Fuck Up

Participants:

deckard_icon.gif delilah_icon.gif leah_icon.gif

Scene Title Fuck Up
Synopsis Delilah gives Deckard a tongue lashing until he can't take it anymore and gives her a lashing…lashing. Leah looks on, equal parts baffled and defensive until things take a turn for the worst and she has to save him. Again.
Date May 16, 2009

Staten Island: Coast

The coast of Staten Island is as much of a presence as its inland, with rivers that invade right into its heart as well as cutting off the circulation of transport from the rest of New York City. The coastal regions reflect a lot of this borough's rural nature, with rough shores and plantlife, broken brick, and general abandonment. The harbors are left to the devices of those that freely come and go, a conspicuous lack of official presence - a number of them notably overrun by the developing crime syndicate, but there are still quite a few, particularly on the coasts nearest to Brooklyn and Manhattan, that are accessible to the lawful public.


The afternoon is seeping into early evening on Staten Island, and many that come for the daytime are getting back on the small ferries back to Brooklyn. Delilah is one that is heading for the docks again, having spent the last couple of hours on the island, the redhead has a more laden bag at her side than usual, and it seems thicker rather than simply ungainly. A square shaped packing job. Her tan coat is over her dress, the colors peeking out from the bottom of the jacket and the click of black shoes echoes below. Lilah seems at least a bit more alert than she used to be when in No Man's Land, but otherwise walks down this particular street with a confident spring in her heels.

The Ferries have come and gone and Adelaide's out in on Staten simply strolling, in the Early evening, her blue evening dress showing beneath her jacket. She holds her phone to ear talking.

Deckard is in a suit. Were he anywhere other than Staten Island that might serve to make him look marginally more legit. As things are, it's a nice, breezy afternoon — not too chilly, almost comfortable, actually — aaand he looks pretty much like a skeevy businessman in sunglasses who really, really needs to shave. Hands tucked deep into his windtorn pockets, he's pacing the docks in the opposite direction, destined for an imminent intercept with ill-mannered British chick who put him in a coma a couple of weeks ago.

Fresh off the boat a few dollars lighter, Leah is coming, not going. Her long stride carries her briskly over the dock, chin lifted alertly with the sweep of her pale, bright baze scanning blithely for a contact. The rest of the money is burning a hole in the front pocket of her pants. The back pocket is not practical, in pants that tight. (Metaphorical hole.)

When something like getting mugged happens- regardless of the outcome, an assault is hard to forget. Even more when you know who it was(sort of). So when Delilah spots Deckard's better-dressed figure down the docks, she slows down to a crawling pace in order to stare a moment longer, just to try and make sure it is the same guy. It is, isn't it? This is a delightful and yet bad situation all of a sudden.

Adelaide talks on he phone in a rather upset voice. "Fine." she closes it and slips it back into her purse. "Damn it." she snarls, breaking the quiet evening air with her melodious voice.

Delightful and yet bad. Yeah that sums it up, save maybe for the 'delightful' part. Busy scoping out the back end action on the squat woman hustling past Adelaide ahead of him with (somebody else's) wallet, he reaches back around to check that his own is still in place only to nearly have his cigarette fall out of his mouth at the familiar blue and white sketch of Delilah drawn out on the walk a few feet out. His heart rate picks up a little; he stops his in his tracks. He looks worried. SHE'S COME FOR HIM.

The man is late. Leah is annoyed.

She pauses, weight planted in the spread of her heels across the moist wood of the deck. The slide of her gaze across the Staten Island landscape has not found the man she's here to see about a dog (of course), but it has caught on a familiar figure prowling the dock. She stands still a moment, heel jiggling with the restless tension shivered through one leg. Then she begins a casual sidle. Doot-doot.

If this were a Chuck Jones cartoon, Delilah would be the big black Spanish bull, and Deckard is wearing matador dress and a red cape. The redhead speeds up down the dock, suddenly raising quite a ruckus, a pair of fists by her sides. Heel-clicks of Doom come fast, and her voice is loud, and has lost its usual orderly accent- in favor of a more brusque one. "YOU. You better not be trollin' or I'll be knockin' those bleedin' teeth down yer'fuckin' cakehole-"

There's no swipe of the red cape, no cavalier smile. Deckard back back backs it up, bristled chin lifted away from incoming confrontation in a manner that briefly leads him to resemble more of a spooked horse than an arms dealer. Nevermind the fact that she's half his size. Or two thirds. Something like that. Aaaahhhh is an all around appropriate response in this situation.

"Woah, hey, I'm — I'm not even — I'm just walking." He's just walking. :(

Hand fallen with ingrained habit to the inside of her dark denim jacket (although really, she doesn't have a track record for actually shooting anyone), Leah advances on the pair of them on prowling strides. Her gaze is narrowed, sharp. Her heels are square and solid, and they thunk against the moist wood of the dock on her approach.

It is not clear how a wise ally would gauge the situation. But what Deckard has is not a wise ally, but a blunt partisan. Leah demands: "The fuck are you doing?"

Probably more like two thirds. Delilah can be quite imposing in the light. "You are a bad man." At this point, she's probably caught up to him to just stare him down angrily, not yet raising fists to start a dustcloud of arms and legs sailing across the docks. At the female voice, Lilah turns her head to find it. "What the fuck am I doing? I am restraining myself from making sure this fuckin'clot doesn't walk again, that's what I'm doing."

"Fuck you." Deckard finally finds it in himself to bristle at accusation re: his badness. Not very creatively, though. There's a brittle, nervous edge to the sliver of his bared teeth further emphasized by the fact that he's leaning slightly back rather than in, sunglasses at a chilly black blank. Do not want.

Suddenly: Leah! His scruffy head had already begun to tip aside at the vaguely familiar ring of her heels against the dock. It turns the rest of the way at the sound of her voice, a sharp breath inhaled only…to stick in a hold. Does he actually want to get between these two?

"Well, you better fucking restrain yourself, kid," Leah retorts. Her teeth flash in a bright grin, her eyes laughter-bright, although what's funny isn't clear, and maybe that's actually a queer kind of battle light (or possibly she could be high — it's not unheard of). She's neither far away nor close at this point, a little ways down the dock, her voice carrying clearly over the surly lap of the water. "What are you, fucking guardian of morality, light and goodness? On fucking Staten Island? Back the fuck off him." How many fucks would a woodchuck — oh, never mind.

"Well, nobody else is fuckin'doin' anything about it. Always a goddamn first time for everything." Dee turns her head back to Deckard, fixing him with a burning glare, but still rooted in place. She allows her height to do the rest of the talking. "Plus I've got a personal beef. I hope you learned your lesson the first time, mate." She warns, as if she might hock back and spit in his eye again if he so much as smirks. "What's your problem? I'm nice to you, I help you while you stay- and what do I fuckin'get? Assaulted? How grateful of you."

Scruffy jaw carved hollow by the knotted clench of hard muscle behind it, Deckard endures verbal assault with none of the field and return that might normally be expected of him. The black lenses of his glasses glint with vacant dislike; the flat level of his shoulders lifts just a hair. Fiber by fiber, his patience is wearing through. And now he has backup.

A few people have turned to stare, now. One of them chuckles. Deckard's getting his ass chewed out by a girl.

Backup in this instance means a woman of habitually questionable sobriety, about half a foot shorter than the one on the attack, and grinning with that little maniacal something extra. "You gotta think real hard about where you spray the milk of human kindness," Leah says, her voice sharp with the sardonic bite of humor, her brows swept high toward her hairline. "And in the meantime, back off him."
Alexander has connected.

"If he ever needs my help again he's going to have to think real hard about how he spilt it." You know, the Milk Of Human Kindness? Delilah takes a half step closer, leering into the black panels of plastic. "You're lucky I didn't tell more people I know about what you did. You're lucky I didn't stick around." It is only a mild bluff, but a sensitive one. "If I weren't as kind, I could have blown your brains out all over that street. Think about that, you fuck-up." Delilah's lips thin out as she takes a step backwards, an eerily familiar sheen on the thinly skinned layers of her face.

Behind black glasses there is the barest flicker of blue, just focused enough to breach plastic selected specifically for its near impenetrable murk. Whiskey rides thin on his breath at close range, like a sliver of acrid metal on the tip of his tongue. You fuck-up.

There isn't actually an audible snap. Not unless you're listening close enough to hear the tendons and muscle flinch taut beneath the ash grey of his suit when he lunges for her.

Bony hands wind into the cloth at her front, seeking rough purchase enough to shove and fling her bodily towards the edge of the battered wood of the dock and and into the black water lapping rank below.

"What did you do to this chick, man—?" Leah starts to demand, with the resumption of the thunk of heels against wood as she moves closer. Whatever action she plans is curtailed, however, by Deckard's spring ahead of her into olympic girl flinging. Her gun is half out of its holster and then slid back again, the black snub of its muzzle never seeing the light of day.

The thing about Delilah- she knows how to work a scuffle. Trailer trash, as it were. So as soon as Deckard lunges for her, she is rather quick to react. He might be latching onto her clothes, but she's latching onto his clothes right back, and trying to worm her arm(or arms) to crook around one of his, or even around his waist, shoulder ducking low into his chest. Flint might have the usual male muscle, but when it comes to dexterity and sheer constitution- it is probably a turned table. If you push, she drags- if she goes in the water, so do you. That is, if Dee cannot manage to instead drag Flint down onto the docks into that gigantic dustball of arms and legs mentioned before.

Fuck she's — attached. There are no threats this time, and there's no cursing. Heavy breathing and the dry scuff of boots and shoes across an ancient dock. Muscle is muscle is muscle (is muscle) and he's quick to boot. Trailer park experience is one thing: a decade in the big house is another. His right hand drops loose to harden around her left wherever it happens to be clutching, wrenching it mercilessly into a bone-cracking twist while they grapple and brace for purchase at the dock's edge.

The only indication that he isn't completely mad is that he looks over to take note of Leah's reach for her gun when he catches the movement out of the corner of his eye. One second of distraction that may cost him.

That's right. Blame Leah.

For a few wild heartbeats of altercation, Leah aims, sighting fiercely down the muzzle of her little Glock into the grappling tangle that is her brother and his assailant. "Christ," she growls. She strides forward instead, bulling head on at the struggling combatants — the second lady bull to enter this evening's contest, although her interest is not really in attacking the matador. Her gun a bare centimeter from the shoulder of the arm it sure sounds like Deckard just broke, she snaps, "Stop and get a-fucking hold on yourself now. I don't give a shit what your beef is. Get a little goddamn dignity and get off my brother."

Okay, ow, shit, hurt- Dee lets out a cutting and rather dry gasp at the crick inside her forearm; that hand lets go of where it clutches- but one cannot say she is not opportunistic. While they're on the side of the dock and Deckard glances away for that brief moment, Lilah finds his foot with one of her own and latches onto him with her good arm. Still not willing to go down alone, it seems. The girl does it just a spare second before Leah has the gun at her shoulder, which means sister's words might fall on air if they both happen to tilt the wrong direction. And remember what that skin does? Hopefully he didn't touch it. …Right?

Provided they do not topple the wrong direction, well- that just means neither of them get wet, and Delilah will probably let go once she's stable. It could go literally either direction.

Ow, ow. Ow. Deckard's knee bends after the stomp of her foot against his, right hand clenching all the harder around the bones he just made a mess of while he tries to correct for balance lost. Leah is demanding one or both of them stop — he isn't exactly clear on the details, and for one terrible second, they teeter precariously on the dock's worn out edge, holding onto each other as visciously as they can without actually moving all that much.

Schhlick, his right hand disengages, too late to be spared slick contact with the stuff she's coated in. The left shoves her back inland. Nice of him. Except. A hard, disoriented blink later, he's still, sort've — about to fall off. Halp.

"Fu—!"

Leah yelps and ducks forward, gun falling to the dock with a clatter of metal on wood. The safety still on, it fails to fire and cause any embarrassing ricochets or manslaughters. For one very disorienting second, the unfortunate Flint is subject to the weird prickling feeling of an incorporeal arm passing through him. But then she is all solid, arms wrapped around him rather than through, and weight planted firmly upon the dock with heels spread wide. It is a little on the angry side, for a hug, but it does pull him inward and keep him from falling into the icky water. (ICKY.) Why she complains, "Son of a bitch," is not clear.

Stumbling backwards when she is pushed, Delilah widens her eyes and reaches out with her right hand- only to look past it and see Leah pass her arms through him. Gun's down- Leah's distracted- Flint's distracted- taking this best chance, The redhead backs away and turns on her heels, clutching her left wrist gingerly to her stomach and just booking it as far away as she can get. She made her point. Flint is a fuck-up, and apparently he knows it, judging by that reaction. GOODBYE, DECKARDS.

Good timing. Deckard is saved an anti-bath by the passage of an incoporeal arm and a hug that is returned with a kind of clinging desperation that doesn't even approach dignified once they're both solid again. His right hand is damp at her back, the rap of his heart at his chest indicative of mounting panic. "It's on me," rasped incomprehensibly at her ear, he lifts his head enough to be sure of Delilah's retreat.

"Jesus, Flint, what are you even talking—" Leah cocks her head slightly, although her room to maneuver is not much, pressed against him in the squish of an embrace. She makes an aggravated noise, and then stills, rising disorientation where a small portion of the toxin — borne from Dee, to Deckard, to Leah in her SAVIOR HUG — has seeped through skin. The rushing sensation that hums through her bloodstream is bizarrely familiar. She's also broken off mid-sentence and forgotten what she was saying, but that might not be directly related.

Deckard's answer takes the form of a rattling shiver. He can't do this right now. Not right now. He's supposed to be doing things. Responsible things. There isn't really much affection in the way he's holding onto her, eyes squeezed shut behind his glasses and sandpaper face pressed down into her hair. The scary brit got her crazy snot on him again. He can feel the world turning underneath him and it's getting really, really hard to think.

At least her hair is clean. Meanwhile, the claustrophobic pressure that creeps down Leah's spine makes her shiver in his arms, quaking in a scrape of denim and cotton against his much classier suit. She makes a little choking noise in the back of her throat, dragging air in through clenched teeth with her face half-buried in his shoulder.

In a tone of detached interest despite her strained voice, her brain operating at a bizarre disconnect from her physical discomfort, Leah mutters: "I think my skin is buzzing."

She is probably not going to make her appointment.


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