Lightly Scented Air

[rhiannon_lee]

Clink…clank…scratch…

Under a thick layer of mascara and liner, Rhiannon’s eyes lifted from the pages of her paperback to search out the sound. She sat slumped on a vinyl-cushioned bench in the laundromat, legs stretching into the aisle alongside her basket of detergent and dryer sheets. She leaned forward and squinted at a zippered hoodie bouncing ‘round and ‘round the front-facing dryer. Was it worthwhile to stop the machine and flip it inside out?

The Laundromat was humid and heavily scented: ocean breeze, spring bouquet, fresh cotton. A television was mounted in the corner and from it Rhiannon heard the subdued score of a soap opera punctuated by commercials for cleaning products or diapers. Headphones hung crookedly around her neck because she wasn’t sure how much juice was left in the cassette player’s batteries.

She set her book aside and knelt in front of the dryer to open it.

[Thread]

Comments

[rhiannon_lee]

Rhiannon snorted. She rubbed her face.

“Not particularly.”

She had never told anyone that before. What the hell?

“I just couldn’t take the risk he’d run his mouth to his friends. I was going through something and I can’t say it’s an activity I wanted to repeat.”

[holiday_pirner]

She flipped through the magazine, not really looking at the pictures. Tablecloths. So many tablecloths.

"Okay, but," Holly began, trying to keep a hypothetical edge to her voice, "what if the vampire isn't bad?" She bent the corners of the pages, running her thumb over the folds.

"Some don't always kill people."

[rhiannon_lee]

“I’d guess about five percent don’t,” said Rhiannon, making up the figure based on anecdotal data only. She thought about that sad vampire in the cemetery in Searchlight, how intrigued he was when she proposed – based on zero data, that time – that some demons might also have souls. “I don’t believe in absolutes.” She dropped her cigarette in the aluminum can. “Although I can say with assurance that the vampire I stupidly decided to nail did kill people, and he liked it.”

She poked her tongue in the corner of her mouth. Replayed the conversation in her head.

Turned to Holly, arm hooking on the back of her own seat.

“Wait, are you doing a vampire?”

[holiday_pirner]

Holly could deny it, but what would be the point? They were apparently trading secrets, anyway.

"Caught me," she answered dryly. "He's in the 5 percent." Or trying to be. I think. "So don't stake him."

She leaned back against the hard seat, the top pressing against her shoulder blades. "And thus the detractors."

[rhiannon_lee]

Rhiannon arched her eyebrows. “Well,” she said, wrapping an arm around an uplifted knee. “I don’t generally stake them unless I find them hunting,” she said. “There’s plenty of the savage variety to distract me. So if he’s as squeaky clean as you say, it’s a non-issue.” She studied Holly’s profile. “He must be cute. And Julianna tried to chat him up?” That made a wicked smile come to her face, though she did her best to subdue it.

[holiday_pirner]

"He is," she understated carefully. "Julianna has a penchant for...the younger variety, I think." She knew she should take her clothes out of the dryer and fold them, but it seemed like a Herculean task at the moment.

"What was it like there? In London?" Holly slid a bracelet up and down her wrist, her eyes on Rhiannon's boots. "Did you meet a lot of watchers?"

[rhiannon_lee]

“Yeah,” she said, resting her head in her palm. Her fingers twisted in her hair and she looked at the floor. “When I was there, it was just me and one other girl, and they kept us separate… Just had us spar a few times before she left. And then it was them and me. Mostly Duncan and me. You have a primary watcher, but you’re like a pet with ten different people walking you.”

[holiday_pirner]

"I know a watcher who was killed," Holly said, conversationally. Her voice implied she could have been talking about the weather, and she turned her attention toward the television.

"The Council seems cold. Maybe they have to be, I don't know."

[rhiannon_lee]

A dead watcher?

Huh.

It wasn’t unheard of. People got fucked up in the field. But she was far from being in the loop, as far as the Council was concerned. Never would she have described them as forthcoming, anyway. “I don’t think of them as cold,” said Rhiannon. “More like… matter-of-fact and myopic. Like with businessmen, it’s all about the bottom line, only the bottom line for the Council isn’t profit. It’s the fate of the world. Out of… I dunno, twelve watchers I’ve seen face to face, I only met one I’d like to shove into a pit of vipers.” She picked up her can and tossed it at a trash bin.

“How do you know two watchers?” Rhiannon asked. “What’s your in?”

[holiday_pirner]

Holly rubbed her eyes until spots showed up in her vision. She couldn't hold out, she needed a cigarette.

"Family connection," she answered simply, rifling through her bag and finding a pack with two left. The brunette lit up, taking the opportunity in silence to change the conversational track.

"Why did you want to shove the one into a pit of vipers?"

[rhiannon_lee]

"Well, aren't you vague but curious." Rhiannon's mouth quirked. She put both feet on the ground and leaned forward, pushing on her knees to stand up. "Everyone I meet in this city takes conversational deflection to an art form," she muttered, reading the timer on the dryer. "Let's just say he's an asshole and leave it at that for now."

[holiday_pirner]

"Actually, I've been a little too forthcoming lately. So I've been trying this thing where I think before I speak." Holly smiled ruefully. "I'm not very good at it."

She absentmindedly flicked her lighter with her free hand. "Anyway, I guess the less people know about you, the less chance you have of getting hurt."

[rhiannon_lee]

Rhiannon picked up a stack of flyers from the dryer and flipped idly through the papers. Orange for a pizza menu. Blue for a car wash. "I always thought it was the other way around. Y'know, the more I know about other people, the more I get hurt." She leaned back against the machines, which felt warm through her t-shirt. "And yet, I keep asking dumb questions."

She paused on a flyer for a concert. Held it up for Holly.

"Here's that place you were talking about. No cover on Thursdays."

[holiday_pirner]

Holly ruminated over that. Yeah, she supposed that was true. But it felt better than being completely in the dark.

"I had been curious to meet a slayer," she blurted out. "You weren't really what I was expecting. In a good way," Holly amended quickly.

"I guess I had this notion of stake first, ask questions never."

[rhiannon_lee]

"Really?" Rhiannon looked at her across the aisle. "Hm." She set aside the stack of flyers but kept one page. She began to fold it into a paper airplane. "I think it'd be easier if I was. Safer. The more I dig, the more I realize how complicated it is. One day, I'll give the wrong demon the benefit of the doubt. Which is weird, because I almost never give it to humans."

She took aim and the plane sailed above the room.

"We aren't born slayers," she said. "It comes to us when we're already forming into a person. Already happy or damaged, beautiful or ugly, confident or timid."

[holiday_pirner]

"Maybe it's the same with vampires, too." She retrieved the fallen plane, fixed one of the wings.

"So, what would you do if you weren't a slayer anymore? If you just woke up one day, and were the girl you were before?"

[rhiannon_lee]

"Kill myself?"

Rhiannon smiled and looked down.

"I have no idea if I'm kidding or not," she murmured. "Truthfully, I can't picture myself without it anymore. It's what I was made to do."

She pushed away from the dryers and crashed onto the seat next to Holly.

"So what are you made to do?"

[holiday_pirner]

Holly laughed, an edge of weariness to the sound. She cast her eyes up toward the ceiling, exposed duct-work and white tile crisscrossing over their heads.

"Oh, god. That question." Her expression sobered. "I have no idea. Maybe that's why I'm always a little jealous of people who do. Like, 'what do you have that I don't?' Oh, right, a plan."

[rhiannon_lee]

"Plans just get fucked up anyway," Rhiannon said. "I didn't plan on moving to Nevada, completely ostracized from everyone I knew prior to... Jesus, two months ago? I mean," she swept an arm outward, plastic bracelets rattling together like bones, "There is no one in my life right now that I knew on the fourth of July and I'm not sad about it."

She dropped her arm.

"I plan on change."

[holiday_pirner]

"There aren't many people I miss," Holly admitted. "The more time I spend here, the more life in London just sort of...fades away. And I'm okay with that."

She finished her cigarette. "Erasure can be just as good as healing."

[rhiannon_lee]

On that point, Rhiannon didn't totally agree, though she would admit it was a half decent substitute. "Your boy got a name? Any distinguishing features?" She lifted her shoulders. "If I run across him fucking up, I'll give him a get out of jail free card."

Coming from Rhiannon, the offer was as good as a stamp of approval of Holly.

[holiday_pirner]

She thought for a moment, smiling to herself. "His name's Daniel. Really great hair. I'm not sure how he manages to style it, actually, without the mirror."

Holly tilted her head to the side. "Blue eyes. Not just blue, but Blue. And he's tall.

"Hey, can you take a picture of a vampire? Is that possible?"

[rhiannon_lee]

"Yeah. Video, too. I guess early Christians or whoever worked their hoodoo on the undead didn't foresee technology." Rhiannon arched a brow. "Listen, you seem like a decent person. I'm contemplating asking if you want to exchange contact information, but there's a catch. I want zero to do with the Council."

[holiday_pirner]

"That makes two of us," she answered quickly. "The Council interests me about as much as that box of soap."

Holly searched through her bag for a spare scrap of paper. "I was staying in Searchlight for awhile, but now I live in Vegas. The place creeped me out. I probably should not have listened to that goth-looking chick who came through my hotel walls."

She looked up at Rhiannon. "Sorry, I do that a lot. Don't feel bad if you have no idea what I'm rambling about."

[rhiannon_lee]

At first, Rhiannon attributed the wrong meaning to the word 'came'. Then she backtracked. "Was she wearing some kind of weird," she gestured at her nape, "Headdress hood thing? Also pale, veiny? If so, she must have a thing for misanthropic brunettes, because I saw her, too."

Rhiannon fished an ink pen out of her pocket and handed it to Holly.