Crack Of Dawn

Participants:

abby_icon.gif deckard_icon.gif

Scene Title Crack Of Dawn
Synopsis It's moving day for Deckard. Not that anyone knows he's moving.
Date July 20, 2010

Le Rivage - Lobby

Le Rivage is a building constructed very much in the Art Deco style. Its lobby walls are quilts of slim wooden paneling, primarily a light tan but with several pieces of darker hue mixed in. The floor is similar in scheme, if with geometric designs in taupe and chocolate on the golden background rather than random bits of color. The wooden receptionist's desk almost blends into its surroundings, despite a glossy black top and the painting centered behind it. This complex offers a variety of apartments for people of moderate income, from studios to three-bedroom suites.


Crack of dawn, pigeons just starting to get up from their roosts to begin the daily grind of running around the city and looking for food. Rats scurry off to the underground and with their dietary prizes in hand, feral animals settle down to wait out animal control. gangs all head back home, tuck away their guns nice and safe, to sleep the day away dreaming of whatever little gang bangers dream of.

Huruma's been in and out, collecting the infant, disappearing off into the city with their communal charge so that Abby can get ready for work. Blonde hair pinned back, navy uniform on, heading out the door with a cooler of food, iPhone squished against a cup of coffee in hand as she flips through something on the screen and duffel bag with EMT across the side slung over a shoulder. It's the start of the day for her, and Johan will be here to pick her up today. In the lobby she waits, oblivious to who might actually be showing up.

Not every feral animal is tucked back into its hidey hole away from the touch of the rising sun. One (1) lumbered in half an hour ago with an empty duffel bag and a backpack, and one (1) is on its way to dragging back out into the chill air and bleary glare of early morning. Shabby in a familiar kind of way in sunglasses, blue jeans and a leather jacket, Flint took the long route only to find Abigail's apartment deserted on the second pass.

Having lingered there for a beat or two anyway, he ducks his head and pushes on. Out into the lobby, past the candy dish without a second glance, he doesn't draw up short until a distracted doubletake renders a familiar skeleton against the surrounding architecture.

Still, sentinel by a window, waiting for the beat up Honda to pull up, she's so engrossed in her iPhone, she almost doesn't hear the scuffle that belongs to Deckard. He knows though, when she notices someone there. The skull lifts, twists to look over scapula and collarbone, back down then a double take before the skeleton as a whole turns to regard Flint with his bags and belongings.

"Flint?" Of course it's him. The phone is slid into a pocket, standing her ground. "Are you.. moving in? " Does he.. did he come for a place to stay?"

Oh.

Yeah. She offered to let him move in.

A slow blink effectively masked by the black screen of his glasses, Flint glances back in the direction from whence he came, wit stirring at a sluggish lag against the early hour. The duffel bag is heavy. So is the backpack for that matter — he adjusts the weight of the latter on his shoulder and frowns at the former. Neither act makes any of it any lighter.

"Routine burglary," is his eventual answer, quiet and croaky without real enthusiasm for the lie. "Just making my escape."

"Hope it wasn't my place. Not that there's much there to burgle" She hopes he's kidding. But he would be, or else he wouldn't be standing here in the lobby. He'd have gone out the back door. "Wrong, There's a really old arm chair in there, but I'd prefer that not be burgled. I'm kinda… attached to it."

Sliding one hand into her pocket, the other lifts the white cup to her lips, taking a sip of the bitter liquid inside before she offers it out to him to share. "Offer still stands, I have a spare room. Master room even, there's a bathroom with it. Or you know, the new bar. It's got a small small place above it, that I haven't figured out what to do with, that you can hunker down in if you want Flint"

"I'm doing okay," says Flint. It's an extended lie, then. Like an extended metaphor, gravel on asphalt through a lift at his adam's apple when the coffee's offered forth. He hesitates on his way to taking her up on it, bony fingers carefully splayed in such a way as to eradicate the chance of accidental contact with her in the process. "I have a place."

He says so into the Styrofoam, the veins roped across the back of his hand at a healthy bulge. He has decent color. His neck's thickened out and his grizzled hair is clean cut as it's likely to get, wiry texture shorn down into something like order. "I didn't know you had a new bar."

"It's not open. Just bought it. Insurance money paid for it and will pay for things till I can get it open. renovations, Brenda's trying to get the same wallpaper again. It's out in Soho" She rattles off the address of a corner building. "Kinda, liked owning a bar, and since the first one burned down… Here's to hoping that this one won't go up in flames. Working on keeping that from happening" Coffee relinquished, more than okay with doing it. Time it seems, at least lessons the hurt that had sprung up between the two of them, or at least on her behalf.

"I'm uhh, waiting for Johan. He's giving me a ride in today. save gas and all that. Did you need a ride somewhere? Or are you heading to midtown?"

She shuffles a few steps forward, sinking her other hand into her other pocket. "You're.. you're looking good Flint. Whatever you're doing, keep it up"

Flint doesn't keep it for long. One stiff swallow and the coffee's held back out for her to take while she rattles off information he tries to forget faster than it can be branded into the side of his brain. Too late.

Too late and the longer he's forced to stand still and act natural, the less able he is to do so with any kind of competence. Tension's creeping into the scruff of his neck like pulled string and he's taken to looking at a magazine cover on a table that he can't read.

By the time he forces himself to say, "You too," he's gone quiet with his own structural collapse into awkward avoidance.

Ownership of the coffee cup is traded with far less fanfare than a football player but with just as much desire. Pink lips devoid of lipstick, chapstick or gloss part, Abigail licking her lips in preparation of saying something, of filling the morning air between them with more words like she normally does.

But he doesn't like that and lips close. casting a glance to the magazines that he's looking to. Cosmo, mens health, readers digest, circulations that have been left behind by residents who are done with them. She swivels on a foot, pivoting till she's facing the same direction as him, a more diminutive form side by side, looking at the glossy pages even as she bumps his hip with her hip.

Deckard doesn't move much. His bags are heavy and so is he. But a lack of movement to return the bump entails a lack of movement away from it. He relaxes by a margin of subtle degrees in the span that follows, edges cleaved in hard around the scruffy line of his jaw settle into the softer skin at his neck. It is what it is.

His near-whispered, "I have to go," is inevitable. Before Ayers wakes up is the unspoken implication.

"You know where I am. Number hasn't changed" Permission to scurry off like a cockroach that has suddenly been exposed to the light and life depends upon finding that crack faster than the inhabitants foot finds it's back.

Excellent timing it seems, the beat up maroon Honda pulling up out front, in dire need of maintenance and belonging very much to someone who's spent money on schooling instead of transportation.

"Johan's here. I should, well no, I have.. I have to go" She's peeling away, every strand of blond pinned up and in place, heavy boots clunking on the floor of the lobby that will leave her socks soaked with sweat if the day's temperatures creep up too high.

«Mi Manchi»

It's tossed over her shoulder, the odds of him knowing what she said is slim, but she says it regardless before hands press the glass doors open and she's heading for Joahn's car.

Italian is not one of the languages Flint's managed to absorb via the various abuses wrought upon his beleaguered brain. Grip adjusted on the dead weight of his duffel, he watches her depart in sketchy silence before he glances back towards the elevator and sidesteps into the beginnings of his own retreat.

Nobody cranes around to look at him once he's shouldered out onto the street. For the first time in a long time, he blends enough that he might be hard to pick out on his way to crossing the street for the parking garage his Company Issue SUV is parked in.


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