Hello from the Other Side
Summary: SALLY/LAURA (A guest). On the hunt for the variety of human emotions, Sally meets a new female prey that challenges her obligation to punish and kill addicts.
A/N
Ever since Hotel started, I've been in love with Sally — her past, her motivation etc. fascinate me and I really wanted to explore her character a little more. However, I didn't feel comfortable enough to write about any of the other Hotel characters so that I decided I would simply use another guest appearance for my storyline. (In case you miss our Queen, Ms. Lange, feel free to imagine Laura as a version of her.)
The title is an ode to Adele's new song, "Hello." I listened to it while writing and when I heard this line, I thought it was perfect.
I will change the rating to M as soon as I post a chapter that contains more explicit language, so please make sure to either follow or check the filter for the M-rated section.
Anyways, I would love to hear some feedback — suggestions, criticism, any kind of review that lets me know whether I should continue or not. Thank you and please enjoy!
Chapter One
Dark eyes and red lips, heavy coat and mini-dress, big hair and high heels.
Sally made her way past the reception of Hotel Cortez as if she consisted of the fiercest feelings in the world: passion, self-confidence, desire.
The truth was that Sally hadn't felt anything in a long time — sure, a hint of anger over the lack of limes Liz Taylor regularly put in her Mojito, the annoyance of having to deal with Iris on a daily basis, stuff like that.
The emotions she used to want to drown out with heroin were the ones she now lived for — but could not get.
Ever since she had been pushed out of the window, feelings had become her ecstasy, her rush of energy, her addiction. And since she couldn't find them inside of herself, she had to find them in other people. The celebrity that was too famous to have friends, the detective that had lost his son. How she pitied them, those lost souls that were making her mistakes.
And now she was about to find out what had made the curvy, middle-aged blonde at the bar the damaged woman that she was. Sally had smelled her addiction the second she exited the elevator and had been walking straight towards her ever since, not letting her eyes stray once.
Without making any effort to check whether the seat was available, Sally sat down next to her.
"Martini. Sour," she said coolly, as if Liz Taylor didn't already know her order.
"The regular," she responded and left to prepare her liquor-based work of art.
Being the bold, dead woman that she was, Sally didn't hide her interest in the blonde and, without any hesitation whatsoever, turned to look directly at her.
"Can I buy you a drink?"
She was greeted by a baffled gaze that reminded her that real, living people actually still clung to abundant and silly social rules like privacy and the uncomfortableness of its intrusion.
To her surprise, the woman's initial astonishment slowly transformed into a soft smile.
"I already have a drink." Her eyes pointed to the Bourbon in her hands.
"I was referring to the one after that." Sally couldn't help but smirk seductively even though her original intention had only been to smile.
"I'm Sally," she continued and, deliberately skipping to offer a handshake along with her introduction, she addressed Liz Taylor.
"Keep 'em coming, Liz." Sally pointed to both her and her neighbor's glass.
The bar keeper silently placed the Martini in Sally's hands, which was confirmation enough.
"Laura," the other woman said and took a slow, almost lazy sip from her glass before she vaguely raised it in Sally's direction, "thank you for the future drinks."
Her new friend's apparent hint of disinterest didn't bother Sally; she was easily able to maintain a sense of superiority as she felt extensive pity for Laura's addiction. She saw the flaws clearly, each particle of the blonde a reminder of her own dependence on drugs: the ridiculousness of always looking high, the piles of money that she senselessly threw away, the constant need to inject more poison into her veins. Although the woman might have caught her attention with her with her looks, the truth was that she was pitiful.
Sally took pleasure in the feeling of having an advantage but she was also overcome with desire: a desire to get to know every dark corner of her struggles, a desire to observe her suffering at first hand.
"Your first time at the Cortez?"
Sally's voice sounded as rough as her eye-makeup looked; after 10pm she made a specific effort to sound mysterious.
"Indeed," the pathetic object of her desire answered, unable to reciprocate Sally's level of mysteriousness.
"You will like it here. The history of this place suits," Sally bit the rim of her glass simply for the joy of making Laura wait for the end of the sentence, "your character."
Strangely amused, the guest laughed as she exhaled and Sally noticed that the features in her face became more visible, more distinct: small dimples formed next to the corners of her mouth, a few wrinkles next to her eyes appeared. Her face lit with light emotion that made her look softer, more accessible — and more attractive to the ex-addict who was watching her closely.
"Does it?" She raised her eyebrows and enjoyed the burn of the last sip of her drink run down her throat.
Laura loved the uncomfortable, the dangerous — being at the edge made her feel alive. Not in the happy, refreshed kind of way, but in the way of feeling the weight of the misery eat you inside out. Her chosen pain, she tried to convince herself, was easier to bear than the pain of the world and was, at the same time, a suitable punishment for her continuous failures. The truth was that she hated herself; she loathed every part of the disappointment that was Laura Faye, medicating her self-hatred with excessive consume of alcohol and drugs — and, of course, the occasional sex escapade — anything that could make her numb to reality, even if just momentarily.
She looked down as flashes of the reason for her Bourbon affinity haunted her. Before they could unfold, Liz' hands appeared before her eyes and filled her empty glass with the slightly translucent, brown liquid.
Sally watched, entertained by even the slightest changes in Laura's face, and maintained a self-confident, almost satisfied smile.
"So, Bourbon-girl," she let the words fall off her lips playfully. "What brought you here?"
"How about you tell me what brought you here," Laura countered, surprised at her own boldness that didn't seem so unusual anymore once she considered the amount of alcohol that had to be running through her veins by then.
Sally leaned forward and left the weight of her head on the back of her hands, her elbows braced on the cold surface of the bar's counter.
"I'm the one buying the drinks. You're the one answering the questions."
Her big, black eyes blinked, radiating a dreamy yet sinister look that briefly diminished Laura's confidence. Trying not to let it show, she turned towards Sally, who was shortly distracted by the sudden appearance of her opponent's legs from underneath the counter's shadow.
"How about we relocate this conversation to my room? I'm sure room service can supply us with the appropriate amount of drinks there, too."
"Listen, girl, I'm not your mother. If you want a drink up there, you better get it yourself." Liz Taylor barged in, catching both of the ladies' attention.
While Laura felt seemingly insecure by his remark, Sally put him off by waving her hand casually.
"Don't listen to her," she slid off the bar stool, grabbed Laura's wrist and pulled her away from the bar.
The latter quickly fetched her drink and was too preoccupied with keeping up with Sally's pace to look back to see Liz' reaction.
Sally walked straight into the elevator while her follower rather stumbled into it. Once they had entered, Laura watched the former addict press one of the buttons and laughed it off when she flinched as the doors closed. Suddenly feeling the appealing dizziness of the alcohol, she pressed her back to one of the elevator's walls and let her head fall back so that her eyes were directed towards the ceiling. At first she examined its uncommon design and pattern but stopped as soon as she discovered what seemed like a leak or some other kind of stain. With every second she focused her gaze, her uneasiness grew.
"Is that…," she paused shortly to find the right words without sounding insane, "is that a stain of blood?"
Sally didn't bother to look and simply chuckled while she took a few steps towards the other woman.
"The designers of this house have a peculiar taste."
Given Sally's proximity, Laura's eyes were forced to detach from the mysterious, red spot and soon found themselves captured by what seemed like the exact same color on her newfound friend's lips. Before the boiling steam of sudden desire could settle in her stomach, the elevator scared it away by abruptly coming to a halt. The doors opened with a ding and reminded her to look for her key.
"It's room 75," she started digging through her small purse, "I think it's that way." She nodded to her left.
"Don't worry; I know this place better than I know myself." Sally started walking down the hallway, the sound of her heals dulled by the carpet.
"And I mean that."
She looked over her shoulder casually, making sure Laura had caught on.
As soon as they walked in, Laura threw the key on the dresser next to the door, set down her freshly refilled glass of Bourbon and took off her purse.
"We should have got you another drink down there." She briefly vanished in the bathroom.
In the meantime, without any hesitation, Sally squatted down to open the bottom drawer of the dresser and emerged with an unopened bottle of vodka.
When Laura returned, she was positively surprised at the sight of the clear liquid in the mysterious lady's hands.
"There's always some vodka here."
Sally opened the bottle, threw away the lid — which both startled Laura and turned her on — and took a big swig before setting it down on the table by the window.
"The only thing you don't have to worry about here is the lack of alcohol."
"Seems like I chose the right hotel, then."
Even though it had only been a few hours since her last fix, Laura started to feel the increasing craving in her body alongside a stifling distraction that she knew would not vanish until she injected more of the poisonous magic. For a second she regretted bringing Sally to her room, the desire to feel the drug in her veins suddenly bigger than the desire to be in the other woman's company. She could never know their stance on the drug when meeting new people and it always took crossing a line inside of her to ask them about it and to, eventually, be able to inject in their presence.
Sally didn't even have to look at her to know that she was craving another rush of energy and she hated her for it. Part of her wanted to run up to her, grab her shoulders, shake her and scream at her until sense would enter her mind. The other part of the ex-addict wanted to see her crave, inject, thrive, decline, crash, suffer — and perhaps even die. Now it seemed to be Sally who needed her fix, a fix so complex that it could never fit through a needle.
Laura finally resolved to disregard her fear and ask her guest; whether Sally fancied heroin herself or not, she shouldn't have a problem with waiting one minute so that at least Laura could take her medicine. When she looked up, though, she suddenly froze when Sally's eyes caught hers and seemed to capture her whole essence at the speed of light. A bright shimmer had spread in her opponent's eyes and had the smallest indication of something fascinating that Laura didn't quite understand. It was something more than vulnerability; rather an oddly reassuring, sad sense of a dark past; a darkness more sincere than that of her usual late-night acquaintances.
Experiencing the journey of Sally's eyes in slow-motion, Laura was unable to comprehend how it was possible that the other woman suddenly stood right in front of her, so close to her face that their noses almost touched. Her mouth opened and, suddenly desperate to feel as much of her counterpart as possible, she inhaled deeply and soon tasted a concoction of Sally's smoke-stained breath and the room's decayed air.
The ghost's eyelids dropped, revealing more of her deep black eyeshadow. Without having to look, she knew that her old, white-skinned friend was already standing behind Laura, sensing her potential without touching her. She was drawn to feel the blonde's lips on hers, the soft touch of comfort and desire but, at the same time, she was unsure whether that would be worth opening up Laura's world to the demon.
Hearing her heavy breathing, the ex-addict grabbed Laura's chin with her right hand and squeezed her cheeks just so her fingernails would leave the slightest dent in them. Before she knew it, Sally pulled the blonde's face towards hers and all at once closed the small distance that was the only space between them.
TBC