Degradation
Might as well feel bad all the way through, right? And on the Lord's day, no less, just hours after taking communion. In goes the wafer, and by blessed miracle, it turns to flesh in my mouth.
Transubstantiation in an alleyway. In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.
11/27/2005
Logfile from Leah of X-Men MUCK.
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The White Room
A small, comfortable little place, this - a minuscule cafe of little fame and ridiculously good coffee. The main room is small and rather inordinately comfortable, prevented from being claustrophobic by a theme of whites in the decor and the fact that the regulars - a sundry bunch of academics, artists, lawyers, workpersons, and every other group New York has to offer - are generally quietly occupied with coffee and good, solid plates of food. There is no theme, no specialized and exotic varieties of coffee or tea - the atmosphere is thick with cigarette smoke and comfort, not desperate sophistication.
--
Leah has taken advantage of the hour (getting towards "late," especially for a Sunday) and the weather (not too cold, especially for late November) by taking over a whole round table to herself in the cafe, not too near the door, but not too far from it, either. Every time it opens, in fact, her face jolts up from brooding study of the coffee cup between her hands, and her eyes jump with hope dashed by another slouching stranger, another hustling student, another canoodling couple. And she looks down again then, each time, and hunches her shoulders under her denim jacket, and stares all the harder into her dark and sullen drink.
Non-slouching ex-students, pair divided by silence, Adel and Bahir enter one after the other. Bahir drifts away as Adel heads for the counter, the buttons of his coat loose, hands in pockets holding it close to his body as he angles between chairs. Adel quickly sheds his coat, draping it over his arm. He waits patiently in line, chatting up the girl in front of him up until her boyfriend turns around to wrap a proprietary hand around her waist. Adel smiles brightly and falls silent. Bahir sits, glancing a table over -- Leah -- and then on in evident disinterest.
--
Al-Razi
Similar overall in face and form, differing slightly in the small details, both men stand just under six feet, slender builds well-muscled and finely proportioned. Their features are mirror copies: symmetrical, attractive, clean-edged but not striking. Eyebrows are dark, thick but well-defined, with clear eyes below. Banded brown and gray, the effect that of watered silk, they are striking in their clarity, not their color. Thick lashes, not especially long, add a dark frame. Their mouths are stubbornly set.
Adel keeps his hair short, bleached and dyed, with golden strands streaking through a russet brown, set in chaotic spikes. Bahir's hair is longer and lushly dark, with a slight wave. At the longest point, it only just brushes his shoulders. Adel is clean-shaven, while Bahir keeps a slightly scruffy short mustache and beard.
--
Her shoulders still hunched -- raven's grumpy distress -- Leah stares back at Bahir in that interval of glancing, but looks away, too. Down. And then into the backs of her eyelids as she raises her cup for a slow, measured swallow.
It is a few minutes before Adel comes through with two mugs of coffee, one placed before his brother, the other kept in hand. He sits with a smile for all, indiscriminate in his affection, that slowly spins to fix on Leah. As he adds packet after packet of sugar, he grins gamely in her direction. He waves a pinky. Bahir leans back, looking very much as if he'd like to slouch, and scowls over the coffee at Adel.
Leah's cup goes down. Her eyelids go up, just in time to catch -- pinky. Waving. At her. Bemused, she looks at it and then at its owner. "What the hell are you doing?"
"Saying hello," Adel says, sliding smoothly into conversational opening. "Hullo." The pinky goes down.
Bahir groans quietly, taking a long sip to scald harsh words from his tongue.
Leah studies him now. "Do you always say hello like that? You give gay guys a bad name."
Bahir's eyes skitter back in a darting look, flashing approval; a smirk curls over the rim of the mug as he lifts it from another prolonged swallow.
"I imagine I do, given as how I sleep with women," Adel says, flustered a bare second before recovering.
Annoyance flattens Leah's mouth. "Well, how nice for them." Her gaze encompasses both of them for a moment. Twins; mirrors. "Double your pleasure, huh?"
"How original," Bahir says, deadpan. Approval fades and the smirk turns wry, not so gentle in its mockery. "I've /never/ heard that one before."
Adel meets annoyance with cheer: a terminal failing. "The women seem to like it."
"If you want original entertainment," Leah snaps at Bahir, "try Eighth Avenue. Pimps'll hook you up right. Midgets are fifteen percent off for Thanksgiving, I hear. Natural markdown, y'know." Her glower slides to Adel, over him: hot, slick, pallid brown. "Do they? As much as I'm enjoying it?"
Uncurling a single finger, Bahir points it ever so vaguely in Leah's direction. "Much better," he declares, magnanimous. "And yet, no thank you." Magnanimous /and/ polite.
Adel rubs his jaw line with a mug-warmed hand, smile rueful. "Perhaps in a slightly different manner," he accommodates.
Leah bares her teeth at Bahir, but battle-light lights her eyes with grudging simpatico for a second before she sighs back to the other man. "I was waiting for someone," she tells Adel, backing off somewhat (though her fingers are tight and yellow-knuckled around her cup). "Nothing you did. Sorry."
Bahir smiles, ever so slightly, down into his coffee before attention turns away. "Don't worry about it," Adel says, brushing aside the apology. He continues, not-prying, oh-so-deft: "Waiting for a friend?"
"Apparently," and Leah looks back to the door, which stays stubbornly shut.
Adel follows the line of Leah's glance, a shoulder dropping in a shrug. "Sorry they didn't show," he says, sympathy tendered with a feather touch.
Leah shrugs, too, but swifter, harder. Brusque, as in a dismissal. "My own fault," she mutters, half on a laugh. "Next time, I'll call. Anyway." She has another swallow of coffee, grimaces, puts the cup down, braces it between both hands. "Worse ways to spend a Sunday night, right?"
"Usually more efficient," Adel agrees, humor gentle and smile slight. "There's always something to be said for striking up conversation with perfect strangers. I like doing that." Bahir's sigh speaks volumes -- condensed, Reader's Digest volumes -- of resigned irritation on this matter.
"And your brother -- for surely he must be -- doesn't," Leah divines effortlessly. She smiles. "Or maybe he doesn't like you?"
Bahir's attention turns back to Leah, smiled fixed. "A bit of both."
"He doesn't really mind that much," Adel assures, blithe. He smiles over at Bahir, met with a heavily ironic look. "He'd be bored otherwise."
Leah's smile turns upside down. "Bored? So /you're/ his entertainment? Well--" she slouches back, snorts "--better you than me, since I've already struck out once with him. But you keep coming. Tilting at windmills."
"Hmm." Adel blows the thought over his coffee, pausing to take a drink. "I wouldn't say I'm his entertainment. I'd say people are, and unless I forced him to go forth among the plebes, he'd hole himself in a room with a stack of nerdy journals and call himself content."
"And I would be content, too," Bahir says, mournful for many lost nights.
Back to Adel, who says, a touch of irony amid all the cheer, "I'm persistent, see."
"Hoi polloi are the better for it," Leah tells Bahir with dark, mocking gravity. "Speaking for them as I may, since it's my job and all. You're /wasted/ on journals. How can this--" her chin lifts, rotates, includes the coffeeshop and the three of them "--compare to a centerfold illustration of Jupiter's moons or a circuit diagram?" Her voice lowers; the corner of her mouth twitches up. "Or do you go for the hard-core stuff? Firefox source code, oh, God, yeah."
Bahir's eyes flicker, lashes dropping as he sips. He looks up at Leah, bland. "Mutation and polymorphism spectrum of the GALNS gene in mucopolysaccharidosis IVA, actually."
"So, you see, we compare quite favorably," Adel tags.
Leah fans herself languidly. "Hot," she purrs and zaps Adel with fresh irritation. "Do you? 'Cause what he's talking about sounds more interesting than you trying to get into my pants."
"Dull, actually," Bahir says, considering a moment. "Genetic grunt work."
In that moment where Bahir considers, Adel regroups, blinking innocent, lamb-like (sheep to the slaughter!), under her irritation. "Just said hello, Miss."
"So you /are/ gay," Leah declares in triumph.
Bahir chuffs a soft laugh, eyes narrowed at his twin in malicious humor. Adel spreads his hands along the mug, discomforted. He shifts. "No, really, I'm not."
Leah makes wide, offended eyes. "There isn't something /wrong/ with being gay, is there? My cousin's gay, and he's a cop. Should I tell him that you hate the homos?"
"I don't hate the homos!" Adel insists, repeating her words in a somewhat stilted fashion. Bahir makes little noises of evil amusement -- snickering, snicking, snerking -- as appropriate, and occasionally (by his brother's glare) where inappropriate. "I have gay friends." Adel flashes his queer cred, but loses credit by immediately stressing, "You know, just friends who are gay. I just like women. You know, breasts. Hips."
Leah draws herself up to indignant height. "Women," she tells him with acid contempt, "are more than just breasts and hips and /body parts,/ sir. We are /people./"
Bahir lifts a finger to interject with a comment, a slicing look from Adel cutting him off mid-aborning. He finishes his coffee, smiling, as Adel digs. "Of course they are. I like people. I just like female people better."
"Who do you like?" Leah asks Bahir.
"Myself." Bahir sips. "Occasionally, him."
Leah tells Adel now, "I like /him,/" and jerks her thumb at his brother, just in case he needs the help.
Lips to fingers and fingers to air, Bahir wafts a soundless kiss to Leah. Adel sighs in defeat. "You know," Adel whines-doesn't-whine, "he thinks everyone on the planet isn't near as smart as he is." Bahir hums agreement. "And that most people are little more than animals." Bahir nods agreement. "And that he's better than everyone." Bahir shrugs agreement. "And that--"
Bahir /smiles/ and reaches across the table, patting Adel's elbow -- cutting him off. "You are so very twelve."
Leah slits her eyes in a slitted smile. "I like him even more. You might be twelve, but you're a good pimp for your brother."
"You," Adel accuses, playful tone edged, "have bad taste in men."
Leah leans forward on folded arms, her brows rising politely curious over flat, hard eyes. "Because I like him? Or because I don't like you?"
"Both," comes the twinned reply: Bahir's dry, Adel's sly.
And Leah's wry. "So, what -- you come as a set? I didn't think you were Siamese-joined."
"At birth," Adel offers up, plate of cheer trimmed with sunny smile and an airy gesture. Bahir grimaces, eyes flashing in mild annoyance toward Adel. "Not Siamese, though."
"Well, good. You know what happened to poor Eng and Cheng, after all." Leah sips at her coffee, delicate and unconcerned.
"No, not really," Adel says, gesture smoothly transforming into a silent invitation for Leah to offer up her insight.
A lifted shoulder. "One died. The other didn't. Lay there, connected to his dead brother, feeling the death poisons seeping into him, feeling that empty corpse cooling next to him, waiting for his turn. --I'm Leah, by the way. Nice to meet you."
"How perfectly horrible," Bahir says, precise in his pronunciation.
"How -- horrible," Adel repeats, stilted. "That must have been--"
"Horrible, yes. Nice to meet you, too, Leah," Bahir says, name offered: "Bahir. That's Adel."
"Egyptian?" Leah asks with a touch of professional curiosity. She keeps her arms crossed on the table; her hands stay folded inside the nest, wary, warm, and safe.
"Bahraini," Adel says, wrapping his wits back round the thread of conversation. He favors Leah and Bahir both with a mistrustful look before forging on. Bahir meets his gaze, level, and is careful to not-smile. "Know it?"
Leah shakes her head. "I haven't been to the Middle East. Kinda always wanted to. Cairo, anyway. Maybe the Pyramids. I haven't even left the continent, though."
Adel supplements Leah's geography: "Off the coast of Saudi Arabia." He considers over the last of his coffee, smile rueful. "We've pretty much lived there and here. Never even made it up to Canada. I imagine Egypt is much like Bahrain: dry."
"I know where Bahrain is, thank you," Leah clips off frostily. "I was just saying I'd like to go to Egypt."
"But you--" Adel, though young, is wise enough to shut up on that. "I guess I'd like to go sometime myself," he finishes, rather lackluster.
Leah narrows her eyes. "I what?"
"Why do you want to go to Egypt?" Adel supplants, disingenuous.
"Because I'm an ugly American tourist who likes to gape at old impressive shit and take photos and talk really loud to the natives because then they'd understand English," Leah reels off, glibly bored.
Adel's total contribution to the conversation at that stands at "Uhm."
"Volume doesn't really help," Bahir says, helpful tones sweetened.
Leah rolls sweet right back to him: "Gee, thanks, I had no idea. Does volume help you understand sarcasm? I can shout, if so."
Bahir taps a finger against the side of his mug. "I was being," he says, speaking slow for her benefit, "ironic."
"And I was so hoping you were as stupid as your brother," Leah laments on a gusted sigh. "Shooting fish in a barrel is much more fun."
"He tries," Bahir says, utter certainty in his voice. "He tries very hard."
"Do you?" asks Leah kindly, of Adel.
"No!" Adel insists, defensive. He folds his arm over his chest, leaning back in a slouch.
"Note the defensive posture, the sharpness of his tone," Bahir murmurs, aside made sotto voce.
Leah cuts him an annoyed look, then refixes attention on Adel. "So, should I fuck you back in the alley to make you feel better?" Still kind, still soft, so gentle and compassionate and awwwwww. "Would that help, little one?"
Adel considers. Adel considers very hard, leaving Bahir in a mild state of shock, swiftly conquered with sharp irritation: "Don't you--"
"I suppose it would," Adel says, cutting him off. "If you're offering."
"Sure." Leah shrugs back in her chair and then starts climbing to her feet. On her way up, she looks at Bahir, and it's an empty, flat look, hardly glazed with passion. Dull with ... something else. Shadows, or else hatred. "You, too? You can watch if you want. Keep yourself happy." And she mimes jerking off, with a thin smile.
Bahir slams his hands down on the table, childish in his temper. He stands with careful dignity. "Nothing there I'd care to see," he spits, gaze sharp.
Adel stands, likewise, with a great deal less temper and rather more fluidity of limbs. "Not his sort of thing, really: sex." He gestures a silent 'after you'.
Leah shrugs again. "Your loss," and more kindness goes to Bahir with the words, like the slow seep of sweet cyanide. She jerks a nod to his brother and goes out without looking back, shoulders hunched again, hands in jacket pockets, but head up. Oh, head definitely up, flagged defiantly against the night.
"Not really," Bahir grates, buttons refastened. His fingers fumble the third, glare trailing after them. He exits two steps later, yet rather quicker; when they choose a direction, he turns opposite.
Adel spares not a glance for Bahir (poor Bahir!) as he trails after Leah, his hand inches from the small of her back. "Alley, hmm?" he murmurs, leaning toward her, yet not touching her. Slow coils of sensuality unravel, feather light.
Leah stalks on, around the end of the building and into the alley as promised. As promised. Denim scrapes on brick as she turns against the wall. "Shut up," she tells him, low. "Just shut up and do it."
In covering shadow, Adel smiles -- sharp. "Right." Perfectly capable of following simple directions, he takes her hips in a doubled grip, hand to either side. Fingers stroke once, light, before gliding toward fastenings. Clever fingers make for short work, fingers on her skin as he pushes the fabric open.
Crooking a leg up around the back of his, her sneakered heel into the hollow beside his knee, Leah drags him closer and grabs his mouth in a kiss. No passion here, no; no attempt at the softness of love, the play of seduction. Her tongue thrusts against his; it fences, it rams, it insists. Her hands are already dragging at his pants, too, and she's pulling him even closer, harder. Breath, hot and regular on his face. Fingernails, blunt and prickling into his back.
Kiss hard and hot (sparring, forcing -- obliging), Adel braces his right hand on the wall, his left slipping low, curving between denim and cotton. A ripple of phantom touch ghosts along Leah's back: nails, a memory of a touch -- easily lost in a whirl of sensation as his fingers stroke.
Leah's breath shudders, though -- at his touch, at that touch, at any and at all of it. She hitches her hips unconsciously rough against his, and the hand not gripping his back for support dives to help push jeans and underwear out of the way. Down, down -- down! As her body strives /up/ and she kisses. She kisses him.
Adel licks away each hitch and slip of breath, catching her lower lip light between his teeth. He rocks forward and away, rhythm a thing lost in sway of a lower brain. His hands drift -- one falling, one rising -- to meet at her waist. He cups the underside of her breasts through the fabric, thumbs smoothing up and over her nipples, before touch slides down, slow, along the curves of her body. His fingers grip, holding and pressing, assisting the drive up only to facilitate a slide down.
Teeth sink briefly into his lower lip, and Leah's fingers stiffen over his back. The rhythm rocks her, waves slapping against a sinking boat's hull, and her breath draws ragged down its side, down the alley's chilled and fetid darkness, like breaking fingernails, like broken conversation.
With each stroke, a ghost's caress; with each spark of friction, a phantom echo; sensation doubles between two mirrors, reflected in each new shift -- each press of skin, each slide of lips, each glide of hips. A runner's measured breath, rough in his throat, breaks past Adel's lips. He bends his head, lips grazing her collarbone. In the heat and drive, in the multiplication of arousal between two sources, the race is short.
Leah rises to it, but her voice sinks, drowns in glottal fulfillment: a sound like a punch to the gut as she crests the last wave and coasts home. Race over. Race won. Panting deeply, she leans between wall and man, arm and leg still around him. Rests a moment with her brow pressed onto his shoulder.
Sound dies in Adel's throat, unable to shoulder past sudden tension. He rests his head against the wall of the alley, breath smoothing against the skin of her neck. His arms tremble and tighten before he shifts his stance, pulling away. Soft syllables slip past his lips, a tangle of foreign tongues. It ends with a universal sound: a small, sated, "Hmmm."
"Yeah," Leah says, as quietly, and lowers her leg to stand on both feet, a process involving some extrication, some extraction. She pulls in a breath, shakes her head brief and sharp in the shadows.
Safe sex, kids! Adel resecures and disposes, adding trash to trash in the alley. (Litterbug!) He leans back against the wall, licking his lower lip and regarding her from under dark eyelashes, through glazed eyes. "That was nice," he offers, inane.
Leah breathes a snort. "Yeah," comes again, and not kindly this time, not from her, not for him, not here or now. "You feel better?"
Adel's hand starts toward hers, but diverts, to edge her hip in a light touch. "Mmm," he says, agreement vague. More pointed, he turns, pushing off the wall to stand tall before her again. "You?"
"Sure," Leah tosses off and pulls up her pants. Head ducked to watch the fumbling rebuttoning, she continues, "Good to hear. Tell your brother good night for me. Missed his chance, huh? Coulda had you both."
"He wouldn't have known what to do." Glib, Adel dismisses Bahir in a gesture, his eyes on her. "I'll send your regrets."
Leah's mouth hooks down as she raises her head again. "I'm a bitch," she says plainly and catches his forearm in her hand's curl. "If you want -- before you go -- to make up for, y'know, all that in there..." Her hand drops to his pants now, and her fingers trail over his groin.
"I'll forgive you," Adel whispers, voice echoing of playful sacraments. Young and male he smiles, pressing forward against her touch. "Sure. Don't have to, but--"
"Hush," Leah tells him and pats his cheek gently. Then she kneels, false penitent, and pulls him out -- still gentle, there's that, at least -- and takes him into her mouth. Eyes half-closed. Fingers moving, massaging. And tongue ... and tongue. This race isn't long in the running, either.
Adel hushes, last words curling away through the close air. There is the lightest suggestion -- an intimation of a hint -- of shared touch and then it breaks. Stifled sounds echo back soft from the opposite wall as Adel slumps, head rolling to the side. After, he skips words, straight to a pleased hum.
Leah sits back on her heels, swallows, and wipes her mouth along her jacket sleeve. A moment. She stands up, unfolding like a jack-in-the-box. "Good night," she says, a little hoarsely, and turns to go.
"Yes," Adel agrees, voice soft over the word. He leans, watching her walk off: in no hurry to follow, in less hurry to call after her. Concluding words come, after a pause: "You too."
But Leah's already gone, with her head high as she crosses the street -- glance upstream, glance down- -- another shadow borne ceaselessly back into the shadowed night.
[Log ends.]
Transubstantiation in an alleyway. In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.
11/27/2005
Logfile from Leah of X-Men MUCK.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The White Room
A small, comfortable little place, this - a minuscule cafe of little fame and ridiculously good coffee. The main room is small and rather inordinately comfortable, prevented from being claustrophobic by a theme of whites in the decor and the fact that the regulars - a sundry bunch of academics, artists, lawyers, workpersons, and every other group New York has to offer - are generally quietly occupied with coffee and good, solid plates of food. There is no theme, no specialized and exotic varieties of coffee or tea - the atmosphere is thick with cigarette smoke and comfort, not desperate sophistication.
--
Leah has taken advantage of the hour (getting towards "late," especially for a Sunday) and the weather (not too cold, especially for late November) by taking over a whole round table to herself in the cafe, not too near the door, but not too far from it, either. Every time it opens, in fact, her face jolts up from brooding study of the coffee cup between her hands, and her eyes jump with hope dashed by another slouching stranger, another hustling student, another canoodling couple. And she looks down again then, each time, and hunches her shoulders under her denim jacket, and stares all the harder into her dark and sullen drink.
Non-slouching ex-students, pair divided by silence, Adel and Bahir enter one after the other. Bahir drifts away as Adel heads for the counter, the buttons of his coat loose, hands in pockets holding it close to his body as he angles between chairs. Adel quickly sheds his coat, draping it over his arm. He waits patiently in line, chatting up the girl in front of him up until her boyfriend turns around to wrap a proprietary hand around her waist. Adel smiles brightly and falls silent. Bahir sits, glancing a table over -- Leah -- and then on in evident disinterest.
--
Al-Razi
Similar overall in face and form, differing slightly in the small details, both men stand just under six feet, slender builds well-muscled and finely proportioned. Their features are mirror copies: symmetrical, attractive, clean-edged but not striking. Eyebrows are dark, thick but well-defined, with clear eyes below. Banded brown and gray, the effect that of watered silk, they are striking in their clarity, not their color. Thick lashes, not especially long, add a dark frame. Their mouths are stubbornly set.
Adel keeps his hair short, bleached and dyed, with golden strands streaking through a russet brown, set in chaotic spikes. Bahir's hair is longer and lushly dark, with a slight wave. At the longest point, it only just brushes his shoulders. Adel is clean-shaven, while Bahir keeps a slightly scruffy short mustache and beard.
--
Her shoulders still hunched -- raven's grumpy distress -- Leah stares back at Bahir in that interval of glancing, but looks away, too. Down. And then into the backs of her eyelids as she raises her cup for a slow, measured swallow.
It is a few minutes before Adel comes through with two mugs of coffee, one placed before his brother, the other kept in hand. He sits with a smile for all, indiscriminate in his affection, that slowly spins to fix on Leah. As he adds packet after packet of sugar, he grins gamely in her direction. He waves a pinky. Bahir leans back, looking very much as if he'd like to slouch, and scowls over the coffee at Adel.
Leah's cup goes down. Her eyelids go up, just in time to catch -- pinky. Waving. At her. Bemused, she looks at it and then at its owner. "What the hell are you doing?"
"Saying hello," Adel says, sliding smoothly into conversational opening. "Hullo." The pinky goes down.
Bahir groans quietly, taking a long sip to scald harsh words from his tongue.
Leah studies him now. "Do you always say hello like that? You give gay guys a bad name."
Bahir's eyes skitter back in a darting look, flashing approval; a smirk curls over the rim of the mug as he lifts it from another prolonged swallow.
"I imagine I do, given as how I sleep with women," Adel says, flustered a bare second before recovering.
Annoyance flattens Leah's mouth. "Well, how nice for them." Her gaze encompasses both of them for a moment. Twins; mirrors. "Double your pleasure, huh?"
"How original," Bahir says, deadpan. Approval fades and the smirk turns wry, not so gentle in its mockery. "I've /never/ heard that one before."
Adel meets annoyance with cheer: a terminal failing. "The women seem to like it."
"If you want original entertainment," Leah snaps at Bahir, "try Eighth Avenue. Pimps'll hook you up right. Midgets are fifteen percent off for Thanksgiving, I hear. Natural markdown, y'know." Her glower slides to Adel, over him: hot, slick, pallid brown. "Do they? As much as I'm enjoying it?"
Uncurling a single finger, Bahir points it ever so vaguely in Leah's direction. "Much better," he declares, magnanimous. "And yet, no thank you." Magnanimous /and/ polite.
Adel rubs his jaw line with a mug-warmed hand, smile rueful. "Perhaps in a slightly different manner," he accommodates.
Leah bares her teeth at Bahir, but battle-light lights her eyes with grudging simpatico for a second before she sighs back to the other man. "I was waiting for someone," she tells Adel, backing off somewhat (though her fingers are tight and yellow-knuckled around her cup). "Nothing you did. Sorry."
Bahir smiles, ever so slightly, down into his coffee before attention turns away. "Don't worry about it," Adel says, brushing aside the apology. He continues, not-prying, oh-so-deft: "Waiting for a friend?"
"Apparently," and Leah looks back to the door, which stays stubbornly shut.
Adel follows the line of Leah's glance, a shoulder dropping in a shrug. "Sorry they didn't show," he says, sympathy tendered with a feather touch.
Leah shrugs, too, but swifter, harder. Brusque, as in a dismissal. "My own fault," she mutters, half on a laugh. "Next time, I'll call. Anyway." She has another swallow of coffee, grimaces, puts the cup down, braces it between both hands. "Worse ways to spend a Sunday night, right?"
"Usually more efficient," Adel agrees, humor gentle and smile slight. "There's always something to be said for striking up conversation with perfect strangers. I like doing that." Bahir's sigh speaks volumes -- condensed, Reader's Digest volumes -- of resigned irritation on this matter.
"And your brother -- for surely he must be -- doesn't," Leah divines effortlessly. She smiles. "Or maybe he doesn't like you?"
Bahir's attention turns back to Leah, smiled fixed. "A bit of both."
"He doesn't really mind that much," Adel assures, blithe. He smiles over at Bahir, met with a heavily ironic look. "He'd be bored otherwise."
Leah's smile turns upside down. "Bored? So /you're/ his entertainment? Well--" she slouches back, snorts "--better you than me, since I've already struck out once with him. But you keep coming. Tilting at windmills."
"Hmm." Adel blows the thought over his coffee, pausing to take a drink. "I wouldn't say I'm his entertainment. I'd say people are, and unless I forced him to go forth among the plebes, he'd hole himself in a room with a stack of nerdy journals and call himself content."
"And I would be content, too," Bahir says, mournful for many lost nights.
Back to Adel, who says, a touch of irony amid all the cheer, "I'm persistent, see."
"Hoi polloi are the better for it," Leah tells Bahir with dark, mocking gravity. "Speaking for them as I may, since it's my job and all. You're /wasted/ on journals. How can this--" her chin lifts, rotates, includes the coffeeshop and the three of them "--compare to a centerfold illustration of Jupiter's moons or a circuit diagram?" Her voice lowers; the corner of her mouth twitches up. "Or do you go for the hard-core stuff? Firefox source code, oh, God, yeah."
Bahir's eyes flicker, lashes dropping as he sips. He looks up at Leah, bland. "Mutation and polymorphism spectrum of the GALNS gene in mucopolysaccharidosis IVA, actually."
"So, you see, we compare quite favorably," Adel tags.
Leah fans herself languidly. "Hot," she purrs and zaps Adel with fresh irritation. "Do you? 'Cause what he's talking about sounds more interesting than you trying to get into my pants."
"Dull, actually," Bahir says, considering a moment. "Genetic grunt work."
In that moment where Bahir considers, Adel regroups, blinking innocent, lamb-like (sheep to the slaughter!), under her irritation. "Just said hello, Miss."
"So you /are/ gay," Leah declares in triumph.
Bahir chuffs a soft laugh, eyes narrowed at his twin in malicious humor. Adel spreads his hands along the mug, discomforted. He shifts. "No, really, I'm not."
Leah makes wide, offended eyes. "There isn't something /wrong/ with being gay, is there? My cousin's gay, and he's a cop. Should I tell him that you hate the homos?"
"I don't hate the homos!" Adel insists, repeating her words in a somewhat stilted fashion. Bahir makes little noises of evil amusement -- snickering, snicking, snerking -- as appropriate, and occasionally (by his brother's glare) where inappropriate. "I have gay friends." Adel flashes his queer cred, but loses credit by immediately stressing, "You know, just friends who are gay. I just like women. You know, breasts. Hips."
Leah draws herself up to indignant height. "Women," she tells him with acid contempt, "are more than just breasts and hips and /body parts,/ sir. We are /people./"
Bahir lifts a finger to interject with a comment, a slicing look from Adel cutting him off mid-aborning. He finishes his coffee, smiling, as Adel digs. "Of course they are. I like people. I just like female people better."
"Who do you like?" Leah asks Bahir.
"Myself." Bahir sips. "Occasionally, him."
Leah tells Adel now, "I like /him,/" and jerks her thumb at his brother, just in case he needs the help.
Lips to fingers and fingers to air, Bahir wafts a soundless kiss to Leah. Adel sighs in defeat. "You know," Adel whines-doesn't-whine, "he thinks everyone on the planet isn't near as smart as he is." Bahir hums agreement. "And that most people are little more than animals." Bahir nods agreement. "And that he's better than everyone." Bahir shrugs agreement. "And that--"
Bahir /smiles/ and reaches across the table, patting Adel's elbow -- cutting him off. "You are so very twelve."
Leah slits her eyes in a slitted smile. "I like him even more. You might be twelve, but you're a good pimp for your brother."
"You," Adel accuses, playful tone edged, "have bad taste in men."
Leah leans forward on folded arms, her brows rising politely curious over flat, hard eyes. "Because I like him? Or because I don't like you?"
"Both," comes the twinned reply: Bahir's dry, Adel's sly.
And Leah's wry. "So, what -- you come as a set? I didn't think you were Siamese-joined."
"At birth," Adel offers up, plate of cheer trimmed with sunny smile and an airy gesture. Bahir grimaces, eyes flashing in mild annoyance toward Adel. "Not Siamese, though."
"Well, good. You know what happened to poor Eng and Cheng, after all." Leah sips at her coffee, delicate and unconcerned.
"No, not really," Adel says, gesture smoothly transforming into a silent invitation for Leah to offer up her insight.
A lifted shoulder. "One died. The other didn't. Lay there, connected to his dead brother, feeling the death poisons seeping into him, feeling that empty corpse cooling next to him, waiting for his turn. --I'm Leah, by the way. Nice to meet you."
"How perfectly horrible," Bahir says, precise in his pronunciation.
"How -- horrible," Adel repeats, stilted. "That must have been--"
"Horrible, yes. Nice to meet you, too, Leah," Bahir says, name offered: "Bahir. That's Adel."
"Egyptian?" Leah asks with a touch of professional curiosity. She keeps her arms crossed on the table; her hands stay folded inside the nest, wary, warm, and safe.
"Bahraini," Adel says, wrapping his wits back round the thread of conversation. He favors Leah and Bahir both with a mistrustful look before forging on. Bahir meets his gaze, level, and is careful to not-smile. "Know it?"
Leah shakes her head. "I haven't been to the Middle East. Kinda always wanted to. Cairo, anyway. Maybe the Pyramids. I haven't even left the continent, though."
Adel supplements Leah's geography: "Off the coast of Saudi Arabia." He considers over the last of his coffee, smile rueful. "We've pretty much lived there and here. Never even made it up to Canada. I imagine Egypt is much like Bahrain: dry."
"I know where Bahrain is, thank you," Leah clips off frostily. "I was just saying I'd like to go to Egypt."
"But you--" Adel, though young, is wise enough to shut up on that. "I guess I'd like to go sometime myself," he finishes, rather lackluster.
Leah narrows her eyes. "I what?"
"Why do you want to go to Egypt?" Adel supplants, disingenuous.
"Because I'm an ugly American tourist who likes to gape at old impressive shit and take photos and talk really loud to the natives because then they'd understand English," Leah reels off, glibly bored.
Adel's total contribution to the conversation at that stands at "Uhm."
"Volume doesn't really help," Bahir says, helpful tones sweetened.
Leah rolls sweet right back to him: "Gee, thanks, I had no idea. Does volume help you understand sarcasm? I can shout, if so."
Bahir taps a finger against the side of his mug. "I was being," he says, speaking slow for her benefit, "ironic."
"And I was so hoping you were as stupid as your brother," Leah laments on a gusted sigh. "Shooting fish in a barrel is much more fun."
"He tries," Bahir says, utter certainty in his voice. "He tries very hard."
"Do you?" asks Leah kindly, of Adel.
"No!" Adel insists, defensive. He folds his arm over his chest, leaning back in a slouch.
"Note the defensive posture, the sharpness of his tone," Bahir murmurs, aside made sotto voce.
Leah cuts him an annoyed look, then refixes attention on Adel. "So, should I fuck you back in the alley to make you feel better?" Still kind, still soft, so gentle and compassionate and awwwwww. "Would that help, little one?"
Adel considers. Adel considers very hard, leaving Bahir in a mild state of shock, swiftly conquered with sharp irritation: "Don't you--"
"I suppose it would," Adel says, cutting him off. "If you're offering."
"Sure." Leah shrugs back in her chair and then starts climbing to her feet. On her way up, she looks at Bahir, and it's an empty, flat look, hardly glazed with passion. Dull with ... something else. Shadows, or else hatred. "You, too? You can watch if you want. Keep yourself happy." And she mimes jerking off, with a thin smile.
Bahir slams his hands down on the table, childish in his temper. He stands with careful dignity. "Nothing there I'd care to see," he spits, gaze sharp.
Adel stands, likewise, with a great deal less temper and rather more fluidity of limbs. "Not his sort of thing, really: sex." He gestures a silent 'after you'.
Leah shrugs again. "Your loss," and more kindness goes to Bahir with the words, like the slow seep of sweet cyanide. She jerks a nod to his brother and goes out without looking back, shoulders hunched again, hands in jacket pockets, but head up. Oh, head definitely up, flagged defiantly against the night.
"Not really," Bahir grates, buttons refastened. His fingers fumble the third, glare trailing after them. He exits two steps later, yet rather quicker; when they choose a direction, he turns opposite.
Adel spares not a glance for Bahir (poor Bahir!) as he trails after Leah, his hand inches from the small of her back. "Alley, hmm?" he murmurs, leaning toward her, yet not touching her. Slow coils of sensuality unravel, feather light.
Leah stalks on, around the end of the building and into the alley as promised. As promised. Denim scrapes on brick as she turns against the wall. "Shut up," she tells him, low. "Just shut up and do it."
In covering shadow, Adel smiles -- sharp. "Right." Perfectly capable of following simple directions, he takes her hips in a doubled grip, hand to either side. Fingers stroke once, light, before gliding toward fastenings. Clever fingers make for short work, fingers on her skin as he pushes the fabric open.
Crooking a leg up around the back of his, her sneakered heel into the hollow beside his knee, Leah drags him closer and grabs his mouth in a kiss. No passion here, no; no attempt at the softness of love, the play of seduction. Her tongue thrusts against his; it fences, it rams, it insists. Her hands are already dragging at his pants, too, and she's pulling him even closer, harder. Breath, hot and regular on his face. Fingernails, blunt and prickling into his back.
Kiss hard and hot (sparring, forcing -- obliging), Adel braces his right hand on the wall, his left slipping low, curving between denim and cotton. A ripple of phantom touch ghosts along Leah's back: nails, a memory of a touch -- easily lost in a whirl of sensation as his fingers stroke.
Leah's breath shudders, though -- at his touch, at that touch, at any and at all of it. She hitches her hips unconsciously rough against his, and the hand not gripping his back for support dives to help push jeans and underwear out of the way. Down, down -- down! As her body strives /up/ and she kisses. She kisses him.
Adel licks away each hitch and slip of breath, catching her lower lip light between his teeth. He rocks forward and away, rhythm a thing lost in sway of a lower brain. His hands drift -- one falling, one rising -- to meet at her waist. He cups the underside of her breasts through the fabric, thumbs smoothing up and over her nipples, before touch slides down, slow, along the curves of her body. His fingers grip, holding and pressing, assisting the drive up only to facilitate a slide down.
Teeth sink briefly into his lower lip, and Leah's fingers stiffen over his back. The rhythm rocks her, waves slapping against a sinking boat's hull, and her breath draws ragged down its side, down the alley's chilled and fetid darkness, like breaking fingernails, like broken conversation.
With each stroke, a ghost's caress; with each spark of friction, a phantom echo; sensation doubles between two mirrors, reflected in each new shift -- each press of skin, each slide of lips, each glide of hips. A runner's measured breath, rough in his throat, breaks past Adel's lips. He bends his head, lips grazing her collarbone. In the heat and drive, in the multiplication of arousal between two sources, the race is short.
Leah rises to it, but her voice sinks, drowns in glottal fulfillment: a sound like a punch to the gut as she crests the last wave and coasts home. Race over. Race won. Panting deeply, she leans between wall and man, arm and leg still around him. Rests a moment with her brow pressed onto his shoulder.
Sound dies in Adel's throat, unable to shoulder past sudden tension. He rests his head against the wall of the alley, breath smoothing against the skin of her neck. His arms tremble and tighten before he shifts his stance, pulling away. Soft syllables slip past his lips, a tangle of foreign tongues. It ends with a universal sound: a small, sated, "Hmmm."
"Yeah," Leah says, as quietly, and lowers her leg to stand on both feet, a process involving some extrication, some extraction. She pulls in a breath, shakes her head brief and sharp in the shadows.
Safe sex, kids! Adel resecures and disposes, adding trash to trash in the alley. (Litterbug!) He leans back against the wall, licking his lower lip and regarding her from under dark eyelashes, through glazed eyes. "That was nice," he offers, inane.
Leah breathes a snort. "Yeah," comes again, and not kindly this time, not from her, not for him, not here or now. "You feel better?"
Adel's hand starts toward hers, but diverts, to edge her hip in a light touch. "Mmm," he says, agreement vague. More pointed, he turns, pushing off the wall to stand tall before her again. "You?"
"Sure," Leah tosses off and pulls up her pants. Head ducked to watch the fumbling rebuttoning, she continues, "Good to hear. Tell your brother good night for me. Missed his chance, huh? Coulda had you both."
"He wouldn't have known what to do." Glib, Adel dismisses Bahir in a gesture, his eyes on her. "I'll send your regrets."
Leah's mouth hooks down as she raises her head again. "I'm a bitch," she says plainly and catches his forearm in her hand's curl. "If you want -- before you go -- to make up for, y'know, all that in there..." Her hand drops to his pants now, and her fingers trail over his groin.
"I'll forgive you," Adel whispers, voice echoing of playful sacraments. Young and male he smiles, pressing forward against her touch. "Sure. Don't have to, but--"
"Hush," Leah tells him and pats his cheek gently. Then she kneels, false penitent, and pulls him out -- still gentle, there's that, at least -- and takes him into her mouth. Eyes half-closed. Fingers moving, massaging. And tongue ... and tongue. This race isn't long in the running, either.
Adel hushes, last words curling away through the close air. There is the lightest suggestion -- an intimation of a hint -- of shared touch and then it breaks. Stifled sounds echo back soft from the opposite wall as Adel slumps, head rolling to the side. After, he skips words, straight to a pleased hum.
Leah sits back on her heels, swallows, and wipes her mouth along her jacket sleeve. A moment. She stands up, unfolding like a jack-in-the-box. "Good night," she says, a little hoarsely, and turns to go.
"Yes," Adel agrees, voice soft over the word. He leans, watching her walk off: in no hurry to follow, in less hurry to call after her. Concluding words come, after a pause: "You too."
But Leah's already gone, with her head high as she crosses the street -- glance upstream, glance down- -- another shadow borne ceaselessly back into the shadowed night.
[Log ends.]