Desmond Riddock (cockinafrock) wrote in valesco,
@ 2011-04-08 00:28:00

Entry tags:

Skylar/April
Desmond frowned to himself. There was no reason for him to have forgotten that Squibs didn't have the ability to ward journals. The stress from his job was obviously getting to him.

People didn't seem to understand what exactly being the assistant to the Minister of Magic entailed. He imagined it was akin to the way that nurses felt helping a surgeon out during an operation if the surgeon's only real responsibility was to dress themselves. He organized the minister's paperwork, set all her meeting times, and made sure that appropriate gifts were sent to her husband on his birthday. It was a much more stressful job than people could even begin to fathom.

He'd picked up a heavy coat to throw on and then apparated to his usual spot near a muggle payphone in the middle of a small English town, dialing April's number (he'd memorized it long ago).

When she picked up the phone, he didn't miss a beat. "Sorry about the journals," he muttered, rubbing a hand through his hair (it was an expression she could probably hear in his voice by now, "I've been a bit scatterbrained lately."

Ha, lately.

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hath_no_fury
2011-04-08 04:22 am UTC (link)

Having set herself down in front of her vanity mirror, Skyler’s fingers worked at giving her hair a bit more body, raking her meticulously manicured nails through waves of cocoa and burnt honey, her brows creased a little in the center because it just did not seem to want to cooperate with her that night. She was supposed to be meeting a client at some sort of business function that required everyone to bring a date – he was one of those guys that she knew by name, but wanted nothing to do with because of how he treated her when they were alone together, like she was some sort of pet.

Her hand reached out for the burning cigarette that was in the ashtray at her side, knowing that she would have to brush her teeth about 10 times before she left the house because he’d complain about how she tasted like an ashtray, otherwise. It was an understandable concern, she supposed, but knowing who it was she needed to see tonight made her crave the nicotine to calm down.

She would have preferred a joint, to be completely honest…

When her phone rang, she scrunched up her nose with distaste, expecting it to be the man she was supposed to be seeing later. She flicked the ashes of her cigarette, and blew out the smoke before she picked up the phone.

“You have April.”

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she heard a male voice reply to it – a voice that made her smile instead of cringe, and allowed her to lean back more comfortably in her chair and cross her legs at the knee.

“Hello, Desmond.” She paused as she listened, and gave a sympathetic pout of her lips as he explained. “What’s the matter, honey, has the minister been making you miserable again? He's not working you too hard, is he?"

That was practically a rhetorical question, by this point in their…well, ‘relationship’.

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cockinafrock
2011-04-08 04:38 am UTC (link)

"She is riding me hard enough that she should really be paying me more," he muttered with a frown, leaning against the cool glass of the phone booth.

All right, that was certainly not how any of that was meant to come out. April had the habit of making him feel a bit stupid over things. He took a drag of his own cigarette, exhaling the smoke upward into the booth and watching the grey haze slowly take over the enclosed space. She really was the only person that he spoke to about -- anything, really. Telling his family things would only make him appear weak and make them worry - two things that he didn't want to have happen.

"What about you? You sound as if you have your own stress to deal with."

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hath_no_fury
2011-04-08 04:58 am UTC (link)

Skylar bit her lip as she tried not to let out a snort, or more inappropriately something along the lines of ‘that thought sounds familiar…’ – she knew how he meant it, but she stifled a giggle by taking another drag of her cigarette, her foot bobbing as she looked back in the mirror, tilting her head from one side to the other to make sure her makeup looked alright from all angles.

She would finally sigh, when he asked about her own stress, and with another extension of her arm the cigarette was back in the ashtray, and she was leaning forward to swipe her thumb against the edge of her bottom lip, to get some of the lip stain she had used off of her skin.

“It’s that obvious, hm?” She smirked. “Don’t you worry about me, sugar, it’s nothing I can’t handle.” She was once again playing with her hair as she talked to him, though this time she was being more casual about the whole thing – she enjoyed talking to Desmond, because he genuinely cared when he asked how she was doing. Sure, he paid her just as anyone else did to spend time with him, but when she was with him it didn’t seem as…dirty as it did with other men.

Like the one she had to see tonight, for example.

“I was starting to think you forgot about me. Haven’t heard the sound of your voice in quite some time.”

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cockinafrock
2011-04-08 05:05 am UTC (link)

If he was honest with her, he hadn't wanted her to see him in the frazzled state that he'd been in since the last minister had been rather messily killed. He was slowly adjusting to Millicent, but she was -- well, more business and less action than Corner had been. Not that he disapproved of this, honestly, since it meant that he had less problems with having the tips of his fingers constantly scorched from literally scathing letters in the post.

He let his forehead thunk against the glass as she spoke. Desmond knew it was silly for him to worry about April since she was fully capable of handling her own matters, but he couldn't help it. She was much more than a friend or a lay to him, but he wouldn't tell her as much. She had her -- business -- and she seemed happy with it. He didn't want to take that away from her. Desmond of all people knew what it was like to want to take control of something, anything that you could.

"You know I'd never forget about you," he said quietly, hoping that she didn't hear just how much sincerity he'd been unable to carefully extract from his voice, "I just didn't want to smother, and you seemed busy..." And then he'd been busy, so.

"But I felt badly. I'll send you flowers tomorrow." Owling the shop right now would probably just end in a disgruntled howler sent to his flat, so he'd wait until the morning.

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hath_no_fury
2011-04-08 06:01 am UTC (link)

Her blue eyes blinked when he spoke, looking away from her reflection in the mirror so that she was looking down at her lap, her free hand smoothing out the fabric of her dress. Of course she had heard the sincerity in his voice, because he was one of those guys that people could read like a book, if they looked hard enough. Sure, he had his secrets – pretty big secrets, actually… - but Skylar had known him long enough to know when he was faking being happy because he was sad, or when he was lying about just how stressed he was, or when he was smiling just because he felt he owed it to her to not look miserable while she was there.

It wasn’t common, at all, for a client to feel like she deserved anything in return when she was with them – for them to be even a little considerate about her own feelings. Most of them treated her like she didn’t have any – like she was there just to do a job, and that she wasn’t an actual person but a product for them to use and dispose of.

She was people’s dirty little secret, and she was fine with that, for the most part. She didn’t do what she did for a living because she liked it, but because…well, she was good at it. She was good at making people feel special, and beautiful, and wanted.

Sky smiled when he mentioned flowers, actually letting a small bout of laughter pass through her lips as she uncrossed her legs and rose to her feet, reaching out to grab at the base of the phone as she leaned the receiver against her shoulder, grabbing the ashtray with her other hand so she could move over to her bed.

“My place could always use flowers…”

She wouldn’t tell him not to get her any, but only because she knew it was pointless – that, and it would probably make him feel uncomfortable for putting the offer out there.

She settled down on her bed, took another drag of her cigarette, and exhaled as her fingers began to play with the coiled cord of the phone.

“How does that saying go again? April showers bring May flowers?” She smiled, still twisting at the cord. “More importantly…when are you going to ask to see me again, instead of offering me flowers a month in advance?”

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cockinafrock
2011-04-08 04:24 pm UTC (link)

Desmond wasn't a typical man in many ways, and April probably knew that better than most. He tried to hide the way he felt not because he thought she'd reject him, not really, or that he felt ashamed for feeling that way about someone he paid for ... favours, but because he didn't want to make her uncomfortable.

He made a mental note to order as large a bouquet he could afford while still ensuring he had the money to visit April himself. He laughed a bit nervously, head ducking for a moment.

"When you think you have time," he said easily enough. Desmond was not demanding, probably at least in part because the Minister seemed to have taken much of the fight out of him in the past few months. "I don't want you to have to rush anything, but -- soon would be lovely."

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hath_no_fury
2011-04-09 04:14 am UTC (link)

She smiled again – something Desmond seemed to make her do without even trying. She found so many things about the man endearing, charming even, despite his quirks. Desmond always made her feel like…well, like a woman when she was with him. Or, at least not like some dirty mistress.

Which, she probably was, to at least 2 or 3 of the men who hired her over the phone.

“I’ve always got the time for you.” She said with a soft purr in her voice, and found herself gnawing at her lower lip as she watched her fingers wrap around the cord again. She was thinking, at that moment, about the last time she had been with Desmond. It had been good - great even, and she smiled as she remembered the way his hands had felt against her that night.

It wasn’t often, that she felt her body tingle at the aspect of seeing one of her clients.

“How about I send you an Owl in the morning? By then, I should know my schedule for the next few days, and you can let me know what works for you.” She paused, and then rolled over onto her stomach, her legs bending as she cupped her chin in her hand, smirking to herself. “Unless you’d like me to pay you a personal visit?”

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cockinafrock
2011-04-09 04:28 am UTC (link)

He chuckled uneasily. "Personal visit? Should I be worried?" He honestly had no idea what she was implying with that, and he didn't want to assume that it was what he was hoping it was.

Desmond liked to think that he was a good man in many ways. He was an active and productive member of society, when he took care of a woman to sate his own desires he made sure that she got satisfaction out of it as well, and he donated blood regularly.

"Ah--whichever you like," he glanced up at the top of the phone booth, noticing with some distress that it was rather grungy (and that now that he looked harder for it, the rest of the booth was also). "I mean -- a personal visit wouldn't be unwelcome." If that was what she wanted.

He thought about passive-aggressively asking whether she was going to be busy with that girl from the journals, but such pettiness seemed a bit below him even if he did feel jealous over their exchange.

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hath_no_fury
2011-04-09 04:40 am UTC (link)

She giggled at his question, scrunching her nose with amusement as she shook her head, even though he couldn’t see it. “I don’t think so?” She began to sway her legs, switching between bending and unbending her knees, looking down at the comforter of her bed. “You know, you’re not at work, love…you are allowed to tell me what it is that you want.” She felt bad, that Desmond was so stressed out all the time because of his job, and how he always just kept his mouth shut and did whatever was asked of him, regardless of whether he wanted to or not.

She was still trying to break him out of his shell a little – so he could have the confidence to speak up for himself, so that when he found a girl, he wouldn’t be so conscious about everything he said.

He deserved a good girl, she always thought. He was certainly caring enough, and was kind, and worked hard, and…well, she just thought he deserved better than a call girl to keep him company on those days when he felt more lonely than he did on others.

“Let’s just say this…you’ll either wake up tomorrow with an owl pecking at your window…or me, knocking on your door.”

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cockinafrock
2011-04-09 04:49 am UTC (link)

There were a few things wrong with the idea of him having some sort of girlfriend. The first and most challenging was, of course, the way he'd begun to feel about April so long ago ... and the second had to do with him still being hopelessly mindful of the things that he said. It took too much calculation to even consider asking a woman out on a date.

It wasn't that he didn't have the confidence to speak up, honestly. It was that he spent too much time thinking about the most appropriate thing to say, the thing that would cause the least amount of problems in his future.

He nearly choked the moment she said that he might wake up to April knocking on his door. "I wouldn't mind that in the least," he said quickly, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck. "I mean. I could make ... pancakes?"

Because that couldn't possibly go horribly wrong.

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hath_no_fury
2011-04-09 05:09 am UTC (link)

Once more she smiled. “I’m a big fan of pancakes.” Her smile turned into a grin, and then she looked over to the clock. The time made her sigh, and she chewed her lip again before speaking into the receiver. “Listen, I’ve got to finish getting ready, or I’m going to be late…” She made sure she left out where it was she was going, sure that Desmond, just like most of the other men and women she saw, wouldn’t want to hear about other clients.

“I can be at your place tomorrow morning at…let’s say 8 o’clock?”

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cockinafrock
2011-04-09 05:16 am UTC (link)

Desmond definitely didn't want to hear about her other clients, if only because he would worry after her most of the evening and end up getting very little sleep for the morning, rendering him mostly-useless for April's whims in the morning.

"I can do 8," he agreed with a nod, "I'll see you then." And because he didn't want to waste any more of her time, he hung up the phone shortly afterward. He'd need at least a little time to tidy up his flat before he went to bed, after all. No need to have a messy floor for April's visit.

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