As Above So Below

Where have the gods gone? Underground. A 1x1 multimuse rp blog

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Catch It || Linnea & Hayden

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Linnea’s work routine had been thrown entirely. It was amazing how a single incident could make a woman lose her touch. Of course, she wasn’t the steadiest person employed there. And more often than not, she made heinous mistakes that were covered up with a cute smile and a nod. Her boss would smooth it over, and that was that. People loved her well enough to not mind her hair-brained mistakes.

The man who’d barely noticed her but caught the bottle, he was bothering her. She couldn’t place why or how, but her mind kept wandering off to him. He was so intent on his reading, or focusing on it enough to keep himself distracted more likely, and how he still caught it. She couldn’t catch something thrown directly at her, much less when she wasn’t paying attention.

As she was cleaning behind the pastry case, she noticed one of her coworkers setting a tray down where it didn’t need to go. It was in the way, and someone would knock it over into the aisle way. “Hey, Monny, don’t put that-” Not a second later, a customer ran smack into it. Linnea jumped and tried to catch the rim with her fingers to keep it’s contents from hitting the floor, throwing herself up on the pastry case. Her legs dangled, and she’d only just missed as another hand caught it. 

Looking up, with her hair in her face and laying over a glass case that definitely would need to be cleaned again, she came face to face with the oddly observant man who’d caught her bottle of steak sauce. “Hello again,” she breathed, not realizing she’d knocked the air out of herself jumping up. “You do this often? Catch things, I mean?”

[darkplacesdarkfaces-blog]

The answer to that was a definite no. Catching things, as serendipitous as each coincidence seemed to be (if he was to believe in something like that in the first place), had only happened as often as she was there at the same time that he was. Which at the rate things were going at that very moment, were few and far between. Still, an incident was once, a coincidence twice, and three well...he didn’t often like things that made it up to three. They were good or bad, and never in between. Black and whites were hardly worth it, if he was given the choice to walk away from them. But as it was, maybe he really didn’t have the option. As it was, he was already headed straight for it. 

A call had made him get up from his table. The people under him weren’t so experienced in wording their way around difficult people, and for that he couldn’t really sit down somewhere without expecting to be called back up again five minutes later. He was almost at the door when-

“Hey Monny, don’t-” and then a clatter of something wobbling itself off the counter top as someone passed him in the opposite direction. Perhaps he tended to avoid things that happened more than once or twice, but he did feel the smallest bit sympathetic for poor “Monny”. It wasn’t often sympathy fit in anywhere else in his day. Besides, his people could spend a good few minutes sweating for a bit.

The contents of the tray slid over to one side as he leaned back to grab it, catching on the narrow rim as he straightened it out again. They were light enough though. No harm, no foul. He placed it back in the center of the counter top and made to leave without drawing attention to himself, but the next step he took brought him face to face (or rather face to chest) with the same waitress from a couple weeks before, no Monny to be found. He skipped over the hello as she stared at him wide-eyed and opted to shake his head to answer her question- no, he didn’t often spend his time looking for knocked over things, it wasn’t a hobby (but the simplicity of it all was an amusing thought nonetheless)- and the corner of his lip pulled up slightly for a moment. Once his hand was free of the tray, he offered it to her, palm up. 

“Would you like to come down now?”  

[darkplacesdarkfaces-blog]

breaking the block ;; dean & -

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Marina wasn’t planning on staying in the city that day, but two calls and a delayed flight changed her plans entirely. She remembered a small cafe a friend had introduced her too, and since she was in the neighborhood… might as well. Silently, she slipped in the building and looked around for a place to sit and considered what she wanted to order when she noticed a man twirling a pen out of the corner of her eye. Rather than announce herself, she slowly walked toward him to not alert the man to her presence. She hiked her purse up on her shoulder and ran her fingers up his side, just as she leaned over him. “Hard at work, or hardly working?”

It’d be a lie if she didn’t say she was a little too interested in the singer boy who’d she only just met. There was just something about him, something she really wanted to have. A light, shining though his face… it was addictive. Marina had never met another person who could be so pleasant and sweet as him. Her family wasn’t known for being especially pleasant, and neither were people in her regular social circle. Outside of Helena, she could barely be bothered to make time to “hang out” anymore. This one, though… she’d wandered into the coffee shop hoping to run into him. And as fate would have it, she did. Now standing behind him, smiling wide as she hovered above, she was pleased to missing her trip.

[darkplacesdarkfaces-blog]

Thing was, he didn’t enjoy waiting for things to just happen. For something to hit him in the face, here I am, enough to urge him to get it down on paper. The whole thing seemed contrived. But as it was, writers didn’t make very good liars. They could spin words, transform them, put them in any different way enough to almost make it sound like something else at the end of the day but it all came down to variations on the same note; the truth.

He felt the sudden urge to slam his head into the table. Writing anything hadn’t been half so difficult when he’d first gotten to the city- when he’d been playing out in Central Park and taking up residence for the day on benches, when he’d been living out of a rent car. It hadn’t been his most well thought out decision, and not the most glamorous of lives, no. But it was something and something had been happening nonetheless. He stared at the counter top displeased for a few more moments, dangerously tipping over into giving into his urge when he felt fingers run up his side. It could have been any number of people and their fingers but still his back went pleasantly straight and tight as their fingers crawled up him, like a well tuned bow string. It didn’t really matter who it was, to be truthful. Something was happening regardless.

And then hair tickled his shoulder over his shirt, and a light, recognizable voice spoke in his ear, which made his slow start much, much better. He spun the bar stool around, his knee coming to rest between her own as he looked up at her, a smile on his lips first sheepish, then relieved. He looked behind him at the fairly blank pages and then shrugged once he was looking up at her again, leaning against the counter top.

“T’started out that way, but it ain’t workin’ out too well in my favor honestly, between you n’ me. Can’t be blamed for tryin’…” He gave her a ‘what can you do sort of look’. It wasn’t like he really had any sort of manager to breathe down his neck about it. “So, to what do I owe the pleasure?”

[darkplacesdarkfaces-blog]

breaking the block ;; dean & -

He couldn’t stay still. Which meant that any plans he had of even getting close to the illusion of having done something that day were slipping through his fingers like sand- like every other god damn shitty cliche that had graced the lines of a loose sheet of paper. They had all been crossed over in black and blue pen in split seconds of frustration- so many lines about girls in coffee shops and cliche sounds and smells. He was pretty sure he’d written down some Journey lyrics too at some point as a joke to himself which he found less than funny the moment he was done. Perhaps he needed a change of scenery. As cliche as it all was, he enjoyed the homely-ness of hole in the wall coffee shops. Even though at this point he couldn’t really do much other than stare out at the rainy street through the window- deftly twirl a pen in his hand, for that was as much as he could bother to do with it- lightly stab some tea leaves back into the bottom of his mug with the bottom of a spoon. Sometimes all at the same time, which made him sigh with a defeated tilt of his head. He couldn’t stop moving. His day was fucked. 

[goneforthemoment]

Wife || Adam & Helena

Kicking open the door and yelling, “Honey, I’m home!” may not have been Adam’s style, but it was what he did anyway. He wanted to make sure that his wife was fully aware of his presence, and she could roll her eyes when she finally met him face to face that day. For once, he’d been a good man and not messed around with anyone - a fact he wished he could brag about but his wife would slap him nonetheless. Which he both needed and deserved, honestly.

“Wife?” he called, throwing his briefcase and suit jacket down on the couch before walking through their home to find the woman he had tied himself down to. Was it a mistake? Probably. A habitual cheater should never be married. But she looked good on camera, cleaned up his life, and god was she beautiful. That was the cherry on top for him. How proud he was to call her his.

“My darling wife, I have news. Excellent news. Take a seat, because you’re going to need it.” He smiled and entered their bedroom with a swag that only came from getting one’s way. “But first, how was your day?”

[darkplacesdarkfaces-blog]

“I’m telling you Ro, if you’re doing black tie at the Lotte, you can’t have just lilies. It’s a multi-million charity function, not a funeral.” She glanced away from her moving pen to the time ticking away the seconds of the call on her phone, imagining the eye roll on her assistant’s face as his idea was shot down yet again. They’d been going at this for the better part of an hour, both stubbornly trying to argue their visions like a bitter day in court, neither going to be the first to relent. Even though they both knew she had the last say. 

She heard the key in the front door click itself to ‘unlock’ before it banged open, colliding with the wall beside it. She rolled her own eyes. “Figure something else out. I’ll have to call you back.” She blew out a breath, fluttering her bangs as she clicked the red hang-up button with her own red fingernail, spinning her chair around just in time to see her husband present himself to her with all the bravado of the character he played behind podiums. 

“I need a glass of wine. Or two,” she merely said and then recrossed her legs, absently gesturing him to go ahead- impress her, if he could. Which maybe she wasn’t quite in the mood for. After all, he couldn’t even notice that she was already sitting. And it boiled her blood. Amazing how he expected her to be all ears the minute he had something to say, and when she did it was nothing short of the attention you’d spare listening to a child babble about something you couldn’t understand, the magic they saw just all in their heads. 

[goneforthemoment]

Catch It || Linnea & Hayden

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Linnea stopped and smiled at the man. She remembered dropping off his drink, but not having the time to stay and chat for a bit, but he wasn’t much interested in her anyway. With a small blush rising to her cheeks, she nodded and took her leave as to not bother him. On her next round out, she made sure to slide on one of the more expensive lattes the restaurant provided with a small ‘thank you’ written on the napkin. It wasn’t that big of a deal, catching a bottle. But he had been so nice about it, and that was rare these days. She figured the least she could do was show that his kindness wasn’t wasted on someone ungrateful.

[darkplacesdarkfaces-blog]

No, he wasn’t much interested in her after that, especially seeing as there wasn’t much in the way of anything else to say. There was only so much time he had on his hands before hell broke loose time and time again. He wasn’t about to spend it staring at a waitress he’d shared as many words as he could count on his hands. 

Still, after noting to himself that she was still standing there, he spared a glance upward at her just long enough to catch her smile and return with a hint of his own before glancing back at his book just as fast. Words really weren’t so rare as smiles were, especially in his line of business. He had the time for those. 

He tried not to look up across the street much after she left. Though the thing he was trying to avoid made it much harder to be avoided than it should have been. Then again, that was his brother- an attention seeking, loud short fuse. As in body, so he was in spirit. If he wasn’t looking up at the flashing lights and the continuous stream of signs across the street, there were gossiping elderly women behind him to fill the Adam-less void. There were the short little bursts of the repetitive city ‘news’ as a taxi rolled by, or teenagers playing the same tired and tried snappy joke on the latest political gaff, courtesy of none other than the small stick of dynamite he had to call brother. 

He couldn’t concentrate. The only thing that kept him there longer than he should have been was that very same waitress he’d said little more than a sentence to, and this time he stared at her full on and curious as she placed a little teacup and saucer on the table, the ceramic twinkling with its shaky leg in the November wind. No words this time? He raised a brow, curiosity looping into confusion as he looked down at the teacup, the part of the napkin with the small, pretty scrawl in black ink poking out the back end. He let a smile pass his lips as she walked away again, attempting to head back into his book for the second time. The constant barrage of all things sibling couldn’t keep him here, but he’d let this small thing take up a couple extra minutes of his time. 

When he once again made a move to gather himself up to leave, he didn’t see her. He flipped over the paper he hadn’t touched, away from the news that was getting on his nerves and then tucked the written napkin between the first few pages. He scrawled a quick ‘you’ve earned it’ on some free space before tucking several bills beside it, leaving coin change for the coffee he’d gotten long before any of this had happened. And then he made his leave. 

[goneforthemoment]

Catch It || Linnea & Hayden

Linnea’s day had already gone to hell in a hand basket, and it seemed that she was going to keep making mistakes left and right. Her tray wobbled as a customer pushed passed her, and she groaned. Keeping it steady, she rectified her situation and kept going out on the patio. Of course, a small child cruised right passed her and hit her arm. She kept most everything upright, but a bottle of steak sauce was about to meet a terrible fate on the floor. To her surprised, she looked down as a hand caught the bottle. “Thank you,” she said, holding out her hand to take the bottle back. His face was very familiar, she saw him often. “Those are a bitch to clean up. I mean hard. Sorry. Not supposed to say that at work.”

[darkplacesdarkfaces-blog]

It was busy that day, and so it was all too easy to be left alone, unnoticed. No unexpected drop-ins from relatives or the grown monkeys (as he so affectionately referred to the oddly eager people under his thumb) to deal with, air unmarred by the disquiet and butting heads he was so used to. Well- perhaps that wasn’t true in its entirety. It was hard to get away from someone whose face was plastered everywhere. His eyes rolled as another political advert with his brother’s smug looking smile steadied itself on the screen across the street, replaced with another only seconds later in the ten minute cycle. He had just enough time to look away and return to his book (a few pages into the abandoned paper on the table and there was that annoyingly smug smile again) when the soft jingle of glass and the split second of air rearranging itself by his cheek told him that something was falling. A quick lift of his eyes from the page, he stuck a hand out and just as quickly righted the bottle that was still threatening to wobble itself off the tray again. He stilled it with an index finger before returning to the spot he’d last left himself in his book before getting distracted by fake and toothy grins. He didn’t really look at her, shrugging once. “I’m not going to tell if you won’t.”