Mimosa Harrington
Hogwarts Head Girl
Posts : 1500
Birthday : 2013-08-13
Join date : 2017-07-22
 | | Subject: It's enough for this restless warrior just to be with you (One Shot & Trigger Warning) Tue Jan 14, 2020 9:17 pm | |
| He had dropped the car off at the Fox parking lots.
It hadn’t been as hard as he had expected. In fact, it went seamlessly. His access card was still active and no one treated him any different. Apparently, word had not gotten out yet that he and Tessa were no longer dating. The woman was probably too grief stricken to make calls immediately though Jackson had no doubt he would at least be losing some if not all his privileges soon with the media giant. After dropping off the company car, the politician had seriously considered renting one on his own. Perhaps temporary ownership of a vehicle would convince him to stay sober?
Or it would just result in him driving drunk and hurting yet another person out of selfishness.
Still, the moment he called an Uber felt like defeat, so much so that when he got into the back of the executive car with tinted windows and shoved a few hundred dollar bills at the driver, it didn’t feel like anything. Or rather, it didn’t feel any worse than sitting at the back of the car wallowing in his own repugnance. The driver hadn’t said a word, the money doing its work. When someone tossed as much as he had and entered a destination labeled simply as “Downtown”, he probably needed to be driven around some.
They drove aimlessly for two hours, enough so that the sun was starting to set when they entered a more crowded street. Jackson couldn’t pinpoint what he did in those hours except self-loath but he supposed that was what was most important. He had hurt two wonderful witches and for what? The man refused to think that telling Tessa the truth had been wrong. Isn’t that what you were supposed to do? Tell the truth? Or should he have just lied, kept on dating her while being in love with someone else?
No, even he couldn’t be that much of a bastard.
“I need a whiz,” he finally spoke as the sun was setting. The driver merely nodded, steering the car into a shabby street lined with places of questionable repute. Not that Jackson minded. As soon as the vehicle came to a stop, the man exited without a word. The driver didn’t even wait a few minutes out of courtesy for Jackson to go into the neon lit establishment, high tailing it out of there to his next assignment. A few hundred dollars in LA only got you so far.
Didn’t he know it.
There would be more worries tomorrow. Breaking up with Tessa meant a lot of things. But the most affected area would be his work. Without Fox’s steady stream of funding, they would not be able to keep their offices running for long. They wouldn’t be able to campaign for 2028. They might even have to sell the whole team for parts.
And HR420, the only good thing Jackson had ever done in office, would be shelved and killed.
He really should have taken that deal with Purdue. He would have been able to support his campaign with their cash. Now, Kushner would get to kill the bill and Jackson would have nothing to show for it. Perhaps it was what the wizard rightly deserved after all he had done.
In his haste to find the bathroom, Jackson had barely noticed where he was. But the place became all too clear as he exited, coal black eyes roving over the colorful sign and the man out front acting as both bouncer and ticket issuer. Aimlessly, Jackson walked over to him, notions of asking for direction vaguely on his mind. The man had no time for small talk though, simply growling “Two drinks minimum plus cover charge”. Mutely, Jackson handed over a fifty, only to have the bouncer/collector look at him expectantly. The politician handed over another twenty and received a change of less than five dollars, granting him entry into one of the seediest strip clubs he’d ever seen.
The stage took up the entire left side, small tables crowding around it like ants around a sugar mountain. The music immediately assaulted his senses, making his head pound and by the time he was shown to a table, the unmistakable smell of the place had seeped into his nose as well. He hadn’t been to a strip club in over two years now and he had not missed it.
A waitress wearing little more than the performers on stage stopped by, asking him what drinks he’d like. Jackson simply told her to surprise him and sure enough, two glasses of their most expensive scotch were soon found on his table, daring him to take a sip.
He probably should. Everyone here was drinking. It was one of the two reasons why they were here.
And if he was going to drink, he may as well indulge in the other activity too. It wasn’t like he was going to get laid anytime soon.
“Hey handsome,” a soft, sultry voice called out from his right, making him took up into a pair of too perfect breasts. “Pole dancing not your speed?” When he made no reply, instead making a great effort to avert his gaze from her ample bosom to her heavily made up eyes, she continued. “I would have been quite offended, if I was dancing up there.”
Unsure how to reply, the man reached up to touch his cap, finding it wasn’t there. “My apologies Ma’am, I didn’t mean to be rude.”
“Ah, Southern boy, I see. And a sad one at that.”
Once again, Jackson had no reply to her calculated intuitiveness. So he merely hung his head. If a stranger in LA could tell he was sad, he must look miserable. If a stripper knew it, she must have smelt blood in the waters.
“I know how to make that frown turn upside down,” she offered leaning down to whisper in his ear. Before he could accept or decline, the girl had snapped her fingers and as if on autopilot, a tent had been erected around their table, ready for a private lap dance.
***
He had to go to a meeting, that was the only thing on his mind at a quarter to eleven in the evening. Jackson had never attended meetings here, didn’t even know where good community centers for such things were in this town. But a quick Google search on his phone had suggested a place not too far from the strip club and that was where he was headed.
He had done a fuckton of wrong today, but perhaps he could do one thing right.
***
“What’s your name?” It had taken a while to ask a question, mostly Jackson had been content to let her do what she wanted. And the first thing she had wanted to do was sit across from him and reach for one of his scotch glasses.
“I can be whatever you want me to be, honey.” She replied, lowering the glass from her lips and batting her false eyelashes at him. “I could be sweet little Rebecca from your high school, down on her luck and needing to make a few bucks here in the big city,” she offered. When he didn’t reply, she rose from her seat, moving slowly towards him, her hips swaying to the music that may have been dulled from the tent around them but was still very much present. “Or I could be a child bride, smuggled from Russia through Alaska who’s just escaped and is looking for a gentle, decent, man.” As she said this, one red lacquered fingernail came to rest on his shoulder, her other fingers following shortly as she pushed him back in his chair.
“Not Alaska, not after the NAFTA collapse.”
“Pulling out of NAFTA was the best thing President Trump ever did.”
“Only to replace it with something exactly the same.”
At this point, the stripper had looked up at him with genuine curiosity in her eyes, forcing Jackson to notice that they were in fact a serene shade of blue under all that makeup. “Political enthusiast?” she had guessed and for lack of a better answer, Jackson had given her that much.
“Something like that.”
“I’m a PolySci major at university,” she offered with her first genuine smile.
***
At first glance, it didn’t make sense to hold a meeting this late. Wasn’t this the time when all bars and clubs were open and functioning? And most drunk or ill behaved, uninhibited people out on the streets? But perhaps that was the point? One had to get to the meetings while avoiding all of the night scenes of the city? Kind of like an obstacle course to get through to the other end where salvation awaited.
And quite a few people had made it through that obstacle course, the politician assumed as he entered the building where the meeting was to be held in another fifteen minutes. He was attracting attention, he knew that. He smelled of the strip club and he had Michelle’s glitter all over his white jacket. There was a wet patch on his trousers that no amount of tactical jacket placement would cover up and he simply reeked of desperation, sadness and disgust.
But that was why he was here. He needed help.
Now more than ever.
***
“So, why are you here, Handsome?”
“I… just broke up with my girlfriend.”
Far from being put off, the stripper leaned towards him with more interest. Now this, this was a breed she was well acquainted with. Every night without fail, someone came in from a fight with the wife, a breakup with a girlfriend, a turn down from a date. And she was used to soothing all those bruised egos. “Bitch,” she murmured, lips well practiced around the word. “You are so much better off,’ she simpered, underlying her expletive. “I can show you exactly how much better off if you loosen that belt of yours.”
“I cheated on her.”
That gave her pause. Just when she was sure she had his type down, he changed. Of all her clientele, this one was turning out to be… actually interesting.
“And why would you do that?”
“Because I found the girl I’m going to marry.”
***
The room was filling up. Within minutes, almost twenty people had gathered with chairs laid out for even more to arrive and take their seats. A box of semi stale pastries rested on a table by one side, next to two giant coolers containing coffee and tea. Most people here seem to know each other, greeting their fellow sufferers by name. First time attendants were easy to spot, there were only two others beside him who looked awkward and out of place.
Jackson had taken his seat at the far corner of the back row, not wanting to cast too much attention to himself. Though that was perhaps impossible now because too late he’d realized sitting at the back meant sitting close to the door. The same door everyone was coming in through, seeing him first thing and judging him second thing.
His instinct from the start had been to run. He could find another meeting. A more discrete one. Maybe one where there weren’t quite so many chairs…
But he had to do it. If not for himself, then for her. He had to get better, and that started now.
***
Michelle was not a bad kid, he found himself thinking as she polished off the scotch. Perhaps not as conventional as he preferred but she was still young. And part of being an American was being free to make your own choices. If she chose to work in a strip club to support her university education, she had that right.
“You know everyone deals with it differently right?”
‘And how would you know that?”
“Why do you think I’m here?” Unlike Victoria, Michelle was completely unapologetic. Perhaps she had truly embraced what had happened to her. Or whatever had happened hadn’t been severe enough. Jackson didn’t feel comfortable pointing it out though. And in a minute, he learned he didn’t have to.
“You don’t believe me.” It was not a question, just a statement of fact. “You think someone made a pass at me at a bar, groped me at worst and now I’m pretending it was a bigger thing than it was.”
“I didn’t say th-“
“I was raped by half a dozen men. Four classmates, my dorm RA and my Intro to Psych Professor. He called me into his office to discuss my paper, roofied me and had a go before I was even fully passed out, then called his top students in for a share of the prize. They cut my panties six ways to take back home as a souvenir.”
“You don’t have to talk abou-“
“Why, because it makes you uncomfortable? You look smart, are you starting to understand the problem?”
And in that moment, he really was starting to. Even through the haze of a young, lithe woman sitting on his lap, running her long fingers over his body as she spoke of her assault.
He was finally starting to understand.
***
“Hello everyone, my name is Jenny.”
“Hi Jenny,” the chorus of voices echoed back, Jackson’s own barely above a whisper. This had been a bad idea. Jenny was now the first newcomer to speak, signifying that newbies would be put in the spotlight from here on.
“As you... probably know, this is my first time. I’m here because… because my wonderful girlfriend said I should see someone and the idea of therapy terrifies me. I just… one on one with the therapist judging me for… for my relapses. It seemed easier to start by being in a group of people who’ve been through the same.”
A polite round of laughter followed, this time, Jackson didn’t bother chiming in.
This was a bad idea.
But it was too late to back out now.
***
“Then why are you here, of all places?” the politician inquired, truly skeptical. This was not how victims of sexual abuse were. They were like Victoria. Quiet, small, easily scared. They didn’t give hand jobs for cash at strip clubs.
“Because I had to prove to myself that those people had no power over me. That what happened to me does not define me. I come in here every day, go to men I choose to go to, make more than people working nine hours at an office every day and tell those motherfuckers that they do not control me.”
Jackson remained quiet, leaning forwards, head in hands as the thoughts crashed over him. Michelle had vacated his lap in favor of the scotch some time ago, clearly noticing that he was in need of another type of release altogether.
“So what do I do now?”
“You’re asking a stripper what to do?” A sincere laugh escaped her scarlet lips before her blue eyes turned to his. “Start by listening. No matter how uncomfortable it makes you. Stop making things about yourself, Handsome. She went through something horrible; the last thing she needs to worry about is how her trauma is affecting you.”
It was suddenly becoming clear to Jackson where he had been wrong. And boy had he been wrong. In everything.
“You know, you’re really smart.”
“For a stripper?”
“No, you’re smart period.” And with that, Jackson took out his wallet and emptied all the cash he had in it. Though Michelle protested that she didn’t charge for services not provided, Jackson wouldn’t hear of it. The man got up from his seat and exited the step in a hurry, knocking over the glass of scotch on his way out. He would find the stain it left only later as he headed out to locate the nearest meeting in his current area.
***
“Hi everyone I’m... Blake.”
“Hi Blake.”
“I want to start by apologizing to you all. I’m… not like you.” This time, his gaze rose to meet all those who had turned in their seat to stare at him. Rows upon rows of women, some clad as if in the dead of winter, some holding themselves in a way that made them small like Victoria did, others watching him with guarded eyes, their suspicions confirmed that he was not one of them and therefore should not be in this meeting.
“I came here tonight because... Because the woman I love went through something you all did. And I don’t know how to deal with it. I don’t know how to be there for her… I don’t know how to talk to her about it… I feel… rage when I think about what happened to her and I feel as if…” A pause, to collect himself so his voice wouldn’t break.
“I should have protected her… But I didn’t and now we can’t go back, only forwards. I need to understand what she’s going through and I was hoping that by listening to all of you… I realize it’s a terrible invasion of your privacy but I’m asking. No, I’m begging you all to please… help me understand. I need to understand what victims feel and how to make them better.”
The room echoed with pin drop silence after his admission, no one making a sound until the group coordinator finally spoke up.
“Well, for starters, stop calling her a victim. She’s a goddamn survivor is what she is, and you best believe it.” ________________________________________________
Last edited by Mimosa Harrington on Sun Jan 19, 2020 10:26 am; edited 2 times in total | |
|
