Participants:
| Scene Title | And Whether Princesses Have Wings |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Bolivar brings Princess Dee a present a few hours after her healing, and Raquelle courteously accepts it. They sort of start to catch up, before other entirely natural processes and urges catch up to them. |
| Date | May 13, 2009 |
St. Luke's Hospital is known for its high-quality care and its contributions to medical research. Its staff place an emphasis on compassion for and sensitivity to the needs of their patients and the communities they serve. In addition to nearby Columbia University, the hospital collaborates with several community groups, churches, and programs at local high schools. The associated Roosevelt Hospital offers a special wing of rooms and suites with more amenities than the standard hospital environment; they wouldn't seem out of place in a top-rated hotel. That said, a hospital is a hospital — every corridor and room still smells faintly of antiseptic.
That Registered healer that Bolivar had been talking about is, apparently, a far more intimate personal associate of Raquelle's. This should not have surprised him at all, given they are all churchy people, and New York City is apparently comprised of about sixty potential acquaintances altogether. It does anyway. Surprise him.
It's only a few hours since the makeshift redhead fled upon the glittering green of her Vespa steed, leaving in her wake a Princess awakening to her father's running eyeliner and an entourage of nurses-in-waiting cooing over her bedside. There have been some hubbubs since. fMRIs for verification, some other wrinkle of discovery that had raised voices for a few seconds, but Bolivar couldn't hear from all the way out here in the living room. He's in the wrong fairy tale, really.
Officer Rodriguez-Smith is more like the solitary hunchback in a clocktower, destined for a thorough stoning at the hands of a deservedly righteous mob, than a God-fearing or beloved anything to do with heroes and magic and edifying storylines. Still, even that lurking creature had had something stolidly faithful about him, and the scarred cop is precisely like that now, seated on the bench with a crumpled cardboard coffee cup in hand, his trenchcoat's long lines laying lank against his legs.
He keeps looking up when he hears the doors clack open, squints under the fleeting coruscations of sunshine.
It has been a very very very very very very rough couple of weeks for Raquelle and whatever news a doctor had for him if any, and all the promises of what he'll do for people and all the rest of that emotional rubbish has left him pretty drained. But Raquelle soldiers through, he's been…'brave'.
He comes down that hallway and through those doors wearing a pair of /fabulous/ dark blue jeans, docs on his feet and a fitted black and white t-shirt, a black blazer over it all and he has on less make-up than usual, guyliner and freckles showing a bit as he runs his fingers through his hair and slows to a stop to scan the area for a familiar face.
There is one, fire-ravaged down one side and distinctly uneasy the whole canvas through. Bolivar is compressing his coffee cup into some kind of elaborate three-dimensional origami fractal. Kind of. Not really. He's making a mess because he's aggravated, that's all, if fortunately not a mess that actually spills over onto anybody else, bar the occasional tot that trips over his shoe or lost idiot who can't read the lacquered plastic signs posted up on the walls.
"Raquelle?"
Bolivar gets up after the few seconds it requires for him to realize not that remaining seated would be rude, but remembering that he doesn't— actually particularly desire offending the songbird. "Hey. I got her a gay demon." Awkwardly, it emerges in his hand: a squashy, thin-limbed purple creature with a pot-belly, tiny, curved candy-striped horns protruding from his head, hooked tail the fit of a girl's wrist, and a lopsided grin. Bolivar sticks it out in Raquelle's general direction.
…Raquelle's mental 'wtfing' all screeches to a halt as he hears his name and those baby blues fall on Bolivar after a moment, tense expressio nsoftening a fraction as he heads that man's direction, taking a deep breath. "Hey…didn't expec-" He's cut off by the sight of the gay demon, lashes fluttering and hands reaching out to take the stuffed animal.
"A gay demon." Raquelle repeats with a hint of a chuckle in his tone. "I guess it beats just taking a picture and taping it on a coffee cup." He bites his bottom lip and looks the other man over with a raise of an eyebrow. "She'll love it."
"Whatever," Bolivar responds, gallantly, releasing the inscrutable purple being into the grasp of its mistress' lieutenant. "I hate Barbies." Gallantly.
The next instant, he somewhat regrets having released the plush toy. It leaves his small hands excruciatingly empty; a circumstance which he tries to correct by curling his fingers in on themselves, but there's no point in that, and upon feeling the clammy residue of sweat on his own skin, he's left to wonder if he had accidentally left a patch on the gay demon's skin. Father Sumter is going to love this. Maybe DeeDee will know better than to bring him over there. Maybe pigs will fly.
"So are you going to stand there leering at me like we just broke up, or are you going to tell me what's going on?" Bolivar shuffles slightly. Stows his hands in his pockets, and returns glance at a woman who'd been looking at him upon his description of the gift. She twists her head away as if he had slapped her in the eye.
"Her sister performs brain surgery on all her Barbies so, Diana prefers stuffed animals anyhow." Raquelle admits after a few moments of awkward silence, reaching for one of Bolivar's hand in small gesture of his hand, questioning even. "Err, well she's all healed up mostly. This sweet girl came to help her out, she wanted to keep her pink cast but they are gonna remove that soon and give her a bandaid instead."
He shifts his weight from foot to foot. "But she'll be home soon, really soon. I really uh, should work on getting her - oh shit work, um. You're okay yeah?" He fidgets with the toy.
Accosted in mid-flight, Bolivar's hand remains unaccountably docile. It doesn't bite, flee, or even put up much of a struggle despite the barred confinement of Raquelle's dexterous fingers. Instead, his thumb winds up angled over the back of the other man's hand, stroking parallel the subtle slats of metacarpal bones underneath the skin, until the edge of his finger stops, nudged into the notch between his knuckles.
This time, nobody looks up. "Am I okay," he says, raising a dark brow. "I'm fine. Nothing happens to me. No more fucking assassination attempts, anyway." And Robin Hood gave him free money that's still tiding him over beautifully in other aspects of his life, so— "You? Going to work today sounds like a pretty bad idea, but you've been crouched over her bedside like a fucking gargoyle the past week, too."
Raquelle squeezes Bolivar's hand gently, fingers caressing and otherwise sexually harassing the hand within its grasp as the owner of the sexual offender tucks the gay demon under an arm as he ahhs softly. "Good, you've okay then, hell you've been uh, well you've kept me from choking bitches." He admits before frowning a bit. "I really haven't been thinking about work and shit, I really should though. Heh." He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath.
"Thanks."
As long as Raquelle's eyes are closed and everything, there is not a lot the young father can do about getting kissed. Clever ambush. Bolivar has to put himself off-balance on his toes to do it, but it's done in the end, with a small expenditure of athletic effort, before he rocks back on his heels. "I disagree," he says, frank as your average mallet. "You should go home, soon as she tucks in for the night. My apartment's pretty close by.
"Or your daughter could need you." Y'know. Something about familial obligations, companionship, love; all those abstractions that Bolivar isn't overly concerned with, while he's giving away plush demons and there's a beautiful young man glibely ignoring the fact that the palm he pretends to prize is all over a mess of scar tissue. He lets the offer sit in the air, canting a wry half a smile at Raquelle's word of gratitude.
Raquelle's lips curve in a flash of a smile as he returns the kiss tenderly and pulls back a bit, eyebrows raising. "Are you inviting me to your place or…" He's a little frazzled, understandably as he squints and nods slowly. "She might, I mean…for the cast and the last tests and then the going home but for now, um." He trails off.
"I could come over, then come back then…go from there." Lashes flutter as he opens his eyes to focus on that hand.
Choppy cuticles, striated nails, a nightmare of distorted grain across the back and the lines in fractured wrecks across his palms. At the bases of his fingers, the webbing gone oddly crinkly as if it would tear like paper if stretched too far.
Bolivar's hideous down one side, he firmly believes. He's never sure what, exactly, to do with Raquelle's blithe and unceremonious ignoring of this fact other than to blithely and unceremoniously ignore that that must be what's going on. Such is the nature of his smile, reserve or insincerity or sarcasm replaced with casual acceptance. Kelly's horribly frazzled. It's adorable, in its own way.
Whether or not he chooses to be soothed by tea, or tiny, competent hands, or an eventual dog bounding across the twisted covers remains to be seen. "Up to you, senor. I'm at your disposal." Even in Bolivar's voice, that sounds strangely like humility.
It is oddly beautiful/fascinating to Raquelle, the chopiness and striations and nightmare grains and what not. He may or may not have had a crush on the phantom of the opera when he was little. Who knows, he just brings the back of that hand to his lips, kissing the back of it before shooting a glance at that old lady who is peering at them oddly. He rolls his eyes a bit before blowing an air kiss.
Then he's quiet, considering everything that has been said and done. "She's napping." He starts out very carefully. "And I cannot think about much else right now other than…" He murmurs softly what he's thinking in Spanish…most of which could never be translated within a TV-14 Rating naturally, hell M is pushing it. "So you should show me how close this apartment is so I can make a wise decision." He tugs at that hand before pausing. "…and then I won't have to kill you when you discover I'm not a natural brunette…." That muttered he adjusts his hold on the gay demon
There's a little bit of grinning for that, too much heat lurking in his eyes for simple warmth but no lack of gentleness for all his intent, either. Fanged curiosity with respect to the mystery of Raquelle's true colors. The Spanish, he understands. What characterizes the sentiment underneath. "Three blocks over. Just before the Bloods and Crips and shit start merging their ganglands in with Columbia's frat club piss lines."
Raquelle's snared fingers are lifted onto Bolivar's shoulder, tugged as if it were a tether attached to something mulishly stubborn and unwilling to come along. Which Raquelle isn't. Bolivar leads the way, his tread long and even, their shoes clicking cadence on the flat varnish of the linoleum. They make their way past scattering droves of sharp-voiced ladies in scrubs and visitors as haggard as the young father himself. Automatic doors hiss open for them.
They have other things to discuss, unnumbered subjects. The fate of the little asshole snot who'd goaded Diana into her attempted flight off the furniture, and the message that Kayla Reid had received, the time he'll wait for her reply. Of Docs and pumpkin carriages and brand name lubricants, of fajitas and their new President, and when the weather will warm and whether princesses have wings. Except, you know.
Not really.