Participants:
| Scene Title | Child Support |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Deckard style. |
| Date | August 27, 2010 |
A stone's throw away from the little makeshift harbor on the foreshore of the Arthur Kill river is this little even more makeshift bar. Little more than a shack, the interior barely fits more than its own stock of alcohol and kitchenware, and the seating spaces are outdoors under a rickety wooden cover decorated with fishing paraphernalia and nets. The chairs and tables are broken down cheap things that look like they've been scavenged from all over the place, mismatched but comfortable with some cushions or blankets thrown over them. The ground is sandy and dirty, as if the beach extends right under your feet, and despite being outdoors, the place is cluttered. Simple alcohol is provided - whiskeys, rums, and beers - without a chance of food, and you'll mostly find yourself in the company of thieves, considering the kinds of boats that dock here.
Today Amadeus picked the seediest bar he could find, presumably the least likely place any woman he knows, except perhaps Peyton, strippers, and… well the least likely place some women he knows will find him. He's muttering, with a glass of Jack Daniels in his right hand. He's had quite a few, wearing his AC/DC shirt and a black MLB bat bag like the last time Flint saw him. He's in before the elder Deckard, so he's just talking for anyone who'll listen. "I ain't no… frat boy! Ain't no girl gonna change me!" he slurs at the bartender, then burps.
Today Flint went to work, presumably because they finally called and asked where he was. A few hours and a wan stack of paperwork signed and sorted later, he's out on Staten Island in style: grey pinstripes and black sunglasses. A couple've the regulars slouched in around the bar's fringes glance to his pockets and the stir of his boots across sandy floorboards before they glance to his face and decide to wait for the next wiry old guy in a suit. Deckard's been here enough.
Cigarette fresh-lit at the corner of his mouth, he sizes up his supposed spawn from afar, dark lenses opaque against the onset of nightfall around what few orangeish lights the Pelican has strung through its fishnet ceilings. Takes him a good minute to spur himself on for the bar proper, where he orders, "Miller light," with cash already in hand.
"She's all 'You smoke pot, I like this pretty educated boy more' and then she's like 'I can't ruin my reputation'. Man, //fuck those straight-laced bitches!" Amadeus chugs his whiskey, then slams the glass down and pushes it forward for a refill. At Flint's voice, he looks up, squinting. "Hey, ain't you my dad? Why ain't you a loser anymore? Logan said you kill hookers or somethin'."
Logan said. Tension steels into the cut of lean muscle across the side of Flint's narrow jaw; binds taut in his spine and flexes pale across the back of his hand, frozen in the process of shooing a few extra ones out've his billfold. Hard to tell whether or not he bothers to look at Amadeus, but there's heat enough to feel like a stare for the beat it takes him to say, "Make it the usual."
Beer is swapped out for whiskey to match his son's and he turns to scope out an empty table.
If Flint goes for a table, Amadeus will follow right after, even if his movements are a bit unsteady. He can hold his alcohol, but he's had a lot. "I ain't goin' near those straight-laced chicks anymore. They all think they're too good. Always wanna change me and make me into some fuckin' frat boy. Fuck frat boys, a frat boy ain't nothin' when you're breakin' their kneecaps over a drug debt."
A table is what Flint is going for, to be sure. There's one with all four legs still intact on the outer edges where the bar's decking vanishes beneath beachy sand and he sinks down into an office chair there, tatty fabric and yellow foam familiar to his assbones. Whiskey's set down after, cell phone retrieved, glanced at and tucked away while Amadeus follows in all his wasted inevitability.
Amadeus plops down in the chair across from Flint, sitting his glass down in front of him. "I ain't good enough? What makes this dude so fuckin' great? So what if I live in my van, so what if I smoke pot. She wants to please her fuckin' dad? Fuck this guy. You punch her dad in the face, he's like, your partner, right? Fuck that guy. If Delia thinks I'm such a fuckin' loser and he won't approve, totally fuck 'im."
Deckard has to think about how much he cares, here, with information he couldn't have calculated tumbling into his lap like cigar ash. Clump after hot clump. Kid knows who he works with, kid knows the daughters of who he works with, kid knows he poked his knife around in a hooker or two. Kid knows where he is all the time. Creeping paranoia is hard to shake when sober, so Flint takes a longer drink than he should, teeth already grit against the burn of it into his empty guts.
"I don't think I could take him," is an honest (if sparse) response to the whole of it. Lazy confirmation while he stretches his legs out and splays his toes in alligator hide boots.
"Fuck this old dude, I'd take my bat, it's the Deckard bat, and I could take 'im. But fuck that, dude, I don't need her. You know how many trashy strippers are in the city? And I've got my foot in the door with Peyton Fuckin' Whitney." Amadeus downs a bit more of his drink, slamming his forehead against the table and laying it there. "I don't fuckin' care, y'know, dude? The fuck am I gonna do with some straight-laced chick anyway, the fuck am I gonna let someone make me change for? And did you fuck-her-sister or almost-fuck-her-sister? 'Cause I might revenge fuck her sister."
One brow tilted aside for Amadeus's confidence in his own batting average, Flint tilts a subtle sideways look after someone who might be able to help him and finds…no one. No one helpful, at least, which is hardly surprising considering the hour and setting. Right hand caged over his glass, he lifts it again and slouches deeper into his chair, distant as he can be in such close proximity to so much trouble. "We didn't fuck."
"Good, 'cause I don't wanna do that psychologist thing, with the t-rex and fucking your own mother or whatever." Amadeus shrugs as he mangles psychology, apparently content with the as he takes another long sip. "So what's your deal? How the fuck did you go from hooker slayer to homeland? And what's with all these chicks you've got hangin' over your arm and shit? Like that fine Southern number."
Irritation forced out through his sinuses at a slow breath that's more deliberately measured than it could be, Flint leans aside enough to scrub a tired hand down the length of his face. Calluses rough to bristled stubble and skullbone carved out harsh against hollow cheeks and hooded brow, thumb hooked up under the bite of his sunglasses into the bridge of his nose. Then he pauses there like that, elbow rested on the table and face turned into the rest of his palm. "Fuck you."
"The fuck is your problem? Your life's perfect, I'm the one who got left in the fuckin' dust. You know my mother only gave me this last name to spite you." Amadeus grabs his drink, then stands up at the table. "So ya know what? Fuck you." He tosses his drink from the glass, aimed right for Flint's clothes. Then he drops the glass and reaches back into his bat bag. "You wanna fuckin' make somethin' of it, I'll take you right here."
Flint flinches at the chill of lukewarm whiskey through the fiber of his suit. One of his nicer ones — Company supplied, no doubt. Tailored to the slope of his shoulders and the unlikely length of arms, legs and torso. Expensive.
Not like the drinks. Or the rickety table, when Daddy Deckard hooks one boot up under the nearest leg and flips it in the same motion that sees him up out've the his seat, teeth bared, hands ready.
"I don't need no bat to take you, pops!" Amadeus releases the bag and just goes running, moving to try and grip Flint's shirt and throw a punch across his cheek. "Bring it the fuck on, deadbeat!" he both angrily and drunkenly slurs as they get idle looks from the few people in the bar with them.
For once in his unlikely life, right now, in this fight, Flint has age, experience and sobriety on his side.
Amadeus's first strike is soaked with a down and sideways snap of his profile, cheekbone razored to knuckle with force enough to split both in the time it takes him to snarl his own hands into ACDC and cotton. Not to swing, but to lift the kid off his feet and hurl him down into the broken jumble of the inverted table nearby.
Amadeus slams down into the table, groaning as the room practically spins with drunkeness and pain. "Man, fuck you." is all he can think of to say, since, like a good father, Flint quickly caused the younger of the two to run out of steam… in the midst of inflicting lots of back pain. "You never even took me to a fuckin' baseball game. Where's my fuckin' baseball game? Fuck my stepdad, he don't understand shit. Man the fuck up and take me to a baseball game damnit!"
Bent sunglasses snapped off and flicked down all askitter after Amadeus, Flint glowers down from on high with eyes lit like hot coals in their sockets, lurid blue ringed bright against the duller backdrop of industrial orange that comprises The Angry Pelican. Blood's already set to oozing thick down the side of his face, gumming at salt and pepper stubble between raggedy breaths while he fumbles out his wallet with shaky hands and clears it of ID. Badge. A folded photograph.
All that goes back into his coat. The rest gets flung down at Amadeus's stupid face — warm cash and leather — more than few hundred dollar bills soft under the magnet.
"The fuck is this?" Amadeus asks as he takes the wallet and slips it into his pocket, then slowly sits up with his legs crossed, rubbing his back. "That's fuckin' it? You're just gonna throw some money at me and leave? Man fuck you." He starts to stand, grunting as he tries to straighten his back, one arm turned around to rub it. "You don't want a son, fuckin' fine. I wasn't even gonna ask for a lot of money, I just wanted to know who you fuckin' were, but maybe if I fuckin' sue you for all the missed child support I'll get your fuckin' attention."
"I'm not someone you should know." Voice sanded down to a growl for Amadeus's ears only, Flint lets the younger Deckard get to his feet without contest, cash and all. A sweep of his hand stems some of his own blood seep away from contact with his collar, oily red greased between his fingers when he takes his first step back. "You're holding everything I have. Leave me alone."
"Fine, fuck you dude." Amadeus repeats, starting to walk away with a bit of a drunken and pained stumble, dismissively waving him off as he heads for the door. "Don't need no fuckin' dad, I'm gonna go get laid."
Deckard could stand to look guiltier than he does when Amadeus turns to hobble on out, shoulders stiff and scruffy head ducked away from the stale ache throbbing in through the side of his skull. He's shaken up, rapid breathing only just beginning to filter back into something more metered when he stoops to jostle his table upright again. Then he's out too, boots tracked out onto the beach without money to spend on booze and even less to spend on anything else.