[ She - dear Gods, why would any woman dress like that, what can it possibly accomplish? - stumbles backwards, hitting first the bar stool, then the counter. Her beer splashes all over her atrocious clothes and instead of glaring at him like that, she ought to thank him for the opportunity to change into something that doesn't make her look like some confused teenager, still trying to discover herself. If she owns any such items, that is. He's about to step back, leave her to his unvoiced questions (approachable doesn't mean he has to care and going by her looks, she certainly wouldn't ever vote for him in any case), when she moves, suddenly and way too fast.
He barely manages to raise his forearm in an instinctively defensive manner before he's sloshed with beer. Right in the face, too. For a few seconds, all he can taste and breathe is beer, sour and ugly and he snaps his mouth shut to avoid swallowing any more of it, disgusting, disgusting...
Wiping his hand across his face, clearing his eyesight first and foremost, the bitter smell leaving all his senses over-wrought, he blinks her back into focus, beer slipping from his eyelashes, from the tip of his nose. Drip, drip, drip. Right... onto... his shoes... He doesn't truly register the crowd around them anymore; his brain more or less filters out everything, from the music to the grinding bodies to voices and talk and the smell of sweat. Instead, he zeroes in on her - on how she stands there with her empty glass. Looking so fucking accomplished.
[ Somewhere someone screeches in response to her covering Mr High & Mighty in the kind of shit the people on the floor drink. Oh my God, someone else stage whispers to her right and Alexa feels a moment of true and utter pride. Pride with a fucking capital P. Tear down the patriarchy, the feminist saying goes, reform the system, take it the fuck down, all of it. And she's doing just that, yeah? It doesn't exactly feel like rainbows and sunshine, she bumped her leg something awful on the bar stool, but it feels pretty good nonetheless. The look on his face, the complete surprise, the opposition that follows, obviously. She loves the shit out of all of it.
Huffing out a laugh, she turns around with her now empty glass, about to go order a new one, probably making some snide remark about putting it on Monsieur Girard's tab, since he's the one who wasted the first one.
She's still German to the bone, but she keeps up with the news. Alexa knows more about Luxembourgian politics than a whole lot of Luxembourgians who seem to prefer blinding themselves to the capitalist, neo-liberal realities of their country rather than doing shit about it. Jean Louis Girard personifies that. Her Mom and Dad buy into it. No, even worse, they profit off of it, don't they? Sometimes she feels like the only sane fucking person left in the world. Shit.
And tonight she took on the role of rebel extraordinaire! Upgraded her evening from okay to worthy of a fucking joint. She can't wait to tell Timm about it, he'll be so proud, old-school anarchist that he is. ]
[ She huffs out a laugh, he hears it as clearly as he sees it on her ugly face. Blood boiling, he can feel his hands clench into fists, whilst beer continues dripping onto the floor, leaving small, comical puddles by his feet. Distantly, he senses people moving near him but he doesn't give a shit. This smell... He wipes his nose again, convulsively, but it's over-powering. For a second or two, the floor between them flashes darker, seems to turn decidedly wooden and there's no way, absolutely not, he won't have it...
Eyes narrowing all the way to slits now, he crosses the floor in a burst of speed that leaves someone gasping by his elbow, probably some useless little queer trying to wipe the floor or whatever they're good for, he's not here to judge. Without pausing, without taking even a second to reflect upon just how bad this would look, spattered across the front page, he reaches out, fingers closing like a vice around the girl's wrist, right above the hand still holding her empty beer glass.
He grabs her. And he squeezes, hard enough to make the small bones under her skin strain beneath his fingertips. ]
[ She doesn't see it happening, of course, how the fuck could she, she is standing with her back to him, but fuck, fuck, does she feel it. His hand closes around her wrist, fingers digging in so hard that she can practically hear her bones crushing together in his grip. Alexa yelps, halfway screams and crumbles to her knees, the empty glass clattering where it hits the ground and spins around its own axis a couple of times. She whimpers, even though she tries not to, she can't help it, it fucking hurts. He's fucking hurting her and did she not say he was the violent psychopath type? Props to her for being so fucking observant and for being right... Props to her, props...
Holy shit. Tears are running down her cheeks silently while she twists against his legs in an attempt to relieve the pressure, the pain. Her head is in crotch-height and if she were to turn her head, she'd be looking like a fucking sexualized commercial, wouldn't she? Well, fuck that and fuck him! Fuck him! Fuck him!
Ouch.
When she finally draws in enough air to speak, she manages to wheeze out a weak - ]
[ He can't help the small spark of satisfaction as she crumbles to her knees, the glass tumbling from her grip and disappearing among the shadows. This suits her a lot better, doesn't it? Weak. As she is. Brow furrowing slowly, gradually, he tightens his grip just a fraction. Around them, some people are staring whilst most turn away because there's a party in here, isn't there, and how could someone so insignificant, so weak and small and immaterial ruin other people's fun?
Breathing shallowly, he pulls her to her feet, hard enough to make the bones in her wrist crunch in his grip. She's not as scrawny as he'd first assumed but he'll always be stronger than her, it's a simple fact of life, a nasty little existential joke that he doesn't care whether or not she truly understands. Brute force always wins. You just need to have enough of it.
And compared to her, he certainly does. ]
Shut up and come along.
[ It comes out close to a growl. Without further ado, he starts towards the counter. Pulls her along in his wake. It was not, after all, a suggestion. ]
[ Her natural reaction should be to yell, to shout, to scream so someone will intervene, but Alexa knows she's on her own at In&Out, fuck, she's on her own at Rosebud as well. She's got no-one. No-one but herself. Timm's out back, doing his dark, dirty deeds and anyway, she's not one to rely on anyone else to come save her, is she?
No-one certainly does. She swallows thickly as she gets to her feet, her legs shaky pillars of bone and flesh, and looks around at the crowd where most have already turned away and the few who haven't do as her gaze passes over their faces.
The tears stop as suddenly as they started squeezing out the corners of her eyes. It's an empty, worthless sort of feeling, being this insignificant and this disliked. Normally Alexa doesn't care what people think about her, she doesn't ache to be in any of the available cliques, the lined-up boxes, but as Girard drags her towards the bar, she feels like a piece of trash on its way to the waste bin. Only men can make you feel so unimportant, like you're not worth the air you're breathing, like you're a fucking thing. Not even the Lipstick Brigade from Rosebud can make her go all void and dumb.
Fucking psychos, all of them. This guy especially. She turns her head to glance up at him, it's not a real look and she hates herself for it. Instead it's a stolen glimpse, sideways and indirect. Alexa Hase is currently doing her best not to provoke him.
Her. Alexa. The master provocateur. Look what he's reduced her to, the fucking scumbag. ]
[ He drags her all the way to the counter, throwing her roughly against one of the bar stools without caring whether or not she actually manages to catch herself in time to avoid getting her knee smashed. Survival is a question of mind and mentality and this girl? She clearly doesn't measure up. Why she's even getting herself mixed up down here in the first place, he can only guess. The girls next door probably don't want her, either.
His grip doesn't loosen, not even as he signals for the bartender, running his hand through his hair on the tail of the gesture. Beneath his palm, the beer-stained hair strands flatten easily against the back of his head and all he can think about is how greasy his scalp's going to be. Beer. The smell. His look darkens as he finally glances sideways at her, enough to catch her trying not to look at him too obviously.
Learning her place, as it were.
The bartender pauses by them. He gives the girl a cursory glance and little more; he's smart enough to notice that the crisis is over and done with. ]
Get her another one on me. [ He speaks loudly enough to make himself heard above the music, some 90s dance beat that he recognises from somewhere, sometime. It's not important. What does matter, however, is the few curious people still listening in around them. ] I knocked her over, it's my mistake.
[ With that, he glances at her again with a slight smile, like he hasn't just been on the verge of smashing her face in. ]
Next time, be more careful.
[ He lets go without waiting for her reply - not expecting one, either - and stalks away from the bar. If Marcel isn't already done, in a few minutes he most definitely will be. ]
[ She smashes into the bar stool with the leg that isn't already thumping from pain, but his presence makes her keep quiet rather than yelping in discomfort. He's still gripping her by the arm and it fucking hurts, like, it hurts enough that she's seriously concerned whether she's broken something or bruised a bone or some shit. Noticing how he tries to fix his hair and managing too easily not to leer - because she's fucking scared, okay, shut up - Alexa listens to him lie through his teeth about having knocked her over, about it being his mistake, because he doesn't actually mean that for a second. The way he's crushing her arm tells her that much. She doesn't say anything. She keeps quiet and compliant and it's like any other kind of assault on women, they'll think it's her own fault for not fighting back. Shit, she fought back and that's what provoked him to this point, right? Get your fucking explanations straight, violence advocates...
He looks at her, then. He looks at her and he smiles and Alexa can feel goose bumps breaking out on her arms, a shiver running down her spine. She feels powerless. Opposite him, she's got no voice, no strength, no fucking nothing. He's taken it all from her, he knows it and he's enjoying the fuck out of it, fucking psychopath. Next time, be more careful, Mr Foreign Minister says and lets go, leaving her to hurt, her arm hanging limply by her side while the bartender puts a full glass of beer on the counter in front of her. She stares at it, rather than following Girard with her eyes.
She knows. He'll get away with this. Because he's in a position of power, because he's white and privileged and, most importantly, because he's a man who's taken her voice and her worth with him.
In the end, the beer remains untouched. It's like a kind of evidence. Proof of all her weaknesses at once. She seats herself on the bar stool that has given her multiple bruises at this point. She sits down and she waits, hugging her arm to her chest half-heartedly. When all comes down to it, all the self-care in the world doesn't change shit about what happened tonight. ]
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no subject
He barely manages to raise his forearm in an instinctively defensive manner before he's sloshed with beer. Right in the face, too. For a few seconds, all he can taste and breathe is beer, sour and ugly and he snaps his mouth shut to avoid swallowing any more of it, disgusting, disgusting...
Wiping his hand across his face, clearing his eyesight first and foremost, the bitter smell leaving all his senses over-wrought, he blinks her back into focus, beer slipping from his eyelashes, from the tip of his nose. Drip, drip, drip. Right... onto... his shoes... He doesn't truly register the crowd around them anymore; his brain more or less filters out everything, from the music to the grinding bodies to voices and talk and the smell of sweat. Instead, he zeroes in on her - on how she stands there with her empty glass. Looking so fucking accomplished.
His eyes narrow. ]
no subject
Huffing out a laugh, she turns around with her now empty glass, about to go order a new one, probably making some snide remark about putting it on Monsieur Girard's tab, since he's the one who wasted the first one.
She's still German to the bone, but she keeps up with the news. Alexa knows more about Luxembourgian politics than a whole lot of Luxembourgians who seem to prefer blinding themselves to the capitalist, neo-liberal realities of their country rather than doing shit about it. Jean Louis Girard personifies that. Her Mom and Dad buy into it. No, even worse, they profit off of it, don't they? Sometimes she feels like the only sane fucking person left in the world. Shit.
And tonight she took on the role of rebel extraordinaire! Upgraded her evening from okay to worthy of a fucking joint. She can't wait to tell Timm about it, he'll be so proud, old-school anarchist that he is. ]
no subject
Eyes narrowing all the way to slits now, he crosses the floor in a burst of speed that leaves someone gasping by his elbow, probably some useless little queer trying to wipe the floor or whatever they're good for, he's not here to judge. Without pausing, without taking even a second to reflect upon just how bad this would look, spattered across the front page, he reaches out, fingers closing like a vice around the girl's wrist, right above the hand still holding her empty beer glass.
He grabs her. And he squeezes, hard enough to make the small bones under her skin strain beneath his fingertips. ]
no subject
Holy shit. Tears are running down her cheeks silently while she twists against his legs in an attempt to relieve the pressure, the pain. Her head is in crotch-height and if she were to turn her head, she'd be looking like a fucking sexualized commercial, wouldn't she? Well, fuck that and fuck him! Fuck him! Fuck him!
Ouch.
When she finally draws in enough air to speak, she manages to wheeze out a weak - ]
Let go of me, psycho!
no subject
Breathing shallowly, he pulls her to her feet, hard enough to make the bones in her wrist crunch in his grip. She's not as scrawny as he'd first assumed but he'll always be stronger than her, it's a simple fact of life, a nasty little existential joke that he doesn't care whether or not she truly understands. Brute force always wins. You just need to have enough of it.
And compared to her, he certainly does. ]
Shut up and come along.
[ It comes out close to a growl. Without further ado, he starts towards the counter. Pulls her along in his wake. It was not, after all, a suggestion. ]
no subject
No-one certainly does. She swallows thickly as she gets to her feet, her legs shaky pillars of bone and flesh, and looks around at the crowd where most have already turned away and the few who haven't do as her gaze passes over their faces.
The tears stop as suddenly as they started squeezing out the corners of her eyes. It's an empty, worthless sort of feeling, being this insignificant and this disliked. Normally Alexa doesn't care what people think about her, she doesn't ache to be in any of the available cliques, the lined-up boxes, but as Girard drags her towards the bar, she feels like a piece of trash on its way to the waste bin. Only men can make you feel so unimportant, like you're not worth the air you're breathing, like you're a fucking thing. Not even the Lipstick Brigade from Rosebud can make her go all void and dumb.
Fucking psychos, all of them. This guy especially. She turns her head to glance up at him, it's not a real look and she hates herself for it. Instead it's a stolen glimpse, sideways and indirect. Alexa Hase is currently doing her best not to provoke him.
Her. Alexa. The master provocateur. Look what he's reduced her to, the fucking scumbag. ]
no subject
His grip doesn't loosen, not even as he signals for the bartender, running his hand through his hair on the tail of the gesture. Beneath his palm, the beer-stained hair strands flatten easily against the back of his head and all he can think about is how greasy his scalp's going to be. Beer. The smell. His look darkens as he finally glances sideways at her, enough to catch her trying not to look at him too obviously.
Learning her place, as it were.
The bartender pauses by them. He gives the girl a cursory glance and little more; he's smart enough to notice that the crisis is over and done with. ]
Get her another one on me. [ He speaks loudly enough to make himself heard above the music, some 90s dance beat that he recognises from somewhere, sometime. It's not important. What does matter, however, is the few curious people still listening in around them. ] I knocked her over, it's my mistake.
[ With that, he glances at her again with a slight smile, like he hasn't just been on the verge of smashing her face in. ]
Next time, be more careful.
[ He lets go without waiting for her reply - not expecting one, either - and stalks away from the bar. If Marcel isn't already done, in a few minutes he most definitely will be. ]
no subject
He looks at her, then. He looks at her and he smiles and Alexa can feel goose bumps breaking out on her arms, a shiver running down her spine. She feels powerless. Opposite him, she's got no voice, no strength, no fucking nothing. He's taken it all from her, he knows it and he's enjoying the fuck out of it, fucking psychopath. Next time, be more careful, Mr Foreign Minister says and lets go, leaving her to hurt, her arm hanging limply by her side while the bartender puts a full glass of beer on the counter in front of her. She stares at it, rather than following Girard with her eyes.
She knows. He'll get away with this. Because he's in a position of power, because he's white and privileged and, most importantly, because he's a man who's taken her voice and her worth with him.
In the end, the beer remains untouched. It's like a kind of evidence. Proof of all her weaknesses at once. She seats herself on the bar stool that has given her multiple bruises at this point. She sits down and she waits, hugging her arm to her chest half-heartedly. When all comes down to it, all the self-care in the world doesn't change shit about what happened tonight. ]