When You Gotta Go

Participants:

deckard_icon.gif tavisha_icon.gif

Scene Title When You Gotta Go
Synopsis Sometimes you can't. Deckard and Tavisha break some men's room rules.
Date February 14, 2009

Shooters Bar and Bistro: Men's Room


Disappointingly for those into watersports, Deckard has already done whatever it is he came in here to do. If there was such a thing as last call on Staten Island, it would be close to it. As things are, he's somehow the only guy in here, which leaves him free to turn on one of two available water faucets with a retarded little magician's flourish. Tada! Water!

He is slightly inebriated.

Back to the urinals lined up across the opposite wall, he pushes his hands dutifully under the free flow of cold water, only to realize half a second later that there's no soap. Nooo…soap over there at the other sink, either. Dilemma. His reflection in the mirror is scruffily perplexed.

Long night. Not at the fighting ring, actually, Tavisha at least doesn't have the lingering scent of blood, sweat and generic foulness of the Pancratium following him around. No, it's mostly just the slightly more pleasant, outward scents of the river and the boat it cruises on. Cold out there. Warm in here.

Less pleasant, though, is the mens bathroom, but a necessary evil. Tavisha, not exactly the poster boy of sobriety right now either, finds his way to the very back of the pub, levers open the door to the bathroom with his shoulder and a lazy turn of the handle, the bright lights of the dingy little room making him wince a fraction. From the last time Deckard ever saw him, he's not dressed so dissimilar to then, save for the forest green of his choice of coat, covering the standard all black ensemble. In the reflection of the mirror, the older man gets a glance, no recognition made, but a friendly if bourbon-influenced head tilt in greeting as he secures the door to shut behind him. Doot de doo.

Does the water help by itself? Or does increased dampness without benefit of sudsing bubbles actually make things worse by making his hands a friendlier environment for the foul microbes who make their home here? These mysteries and more are the subject of much inner debate while Deckard stares dumbly down at the metal gleam of the faucet. His leather jacket is as beaten up as the rest of him, scuffed brown somehow serving as a compliment to the bruising making its way from blue to brown and green beneath his eye. In his dreams, at least.

The fact that there's someone else here doesn't register immediately. He hears the door swing open, hears the subtle increase and then fade of conversational volume from the bar on the other side. He's just slow to actually look up at himself, and then past himself. At Sylar. Closing the door.

AAAAAAAHHHH.

Deckard instinctively jerks himself into flight mode, only to collide sideways with the paper towel dispenser to his immediate left. There's no other door that direction anyway, the sink's still running, and his hands are wet. WET. AND THERE IS STILL NO SOAP.

Tavisha's hand has barely left the door handle behind him when quite suddenly, the man washing his hands several feet away turns into a flurry of motion out of his periphery, the raise in heartbeat noticeable even under the sound of feet scuffing tile and the collision of body against dispenser and the still running water and aaahh what did he do now. Tavisha's step for the urinals is halted, fairly simply freezing in front of the one way out of the room as he turns to look at the other man, startled through his otherwise mellow haze. "Woah— " His other hand comes up, and he takes a step in the man's direction. "Are you alright?"

Which likely has the opposite effect of what he intends, but despite his conversation with Teo, despite his reputation he's already gained at the fight club— well he's had a few, and he is concerned, the emotion of which is written on distinctive features. Of course, Deckard had started to figure Sylar wasn't too bad of a guy just before they were both plunged into hell in the form of a mad chase through a hellish place, but Tavisha doesn't know that.

Deckard's heart is pounding hard enough to bruise itself against the backs of his ribs, breathing accelerated and adrenaline throttling about the sides of his ears. Unfortunately, adrenaline does approximately nothing to clear the boozy haze out of his head, and the best defense he can come up with seems to be limited to pressing himself back against the dispenser. Maybe he'll get lucky and fall through into another dimension.

Pale eyes wide and teeth grit out in a very basic kind of fear, he somehow has the presence of mind to keep his hands held up and out so that he doesn't drip on himself. Except that he does anyway, cold water tracking over calloused palms and into his sleeves.

He flinches when the other man steps forward, almost as if thinking of making a break for the door past him, but can't…quite work up the courage. Or think that clearly. Or run in a straight enough line.

It takes a little while to realize what the words coming out of Sylar's mouth are as a result. "Wh— what is this? Are you really here?"

Odd question, but at least it has any easy answer. That hand outstretched lowers some, back straightening. This won't be the first time someone has been frozen scared of him with their heart attempting to escape their chest, it sounds like, with every thud, and it won't be the last. But at least by now he can tentatively connect the dots. Tavisha nods once, studying the wiry man hunched up against the dispenser with a sort of dawning weariness. "Yeah. I'm really here."

A pause, corner of his mouth turning up in an insincere smile. "I guess you didn't expect to run into me, did you," Tavisha says, his stance becoming less approachable, more squared off. He has no idea what he's saying. But puppy dogging for scraps of information is tired.

"I — just needed to take a piss." Deckard sounds slightly miserable. Why does everything have to be so complicated? Can't even pee in a bar without Death barging in and waving his scythe drunkenly around in his face. Rabid fear takes on a more exasperated air. The shittiness of his luck is almost as hard to believe as anything else going on right now. It's improbable. Someone upstairs hates him. Those bitches with the eye. Someone. Something.

"I was washing my hands — look, I hhhaven't even — I haven't even told anyone. Anything. No one. I don't care. Do whatever you want — just…" don't kill him in the toilet. It's embarrassing, ok?

Deckard gets a look bordering on too studious, gaze darting down to look at stained tiled in an attempt to fit this together, but whatever the answer is, it doesn't lie in tiles that have only been slightly scrubbed free of urine and puke stains through the course of two years. When he looks back up at Deckard, even bravado can't really steal away the uncertainty visible there, although it wouldn't be surprising if the older man had other things on his mind. Tavisha's shoulders loosen a little. "Maybe you should have told someone," he says, faintly, and bourbon - blame it on the booze - forces him to add, almost coyly, "You could start with me.

The older man doesn't literally squirm under Sylar's scrutiny, but he seems to be having a hard time not squeezing his eyes shut against it. Keeping in mind that if he does close them all the way, he can't see what's going on. The result is a wincing kind of uncoordinated squint, long face blanched as pale as the blue of his eyes while he keeps his back pressed to the towel-bearing wall. On the plus side, his hands are starting to air dry.

"Who am I going to tell? Nobody likes me. I'm just some…guy. Some annoying drunk guy. I'm still not even sure you're really here." More dismay at that realization, and oblivious to persistent dampness and potential germ-riddenness, Deckard pushes a hand back over the top of his head, semi-flattening the unkempt muss of his ever-increasingly-grey hair.

"Start with you…what." Shit, Sylar's words aren't making sense. Panic starts to stir again, even dumbed down by the booze, and Deckard raises his free hand to fend off a fiery death. "I'm — just've….had a few. I'm not evading…I just dunno what the fuck, okay?"

Throughout this, Tavisha just watches. Blessedly, he is not as drunk as Deckard - he might die if he tries, frankly - but he can still feel the warmth of his intake tonight thrumming beneath his skin, and after a while, he simply raises his hands to rub his face, weary of this before it's even begun. His hands smooth right up to run through his hair, link fingers briefly behind his head, and give a very merry, room-filling chuckle from a despairingly grinning mouth. Which means he's either drunk and fed up, or kind of crazy and broken. Both are likely, one is true.

"Wow," he breathes out, arms lowering back down to his sides, then levels that intent stare on Deckard once more. "You're terrified of me." He points. "You think I could kill you. Right here, in this building, with all those people outside, you think I'd do that. That I'm capable." The pointing hand drops, and he shakes his head. Of all the people he could have been. "Look— whoever you are— I'm sorry. For whatever it is I— I seemed to do to you," his hands sort of make a rotating gesture, as if reeling the possibilities unknown to him, "or said, or— "

Well this is fun. Tavisha stops, fists a hand and covers it with his other, as if wringing them together. "I'm not who you think I am."

"Please don't," is Deckard's mumbled version of a 'yes' for the rhetorical question of whether or not he thinks this Tavisha guy would have it in him to leave his corpse to get pissed and puked on by everyone here tonight too drunk to care. His eyes skip to the floor, really looking at it for the first time, and then back up again more warily to current company. Current company that is both Sylar, and apologizing for trying to kill him.

As with the disembodied voice that plagued him in his apartment the night prior, the shrill porcupine bristle of panic is slowly beginning to fade. He is going to die, or not. It's possible his heart is still a little weak from his stay about the Invierno, because really it just. Can't be bothered to keep pushing fresh blasts of adrenaline around all the time.

"Is this…like a movie star thing, where you try to kh…kill so many people you forget who they are?" Rationalization is hard when you are drunk. Or easy. If you don't mind that all of your rationalizations are crap.

"Who are you?" God? Really unfunny choice of bodies, if so.

Tavisha's brows knit together at the attempted and aborted rationalisation, more of a kick where it hurts than Deckard may realise at the time. Angst. Uncomfy angst that makes him a little speechless, what do you say to that. He kind of just shakes his head, as if that needed a no, and as if it made much sense. But the next question is more of a relief, even if it's born out of utter confusion. But it's a step in the right direction.

Maybe.

"I'm— called Tavisha," he says, with that slant of pronunciation that doesn't stop it sounding any less absurd to those who know him, or even those who don't. Eyebrows raise a little, a somewhat lost and reasonably apologetic tone to his voice when he asks it right back: "Who are you?"

Hand still on head, Deckard lets it slide and fall sickly, slackly back to his side. Even his breathing has reassumed some kind of normalcy, if it's still a little fast and shallow. A deeper breath tries to bridge the gap, and for the first time so far, he looks sideways through the wall. Nothing weirder than usual is going on out there. In here, Sylar's skeleton still looks like…Sylar's skeleton.

"Flint." He's Flint. Also somewhat security ignorant. "Tavishah." He takes a minute to mull over that before the inevitable snort and: "S'kind've a girly name."

"It's Hindi," Tavisha readily supplies, then drops his gaze towards the tile again. At least he isn't sending this man into any deeper of a panic attack, equilibrium peeking out from its hiding place and slowly, slowly restoring itself. The fact that he— kind of needs to pee is starting to tug at the sleeve of his attention but he ignores it for now, again letting scrutiny fall on Flint. Does he want to know whatever this man has to say about him? Yes, of course he does, but— won't he just be like everyone else? He doesn't strike him as some guy who ever knew him intimately. "I'm sorry I scared you. And that I don't remember you. It's been a weird— day. Month. But I'm not going to kill you. Now or later." May as well make that clear.

"Oh." Deckard says this in precisely the way that anyone ever says it when the thought crosses their mind that they should try to be polite about something they think is stupid and they fail miserably anyway. "You don't look Hindi." What does Hindi look like? His eyes shutter dimly aside again, searching after a mental image that involves Bollywood but not much else. Definitely not anything helpful. It occurs to him that his left hand is still pretty damp. He flicks it a little.

"I…uh. Hhh." What to say? Another deep-drawn breath has him on his way back to a less catastrophic heartbeat, and he lifts the dryer of his hands to flatten over his own chest, under white dress shirt and brown jacket. He's still here, apparently. And he feels awake. Mostly. "…Okay." Probably not the best choice. "I mean…it's…don't worry about it. I guess." What the fuck is he saying? His hand slides up to grasp lax at his neck, where he still has a pulse. Happy day.

That last promise definitely gets a dubious look, though. If it was a promise. "Pinky swear?"

Eyebrows raise, a sort of half-nod, impatient. "I said I'm not going to." This is depressing.

A hand raises awkwardly to sort of scratch at the corner of one eyebrow, then takes a step to the right. Short of the Time Warp, Tavisha kind of angles a shoulder towards the door, hand gesturing vaguely towards it. "Don't let me stop you." His pleasant drunken buzz has turned somewhat morose, as such states of mind often do, and the words come out with a slightly harsher tone to it, a sneer, a little unnecessary. "Never know, I could change my mind at any second." Deckard's sarcastic radar on that one should probably be beeping— or whatever it is radars do when they detect things— at that, but you never can tell when it comes to sociopaths. Regardless, Tavisha is making his way towards the urinals, no longer studying the unfamiliar man.

There's the door, along with an invitation to scuttle on through it, leaving Sylar to wee to his heart's content. Deckard just kind of stands there. Was he just sarcastic at him? About murder? "There isn't any soap." This is the most intelligent thing he can think of to say in the face of current events, delivered as if it may have some bearing on whether or not Tavisha wants to carry through with his plans to pee. "Okay," he says again. "I guess I'll…" sort've…make his way out, over here. He starts for the door, hand braced against the first sink to turn it off (and to use it for support) when he crosses past it. "You should…maybe stay out of public. I dunno. If—" you're really not a psycho murderer. Or something. He doesn't finish the thought, already balancing too much of his weight against the doorframe while he fumbles with the handle. "I'm not the only one who'll know."

His belt is giving him problems. An impatient sigh is exhaled through his nose as Tavisha wrestles with the buckle, but stops when Deckard opts to say more to him, looking over at him. Because it's kind of weird to hold onto his belt while talking to someone, he sort of fixes it once more, hands dropping to his sides. First reaction being, irritation, then something more severe. Anger. But not really at Deckard, more like at the universe. Then, resignation. "Why do you think I'm even on this island?" he says, a little flatly. Pause. "Thanks." He guesses. "I don't… know if I can just hide for the rest of my life but— " shrug, "point taken. You're right." And there's not a lot he can do.

Incidentally, he can shapeshift. But perhaps neither man in this room quite know that.

This is kind of weird for a lot of reasons, really. Not the least of which is the fact that Deckard is breaking the no talking rule in the men's room. He opts not to answer the island question ('To kill people,' seems like an untactful choice at this point) and can only bring himself to shrug a shoulder at the thanks. "Way to go on surviving the apocalypse and…everything," tacked on as a fail farewell, he glances down at the killer guy's shoes and levers the door open to let himself back out into the noisy bar.

That doesn't sound particularly sincere, but, you know. It's a dirty little bathroom in the back of a bar, sincerity sort of isn't encouraged for a number of reasons, so Tavisha just 'mm's absently, and turns away as Deckard disappears out the door. Alone at last. Then, he repeats, once more and without feeling, voice bouncing tonelessly off the walls: "Thanks."


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February 14th: Bargain Basement Healer
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