i’ve been sleeping on this for years but piper solitude’s real name is Tiffany Jane Ylitalo and honestly can you blame her for changing it to something with a little more bite
i wasn’t even a little bit ready for what i was getting into when i had this idea but here we are i guess. piper’s a Bad Person and i’m uncomfortable
Listen. I’m not somebody with a habit of second-guessing herself. But on days like today, it’s hard not to ask, “You gave up a cushy career as an attorney-at-law for this?”
I sigh heavily through my nose. It turns into a hoarse cough. Too usual a thing, even these days, for me to take much notice. The clock above the door tells me another cup of coffee would do me a hell of a lot of good, so I emerge from my room for the first time all day and head for the kitchen. Ace is nowhere to be seen. Good. I don’t need her coming at me for “working such ridiculous hours” and “mixing stimulants and alcohol before noon”.
The worst part about coffee is that nobody’s found a way to brew it straight into a gal’s mouth. So, as I’m waiting, I wear a groove into the curled linoleum of the kitchen floor. I never pace anywhere except the kitchen, and only while waiting for coffee. Something about the rhythm of boiling, dripping water. The apartment fills with the acid smell of roasted caffeine. The beans were five bucks a pound. I’m no connoisseur.
Slick’s got me on call today. Her, and about a thousand other crooks. Got three consultations in a row this afternoon, all different parts of the metro. Don’t know what I was thinking when I scheduled that. Friend of a friend wants to meet up for a “favor”, specifics unspecified, although I know every other thing about him short of his shoe size. Kyrie needs me to show some kid the ropes, as if I’m the closest thing she’s got to a proper debt collector - which I suppose just goes to show how lean things are getting out there.
Supposed to meet up with Ben later to hunt down a couple of supers for interviews. A dozen irons in the fire, and somehow that’s the thing I keep coming back to — a completely nuts, dead-end puzzle box case that might not even have a solution, and which I’m definitely not getting paid for. But I can’t shake it. The coffee machine beeps quietly as the water stops dripping. The heat of the pot through my gloves makes my numbed fingers itch. This case is a bad love affair; takes all my headspace without giving back, but something’s there that’s too good to give up.
I’ve got the half-empty pot to my lips when I hear the floor outside my front door creak. I know who it is even before the three-second pause, just enough hesitation to mean something, followed by a brisk knock.
“Come in, Al,” I say. The door opens, and the man on the other side has to duck to enter my apartment.
We haven’t been acquainted for long, but there are a few things I know about Alastair Sergei. One: his picture’s in the dictionary under “Tall, Dark, and Handsome”. Like if a menswear model had a change of heart, became a librarian, and succumbed to a slightly unhealthy love of pasta and cheap wine. Two: no matter what Aisha thinks, he’s only slightly less harmless than he seems. He’s got too many streaks of bad character to be faking his overall good nature. Just how I like ‘em. And, three: the serene, charming, and entirely self-controlled smile he’s got on his face when he says hello is so boring that I consider telling him to turn right back around and leave me alone with my work.
His greeting stops halfway out of his mouth when he sees me drinking coffee right from the pot. I think about smirking at him, but decide it would be more effective to just maintain eye contact as I take another few gulps. He doesn’t even know about the whiskey.
“Rough morning?” he finally says, confusion adding a hint of interest to his bland smile.
“Can’t tell, yet,” I answer, setting the pot down on the countertop. “Long one, for sure.”
“When’d you get up?”
“Implies I’ve recently been anything other than up.”
Alastair winces in sympathy. “I should probably leave you to - uh - rest, maybe? I just thought I’d drop by, since—“
I grunt a couple of shapeless negatives, waving his words away. “Sit down. I’m already, you know… taking a break, or whatever.”
Alastair’s polite smile returns. It’s got an edge of mischief to it, this time. Slightly better. “Sorry, what was that? That word?”
“I dunno what you’re talking about.”
He leans against the back of the couch, his hands in his pockets. “To hear Ben tell it, the word ‘break’ isn’t supposed to be in your vocabulary.”
“Yeah, well,” I say with a shrug. I let him have this one, because he’s sounding too much like Ace for my taste, right now.
Alastair watches me for a minute. I’m looking down at my gloves as I pull at the hems, but I can feel his eyes. I deal with my own glare in the mirror every day. His feels like a summer breeze, compared. “What’s keeping you up all night, then?” he says.
“Mm. Jealous?”
I think that’s a new record for “smallest amount of words needed to reduce a man to momentary speechlessness”. Then he laughs easily, and a dark flush spreads inward from his ears. The slightest pang of adrenaline quickens my pulse in something similar to pride — satisfaction — like when I managed to pick a lock for the first time in sixth grade.
“Just couldn’t sleep,” I say before Alastair has a chance to get smart with me. “Figured I might as well use the time to get some work done.”
“Oh, I know that feeling.”
My eyes suddenly lock on to his hands. “Stop that.”
He pulls back, leaving a small spot on a nearby table cleared, the clutter and trinkets arranged into the beginnings of order. “Sorry,” he says reflexively, before crossing his arms. “Habit. I mean, I’m actually kind of impressed at how fast you managed to…. unpack.”
“When a room’s too clean, it don’t feel right,” I say.
His mouth twitches, but he lets it go. I suppose this means we’re even. His tone returns to banter. “I doubt anything in this building could even charitably be referred to as ‘too clean’, though.”
“That’s part of the charm,” I say, finally cracking a smile. He returns it, just as crooked but with his lips closed over his teeth, like he’s trying to pretend it’s not a completely different expression from the one he walked in with. There it is. That’s the stuff. I consider telling him he looks better when his face isn’t faked, but then again, that’d take all the fun out of making him slip.
“Since you obviously got nothing better to do,” I say, turning to the sink, “I’ll make some more coffee.”
“Thank you,” Alastair says with genuine warmth. He doesn’t mention the cup and a half still in the pitcher on the counter. Maybe he does know about the whiskey.
I set out the stuff he’ll need. I’m not gonna mix it for him. A girl’s gotta have some standards. He comes into the kitchen, his dark red curls nearly brushing the plaster ceiling tiles, and I remember — four: he takes so much cream and sugar in his coffee that I could be brewing ground-up triple-A batteries and he’d drop dead before he noticed a difference.
There is a small piece of paper on the kitchen window.
I freeze, staring at it. I can see, backlit by the city sun, a few symbols printed on the other side. It wasn’t there when I came in to make my own coffee. I’m almost certain. Ninety-nine percent. But… I can’t be sure. I didn’t make a specific note in my brain, The kitchen window is clear, nothing out of place — I reach out to it. The note is on the outside of the window. I live on the third floor.
Alastair says something. My ears filter it out before it even reaches my brain. When I stick my arm through the open window, I can just barely reach the paper, and it comes off with the faint sucking noise of weak adhesive.
A heart and a winking face. It’s handwritten, but it uses keyboard characters to form the symbols as if it had been typed up. I turn it over in my hands. There’s nothing else. My mind flips through everything I’m working on, every bit of information pertinent to all the plates I’ve got spinning on sticks, but I’ve never seen this kind of thing before. It could just be some kind of joke, I suppose, but—
“Piper, what is it?” Alastair says, insistently enough that it gets through.
I turn from the kitchen and head for my room. There isn’t a single surface in this place thick enough to keep out more than a whisper, but I figure it’ll be good enough to give me a moment to think.
I stopped believing in coincidences about the same time I first got jumped for sticking my nose in the wrong place, and this was just strange enough to fit. I could write it off as a prank, except that dumb teenagers would have a hard time scaling three stories of apartment complex just to leave a note. Unless they were supers, in which case the note may have something to do with my investigation into the superflu. I wonder if Ben would know anything about this. He and Ace are both more into the text thing than I am. Maybe it means something?
“Piper.”
I never made it into my room. I’m standing with my forehead pressed to the door. “Shut your mouth for a damn minute, would you?” I snap, holding a hand up without turning to him.
Alastair leaving my apartment in a huff registers in my brain on roughly the same level as the housefly shifting its position on the floor near my feet. The note is a signature. That much seems obvious. But it’s a signature I’m not familiar with, which makes me wonder why the owner cares about who I am or what I’m doing. Not much of a message. Maybe it’s just meant to confuse me, make me ask more questions. If that’s it, then it’s sure as hell working.
I can’t shake the feeling that I should know what this is.
The paper crumples in my hand, slowly, absently. Even worse, I feel like if the person who put it there could see me right now, they’d be laughing.
you don't have to do this one (unless you want to) but the first thing that came to mind when i saw that playlist ask meme was "playlist: PIPER NO" lol
multiples of ten for piper- every multiple of five that is not a multiple of ten for alastair. and then 13, 14, 17, 18, and 19 for aisha
i definitely just spent an hour and a half answering this
PIPER
10. Do they like children? Do children like them? Do they have or want any children? What would they be like as a parent? Or as a godparent/babysitter/ect?
Uuuhhhh well piper doesn’t… HATE children, she’s alright around them, but she doesn’t want any of her own;;; she’d be a horrible mother - not actively abusive, but fairly neglectful due to hyperfocus in other areas. She’d do better once the kids were older, but by then the damage would already be done. Her kids would grow up smart, self-reliant, and emotionally maladjusted [coughs loudly that if she had kids with alastair some of these problems would be largely mitigated and the children would be SUPER CUTE TOO UGH]
20. Do they like musicals? Music in general? What do they do when their favourite song comes?
Yeah piper likes music! She’s got a pretty terrible voice herself and she doesn’t like singing in front of people tho. She doesn’t know a ton about the craft, but she can get into musicals and hold a decent conversation about them. Tbh she’s one of those people who can’t hit the high notes and is well aware of it so she doesn’t even try like she’ll get really into the parts that are roughly in her range but when the awesome big parts come she drops the octave and kinda mumbles through it ahaa
30. Do they exercise? Regularly? Or only when forced? What do they act like pre-work out and post-work out?
Piper goes running several times a week and can hold her own at parkour for a while, but she’s not nearly as in-shape as she used to be. Running is good for her because it both gives her time to think and forces her to focus on something outside of herself. She’s not terribly self-aware, but she understands enough to know that when she’s getting frustrated trying to work through a problem then going running can sometimes help her through it.
40. Do they like energy drinks? Coffee? Sugary food? Or can they naturally stay awake and alert?
She hates energy drinks, tolerates sugary foods but doesn’t crave them much, and drinks probably too much coffee. She’s constantly tired and has gotten used to functioning while exhausted. I kinda wonder what would happen if she got thrown out into a nice cabin in the mountains without electronics and was forced to stop working for a few weeks, just read books and chop wood or something I wonder if she’d re-learn how to get a full night’s sleep
50. If they could only take one bag of stuff somewhere with them: what would they pack? What do they consider their essentials?
Aw geez. Okay she’d probably take her pistol, her phone/computer and chargers, some notebooks, a water bottle, her wallet… a leather jacket. Maybe some books pertinent to what she’d be working on wherever she was.
ALASTAIR
5. Do they have any siblings? What’s their names? What is their relationship with them? Has their relationship changed since they were kids to adults?
He has two sisters, one older [cleo] and one younger [basil]. He gets along very well with his family, but he’s much closer to basil than cleo and talks to her regularly - every other day, at least. When they were kids, even though they spent more time together he was a lot more… emotionally guarded? I mean he hadn’t learned how to manage his temper yet and so their relationships switched between friendly and aggressive I guess, which is probably pretty normal. Alastair was easily offended, Basil was needlessly confrontational, Cleo was overtly passive-aggressive. They were quite the handful and their parents weren’t the most saintly pair in the world either but it always worked out in the end ahaa
15. Are they good at cooking? Do they enjoy it? What do others think of their cooking?
Yessssss he’s a wonderful cook and while it’s not his FAVORITE hobby he does enjoy cooking, especially when he’s cooking for other people. His family thinks he’s the best cook out of the four of them that aren’t his mother. Aisha [who is an alright cook herself and enjoys new experiences] likes to see what he comes up with when forced to go gluten-free for her. Piper thinks he takes food too seriously but doesn’t tease him too much about it
25. What do they find funny? Do they have a good sense of humour? Are they funny themselves?
Alastair will always laugh at hyperbole and understatement. He probably loves the Needing/Getting video - and really I guess all of OK GO’s stuff because it’s all so ridiculously over-the-top. He’ll laugh at jokes at his own expense as long as they’re made kindly, but finds it difficult to appreciate self-deprecating humor when it comes from other people (why would they say bad things about themselves unless on some level they actually meant it and are secretly hurting??? He would be able to tell). He’s pretty good at reading people and being able to make them laugh but he’s far from being a clown. his delivery is usually fairly muted (not necessarily dry; he’ll give it away by smiling and/or changing his mannerisms suddenly) and he doesn’t laugh at his own jokes unless someone else laughs first.
35. What’s their guilty pleasure? What is their totally unguilty pleasure?
adflajfalksdfjladskfj um. He really likes young adult fiction, and he feels like a COMPLETE RUBE for it I mean it was fine when he was a teenager although there wasn’t quite as MUCH back then. He stopped reading it entirely in college when he tried to reinvent himself as Very Grown-Up Academic and now with the advent of ebook rental he doesn’t ever have to be seen as a 33-year-old man checking out the entirety of the Etiquette and Espionage series from the library HAAAAA. As for non-guilty pleasures he loves singing loudly. He doesn’t have a great voice either especially at high volume, and he’s generally considerate of his neighbors, but if you’re listening to les mis in his car he will sing the whole dang thing and his voice will crack but that is Okay. You can make fun of him and he will just smile and shrug but on the inside he’s like YEAH BUT WHO’S HAVING FUN?? OH RIGHT IT’S ME AND NOT YOU
45. How do other people see them? Is it similar to how they see themselves?
People generally see him as a very well-adjusted, responsible and competent person who cares very deeply about his friends. Most of the time he sees himself this way too but there are those days where he worries that he hasn’t really grown up/changed from his selfish and volatile youth,,, my poor son
AISHA
13. What is their least favourite food?
Jello. She can’t frickin stand it by itself and like, jello salads or whatever??? why the heck would anyone put perfectly good fruit in this disgusting wiggly travesty of a non-newtonian fluid
14. Do they have any specific memories of food/a restaurant/meal?
The first time she tried a gluten-free pizza and realised that good food didn’t have to make her sick was a pretty big game changer tbh
16. Do they collect anything? What do they do with it? Where do they keep it?
She collects vinyl records! Mostly of hard rock but anything is fair game tbh. She has a big chest of drawers full of records with the record player on top of it and she does in fact actually listen to them fairly regularly
17. Do they like to take photos? What do they like to take photos of? Selfies? What do they do with their photos?
Aisha has a lot of recording habits but photos are not one of them. I think she has like… one photo, the one that Piper took of the two of them when Piper graduated from college but otherwise there really aren’t any photos in the apartment. Neither of them have any family to commemorate or whatever and don’t really enjoy looking at themselves so
18. What’s their favourite genre of: books, music, tv shows, films, video games and anything else?
For books she enjoys biographies and other non-fiction, but will go for sci-fi now and again too. She likes hard rock and occasional metal for music. she probably watches shows like Orange is the New Black and X-Files, but I can see her watching Steven Universe, Gurren Lagann, and Psych or Monk. She’s really enjoyed movies like Fury Road, anything from Studio Ghibli, and probably Tarantino’s films (I think she’d really like lee pace’s The Fall, once alastair got around to watching it with her. She would cry a lot). She’s not really a gamer but Alastair is and I think if he ever tried to get her into it he’d show her like… Undertale, because alastair would love undertale, and aisha would enjoy it but I think she’d be one of those people who has trouble with the non-pacifist endings;;;
19. What’s their least favourite genres?
She doesn’t like most fantasy novels - Lord of the rings was one of the exceptions, and she was really into the thomas covenant chronicles as a kid but really grew to resent them over time. It takes a lot for her to dislike music in general, but she doesn’t like Mackelmore like… at all. She tried watching Hannibal once, got a few episodes in and got too vaguely uncomfortable to keep going - so I guess horror/grimdark isn’t really her thing, although she can tolerate it in smaller doses in other works. Out of the video games she’s tried, she knows she doesn’t like first-person shooters at all, and has a hard time playing any other first-person genre too.
