Undisclosed Desires || Open

[kvietka]

[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=cellspacing,0px,true][atrb=width,420,true] A IN'T A SCENE * IT'S A GODDAMN ARMS RACE ❚ WORDS 499 ❚ TAGS Open❚ NOTESFeel free to interrupt~ It was a habit she wanted to break. But she couldn't help it. The proclivity was just too great. Sometimes the location would change, but it was usually the same. Today, she had opted to be close to the Elizabeth Tower. Despite all these freaking tourists snapping photos and pretending that they're leaning against the tower, it was a spot that Natalya would spend her days. That tower reminded her of her escape from the motherland and from the feelings that she knows she is supposed to repress. They are unrepressable and it was ironic. She was rushing back to those feelings every time she went to this tower. She had proceeded with parking her moped close to the bench she was sitting on and taking out her notepad. With a pencil, she began as usual... "Dear Ivan..." ...No, that wasn't good enough. She proceeded to crinkle the paper and start again. "My dearest Ivan..." ...No, that might sound too clingy. She crinkled that paper again and continued debating with herself with how she was going to do this, openings ranging from "My love Ivan..." to "Damn you, Ivan...". She grunted in frustration. She really didn't want to be writing this, but it was just too much of a habit. Once she got the ball going, it's going to continue rolling until its painful stop, never losing momentum. "Ivan: it began. Like a formal business letter. Something that seemed quite neutral and conveyed a sense of formality. Lovely. "I write this letter to tell you how much I love you." ...No. She isn't writing this letter to tell him how much she loves him. She won't take to that. She crumpled the letter yet again and instead wrote... "Can you stop being in my mind?" No, that's not going to work either. He probably doesn't care. "Stop being an asshole, I swear, I hate what your existence has done to me." That won't work either. So she decide to write this. "Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. Damn you. Damn you." ...over and over again, covering the whole sheet of paper... this was freaking frustrating. She was tempted to crumple this one but... it seemed right. This was going to be like usual. She will never send these letters. But she'll keep writing. Over. And over. And over again. made by ayu of btn

[Feliks Łukasiewicz]

Feliks liked visiting places he wouldn't normally go sometimes. He liked the change of scenery, the different sights and sounds and smells, in all the varieties they came. He had a few hours to himself, his MI6 superiors having gone a while without calling him, his employers at the salon having closed the place for refurbishment, and his little family of ponies having been properly cared for for the time being, and so he had decided to while away some time in one of the more heavily tourist-infested areas of London.

People-watching was more interesting when there were a lot of people to watch, and the more variety between them the better. Tourists were excellent for that, even if they all seemed to do the same things.

Feliks perched himself on a low wall not too far from the clock tower famously, if not perfectly accurately, referred to as Big Ben. Ben was the name of the bell inside the tower, which was named Elizabeth... Feliks frowned briefly and quickly cut that train of thought off where it was. Legs crossed modestly beneath his pleated beige skirt, he hummed a little tune to himself, watching people go by.

A family, two adults with a boy of the age to be starting school, paused in front of a statue to get their picture taken with Boudicca. In a broad American accent, the child read the informational plaque at the bottom loudly and with quite a few mistakes, but his parents praised him for how well he was reading. Impressed, Feliks agreed silently that the child was not so bad for his age.

Some ways away, a teenage couple spoke in excited French, before the girl struck a silly pose in front of the clock tower and the boy snapped her picture. All the tourists had cameras, it seemed--well, the area was full of beautiful things, and people did like to bring proof back with them when they had gone to beautiful places. Feliks had seen it many times with his fellow stylists when they had taken trips, though not so much with other agents. Spies generally preferred to be able to prove that they hadn't been to places where things had happened.

There was one young woman who didn't have a camera, just a pencil and a pad of paper. She seemed to have been there a while, but Feliks hadn't noticed her before because she was sitting on a bench with her head down, and the crowd jostling around her largely obscured her from view. Now that he saw her, however, Feliks wondered who she was. What was she doing here, writing in the middle of everything?

The watcher stood up and stretched out his legs. He had been sitting for some time longer than he was accustomed to, since he was so often on his feet all day playing with other people's hair and makeup. As if he didn't have a care in the world, Feliks threaded his way through the crowd and stopped by the girl's bench. She didn't notice him, so he sat down at the far end of the form--funny how those really old words pop up in your head when you, like, don't expect them, he mused to himself. Even in his mind he liked to phrase things that way.

A short while passed. The young woman still didn't seem to realize he was there, she was so absorbed in her writing. Eventually, curiosity getting the better of him, Feliks spoke up.

"Like, who are you?"

[kvietka]

[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=cellspacing,0px,true][atrb=width,420,true] A IN'T A SCENE * IT'S A GODDAMN ARMS RACE ❚ WORDS 259 ❚ TAGS Feliks❚ NOTESSorryit'sshortandlate No one really cared for her business. Nor would she let people care for her business. She preferred they didn't. And she won't care for their business. It was that simple. Hopefully her aura told people "Bug off." But oh goodness, the universe decided to be cruel today. The universe decided to send her someone who was either too oblivious to see "I'm not going to talk to you, so scram." or just enjoyed butting into business. Either way, she wasn't going to enjoy it. Being caught with all this crumpled paper and these letters was humiliating. No one questions her writing skills, no one questions her presence. That's how she wants things to be. Not "Hello there, deary, I hope you're having a nice day! Pick up your trash, let's keep this city clean~" No fluffy unicorn rainbow time, no friendship bonding that ends up with an angsty movie where one almost dies and the power of friendship saves them all. It just doesn't work that way. Friendship doesn't simply happen. And with the principles of entropy in mind, friendship wasn't worth it in her mind. Wasn't all of it going to end eventually? She crossed her arms. This was weird... was that a woman or man? She didn't want to ask. "Why the hell do you care?" she answered coldly, downplaying whatever initial panic and filled her, keeping the panic down her throat. No way is she going to say anything about the letters. Letters she'll never send. made by ayu of btn

[Feliks Łukasiewicz]

Feliks was surprised by the hostility that seemed to emanate from this woman as soon as he spoke. He had expected that she might be annoyed, or even confused by his looks, but this degree of anger didn't make sense.

Or maybe she was reacting normally, and he just couldn't tell. It was hard to be sure sometimes. People tended to react to Feliks in strange and disproportionate ways, especially when he was dressed like this.

Then the woman crossed her arms and demanded to know, "Why the hell do you care?"

Feliks considered it for a second. Why do I care, anyway?

"You don't have a camera," he concluded, as if that explained everything. But he knew it didn't, so after a pause he elucidated:

"Like, just about everyone around here has, like, a camera or something, or, like, a reason of some kind to be here. But you don't, so I wanted to see what you were doing in the middle of, like, everything."

He wondered if she was an author; perhaps that was why she was sitting here, ignoring a bustling crowd and scribbling on a series of sheets of paper. If that was so, it clearly wasn't going well; the ground and the bench were littered with scrunched-up wads of paper that matched the color of the notepad she was writing in.

Curiosity suggested to Feliks that he should pick up one of the discarded sheets of paper to see what she was trying to write, but decency told him that that would not go over well. It would be invading her privacy, and while he was used to finding out more about people's lives than he had any right to know--both as a hairdresser and as an agent, for different reasons--he would surely offend her further if he did. To remind himself to leave the papers alone at least until the woman left, he folded his hands in his lap in the mannerly way that he had learned as a child at a tea party.

[kvietka]

[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=cellspacing,0px,true][atrb=width,420,true] A IN'T A SCENE * IT'S A GODDAMN ARMS RACE ❚ WORDS 366 ❚ TAGS Feliks❚ NOTESLate again, but hopefully satisfactory Weren't you taught at a pretty young age to not be too curious? Curiosity tends to kill the cat, after all. And anyways, Natalya's usual seriousness tended to be just a tad bit... unprecedented? It wasn't all the way necessary, but it was a sort of thing that came a little too naturally for her. She went by her code of conduct and really, as a force of nature, she wasn't one to be reckoned with. "You don't have a camera. Like, just about everyone around here has, like, a camera or something, or, like, a reason of some kind to be here. But you don't, so I wanted to see what you were doing in the middle of, like, everything." he said. Nosy much? But it was true, everyone around here tended to be those annoying American tourists with their glitzy cameras and their stars-and-striped visors. They would pose in the most obnoxious poses and smile with their perfectly white and straight teeth, holding a bag of McDonald's in the other hand. As a resident of London, she really didn't have a reason to be smiling in front of Big Ben. Couldn't a British citizen just write wherever she wanted to or do whatever she wanted to do, and not get confronted for it? No. There had to be nosy people like this with such weird ways of talking, like one of those Valley Girl Californians, no less, and interrupt her usual business. Her eyes narrowed at the effeminate man. "You really like getting into other people's business, don't you. Couldn't a person write in peace if she wanted to? I've lived here for a couple years and I doubt I have any reason to be photographing the Big Ben and all the other place of London." she said, looking back down at another blank sheet of paper. Her pen did not move, and she really didn't want to keep writing these letters. Letters she would never send... at least this was distracting her from running in circles for now. But which way was she heading? Backwards? Forwards? It really is hard to say. made by ayu of btn

[Feliks Łukasiewicz]

The woman's bad-tempered accusations offered Feliks an opportunity for self-reflection. It may have been his imagination, but he could have sworn that he heard her muttering something disparaging with the word "nosy" attached. Did that describe him?

If he were honest--and it was always a treat when he could be--he would have to admit that it did. But he was a professional nosy [insert epithet here]. The government paid him money for it, even if it wasn't much. He could be forgiven for carrying over some of his on-the-job habits, couldn't he?

Of course, no one was allowed to know that. And even to those who did, his behavior reeked of a clumsy, intrusive rudeness. He was starting to suspect that his attempt at conversation might be a total failure, and the woman's next words confirmed it.

"You really like getting into other people's business, don't you. Couldn't a person write in peace if she wanted to? I've lived here for a couple years and I doubt I have any reason to be photographing the Big Ben and all the other place of London."

Feliks chewed on that for a while. Now he knew that the girl lived in the area, though her behavior still interested him for its uniqueness. He would probably not be getting any answers, though. The conversation was a loss, but that may be because of what kind of person the girl was, not because he was wrong to have tried to be friendly. It was hard to tell for sure, though.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to go, like, getting in your business and all. I was just curious."

The apology was sincere, even if it didn't sound like it. That said, Feliks slid further away down the bench and turned away. Pulling out a pencil and a notepad of his own, he began to scribble down his observations of everything that was happening around him. Now he, too, was sitting and writing in the middle of a tourist area.