nysalogs | [open] channeling angels in a new age, now.

[He wakes staring straight up into a circle of lights. Bulbs like the surrounds of a dressing room mirror cast a halo too bright to see through around his head until he gropes upward, blindly reaching for the edges of the metal lamp (too hot to touch, or it should be) and pushing it aside. Even with it gone his eyes are fucked by the afterburn, the world nothing but blotches of black and white.

He's lying on... on...

Is this a hospital bed? It feels too familiar: the metal frame, dents in the mattress where it's designed to bend. Prior's hand drops, feeling for the clean crisp cotton V of the hospital gown he has on. He hasn't been sick enough for this - no, no he was doing well. Vision slowly swimming back into focus, he makes out white sheets. Green curtains. A tray beside the bed with slim little surgical implements laid out on a tray like party canapes.

And then there's the blood. His skin feels smooth, untouched, but the floor is spattered with it. Smears and smudges across to a partly open door.]

What did they cut out of me this time? Louis? I didn't sign any consent forms for this. What have they taken? Can't be a kidney, I'm not even black market valuable now. Lou? [With a clatter he pulls himself off the bed and crouches beside the nearest pool of blood. It smells like... vinegar? No.]

Wine. This is wine? [It's on his fingers now. He sniffs it, then touches his tongue to one fingertip, just to check. Wine.] Well would you look at that. I slept though a party.

[So this place is really something. This brothel. The name's not inspiring confidence that it's any less of a fetish dungeon than he'd first guessed on being told about it. Shades Darker than what? And the scenes outside would put the streetwalkers he knows to shame. It's like a cross between some ancient Arabian fairytale souk and Times Square on a Saturday. It's not not quite his scene, not really. The crowded, messy entertainment district across the way is far more his line - but then that's the problem when sex becomes professional. People start taking it so seriously. Look how literal they've gone with the color scheme, for gods sakes.

But there's something in the air designed to unwind and ease, and it's working on him just a little.

He's only here to visit a doctor. But having given the right name at the door he's been told the man's busy, he'll have to wait. And, like showing up early for a table at a fancy restaurant, it turns out the only place to wait here is at the bar.

Picking his way between people here for other purposes, smiling and shaking his head at invitations issued right into his ear, he cuts a slight figure, all in black, as he picks out a barstool and looks to attract the attention of the woman serving. Might as well take a glass of courage while he's here.]

Edited 2017-10-19 23:35 (UTC)

My, you're a busy man.

[By the time security find a space in the brothel doctor's schedule to let Prior pay a visit, he's had maybe one more drink than he should. Silhouetted in the doorway he assumes a Norma Desmond pose, grand and a little dilapidated, surveying the little room as though he owns the place. He's black clad and far too thin but no small presence, letting the door swing sharply shut behind him.]

This is practical though, even I can't deny that. I mean, how many places can there be where you can get the STD and get rid of it all on the same night?

[The sentence carries him across the room to John's desk, and is punctuated by him dropping into the chair beside it. There's a hand held in the pair, palm pressed outward: before you start-]

I'm allowed to be flippant about it, I'm dying.

Edited 2017-10-01 14:56 (UTC)

[One benefit of having a red light district in the neighbourhood: no one gives a fuck what you're into, so long as you're paying for it. The ethos extends downwards into the various crimson painted stalls and stores lining the edge of the area. Clothes that Prior would be given long looks for paying too much attention to elsewhere in the city are free to peruse here, along with all the other trappings that go into beautifying the denizens of the district. If money weren't an object, Prior could spend a fortune. As things go, he spends hours browsing instead, coming out with kohl liner in the softest midnight blue, and a lipstick that might just suit the current pallor of his skin.

Objects palmed, he turns to find where he's supposed to pay. Only to be distracted by a display stand he'd missed before, strewn with candles and beads, and a rack of glass objects of uncertain description, discretely stacked against the wall. Candlesticks? Prior reaches to pull one a little further into the light, and notices the glass is set with ridges, leading up to a flared end.]

Well.

[The thing won't slot back the way it came, so the only possibility is pulling it further out. All twelve inches of it or more. It's almost pretty, the way it catches the light.]

Well, someone's accommodating.

[There's just a little part of Prior waiting for an elderly gentleman in a triangular blue dress to come ambling down the road toward him. Poor Merlin, the whole Disney legacy thing must just be a curse. And of course that's not who eventually forges into view, heading toward the little scrap of green between the houses where they'd arranged to meet. This Merlin's young - younger than Prior - and who knows if he can turn into bats and birds on a whim. No dress, either. Ah well, Prior of all people shouldn't trade in stereotypes.

In an attempt to look less funereal than has been his recent trend, Prior's picked up some clothes according to the fashion here. A soft grey shirt with little blue doves embroidered on the collar and a tailored coat in a burgundy so faded it's almost pink. He's difficult to miss, then, as he steps out onto the sidewalk and lifts a hand.]

[Whatever time of the night it is when Byerly abandons his piano, and any engagements that came afterwards, it is dark by the time he returns to his refugee accommodation. The streetlights here aren't much when they're lit at all, and several of the ones on this street have flickered and faded out already.

It is dark, but the figure in the street outside his house is darker still. A sharp black outline against the smudgy night: someone in a long black coat, with a black scarf pulled up half across his face.

It paces, a couple of steps one way, then the other, then steps back further into shadow and seems to huddle in on itself as if specifically attempting not to be seen. But it doesn't move more than a few meters from this one particular front door.]

[This isn't what he does. Something like him, a thing that skulks and slinks around the outskirts of society, a thing created only to destroy and therefore which has very little experience with what one would consider social niceties-- it's unsurprising, perhaps, that he prefers to keep to himself. That even here, with his world destroyed and the terminal prognosis of his rapidly decaying memories now halted by Orbiter intervention, he still tends towards the same patterns of behaviour he's always known. Keeping out of the way and out of sight, like a spectre on the edges of a crowd, a pale ghost.

So why he's not only going along with this, but practically suggested it, is beyond him. Call it the result of a shared moment of isolation in the depths of the night, or something like that. The need to fill one's mind with something other than his own clattering, convoluted thoughts.

That, and he does like the theatre.

And so here he is, coming to meet Prior at his apartment before accompanying him into the entertainment district, like some kind of gentleman. Rather than the dog he is, the instrument of war, the hound of destruction.

He knows, smartly, three times. Waits for an answer.]

[Let me know if this is okay or if you'd like me to change anything!]

[To call anything Dirk Gently does 'investigating' would, perhaps, be extraordinarily generous. Dirk, being an extraordinarily generous person, is happy to ascribe that verb to just about any activity he likes. In fact, the very nature of his methods -- and not just his methods, but reality, in which he applies them -- precludes the possibility that he is ever not investigating. Sometimes, though, he gets whimsical. Sometimes, for instance, when he's feeling particularly restless, particularly in need of something to remind him that yes, he is in fact a real detective and rather an effective one too if he says so himself (which he would, if asked), he pulls from his vast repertoire something that almost looks like investigation if one were to squint very, very hard and in the direction of something roughly adjacent to it.

The method goes like this: first, one must accept that the universe -- any universe -- is a fundamentally chaotic place, one prone to resisting any kind of probing into its squishier, more tender bits with vigor and enthusiasm. Secondly, one must accept that everything within that universe -- any universe -- is intrinsically and inextricably connected, that any one thing affects all other things in myriad and generally absolutely inscrutable ways, and that therefore knowing the angle from which to interrogate a given problem is an irrelevant question in the first place, as following any given thread will, inevitably, lead eventually -- sooner or later, if admittedly not always with the greatest efficiency -- to the desired solution. It is in fact sometimes it's best not to know much of anything at all, therefore. Check and check.

These two axioms accepted, processed, subsumed, one may proceed to step three: to find someone who looks as though they know where they're going. Someone attuned to some siren call -- call it intuition or neurochemistry or an intense desire for a sandwich -- leading them somewhere personally meaningful and therefore of objective importance on some scale. Step four, naturally, is to follow that person and see where they're going and what happens along the way.

Step 4b, in this particular iteration of the algorithm, is to run smack into someone turning a street corner at the same time as Dirk is hurrying along the sidewalk trying to keep up with his preternaturally long-legged quarry. In a universe in which there are only accidents, it follows that there may as well also be no accidents at all. One doesn't ignore a message writ so large across the face of reality. Particularly if one has just run into someone, and must take that someone by the shoulders to ensure that neither of the involved parties falls on their hindquarters.]

I am so sorry. That does happen. Hazards of the trade; you know how it is.

[He gives a little laugh, almost a guffaw, and waves an airy hand (silly me) as though yes, everybody knows how it is... whatever 'it' actually refers to in this case. A wide smile, too, which comes to his face partly because he's simply prone to smiling, and genuinely, but also partly because this is obviously some kind of lead. Remains to be seen what sort, of course, but he really does feel as though he's getting somewhere. Closer to his goal? Maybe. Further away? Also maybe. Still somewhere, and that's rather nice.

Once he's sure they're steadied, Dirk accompanies all this with a cheery wave of greeting.]

Hello! Dirk Gently. Are you quite all right?

Edited (what are closing tags) 2017-10-07 15:22 (UTC)

[He's a good heart. We need more people here who have good hearts. Byerly had spoke highly of Prior, and Dorian had been eager to meet the young man since then. After he'd recover from the hangover, he thought first. After work, he'd thought second. But work hadn't allowed time for play, and the afternoon he'd finally started for their residence was the afternoon they were evacuated.

Then there was the whole business of sleeping for an entire three days that followed, and the ordeal made it hard to be eager for much of anything. He's nursing a bottle of grappa the day he encounters Prior, loitering about the West End in hopes of some restoration of his spirits. It would work eventually, no doubt, but it was just so agonizingly slow without stimulating conversation that he can't help but speak up to anyone without thought. All that time wasted thinking he'd needed to look presentable for such a similar stranger, and here he is.]

Are there set showtimes for- Ah, pardon. [He has to cut himself off before he can go on to inquire as something as basic as scheduling to the other man, seeing as he doesn't quite look the part he'd assumed he'd find.] I nearly took you for one of the dancers. You strike that kind figure out of the corner of one's eye, you know.

Fitz || Dreams.

Rogue || Courage.

John || Pathology

Ramsey || Toying

Merlin || Traverse

Byerly || Nightbird