(no subject)

[playswithboys.livejournal.com]

Time: October 14th, 2000
Place: Lobby
Status: Semi-private (Pepper, Crowley, War, John, Bast, Wensley and Roger) [Complete]
Summary: An unexpected visitor


Pepper had spent the day moving various plants into the lobby and trimming them as best she could, throwing the extra leaves and little branches in a garbage bag she'd brought with her. The place needed some greenery and some flowers, and she figured it couldn't hurt now that it was getting colder and things outside would take care of themselves more.

She thought she'd bring in some poinsettias soon.

Granted it wasn't even Bonfire Night, but being English meant that she started preparing for Christmas in October, like everyone else. Besides, Adam had promised a good winter, and she was looking forward to it.

The plants had generally been behaving themselves, all except one. Whoever'd had the bright idea to grow wysteria on the pergola near the garden should have been caught and executed, in Pepper's opinion. The plant had a history of growing up the sides of buildings, destroying framework quite effectively, and yet someone had let the thing go. Pepper had spent half the summer trying to tame the thing and it still wouldn't stop spreading. She was certain that countless people at the manor had probably seen her pitching a fit while hanging upside down from pergola, cursing the wysterias ancestors into oblivion. Those branches were thick.

Maybe that was why she'd decided that she deserved time working in the lobby.

So now she was enjoying a moment of rest, sitting in a chair near the front desk and rereading The Man in the Iron Mask. She'd forgotten how much she enjoyed the book, hadn't read it since she was fourteen or so, and was pretty caught up in it. Pepper had a tendancy to be very expressive as she read or watched movies, and she was currently engaging in gnawing her fingernails down with her teeth, eyes wide as two pound coins, while King Louis ordered d'Artagnan to arrest Porthos and Aramis.

Comments

[no-npc-here.livejournal.com]

It said a lot for Roger’s current state of mind that he was shouting for someone he wasn’t even sure could hear him, not knowing if Adam was in the building at all. While he was at it, though, he might as well mouth off to the idiot with the cigarette.

“Yeah? And what are you, his bodyguard?” He coughed roughly as his eyes started to water.

[dangeroushabits.livejournal.com]

"Nah. More like yours," John said coolly. "Do yourself a favor, kid. Turn around and walk away." From this angle, he could see Bast quite clearly, and thought he'd caught a glimpse of movement from the opposite staircase. Roger was a few heartbeats away from revelations he really, really could do without. "This place isn't for you."

[first-catwoman.livejournal.com]

//Really not for you,//Bast added, baring her teeth in what could be easily taken for a grin or a feline sneer. Her tail lashed. //My advice'd be to scram, pretty boy. While you've still your favourite parts.//

Just for effect, she stepped closer, and murmured, for his 'ears' only, //I know everything about you.//

[playswithboys.livejournal.com]

Pepper gave an inaudible releaved sigh when John showed up. If anyone could handle someone like Roger without damaging him permanently, he could. John could just throw it back in his face and...

oh dear.

Pepper had to stop herself from yanking the woman back and sending her anywhere out of sight. This was bad. "It's her Hallowe'en costume," she told Roger, because he certainly wouldn't be able to drive back to London if he thought he saw what was standing right in front of them. "She's tryin' it on early. But they're all right, Roger. It's time for you to go. Please." Before you see something else that could potentially cause a nervous breakdown...

[average-adam.livejournal.com]

He knew just what was going on, of course. But Adam had hoped that Pepper and Crowley could handle it quietly without the necessity of his intervention. When the others started showing up, though, and Roger called his name, he couldn't stay out of it any longer. He wasn't a coward and all of these people were his responsibility - even Roger. Instead of running down stairs like he tended to do when there was a problem, however, Adam walked down calmly, regally, and in total control.

As he reached the little knot of people, he looked at Roger. "I'm Adam Young."

[dangeroushabits.livejournal.com]

John silently backed off, gesturing to Bast to do the same, and took up a position next to Pepper and opposite Crowley, flashing the girl a brief smile of reassurance. He didn't suppose it'd be much fun for her to watch Adam and Roger face off, but to him, the whole scenario was sort of encouraging, in a weird way.

Instead of fighting among themselves, the Manor residence were closing ranks against an outsider. He wondered if that was the sort of thing Adam had intended to happen, or if any of the others realized they were doing it.

[playswithboys.livejournal.com]

Pepper had never known it was possible to be so thankful yet terrified at once, but that was exactly how she felt when she heard Adam's voice. John's smile did little to calm her nerves, though she appreciated the gesture. This was getting much worse than she'd hoped, and she slowly felt the room converge around Adam, the way it always had when he had something to say and wanted everyone to listen. Without thought, she took one small step forward, as though it were a position she occupied, on Adam's right, at his back.

Just leave, she thought desperately as she stared at Roger. Flee for your heart or your sanity, whichever you value more. You don't know what you've stumbled upon by accident, and I'm sorry that I led you here. Go.

[first-catwoman.livejournal.com]

Bast definitely grinned this time, watching Roger - well, like a cat watches a mouse. No, not a mouse - more like a fat, juicy rabbit caught in snare with no way out.

But she backed off slowly and crouched next to John, making her movements as feline and inhuman as possible, her tail twitching for good measure.

[dearwensleydale.livejournal.com]

Shouting voices drew Wensley out of the pantry, irritated and confused as to what the hell was going on. He stopped short when her saw Pepper and the ever-growing group of friends circling her, and Adam facing off against a stranger. Inching around the edge of the Lobby, he took a place at Pepper's elbow, putting a hand on her shoulder.

"Is this bloke bothering you?" he whisper-asked Pepper. He hadn't seen her this tense in a long time.

[playswithboys.livejournal.com]

She was beginning to think that she had some kind of distress beacon attached to her. It was sort of surreal, the way people kept turning up. But also comforting, as much as she wasn't used to having people defend her. Especially having most of the Them there like that. Hadn't happened in a long time.

She side-glanced Wensley seriously and said in an undertone, "He's... tryin' to get me to go back to uni with 'im."

[no-npc-here.livejournal.com]

“Not for me? What the hell is that supposed to me…” Roger trailed off as he got a better look at the woman in front of him. He stared. And then he gaped. “That’s a bloody fantastic costume then,” he answered Pippin’s rather over-hasty explanation, his voice thick with disbelief. “What in the…”

“I’m Adam Young.”

Roger turned his eyes to the speaker, and suddenly the strangeness of the woman didn’t seem to matter so much. He was still staring, and even gaping a little, and was dimly aware that he must have looked a gigantic fool at that moment.

He pulled himself together with an effort.

“I’m Roger Dowd,” he said doing his best to match Adam’s tone. He succeeded mostly, except for some reason his voice sounded smaller than Adam’s, even though Roger was taller. “Pippin’s boyfriend from Uni.”

He hadn’t meant to put the emphasis on boyfriend, really, but after all, this was The Competition, and he had a large backup, while Roger, apparently, had nil. He glowered as he watched Pippin come up behind Adam’s right shoulder.

[average-adam.livejournal.com]

"Hullo then, Roger," said Adam quietly, but his voice had no problem carrying. He was faintly amused at the odd collection of rescuers that Pepper had acquired, but, as John presupposed, that was part of the point. It was still us against them. Adam was just changing the definition of us.

"Don't mind the others. They're all just tryin' to tell you that you'd be safer if you went someplace else. They just have dif'rent ways of doin' it."

He ignored the comment about Roger being Pepper's boyfriend. Saying the word didn't make it true.

"Was there somethin' you wanted to ask me before you left?"

[no-npc-here.livejournal.com]

“Actually, yeah” Roger answered, but bugger it all if he could remember what it was, exactly. Being faced with … an army like this was not really helping his fury or his sense of being in the right. “I wanted… I wanted to know…” his hands curled unconsciously into fists. “I wanted to know what you can give her that I can’t.”

[average-adam.livejournal.com]

"You've got it all backwards, Roger. It's about what Pepper can give me that no one else can." He smiled faintly, but stood perfectly still, always and ultimately on his own ground. "But not like you think. Still, she made her decision all on her own an' I think you should respect that."

[no-npc-here.livejournal.com]

“I just can’t get a straight answer out of any of you!” Roger exclaimed, not even knowing how to begin to understand what Adam had just said. He turned his gaze to Pippin.

“So that’s how it is, huh, Pip? I and all of your friends at Uni, we were just, what, a vacation from your crazy life with Adam and the circus freaks? Did you wake up one morning and think, ‘Hey, for a lark, why don’t I go off to school in London and make some friends and have a boyfriend for a year, just to see how normal people live’? Oh, and while I’m at it maybe I’ll get pregnant and then kill the baby.

He regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth. He was feeling angry and hurt and defensive and he wanted to say something hurtful, but that… that wasn’t something you said in front of other people, and he’d wanted to talk to her about it but he’d never intended it to sound like that… he’d wanted to be understanding…

“Oh Jesus,” he said softly, taking a step toward her. “Pip, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…”

[playswithboys.livejournal.com]

Pepper turned her head sharply to the side, her breath coming out in a rush as though she'd been slapped. In a way, she had. One hand instinctively curled into a fist, but she had no use for it.

She felt like she was going to be sick.

Pepper stared at the floor, eyes wide and panicked, but there really wasn't anything to be done about it. He had found out. Of course he'd come looking for her. To talk to her about it, and make her come back. And everyone in this room knows. "Who told you that?" she said quietly, thankful that Adam was between the two of them. He wouldn't let him close, right?

[no-npc-here.livejournal.com]

“Ruth,” Roger answered after a moment’s hesitation, equally as quietly. “She um, she didn’t want to. But, well, I’d noticed something up even before, and then I couldn’t figure out why you didn’t come back, and I knew you’d have told her. I mean, she was your best friend at school, right? I just sort of, pressed it out of her.”

He hates talking around the barrier of Adam’s shoulder- he’d come down in person because talking on the phone was too impersonal, too distant, but now he felt farther away from her than ever as she stood flanked by the oddest assemblage of people Roger had ever seen.

“She felt terrible about it afterwards,” he added weakly, finding that as an olive branch it fell awfully short. “But I think… I think I have a right to know. It was my baby too.”

[playswithboys.livejournal.com]

Ruth. She had told him directly, he didn't even get it from someone she'd told, second or thirdhand. Nevermind the fact that she'd promised Pepper she'd never tell anyone. Ruth had been the only person at uni that Pepper had told anything to, and it seemed that she'd made a mistake. It couldn't make it any more clear to her that she didn't belong there.

The semi-apology that Roger was trying to hand over did nothing to calm the matter, and no she was not going to have an argument about woman's rights with him because that was not his concern. In the end it was Pepper's fault, her fault for being stupid and fucking up the same way her mother had, only the difference was that Pepper had never met her father for it, so things were reversed. Because her mother had felt the same way about him, apparently - "What did you think was goin' to happen?" she asked disbelievingly, stammering over the words with a dry mouth. "You thought that we'd have a baby? That we'd get married and live in some little suburb with a tiny green lawn in front of our house, and I'd learn to cook and sew and - " never imagine anything again?

She shouldn't be talking anymore, not with all these people around them and Adam, oh God, Adam and Wensley were hearing this, and suddenly Pepper did wish she was in a room full of strangers. In an odd moment of terrified reflection, she glanced back over her shoulder to the chair where her book and Crowley's bouquet rested. Lillies. So much for youthful innocence....

If only she could just disappear.

[average-adam.livejournal.com]

Adam merely stood there, non judgmentally, between them. He'd stop it when it needed to be stopped, but for now both Pepper and Roger needed closure. He didn't dismiss the others. They might still be needed.

[dangeroushabits.livejournal.com]

John set his teeth and reminded himself firmly that none of this was really any of his business and that Adam would deal with the little shit in whatever manner he saw fit. It didn't help much. He badly wanted to introduce his knuckles to College Boy's pretty face. Some dirty laundry even he couldn't countenance airing in public, and Pepper shouldn't have to put up with it.

He glanced at Crowley, symbolically putting his fist in his hand and turning a fierce glare on the punk to express the sentiment he couldn't act on directly.

[first-catwoman.livejournal.com]

Bast hissed almost involutarily, and focussed on ignoring the urge to treat this- this- kwrall like the aforesaid rabbit. She glanced up at John, seeing he was having trouble with similar sentiments.

Funny, though - a while ago it might have been the girl she was upset with, but all she wanted to do right now was have this pretty boy's blood decorating the carpet. She bristled visibly, tail lashing like a loose pylon in a high wind, and growled, long and low, deep in her throat.

[no-npc-here.livejournal.com]

“Well, I would have married you!” Roger answered defensively. She made him sound like such a misogynist bastard. It wasn’t like that at all! He would never ask her to give up her life or her dreams; it was just that he wanted her to be a little more grown up, to stop living in her fantasy world with stage combat and pirate stories and games better left to children. Babies were real, and you couldn’t just pretend that this one had never happened. It wasn’t fair.

“I just… I just wish you had told me,” he said finally. “I wouldn’t have asked you not to do it… I mean, well, I guess I would have argued, but I would have understood.”

He thought he would have, anyway. He was so far off his footing with her now that he didn’t really know anything for sure anymore. He held out a hand to her.

“How the hell am I supposed to understand you, Pip? You never once told me anything important, not over a whole year.” There was a self-deprecating, teasing smile on his face as he said the words, but the question was completely sincere.

He was doing his best not to look at the people behind her; he heard the clichéd expression ‘if looks could kill’ and he wasn’t quite sure at that moment that they couldn’t. Although it would probably be a lot easier to be killed than to continue standing there trying to have that conversation. He wished again that they could have talked in private, but as long as she seemed willing to have the conversation in front of all those people he would keep up his end of it.

He owed her at least that.

[playswithboys.livejournal.com]

This had to end now. It didn't matter if he would have married her, she never would have consented. It didn't matter what he wanted for her, no matter how nice it seemed, because she didn't agree. She made her own decisions and she lived with them. That was real life. That was being grown up.

He was as much caught up in fantasy as she was; just because his didn't involve superheroes or sword fighting didn't make it more valid or worthwhile. Certainly not here, were the lines were so blurred. And he wasn't supposed to understand her. He never had. He had been a replacement, and Pepper was only just beginning to realize how true that was. "I'm sorry," she said, only now her voice came out stronger. She had a job to do. "But there was nothin' for you to understand. An' maybe I shoulda told you about it, but I didn't. It was my choice and it's done. As for me tellin' you what's important...." She looked around then, her eyes lighting on the improbable flock that had come to her rescue without her ever having to ask. "You don't believe in it, Roger. You never will. There wouldn't a been much point in tryin' to explain."

[no-npc-here.livejournal.com]

And there it was. They just didn't belong together, and that was it. Roger stared at her for a long moment, almost long enough to forget the fact that everyone else in the room wanted to strangle him.

“Yeah,” he said finally, not knowing himself exactly what he was agreeing with. “Okay.”

He clenched his fists and, steeling himself, turned his gaze to Adam. “You take care of her,” he ordered, with all the fervor an ex-boyfriend could muster. “I don’t care if it’s what she can do for you or what they,” he waved a hand at Pippin’s army, “can do for her, or whatever. You take care of her. She deserves it.”

And then, because he couldn’t bring himself to turn his back on those people anymore than he could bring himself to really look at them, he turned only halfway and backed up awkwardly to the door and put his hand on the knob.

[playswithboys.livejournal.com]

Pepper watched him go. She took a deep breath as the door closed behind him, tried to be calm and focused, to not think too hard on her surroundings, on the weight of everything that had transpired so quickly. She tried not to think in terms of oh hell, what have I done? though it seemed inevitable. She tried to center her attention on something that wasn't related, wasn't part of the current situation, but the only thing in this room was eyes.

Then everything shattered.

Having a concussion was less confusing than this. She was cold and fatigued and she couldn't remember how to look at anyone dead on anymore. Her strength had fled from her and it felt so permanent this time.