Are You High?

Participants:

deckard_icon.gif jet_icon.gif

Scene Title Are You High?
Synopsis On his way back home to one of his ratholes on Staten Island, Deckard is intercepted by a fifty year old woman in a twenty year old goth's body. Sadly, stranger things have happened to him. And it shows.
Date July 16, 2009

Staten Island

There's something about the fringes of Staten Island that will always inspire sentiments of unease. After the bomb, much of Staten Island has fallen into glorious disrepair, so much so that places that were already in stages of decay look more like monuments to entropy than once urban settlements in decline. While much of the island was suburban residential areas before the bomb, there were two crowning moments that drove this borough of New York into an early grave. The first was the mass exodus of survivors and panicked people fleeing Manhattan. They came by foot, bicycle and car across the bridges to Staten Island, all manner of desperate and frightened people flooding into a crowded place. While some fled through to New Jersey, others simply couldn't — or wouldn't — go further. This, like in Queens, led to an eventual chaos that would in time eclipse the pandemonium in the eastern edge of New York after the bomb.

Staten Island was in the direct path of the fallout from the explosion, and after thousands fled to the island, the entire populace was forcibly evacuated. Those few that managed to stay, clung to their homes desperately, and those few who did would suffer from radiation sickness and the ever-escalating crime rate. By the time Staten Island got the "all clear" from the government, the damage had already been done.

What was one suburban neighborhoods and parklands is now a monument to decay. Houses lie in various states of disuse and ruin, and like much of New York has seen property values nosedive. Few want to move out to a formerly irradiated zone, and even fewer want to return to a place so rife to violent crime. Now, much of Staten Island lies in various states of decay. Houses abandoned by families that fled the city, were forced into forclosure and were never resold, or simply places where entire families went missing and are now squatted in by any number of transients line the once peaceful streets. Staten Island is a home to crumbling infrastructure, spotty electricity, and people who wish to remain undiscovered by law enforcement. Few police will willingly go into this now infamous island.


Somewhere in the midst of Staten, a residential street opens up into a more coastal region of the island, leaving unoccupied houses and desolated pavement defenseless against the encroach of dirty sand and creaking erosion where the wind has ripped at wood siding and pitted patchily tiled roofs. A stop sign leaning at a skewed angle is the last marker between this street and the one that runs along the beach, not more than a mile from a rickety bar reopened not long after the island was cleared for repopulation. It's a popular hangout for local drug pushers, scuzzbuckets and scavengers, and probably where Deckard started before he wound up here.

Tall and lean, the stiff lines of a brown leather jacket lend more squaring to his shoulders than they probably deserve when he trails his way hazily around the stop sign. His greying hair and grizzled stubble collection is touched blue in the fading light, dreary clothes blending well with the urban decay that's all around. He's smoking. And talking to himself. …But mostly smoking.

"Hey buddy!" A female's voice as a teenage gothling is skipping, yes, skipping towards Deckard now as she works her way around the cracked pavement as she nears him. Don't laugh, skipping gothlings are in high demand! Moving closer to Deckard the back of her hand moves to brush a lock of black hair which has probably been dyed three times or more as it's tucked lazily behind her ear. "Hey buddy," comes a soft pant as she seems a little out of breath, "Hey. Can I bum a smoke." Coming to a stop infront of him now, her arms cross over her chest as she grins up at Deckard, apparently Jet is in a good mood. "Can I please have a smoke?"

Deckard doesn't say, 'Hey,' back. He doesn't do much of anything, actually, save that he stops walking, squints, and stands up a little straighter, old leather rustling at his back. Several seconds pass before he looks convinced that he's seeing…what he's seeing. Unfortunately, a glance swung back over his shoulder yields no other company to ask and he's left to look her over the way he'd look over a banana in the grocery store if he found one with a head growing out've it. Brow leveled flat, cigarette leaking smoke in a winding line past the stark blue of his eyes, Deckard staves off reaching into his jacket with a beat or two of awkward silence and staring. When he finally does reach for what remains of his pack, his hand bumps past the dull butt of a revolver snugged in under his left arm.

The gothling just stands there infront of Deckard as she watches him slip his hand into his jacket, though the gothling with the contact'd black eyes doesn't watch his hand, her eyes just lingering on his own as she watches him. A shifting of her form, a crossing of her arms over her chest as she waits. Jet doesn't even comment on his lack of speech, just waiting for that lovely smoke to appear. Or she hopes it appears.

Yeah. It appears. His hand isn't moving so slowly that it doesn't eventually get in there and out again, bearing a single smoke rather than the box in its entirety. Said cigarette is offered out more carelessly than it was extracted, crisp and white and only a little smashed. Skipping goth girls. On Staten Island.

Jet flashes the man a grin as she plucks the smoke from his hand, "Hey, thanks." Tucking the smoke between her lips now, her arms cross lightly over her chest as she continues to regard the man, "You got a lighter too baby?" Mumbled words around her smoke as she continues to regard the man, before smirking up at him. "Strong, tall and silent. I can dig that."

"Sure." Deckard has a lighter too. Still staring, if moving a little quicker now that she hasn't — burst into flames or pulled a gun on him — he dips a metallic flip lighter up out of his pocket, steel scuffed and smudged up close when he thumbs it open for her. Fuzzily focused and saturated with whiskey stink, he still manages to look skeptical when she rattles off a list of his qualifications. Force of habit, maybe.

Jet wraps her free hands around the spark of flame from Deckard, inhaling it before holding it in her lungs and then exhaling it out through her nostrils. "I don't normally smoke," she speaks with a small cough, "Bad for the lungs, you know?" A smirky smile to Deckard at this as she finally plucks the smoke from her lips, ashing it on the cracked sidewalk. "So." A beat, "So you selling any drugs out here baby?" a smacking of her lips together at this, "I may be interested in buying."

"Fresh out." Not exactly a lie, if the whiff of sweet marijuana mingling with stale whiskey sunk into Deckard's scuffed jacket is any indication. He rankles his nose behind the more innocuous stick of his current cigarette, scruffy jaw slid over into a sideways set while he watches her. …Boobies. While he watches her boobies. And only belatedly catches himself enough to look back up at her face. Focus. "So, what? Cocaine but not tobacco?"

Jet watches him, watch her boobies though it doesn't seem to phase her much, maybe she gets it a lot, ot maybe in her fifty years of existence she has gotten used to it. "Hey. I don't do cocaine. I was looking for weed, or something." Another inhale of her smoke as she holds it in her lungs before exhaling it out. "My name is Jet, what's yours babycakes?" A flash of a grin to him at this as well as another ashing of her smoke.

"Flint," Deckard replies with a sort of dull honesty to his answer where it'd be pretty fucking easy to lie, all things considered. He looks worn down; sounds like he doesn't care one way or the other. "Weed 'or something.'" Smoke pushed out through his sinuses in an uneven huff of hot air, he looks past her to the wreckage of the street and sighs to himself. "Do I know you from somewhere?"

"Nope. But you were standing here. Alone. Talking to yourself." A quirk of her lips as she takes another inhale before ashing it, the smoke half way gone now. Stepping around the side of Deckard she lifts a hand to her forehead as she peers down the street, then back to Deckard. "Quiet tonight. You think my chances of walking along and now getting hurt are above or below eighty percent tonight?" A smacking of her lips to this before she takes another deep drag of the smoke before flicking the rest away.

"I wasn't talking to myself." Okay, so. Apparently Deckard does care enough to lie a little, though his tone in doing so is nearly impossible to differentiate from the one that faded out before it. When she looks away, he looks to the flash of her cigarette and the smack of her lips, attention span about as solid as the ruffle of his short-shorn hair in the salt breeze. "It's getting dark, so. I'd say your odds are probably pretty bleak."

Jet shifty foots for a minute as she lifts her fingers towards her mouth as she seems to be taking a drag, but alas her fingers are empty to they lower back down as they cross over her chest. "I ain't worried about it. They'll leave me alone. I'm goth, afterall!" A playful 'grrr' at the man as she bears her teeth at him, before she gives a short little giggle at him. "Anyway. You know of where a girl can get some digs around here?"

"I'm not 100% sure you're really here," muttered low to the sift of chilly air between them, Deckard lifts a brow and takes a personal moment to focus on actually smoking the cigarette that's been hanging out of his mouth since before this conversation actually began. "Either way you're standing in a neighborhood full of abandoned houses. If they look occupied they probably are. Don't try to make any fires or make noise or wander around in the street and you should be fine for the night." Still at a resigned mutter, he looks her over again in full, then tips his head back in the direction of the bar. "If you have money they might let you sleep upstairs."

A soft laugh from her at this as she slides a bit closer to Deckard, her arms moving to cross over her chest as she regards him. "Don't make me prove to you that I'm real baby," come her murmured words, "You won't like the outcome I assume you." A light moistening to her bottom lip at this, "You got a house? Girlfriend? Dog? You should let me stay with you tonight. I'll give you a couple hundred bucks. You can lock me in the bathroom if yeh want." Is she serious? Maybe. Maybe she's just fucking with him.

Deckard's brows sketch up just a hair, pale eyes flicking up and aside to measure the slow press of night against the horizon. Shadows are fading into a more generalized gloom. One well-suited to his dusky jacket and darker jeans. "I have…a few places to stay. A couple of them still have beds." Caught off guard, he hesitates ahead of offering further details and tugs his cigarette out of the corner of his mouth to narrow his squint still further. Is she just fucking with him? "Why wouldn't I like the outcome?" It is hard not having x-ray vision. He cannot check to see if she is a man. :(

"Huh? Outcome?" A smirk from her at his as her finger move to his chest as she boldly walks up it. "You just wouldn't." Her hand pulls away from him now as she gives a clap of her hands together, "Yes yes. Take me home with you." A laugh from her at this, "Wherever is fine. I really should find my own place… but the people here are so nice! why just last night a Fed let me sleep over. Nice chap. Silly chap."

Ash drifts of the end of Deckard's cigarette, kicked off by the wind to fleck invisible into his own sleeve while he watches her. Because he's definitely back to staring again, the rise and fall of his chest steep and slow while he considers his options. "There's something wrong with you," decided at length, he sticks the smoke back into his mouth and starts off down the street, nearly tripping over the curb as he goes. Maybe just expecting that she'll follow.

"Are you sure?" Jet begins to skip after Deckard as he walks away, even so far as twirling this way and that. "If I had to say anything," comes her soft pant as she once more gets out of breath from the physical exertion, "I would say I'm just carefree." A bark of laughter from her and then a grin as she continues along, careful not to stumble over the cracks. "Do you know where I can get a unlicensed gun?" Random question that.

Skipping. Sure. Flint's had a long day and a longer year to not so much as lift a brow to the scuffing tune of her irregular progress behind him. His own boots don't pick their path all that carefully — black cracks still standing out enough against feeble light that he's able to trace over most of them without falling on his face. It isn't until she asks the gun thing that he stops again, almost resigned in the haggard way he turns back around to face her. "Did someone send you to come fuck with me?"

"Nope!" A flash of a grin to Deckard once more, "Do you want me to fuck with you baby? I'll fuck with you if you want me to. But it'll be my fucking. My game." A skin and a jump makes her land right in front of Deckard, the gothling starring up at him with her black orb'd eyes. "I just want a gun. You look like the type of man who knows things."

"If you want the serial number gone and not just scrubbed off the surface it's going to cost you more than 'a couple hundred bucks,' Lydia." Patience finally starting to wear thin, Deckard tips his bristled chin down to achieve some semblance of eye contact from within the black pits of his own hard-carved sockets. "As for the rest, depends on how literal you are with your fucks."

"Lydia?" A perk of her brow to Deckard at this as she tilts her head to one side. "I've had many names in the years of my existence, but I never took a Lydia. And I don't fuck. Sexually. Never have. Prolly never will. Less I get drunk. And forget where I am," A smirk from her at this and then a grin as she trots sideways a bit then back to Deckard. "I have money."

"S'that…" Deckard starts, swallows, squints again, puzzled. "S'what, twenty? Twenty years? Christ. You idiots can't use society as an excuse for this kind've shit, you know. I know plenty of people born in the eighties who know how to dress and act like they're from earth." This is maybe the most words he's said all in a row since they started talking. Maybe he's flustered by the evaporated promise of sex with a hallucination from Hot Topic.

"What the hell are you talking about?" A smirk from her at this as she just skips along. "I'm not twenty years old." Moving to his side she walks along with him for a few moments… before suddenly starting to skip again alongside of him. A beat, "Would you really have sex with a strange gothling for a gun?"

Deckard has to look ahead again when she starts skipping. They're nearly to a particularly shabby looking grey house at the end of a cul-de-sac, roof all sunken in and windows gaping. Her first question goes unanswered. The second gets a vaguely honest, "I dunno."

Jet moves to play hopscotch on the sidewalk now, moving in imaginary lines as she goes silent for a little bit. A glance to Deckard out of the corner of her eye, then back to where they are walking. "You're a handsome man, but I don't feel right screwing around physically in this body. You know. Or something." Odd words perhaps as she gives another smacking to her lips. "You want me to make you some soup or something? You do seem kinda out of it. Are you high?"

"Thanks." The compliment is absorbed with the same flat absence of affect Deckard's been sporting all evening. Past that there's a slant at the flat of his mouth, but not much more. "Probably a little." Honest again. A sniff and a sputter of sparks later, his cigarette is flicked hard off to the side of the walk up to the grey house. 'Home' looks like a shithole, even in the dark, and he's already reaching to tug a small flashlight out of a back pocket. "There's canned stuff inside."

Jet moves to take a position behind Deckard, looking around his side as her hands actually move to his hips and rest there, as if getting ready to shove him infront of her at any sign of danger. She very well may! "Did I tell you my name is Jet?" A beat. "I think I did. You don't have spaghettio's, do you? I loves me some of that shit." She's just talk talk talking, maybe making up for Deckards lack of it.

"Yes. And no." The flashlight is flicked on yellow gold and the door opened without a key. It's darker inside than out — the only existing light patched in deady, foggy blue through boxy windows and a vomitous hole that stretches down through the roof and part of the second floor. Deckard doesn't flinch at the contact, though it does give him a weird, blue screen sort of pause before he continues on inward and turns to lock the door behind them, flashlight beam raking a wide arc over black debris and moldy carpet along the way.

Jet pouts a little to his words, the gothling perhaps really wanting some spaghettio's. Walking along in silence with him, she finally removes her hands from the mans side as they cross over her chest, just walking along with him in the house. "When was the last time you've been here?" Her voice is softer now, almost a whisper as if not wanting to disturb anything. "I sometimes wonder why I do this, when I can go rent a hotel. A nice hotel. Why do I do this? Slum it?"

"Couple've weeks ago." Less reassuring than it could be as far as answers go. There's a dampness and a dankness to the air deeper in that's mitigated somewhat by the free flow of air in through the windows. A louder, "POLICE, run for your life!" ends in the awayward scuffling of little rat talons over across damp drywall, but there's no scrambling anywhere else in the house. Deckard presses on for the kitchen, opening a narrow pantry on the way. Lo, there are a few clean cans of chicken soup sitting on the dusty shelves inside looking lonely in the absence of more substantial company.

Every step crunches or sinks or sticks. The floor is thick with torn up housing material and it takes him some maneuvering to make his way over to dragging a propane tank out of a cabinet and onto the counter. A little gas stove on stilts follows it out. "Can't be for the company."

"Man, I hope you don't bring women here," are her murmured words as she does actually trip now, bumping hard into Deckard before she brushes her hands down the front of her form. "Anyway! You do have soup. And it's chicken soup! I bet you knew I was coming. Didn't you. A dream or something. I hear drugs can open your senses to unforeseen things, or something." A smirk from her at this then a laugh, "Need me to help or something? And I don't know. Why mingle with the wanted, when the unwanted are more important?"

"Just you." Knee deep in short sentence fragments again, Deckard grunts against the bump, managing to stay upright by virtue of weight twice as much as she does while he busies himself hooking up the hose and turning the nozzle open and swinging his lighter over the stove deftly enough to light it without setting himself on fire in the process. Selective hearing keeps him from registering the offer of help, but he glances to her at her last, eyes little more than a faint glitter of reflected light in the dark. "More important to what?"

"What?" A confused look from Jet to Deckard for a moment as the gothling just stares at him, and then she smiles. "Oh. More important than society gives them credit for? I don't know." A slight blush to her cheeks at this as she clears her throat, the female moving around to his side as she watches what he does in preparation, "Are you making this for yourself, or for me? Cause I can make it either way, you know. Really."

Yet again, Deckard eyes her for a span of silence, the harsh angles of his long face outlined in a dull paint of orange light. Is she blushing? Christ. He finally opens a drawer with a long drag of his right hand, black pan and oversized spoon withdrawn and clattered out onto the counter next everything else too carelessly. "If I let you cook will you stop talking to me?"

Well if words could hurt. At his words of her not talking to him there is a faint tremble in her bottom lip as well as a misting of her eyes. "Sure, no problem." A faint smile to Deckard and the gothling moves past him to find a seat somewhere, hands folding in her lap as she just sits in silence and stares at a blank wall. She can be quiet, and still, the only motion from her being the rise and falling of her chest, and the sound of her breathing.

Shit.

Deckard watches her go in silence from beneath the low hood of his brow, frowning hard at that little extra glisten in her eyes when she moves past. But NO. He's not going to let himself care. So. After a moment's awkward, lingering, hesitating quiet, he bulldogs his way back over across the jumbled floor to the pantry to retrieve a pair of soup cans so that he can heat them up over the stove. Enough to feed them both. Probably in silence.


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