multiversallogs | → I'm now becoming my own self-fulfilled prophecy.

Who: Irene Adler, Benevenuta Crispo
What: Irene being extremely forward.
Where: Bernát Residence.
When: Call it a Sukkardi, not long after monster rain.
Warnings: see characters involved.

Today, Irene's playing at demure. This means absolutely nothing except a lot of white lace and a respectable hemline which only makes her crimson smile seem ten times dirtier, all her primness and prettiness serving as nothing more than a foil for the entirely obvious truth. Dressed up like a doll, she looks even sharper and hungrier than ever.

She has a bottle of very fine white wine in the hand not occupied with her clutch, which she bites down on (teeth on the gleaming knuckleduster handle) for a moment and holds in her mouth, leaving a smudge of lipstick, to press the doorbell. She quickly reclaims the bag and stands up a litle straighter, feet together, society smile barely keeping in check her bright-eyed, sharp excitement. Ladylike. Vicious.

And when the door opens, she speaks immediately, launching straight into airy, intentionally overdone theatricality without so much as a hello-

"My cleaner kicked me out, something about needing absolute silence and peace in which to work her magic and see if she can't finally get those bloodstains out of my white carpet. So, I thought I'd see how my necklace was getting on."

She holds up the bottle, raises her eyebrows.

"And look! I brought a present."

--because Irene does like to spoil people, and that serpent pendant was payment.

(It's probably a worrying example of Irene's sense of humour that she finds everything about this particular scene and her current act to be absolutely hilarious).

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Benevenuta, appearing ever so slightly bemused by the sudden addition of Irene Adler to her otherwise mercifully quiet evening in, is slightly less precisely put together in sheer cardigan and organdy bloomers, which are not, despite their half-assed (if you'll forgive the pun) attempt in that direction, actually pants. The front door of her apartment opens straight into her living room, and behind her on the glass coffee table there is evidence of a solitary evening in; one wine-glass, a selection of books, and...some sort of dessert?

(She's gone blonde since they last met, but perhaps Irene has already seen that on the network; it's very conscious, the way she's softened herself since the end of the crisis, gone back and reinforced that first impression she'd given of herself to this city, sheathing the sharper, darker parts and making them harder to hold onto, like smoke. Some people are harder to fool than others.)

“Come in,” she sighs, half a laugh. “I'll get another spoon.”

"You're too kind," Irene coos, coming in as bidden and surrendering the wine, peeling off her gloves with liberal help from her teeth in a way which definitely doesn't tally with the white lace and prim hemline.

"And I love the blonde, by the way," she adds, not fooled at all; it would take more than hairdye to make her forget how Benevenuta acted during the crisis, and perhaps more interestingly the gap between how she acted then and how she acts now and at other, safer times.

A practical woman is one thing, and a very interesting thing indeed in Irene's opinion, but a woman who lies is ten times better.

“It's more me,” Benevenuta says of the blonde, shutting the front door behind Irene and taking the wine and herself to the kitchen to get another glass and spoon. The dessert on the coffee table is a creme brulee that she hasn't cracked into yet and the open-plan nature of her flat means the whole space smells faintly of her having made it, not unpleasantly; underneath that is her perfume, a Guerlain.

The books are varied - nonfiction all, but Foucalt on madness, Cioran on the human condition, art history of women Surrealist artists, and medical texts dealing with xenian and human variation physiology. Light reading, then, for her evening in. (It's a treat, a trade-off; when she gets through a certain number of chapters on what she needs for work, she reads something she wants to read for a while. She finds she gets more done that way, and moreover that she absorbs more information if she isn't trying to force it down her own throat over fatigue.)

“And I'm glad to see you well,” she adds, returning, apparently unconcerned by their difference in dress-code. Pants? A bra, maybe? No, she's fine like this.

Well, it's more someone.

Irene takes a seat, taking in the books with absolutely unabashed nosiness and adding the names to a mental file, as well as the fact that Dr Bernát works on her evenings off. Which is reassuring, really.

She'll make a good ally. And the blonde is lovely on her. (Irene can easily imagine that all sorts of things are lovely on her).

"Well, the same goes for you," Irene informs her with a smile, hands folded on the back of the sofa. "And yet I am absolutely unsurprised."

Benevenuta offers her the spoon as she sits down, folding one foot underneath herself and resting the other on the floor - easily at home, like she's lived here forever when she can't have been in this particular flat long at all from the look of it. It still feels new in places, the way that her belongings haven't yet quite filled it, like she's still growing in.

(Deciding who she is, exactly, to this city.)

“It was, ah, touch and go.” It's probably a good thing Lucius can't hear her mildly deprecating comment, there, he'd probably choke on something.

Irene takes the offered spoon and lets the mask slip slightly, intentionally-- "You don't seem touch and go to me," she says easily and softly, companionably, keeping her eyes trained on her for just a second too long before she cracks a smile and returns to her act with just a hint of self-aware wryness.

We both know what's going on, don't we? But it's more fun this way.

"I'll let you crack it, shall I?" she says, tapping the spoon against her lower lip, half thoughtful and half flirtatious.

How Benevenuta contains some thoughtful remark about which of them best likes to break things-- well, it is a mystery. (Her sense of humour is a quiet thing, an undercurrent, but it's there.)

As she cracks the top of it with her spoon, she says, almost thoughtfully, “I have yet to find an occasion to wear that necklace that can top our first outing together. The thestrals, particularly; I have never ridden, before, something that takes flight.”

And it makes perfect sense to think of jewelry as not only requiring an occasion but as almost participatory. There's nothing odd about that. Some people (like Benevenuta) name their weapons, after all.

Edited 2012-04-11 22:01 (UTC)

Irene's eyebrows go up, her spoon hovering over the surface of the creme brulee as she looks at Benevenuta, amusement twisting up the corner of her mouth.

"That sounds like a story I'd like to hear," she remarks, voice soft and wry.

Hint hint.

She takes a spoonful, too, popping it into her mouth and keeping her eyes expectantly fixed on Benevenuta. Well, even if she won't tell the story, she expects a lot from her in terms of keeping her entertained and engaged.

“There was a fight-- there were many, but in which I found myself...” Which is not a strange thing to say, even if she'd shy away from actually discussing and reminding people of that particular reality and her participation in it; she'd been out and about for most of the crisis, and Irene had seen that she was armed. Of course she got into scrapes.

('Scrapes'.)

“So I have the crossbow, and there are the thestrals, and I supplied...” A pause, as she searches for the right phrasing. “'Air support'.”

Irene raises her wine glass to her lips...and then lowers it again, upon hearing that.

"I," she says, pausing for dramatic effect, "am so sorry to have missed that."

A smile trembles at the corner of her lips, because somehow, she and Benevenuta are on the same level. And because she's picturing quiet, brilliant Dr Vanessza Bernát mounting a crossbow attack from whatever sort of flying thing a thestral is and it is...entirely believable. Wonderful.

“It was an experience,” Benevenuta says in typical diplomatic understatement; it was, in an admittedly somewhat worrying way, probably the highlight of an experience that is not really meant to have had highlights. There had been moments in the fighting and the running where she'd genuinely been enjoying herself--

--well, it just is what it is.

“But you found yourself safe?”

"Oh, I always do," she says airily, in a tone which sounds a little more like she was glossing over events than it was meant to. Recognising the botched line she gives it a split second, then lets her eyes soften as she delivers a slightly apologetic smile; sorry, I'll tell you the truth.

Whether she actually will or not is somewhat up for debate, but what follows is at least part of it, in a low and intimate tone:

"Staying in a safehouse was worse than being outside. Or- so I thought when I was locked in there. Maybe the grass is always greener on the other side of the nightmare."

But there's something in her slow, wry, careful pronunciation of nightmare- she sounds less like she's talking about her own life and more like she's recounting some sort of horror story, just frightening enough to be exciting- because that's how she likes to look at it, to keep herself sane. She's smiling still.

→ I'm now becoming my own self-fulfilled prophecy.

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