Awkward

Participants:

abby_icon.gif deckard_icon.gif

Scene Title Awkward
Synopsis Once again Abby is brought in to make repairs on Deckard. Only it's the first time they've seen each other since he last screwed up and neither is 100% sure what to do. The default answer seems to be 'as little as possible.'
Date March 28, 2009

The Garden


It's been a long night, and a long morning, and a long afternoon. Deckard hasn't gotten up much. Once or twice to pee. A couple of times to ask for more drugs, or a drink. He hasn't slept much either. After the initial round of substance abuse wore off, the soreness and stiffness in his side and across his back has been hard to shake. There's no TV, or books, or newspaper. Some maps on a desk across the room that he might've gotten up to shuffle around at one point.

For now he's propped up at a thirty degree angle by a couple of blood-spotted pillows. Teo took his shirt, shoes, guns, knife, wallet and most everything else but his pants and socks, leaving Eileen's stitch job, tattoos and wiry muscle in his arms and chest exposed to air that's pleasantly warm enough to have him in the process of nodding off again.

There's a smell of Shepherds pie and footsteps coming up the stairs then down the hall. There's apparently been nice smells coming, but thats because Jezebel was warned that Abigail was coming and was making good on her promise to stuff the blonde to the gills. So a couple pills later, one boat ride with Teo holding her hand and using every trick in his arsenal to keep her calm, Abby had made it to the Garden. Sometime between healing the others at the lighthouse and now, she'd found the time to dye her hair again. Brownish red once more. Her psychologist would probably say it's her trying to cope with the shit that's happened. It's truth. It's something she can change.

But the footsteps stop at the door to the room, one that she once occupied when she spent a few weeks here, the bearer of the food trying to get the courage bolstered before she shuffles forward a few steps to look in and find who she was here to see. "Jez is cooking. I thought you might want some shepherds pie" Nowhere near as thin as when he last saw her, but just a little. Five more pounds to go. The red hair is up in a ponytail, fisherman's sweater, and jeans. Some knock off Ugg's on her feet. It's white knuckles that hold the tray aloft, newspaper tucked under her arm as she waits at the door for permission to come in further.

Footsteps register as a dull heads up in Deckard's ears. Someone else coming to bother him. Scruffy head tipped back into the pillow behind it, he lifts his good arm to tug up at his pants and fasten his belt, careful not to yank at the span of tubing that connects the bend of his elbow to a near-empty bag of plasma strung up over his bedside. He's slow, dragging and disinterested, probably under the impression that his imminent company is both male and still pissed.

Except that it isn't. He jumps like a mutt caught with its nose in the garbage at the sound of Abby's voice, banana bag rocking with the sudden motion. Aaah. Some warning would have been nice. Or a shower. Something else to hold against Teo whenever he gets around to organizing a list. For now, he's left to stare at her and the meat pie, still gaunt and poky at the ribs if…somewhat improved, at least. If not in general, then improved from yesterday when he was running a little too short on blood.

Not what she was expecting. Him being the twitchy one. What a wonderful pair they make. No verbal permission or even physical permission given, the blonde still shuffles forward with the tray. "Just the gunshot?" There's the desk and the maps soon covered by the tray. She's nervous, partly because he's there with no shirt on, he did that thing back in the apartment buildings, and she's on the last place that she really even wanted to ever step foot on again.

"Yeah." Just the gunshot. Various older scraps are scarred into him, the most notable at present being the pinched slash down across his ribs. The old puncture at his back she probably already knew about, if his suddenly having two kidneys these days is any indication. Deckard's pale eyes follow the tray's progress rather than hers, preferring to linger there at the desk. He did that thing and now here he is without a shirt and it's a good thing Teo took his guns away because if he hadn't he would shoot him with them.

Maybe it's a testament to her state right now that she's not blushing bright as the north star right now. That after she wipes her hands on her jeans, it's to the closet she goes, to get a thin blanket, snap it out with a flick of her wrists that almost all domesticated women seem to know how to do and shuffles over to the reclining man, cover him up with it. Give him some modesty. No attempt made to tuck it in since he doesn't seem inclined to be social or comfortable with her here. "Hand please." He knows the routine by now as she eases down to sit beside him on the edge of the bed. "I got a tattoo." Tattoo, changed her hair red, moved to some place new. She's a whole bundle of change!

Deckard tolerates the furl of the fresh blanket over him. For about ten seconds. Then he reaches up with the stronger of his hands to tug it down to his middle, distant annoyance for the effort knotted into the flex of his jaw when he lifts the same hand in familiar offer. One sheet isn't going to make this any less awkward, no more than having Eileen sew his shoulder back together made it hurt any less. And she got a tattoo. "Cool," is all he can think to say, which sounds stupid in retrospect, particularly with the flatness of his voice that accompanies it.

Well, maybe not less awkward for him, but it would have been for her. Her hands are warm, not that he's cool, when she places both of them around his one hand, holding onto him gently. There's no verbal output of prayer, nothing to even signify that she's praying short of a lowered face, focusing on his hand. But within moments, there it is, that old familiar feeling. Only difference is that to Abby, somewhere in his body is a sinkhole. Where Mu-Qian healed his eye. It's foreign to her ability, it's something that needs to be cured, but.. since there's nothing to actually cure, it's just a hole in the scheme of things for her gift to be pulled upon endlessly. His shoulder though, starts to knit in it's slow motion way. The redhead for her part says silent, since that seems to be de rigeur today.

If anything he's a little too warm, either from the sunlight filtering in through the room's single window, or the beginnings of a fever. The long bones in his hand don't curl around hers this time, leaving the length and nature of contact to her discretion while he studies the wall and his shoulder begins to fix itself, muscle rejoining muscle and bone filling in the gap shattered into his scapula. She doesn't say anything, so neither does he, whiskey stink familiar enough even if his attitude isn't.

It's gonna be a loooooooong looooooong five to ten minutes. That's what. Just their breathing and the minute sounds of flesh repairing. The lines of tired that silently weave themselves into her face around her eyes. No more contact than necessary, since he doesn't seem to want it, and she's… going off of him it seems. He looks out the window and she just looks at the floor.

Unconscious relief slacks dark tension out of Deckard's shoulders, easing the hollows around the jut of his collar bones while she works. His sink into the pillows at his back becomes more relaxed, less effort expended on keeping pressure away from the damaged shoulder. The rise and fall of his chest is easier. It's a nice feeling. It always is.

And still, he doesn't look at her. His fingers don't so much as twitch within her grasp.

"Is this how it's going to be?" It's quiet, as if she almost doesn't quite want to ask. It's a lot easier too just to not look at him.

"Dunno." Even an answer as simple as that is slow in coming. Breathe in, breathe out. His opposite arm lifts to brush a thumb over the near-mended wreck at his shoulder, never near death so much as in its vague vicinity. And better now. Back to square one. "Is there another way you want it to be?"

"I want it to be like it was. Before you lost an eye and before he had someone cut my tongue out. Before Staten island. Where if you did what you did still, at that time… I wouldn't have had.." She should cut off the healing, it's done, there's no pull from his shoulder, just that sinkhole of his eye. "It wasn't.. it wasn't you." Normally those words are a death knell. As it stands, the healing stops then, letting him take his hand away first he wants to. "I still see him. he's not there, but I still see him, I still feel his hand on my throat. Why did you touch me. Why did you try to kiss me. Why then?"

"It won't be like it was." Decisive enough there, Deckard glances over her face for the first time since she's been here, taking an automatic read when the healing shuts down and she utters the inevitable, 'It wasn't you.' Something he hasn't heard since college. Somehow when he shot Felix the other morning, he didn't predict that most of what he'd be feeling for the next few days would consist of highschoolesque humiliation. Then again, he does spend a lot of his time these days hanging out with a bunch of twenty year olds.

Free hand lifted enough to rough itself through dark hair, he sits up the rest of the way, not turning his other hand out of her grasp until she's started asking uncomfortable questions. The scruffy line of his jaw has gone hard again, and rather than answer, he reaches up to unhook the plastic of his IV bag from its perch overhead.

She's not had to endure highschool humiliation really. Two years of it, and being who she is… She slept through a lot of it. His words echo what Dr. Yee tells her. It won't be like it was. It won't ever be like it was. It will be what she makes it. As he goes for the bag, she sets about to removing the IV from his arm, careful, gentle. Out comes the catheter, over the puncture hole goes her finger and three seconds later, and one quick prayer, it's as if it the crook of his elbow was ever pierced, save that there's the smear of blood on her thumb, and where it had managed to leak. "I'll shut up. Food's on the table. Don't grab Jez's ass, stay out of the actual garden. She cooks pretty good. There's towels in the closet here for a shower, she keeps extra shampoo in the closet outside the bathroom. That's todays newspaper with the food" She wipes the crook of his elbow with a tissue before she slips off the bed, let him deal with the IV bags and the IV catheter on the night table. "Tell Teo if you need more healing. I need off of here before my pills wear off."

Deckard is probably listening. He's paying attention enough not to wrest his arm away from the tug of the IV out of his arm at the very least, and remains seated on the bedside until it's out. Tubing coiled accordingly, he just kind of tosses it all unto the table in a lazy pile as he stands. There's food. He's hungry.

The way to a mans heart, through his stomach. He goes for food and Abby starts heading for the door, tossing the little ball of kleenex after wiping his blood from her finger into a wastebasket "Have a good evening, Mike." Teo's waiting somewhere downstairs to ferry her off and back to the safety that is the mainland.

"Sure." A good evening. He'll have one. Fork dragged from the plate, rather than carry the tray back to his bed, Deckard stays standing at the desk to poke around through meat and mashed potato. Smells okay. Anyway. Eating gives him something to do instead of looking like he cares that Abby's leaving, so. He gets to it, attention turned to the window and the abundance of greenery just outside.


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