Your Scars • •

[Thayer Rhodes Finch]

Finch had a feeling that he was the guy in his building that everyone else hated. He was always having packages delivered when he was at work, and when he had days off he would come home with some new project that meant he blocked the stairs awkwardly, or got in someone’s way when they were trying to rush in and out of the place. He didn’t do it on purpose, but when he took the apartment on the second to top floor, he didn’t think everything would be so difficult. He job as an actor meant that he could be out at all hours. Sometimes the themed tours were at night, or they were a steady nine to five venture. It depended on the time of the year. And he liked to keep busy, so he had hobbies that kept his hands fiddling with something until he was ready to hit his pillow and call it a night. They could be loud sometimes, and he was the first to admit that he lost track of the time and didn’t see when the sun gave way to the moon. Finch was harmless, despite his appearance some days. He knew he looked like he stepped out of a prison gangs when he felt like he had fell out of the wrong side of the bed, but he was a friendly guy who just acted impulsively a little too much.

Today was a day where he had lost track of the sighs and the huffs, the eye rolls and the glares. Finch had tried to be polite and smile, ask his neighbours how their day had been, but none of them seemed too keen on striking up a conversation with him. It wasn’t his fault that the elevator was out of order. He couldn’t whip out a crystal ball and foresee that happening when he was ordering the sheets of metal for a new project he had dreamt up for the empty brick wall in his bedroom. It also meant that when he had signed for the delivery he had to manoeuvre it up the stairs, which was considerably difficult given that he was just one man trying to make use of his single day off this week. It had taken him all of his time to get the sheets to his floor, three of them in total, all bigger than he was and wider than the actual stairwell. It wasn’t an easy task when he was on his own, and after the second flight he had felt his t-shirt sticking to his back. By now he knew he had to look something of a mess.

Holding the sheets steady with one hand, Finch took a moment to catch his breath. This was the home stretch. His door was just at the end of this hallway, and getting the metal there wasn’t as tough as getting it up the stairs. He was happy that the stairs were done with now. He wasn’t entirely sure he could handle any more of them. He took a deep breath and began moving the first one down the way. He felt like this bit went quicker, but he shook his head free of the tricks his imagination must have been playing on him. With all three propped by his door, he dug the key out of his pocket, wiped his brow with the back of his arm, and popped his door open. He didn’t care where they went once they were inside, so long as they were inside. Shelley came to see what was going on, sniffing at his legs curiously, trying to push past him, but he wrestled her back inside where she retreated to her favourite spot on the couch. Finch had the first sheet in his hand, rotated and held steady to try and angle it through the door frame, when he felt the presence of someone behind him. He paused, arms tense as he held the sheet of metal still, and peeked back over his shoulder. “Hi. Won’t be a minute. I hope.” He said, shimmying the sheet as best he could through his door. It clipped something on a shelf and he heard the thud and roll of something on his wooden floor before Shelley ran after it in hopes it was a toy or food. “Maybe two.”

• • •

TAGGED! Bexley Dresden Maze
WORDS! 731!
OUTFIT! Metal Man!
LYRICS! I Believe - - - Christina Perri
NOTES! <3

[Bexley Dresden Maze]

Bex used her apartment as an escape from her office and the world outside. It was where she hid from the world when she just didn't feel like joining the masses. She worked damn hard to get the place and then get it to how she wanted it. She could have easily afforded some swanky place among the upper crust but Bex wasn't that girl; even if ninety percent of the time she looked the part. She had fallen head over heels in love with the building. It had character and a wicked story, which was what sold her on the place. Bex had looked at the three available places in the old factory but the first two weren't to her liking, too fixed up and posh. The third, her apartment, had exposed ceilings so all the pipework was visible and her walls were the original brick. At least, most of them were. She had negotiated the contract right then and there and signed it as soon as the corrections were made. Bex was brilliant at her job and smiled a lot through it so people thought they were doing her a favour, and she let them think that.

The noise coming from downstairs was irritating enough that she decided to pack up her laptop and risk looking like one of those SNL writers rejects working from a table at Starbucks to get something done. She had four different contracts to write up and spin so her clients had loopholes but their management teams did not. Bex was damn good at her job and she wanted to be the best in the business. She wanted people to instantly think of her name when they thought of an entertainment lawyer. She was well on her way there when she could concentrate on the job at hand. If it hadn't been for the fact that the office was hiring the new interns this week, she would have been in her office there. They all wanted to please everyone and it irritated Bexley. She had been eager when she'd applied for the internship but she hadn't been trying to kiss everyone's ass. Her "refreshing" attitude was the reason she'd been offered a position at the firm after her internship. Bex wasn't there to make friends and be everyone's buddy, she wasn't there to impress anyone but her boss and her clients; which was exactly what she did.

Starbucks didn't bring Bex the results she wanted so she ordered herself another cold drink and headed back to her home to blast the music and hope to hell that it covered whatever was happening on the floor below her. She didn't know many of her neighbours, as in she knew two. The man she shared the floor with and the woman on the second she'd shared an elevator with and bonded over the pizza place, and the hotter than sin delivery man from two blocks over. She always told herself she would go to one of the mixers someone was throwing, opening up their apartment to the entire building but she was never around and only saw the remnants the morning after. It almost felt like living in a dorm again, only her place was much nicer these days. She stopped on the landing before her floor, opened the door and leaned against the frame, watching for a moment a guy, probably around her own age, attempt to get a large piece of metal into an apartment. "Take your time. This isn't my floor. I was just curious about what sent me to Starbucks." She returned casually with a shrug. "Need help?" She asked almost immediately. It looked like he was having a hell of a time getting that sheet of mental through the doorway.

♦ ♦ ♦

TAG; Thayer Rhodes Finch
WORDS; 630
LYRICS; Good --Lindsay Ell
NOTES; <3

[Thayer Rhodes Finch]

As an actor in New York City, Finch was used to the eye rolls and the false smiles that simply rang with the chorus of ‘oh, another one’. He wasn’t auditioning for TV shows, or fighting for spots on Broadway though. He had his gigs themed around educational events, holidays, and historical tours of the city and the sights. He had a separate wardrobe for the costumes he often found himself wearing, some of them terrifying, some festive, and some accurate to the time period he was pretending he was stepping right out from. He was a little less keen of his wig collection, but they were mostly fancy renaissance pieces that came out once in a blue moon when there was a school visit in his diary, or a museum event that he had been hired for. He liked the change of pace that came with this branch of acting. He enjoyed interacting with different crowds, scaring them, delighting them. It felt more rewarding than watching himself on some small screen having a walk on part in a hospital drama, or getting shot and playing a victim in a cop procedural. No, as a man who liked to get his hands dirty, he wanted to bounce from character to character, travelling through time like he had his very own magical blue box.

It was a childish fantasy in some ways, but the fact that his inner child got to come out and play while he was grown up and earning money to pay the bills seemed amazing to Finch. He had lost a lot of those younger years of fun because of how he looked after his mom and sister. He had been working for the past thirteen years of his life; something most people didn’t accomplish until their late thirties. He was grit and steel; ironically the same things he spent his free time playing with. Taking broken things and making them beautiful, twisting them into something new and artistic, was therapeutic for Finch. In many ways it had helped him through his grief at their family’s inherited disease; the thing that might ultimately kill them all. He didn’t want to dwell on those dark, soul sucking “what ifs”, so he took the things people tossed away and fixed them up; something doctors hadn’t been able to do for his mom. Hell, one day he might find himself in her position, but at least he could say he had made something beautiful in his life. His mom had always said that her accomplishment was her children, but Finch refused to pass on the disease that lingered in his genetic make-up. Kids were fantastic, but no one would call him daddy and ask him to tuck them in at night.

It was sometimes a melancholy thought, but Finch didn’t want to be the one responsible for someone else getting sick, maybe even dying. Medicine could come a long way in the next few decades, but was it worth the risk? He didn’t think so. He was playing the lottery right now, but his jackpot was a diagnosis that his status as ‘carrier’ had been upgraded to ‘sufferer’. He had promised his mom that he wouldn’t waste his life worrying, or slipping away from what he had always done best. So he shook away those thoughts when they crept up on him and usually put his hands to work on something metallic and strong enough to outlast him. He winced, peering around the metal sheet. “Has it been that bad?” He asked, envisioning half of the building voluntarily evacuating themselves just to escape him. He dislodged the metal from what it had caught on and then it slid easily into his hallway. “I already guessed I was the most hated guy in the building, now I know I am.” He sighed, moving onto the second sheet which moved seamlessly to where he wanted it to go. He paused before the third one, waving away her offer. “I got this now. Thanks though.” He hauled the third and final piece into his private space and let out a breath of relief. “I feel like I should reimburse you for the trip to Starbucks. If the lift had been working none of this would have been half as bad.” He still would have had to shimmy it down the hallway some, but there wouldn’t have been the stairs to factor in, or the doors that didn’t open automatically.

• • •

TAGGED! Bexley Dresden Maze
WORDS! 754!
LYRICS! I Believe - - - Christina Perri
NOTES! <3

[Bexley Dresden Maze]

Bex had own and lived in the top floor apartment from the very first day it went on the market. It was an old building recently converted into apartments and she had fallen head over heels for the place before she'd ever asked a single question. Of course, she was quite good at multi-tasking so she'd managed to get every question answered whilst still in awe of the place. After seeing it, she wondered why the estate agent she'd hired even bothered showing her the flat that was three floors lower. Bex loved the view, loved that there was private outdoor space that she could make her own while the lower apartment lacked that. She wasn't an outdoorsy person by nature but she did love New York City more than she could put into words so having that outdoorsy getaway in the city was perfect and exactly what she hadn't known she'd wanted. It was nice after a long day at the office when she had been forced to leave the city for a couple of weeks of work away.

Whenever she was in, however, the noise and in turn, the music was usually low enough that she could hear the bass but nothing else of it. That had never bothered her and in fact, she usually had her own music on in the background to keep the silence at bay. She would never complain about the noise but she did get curious who was playing that music or who was making such a commotion in the stairwell; especially because it was usually late at night or so early she thought she was the only one awake. "I'm not usually home so it's something new for me. They're all probably used to the noise. Or you know, not home." She suggested because she didn't want this guy thinking he was pissing off the entire building. As it was, he wasn't irritating anyone to Bexley's knowledge, not even her. She just wasn't able to concentrate on the task she'd been working on so she'd needed to get away from it all and into a different kind of noise; the dull hum of a coffee shop. She'd never had a complaint about noise before. She actually liked the music that came from the floor below hers.

Bexley smirked, brushing away his concerns. "Second hated. The guy on third has like fifty cats." She lied with that smirk of hers still in place. She was joking of course, but she had such a dry sense of humour that it didn't always come across the way she wanted. It was something that stopped bothering the young brunette a long time ago. There was no point on dwelling on something that was so much a part of her she refused to change. Bex leaned against the wall and continued to watch the man struggle the littlest bit to get the sheets of metal into his apartment. He had waved away her offer of help, which was probably good because Bex didn't have the first clue how to help him anyway. When he spoke away, she zoned back into the moment, having let her mind wander away for a few minutes. "The coffee is a write-off business expense." She told him with a smile. "But I wouldn't say no to a slice from Sal's." She said with a light laugh. She loved a good slice of deep dish and Sal's down the road had the best she'd ever tasted; and as a born and bred New Yorker, she'd tried a lot of pizza places.

♦ ♦ ♦

TAG; Thayer Rhodes Finch
WORDS; 598
LYRICS; Good --Lindsay Ell
NOTES; <3

[Thayer Rhodes Finch]

When his apartment had been on the market, Finch could hardly believe his luck. It came at a shockingly good price which made him ask what had happened there, or what was wrong with the place. He was promised that everything was in working order and that the previous owner was simply moving in with his girlfriend. Finch wasn’t going to question good fortune when it came his way. It was too rare a find to pass over, to look for something else. Besides, it was spacious and came with a reasonable balcony, which meant he could work on his projects without needing to rent out a separate studio space. He was the type who could save money easily, but he was far from loaded. His job, paying well, kept him afloat with cash to spare, but he was a single guy with no serious commitments on the horizon. He also had no intention of having children so it helped to know that he wouldn’t suddenly need to spend his cash creating a nursery.

Finch knew people dreamt of the happy family, the doting children and the dog in front of the fire. Well, Finch was happy with just the dog. Shelly was currently dozing near the open balcony door, her mind far from interested in what Finch was up to. The furry pup was the only steady relationship in his life and it was a relatively simple relationship that revolved around food, walks, and a tug rope. There was always someone who told him he could have more, but Finch wasn’t going to spill his innermost thoughts and feelings to every Tom, Dick and Harry he met in New York City. He had his reasons for not wanting his own offspring. He didn’t think it was fair to gamble with their health when they wouldn’t even know about it until they were much older and unable to do anything about it. He was playing a nightmarish waiting game himself, but did everything he could not to dwell on it. All he knew for certain was that he wouldn’t let the disease continue to spread, nor would he make anyone sit through the heartache of watching him deteriorate – if it ever came to be. Alas, too many people had rose tinted glasses when it came to family life and thought he was foolish or immature to not want children, especially when he admitted to adoring everyone else’s kids when they came around.

He flashed a smile, hands on his hips. “Fifty? From the noises down there I thought he had at least sixty and was trying to teach them how to harmonise.” He didn’t know the man, but Shelly kept him informed that there were cats around the building; it was the only time she barked when they were at home. His stomach gurgled at the mention of food, like an alarm telling him it was feeding time. He wasn’t one to argue when his stomach called, and pizza sounded fantastic right then. “That sounds like a brilliant idea. Just let me change out of this shirt first.” Moving metal sheets wasn’t easy work and Finch had broken a sweat. Ideally, he would have showered before eating, but he didn’t want to make his neighbour wait on him. A quick change, some more deodorant and he should be good to last until he got home. He wasn’t anywhere near as sticky as he was after a day in heavy costume and make up.

• • •

TAGGED! Bexley Dresden Maze
WORDS! 587!
LYRICS! I Believe - - - Christina Perri
NOTES! <3