Allison Hargreeves | #00.03 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
numberthree) wrote2021-07-27 10:56 pm
numberthree) wrote2021-07-27 10:56 pm
Entry tags:
[Day 0] ☂️ I don’t pay attention to the world ending
It’s a night like any other night.
A dress and matching jewelry that could buy a small house or a large yacht. Two or three hours in a chair, with her eyes mostly closed, while her hair and her makeup are done to exquisite perfection by people who stake their livelihood on color wheels, the association to her name, and know far better by now than to attempt to make small talk.
If she could have gotten out of this without a minor news scandal and being hounded about it for the next few months, she would have. But it’s an opening, and there’s no way either of those was going to happen feasibly, so she never says it, and she grinds back into her bones the need for a cigarette and a drink. That can come much later. When she’s back home in the wee hours of tomorrow, and this long day is over again.
Her name is spiking the charts again, while she'd slept half the day.
There’s a limo with the director and Love on Loan’s newest leading man, champagne and smiles, while she refuses to let herself lean into the whisper of her thoughts. (The fourth person who should be the car; was here the last two times.) It’s only champagne and smiles, being talked up about who will be there, who it’s most important to put a word in with, and who is looking for her that it would behoove saying hello to even if it won’t lead to anything for them later. The notes on their speech.
It’s old hat. She mastered this so long ago.
How to smile like the sun itself through everything.
(The last eight months have only sunk those claws in deeper.)
When the limo pulls to a stop, there are people to open the doors, and Allison is last to step out, taking the hand of her lead and brandishing a smile that looks like this is the only place in the entire world she’s ever wanted to be. In front of all these crying, screaming, cheering faces; applauding hands; stomping feet; a million flashing cameras and journalists, pens to paper, already calling her name and flinging questions.
Allison handed off her purse to one of the red carpet attendants before she walked out to stand before them, unaccompanied before Fathom’s Love on Loan 3 photo backdrop. She sails straight through it in perfect gliding steps, a star that grew only more radiant for the adoration spilling over it. All spotlight and glam, a wash of voices and smiles, and even more camera flashes’s going to capture the photos that will top all the papers tomorrow.
In a direction she wouldn’t expect except in a dicey interview sharp turn. It isn’t until one throws out a question about her father (When was the last time you saw your father?), then her family (Have you heard from your brothers?) that everything is going sideways, pear-shaped. Still, the next second, while the crowd’s clamor is only swelling louder, another Red Carpet assistant’s fingers are touching her arm. She is stepping behind Allison, saying that the news just announced her father’s death, and it’s unprocessable, but she’s smarter than that, trained better than that.
Allison gave the crowd of reporters a small wave goodbye to the cameras. She walked off with the woman who had joined her, irritation at war with confusion, as everything cold, hard, easy order slid sideways further and further sideways. Her father? Dead?
~*~*~
She wasn’t expected to stay after that.
If she did, it would shift the focus of Love on Loan 3’s opening to the biggest throwback news story about The Umbrella Academy since Vanya’s book, instead of what it was. An exclusive, early Hollywood movie opening. It would be easy enough for them to make excuses for her and everyone in the crowd to understand (and be disappointed they were denied their pound of flesh until after it was over).
The whole event was already trumped. This week’s news would be Hargreeves related, but not Allison Hargreeves and about her newest movie, except tangentially. Far more pages in than could have been expected even thirty minutes earlier. It was just managing it with as much aplomb as could be saved now.
The limo was pulled around to the back, and even then there was a crowd to contend with, journalist’s for handlers, assistants, and security to repeatedly tell “No comment” to as she was bustled, under dark glasses now too, in as fast as could be psychically possible. Her head still ringing with the words as the car started inching its way out. Crowds who showed up to sneak a peek but who weren’t A-Listed Guests and able to afford tickets still gathered outside. Still pressing in. Like her throat.
It still felt impossible to grasp the words repeating over and over in her head. Especially with a security guard in front with the driver, and an assistant in the back with her, tasked with making sure she got home safe and without being accosted by whoever might already be waiting at her house. Still too much publicity for anything like letting herself feel it. Letting it more than skitter back and forth across her mind, but not free to take her whole face.
It seemed entirely impossible for it to be real. The man who was going to outlive them all through pure heartless, arrogant, disappointment dead? Allison reached up and rubbed her temples against the tumbling feelings. Something missing somewhere she couldn’t name. The tangle of bitterness and unmoored surprise refused to stop binding her bones. Not sadness, at least not in any simple, straightforward fashion, but a feeling someone had stabbed her face front, and while jerking out the knife, taken everything in her chest and guts with it. He’d still been the only thing she’d ever had for a father.
Even if that had been a piss poor version, to be sure.
A dress and matching jewelry that could buy a small house or a large yacht. Two or three hours in a chair, with her eyes mostly closed, while her hair and her makeup are done to exquisite perfection by people who stake their livelihood on color wheels, the association to her name, and know far better by now than to attempt to make small talk.
If she could have gotten out of this without a minor news scandal and being hounded about it for the next few months, she would have. But it’s an opening, and there’s no way either of those was going to happen feasibly, so she never says it, and she grinds back into her bones the need for a cigarette and a drink. That can come much later. When she’s back home in the wee hours of tomorrow, and this long day is over again.
Her name is spiking the charts again, while she'd slept half the day.
There’s a limo with the director and Love on Loan’s newest leading man, champagne and smiles, while she refuses to let herself lean into the whisper of her thoughts. (The fourth person who should be the car; was here the last two times.) It’s only champagne and smiles, being talked up about who will be there, who it’s most important to put a word in with, and who is looking for her that it would behoove saying hello to even if it won’t lead to anything for them later. The notes on their speech.
It’s old hat. She mastered this so long ago.
How to smile like the sun itself through everything.
(The last eight months have only sunk those claws in deeper.)
When the limo pulls to a stop, there are people to open the doors, and Allison is last to step out, taking the hand of her lead and brandishing a smile that looks like this is the only place in the entire world she’s ever wanted to be. In front of all these crying, screaming, cheering faces; applauding hands; stomping feet; a million flashing cameras and journalists, pens to paper, already calling her name and flinging questions.
Allison handed off her purse to one of the red carpet attendants before she walked out to stand before them, unaccompanied before Fathom’s Love on Loan 3 photo backdrop. She sails straight through it in perfect gliding steps, a star that grew only more radiant for the adoration spilling over it. All spotlight and glam, a wash of voices and smiles, and even more camera flashes’s going to capture the photos that will top all the papers tomorrow.
In a direction she wouldn’t expect except in a dicey interview sharp turn. It isn’t until one throws out a question about her father (When was the last time you saw your father?), then her family (Have you heard from your brothers?) that everything is going sideways, pear-shaped. Still, the next second, while the crowd’s clamor is only swelling louder, another Red Carpet assistant’s fingers are touching her arm. She is stepping behind Allison, saying that the news just announced her father’s death, and it’s unprocessable, but she’s smarter than that, trained better than that.
Allison gave the crowd of reporters a small wave goodbye to the cameras. She walked off with the woman who had joined her, irritation at war with confusion, as everything cold, hard, easy order slid sideways further and further sideways. Her father? Dead?
~*~*~
She wasn’t expected to stay after that.
If she did, it would shift the focus of Love on Loan 3’s opening to the biggest throwback news story about The Umbrella Academy since Vanya’s book, instead of what it was. An exclusive, early Hollywood movie opening. It would be easy enough for them to make excuses for her and everyone in the crowd to understand (and be disappointed they were denied their pound of flesh until after it was over).
The whole event was already trumped. This week’s news would be Hargreeves related, but not Allison Hargreeves and about her newest movie, except tangentially. Far more pages in than could have been expected even thirty minutes earlier. It was just managing it with as much aplomb as could be saved now.
The limo was pulled around to the back, and even then there was a crowd to contend with, journalist’s for handlers, assistants, and security to repeatedly tell “No comment” to as she was bustled, under dark glasses now too, in as fast as could be psychically possible. Her head still ringing with the words as the car started inching its way out. Crowds who showed up to sneak a peek but who weren’t A-Listed Guests and able to afford tickets still gathered outside. Still pressing in. Like her throat.
It still felt impossible to grasp the words repeating over and over in her head. Especially with a security guard in front with the driver, and an assistant in the back with her, tasked with making sure she got home safe and without being accosted by whoever might already be waiting at her house. Still too much publicity for anything like letting herself feel it. Letting it more than skitter back and forth across her mind, but not free to take her whole face.
It seemed entirely impossible for it to be real. The man who was going to outlive them all through pure heartless, arrogant, disappointment dead? Allison reached up and rubbed her temples against the tumbling feelings. Something missing somewhere she couldn’t name. The tangle of bitterness and unmoored surprise refused to stop binding her bones. Not sadness, at least not in any simple, straightforward fashion, but a feeling someone had stabbed her face front, and while jerking out the knife, taken everything in her chest and guts with it. He’d still been the only thing she’d ever had for a father.
Even if that had been a piss poor version, to be sure.