He's So Burning That Couch

Participants:

coren2_icon.gif mortimer_icon.gif

Scene Title He's So Burning That Couch
Synopsis Coren finally gets a chance to get back to his apartment to shower, and Mortimer shows up not soon after he arrives. Some "words" are exchanged and they come up with some semblance of a plan.
Date September 7, 2009

Casa de Shelby - Lower East Side


Coren's finally managed to make it home for a shower after getting discharged from Bellevue and settling only a few of many issues left to be settled at work. The fact that he'd been smashed over the head with a cast iron skillet and had his partner abducted in the same day seemed to grant him a certain level of sympathy from some of his superiors — the last sympathy he expects to ever receive. He and Elisabeth traversed the corners of Manhattan with no success in picking up on Cassidy's location.

What he sees when he arrives at his apartment is just another bad moment in his already shitty day. Of course, this particular sight he finds tremendously confusing. His bed and Cassidy's are both stripped down to the mattress and his closet is half empty. "What the fuck?"

There's a hard knocking on Coren's door, almost frantic. Behind it is Mortimer, wearing an unbuttoned black suit jacket, a buttoned up light-blue denim shirt, some neatly fitting blue jeans, and a pair of black boots. Of course both his hands have black leather gloves, to hide the one robotic left arm. "Open the door!" he exclaims quite urgently.

If the knock weren't unsettling enough, the voice he recognizes from all those memories from Cassidy makes his blood curdle. Coren doesn't run to the door, but he doesn't walk, either. The door opens and closes in quick succession, two powerful arms grabbing Mortimer by the collar and pulling him hard into the apartment, his foot knocking the door closed. "You stupid little man. What the fuck were you thinking?" It's the first time Coren can remember actually yelling. "Let's taunt the crazy psychopath! Fucking brilliant. You may as well have bloody given him a fucking bomb while you were at it. I'm sure he'd have thought that was fun too!"

"Don't yell at me! I've killed serial killers before! That wasn't supposed to happen!" Mortimer doesn't have to be sane at the moment to be unsettled by an unpredictable serial killer with body possession powers, and Cassidy. "He's a serial killer! He's supposed to be predictable! He was supposed to go into my body so I could take LSD and drive him insane in my head! This doesn't make any sense!" He smashes his right fist into the wall, clearly frustrated. "Where's Cassidy? Where did he take her?"

Despite the height difference, Coren still seems to be able to look down at Mortimer. At least his eyes are turned down at the man who's a whole half foot taller than he is. "I've been in law enforcement for thirty fucking years, and you go ahead and taunt the man! He was already insane you moron." Both fists clench as soon as Mortimer puts a dent in his wall and he swings his own at Mortimer's head — and he hits harder than the average man. "I don't fucking know where he took her, or I wouldn't bloody be here, now would I?"

Mortimer's head swings to the right from the force of the fist, sending him stumbling a few feet. "I hate you!" he suddenly exclaims with such emotion that suggests he clearly doesn't hate Coren for a punch. He turns around, going to swing in Coren's direction, but he quickly stops himself for whatever reason, standing there looking frustrated. "Serial killers have more sanity than you give them credit for," he says in a forced calm, spitting blood from his mouth and to the floor.

"What the fuck are we gonna do about her then? Use your fucking link, do something!" This time he does get physical, moving to grab Coren's collar and shake him as he makes his demands.

"Suck it up, buttercup," Coren says. "I'm quite aware of the psychology of serial killers, having co-authored textbooks and countless journals about them, you don't have to lecture me. I was referring to Azrael." He jabs his fist at Mortimer's stomach when the taller man grabs his collar. "It doesn't work when she's that far away. She's out of the fucking city."

Mortimer grabs his gut, backing away as he dry heaves a few times, looking up at the man. "I'll kill his entire family, I'll call Linderman, I'll fucking summon an Old One!" Then, suddenly there's an idea, and he slowly stands up straight again, hand still on his stomach. "What's he want? Tell me what he says he wants! I need to know everything, everything!"

"If he bothered to mention what he wanted, don't you think I'd have given it to him by now?" Coren asks, slowly calming down. He cracks his neck only narrowly restrains himself from hitting Mortimer again. "I don't think he has a family. We have intelligence that suggests he has no body of his own, which means anyone he inhabits is an unwilling host." He narrows his eyes at Mortimer. Summon an Old One? "Yeah, because Shub-Niggurath and Cthulhu are going to be so helpful. Lay off the horror fiction there, Mort, it'll only fuck with your already fucked-up mind."

"I've seen them before, when you look up in the sky, you can see their eyes peering down from the clouds, and hear the mad piping…" Mortimer trails off, voice wary as he almost completely forgets the topic. Then, suddenly… "Where am I?" He stands up, looking around a bit disoriented. "You're Coren!" he announces, his demeanor and general tone changing to a far less unstable manner. "Oh god, Cassidy, she was kidnapped! I don't know why I'm here, but, fuck, I don't know what to do, and I keep blacking out, how am I supposed to help her?" he asks, sounding far more helpless and fearful than he did a moment ago.

Coren's first reaction to the sudden obvious statement is, "No shit." But once he's had a moment to take in Mortimer's sudden change in body language, things become a little clearer, and his expression sinks just a bit more. "Oh bloody wonderful. One of the few people who can probably be of use and he has to have dissociative identity disorder." If he hadn't sworn to Liz he wouldn't touch alcohol until Cassidy was found, he'd be raiding his own liquor cabinet. It's only because of Cassidy that he hasn't arrested him already, and he's slowly started to wonder about that. In the end he says, "Perhaps it's best to leave the helping up to the professionals, you clearly need a bit of help yourself."

"Shut up!" Mortimer suddenly yells, shaking his head as his demeanor swings right back. "I'm trying to keep this Lovecraft stuff out of my head until I can save Cassidy." He heads for Coren's couch, taking a seat as he continues to rub his stomach. "I'm not letting that other me do a damned thing until I get Cassidy back, but stuff is easier if I just switch out sometimes. So start talking, what're we gonna do?"

Coren rubs his eyes. God he needs a drink. "What's this we, bullshit, Mortimer? I have half a mind to throw cuffs on you and drag your ass into a cell. Or a padded room." He pours himself some orange juice instead, and does not offer Mortimer any. "Either one would probably help me keep my job, and at this point, I'm pretty much all for that given all of the other shit hitting every fan today." He's so burning that couch.

"I don't care about your stupid job, if you weren't linked to Cassidy I'd have gutted you like a pig by now for being linked to my girlfriend." Mortimer crosses his arms on the couch, propping his feat up on the coffee table, apparently having a great deal of dislike for the man and his property. "I want Cassidy back, and you damned sure better want her back too. I'm helping, like it or not. I have six members of my gang left, seven if I count that guy who likes clocks, and I can call in favors to Linderman. You're a cop and you're old. So let's put this together and fucking save Cassidy."

Needless to say, there are a lot of unresolved anger issues, mostly at Azrael. But seeing as how he's also not particularly thrilled with Mortimer, those words just plain infuriate him, and he leaps over the couch to knock Mortimer off his couch and feet off the coffee table, intent on beating the man. "She's not your girlfriend, you demented sod. You lost any right to that when you broke into her fucking apartment, or need I remind you?" There goes another fist swung at him.

And tipped back the couch goes, taking punches as he throws a flurry of punches right back, his left punches particularly hard, obviously not a real fist. "Fuck you Constantine! She's is my girlfriend, you took her awa—" A punch to the mouth promptly cuts him off as he tries to roll Coren on to his back. "I never hurt her, not once. All your bitching because I fucked her and you saw it and got jealous is what hurt her!"

"Saw it?" he grapples Mortimer and heaves with all his strength to toss the man a few feet so he can finally stand up right. The coffee table is beyond repair. Cheap wood to begin with, it has splintered in several places, including one of the corners. It might be able to go three-legged. He rubs at a few of the spots he was hit. It's the ones from the fake fist that hurt him. He winces slightly, wiping blood away from a cut above his brow. "I didn't see it, I witnessed it from her perspective. I felt her emotions and heard her thoughts and watched you plough her." He says it with such contempt. "Do you have any idea how messed up she was after you broke into her apartment that first time? You freaked her out. You don't call that hurting her?"

Mortimer is easily flung a few feet away, landing on his ass with a black eye and a cut lip, as well as a few other bruises on his face and a bloody mouth. "Fuck you, I apologized to her, she forgave me. I love her, especially that pussy bastard inside my head. If you have such a problem with her fucking, then tell her to wear a goddamned blindfold instead of you being such a pussy about it. So what if you hear her thoughts? Enjoy the fucking ride and shut the hell up." He wipes his mouth on his sleeve, staring down at the blood smear. "If you're done bitching, let's figure out how we're gonna save her."

"I'm sorry," Coren says, rubbing the few sore spots on his own face. Thanks to his ability, he won't look nearly as bad as Mortimer when everything goes black and blue. "I need to invest in a punching bag so I don't have to use you a substitute." He kicks the broken coffee table off of his favorite chair and takes a seat, thoroughly unimpressed with the idea of Cassidy blindfolded and engaging in sexual relations with Mortimer. Again. "The only bright idea Harrison had was to drive to the corners of the city and see if there's anything I can pick up from there. No joy on that front, there was nothing; I had nothing, either, at least she had something. Staten Island is our next best idea, but I have a feeling the bastard took her out of the state." He glares at Mortimer, "I still don't like this we idea. Be lucky if the landlord didn't call the police. I could lose my job for not bringing you in, so consider it a favour that I'm not. If you have any bright ideas, now is the time."

Mortimer takes a seat across from Coren after forcing himself up off the floor, then crosses his arms again. "I can ask my men to check the cameras around our territory, I can make a call to Linderman to see if he can make some calls and find out if anyone fitting Cassidy's description was spotted on Staten. And I guess there's a last resort, something I'd only do for Cassidy…" He looks over at Coren, very serious now. "I could offer myself to the Company, those Evolved kidnapping fuckers I blew up a few months ago, and make my condition for going quietly that they use all their fucking resources and people with powers to find her."

Coren quirks a brow as Mortimer mentions the offer. Seriousness from a lunatic? "Yes, I know about them," he says. "I can tell if she's anywhere on the island if I just go there and get to the center of it. That's probably faster than running any of those orders or favours. You might want to work on Plan C a little bit. Might be our only option."

"If I knew how to use half the shit I built when I had my ability, I'd have found her by now. But now most of it is useless, and who knows how long this stupid arm is gonna work without any maintenance." Mortimer holds his left hand up, still gloved, opening and closing it. "Fuck, fine, I'll try and contact the Company. When you save Cassidy, tell her I love her, because these people aren't gonna let me live."

"Well Christ, Mortimer, I didn't say offer yourself up to them before they find her," Coren says. "That would just be stupid. I wouldn't trust them with my laundry. I'm just pointing out that we don't have many options."

"Well fuck, I'm not exactly thinking straight. I can't remember three months of my life, I have an alternate fucking personality who's a total pussy, and my girlfriend is kidnapped by a guy who's so fucking insane I couldn't predict him." Mortimer stands, holding his head, groaning in absolute frustration again. "Fuck, just fuck. Why did it have to be her? She didn't do anything! Fuck!"

"It was her because I care too much about her," Coren says. He's known it for a while, but he hasn't actually said it out loud before. "And this bastard … I don't know what his plans are for me, but clearly he intends to use Cassidy to get to me somehow." He fights very hard to keep the tears away. "Because of that, I don't think he'll kill her. He's obsessive, intelligent, and he knows everything I do…." And he doesn't finish his statement, because his next words were going to be 'there are plenty of things that are worse than death.'

"If someone else tried to kill you before he could finish his plans, if someone else took you, if there was a serious risk that you could die… it'd drive him nuts, it'd draw him out." Mortimer looks back at Coren, speaking as if he knows from experience. "It'd draw me out. I can't predict him, he's not a serial killer, but I'm not a serial killer either, I just know how I work. It'd drive me fucking nuts if I had a target and someone tried to kill them before I did… I hope you know what I'm getting at by now."

Coren's eyes widen at Mortimer's idea, but he manages to calm himself enough not to try and lash out at the man who just suggested he get himself maimed, or killed. "If you're suggesting I sacrifice myself, I think that's a bad idea. And not because I wouldn't do it. She'd be half-dead if I did. This link was very painful when we first got it, I can only assume it would do some major damage if one of us were to die. I'm sure I could endure it. That's my ability, no hers." He gets off his chair and steps closer to Mortimer to look him straight in the eyes, or as much as he can being a foot shorter. "She saw a precognitive who more or less predicted we'd be shells of the people we were if the link were broken for any reason. I don't want to accidentally kill her by trying to save her life."

"Well, fuck…" Mortimer doesn't protest, if it'll hurt Cassidy, well, he'll just take Coren's word for it. "What if we just stage a kidnapping? Try to draw him out so he'll try to save you before I do anything. But even if that could work, we'd still need a way to track him. It's not like we can kill him when Cassidy's still missing… I'll try and contact the Company."

"You're assuming he won't verify that it's not a trap first," Coren says. Apparently the rage has subsided and the smart detective is finally back. "From what we've determined, he can access the memories of his host. Pull information from their heads. All he has to do is find us and he'd know we were trying to fool him." He rubs one of the sore spots on his chest from being struck, "And see if they have anything else we can use. Something to negate evolved abilities or something. At this point, we need any and all help we can get."

"Before I leave," Mortimer's made his way to the door, grabbing the knob. "You know anyone or any numbers I can call to find these people easier?" he asks, since the Company aren't exactly listed in the Yellow Pages.

"Wait — you've gone and made all of these plans and ideas and don't even know how to contact them?" Coren asks. He shakes his head, "How the fuck am I supposed to know? We police aren't exactly kept in the loop about all of these crazy, secretive organizations bent on … God knows what. I would say your best bet is Richard Cardinal. He's the one who informed us you were going after Azrael in the first place, maybe he knows someone. Just don't do anything stupid, Mortimer." He doesn't come to the door to lock it or let Mortimer out. "And don't let anyone see you on your way out." Not that there's much to see. Narrow halls, hundred plus year-old elevator, narrow stairwell.

"I don't want to have to explain why I didn't arrest you."

"Hey, it's not like I can tell my guys why I was here and didn't kill the guy who's cockblocking me." Cardinal, of course, that's who he should call! Mortimer slips out the door, not saying another word, at least until he peeks his head back in. "And don't worry, when we get Cassidy back, you'll have many more shows." Door shut, then he laughs, running off down the hall.


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