Participants:
| Scene Title | Awkward Silence |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | A short scene in which there is a lot of it. |
| Date | April 27, 2009 |
Old Lucy's - Out Back
Off the fire escape the Redhead drops, this has been her modus operandi of late to dodge the reporters when she's off duty and trying to avoid them like the vultures they are. Messenger bag of her shoulder, sweater over the Jesus saves, the healer's demeanor is a little more quiet than in the bar. She pauses outside the back door long enough to shake a pill from an orange bottle, pop it in her mouth and hold it there while a V8 is dragged from out of her bag and the cap untwisted.
Despite the fact that Deckard is clean and in a reasonably respectable business suit, tie and overcoat, he doesn't look terribly out of place in the claustrophobic slink of the alley behind Old Lucy's. If he's at home anywhere, it's here in his natural, scuzzy environment. He doesn't really announce himself past, perhaps, an overloud scuff of one shoe against damp concrete when she drops down off the escape.
Abigail's gaze flicks to the scuffling sound, caught in the act of drinking down the pill and guzzling half the V8. Deckard, though she tensed for a moment, ready to throw the bottle and scrabble back up the fire escape if she had to. "Flint."
"Yeah." That's his name. Hands pushed down deep into his pockets, Deckard is a lean, scruffed, standoffish mass of black a short ways off. He bears a certain resemblance to the old beat up tin garbage can he's standing next to, lambent eyes screened neatly out by dark glasses.
"I live four blocks away," She doesn't know why she says that, though she has to go past him to get out onto the street so she starts heading for him. "I never.. said thank you, I think, for what happened in the Brothel. You lost an eye over me, I think. If I couldn't have fixed it, I still would have …" Abigail cuts herself off, coming to stand before him. "Teo says you have a thing for me. He doesn't know why, but that you do. I wasn't about to say that in the bar, but out here in the alley. That's why you kissed me in the safehouse." There. She said it.
"…Okay," says Deckard, not very intelligently. She lives four blocks away. Brows tugging into an unconscious furrow, he opens his mouth, thinks better of whatever he was going to say and closes it again. Fortunately it's less awkward than it could be given that she's still talking. Except then she keeps talking, all the way back to the thing and the kiss. Back to awkwardness again. There is a pause. One filled with a lot of working at his jaw and a vaguely cynical tilt of his long face.
"You're welcome. For the first thing. For the second…I assume you already have the condolences of everyone else who knows."
"I didn't tell anyone. Only Teo knows." Because being a crying mess on the floor isn't the greatest thing in the world to tell folks you were. "And my psychologist." See, she's seeing a crazy doctor. "But she's not telling anyone, I promise." The V8 bottles back into her bag, making it's company with a few textbooks, notebook, the anti-Anxiety pills. She opens her mouth to speak, then closes it again, before changing her mind and offers out her hand to him, like she just wants to shake. "I'm Abigail Marie Beauchamp. I'm 20 years old, I'm registered as a tier 0 Healer. I'm a bartender at Old Lucy's and.. I know things can't be the way they were, Flint. But I'd like to.. have it go back to what we can. Something. Anything other than awkward silence."
Unfortunately, Deckard's answer for this takes the familiar form of…still more awkward silence. Jaw set in a gentle aside, he watches her introduce herself and offer her hand with a minor adjustment in the tip of his head. Twenty years old. The already thin line of his mouth thins further and the scuffing brush of whiskey breath through his sinuses sounds a lot like a sigh.
When his hand finally drags out of his pocket to wrap around hers, its actually warm for once. It's also a little overly firm, and disinclined to release in a timely fashion, like there's a gear jamming somewhere in the brace of his bony wrist.
So she leaves her hand there. Touch. Coren had said that she needed to not cut herself off from it. But he probably didn't have an inkling of how much she didn't like touching before the life stopper that was Staten island. Hers is soft, despite slinging beer and warm as well, not her ability put to use. It's also swallowed by his hand. For once, she doesn't talk.
In the end it may be the absence of a blanch or an effort to pull away that saves this from escalating into something unfortunate. Who knows? Not Deckard, who looks a little like he's trying to swallow a bad taste out of his mouth when he finally manages to break the lock of his hand around hers in a jerky twitch of tendon and a gradual release.
She's on drugs. She's also not fresh from hell were touch meant the big bad wolf was coming to fuck with you. "Curfews not around yet. I could use something to eat. Something hot to drink. I think there's some weird Greek Gyro place around the corner." Harmless offer to get something to eat. "Pretty sure it won't violate my diet."
"I should get back to Staten." Voice gone a few shades coarser than the norm, Deckard is in the process of taking a step back before he's hand has fallen all the way away. "Business to take care of." A mute rankle of his nose later, he's turning to navigate his way back out of the alley the way he came in.
"Leave a message with Brian if you need my…" Need my healing. That's the only thing that follows him, letting Deckard escape, nothing but her blue eyes tracing his path till he disappears out of sight, leaving her alone in the alley.