Participants:
| Scene Title | A Night in |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Sort of a night in for the residents the apartment that leads to many topics, a perpetually italian speaking Teo that no one understands, and a disney movie. |
| Date | December 17, 2008 |
Alexander, Teo and Abby's Apartment in the Bronx
For some reason, Abby isn't at work tonight. She's— somewhere around here. So is Al, last he recalled. It's 12 AM on Wednesday evening and, true to the holiday spirit, the young people are fucking around. Teo is slightly tipsy, by which he means he should probably be drowning in a puddle of frothy vomit in a slushy gutter somewhere, but he managed to get home, drink his way through six other beers, balance them into a pyramid, and locate a bright red staple-gun. Which he is currently holding as if it were a different sort of gun altogether.
He sights down along the length of it, frost-pale eyes narrow with intent, his grip on the ribbed rubber grip thing sure, and his aim wavering only slightly as he levels weapon, arm, and eyes at the topmost beer can on the kitchen counter. The television drones in his right ear and he's muttering under his breath. He can do this! He can knock down the topmost can. He has bet himself some kind of sandwich that he can knock down the can. He scowls. Fires. Misses.
Plink. The staple bounces off the faucet and rattles down into the sink. "Cazzarola, la pistola stupido fatta in Cina—"
Alexander comes wandering out of his room, bottle of beer in hand, in pajama pants and faded t-shirt. He looks sleepy and contented, blue eyes blinking owlishly, toting a copy of Huck Finn in his free hand. "T, what inna hell you doin'?" he wonders, rubbing at his eyes.
Abby's not long after, head to toe Flannel. Bartending binder in hand, houserobe ontop of all that and now blonde hair back in a braid. The noise and clatter and italian words drawing her to the doorway of her small room with an inquisitive look.
In lieu of a decipherable explanation, Teo points his friends angrily at the pyramid of beer cans, and then at the staple gun, and continues to exclaim in Italian without appearing entirely aware of which language track he's on. Rounding off toward what seems like a slew of grammatically impervious swear words, he wanders toward the living, waving the staple gun around with something like eloquence. "Non fermera il trasloco." With that, he hands staple-gun to Abby and attempts to pry the beer out of Al's fingers.
"Angel, carissimo, you cain't have my beer, and you need to put that down and give up that heathen papist babble in favor of English, 'cause Ah am lost," says Al, nimbly stepping out of Teo's reach, and reaching for the staplegun with his power, the better to put it somewhere Teo can't get to.
There's a mild squeak from Abby as Teo hands her the staple gun while Al gropes for it. visions of a pattern of staples pitt pattering a horizontal line around the place. Thank god that her imagination isn't real, and it's realtivly safely put in her hands. Whereupon Abby quickly removes the battery from the gun. Brunks + powertools, it's just a recipie for disaster. She has the same idea as Al, put it somewhere where he can't do anything with it. "Maybe he was saying sweet nothings to you?" Abby offers up to Al. Gun safely away, Binder deposited on her dresser, She's padding her way to the kitchen. "I'll make some coffee"
Oh no! Telekinesis has eaten the staple-gun, and Teo has no telekinesis back. Though for a moment he rather looks like he's trying, frowning at the flying power tool, his hand forlornly held out in mid-air and his brow knit. When the shiny red object fails entirely to return to him, he turns his head to subject his copper-haired roommate to a most judgmental glare. "Ora non posso nemmeno mangiare un sandwich. 'Ey." His attention is diverted the next moment to Abby. Or rather, her head. Shuffling sideways, he installs himself on the floor next to her and puts his fingers in her hair. "Quando questo e successo?!" He string the golden strands up for Alexander to see. </re>
"Did you just ask for a sandwich, kid?" Al wonders, taking a last pull of that beer. It's finished off, and he slings the empty into the kitchen trashcan. "And speak English, will you? You gotta teach me Italian before this is gonna work, y'know?" He drops into a kitchen chair and stretches out, looking pleased with himself and the world. I has a howse.
The scooping of coffee beans into a burr grinder audibly stops what Teo's touching her hair. "Your drunk, i'll forgive you that. Can you speak english please Teo? I don't understand a single thing your saying other than maybe why is my hair not red again?" Her blue eyes travel to Al and his sprawling, a smile on her face as she looks to teo, juts her chin to draw his attention to Alexander. 'Dare you to kiss him" Spoken under her breath, loud enough only for Teo to hear.
Despite being somewhat too disoriented to put the effort into Englishing, Teo is capable of understanding the language that was invented before language. That would be body language. Abby is making secrets at him. He groks that. Ducks his head down to hear her, an ear tilted toward her fair little face and his whole frame momentarily taken up by the stillness of intense concentration. He then glances at Alexander. Then at her hair. "Le solo buone persone dovrebbero baciare Alexander," he tells her, before his expression of sheepish regret changes into something thoughtful. "A meno che…"
Ah ha. Abruptly, his rather large Finnish nose nudges her temple and he presses his lips briefly to her cheek. Patting her shoulder insistently, he then points at Alexander, and proceeds to climb onto the kitchen counter.
Alexander gives them a monkey's grin, but doesn't comment. The fridge opens, and another bottle of beer comes wafting towards him, as if borne by one of the Beast's invisible servants. He pops the top and lifts the bottle in salute. Apparently he didn't hear Abby's little suggestion.
Abby pulls her head away at the kiss, away from the affection, and thankful a moment later when Teo's getting the hell out of her ha… shit, he's crawling onto the counter. Work is suddenly looking very appealing right now. "Teo! Get down from there! Not that way! Heavens your gonna step on my beans!"
"No." Unfortunately, that isn't Teo returning to Inglesi; 'no' just happens to be the same between languages. Anyway, he isn't going to step on her beans. Somehow, he manages to swoop his foot around it and continue on a rambling gait along the counter. Manages also to avoid planting his foot in the sink or kicking over his pyramid of beer cans. He bumbles around the edge of the kitchenette, his head and shoulders hangdog slouched to avoid bashing his head in on the ceiling, until he comes to where Alexander is sitting. Drops into a crouch and says, "Ipocrita." He points at Abby and leans back on the tiled wall, looking a shade more tired than he had before.
"I am not a hypocrite," Al says, with a complete lack of heat. Teo isn't permitted to keep waltzing around the countertops, however. He'll find himself floating gently, and drifting down towards the ground, as if he were Glinda the Good Witch come to warn Dorothy about those damned slippers.
Now the blonde is getting a bit put out. Not a single word understood and he's still not looking like he might speak a drop of english. "No wonder I work nights" whihc is drowned out by the burr grinder and it's promise of caffinated and bitter goodness to come.
Though he finds himself lifted up and gently returned to some altitude conventionally regarded as safe, Teo doesn't come out of his crouch. He's deposited in the same little curled-up ball that he was carried away in, his bare toes hitting the tile with a little slap-slap and his head momentarily obstructed from view by the table. Unceremoniously, he then dumps himself onto his arse, flinging an arm over Alexander's nearest knee and scowling underneath the furniture at Abby's ankles.
"I'll have decaf," Alexander says, sitting up a little, stretching one foot out before the other - the posture of a tribune in his ivory chair. The regal effect is spoiled entirely by the cuddling he's getting - one hand drops loosely to scratch at Teo's scalp. Hey, he always likes it, right?
'Did you pick up any? And besides, decaf still has caffine. Not much less either. Might as well drink the real thing" But abby closes up her beans and stuffs them in the fridge, grabbing the small packet of already ground decaf and letting that brew first for Alexander. Teo's scowl is unseen. out of sight, out of mind. "I'm going to the movies this weekend. What should victor and I go see?"
The scowl fades after a moment, effaced away by the snag of nails on scalp. Teo's hair is growing out— just short of scraggly, but enough that even the meager winter sunlight has started picking out some of the yellow his father's genetics had encoded in his head. Wearily, Teo's forehead hits the edge chair beside Al's leg with a thonk.
Alexander scoops Teo's chin up, lifts it a little higher. Lean against my leg, if you're gonna do that. "I don't know. Not much is out I'm interested in," he notes, lazily, still scratching Teo's scalp, as if the Sicilian were a favored pet. "Who's Victor?" Al himself remains buzzed nearly to the scalp.
"GUy who tried to get a drink in the bar with really good fake ID. Evolved. He slammed some guys head on the bar who was leering at my rear. Owen thought he deserved my phone number. He ven called a few times to check up on me after seeing the news thing" Al's decafe is percolating away, nearly finished. She sunk alot of money into their coffee maker.
Blankly, Teo watches the cabinets underneath the sink, his head pillowed on his arm bridged across Al's knee, eyelids lazy and expression falling somewhere between pleasant and indifferent. It's difficult to tell whether or not he's listening until he finally gets around to contributing, albeit with audible difficulty. "James Bond." The hand dangling over into the air to the left of Alexander's chair swivels upright, and he offers Abby a thumbs-up from above the horizon of the table. As long as he's giving the obvious answer, he might as well go through the effort of offering visual accompaniment.
"Well, that's promising. A gentleman, in this day and age, who'da thought," Al drawls. "How old is he? Tell him you have two big, ugly brothers who guard your virtue." He leaves off the scratching in favor of idly tracing with a fingertip the lines of Teo's features, all with an air of absent-minded possessiveness. He glances down at Teo. "What about Bond?"
'Already did. Already did and he thinks i'm crazy. he knows what I can do to and why I couldn't answer his phonecalls right away. Think i'm bat crazy, but he's still willing to go to a movie with me" Abby leans over the counter and looks at Teo " And it's not a date. I'm wanting to make friends who don't run around with guns" Back to fixing Al's cup, pouring his cup. "Bond. Should make him happy"
Some part of Teo's brain is still sober enough to notice the sorts of topics where Abby and Alexander trade off understanding him. Movie-going and hypocrisy. The dichotomy makes him smile absently at nothing, subtly changing the planes and shifting the oblique angles under the tips of the telekinetic's fingers, before he notices Abby's head poking into view and giving him significant looks. His smile threatens to fade, but stays while she does, and when she's gone his head rolls on its stem, hiding his eyes under the bar of shadow thrown by Alexander's wrist. The other parts of his brain aren't that sober.
"Sounds like a date to mee-ee," Al singsongs, teasingly. He ignores any silent conversation. Until Teo gets himself a real lover, he's Al's to pet on, or so the assumption runs. He does go back to scratching, however, ruffling that blonde hair. He ignores his own split-lip - it's minor, really.
"Not a date. He's paying his way, and i'm paying mine. My mother would turn in her grave if she was in one if I went on a date" Abby comes around to pass the coffee to al's free hand. "What do you both want for christmas? I haven't got your presents yet and I got my first one today, so I guess I better get a move on"
Ollllld-fashioned, says the bemused twitch of Teo's rough fingers, hanging heavy as sandbags flung over the edge of a balloon landing in nowhere in particular land. He starts to say something, but the first syllable emerges in Italian, so he stops before he gets further than that. Bar—. He wouldn't particularly mind foregoing a fuck-buddy for a reasonable length of time if it meant he could get his hair fashionably mussed for free and without censure. Sort of an Abby's-eye-view on the subject: ranking the care of the contents of one's scalp high up, the regular stuff pushed down under it. The shrug he gives her looks drowsily good-natured: anything.
"I don't need much. A warm robe for hanging around the house might be nice. They have some decent ones at Target," Al suggests, lazily. He pats Teo gently on the side of his face. 'What about you two?"
"bar?" warm robe, that's noted in her mind. "New scarf, Maybe some new slippers my old ones are getting pretty dead" abby looks down at them, threadbare in some places. "bath stuff" The blonde turns around to go tend to hers and Teo's coffee. 'Maybe a new wallet. I don't know. I'm easy" Conrad's present has been tucked away some place safe.
Finally, Teo draws a breath that sounds somewhat like a return to consciousness. Snghf. His shoulder hitches up and his lungs inflate to something like full capacity, and he hears his spine crick before his ribs creak. With effort, he raises his head, hooking Alexander's hand on his ear before it inevitably falls off. "Boat," he translates finally, his fluency in his second language slightly lagged under the influence of alcohol. "I'm making everybody get me little boats. Toys or shit, you know." He gestures in the air with his free hand, arm lengthening out to its full extension. He puts his thumb and forefinger about seven inches apart, before cranking them closer to each other and peering at Abby through the gap. "Cheaper the better."
"Oh, right," says Al, as if it were in fact a matter of course. Which is, you know, dubious. "That I can do." Nevermind that it's likely to be a fully rigged USS Constitution in a bottle, if he has his way. "Bath stuff, like?" he prompts, before hiding a yawn behind his free hand. He's only had the one and a half beer, so there's nothing beyond a faint flush to betray his reaction.
"Like bubble bath, and soaps and.. stuff. girly stuff" Abby grins at that. 'He's so happy right now, sitting at your leg and getting petted. I should leave you two be. I still have to study" Her coffe is perking away, the water dripping in it's dark shade into the pot cup below it and she soon switches the one out for an empty one, bringing the filled cup to teo. "Here you go. Maybe you'll start speaking english"
It's no real accident that Teo is cheerfully ignoring the grocery lists of things that everybody else wants. He's already made up his mind what he's getting for them, see. For all he tries to be good about, you know, caring about people and their happiness, he occasionally gets ideas into his head like psychic burrs that aren't going to come back out with enough yanking to cause a lot of hemorrhaging in his brain. With the elegance of a dead person, he starts putting himself up on his feet, accepting his coffee, though evidently to go.
"'S a good change from asking things for people that you personally find inherently disgusting," he tells her, his tone inscrutably light. He drops her a wink: no hard feelings, despite it. "I actually gotta go catch a bus in an hour. Grazie, both-a' you." He uses his mug to salute, smiling, and swivels out of the doorway with the same bizarre, loose-jointed agility that kept him alive throughout his teens.
Al's face is cool, as he watches Teo go - that scar adds a touch of humanity to his tendency towards marble immobility. He frowns a little. "Good night, Abby. Vaya con dios, T," he adds, lifting that beer as something of an afterthought. "Abby, I'll remember that," he adds, gently. She's going to end up inundated in bubble bath. As she turns to go, he murmurs more to himself than either of them, "Nymph, in thy orisons be all my sins remember'd."
"You mean, i'm home and you go out?" Abby shakes her head. "Alexander, find a movie, i'll come out and study here. I don't think I can take being alone in my bedroom right now." Hsi words making her frown and wonder what that all meant. She's making a plan to sleep on the couch. "Bring home some milk Teo. We're out. Maybe a loaf of bread, we'll be out soon enough too of that" She's heading to her room to fetch the binder.
There's a backward wave over Teo's shoulder: assent. "Yes ma'am. Buona notte." Practically walking through the process of jacket and sweater, he proceeds out the front door, coffee vapor left in his wake.
Teo has left.
Al's face warms a little, as he turns to blink at her, even the ruined lid wide for once. "Are you havin' trouble sleepin' by yourself? I can set up my cot in your room, if you want. You know me, I won't offer you any offence to your modesty,," he says, gently.
"She kept me in a bedroom Al, chained, I could reach the bathroom. Sleeps not the problem just.. small room" Her cheeks start to heat. 'But thanks, for the offer" More than a little embarassed. "thought i'd fall asleep on the couch tonight"
'Let me know what's best, then," he says, simply. And heaves himself up to leave beer in favor of coffee, albeit coffee so loaded with sugar and creamer and cocoa it's a poor man's mocha.
"Pick a movie, we'll see. See whats on TV" she ducks into her bedroom, the little gold cross above the door that marks it as her and comes out with a lap throw and the big black binder. "Hey umm, I didn't tell Teo cause, he'd freak. I uh, I saw her again"
Alexander pauses at that, spooning sugar into his coffee. "What about…." Al deliberates. "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" he suggests, and then cocks his head at her. "Saw whom?"
"Sure and Her. The one who took me. but it wasn't her. It was the other her. Her origional. niki" Abby settels on the couch with her coffee, taking up one corner.
"You've lost me, doll," Al says, as he wanders over, and claims the other half of the couch.
'Jessica was the woman who took me. But she's just one person. She's multiple personality Al. That was she was trying to get me to fix. But I couldn't. Her sister, Niki, came into the bar yesterday. She was looking for a job and didn't recognize me at all"
That has him staring like an owl. "Wait. She wanted you to fix her MPD, that's why she took you. But only one personality remembers you?"
"The one only ever met me. Jessica. niki is the origional and.. she's.. nice. Jessica.. is nice, so long as you do what she wants, and there's a third, I can't remember her name. But I couldn't fix her, there was nothing to fix" She lifts the coffee to her lips and sips. The binder stays closed on her lap.
Alexander is left bemused, fingers wrapped around his mug, shaking his head. "I'll be damned. So, you can't cure madness, huh?"
"Not if there's no… physical reason, no. There was nothing… physically wrong with her Al. If there had been some tweak in her brain that caused it, if there had been some imbalance of chemical because.. her pituitary gland was off, I could have but, there wasn't" Abby takes another sip. "I left a note for Isabelle to hire her. In a screwed up way, I'd rather she be near, so I know that there's one less thing to be looking over my shoulder at. That and… if someone starts trouble at the bar or tries to take me.. I just.. I don't think she'd let it happen"
"That's fu- that's completely bizarre. What a carnival we live in here," Al says, utterly at loose ends. "I don't even know what to tell you."
"Stupid Idea? Not so stupid idea? Do I need to like Brian said, find someplace else to work or take him up on his offer. He offered to let me move in with him, that I wouldn't have to work, he works three jobs already, and makes more than enough money" Abby looks over to the other end of the couch and to him.
Alexander's lips quirk. "He wants to keep you?" he says, bluntly. Let's call it like we see it, shall we?
'He proposed it. I told him it was apprecaited, but, I need to work, I like to work, and I like that bar, and I like my boss and I can take off if you guys need me and she doesn't blink an eye. He's sweet, oh Al, he's so sweet, and he's keeping a copy near so that I'm looked after and no one bothers me"
"I can't say I care much for him, but if you think you'd feel better with him…." Al trails off. Not precisely jealous, but not much pleased either.
'I told him no Al" Abby studies the other man. "I'm finally in a place that doesn't have visible cockroaches, and there's cable. i've never had cable. And, I have two guys to take care of, and whilei'm sure my momma would faint to think of me living with two men who are strange in the bed, as she'd call it, I don't mind it at all and.. I just.. I like it. I like making food and knowing it's going to get eaten and picking up both your clothes and doing the laundry" Abby shrugs.
Al is touched by that, try as he might to hide it. "You'd rather take care of us than be with him?" His voice is diffident, gentle. "Strange in the bed, huh? That's….I can't remember the last time I heard someone put it that way."
"Brians sweet Alexander, but I don't have the energy to put towards.. pleasing another person. You two, your easy. It's five minutes more, I like a clean place and your not slobs. Your out, when Is leep, your in when i'm at work. It's.." Abby frowns. "Brians nice, but Brian is not you or Teo"
Alexander laughs at that, quietly. 'I see your point. We love you, we don't demand much of you but what it pleases you to give. It's like having two brothers, rather than a lover who wants all your attention."
You say, "It's like having two brothers to take care of and I never had two brothers. Some day, i'll get married, if that's what god wants for me, and if my husband wants me barefoot and in the kitchen, i'll do it. Right now though.. Alexander.. I like working in the bar. Watching the others do thier dances on the bar and the hours are nice and the tips are even better, and there's no thing like feeling safe knowing if someone comes through the front door to try and take your brain, that your boss is gonna summon fire from her hands and burn the guys to a crisp""
Alexander snorts. "No, you won't. God won't subject you to being married to someone like that. But I'm with you there. Teo and I will never be a threat to you that way, whatever our tastes."
'You wouldn't Alexander, I know you wouldn't. Don't.. don't tell Teo that Niki's applied to the bar. I'm going to wait, see what happens. I could use the extra.. protection. I really don't think she'd hurt me. She didn't hurt a hair on my head and everything I asked for, she brought me. She even called Teo when I asked"
"I'm dubious. She sounds like a violent thing, and I don't know. She's already taken you. But…..if you insist," he says, bowing his head and closing his eyes, in rather exaggerated submission.
'I don't think she knows about her 'sister' Al. that's the only reason I think, that it might work. And you know me. Bleeding heart. Things happen for a reason" She looks to the TV after reaching over and punching him in his arm. 'Gimme your hand. You start the movie, i'll fix your lip. Really sorry about your eye. I could fix that better this time. I pushed too fast, worried about your eye and wasn't being careful"
Alexander flicks the TV on. It actually proves to be 'Monsters Inc,' which is something of a favorite for the redhead. He snorts again, and puts his hand in hers. "Honey, it's more than enough. By rights I should be wearing an eye patch."
"Allow me my moments of imprefection" She hushes him. Her eyes dart to the screen withinterest, some familiar prayer to Alexander and their shares religious history before the tingle starts to travel where it's needed. "Oh.. I've never seen this"
"It's really cute. What if the monsters under your bed when you were a kid were just doin' it to make a livin' in the monster land?" he explains, even as the wound on his lip fades.
'Better monsters than demons?" Her hand tightens a moment before she lets go as the tingling tapers off. "I'm going to get no studying done. Oh well. I'll have more hours tomorrow. I can afford to slack off" The threadbare slippers are kicked off and her feet tucked under her, blanket re-arranged.
Alexander wonders, rather foolishly, "Studying for what?"
'Bartending. Need a license. Old enough to get it, not old enough to drink it. But I still gotta get it" She passes over the binder blindly, utterly entraced by the perils of Mike and Sully and Boo on the TV.
Alexander chuckles at that. "I feel sorta dumb, but of course, you do have to, don't you," he mutters, sprawling out a little.
'you feel dumb" She hsaked her head and pillows in on an arm, her other arm tossed careflessly on her thigh. "I'll have some chicken cooking for you guys before I go to work. It'll be in the fridge, ready to reheat"
Alexander says, with mock regret, "A condition all too common, these days."
'Oh hush, really, im gonna miss this with all your jabbering" Says the woman doing as much Jabbering. "and for heavens sake, would you two just go make out in one of the rooms one of these days. Enjoy each other. I swear i'll lock you both in a room with strawberries and chocolate and oysters if you don't
Alexander looks faintly chagrined. 'Nah. Leave it be. That won't happen," he says, a little uncomfortable.
'Okay" Abby murmurs. though her attention is back to the TV, she sticks a foot out to bump against Al's, a couple times. Like trying to provoke and annoy, play with your sibling on the couch. get back the mood there was before.
 December 17th: Lookout |
 December 17th: Meeting James |