’re outta the business, you hear me?” The man stared at him, serious as nothing else. The bar stilled, as if poised to kill. There was a rasping sound behind him, a knife upon a stone. He felt as if the world was opening up and closing in on him at the same time. His chest clenched. His fists closed. Beneath his hands, he watched the worn material of his suit turn from a worn grey to a clean, smooth black. Felt as the weariness washed off his shoulders. Felt as a spike of adrenaline or excitement or fuck, he didn’t know, something ran through his veins.
Grift was silent.
“You know where the house is. You get in there, you kill him, you grab what we need.”
“Don’t do hits.”
“What was that?”
“I said I don’t do hits,” Grift said, louder this time. It had come out of nowhere. Everything came out of nowhere. Usually he was the best at keeping his lips sealed, never said anything he didn’t want to, never felt the urge to, but he couldn’t stop himself from talking here. The smoke in the air made the features of the bar flicker and merge together. It made him dizzy. Or was that the smell? Sickly sweet perfume and the underlying scent of booze and sweat nearly swept him off his feet, cloying and bitter all at once. The women in the bar eyed him as he straightened up, the familiar swagger once again seeping into his bones. It wasn’t about the man, he reiterated to himself, relishing the appraising eyes upon him. It was about how he carried himself.
“You do this one. You do the spy shit, yeah? Well, we need a man of your subtlety, so you do this. You get paid real well for this one.” A beat. “No more fuckin’ benches. We’re talkin’ an apartment in the heart of the city here.”
Grift took the suitcase and stood up. He sucked in his cheeks. Things looked strange, real strange and something was seriously off in the way people spoke and moved, as if they were bouncing from one era to the next. So he stood, and he stared, and wondered where to go. The suitcase was heavy in his hand.
This was wrong, he knew it was wrong, but god, it felt right.