Amory Felix (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
fatespoken) wrote2020-12-01 01:48 am
fatespoken) wrote2020-12-01 01:48 am
∞ [ action post ]
✏ LOGGING: This is your thread for logging, whether spontaneous or plot-related, silly or serious. His normal haunts include shifts at the Blue Light, various city bars, cafes, random encounters, etc. Prose preferred, [] are fine too.
✉ TO SET UP: Just drop me a line at aeloriax[at]gmail.com or Y!M/AIM (listed in the post below) to give me a heads-up. I'm open to anything as long as it fits ICly.
TRACKING:
March;
Peter & Amory [ Blue Light ] ✯ this is a song lyric [ in progress ]
✉ TO SET UP: Just drop me a line at aeloriax[at]gmail.com or Y!M/AIM (listed in the post below) to give me a heads-up. I'm open to anything as long as it fits ICly.
TRACKING:
March;
Peter & Amory [ Blue Light ] ✯ this is a song lyric [ in progress ]
i buried it too deep under the iron sea;
And in a private manner of his own, the eldest Pevensie can understand some of that.
Not the 'why' again, but the what and the how of it.
He has not wanted the company of anyone in his class back home in a year's time and before he had gone through the Deep Magic again, before everything changed--and for the last time for two of them--he could not see himself doing so for much longer still. Yet likeness of any kind is not what pushes him to pursue beyond what he has before this evening, and as is often the case with a majority of encounters that brush more than their respective surfaces, it is not especially planned or wanted so much as it is a combination of things that 'happen to...' at the same time. He happens to be the one closing rather than Blue. He happens to have noticed Amory's increase of intake with the drink. He happens to be the sort of person who prefers his employees to either assess their own problems or allow someone to help them assess them together rather than to watch them slip down and out through his peripheral vision.
He happens to care.
All these things.
They come together tonight to make one blond, blue-eyed High King more of a 'fucking annoying' sort than usual. Perhaps Amory will be unprepared.
Wouldn't that be something.
i buried it too deep under the iron sea;
Amory wouldn't have any of it.
He didn't need a King's aid-- He didn't need Peter's advice, just as he didn't need that Senator's. Fuck him. Fuck Peter Pevensie. Fuck his father. The curses are falling like bullets in his mind, thudding against the steady throb of a headache in conception. At least Peter could have been one of those royals. Like Nero who strung up religious outcasts in his garden as burning lamplight pyres, guiding pathways gold with their cries. Pinning bloody carcasses to men and letting wild animals eat them dry. Maybe if Peter had been a a sanguinary King-- then maybe he would at least be interesting. And of course, he wouldn't have had the heart to give a damn. But Peter Pevensie isn't that sort of King, even the shadow of his memory can tell him that, and Amory can't help but imagine that being devoured by wild dogs would be more pleasant than Peter's prodding.
"The earth turns, men fornicate, and Amory Felix continues to drink. What a dynamic pattern of life," he snorts dryly, right hand gesturing with each turn of a comma. Yet, the hand doesn't linger too long in the air, shifting suddenly to cradle his forehead as his head bows over. He can feel his thoughts sliding heavy, tipping and funneling inward like a hourglass flipped upside down. His nausea crests, and Amory wonders whether it's just because of the alcohol.
"Leave me alone."
Succinct, pointed, hollow.
i buried it too deep under the iron sea;
"I would, except that you are treating The Blue Light not unlike your personal lounge, which, even in the after-hours, I have to point out, it is not." His tongue clicks at a corner of his mouth, fingertips pointedly not tapping in any especially inferential rhythm. "If you truly wanted to be left alone, I think that you would take your company," a nod to the shots, "in actual privacy." That is not entirely accurate. Peter does not think, but more feels that he knows this, but 'think' is a less abrasive term than know, something Peter understands from having taken offense to any man claiming to know anything about him from time to time when they knew nothing at all. Hypocrisy? Not quite, the difference being that those sorts were wrong and he, he feels, is rather right, but Amory Felix will not admit this to him. He knows that too. Or thinks he knows. Curiously circular, he's come to this point of heading the employee off rather than bypassing him with coincidental timing, something he could easily have managed.
"Besides, I'm sure I'm not the only one who's noticed," he adds, but this addition fills the room with a wry stillness, as if to say: you are something--important, necessary, present, annoying, or whatever--enough that others have observed you at one time or another at the drink, and you are only dealing with your own doing. It is no one's fault for being aware, particularly when the thing, being, or action they are aware of could have taken precautions to be all but invisible. Amory is not stupid, and Amory is not one to brook fools on anyone's time, but Amory is also not immune to insecurities, to the multitude of flaws he does not broadcast. The drinking, Peter deduces, is a manifestation of some of that, even if the man himself will not recognize it.
i buried it too deep under the iron sea;
"If you have a problem with me being here, then I," he pauses, already half-poised to move, right hand draped around the neck of the bottle sitting beside him, "then I will gladly remove myself." He ends his declaration with another flare of his hand; a parody of courtly civility nicked from some TV movie special or historical re-enactment. Amory thinks it quite funny, Peter. And even with that nausea as a steady wave in his head, he laughs. A dry, broken sort of laugh pieced together with minimal effort.
The laugh silences the minute he lifts himself up, wobbling ever so slightly as he aligns his balance. Last thing he wants his Peter thinking he needs his aid, any more than Peter must presume he does. Fucking Good Samaritan. Fucking High King. In his other hand, the cigarette is sent smoldering against the pad of his index finger; the trailing end of gray smoke snuffed out. Not the smartest idea, and one that will leave a mark, but his mind does not even think of caring.
i buried it too deep under the iron sea;
"Your presence isn't the problem I was referring to," he says as he gets up only to follow Amory toward the door, brow arching at the snuffing of a smolder, though he makes no comment. There isn't much to say between them if the other man persists with what Peter identifies as some marriage of defiance and denial with a resulting fringe of dislike and whatever else can be purely attributed to the degree of drinking that has gone on tonight, and only by one of them. How one defines 'much', of course, varied on who, what, and why one is. Who Peter is, is in frankest terms, Peter, and what he is, is not limited to just one thing but that in and of itself is a qualifier, and why he is, well that much they have gone over, and he has once again resigned himself to the reality that Amory will not be expressing the who, what, or why of his self any time soon. In a way that is fine.
They are not particularly close, but the obstinate focus on drinking as a solution or a fix is hard to ignore and some of the stranger but stronger bonds in stories have been forged over a concern rather than an affection. Such is the beginning of the case here, though the end has yet to out itself as the blond falls into step alongside the bartender rather than behind. Maybe it would be better to say something else, but he doesn't know what to say, and he has never been too fond of idle words, so he keeps to his silence, something he does not think of being an even greater annoyance. Irony would have it that, in truth, it is the very kind of contemplative quiet that would have had him up in ire a little over a year ago.
i buried it too deep under the iron sea;
The hasty step in his stride the moment he sets off from the booth says enough, liquid in the bottle sloshing against glass sides as he rushes toward the door. He means to walk faster, but what common sense lingers tells Amory that he's likely to fall on his face. So what he settles on is a median between walking and jogging, hoping to lose the King or at least send a message of derision. And it's his greatest hope that Peter will get the note unless he is thicker than Amory has assumed. When he does reach the door, Amory heaves it open a bit too harshly - the wood jamming against his hand, splitting open the premature blister on his index finger. There's line of red streaked against the door's edge; a gift of sorts for whoever has the early shift tomorrow.
i buried it too deep under the iron sea;
Well.
If Amory hopes to lose Peter through way of a median between walking and jogging, Peter will give him the benefit of the doubt, or would if he could read minds, and credit it to the drunken stupor. Okay, well, second thoughts being second, maybe he wouldn't, but the world will never know for certain. Still, his general feeling would be that no one should be able to lose anyone at such a median, save for, perhaps, people without legs. Also babies.
Needless to say, he locks the door behind them after giving the 'gift' a cursory wipe with the edge of his shirt, frowning when it does not entirely come off, but the shirt will be fine after a cleaning. Probably. Possibly. Whatever the case, he does not hurry, feeling no need to, considering Amory's less than...strenuous pace. He even stands just where he is for a moment or two, arms crossed and considering the moderately retreating figure ahead of him before following through with, well, following anyway, half inclined to place a hand on the other man's shoulder, just to get his attention. At the last second, he refrains, stuffing his hand in his pocket instead, the other lightly resting over the device in the opposite pocket of a coat a little too light for the hour's chill, but Peter has never been especially averse to a normal winter's edge. When walking beside the bartender again, he pauses before taking a quick step ahead and standing in front of him.
"Look, obviously you're bothered by something. Fine. I'm not going to ask, but you should go home." He pauses, casting a glance to the side as if there is someone walking by, but no one else is around, not as far as the eye can tell. The deviation is a second only though, and then northern sky fixes itself back upon the person who is not exactly a friend but certainly not an enemy either, someone who has proven in his own way to find a use for diligent work and a person who keeps much of the things that fill in the blanks close to the vest. It is curious. It is hardly any of his business. But here he is, and it is true enough that some things happen more without reason than with it.
i buried it too deep under the iron sea;
Speaking about the winter's chill, Amory's own shoulders are thinly sheltered aside for his only long-sleeve layer. What may be a brisk wind to Peter, is likely a biting chill for Amory, cold pricking against skin not yet accustomed to an winter as season. It's either that his brain is too preoccupied with trying to forge sense from pink elephants, or that warmth from spirits have managed to pervade even his furthest extremities. Or maybe he's chosen not to mention it, swallowing up his discomfort as he would never swallow his pride, firm steps marching toward his chosen destination. It wasn't like he hadn't heard Peter's words, and surely he must have, considering that Peter's voice was the single sound against a vaulted midnight sky. But hearing wasn't equivalent to listening, and even with those words pointed at him, Amory chooses to step forth in ignorance, syllables as empty as the air that circles around him.
Suffocating.
i buried it too deep under the iron sea;
"Amory." It is only a name, but sometimes a name is everything. A name can be stop and a name can be please and a name can be listen. A name can be anything as soon as everything, in fact, and so it holds that semblance now, anchored between them like a line that loops two separates together until they appear circular and seamless, not separate but integrated, involved. If he needs a word for what he has chosen to be, Peter supposes 'involved' might very well do.
i buried it too deep under the iron sea;
"I told you once already," he speaks, the tone of his voice stretched taunt, then tightening into contracted sound. It seems to be only anger, but how strangely it carries itself with a weight that seems possibly palpable. "I told you I don't need your help, kid. Fuck your concern and all your damn insistence. Fuck you, Peter Pevensie."
i buried it too deep under the iron sea;
"Somehow, your insults get less and less effective the more you try to use them," he informs rather than suggests, as if it is a fact, and as far as Peter can tell, personally, it might as well be.
i buried it too deep under the iron sea;
"My father doesn't look a day over thirty-five, and trust me, I'm being generous. Do you know how old he really is?" a single step forward, "Two thousand ninety-one. But that's fucking irrelevant because to everyone else, he's barely out of his twenties. An adult back in his day, a relative youth in ours. Do you think everyone respects him? Do you think he's treated as he should be treated? Hardly."
He shakes of his head, stringing it onto another one of those dry, insipid laughs. In fact, Amory Felix lies. The way in which his father carries himself has always reflected years beyond his form; an unmistakable personage that has led both men and businesses throughout the folding of years. In the last three decades, he's played the role of a lawyer, a real-estate investor, a historian, and a winery owner, amongst other things and all at the same time. To claim that he hadn't garnered respect in each venue would be a blatant lie.
Of course Peter didn't need to know that.
i buried it too deep under the iron sea;
Amory is taking wild swings, and as wild swings are wont to, they are missing even as they betray truths or at least half-truths about him that Peter knows he would not otherwise be privy to. Combination drunk and irritable and Amory; it's interesting, and it occurs to the High King that, like most people who he has seen vest themselves in a character that shields another reality, the bartender carries some mix of fear and bitterness, the kind sometimes born of disappointment and more often of hurt. He has no hard copy history to back up the inferences, but not all of the things he learned in Narnia had to do with aptly wielding a broad sword or politely refusing courtiers, so on and so forth. Much of it is just the kind of thing another person can and has in their own life learned on Earth or a distant star.
It has to do with people, and that broad of a statement has a frightening amount of context and content that can get involved, but suffice to say, that for all his sometimes-social dryness, private shadows are no stranger to him. Besides, it is not as though Amory has made any particular secret of his drinking. Peter was honest when he said he was not the only one who had noticed, the difference being that he has been one to speak to it, not in small part, he would admit, because he prefers to have their competent barkeep...well, competent.
"That is something," he half nods and half sighs, a casual thread to those three words that keeps it from being something that could be mistaken for mockery, but again he does not make any move to call off his intervention, rare but fully invested. It is possible--it is likely--that a secret part of him (even secret from Peter himself, the eternal subconscious of his oldest and youngest moment) recognizes that it matters to let someone know they are being noticed, that the actions they take have consequences and that someone else is going to mind about it, even if the doer himself does not, or, more accurately, professes not to. Such is something of the matter here, and anyone who knows the eldest Pevensie sibling could tell anyone else: when he gets an idea into his head, when he decides something, he is immovable enough, come armies or, as is the case now, Amory.
i buried it too deep under the iron sea;
When off work, Peter Pevensie has no rule over him.
"You have no right to advise me. No right to tell me to go home," he sucks in a breath of air, a tempered space between silence and rancor that continues to fight its way through. A showcase of anger won't lose the King, nor will derision, and Amory feels the last ends of his nerves snapping, dissolving into the miasma of his cresting nausea and temper.
"Just be quiet, Kid."
i buried it too deep under the iron sea;
"Perhaps not," he admits, almost too amiably. "But that won't stop me, no more than someone's advice will stop you from running head first into whatever is that's bothering you." To Peter, that is what it seems that Amory is doing, avoiding, avoiding, avoiding, but avoidance only works for so long before, like most things under tension, the thread snaps and frays beyond repair. It is something worth worry, worth the act of running metaphorically into a wall face-first over and over with the hopes of changing anything at all.
And Peter does not like to idle away when action is an alternative. Not all action garners desired results, and some ends up without any results entirely, but the adage of never knowing until one tries applies here in full. For all their often mutual dryness, wryness, and the unspoken, unwritten agreement to give each other generous berths of personal space, this does not automate out all traces of care and good intention. Certainly, the High King never gives word to it, but that can be said of his care for even the people closest to him. Bypassing the talk, there remains only the thing of making something happen, or keeping it from happening.
Tonight, he supposes, is a little bit of both.
i buried it too deep under the iron sea;
"You think you're an adult. An adult stuck in the body of a brat. But it's all pointless. You're not King, Pevensie. You're not even a man, no matter the truth. No one sees that, all they see is what you appear to be." he breaks off, severing his words with contained laughter, "You should just forget about all that. Forget about Narnia, forget about being a man. You're just a fucking kid."
He's too muddled to notice the thread snap, gathered pressure sinking back as suddenly as it came. It now rests behind the tired walls, but the deed has already been done, and the deed is irrevocable.