The Caress of Gamaliel

Sarona looks at the two men. Really... there isn't much to tell about them, she'd guess. Just their suits. And it's not like she'd really care all that much. She doesn't know these guys.

"Really? What sick game is this? I'd rather have you keep the car -with us in it I might add!- under control, thank you very much," Sarona says. "Sure, pinstripes are so out of fashion right now, so if that is all I would have to go by... sure... but I'd rather have you drive safely."

The limousine veers towards the Man in the Pinstripe Suit. His head shatters against the windshield.

The windshield seems unaffected by the trauma, despite the heavy "Thud" of the body and the blood that pours out and smeers across the window as it slides off the side of the car.

Time returns to normal.

Almost casually, the driver turns on the windshield wipers and spreads the blood back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, as it's slowly washed away by the rain.

(Let's have you make a Keep It Together roll, please).

Sarona looks in shock as the car is about to hit the guy and...

"Oh, that was a bloody one, wasn't it?" The Driver says with amusement in their voice.

"You know, I wish I could tell you that it mattered which one of the men that got run over, but no. They were both pretty normal people. Took care of their families, respected by their friends. Pinstripe’s favorite Sanora Black film was the 'XXX Game of Thrones' thing. Grey suit had no favorite as long as Sanora got it long and hard. Carnal ugliness and all that. In the grand scheme of things, the universe could not care less about them. Your 'Daddy' was not so fortunate."

You avert your gaze and look out the window. You're in a rundown inner-city area. Almost every house is abandoned or boarded up. Corner shops have metal grates on the windows. Strange things lie in the gutter. This is not a good neighborhood. This is the kind of neighborhood where if you stopped now, the car would get jacked.

The limousine comes to a stop regardless. Standing on the sidewalk is a gentleman with a camera bag slung across one shoulder.

Sanora vaguely recognizes him, and then it slowly dawns on her that this is one of the photographers that has worked several of her films with Loretta.

The Bishop also recognizes him - for it's Laurent, his own lover.

(Laurent, please introduce yourself, describe your character, and explain why you're entering this limousine when you had ordered a taxi. Remember, this is a bad and dangerous neighborhood).

Laurent is standing in the rain without an umbrella, nothing but his jacket and hood protecting him from getting too drenched. He keeps glancing at his phone, impatient for the taxi he ordered to finally get here and pick him up. To get out of this neighborhood. When a limousine stops in front of him instead, it gives him pause. He had ordered just a taxi, right? He makes eye contact with the driver, ignoring the... dirt? He doesn't want to think about it... that's smeared on the windshield, and points at himself, silently asking whether it really is here for him. When the driver confirms, Laurent decides to just accept it. Maybe it will fuck over his bank account later, but it's still better than waking up in a side alley without his kidney if he waits here any longer.

Laurent pulls open the side door and is just about to enter when his eyes land on a familiar face. He licks his lips. "Sanora? Did you upgrade me to a limo? Did you organize this for us?" Laurent is an attractive man, tall, broad-shouldered, masculine, with a slightly rugged appearance. He removes his hood as he climbs in and spots the second figure in the back, which gives him pause, his expression tinged with confusion. "Yves? What's going on here?" Despite his confusion, he settles into the seat right next to Sanora, though he then stays silent, waiting for some explanation as he looks back and forth between his two fellow passengers.

Yeah.... XXX Game of Thrones was fun... but... Sarona sat there being cool. It wasn't her fault the pinstripe suit got hit. It was the idiot of a driver, and she would happily testify against them if needed.

Her cool vanished a bit as the door opened and Laurent entered the limo.
"Oh, Laurent, hey," she says with a bit less cool, and sounding slightly aggresive. "I didn't organize it, and certainly not for you... Laurent, please meet my dad..." Then, as Laurent call her dad Yves, she looks confused for a moment. "Wait, you two know each other?"

"Your... dad?" Laurent asks. The words sound sour like they don't sit well with the photographer. With his eyes on the bishop, he asks, "How come you never mentioned that, Yves?"
He then leans over Sanora to get to the bar, his leg pressing against hers more than strictly necessary to reach it. He pours himself a glass of whiskey, his eyes briefly wandering over the stranger items on top of the minibar, in particular the collar, before he straightens up again. Somehow, in that movement, his hand ends up brushing Sanora's thigh as he takes a sip from his drink. "So, what's this all about then?"

"I think you've stepped into Hell's limo," Sarona says. Looking at Laurent disgusted at the hand touches her leg. She repositions herself on the couch to create some more distance. "The driver is insane, and a muderer... And hell just got quite a bit worse." she glares at Laurent for a brief moment.

He turned to his lover first, a pained look on his face mixed with a scowl of surprise. "Laurent," he said. "What is this about?" He left the rhetorical question hang. He tries his best to uphold the facade or respectability, and yet the proximity between the two of them makes it crumble all too soon.
Jealousy? For whom?
"This is my daughter. I did not mention her because... it felt unnecessary." He said while staring at the girl, surprised by her reaction "Laurent is a... friend, a close one at that"
"I apologize for not telling you both sooner", he says, his shoulders sagging.

"Unnecessary or shameful, your Excellency?" Laurent asks in a voice that is on the surface teasing but carries some deeper weight behind it. He doesn't add on to the rhetorical question, but the implication hangs in the air, invoked by the use of the title. Don't you have vows to keep?

He then turns, appreciating Sanora's beautiful face in profile as she does not meet his eyes. "Well, as they say, like father, like daughter," he comments with an amused smile.

"Unrequired", he says with the finality of a tombstone. He loved Laurent, but sometimes he wished he could carve out that unnerving smile out of his face... with a knife.
He shuffles in his seat.

The Driver pulls away from the poverty-stricken and crime-ridden neighborhood and back into the flow of traffic. Rain continues to fall, though more gently. The lights of other cars shines through the windshield, though the side windows make it so you can see outside even though it's fairly well lit in the passenger compartment. It's as if the limousine refuses to be beholden to physics of light. Not that anyone would care.

The driver begins to speak, but he's not speaking to any of you. Instead, it seems as if he's talking to an audience listening in, "We welcome Laurent to The Ride. Previously on The Ride, we were discussing the deep dark secrets of The Bishop, Yves Saint-Clair, and his daughter, Anette Saint-Clair - or should I say the pornography actress Sanora Black.

Despite the questions of introduction, Bishop Saint-Clair has not properly introduced Laurent to Sanora. Yves has not yet explained to Sanora that he and Laurent are in love with each other, how they have spent several passionate nights together. One thing is clear, however, it was Laurent who came on to the Bishop."

The Driver's voice then shifts again, and it's obvious that he is once again talking to you. "Tell us, Bishop, did you feel lucky to have been singled out by someone so young and handsome?

And Laurent, what was it about the Bishop that attracted you? Was it his older, yet handsome looks? Or was it that he is a priest? You have a history with priests, do you not? Making them fall in love with you, and then breaking them. Did you break them to make them prettier, or just to get revenge?"

Laurent tears his eyes off the beautiful young woman next to him when the driver begins speaking. He listens to their strange voice and the more they say, the more his face hardens. Once they fall silent, expecting answers to their outrageous, deep-digging questions, he forces out a laugh. "What is this?" he asks, desperately trying to sound like this is all a joke. "Some kind of reality TV show? Confession Cab? Where's the hidden camera, man? Lady?" He runs a hand through his wet hair, glaring at the driver. Anger replaces false amusement as Laurent snarls, "Well, some things are taking it too fucking far for television, understood?"

"Ha ha!" The Driver laughs jovially. "No, you needn't worry about hidden cameras. Think of me instead as a therapist; I'll help you reveal your thrashed backsides and bring out those hidden truths you so desperately wish to keep buried. Isn't that right, Bishop?"

"Tell us, Laurent, does Mr. Saint-Clair know your history with priests? Does he know that he's not the first priest you've been with? That you have lured others into your clutches before, only to reveal their hypocrisy to the Church and force them to become excommunicated? Tell us Laurent, what is it that drives you to such actions? Did the priest who molested you as a child instill such hatred towards them? Or did it drive you to lust after them, and only afterwards did you hate yourself for it?"

The flat screen television turns on, with pictures of Yves and Laurent naked in bed, making passionate love. High definition pictures, from an angle that seems impossible for a person to take.

"Did you take these pictures, Laurent? Was it with your drone, capturing the images in high definition? Was it just like the other priests you've fucked before driving them out of their careers?"

"And tell us, Laurent, do the drugs help you forget, or do they make it all that much better?"

The Bishop has known Laurent for a while now, even though the driver's words might be making him question right now whether he ever actually knew the attractive younger man. But in the times they had spent together, between passionate lovemaking and gentle kisses, Yves has never seen Laurent cry. And yet, as the driver talks about Laurent's childhood, about the molestation he suffered as a boy, tears rise in the tall man's eyes, tears that don't fall down his cheeks just yet. "Fuck you," he curses at the mysterious person behind the wheel. "What the hell is wrong with you, thinking I have, what? Some kind of fetish of reliving what that monster did to me?"

His words sound certain, maybe certain enough to have been rehearsed, or repeated at his own face in the mirror night after night when the shame of his actions came to haunt Laurent, but in the back of his mind, a small voice keeps repeating the driver's accusation. You liked it. You liked what he did to you and you've been chasing that same thrill ever since!
It doesn't feel true, but Laurent also can't refute the accusation entirely, not even to himself.

He doesn't respond to what the driver is saying about Laurent's previous affairs. Or the way they ended. But he does watch Yves for his reaction.

When the driver points out the drugs, Laurent's eyes involuntarily dart to the bottle of opioids he had successfully ignored earlier. "I don't take that shit anymore," is his only response on that topic.

He felt his gorge rise, fiery anger build in his stream. At the same time, was the driver speaking the truth. Had Laurent been abused?
His gaze remains on Laurent, he wants to say something... but he blurts something else altogether.
"You're the one sending me these photos, aren't you?", he's ashamed. Annette is here, but at the same time, he must know.

Sarona's mouth drops open in shock, but she remains silent for a moment.
Wait. Really? She is just too flabbergasted to say anything at the moment.

But as the driver continues their speech, Sarona's jaw clenches and she glares at Laurent, even worse than before.
Surely... the driver might be a dangerous and homicidal freak, but Sarona has discovered one thing about them yet. They knew stuff. How? No idea... but this was some kind of weird, weird set up...
Sarona snaps back to reality, having heard these two men argue for a moment.
"What photo's are you talking about, Daddy?" she asks, already fearing the worst.

Laurent turns to the screen, watching as it cycles through the pictures. He licks his lips again. "I took those pictures," he admits, nodding at the scene of Yves on top of him, inside of him, as Laurent's head is turned for a passionate kiss. "But I haven't used them. Haven't decided if I will. I definitely didn't send them to you. Someone did?" His eyes meet the bishop's. "I've never done anything to hurt you, Yves."

Sarona looks at the screen which displays the pictures. Her eyes go big in amazement.
Surely that's a thing she didn't know about dad yet.

The iron itself incites deeds of violence.
Why take those shots if he didn't mean to use them? For someone as pragmatic as he is, Laurent's answers left a lot open.
He stares in horror as both his secret is being revealed.

His jaw is shut, the veins engorged with blood as the image he's always been trying to project is exposed for its hypocrisy. "What are you trying to do?", he demands of the chauffer, "Just, who are you?"