IC contact for lastvoyages

[tucky]

[If I don't have an active post up, feel free to use this post to have your character call, videochat, text, or knock on Tiffany's door.]

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[likeshowbusiness]

Harry sighs.

"Fucking nonsense, all of it. You got anything stronger than beer?"

He's not having this conversation sober, and beer doesn't count.

[tucky]

"Uh-- nothing you're gonna like. But I can get some from the pub. Or ask the Admiral, I guess."

[likeshowbusiness]

Harry lifts his eyebrows.

"What've you got, fucking moonshine? I'll drink it."

[tucky]

"Wellllll, okay." You're a brave soul, Harry. Tiffany hops up to go over to her fridge, reaches for something way in the back, and pulls it out. It's half a jug of something brown, and it looks absolutely disgusting. It tastes even worse.

She grabs him a glass on the way back to the couch, but really, if he just drinks straight from the bottle, she won't judge.

[likeshowbusiness]

Harry pours himself a shot, squints at it for a moment, then throws it back and immediately hacks out a cough that becomes a barking laugh.

"Christ almighty, Doggett. You could strip paint with that."

[tucky]

"It's not like I drink it every day or anything. It's just for special occasions."

[likeshowbusiness]

"Like on those occasions that you specially fucking loathe yourself?"

Says the man who's pouring himself a double before settling back into the sofa.

"...Don't suppose I was so different there to how I was back home," he offers, eventually. "London club. Few extra industries on the side."

[tucky]

"Not so different, but a little bit different?" she guesses.

[likeshowbusiness]

"Yeah," Harry says, and throws back his fuck-awful liquor so he can blame it when he says: "He - that bastard had his act together in a way I never fucking have."

[tucky]

"Like how? What did he do?"

[likeshowbusiness]

"...I came up through the black market," Harry says, eventually. "I've had rackets since I was teenager. I went breaking bones for bigger fish until they got sent down or killed or fucked off to Spain. I loved the Stardust, don't get me wrong, but it was a front. I needed that place so I could look halfway decent to the taxman. And everyone knew it. I was never going to get any respect while I was peddling smut 'round Soho to pay my girls."

It hurts to say. The words stick in his throat, and he pours another drink to soothe it. But they're true.

"He went the other way 'round. Built his legitimate business, then expanded where he saw the need."

[tucky]

Tiffany sits back, kicking her legs out in front of her.

"There any reason you couldn't do that, or wouldn't want to do that?"

[likeshowbusiness]

"There were a lot of reasons I couldn't do it," Harry says. "Didn't have the cash, didn't have the connections," he scoffs, "didn't have a clue I had any other options. Now..."

He sighs.

"I'm too fucking old and I'm in too fucking deep. If I get out of the game, all and sundry'll think I've grassed on every bastard I know."

[tucky]

Snitching, and not wanting to be a snitch, is something Tiffany understands far too well, so she doesn't even try to argue that point. "Would you maybe wanna start over somewhere else?"

[likeshowbusiness]

Somewhere else, Harry thinks. Somewhere away from - what? The boyfriend who killed him, the best friend who betrayed him? The various thugs and dodgy accountants and hangers-on who'd leave him dead in the water, the moment they got a better offer? The memory of the poor fucking boy he'd set to his death, Bernie-

He'd miss his mum, he supposes, but - bless her, she's not got long left.

"Somewhere else like where?"

[tucky]

"I don't know, anywhere. Is there anywhere else you always thought it would be cool to live? You could live in another time, even. Maybe one that's not gonna treat you like shit for being who you are."

[likeshowbusiness]

"There's no time when people won't find a reason to treat me like shit," Harry says, fatalistic but not untruthful. "How would that work, anyway? You drop me in a day and age in my future and I'd barely be able to do my own laundry."

[tucky]

"I mean, you could do research first. Or if you went someplace and didn't like it, you could change your mind and go somewhere else." She's positive Iris would help with that.

[likeshowbusiness]

"You're not wrong," Harry says, but he's halfway through his life and the idea of rebuilding from scratch feels...

Daunting. But, he realises with a jolt, not unattractive. He gulps another mouthful of Tiffany's liquid horror.

"You know what the only thing I ever wanted was? I wanted to be the guv'nor. I wanted people to look at me and know I could give 'em what they wanted. I wanted some respect for that. Not to be some fucking - bottom feeder, scraping up what the Twins and their ilk didn't have the time for."

He shuts his eyes.

"I ever tell you about Bernie?"

[tucky]

"That's the guy who got killed, right?" she asks. "He was in your file. Nobody else cared, but you wanted to figure out who did it."

[likeshowbusiness]

"Never did. Not really," Harry sighs. "I know where, don't know who. But it was - might as well have done it myself. I sent him there, like he was fucking - "

He sighs heavily.

"Disposable."

[tucky]

"Your file also said you didn't know that when you started looking into it," she counters. "And that ain't nothing. That means something good about you."

[likeshowbusiness]

"Yeah, means I got some poor lad sent into that viper's nest and didn't give a fuck about him until I got told he'd..."

He drags a hand over his face.

"I look after my girls, at the Stardust," he says, quietly. "National Insurance, Equity cards, all that. No funny business. Bernie and the likes of him...I should've looked after him too."

[tucky]

"You think maybe it means something good about you that you're saying that now?"

[likeshowbusiness]

"I don't know why I hurt them. My boys. Pietro. Never helped anything. None of it ever helped."

Harry stares at the ceiling through a haze of cigarette smoke, eyes melancholy and glassy. He doesn't answer the question.

"I want to go home, warder. Some other London I ain't ruined yet. I want to start again."