2008-04-12: Dismal

Starring:

DL_icon.gif Niki_icon.gif

Summary: Niki and D.L. happen to spot each other at Niki's previous place of employment, Therapy. The meeting isn't particularly therapeutic for either of them.

Date It Happened: April 12th, 2008

Dismal


Therapy (Exotic Bar)

Queens, New York

It's been awhile. Not since the person that's sitting at the bar here has been here. Because, well, this person doesn't really go to places like this. The person in question happens to be Daniel Lawerence Hawkins. He's sitting at the bar and doing that thing where he's holding a drink. A drink that hasn't been touched other than his fingers around the glass. It's a beer. Anyway, he doesn't even seem to be paying attention to anything else in the establishment other than the beer that he's holding between his fingers. He sighs and stares at the glass. It's almost as if he's been sitting here for hours.

D.L. is one of the very few people not paying attention to the goings-on around him; Therapy is an increasingly popular club, and for good reason, given the multitude of pretty ladies in foxy costumes traipsing all over the place.

A crowd of patrons with girls on their arms make their way to the bar to get more drinks — hiding D.L. from someone who happens to make their way into Therapy at the same time. Someone whom the bartender, a rough-looking young New Yorker with tattoos, recognizes. He has to raise his voice to be heard over the voices and the modern rock beat the DJ is playing.

"Whooooa, Jessica? What the hell are you doin' here? Didn't expect to see you after you disappeared off the face of the planet, miss thing."

Niki slides into the seat at the opposite end of the bar, tossing long straightened hair over shoulder — bare due to the rhinestone-clad purple tank top she wears, and without the telltale symbol on her skin that would indicate her being 'Jessica' as the bartender said. "Sorry, Jerry. Moved on to bigger and better things. Can you be a sweetheart and get me some whiskey on the rocks?"

Ignoring mostly everything that's going on right now, D.L. is focused on his drink right now. Occasional bumps into his body causes him to look up and pretty much glare at whomever got too close, which makes them back off and then he's focused on his beer again. There's nothing else as important as the beer that's in his hands right now, because he's too busy feeling sorry for himself and everything of that nature. He's… quite focused in that regard. Going through every little thing that he's ever done wrong in his life and trying to figure out why. Why. Why is this happening to him?

"Coming right up," Jerry the bartender says to the newest customer while finishing a few drinks and shoving them across the bar to other patrons, miraculously without sloshing them. "I thought you didn't drink," he tells the blonde after handing over her glass.

"Me too," says Niki with a hint of bitterness under her breath, folding her arms on the dark, glossy bar. She's not paying attention to who's at the other end. A strip club is the last place Niki would expect to see D.L., and really, it's not somewhere she expected to be paying a visit to herself. Not today. Not now that she doesn't work here. She looks down at her drink, toying somewhat sullenly with the corner of the red-and-gold napkin it's set atop.

Napkins? D.L. doesn't get no stinkin' napkin. Instead, he gets to raising of the glass and actually brings it right up to his lips… before he realizes that this would just be the wrong path to start going down. Instead, he ends up slamming the beer glass back down on the bar and immediately standing up. Fishing into his pocket for some moolah, he tosses out a ten on the bar and slightly phases to make the person bumping into him at the moment, no longer do that. With a less than determined and more tired than normal expression, the black man is headed off in the direction of the other end of the bar… only because the door is off in that direction too.

The wrong path to be going down. Niki is thinking that very same thing, as she stares down at the glass, tinged red by the colour of the napkin reflecting on it. With an expression that translates roughly into 'screw it', she wraps a hand around the glass all the same, lifts it, and happens to down a hearty sip of the whiskey before looking over her shoulder, straight down the bar at the familiar interior of the club, the stages, the tables. She's expecting to see faces she recognizes, but she expects them to be of the girls, not…

D.L. stops. Right in mid-step. If only because he's not really supposed to be looking at his wife. Former wife. Ex wife. Still wife. Whatever she is to him at this moment in time. Everything seems to slow down around him as he stares like he shouldn't be staring at all, realizing that this is going to be one of those awkward moments that he'll never be able to live down. His eyes can't help themselves and narrow into a bit of a glare as he tries to make sure that it's very clear he has no intention of heading over in Niki's direction, beyond that of trying to get to the door. Now if only he could get his feet to work.

Time doesn't stop for Niki. It doesn't slow down. She knows first-hand what that feels like, as of last night. Here, now, everything seems to become louder for her, the club moving around her in a rush, faced with the threat of missing the chance to talk to him. She stares wide-eyed at the person staring back at her. Her husband. Ex-husband. Still husband. She doesn't know. She's already moving to slide off the seat, abandoning her drink and literally running to him. "D.L.! Wait! Don't go."

D.L. is going… going… not gone. Something tells him to stop. Maybe it was hearing Niki's voice. Maybe he's still in love with her. Maybe he failed his willpower roll. Who knows. Whatever it is, though, it causes D.L. to stop and he immediately looks at the floor. Staring more at the boots on his feet than wanting to even look at the woman that's headed in his direction. She's the one that stopped him, so maybe she's the one that has something to say. He doesn't. Not now, anyway.

Now that she's gotten him to stop, Niki is less than convincing when it comes to making him stay. Silence and a conflicted stare, not the best of tactics. She takes a jolting step closer. "What are you doing here?" There's zero judgment in her tone, just honest curiosity for lack of anything else to say. So far.

"Dunno." D.L. shrugs with his answer, which is about as honest as he can come up with at the present time. He really doesn't know much of anything, anymore. He's just going through the motions of still living his life, because the one of the two people he was living for in the first place… doesn't love him back anymore. Which is kind of hard to deal with.

"You weren't … looking for me?" A hint of surprise makes its way into Niki's voice when she answers, also sounding faintly wounded by the realization that D.L. is just… here. What, drinking? Drowning his sorrows? Wandering? It's a little dismal.

The reason for Niki's question makes itself known in the form of one of the dancers, a woman in a metallic bikini with dyed blue hair, who taps the blonde on the shoulder as she saunters past. "I almost didn't recognize you with your clothes on!" the woman interjects into the pseudo-couples' impromptu encounter, and then she's gone.

"… Ain't know you worked here." D.L. doesn't seem to be shocked or upset or anything more than usual. He's been getting hit with painful surprise after painful surprise. This is just something else to add to the list. And there's more shrugging, because it seems like D.L. is just losing his ability to care about anything, more and more. Which is not going to be good for his future. Or their future… if they even have one together. "I ain't mean to intrude. I'll get outta' ya' way." D.L.'s tone is a bit closer to dismal than sarcastic or anything like that and it fits the fact that he's now moving to start back in the direction of the door.

Not so fast, mister. "While you were in jail," Niki adds while she turns and jogs after D.L. Who was in jail for what she did — again. "D.L., wait." A repeat of her earlier words, but still insistent, if tired. Dismal. The word of the day. She doesn't try to stop him, per se, inasmuch as she follows him to the door. "We need to … talk. We need to figure this out."

D.L. stops, but he doesn't turn to look back at Niki. There's no reason to. Again, with the shrugging, he just sighs and looks at the door. It's so far away. If he could only get there… he can never look back at this place and never come here again, now that he knows she frequents her former place of employment. "Nothin' to figure out. You got what you wanted… needed." Ouch. Cuz it sure as hell wasn't D.L. "I'll make sure to send Micah money as much as I can."

On the heels of D.L.'s comment — getting what she needed — Niki tenses all over, an involuntarily glower coming to her face. She says, "Micah doesn't need your money." That didn't come out exactly how she meant it to, so sharp. Regret is already surfacing as she glances from side to side around the busy club. She goes so far as to reach out for D.L.'s arm, advancing, stepping in, if only to urge him out of the way. Somewhere quieter — in the direction of a metal cage meant to hold dancers, as it turns out. "There are … things we're going to need to decide." And maybe a strip club isn't the best place to decide them, but Niki knows D.L. is elusive when he wants to be. And it looks like he wants to be.

D.L. should so be phasing right now. But, instead, he does the right thing and lets himself be dragged off to this cage of doom, where he'll be able to get out of it if he needs to. Not to mention the fact that, well, he's used to having to deal with cages and bars and things of that nature… because of Niki. This is just like old times, after all. Except, well, this time he won't have to fight big dudes every twenty minutes and get thrown into solitary confinement. Sigh. "I don't wanna' fight about this. You don't love me anymore. I get it." D.L. just shrugs. "So I'll steer clear, send money and you and whomever can live happily ever after."

Behind the empty cage, mounted up high, they're warranted a bit of privacy. Not that anyone was watching them anyway. It's easier to talk here, though, behind those metal bars. "There's no … happily ever after," Niki says with a cynical laugh, pretty face warped by an incredulous expression that's bordering on angry. "It's not that I don't— " She cuts herself off, looking sick. There's no way to say it that doesn't sound cheap, at this point. Everything she's saying, she's forcing. She doesn't want to be saying any of this, and it shows. "I need to know if this is it. If you're gonna… disappear, 'steer clear', whatever, I need to know for sure. I'm not talking about leaving me, I mean Micah. I need to know so that I can handle it."

"What do you want me to say, Niki? You don't want a family anymore. You don't want me anymore. All you want to do is whatever it is you go off and do all day, every day. You don't have time…" D.L.'s tone, surprisingly enough, isn't angry. He's literally just stating facts. And that's even the look on his face while he's saying this. He's tired. Worn out. "I want what's best for my son. And a son needs his mother. Fathers can be replaced." Ouch. Another below the belt swing. "But Micah needs you. I'll do what I can for him with whatever money I can come across but…" He trails off, not even sure if he should continue with these topics.

It stings. It more than stings, it's like a punch in the face with brass knuckles — and for a second, Niki turns her face away as if she's literally been hit. "No." Niki slams her hand down on the base of the dancer's cage beside her. "I'm not going to stand here and let you say that, D.L. We weren't— there was something wrong before this ever happened. Look, I'm sorry," she says, pained but… guarded. "No one can replace you," she adds, quieter. Is she talking from Micah's POV or her own?

"I don't know what you want me to do, Niki. Do you want me to come home? Do you want me to just sit around and do everything that I've been doing? Because that was getting us nowhere." D.L. speaks truth. At least, he thinks so. "I just… believe it or not, I just want you to be happy. I love you more than I can figure out how to express. I can't stand not being around you. I can't stand that you're working all the time. I can't stand that you… did whatever you did." He looks down at the floor, once more. "… and I also don't even care. It's not that you slept with someone else. I… I can forgive that. It's just…" He sighs and leans against the bars himself. "… I'm not sure you want 'us' anymore."

"I wish I knew." There it is again: that dismal tone. Niki crosses her arms, making edgy squares out of her shoulders through tension. D.L.'s right. "I hate this," she says after a silence. "I hate this … so much. I wish I could explain…" But she can't, or at the very least, she thinks she can't. "I've known you … forever, you know," she says, looking down and giving the tiniest of smiles. Of course, it's crushed under the weight of the conversation half a second later. "You used to know me better than anyone," Niki says with regret and tips her head down even further. "Just go," she says under her breath. She can't watch if he leaves again.

D.L. is staring at this woman that he's in love with. Because he's trying to do that thing where he's wanting to be with her. So much. But it just doesn't seem like it's going work out. He sighs and pushes off the cage, turning to head in the direction towards the exit again. Since that's the best place to be going right now. He stops. "I still want to." is the response he gives. Yeah, he wants to know her. He wants her. But… leaving the establishment the way he is, right now, is probably not the best way to make that happen. But… he's gone.

Niki turns and grabs one of the cage bars, leaning into it, pressing her head against her forearm. It's only a matter of less than a minute, but by the time she lifts her head, there's no sign of D.L. She takes one look around Therapy and decides the memories that drew her here aren't ones she wants to dwell on anymore. She's soon gone, too, skirting along the wall and passing the club's tongue-in-cheek faux psychology degrees and a sign that says 'COUNSELING SERVICES'. She climbs the stairs and slips out onto the quieter street.

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