Shady Blue

"Pulp Friction"

“In shorter terms, she was cheap and came in pretty packaging. That was the ‘Blue effect’.”

—

“Hey, Margie,” Blue looked the same as always as she jumped from the last stair of the staircase and took a leaping few bounces to shake off the momentum; blonde hair unbrushed and wild, the faint discolouration of zit cream left only where she would be able to spot it, clothes careless and slightly askew, feet bare, blue eyes swollen, arms decorated with sheet marks… When she came to a halt at the dinner table, even her mother looked the same as always.

Luckily, she was in the midst of her summer break after her senior and final schooling year, the break in which she waited to make the leap to tertiary education. In favour of that, she did not look the same as she did on a school morning, which was far worse than the way she did on a holiday morning. Holiday-morning-Blue, as she was, emerged from her bedroom typically with her light and unbrushed hair around her shoulders and a dress of some kind on — the only flaw in that moment would be a lack of makeup to hide acne scarring and a knot at the nape of her neck where she had slept on her hair. School-morning-Blue emerged wearily with a school blouse and skirt on, the blazer icing the cake and the stockings garnishing the frosting, though she looked far more presentable, the uniform failed to rival the appeal of a short and child-like dress, as she often opted for. It was a strange thing to lean towards when dressing; to want to look like a sexualised child. Perhaps that was because she had been a sexualised child. “-Bagels today? You know how much I love you,”

“We’ve been over this, Blue, It’s ‘Margetta’, you can’t nickname the help,” ’And you can’t wear blue with that awful tan’, was all Blue wanted to say. Still, nothing was stopping the poor woman from making the tragic fashion mistake, so what was stopping Blue? Or who? Besides the woman who wore the figure-hugging blue dress all laws of nature argued against. Who with a valid and totally not redundant opinion was stopping Blue?

“Well, if Margetta is going to be handling my thongs and picking used condoms out of my jean pockets then I want to be a little closer than the professional first-name basis,” It took no longer than a moment for Blue to smooth over her own dress and find her seat opposite her mother. When she did, it took hardly a moment longer for her to ensure her gaze fell everywhere but to the pair of the same blue as her own; like mother, like daughter, it would seem. “I’ll call her ‘Margetta’ when I’m an old Latvian woman known by ‘Gretel’,” Jokes on Marian, Blue didn't use condoms.

“Don’t be disgusting — and don’t eat too many bagels, either, Richard is coming over any minute from work with your father and his boss to join us for a late breakfast,” and suddenly, Blue put the bagel right back onto the plate she had taken from in the very same moment it had taken her to sit down and avert her eyes. Never before in her life had she turned down a fresh and still-warm bagel, just she had never tasted rainbow ice-cream… or done anything her mother had told her to.

“His boss?” Sure, the girl had an odd edge to her words, but somehow it was even something the mother with so much spare time she studied mannerisms in social settings and additionally mannerisms as seen in emotional connections (just for the purpose of being an outstanding socialite) didn’t notice. Even if she did notice, her skills weren’t quite so advanced that she could deduce ‘His boss? The one who came inside of me on the landing balcony?’ from a simple question with a tone of ‘oh, you’ve got to be joking’, served with no more information. It seemed to simply fall unnoticed, instead.

Finally, Blue’s eyes found the pair of the woman before her, the very pair she had been avoiding. Alas, the bottle blonde and spray-tan cased woman looked and sounded as oblivious as ever. Thank the heavens — on Blue’s behalf, of course. “Yes, Damien, I’m sure your father introduced the pair of you last night,” and so Blue watched as the woman tore into her half of a grapefruit with a fork and a knife as if it were loaded pizza — but it wasn’t, it was a fruit greatly resembling a v****a riding the crimson wave. At that moment, Blue was thankful that she had returned her bagel to the pile where it had sat.

“Dad didn’t, no,” As the blonde spoke, she put the most effort into sounding neutral that she ever had before... and all without her first cup of coffee.

“You say that as though someone else did,” Though the woman sounded curt and knowing of something undisclosed, the fact she failed to look up from her organ-esque fruit convinced Blue it was simply her idea of a witty remark. The same wit Blue seemed to have stolen alongside seventeen ounces of blood in childbirth. Would she ever get her wit back? It seemed equally likely she would have the exact seventeen ounces washed away by the cleaning staff per procedure restored by miracle as it was she would wake up one day with the same wit she mysteriously lost. Perhaps the toll of motherhood was still relevant, even when she wasn’t the woman raising the child. The help raised the child. “Margie” raised the child.

“No one did,” when the words flew from Blue’s mouth faster than the speed at which she had barrelled towards the dining table, she found herself forcing a pause. She knew, unless she reevaluated, she would deeply risk her mother finally picking up on something. That meant, she’d have to force herself to sound as attracted to Damien, the very man who came inside of her on the balcony, as she was to Robert — Richard. “Until now, I had no idea who Dorian or whoever is,” Nice save. “Why’s dad’s boss coming, anyway?”

“He’s losing two of his top employees for a few hours, it’s the polite thing to do to compensate,” Oh, way to go, Marian Pierce, sneak in a compliment of the work ethic for your husband and double it with a compliment for your future son-in-law, if all goes to plan. That was the most ingenious plan you’ve ever had, Marian, considering you skipped birth control to purposely fall pregnant and get your now husband to actually marry you. Kudos, Marian.

Blue gave her mother a desperate and deep stare, her eyebrows furrowed, her lips in a delicate frown. It was the “look at me, I’m Blue, pat me” stare designed only to remind her mother she appeared as though she would never hurt a fly. The stare designed to make her mother reevaluate any decision made that Blue may oppose emotionally. The stare that worked every time. “Mom, you can’t force Robert on me, there’s no chemistry,” She even whined as she said it. Kudos, Blue.

"Richard, and after the second date offer you blew off, we came to Richard and he was the only person you exchanged more than monosyllables with,” The woman paused the butchering of her grapefruit to finally meet the warm blue gaze of her daughter. She wished she hadn’t, it was the fullest form of the “I’m Blue, pat me” stare, the form that could talk any poor soul into suicide if the stare so desired. Perhaps it was the fact juice from the butchered grapefruit dripped onto the hem of her dress and stirred the grown woman into a tantrum which caused her to find the courage to rebuke her daughter. “He’s on his way, he’s to be seated next to you and that’s final,” And then the woman flew out of her seat in a huff and threw her napkin to the table as though she had the fullest intentions to curse the damn thing. “Margetta! I’m going to change and then you are to stain-treat this dress immediately,” And then she stamped away — Blue mouthed a small ‘thank you’ to the severed grapefruit and listened to the marches of the surgically enhanced woman up the stairs before she finally spoke again. If she had met her mother before she fell pregnant, she wouldn’t recognise her, not to deviate from the main issue at hand. The main issue, was the fact that she would be forced to converse with three men, two of which she had the slimmest desire to converse with, and one of which nutted inside of her mother some eighteen years and ten months ago.

Only when her mother was so deep in the upper level of the house that Blue could no longer register the fading thumps of her purposeful march, did the girl dare to speak again. When she did, she called out loudly and with full intentions of her voice making it all the way to the kitchen, where (of course) Margetta would be hiding meekly in wait for Marian to storm in, guns blazing, to sodomise the poor maid until the dress was restored to how exactly it was before Marian took out all of her hungover rage on a fruit. ”Margie, did you make a pot of coffee this morning?”

“Yes, I did Miss Pierce — just like every other morning,” Margetta’s voice was just as distantly afraid as any one maid would assume it would be. The poor, poor thing. The worst Marian could do without breaking a nail and throwing a tantrum about that, would be firing the woman. Luckily for Margetta, Blue loved her — and even if the favour of the daughter of the house failed, there was no shortage of work in the region. In fact, the Pierce household was quite small in stark and close comparison to others in the wealthy radius.

“Great, now put some whiskey in it,” and the girl paused as she heard her mother quickly barreling down the stairs. If it was the last time she would see or hear of Margetta alive, she needed to take advantage of the woman and all of her early-morning service glory; all of it. “Three shots worth,” It would be mutual suicide, Blue would plan. She killed herself of alcohol poisoning, Margie killed herself of not having the telepathic powers to know exactly what Marian expected of her far before Marian even knew it, herself. Maybe the blonde hag should have simply learnt that gravity had the tendency to be a b***h with unconfined liquids and additionally that a cotton dress was and will be readily absorbent unless already saturated. Common sense, one could go as far as to say. Common sense Marion was so obviously without.

Suddenly, her mother was standing at the doorway of the room. In all honesty, the dress looked much the same as the one she had so carelessly dirtied. The only difference? The depth of the neckline, perhaps even the shape if one would go so far as to mention where the other came to a sharp point, the new dress came to a more rounded dip right in the wrinkled crease between her breasts. “And what if Richard kisses you and gets the impression you’re a drunk with no self-respect?” Of course, Marian had to find a way to circle the beloved Richard back into conversation. All Blue wanted to say to her mother was ‘well, a man as fine as Robert deserves only the truth’, yet all she could do was sigh and bite her tongue — in the very minute she did sigh and bite her tongue, Marian truly thought that the girl was going to reconsider. After all, Margetta had the track record of following Blue’s orders before she followed the command of the rude but paying woman... at the end of the day, sometimes, Marian had no choice but to facilitate underage drinking, especially since she was the woman to introduce the habit on Blue’s sixteenth birthday. What she had thought would be a way for Blue to appear to be more matured and more suited for grown and ideally wealthy men quickly became a bad habit she wasn’t a stranger to, herself, in her own former years.

But then Blue finally delivered the more tame version of the line she so desired to slide from between her lips with a shameless smile; “Make it five, Margie,” and suddenly the woman couldn’t bring herself to give even two shits any more. She had made a monster. She had bred a child who grew to be the exact copy of herself, without taking into account the house worth of plastic surgery hanging from her chest and her hairline alike. It was and always would be unknown if Marian failed to smile because of the tear-jerking botox and face-lift regime, or simply because the poor woman had no soul. Like most things, it could indeed be a good mix of both. She could have sold her soul to pay for the surgery skin-care routine and therefore be suffering from a combination. On the other hand, there could be infinite combinations to form the reason she never smiled. With Marian, there would probably be no way to ever tell. Mainly because the woman had a habit of saying only what the other party wanted to hear — until it came to her daughter, of course.

When Margetta finally emerged from the depths of the kitchen with a dainty teapot it seemed only stupid to put coffee in, there was no way for Marian to ever know for sure if Margetta had spiked the morning brew or not. Blue knew for sure if the requested five shots had been added the moment she took her first gulp. And in addition to the fact that Margetta never failed to make awful, strong and bitter coffee, it burned as she took the mouthful down her throat without the quick pause she felt she needed that would still offer no reprieve to the potency. The only plus to the two conflicting solutions to form one product, was the fact that it physically was warm, and yet offered the burning warmth at the very same time — and that combination was far better than her consumption of iced wine the evening before, when she felt the physical coolness but at the very same time, the burn of the alcohol on the bacteria and the cells of her throat and chest alike. Blue paused over her mug as her mother shifted and smoothed out her dress beneath her, making an attempt to settle in her seat. For the fleeting moment she made the decision to speak again, decidedly due to the fact she felt somewhat bad for her mother. She had never before felt bad for her mother. Just as she had never tasted rainbow ice-cream. Just as she had never done what she was told.

She knew that her mother cared — and though she didn’t actually care about Blue, herself, but instead cared for the presentation of Blue to the public eye, it resembled the taste of her mother harbouring authentic human emotion. “Thanks for taking mom’s side, Margie,” and she made the effort to be just beneath the volume Margetta could physically pick up from the kitchen but of a volume great enough to lull Marian into a soft sense of victory. Blue knew well how to slip through the cracks when it came to her mother — and those cracks exactly were the cracks of allowing her mother to feel as if she had won, for once in her life, against Blue. But she never could win against Blue; Blue was charming and kind and young and everything good and reliable and trustworthy that Marian herself was not. It was plainly obvious that to remain on top, Blue would have to give the enemy a taste of what it was. Constant defeat built and sharpened skill, victory lead to complacency. She had learnt the simple science in no less than a year when she became aware that life seemed to be a game, the science of leading the enemy to believe that redundant and worthless tactics were efficient. Why would Blue ever want the enemy employing a valid and fruitful technique?

“I knew the pair of you would still be eating,” Not much at all was worse than hearing Marian’s voice as early in the morning as eleven, as the clock then had come to stand. Eleven was Blue’s ‘wake-up’ time, the time Blue finally worked up the courage, after three hours of tossing and turning, to get out of bed and get dressed instead and prepare mentally for the sport which was dining with Marian without the preparation of coffee. Again, only few things were worse than facing Marian at the ‘early’ wake-up time. Some which were worse could be; simultaneous oral and genital herpes, bowel movements during recovery from anal tearing, flossing with piano wire, not-so-instant death — and of course, the grand finale, Marian at eleven in the morning with the additional infamous actuary; Bradley Pierce.

The name was often misleading. It was the name of a party-boy or the thirty-eight-year-old leader of a college fraternity with time spent so often getting wasted that said leader was balls deep in student debt with all the times he’d had to repeat the course. It was strange, when honestly he was an average man with the most disinteresting and booze-less life in the entire working industry. It was the name that lulled someone often into a sense of false security. It was the name when said along the lines of ‘Oh, It’s Bradley from insurance!’, raised the expectations of a guy incomparably lenient and enviably young. Anyone who came to know it was quite the opposite should be pitied, Blue would like to think. How could a guy like Bradley be married while a girl such as Blue failed to find even a decent boyfriend? How was that ever supposed to make sense? Was it meant to be like gravity? Accepted and yet so unexplained?

“We’re only still eating because Blue spends half of her life in bed and only emerges for meals — late, may I add,” Marian spoke sharply, though Blue couldn’t bring herself to care as of her second cup of the godly-nectar-infused-coffee. In all honesty, Blue was considering producing the flask she had taped under the surface of the table right at her seat and further diluting the coffee. In that case, Robert, Richard, wouldn’t have to kiss Blue to discover the amount to which she was intoxicated. All it would take would be Blue simply breathing in the general direction of the man who sounded as if he worked as an actuary more than the man who was an actuary did.

When Blue spoke again, she sounded more soulless than the woman who actually was, her mother. “If the bagels are still warm, I’m not late, mother,” And in the thickness of the headache which was sneaking whiskey-flavoured coffee past her mother, Blue failed to notice as a man seated himself right beside her. She was too busy skulling her teacup as if it was the best tasting coffee to ever land on her tongue to notice the man sparing her a glance and unbuttoning the single button of his blazer; even when his elbow brushed her shoulder and her eyes brushed his as she scanned the table for her beloved coffee pot. And even then, when they landed on the green and dark pair almost sinister beneath the frame of even darker brows, it took her a long moment to double back and for her stomach to sink far further than it ever had. In all honesty, she had forgotten that her mother had said the infamous Damien was set to arrive.

“Richard, please, I have a seat for you right here,” just as the man began to lower himself to the seat of the table right beside his boss, the Kraken struck again. This time, her motives were to seat her future son-in-law right in front of the woman she’d like him to marry in an undisclosed but illogically short period of time — all because Damien had stolen his designated seat by her side. Poor, poor Richard had no idea. Perhaps it was because the husband of this tanned-and-toned woman had the name ‘Bradley’, could anyone married to a Bradley do any real damage? Bradley sounded like a mellow pot-smoker, like a serious guy with a strong work ethic and yet a soft heart and a large home open to many. Bradley sounded like a high-quality dude who was all-around pleasant to spend time with. He couldn’t be married to a complete witch, could he? Too bad Bradley wasn’t an awesome man, himself — bad company attracted bad company.

“Thank you, Misses Pierce,"

And here it comes. ”Please, it’s just Marian,” And don’t you worry, Richard, soon enough it will be just mom — that would be the next line, right? If all went to plan? If Blue succumbed to the plan B of ‘I’ve done nothing but provide for you, you owe me this’, — and if it came to that, ever, she would have succumbed to that, wouldn’t she? She was weak-willed and kind to only who she shouldn’t be. “Damien, this is my daughter,” and Marian spoke just as her loyal and booze-less husband found a seat by the woman’s side and planted a slobbery and forced kiss on her taught cheek. Soon enough, she would become disfigured by plastic surgery, one would think. It would get to the point where the woman’s lips would be so far stretched out from facelifts she would no longer be able to even close her mouth. And if it came to that point, there would be no cheek left. It would be just lip, everywhere. It would be the joker but with a smooth and ageless complexion. She would permanently have the ear-to-ear grin she had only when she was young and naive; the grin she only had when she still had a soul. If she ever had one, that was.

“Blue, I presume, happy birthday from yesterday,” Blue watched as the man shifted in a way that would have been awkward if it had not been him, of all people, and moved to extend a hand to her. The hand was smooth as she accepted the gesture; smooth and cold and stony and somehow smooth again yet not at all soft. Exactly stony. It was the perfect way to describe the hand. And yet the man had unclothed her with said hand a mere twelve hours ago, perhaps she didn’t have the time then to think about what Damien’s hand felt like when so readily consumed by what his engorged blue-steeler felt like either pressing against her or inside of her. “Is the coffee any good?”

“The maid made it, she makes the best coffee — Blue, give Damien some coffee,” Marian sounded almost frantic as she ordered the sleepy-eyed, messy-haired daughter to give up the cup of life and death she had cradled against herself for the entire exchange. Marian was and always would be the last person to know what exactly Margetta’s coffee tasted like; the woman hated coffee, she’d rather die before she tasted a single cup. In fact, the last cup of coffee she ever had was when she was fourteen — the last and the first. Poor Damien was in for a large surprise. At the very same time, he was in for the best surprise of his life.

“Try it,” The Blonde thrust her cup to the man and the contents spilt and shifted over the lip as she did, only just narrowly escaping the leap from the mug to the table. Perhaps she would have to be slower and more careful next time she decided to readily unload the cup onto an unsuspecting man. When she spoke again, she lowered her voice so low no one else on the table heard her; another trick she had developed over the years to escape the wrath of her mother and her large and great expectations. “You won’t get anything from me you haven’t already,”

Blue watched eagerly as the man chuckled shortly and lifted the mug she had nursed only a moment before to his own lips. When he did, he took the same large gulp Blue had innocently taken the very first time she tasted the intoxicated brew of the morning. With the same never-failing tone of amusement, she watched as the man’s eyes widened and he lowered the cup to the table with a stable grip. No one would ever know he was startled by the contents of the mug, thankfully — no one but Blue. Blue quickly gave in to a short chuckle of her own. “Blue, this is the best coffee I have ever had,” The man murmured the words to the girl, though the volume could be debated to be unnecessary. Marian had launched into conversation with Richard about his career and his love life which would leave anyone with even a vague sense of innocence to believe that Marian wanted to marry Richard... what a sight that would be, indeed.

“Thank you, Damien, it’s a secret recipe,” Blue, too, shared the same murmur Damien had adopted. Bradley was too occupied by striving for completely even distribution of butter on his bagel to notice the quick banter between the two. Richard was too consumed by Marian and her small talk and Marian was too subsequently consumed by Richard. Margetta was too occupied by scratching a hardened spot of food from the table as she collected used crockery. Damien was too occupied by Blue to care at all that he could be suspicious and to notice that he had taken subconscious precautions. It seemed Blue was the only soul of the table to care, and Marian was the only soul-less of the table to not care.

“And how much of this secret recipe exactly do you use?”

“Five shots,”

And just as Damien raised the teacup to his lips and the words slid through his ears, he succumbed to a loud and short laugh which finally someone noticed — in fact, something everyone noticed. All conversation fell to an immediate silence... it was almost as though Damien was the guest of the table without the soul, as opposed to Marian and her valuable alterations. Intriguing. Intriguing and typical that a man with dark, dark hair, and an unplaceable accent, dark green eyes hooded beneath a glare of both hatred and mystique and all wrapped in the tie, suit and greeting card of ‘my success story is the work of the devil’ would be the member of the table to have no soul. Blue would bet good money on the fact that Damien’s soul would be worth far more than Marian’s, using a personal comparison of knowing the two (though she did know Damien far less than she knew Marian).

Blue’s heart sank. Damien, as charming and frightening as he was, would need an exceptional explanation as to how the man who never laughed suddenly did, and because of a woman he “just” met. “Your daughter makes the most inappropriate jokes, Bradley,” Blue offered Damien a guilty smile as she took in his words, and though the man had thrown her under the bus at the expense of protecting himself and her from the weather of the scrutiny of Marian Pierce, the quip actually did the job. Blue knew that it did the job, because Marian sighed and frowned at her daughter from across the table, and she gave the girl a look of disapproval; a look that stated without a single breath or word the simple lines of ’Inappropriate? You’re supposed to be impressing Richard, not driving him away’ and the closing statement of ‘Seriously? Inappropriate jokes to your father’s boss? What the hell Is wrong with you, child?’ Damien offered Blue a quick and mischievous yet somehow apologetic smile, a smile to which the girl offered a short “Sorry,” to the woman from across the table by the encouragement of. So that was how Damien got to the top and subsequently reached his position; by covering his ass with somebody else and yet still carrying a face of slight protection. It was both offensive and charming... it got the job done with no hard feelings.

But then her father said something that she didn’t expect him to say; “Sadly, she got it from me,” a quick phrase that completely caught Blue by surprise. All Blue wanted to say at that point, was a simple ’Tell him off, then’, but it remained just another quip she suppressed and instead muttered to herself. Yet through all the headache that had come from Damien and the ‘special coffee’ in less than thirty seconds, the man finished the cup in less than five seconds, refilled it and slid it back to Blue in a manner at which the contents did not make an honest effort to leap for freedom and the embrace of the dining table.

Then, he murmured lowly. “You’re going to need this,” and so Blue followed his example and gulped the contents of the mug quite quickly, herself. Perhaps they were a match made in heaven; a match of creeping alcoholism and dry humour... not to mention striking looks. Perhaps Blue’s last name was ‘Pierce’ for a reason, because against the frame of her sun and wear lightened hair, her eyes were cold and bright and held a glare at all times. She was the last person anyone would ever want to go through customs alongside — she always appeared as though she was on the brink of a fairly violent homicide.

“Blue, you’re going to Harvard, aren’t you? — Richard makes large donations, he’s found himself to have a large influence over the board of application,” Marian asked the question she knew was rather a hooded version of ‘You’ve agreed to go because you have no choice, haven’t you?’

Blue paused as she refilled her cup of one part liquor, three parts coffee. It only took a swift two moments for her to prepare the quip on par with the hypothetical ‘inappropriate jokes’ Damien had placed her in the same car of and a further breath for her to weigh up whether her mother telling her off was worth the chance of further scrutiny for the woman just off to the side of right in front of her. If she did go through with it and she did decide that it was worth it, she would have no way of escaping the inevitable ‘telling-off’ she would cop straight from the stretched-out mouth of her mother; the woman was seated right in front of her. What could she do? Simply get up and leave with no further word and no care as to how much it would piss Marian off? “Richard, you want to sleep with me, right?”

“Blue!” Of course, her mother never accounted for how strange it would sound for her to scream a colour in disapproval. Perhaps it could be taken as a threat, a threat of the colour the woman would beat the girl to if no one else knew that it wasn’t exactly a threat but instead the rather stupid name of a girl. At least she had ensured that Blue would never respond to the wrong name in homeroom, therefore avoiding all potential but small-scale humiliation attached to the five minutes per school day.

“I’m not sure how you want me to respond,” and as Robert offered no more than the words and a small frown, her father chuckled and Damien offered an amused grin of his own — and finally, Blue truly wondered how old exactly Richard was, and she wondered if her mother would have cut off her head altogether if she had referred to Richard as ‘Robert’ in the very same damning sentence she had spoken. With the inappropriate remark and the deliberate use of the wrong name, both Richard and her mother would surely be so offended they would simply bond over the traumatically aggravating experience before running off and eloping; a thrilling narrative.

Yet before Blue could pipe in and deliver the intent of the fate-deciding line, Damien was he who spoke, yet again taking the table by surprise. Perhaps the fault of the tragic breakfast was the potion of the mysterious coffee which had set off arguably the two most unstable parties of the breakfast table as a whole. “I believe she was insinuating that the only means by which she could get into Harvard would be by, excuse my language,” The man paused and peered at Blue through the corners of his eyes with a warning smile — he knew Marian couldn’t yell at him, better yet, he knew exactly what Blue intended to say in that very moment. “-fùcking whoever it takes,”

And though Richard looked quite offended and alarmed for the girth of a split second, it took little less than a glare from Damien with the intent of ‘you’d be lucky if you made to to bed with Blue’ and a follow-up of ‘think about that or you’re fired’ — though Richard was a simple man. Sure, he didn’t gather the complete mix of all that had been thrown into the fleeting glare, but he gathered all he needed to; he was scared shitless of Damien, all Damien did was remind the poor and fragile man. Quickly and awkwardly, Richard forced a laugh. “She’s just like you, Bradley — she’s hilarious,”

For the first time of perhaps the entire history of the breakfast table, Blue was the only person not laughing.

Instead of joining in and perhaps succumbing to peer pressure and forcing a belly-involved laugh at something not even remotely amusing, Blue found her feet in less than a moment. “Please excuse me, mom, I need to use the bathroom,” but as Blue tucked her chair in quietly and Marian launched into conversation, the blonde kicked a certain someone’s chair on her way past, though Damien was met not with an even remotely explaining glance, but instead a generous view of her shoulder as she walked quickly towards the doorframe and slid right through and into the hallway she had crossed so obliviously a good twenty minutes prior.

From there, she flattened herself against the wall just by the frame’s shoulder, where she waited with a certain intent and lingering frown. Even if her mother didn’t know it from the way In which they all sat around the campfire and had a good old laugh, breakfast was a shït show — as far as Marian was concerned, Richard had ended the meal as they knew it, the meal before Blue excused herself for an undisclosed period of time (a period Marian knew would be a simple period of the girl never returning to the meal) laughing what no one but himself and Damien knew to be a completely forced laugh. In the eyes of Misses and Mister Pierce, he was close to tears, not because he was so uncomfortable around Damien and so simply scared of the man, but because he found both his boss’ and Blue’s jokes to be so utterly hilarious. Even then, though it seemed that Blue was nowhere near worth the amount of trouble caused by a good mix of the way Damien looked at her and Blue’s mannerisms alone, Richard still didn’t see the harm in following the wish of the lady of the house, thus pursuing the girl just older than half his age. Perhaps the allure was her dowry, perhaps it was simply the ’Blue effect; the effect of a combination of her doll-like clothing (revealing, innocent) and the way in which her jokes made her seem so irresistible and yet easily obtainable. In shorter terms, she was cheap and came in pretty packaging. That was the ‘Blue effect’.

It took little more than a minute or two for Damien to deliver a simple excuse of ‘needing to take a call’, fool-proof and classic, for Blue to grab the man by the arm as he emerged from the zoo which was the Pierce breakfast table, and to steer the man with surprising strength in the direction of her father’s study. Tragically displayed on the wall, was an oil painting of Blue as a five-year-old, to which both ignored, yet the eyes still bore into the shoulders of both parties as they stood before the desk, or in the very least seemed to. The fact her father’s study had a lock seemed to further the theory that Bradley was financing a secret family from the very quarters, yet the lock was so sweetly convenient it would be impossible to care. In principle, if the pair were caught emerging together, Blue simply ‘used the bathroom of her father’s office’, Damien simply ‘locked the door as he took the call unknowingly to present a further layer of privacy’... it was so perfect it could have only been intentional, but Blue didn’t have that thought of insurance as she chose her father’s study, of all rooms. Her own simple reason for selection was the sole fact that she had a lock at her disposal. Had she gone anywhere else, she would have risked being walked in on at any moment, no matter how slim the chances. The only hope, then, could be that she would have the realisation that she had the unknown excuse at her disposal, right by her fingertips, if she found herself faced by her mother as the pair of them emerged. How charming it was, indeed.

Blue failed to waste any time. She failed to spare the man a chance to acclimate himself with the fact he had been taken by the arm and forcefully dragged into a room with surroundings he had never seen before and intent he had no clue about. For the first time in perhaps a long time, he looked flustered. In the face of it all, her voice was curt and came with only purpose. “What are you doing here?”

As priceless as the man looked in the moment he wondered what the hell he was doing there, at that time, with that girl, it took hardly two breaths from the pair of them to cross his arms — and though he put up the front, both he and Blue knew that he wasn’t completely aloof. And though he made an attempt to appear completely otherwise, he gave at least one or two shíts about the fact that the girl who he fücked on a balcony not so long ago was glaring at him with both a look of surprise and defensiveness combined to form the warm blue of her eyes. “I was invited for breakfast by your mother, Blue, do you expect me to turn down all future functions which may involve you simply because you told me ‘we can’t see each other again’?” His voice, though he tried, wasn’t quite as cold as his blonde counterpart’s — though was it really appropriate to deem Blue a counterpart when his own hair was far lighter? Did ‘counterpart’ require a more drastic difference between the two parties compared? A complete and total turnaround?

The girl pouted, only slightly. Somehow, it was a vital part of the ‘Blue-effect’; looking typical and helpless and completely as though she didn’t know any better than to accept and return any advances. ”Yes, but when you say it like that it makes me feel like an asshole,”

Though by that point, Blue had brought herself to expect a response completely different to what she was given, Damien’s own tone was soft — hell, even his hands were, the rough and marbled hands, as he lifted and gripped the upper-arms of the girl before him. “Well, I need you, Blue — you intrigue and arouse and entice me,” Was this simply a product of the ‘Blue-effect’? It couldn’t have been. At the time of both their meeting and their intercourse, Blue had acted far from incapable of intelligent conversation and had dressed with both modesty and a mature appeal, though of course, her mother had dressed her. Perhaps Damien, at that point, was simply a fluke. An outlier from the theory. A result of experimental human error.

Blue sighed. Shouldn’t the roles have been reversed? Shouldn’t she be the needy woman customarily begging for something deeper and longer lasting than a one-time affair over the railing of a balcony (out of all places)? “Look, last night was great while it lasted but...”

Damien also sighed. When he spoke, he didn’t sound as though he had quite the same babying tone she did when she spoke; a tone as though she was explaining ‘no’ to a toddler or trying to explain to a baby that she wasn’t evil incarnate for plugging up the very socket it had stabbed blindly with a fork. “But what, Blue?” In fact, he sounded affectionate, almost — affectionate in the very sense that would cause Richard to go completely insane. Perhaps to men like Richard and to many others, Damien would always be the man without a soul, the man who yelled at his coworkers when even the smallest mistake was made; the man without a caring nor emotional bone in his whole, entire form. Damien would do exceptionally well if he was ever to open a business of his own. Many could argue that one of the biggest rivals of success was compassion; success with compassion simply did not exist, not in business.

When Blue finally spoke again, she did not sigh, as the pair of them had before. Instead, she threw a glance to the oil-painting by her side, blushed deeply, and decided things could not get any worse. She was having the awkward ‘morning after’ conversation, even without the unintentional and meaningless sleepover, in a place that just so happened to be right by the side of a painting in which she looked so completely terrified and captured that way until the canvas met its final demise. In other words, she accepted the thought that, in that moment, she had nothing to lose. “I don’t know! I don’t want to have my heart broken because I decided I could play ball in the same league as a rich f*****g thirty-year-old!”

Blue searched the eyes of the man before her, but failed to find anything conclusive. They held a certain air of both thinking and withholding something, Blue would probably never know what exactly, but she could tell that it, whatever it was, was definitely there. It was in the way his brows turned down ever-so-slightly and fell just between a gaze and a frown; in the slight upturn of his lips; in the flexing of his jaw. It was intriguing. And though, perhaps, he had no soul, there was certainly something of substance inside of him. There was certainly, in the very least, some residue of what he had before he traded it for wealth and power. Perhaps there wasn’t much to begin with — but perhaps, to want something, some depth of emotional connection was required... and that would certainly mean that Damien had some level of capability to feel an emotional connection; that would certainly mean he had a soul of sorts. Marian was different. Marian only wanted what people told her she wanted. Surely that would mean, out of all the people gathered around the breakfast table not so long ago from then, she would be the one without a soul. Perhaps the existential mystery had been solved. Perhaps Damien only wanted to appear as though he had no soul. Perhaps it was all part of a gimmick to fall into and remain in power. Perhaps faux heartlessness was essential in the game of power; perhaps fear truly was the heart of it all.

When Damien spoke, he lowered his voice. It was almost as though he was convinced they stood in a crowed room, or as though he felt that the oil painting he hadn’t even yet noticed had keen ears and was listening eagerly with a Bluetooth broadcaster for a brain. It was almost as though he felt anything he said, just loud enough, would slide straight through the silence of the empty and well-insulated room and to the dining room, despite the fact they could yell at one another and no one would be able to hear. “I would sooner die than break your heart, Blue — on that you have my word,” and though his voice was rough and careful, his hands remained still and purposeful by her shoulders. She couldn’t move, even if she somehow mustered the desire to.

“That’s a big promise for a girl you barely know,” and so Blue paused and inhaled deeply. Just as she did, the skin between her collar bones dipped and deepened with the hasty gasp for air. Her chest burned and her stomach expanded. It was the most satisfying and calming deep breath she had ever taken — and yet she still felt such a great amount of unrest.

The man smiled just as his fingers shifted and brushed her skin. When his hands moved, he shifted his grip down further towards her elbows, right where he traced strange and small circles. It was a strange thing to do. It was yet another piece of evidence that Damien had a soul. “Considering you still have my cüm inside of you, I’d say we know each other quite well,”

And though Blue smiled sweetly and Damien was sure that that was all of a response he was given, it took little more than a long moment for her to gather few words in a quiet tone... “Tonight at nine-thirty — you, me, a coffee shop... what do you think?”

“A coffee place open at ten? Do you mean to tell me there’s a place aside from your seat at the table which serves coffee with whiskey?” And so Blue laughed loudly, just as she did, she tilted her head and shifted her eyes to his neck and back to his in a solid sweep before her lips finally fell to a small and distant smile. In that moment, reminded of their shared brew, he realised just how well Blue could hold her liquor. It intrigued him — it offered a small glimpse to a side he had previously brushed away... the side that asked to be fücked on a balcony.

Her voice was raspy and bubbled in the back of her mouth as though she had to clear her throat... but she didn’t bow to the urge. She ignored it, she continued with a rough; “It serves regular coffee — now is that a yes or a no?”

“I’ll be parked across the road at quarter past nine,” When he spoke, his voice was much the same. Perhaps it was only the effect of the situation — of the fact they were seemingly negotiating a first date as though it were nothing at all. The girl nodded and offered a final smile before she mustered the courage and the will to break away from the man and to instead turn towards the door. As she did, she made an effort to steer clear of the painting — with all of her will, she would never draw his attention to the general direction of the painting during that long moment in which they were in the same room as it. Through the silence that was sure to leave the pair alert, Blue still failed to expect the voice of the man as he spoke, but she paused and threw her gaze over her shoulder as it met her. “Kiss me, Blue,”

Though she didn’t drop her hand from the lock of the door, she relaxed with a breath and held the bold green of the man’s eyes without pause. And only then did she speak. “Do I get a please?”

Only when Damien paced towards the girl with considerably brisk strides and when he took her face in his hands did she drop her fingers from the lock. When she did and when she lifted her own hands to the man’s shoulders, only then did his leave her face — and when they did, his hands roamed her body and tugged at her clothes in a way that made Blue’s heart sink and blood rush from her head, instead to her toes in tune to the pure thrill. And they rocked in place. And it was desperate and violent in more ways than one. And he gripped and tugged at her and she held on to him as though she had no choice — yet they still wanted more. Perhaps it was the numbing of the booze and the contradicting kick of the coffee which lead them to such a state of unrest and eagerness... perhaps it was simply the fact that they had developed and nurtured something through glances and smiles and a tense meal and banter and laughter and kisses that neither could yet fathom; attraction. Quickly forming and rooting attraction. Plain and simple.

And then he shoved the girl against the wall and said girl groaned lowly — but his lips had left hers, and he left her in the state which had soared and clung to the feeling of expecting something further to happen right then and there before having it torn away; he had teased her, she was left flustered and alight. Yet still, the man smiled as he held her against the wall with nothing but his hand against the white plaster by her shoulder (the hand that Blue’s father would have cut clean off if he had seen that a handprint would linger in a greyed state) and his groin firm against her own. Then he spoke with the same low tone he had since adopted for the girl in the scene. “You sure as hell don’t,” and paused, and as he gasped to gather a breath, his eyes held the pair of the girl’s. In the full and fair lighting of the office, he could, in fact, confirm that the blue in the portrait he had seen the night before was much the same as the blue right before his eyes; a warm and bright and dark ocean tone with a gold ring in the very centre. Charming. Strange. “For what it’s worth, I can’t stop thinking about you,” his voice held the very same and repeated deep and rough tone which seemed he was far from leaving for the likes of something else. It, amongst the seconds which had come before, left Blue dizzy and breathless and lacking of any form of gravity whatsoever.

She offered the man a small and crooked smile as she delivered her own reply — but his tone and his words were unmatched. She could never reach the level of grit and s*x-appeal he had. “Well, have fun with that because I won’t be able to make an escape until quarter to ten tonight if I want to avoid all suspicion,” Though she did come close.

It was a smile Damien then mirrored; somehow, his voice deepened even further, just as his smile deepened in agreement and it seemed the green of his eyes deepened, also. Though he looked mean and frightening and twisted and somewhat soulless, Blue had never felt more open to and more attracted to a man in her life. Scary in a ‘Hannibal Lecter’ aspect seemed to always be an essential thing — and perhaps that was why she wasn’t attracted to Richard in even the slightest; because he looked like a complete pansy. “If you’re not out by quarter past nine and in my car, your dad’s breakfast tomorrow will be a severance package,”

Blue’s heart skipped a beat and her smile quirked — there it was, the ‘Hannibal Lecter’ wrapping of the Damien gift, the appeal to it all. The thrill and the suspense and the chemistry and the humour. Holy s**t was the bastard attractive. “Threatening my father’s job now, are you?”

“Yes, yes I am,” And in all honesty, she had completely overlooked that detail until then.