Chivalry Is Dead

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sonny_icon.gif teo_icon.gif

Scene Title Chivalry Is Dead
Synopsis But reanimated. Zombie chivalry. The metaphor works on a number of intriguing levels: Sonny has recently risen by the time Teo finds him, and Teo is subtly (at first, then less subtly) thirsty for blood. Nothing helps a bad mood like spreading it around. The offer of a million dollar apartment to bunk in, temporarily, doesn't hurt either, although first Sonny warrants scolding for not realizing he, too, has decency and sizeable brass ones.
Date January 10, 2008

The Blatant Luxury Part Of Manhattan — Sonny's Apartment


Sonny Bianco's address, as noted in the Ferrymen's files, points to a lavish building and a notably high floor number, which of course means that it's one of the nicer suites in an already posh building. The lobby is imposing and rivals the look and luxury of some five-star hotels. There's doormen and a concierge desk. No wonder the doctor was surprised that his kidnappers managed to get him back in. Behind the birdlike concierge woman are a row of stainless steel elevators.

Sonny Bianco's address, as noted in the Ferrymen's files, is specific enough that Teo approached the concierge with reasonable confidence and managed to quash the twitchy kind of anxiety that characterizes most terrorists when walking around in the classy lair of privileged persons with what might be closed-circuit camera security surveillance all over the place.

He is cleverly disguised as a friend. Ran a comb through his hair, made sure the clothes he wore were just out of laundry, and introduced himself as that: a friend. It's perfectly normal that Doctor Bianco would have young, reasonably attractive young male friends visiting his private quarters toward the end of the work day, apparently, so Teo merely watches the immaculately uniformed woman's eyebrow go up then instantly straighten back out again, smiles quizzically, and goes where pointed. He gives his real name, suspecting she'll call ahead and stop him if the doctor turns out he would rather not.

The woman does indeed call up. In fact, the elevator doesn't move as quickly as an elevator in this building should - suggesting that clearance was required. But soon enough, Teo finds himself riding up, and up, and up. The elevator finally opens on a hallway with immaculate carpeting with swirled filigree designs. There's surprisingly few doors on this floor - indicative of just how large each one of the suites are.

A door opens down the hallway and Sonny's rather haggard, scruffed head pokes out. "Teo? Come on, come in." His voice is hoarse.

Sonny never hid the fact that he has money - but perhaps how much money was not really comprehensible until now. The apartment that Teo is lead into is large, sprawling and appointed in a cooly masculine, modern style. The entire far wall is made up of windows that mute the mid-afternoon light and cast the whole apartment in a warm glow. The floors are a deep hardwood, the furniture leather. The modern, shining kitchen is open concept. There's a winding staircase to the left that leads to a small hallway, with two bedrooms. The space is open and roomy - perfect for entertaining high profile guests.

The owner however, looks like he just woke up in the gutter. His hair is tangled, he looks pale, and he is wearing a terribly wrinkled dress shirt and pants. The shirt sits crooked on his shoulders.

As per habit, Teo responds to salutations and invites in with a nigh melodic mix of English and Italian and a crooked grin that seesaws with a little uncertainty when he sees the full extent of Doctor Bianco's state. It's quite a state.

Said state is perhaps highlighted by the stark contrast against the gratuitous luxury to which he is apparently accustomed to living in, a far, far cry from the rundown, purely functional, if occasionally prudently sterilized settings of the makeshift medbays that Teodoro had seen him in before. He isn't sure why the potter who made the porcelain umbrella holder thing felt the need to challenge the piece's center of gravity in a manner so extravagant that he has to force his attention away with visible effort to resist the urge to prop it up with his knee. They even have endtables in here. Who owns endtables?

His aunt owns endtables. "You're breathing," he observes, at length. He stopped walking before crossing over from the marble flooring to the wooden flooring, wary of getting his snowboots on anything, feeling mildly concerned about what the residue from the inside of his respiratory system is doing to the air in here. Every cubic foot probably costs more than either of Teo's kidneys.

And his eyes are probably tracking gunk over everything as he looks at it, so he stops, switches back to studying Sonny with a frown. He feels out of place, oddly self-conscious in that way that never really seems to harm the real flesh of him. More than that, as he often does, he feels concerned. "But that doesn't seem to be saying much, amico."

Sonny seems unconcerned by what the soles of Teo's boots might be doing to the apartment. For all its elegance, for all the touches of his personality that resonate in the expensive apartment, it doesn't seem to suit him either. It's all so very uptight. It's the kind of furniture you feel guilty sitting on, the kind of tables you'd worry about putting a beer on. His own home, yet it doesn't feel relaxing. Even in his weakened state, he looks uptight about it. It's rare that someone from the other side of his life sees this showpiece of an apartment, or this mask of his upper crust life.

"I won't lie. I feel like shit," Sonny manages a weak smile. "I was just about to have a shower, but I put some coffee on if you don't mind helping yourself and waiting a few minutes? I'll be quick. But I can't think straight. I think they let me lie on the ground awhile."

Temper flares behind Teo's features, the start of a sneer curling his mouth and a flash behind his eyes, visible here though he'd kept it out of his voice on the phone. He could hide it now, of course— he's not an entirely impossible liar, but something about seeing Sonny's dishevelment in person, hearing that speculation, smelling the pain and illness off the older man's pores inspires something other than tact in the Italian. "Somebody could use a subdural hematoma by way of crowbar," he states, finally, his teeth audibly gritted around the bared rictus of a false smile. He grunts, raises a hand to snag fingers through his hair. "Coffee would be great.

"You have anything to eat? I could make you something." The request — offer — probably sounds absurd, but it might have sounded moreso from a different person. Teo's all disgruntlement and helpful as he yanks his boots off one by one, standing storkish between left and right legs, before he gestures toward the bathroom. "I'm sorry to interrupt. Shower hard."

Sonny is too tired and too muzzy-headed to fully comprehend the other man's body language, but he knows enough to know he's upset. "Calm down, Teo. I'm okay, really. Or…I will be, in a few days." He reaches out to give Teo's shoulder a reassuring squeeze. "Help yourself to whatever's in the kitchen. I was going to heat up some of the leftovers in the fridge. I won't be long." He manages to make that sound mostly normal, mostly his usual self. But his weaving gait and the fact that he has to reach out for the wall to steady himself betrays him. Soon after, he disappears into the washroom. There's the sound of water running.

An expensive-looking coffee maker bubbles with fresh, fair-trade, organic brew. The fridge is nearly empty - or perhaps it just seems that way because it's so big. There's milk, a dozen or so bottles of smoothies, a bottle of wine, a dozen or so bottles of microbrew beer and two takeout containers with food from a pricey restaurant. This is not a man who makes much use of the glistening gas oven. In fact, the only appliances with signs of use are the microwave and dishwasher. All the more evidence that he may live here, but there's no real sense of home.

That is sad. Not because Teo singularly resents gilded cages, but because he's met a few who've lived in them and he can tell a little about the habitants. Sonny isn't like Lucrezia, whose varnished claws could unlatch the lock and violently colored wings bore her away and back, the wicked curve of whose metaphorical beak bore an eternal smirk either way. This gilded cage is not as well-loved as hers.

He can tell, even as he shuffles around in his socked feet, digs mugs out of the cupboard and studies his reflection on their convex surfaces for a brief, quizzical moment, before pouring himself some coffee. When the steam funnels into his face with such boiling zeal, he waves it away, grimacing, goes to find a plate and lever some leftovers into that, and then the microwave. He harbors the distinct sense that he's leaving conspicuous fingerprints wherever he goes, the grease and dirt that come with being an organic human being. Too much of one, for this place.

Sonny doesn't linger long in the shower, for all he might feel like it. He's only in long enough to scrub off the grime of captivity. When he emerges, it's in a pair of jogging pants and a t-shirt, his hair still damp and curled tightly.

He looks a bit better, walks a bit straighter as he heads towards the kitchen. He reaches past Teo to the cupboard to pull out an off-white, modern-looking mug. "I should've known you'd ride in on your white horse." This is followed with a smile. Though some might say that in a mocking way, his sentiment seems genuine, admiring, even.

As knights go, Teo does not a glamorous one make. In place of a lance, he has a fork with half-dried sauce chunked to it. In place of a white horse, he has— gray elastic-rimmed cotton on his feet, and jeans, a slight slouch as he studies the coffee-maker machine from underneath the shadow of a furrowed brow, trying to determine if it has a self-destruct button or nuclear core reactor amid the spaceship-like proportions and sleek lines. "Nuh?" Though he saw Sonny's mirror image miniaturized abd bulged around the marked glass for the water level, sound seemed to take its time processing through his brain.

The fork flip-swivels sideways in his hand; he straightens and turns, his features registering pointless surprise at Sonny's garb before embarrassment at his remark, cheeks darkening, a laughing shake of his head. "I do this thing where I drink a lot of coffee," he says. "Chivalry's dead, just got… reanimated. With crystalline xanthine." Ding. The microwave's digital display glows a healthy 00:00.

Sonny hits the buttons that 'disarm' the coffee maker. He pulls out the pot, pours some into his mug, then offers the pot towards Teo's mug to fill. He then opens a stainless steel sugar bowl and drops a few spoonfuls of unrefined cane sugar into his mug. At least the cream he retrieves from the fridge is normal.

"Teo," the doc begins, "I…really do appreciate you coming to check on me. But I am okay." He may say that, but he hasn't made any indication he'd like the other Italian to leave or is uncomfortable with his presence. "I think the drugs are mostly out of my system. Now it's just fatigue and weakness from overusing my power. It's happened before." He moves towards the microwave and tugs out the plate. "Are you going to have some, too?" He motions to the containers of food, then to the dining room.

The containers of food warrant a look, then the dining room, Teo's gaze following the direction of the other man's hand like a particularly simple dog, awaiting the order or gesture that says go. When that isn't forthcoming, despite the verbal accompaniment, he turns up the corners of his mouth. "Si. I'm starving." Someone probably should have warned the good doctor. Once you feed a boy, he'll follow you around forever. He promptly distracts himself with the process of making himself up his own plate, no more greedily heaped up than Sonny's had been, despite a certain degree of temptation and, distracted, his voice seems to come from over a greater distance than there is.

Probably, it doesn't make the question any less suspect. "You're not going to tell me about it, are you? What happened?"

Sonny settles himself at one end of the dining room table. It's one of those modern-lined ones that, fortunately, doesn't feel as formal or intimidating as other pieces of furniture in the apartment. It helps that it's bare at the moment, save a few pieces of mail. He seems reluctant to eat and takes a few hesitant bites of unbuttered mashed potatoes. The coffee is consumed much more than the food.
He looks up, towards the kitchen as Teo waits for the microwave. He rubs his forehead and pushes back wet curls. "Even if I wanted to tell you enough to go after them, I couldn't. Whatever they drugged me with fucked up my memory. I never got names and faces are fuzzy. They're…" Sonny's jaw clenches and he exhales a held breath. "…they're going to make me do it again. At some point."

"The faces are 'fuzzy?'" A wedge of Teo's tall frame shows through the doorway as he leans his shoulder on the frame, the rigid lines shadowing the angles of his face, his weight lazily off his feet, arms crossed over his chest, dingy fork dangling from between long fingers over the crook of his elbow. "Jesus fucking Christ." His gaze flattens and he shows teeth, a flash of irritation, though it's hard to tell from over the distance of the floor. He watches Sonny imbibe and eat, rocks upright when the microwave chimes again.

He's economic with movement through space, and it's only a few seconds before he's out again, chunked beef and parma ham sharing space with leafy greens. The teeth of a stainless steel fork grate against the bottom of his plate; his feet make no sound on his way over to the couch, though he seats himself across from it, cross-legged on the floor. The plate rests on the coffee table, at convenient height. A little flatly, "You have some nerve talking about white horses, amico. You're Abigail Beauchamp with a little more color and kink to your hair."

Sonny barks a bit of laughter with food in his mouth. He pauses to chew, then sets his fork down. "You wouldn't say that if you knew me better, Teo. I help these people out of self-preservation. I don't know how to fight. I can't really use my power to defend myself. All I'd do is get myself killed if I fought against them." He stands up from the dining room table and follows Teo into the living room to better facilitate conversation.

"If you knew me better, you wouldn't be making that comparison." He picks up his fork and takes a bite. It's chewed thoughtfully, eyes unfocused for a moment. "It's all self-interest."

More frequently than one might imagine, Teo's investment in the better qualities of a person's character are not accompanied by eyes large with naivete and a poetic epithets about the nature of altruism. Instead, his features bear a slight frown, the rhythm of his eating interrupted only when he reaches to unzip, unbutton and remove his jacket, the process of his listening uninterrupted at all. "No offense, signor, but that's bullshit.

"You're no more self-interested than the next guy I know standing on a wall with a weapon in his hands or in his blood. Forget about me, or retaliation, or revenge. The easy thing— would be getting the fuck out of New York with a few ex-SAS, Navy Seals, and Registered teleporters on your bodyguard. You don't look like you're enjoying this," the fork describes the entire apartment, the whole situation, in the air, "but here you are. But you're here. Whatever the fuck it is you're interested in, it isn't just your self, as defined as some 'spoiled little stronzo with jelly for his spine and piss instead of a heart.'"

Irritably, he scratches beef off the bottom of his plate. It's hard to say what specifically inspires that aggravation: the fact that Sonny's making these sacrifices, or that he doesn't agree on why.

Sonny chuckles and shakes his head. "It wouldn't make any difference to run and hide. You know as well as I do that no one is safe anymore. If someone wants to get to me, they're going to get to me," his tone is bitter. "I don't have any choice. If I ran off with bodyguards, then my father would have to admit the Evolved situation is not under control. Then everyone gets marched off to camps and forcibly registered. Fuck, look at this," he motions around him. "I can charge two hundred thousand dollars for thirty minutes of work. Two hundred grand. Comparing me to Abigail only insults her." He drops his fork and pushes his plate away. He seems to have lost his appetite. He leans his head back on the couch, closes his eyes and folds his hands in his lap. "There are no 'easy things,'" he murmurs, nearly inaudibly. "Not anymore."

"You can't tell me that people can't hide when they're hunted." There's a faint note of incredulity in Teo's voice, a distinct set of stubbornness to his jaw even as he pulls a mouthful down his throat. "You've worked with the fucking Ferrymen, for God's sake. And you can't tell me your dad couldn't come up with a good excuse for his kid to romp around the world.

"I'd appreciate it if you sucked up to the fact that you're a cut above the reticent and wilfully blind fuckers out there going through their day ass-up and heads buried in the sand. Abby doesn't retain injury to her ego from being compared under favorable circumstances to anybody." The words come with more fluency and faster than they're normally wont to, flogged forward by — maybe stress. Generalized ill-temper, him having met his quota for cynicism this month. Year.

"If not, I guess humility and self-loathing are as fashionable as the next two thousand d—" It is obvious when he realizes how he's sounding. You know, irritable, bossy, making words where they aren't his business. He stops on the breath of a new sentence, drops his gaze to the plate and then his face onto the palm of one hand. Mumbles an apology.

Sonny doesn't open his eyes. He keeps himself relaxed against the back of the couch, hands still folded across his stomach. But the tensing in his face muscles betrays his reaction to Teo's tirade. Then he opens one eye and murmurs, rather wryly, "Would you like a drink, Teo?" Sounds like he needs it. Before the doc even gets an answer, he's standing. Once on his feet, he pats the other Italian's cheek like he did while drunk. "I'll get you a beer." And then he's weaving a bit as he heads towards the kitchen. Funny. He felt fine until he stood up.

Patted on the face, Teo's head teeters to the side on his shoulders a fraction of an inch, his features still grimaced with apology. He doesn't answer about the drink because, apparently, Sonny already knows his answer. Which is nice. The rest of the time, his telepathic SOSes don't work nearly as well. He cracks an eye open wider when the older man begins to drag his corpus into the kitchen area again, rises to his feet with something like alarm when he notices the Sonny's haphazard sway on his feet. He offers the man's back a word of caution.

By the time the beers have emerged, Teo's carried his plate to the window. The fork is momentarily laid to rest on the edge of the porcelain, most of the food gone. He's peering at the view through an inch's gap in the curtains.

Sonny doesn't get a beer for himself. With the remnants of the drugs in his system, that seems like a bad idea. Instead, he pulls out one of the smoothies. He steps up to Teo and hands him the beer.

The view over the city would be more spectacular if it didn't give a very good picture of just where the bomb took a chunk out of the landscape. The path of destruction is clear from this height. From down on the street, the city's scars might not be so apparent, but the crater sticks out from here, jagged and deep.

"Listen…" Sonny hesitates, pauses to sip from the smoothie bottle. "…I know you've been having some problems. At home." A beat, "…you're welcome to stay here for awhile, if you like."

The beer is accepted into Teo's left hand, and he remembers to say grazie although his eyes are still on Midtown. Granted, he walks, buses, teleports, or bikes there every other day at minimum, but it seems different from up here. Worse, somehow.

Heee, when you're right in it, as often as he is, you know that the buildings that remain standing are holding, that the sidewalk isn't toxically irradiated, that there's life to be found bending photosynthetic tissues toward the sun from the mouldy gutters or nibbling from the garbage dump. You know that your friends are nearby, and you know it's safer than any cop-watched curb of the city. Midtown looks better when there isn't a skyline beautiful and architecturally whole bracketing either side of it; when there's nothing to compare it to.

From here, it looks like ass. Everything feels like ass. Teo isn't sure what he's doing here, exactly. Sonny's fine. Maybe he should stop eating and drinking Sonny out of house and home. Not that he's likely to run out of house and home any time soon. "In my heart, I want to make a funny joke about you inviting strangers into your home five minutes after experiencing a violent abduction and coercion, but I can't get the words together," he mutters, offering half a smile and a toast to nothing at all.

"Oh, I don't deny there's something psychological about it," says Sonny rather matter-of-factly. He's not a man who denies his faults. "But that doesn't change the fact that you seem to be going crazy living in that apartment. You need to step back. And me?" A shrug as he too considers the cityscape. He takes a drink from the smoothie. "Well. I could use the company."

If one were to read too much into it, one might posit that Sonny's somewhat gloomy outlook has something to do with the view that greets him. The resolve to his lot, to his life is nearly a palpable entity that haunts the apartment. No wonder he escapes it for Ferrymen duty, or spends long hours in his office. At least there are people, at least there is life. Having a view like this of New York City is like being graveyard adjacent.

A twitch takes up residence under the subtle ledge of Teo's cheek, a manic grin or bark of hysterical laughter gritted back. There's a grain of truth to what the older man is saying, he knows, but it's spoken in such ignorance of the current context of Manhattan's existence that his brain threatens to shred from cognitive dissonance. Alexander is the least of his problems. He keeps thinking about Alexander anyway.

In unkind terms. Teo swallows half his beer, sniffs through his nose as loud as a dog, and says, "It isn't safe here. Less safe than average. Probably be less with both of us here," he points out, turning to give Midtown his shoulder.

"No more or less safe than anywhere else," says Sonny. "The only way to be 'safe' is to live in fear. And if there's one thing I refuse to do, it's that." He wanders away from the window as well, to sit heavily upon the sofa. "That's why I won't run away." He sets the smoothie down and leans back again, eyes closing. His chest rises and falls with deep breaths. His whole body virtually twitches with exhaustion.
"The offer's there, anyway. Though I'd imagine you don't feel that comfortable here."

Finished with his plate of food and on to boozing up, Teo marks his finished plate with a clink of clay on the coffee table. "I think you're wrong," he announces cheerfully. The couch cushion sags somewhere off to Sonny's left, when the Sicilian leans his back on the furniture despite having seated himself on the floor, again and always.

"I'm probably going to take you up on it some point over the next few days anyway, though." The derelict library and remodelled dispensary both serve well, but business always feels nearby, there. "Thanks. Really. I'll call ahead, in case you're— busy." Lightly, a fist bops the sleepy aristocrat upside the knee once. And again. "Don't make me carry you, princess—"

"Nngh?" Sonny lolls his head forward, stifles a yawn and rubs his face. He looks down at Teo by his leg. He kicks lightly in response to the fist-on-knee. "The only thing I'm going to be 'busy' with over the next week is getting my life back on track. Jesus. You know how much everything gets fucked up when I miss one day of work?" He stifles a wide, lion-like yawn. "Kelsey gets so pissy because she's the one who has to tell the socialites their nosejobs have been bumped back." Then his eyes drift closed again. He seems ready to pass out completely at any moment.

That seems like a bad idea to Teodoro. There are terrorists around, and Sonny's probably going to get cold with the process of air-drying in a room that's all filigreed stone, wrought steel, and flat leather. There's a bemused grunt in Italian— You're the worst host ever, bereft of rancor or real heat. In all honesty, he's glad that Sonny's falling over cold. Assuming his health isn't a problem, it could minimize trouble and discomfort while Hana does a bug sweep.

Pulling himself into a crouch, Teo closes a hand on the ankle of Sonny's kicking foot, reaches to grip his wrist with a gunsure hand, and summarily haul the Mayor's son over his shoulder. Not to give the audience the wrong notion, of course, but as far as Teo's aware, he'd given fair warning. Princess.

Likely not his health, if Sonny's estimation of his condition is correct. It's just fatigue brought on by extreme use of his ability.

"Jesus!" that's his reaction to being bodily flung up into a fireman's carry. "I can walk, for god's sake!" There's a bit of flailing of limbs, but to avoid injury on the part of either party, he doesn't struggle too much, nor does he kick. He does make motions that he would like to get down, though. Like a cat. "This isn't helping you shake your chivalrous image," he deadpans from the rather embarrassing position as a six foot plus guy slung like a mink stole on the other man's shoulders.

Fortunately for both their sakes', if not God's, Teo's balance and agility remain nigh perfect after a beer on a full stomach. A few more in him, and he might have considered himself ready to fight for his life. He navigates the living room's spacious dimensions and lopes up the staircase, into the hallway with an eerily practiced turn and swivel to avoid cracking the extension of Sonny's skull open on a corner as he goes, craning his head to figure out which bedroom is the one in use.

"That implies nothing separates knights from cavemen except for a concussion," he points out, genially. A beat's pause. "That makes a lot of sense sense."

"The only difference between a knight and a caveman is how pointy their weapon is," says Sonny, perhaps not getting his own innuendo. Or perhaps he does, and he's just too tired to correct it. "Seriously, seriously, man. Put me down." He doesn't struggle too much though, not until they're off the stairs and on solid ground. Then he fights more to get his feet back on the ground.

The master suite is pretty hard to miss. It's large and spacious, but with a slightly more homey quality than downstairs. Downstairs might as well be an extension of his office - a space for hosting parties and meeting high profile clients or political supporters of his father. His bedroom is actually more private. There's more clutter, there's an older love seat that actually looks comfortable. There's even a small LCD TV with a PS3 hooked up to it. It smells like sleep and is cozily warm. The fluffy down duvet with a brown cover is piled, kicked at the end of the bed. The blinds are drawn, blocking out the window's view of New York's ruined skyline. It all combines to give the room a hibernating, cavelike feel.

Two exhibits of evidence that Sonny prefers his weapons blunt. The caveman feel— at least, as compared to the sterile palace downstairs. Second, the fact that Teo's about to get his teeth kneed in. Muttering assent, he stoops slightly, the muscle of his shoulder lengthening under three layers of cloth to ease Sonny's slide down to the floor.

Despite a twitch of ordinary temptation, Teo doesn't look too closely at where the older man's clothes rucked or rude. Always thought sleepy girls, cheeping and rumpled, were kind of adorable; a weakness he realizes he shouldn't be cultivating in the company of the Mayor's son, an erstwhile kidnappee and all-round haver of a shitty time. "I'll let you sleep," he says, crooking a grin even as his gaze deliberately wanders elsewhere. He yanks his own shirt back on-axis. "I'll give you a call if something happens. Would you return the favor?"

That whole little trip given by the Teo the Valiant has Sonny's head spinning more than any move he could have made on his own. So the other will find him used as the doc's primary mode of staying vertical for a moment. He weaves and grips to Teo's shoulders. Oof. "…I know you meant well, but next time, just an arm, okay? And yes, call, call. You know the number." He manages an off-kilter, somewhat goofy grin which matches everything else that's now a little askew thanks to the manhandling.

The bed looks oh so very tempting. So he's a bad host once again as he starts to pad for the bed. But he stops halfway, then reaches for Teo's hand. He takes it and brings it up to his lips for a quick kiss. "There you go, hero. Ride off into the sunset." There's a rough, throaty chuckle, then the doc drops bonelessly to the bed.

He seems to have forgotten it's the damsels that get their hands kissed.

If Teo wants more conversation, it's going to have to wait, because Doctor Bianco is suddenly asleep, duvet and clothing askew, body crooked on the bed. It doesn't matter when you're this tired. All that matters is being horizontal.

The whole thing leaves Teo feeling he'd like to shoot something, the temper and mangled frustration that used to follow him around as a smaller child, trying and trying, over and over, to kill something small and it just wouldn't die. He rubs his other thumb on the back of his hand, unclear on whether he's trying to efface the runoff tingle of nerves or keep the residual heat. Possibly, he's failed to realize that those two things are mutually exclusive.

He frowns at the sleeping man. Shifts his eyes across the room, studying the PS3 games available in a neat row of glossy spines, smells sleep and recent laundry wafting in air too comfortably warm for eddies. Has to give himself a little shake before he can remember to hook a finger into his pocket, pull up his phone. He is quiet about shutting the door behind him.


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