Participants:
| Scene Title | Dude, Where's Your Husband? |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Raquelle has lost his baby daughter and Bolivar has lost his baby pooch. It isn't the easiest thing to bond over, and head trauma is almost issued once or thrice, but it helps that the two ignore the majority of what the other is saying. A box of cereal suffers worst. |
| Date | April 20, 2009 |
Interchangeable Grocery Store
Biiiig retailer.
Jason Bolivar Rodriguez-Smith has lost his dog.
This is terrifying for a number of reasons, most of them variations on one: he likes his dog a lot. Offshoot from that, he lost another finely-furred companion over a year ago, a blow from which he has not nearly yet recovered emotionally, even if the physical circumstances (getting blown up by a nuclear man) have recently alleviated. Separately, but not entirely non-sequitur, his dog is his livelihood. Little Logan Rose's Welsh spaniel senses and sensibilities have become a powerful asset to the New York Police Departments' K-9 department, specializing in bombs and narcotics detection, in the brief time she has spent growing from recalcitrant pup to young lady.
Thirdly, she's all the fucking family he has, and there's a yet-unresolved knot of a notion hidden between the layers of his conscious: that this is what he gets for worrying about people. Where people includes the twelve-year-old boy he'd shot dead amid media frenzy weeks prior, one unregistered Evolved Kayla Reid who had saved and improved his life unasked, and whomever had dumped eight hundred dollars in his bank account. He killed a fucking child, and the rewards seem endless. It was enough to drive a man to distraction. Subconsciously.
Consciously, his mind and person are occupied, mostly, with yelling at at the supermarket superintendent and whichever hapless shoppers find themselves in the unfortunate circumstance of crossing his path in the gigantic retail store. His small, scarred frame makes disproportionately loud footfalls, boot soles clashing with linoleum, his breath seizing out of his lungs with fervor to rival the lines carved inches deep into his forehead; the uniformed grocer beside him seems to be shedding hairs from the edges of his bald spot with every passing instant. Ten minutes after the first announcement went out and into the search, and the cop is fucking pissed.
"Lead, follow, or get the fuck out of my way!" he exclaims.
His companion wilts fractionally, and looks down the women's hygiene aisle they stilted to a stop in. "Officer," he says, "I'm very sorry, but if you keep this up—"
Father/Daughter day for some reason, but Raquelle only has one of his little angels with him, the blonde one that talks alot. Everybody has to do shopping, even hair-dressing fathers so here they were together but he turned to snatch a box of something important of the shelf then turned back around and the little girl dressed like snow-white complete with bob and hairbow of a hairstyle is no where to be scene. Since then, Mr Cambria himself has been running franctically down each aisle calling out in more than one language, "Diana! Diana Benne Cambria! PRINCESS DIANA?!" He skids in his docs down the feminine icky stuff aisle, looking frantic. He wears a fitted black mock turtle-neck and his hair is all styled at usual and his jeans are black, black on black and the eyeliner helps with the goth appearance + fingernail polish. Frantic father. Somebody tells him to shut up. "Don't TELL me to shut up looking like a drag queen on heroin ma'am, thank you!"
At this interruption, Bolivar looks up, and turns his head around on its axis. His field of view squares on Raquelle just in time to catch the target of his ire bristling in response and hastening away. His right eyebrow goes up, his left plummeting down around a moderately incredulous squint. "When you insult people, you're not supposed to use words that describe yourself," he grinds out. The superintendent beside him seizes the momentary diversion provided by hairdresser to mumble something frenetic about checking the manager's office again, in case anybody made a report somewhere in the intervening point-eight minutes since he last walkie-talkied in.
By the time Bolivar tries to readjust his attention, he's past the tampons and making a break for the perpendicular walkway. Bolivar scowls, snaps his scarred head back around to pin a glare to Raquelle's face.
"And what the fuck is up with 'Princess Diana?'" he demands. He can not honestly recall having harrassed this young man at any point during his supermarket-wide tirade, but it's all been something of a blur— and it makes altogether too much sense that some sparkly-fingered jerk-off would be mocking the care he has for his dog by inventing some farce about dead British monarchy. He stomps for the end of the aisle. "If I was an autowrecked floozy, I could use a little fucking sympathy."
His babygirl is missing and this tiny man is talking to him and Raquelle really doesn't have time for this, really. "Bitch, don't START with me!" Raq is quick to snap towards Bolivar as he holds up a finger. "And don't you fucking swear when you're saying my fucking daughter's name you son of a puta." He runs his fingers through his hair before giving a tiny flail. "Have you seen a small 4 year old girl, probably close to your own height, dressed like snow white with missing teeth?! She's missing!" Then he sees the badge. "Oh thank fuck, officer! My daughter is missing."
All that time Bolivar spent not reading books left plenty of untapped resources for him to use on following zag-zigging trains of thoughts as these. The other man's spurious flurry of retorts elicit progressively greater and greater levels of annoyance, visibly etched on his scar-bracketed expression and posture.
Bitch, what! Daughter, well. His own heigh— "Look," relevantly enough, "I'm way fucking taller than a four-year-ol—" Bolivar manages to snarl in edgewise, before he aborts in order to figure out what it is that is the 'missing' article in question when the word crops up twice. Raquelle is looking for teeth. No, no, he's looking for Snow White. Alternatively, his daughter. The half-breed's jaw extends like a snake trying to swallow an egg, consternation dawning on him through the fog and static of other panic and anger. Where 'consternation' is his version of sympathy.
Ffffwhat.
"'Fuck' isn't going to save you now," Bolivar announces, after he locates his voice somewhere in the region of air in front of him and reinflates his lungs by inhaling it back into himself again. Though still obviously feeling nettled— he always is, that sentiment is balanced out by something akin to pragmatism.
He points across the bread area and a bucket of eight dollar mops. "I was going to check the manager's office. My dog is missing. Logan Rose. Logan Ro—!" his voice cops out halfway through his next spate of shouting, so he stops with a mutter, jerks his head toward the way he'd been going anyway. Magnanimously, he says, "You can come with."
"LOOK sweet potato prick, I'm very stressed out right now, if you want to fuck…I'll let you top cuz lets face it Napoleonic complexes are no joke but that has to wait because Diana is missing." Raquelle tries to be rational, he does. He missed half of what the man said honestly as he just tosses the box of tea he was clutching over his shoulder at the 'you can come' permission. "Your dog is…oh poor thin-oh jesuschristDIANA?!" He calls out again, and he has some pipes on him as he follows after the man.
Fortunately for everybody involved, Bolivar's own pipes have taken considerable abuse as of late otherwise he would probably have come up with an appropriately canny reply to that. Where 'appropriately' wouldn't be very. A sigh of annoyance escapes him in a draconian hiss. His boots clack the floor with the stolid, pointed report reminiscent of an ongoing stabbing. Shelved items scroll past them in a rapid technicolor blur, and the tea looks very diminutive and forlorn sitting on the floor where Raquelle had dramatically abandoned it.
"You can stuff the retarded food name up your cervix, thanks," he snaps, craning his head to check this aisle, then that, for any sign of curls. Be they white-and-brown or blond. "My name is Jason Bolivar Rodriguez-Smith. Where's your husband?"
Raquelle mutters under his breath in Japanese and Spanish, a happy mixture and he rolls his eyes. "No kinky shit on the first date, if you were PMSing that badly babycakes I'm sure the store would've understood you taking a midol when we were on the aisle considering the stress." Awww, he's sweet and thoughtful. "But I've heard the hormonal fluctuations during the transition process can be a bitch." All rapid fire response before he pauses to peer at something passing by, not snow white. "DIANA!" - Oh yes, introductions. "Pleasure to meet you Officer Bollywood…how the hell do you lose a /dog/ in a grocery store?!"
"Where the fuck do you get off being such an egotistical bitch when you lost your own daughter?" Bolivar demands, his voice coming in on a register like a dying engine from through the grille of his gritted teeth because he can't be bothered to clear his throat before speaking.
Between the two of them, he and Raquelle have managed to almost empty this corner of the store already.
"Don't be intentionally dense, asshat. If your partner is in the fucking store, he needs to know what the fuck is going on and stand guard at the fucking exits in case the troupe of incompetent gringos miss something before you get a bulletin out. Sorry, but I don't think even you can turn your missing daughter's fucking case into a cleverly obnoxious statement about weird sex, so do us both a fucking favor and stop trying.
"This way." Without bothering to point, he simply hangs a right and careens off toward the white rectangle of the office door, its windows blanked out with Venetian slats of concave blinds. The light is on inside.
Raquelle grits his teeth, snatching a box of Lucky Charms off a shelf as they pass and he holds it up as he follows the man, threatened so badly to help the man find his pot of gold, right upside his head but he just lowers the box and takes a deep breath. "Blahblahblahblah, I get it, you hate being short and you're scared for Fifi! - You can just bite me Officer and while you're at it, kiss my-" He cuts himself off as he eyes the door and drops the box of cereal, shifting his weight from foot to foot. "I am better than this, I am shaming my family, so I apologize for questioning your gender and your sexual prowess. I don't have a partner, you assumptive jackass." He hisses through his teeth. "I'm a single father of two living in the lower east end, not exactly domestic partnership material, ASKING doesn't hurt."
Most adoption agencies wouldn't have given two kids to a man living on the Lower East without any domestic partnership material. Especially not ones that seem prone to physically beaning policemen with boxes of processed grain and rainbow marshmallows when the policemen are trying to help. Bolivar glanced over his shoulder. Almost doubletook. He's shot people for less. "Are you fucking ser—?"
But no, Raquelle isn't. Or he changes his mind the next moment, switches to yammering some more and drops the Lucky Charms, starts skittering around like a pony on too many oats in front of the door. He really does hate being short, it's true. Underlined when he stoops to pick up the discarded box of cereal, and he doesn't have to stoop very far. "Replying with five fucking words couldn't have hurt either, you psychotic Gook." Rolling his eyes skyward, Bolivar seizes hold of the door handle. "I was trying to be helpful and you're just being a cun—"
A confetti explosion of canine barking shuts up the cop, arrests him in place for a moment, staring. The next instant, the tiny half-Mexican barrels in through the office, ignoring the desk, water cooler, and enormous vector graphic of President Nathan Petrelli up on the wall in favor of hugging his pooch. His pooch is glibely unconcerned, it seems: she's been making friends.
And speaking of— "Your daddy is going to buy you these," Bolivar adds, shoving the slightly dented box of Lucky Charms into the arms of the small blonde princess beside the dog.
Watching Bolivar stoop, Raquelle with his big old heart /does/ start to feel somewhat bad, really. His jaw sets though as he resists digging deeper into his arsenal. "You've got one more time to call m-" Door opens when Kelly was interjecting. Oh look! Snow White Diana and the Dog! He almost collapses in relief. "Oh thank god." He crosses himself reflexively and barrels in after Bolivar, almost tripping/falling over him as he twists to the side to get to his baby girl who seems to be eyeing the tiny mexican man dubiously and still trying to pet her new best friend, but then she has cereal and she blinks. "Daddy! I find puppy, we keep!" She announces and shakes the cereal around with a happy dance. "Ice cream now, is girl doggy I think and we want…" She tilts her head to the side as if trying to hear the dog. "Strawthberry!" Lisping can be so cute but she's squeaking as Raquelle is just scooping her up in a hug and clinging to her tightly. "Oh baby girl, don't you ever…don't you ever do that again, oh god baby girl…" Cling hug. Lucky charms box is really being abused this whole scene.
Which is exactly why Raquelle owes it to management to purchase said cereal box in full, obviously, which the other man would elaborate on at uncomfortable and poisonous length, only he's a bit too busy catching dog tongue on his face and snapping dismissively at the supermarket employee who's hovering neurotically over the four of them.
Bolivar has his arm bent double around the spaniel's coquettishly cosseted head, her ringlets bunched up in his fingers as she sniffs up at Diana, that the girl might remember that she is indeed loved. Logan Rose's tail swings left to right, thrice, before she scrabbles her blunt feet higher onto his crouched limbs, trying to climb up her master for yet unelaborated reasons.
Bolivar isn't one of those dog lovers who treats his girls like they are people. He doesn't talk to Logan Rose like she can understand the words that he's saying, but long before those were invented, there was tone of voice. There's bad temper and relief mingled in the growl of his tone, and mere seconds before the young dog's borrwororworwww fades into a fretful, comforting whimper.
Raquelle rocks his daughter and kisses her cheeks and nuzzles and hugs before setting her down and taking a deep breath. "Daddy. Princess Puppy come over for dinner?" She asks brightly, chirping and Raquelle has a moment of pause to look between Bolivar and the dog and the dog and Bolivar and then back to the dog and opens his mouth and shuts it before opening his mouth again and oh damn, quivering lip, teary eyes. "Daddy…pweeeeeeeeeeeze…" Raq sighs and scoops the girl back up onto a hip, holding the battered box of cereal in the other. "Thank you officer for helping to find my daughter, the Cambria family would like to blahblahblah, look dude…" Head tilt. "Hmm…" Okay…so…nice ass, blinkblink. "OH, right, I totally owe you, I was an ass, you have an a-well there's err the law and god, sweetie, I was a complete jerk and my daughter wants to invite you and your beautiful critter there for dinner." Diana beams! "Goood doggy, s'a princess."
And now Bolivar is being spoken to some more. Not by a hapless grocer over-stressed from quandaries and social pressures too great for an intellect that had barely managed to conquer the GED, but by his erstwhile tormentor, apparently.
He doesn't really believe it at first. Partially because Logan Rose has shoved her snout into his ear and is distorting all other soundwaves trying to enter its cartlidge spiral with her whining. Creasing a scowl into his features, Bolivar lifts his head. Finds himself confronted with— well Raquelle's too high up to see from here without hurting his neck, but his princess seems to be hamming it up a lot. He gives Diana an incredulous expression that she is probably too young to parse correctly.
Given the unsightly, burn-roughed state of it, he finds himself in the absurdly ironic state of feeling too proud to point out to Mr. Cambria that his face is over here. It's difficult to think that the glamorous young beautician hadn't noticed, anyway. Bolivar straightens eventually, buoying his dog aloft. Thanks to the difference in heights of their respective heights, Logan Rose ends up at petting level again and looks toward the other princess optimistically.
"Do you even know how to cook for a dog?" Bolivar inquires, dryly.
Raquelle shifts Diana to his other hip when she starts fiddling with an earring, lucky charms box switched to the other hand so he can take a deep breath and purse his lips thoughtfully as he looks Bolivar up and down once more. Oofing as Diana squirms to reach out and start petting the doggie again happily. "I know what not to feed and what to feed a dog, I'm not an expert Officer but when my girls started asking for a puppy I did my research." He now has time to really /look/ at the man which just makes him nods slowly to himself. "You /are/ like a sweet potato pie…" It is almost marveling as he moves to adjust his hold on his daughter. "Just flakey a bit, maybe deliciously charred for flavor but filled with scrumptiousness. C'mon honey…" He turns to open and hold the door open. "I have a feelin' we're gonna get called on disturbing the peace here…"
"That's the most stupid thing I have heard about since the last time you said anything," Bolivar observes. The crook of his wrist tightens, pulling Logan Rose's silk-stockinged hocks up closer to her small body, the better that her daddy might shield her from the world in its conniving enormity. He walks ahead, somehow without moving the dog too far out of the radius of the four-year-old girl's physical affection. "I seriously doubt you eat anything. I'm not 'honey' or any kind of edible metaphor thing at all.
"I'm actually famous," he says, his tone caustically overbright. Uncomfortable for a whole new array of sordid reasons which make vanity look simply facetious, Bolivar shifts his gaze at the tabloid rack. With the subtlety of a particularly brightly painted monster truck, he says, "I shot a kid last month. No offense, but they creep me the fuck out now." It isn't exactly a lie, though the stare he sets down on Diana's face is weighed with something else.
Raquelle laughs a soft and almost comforting to /most/ people lower chuckle as he sighs softly. "Oh sweetie…" He rolls his eyes a bit and can't get that far away though cuz Diana is still petting the doggie as much as possible. "I don't eat metaphors." He sweeps a less than innocent gaze up and down Bolivar's body, undressing and redressing him in his mind. "But I /do/ enjoy blow pops." With a smirk. "Tonight we're having a good little dinner though, and trust me…I might hit the gym like whoa but I /do/ eat." Then he has to blink and stare at Bolivar for a few moments. "You shot a kid." Long pause. "I'll put her down for a nap. My other one is at a sleep over." He now just looks very concerned, in his mind Bolivar is probably /insane/ and in need of yaknow, no judging, just gentle words. "But you'll have to leave your gun /outside/ or in a vehicle I'm afraid."
Both, possibly. Neither. Bolivar hasn't suffered much at the judgment of others. Bizarrely little. It disconcerts him: a brief spark of criticism in the press, one attempt on his life, enough paperwork to drown a moose, and then… nothing. Because the child had been Evolved, he knows. It's better for him this way, and that bothers him almost as much as this alarmingly well-varnished and immaculately layered gnat buzzing around his ear is bothering him.
He isn't sure why Raquelle doesn't just mumble an apology and beat a hasty retreat; the drawn out version of rescinded invitation is proportionally more awkward. Even Bolivar would understand, and Bolivar is rarely understanding. There are plenty of charity cases walking their dogs in poetry-worthy solitude around New York City. "I didn't shoot the fucking kid because he was creepy," he says. "I just said that so you would have a socially acceptable excuse to run away." Underneath Logan Rose's elbow, he wiggles forefinger and middle: like this. Run away, run away.
Raquelle licks his lips and shakes his head. "Well /that/ is a relief! I mean if you had been some crazy psychopatic serial killer who shoots kids for creepiness and then you had dinner and hurt one of my girls, I'd have to slit your throat and then I'd be in trouble for hurting if not killing a cop and then oh god prison…I'd have to get all buffer and become a prison daddy and oh lord." Then he blinks. "Awwwkward. Anyhow! C'mon, you got a ride or you need one? And I haven't worried about being socially acceptable for a hella long time, trust me. If I was going to run I would've just clucked you in the head with the lucky charms and beat it."
There's no adequate response in any language that Bolivar knows that could set straight (lol) the hopeless meander of this train of conversation, so he doesn't try. Instead, he furrows his brow at Princess Diana, who doesn't seem nearly as pure as her costume would suggest, or else she would not be getting along nearly so well with Logan Rose. Shrewd light seems to twinkle in either of their eyes, the mystery of woman contained in two miniaturized packages.
Bolivar is more than capable of walking, these days. Ever since Kayla took all of his pain away.
"I'm on the Upper West, which I'm pretty sure is out of your way," given they're on geometrically opposite ends of the island— "But I'll walk you to the door," he finishes, a little slowly, as if he isn't sure why these words are coming out of his mouth. Raquelle is supernaturally attractive. Could explain it. Pretty people tend to have their way: an evolutionary prerogative, even if the whole homosexual thing chopped Raquelle out of some of that logic.
"Where's her mom?" he gestures at the child in Raquelle's arms with his head, because both of his arms are fully occupied by the spaniel. If Bolivar had any idea how absurd the figure the four of them cut right now, he would probably have left an extra foot of space between them and let the princesses bemoan their separation in squeaky voices.
Diana whispers softly to the doggie from time to time but just really is communing with said doggie in a very feminine way. "Upper West hunh? Cool cool, I save up enough to get my salon I might try to mosey up that way, get my girls somewhere nicer." He sighs and just nods quickly. "Very well, to the door." Then at the question Raquelle has to look from Diana and back to Bolivar and just sighs softly. "Explosion thingie, just got to the city was helping victims, woman comes like she's running from something, gives me her 2 year old and makes me promise to keep her safe before spontaneously combusting right there on the spot." Thankfully, Diana doesn't know what these words mean. After a moment he just coughs. "Ahhhyep." Sober moment.
Given one of Bolivar's closest/actual friends is an Evolved of considerable prowess and his coworkers are similarly sponsoring baby mutants via adoption, he probably shouldn't stare too much at the story of the combusting woman. He does anyway, though mostly at the girl, whose legacy seems to promise something just as unsettling for her future. "Damn," he says, before pointing to the keloid ruin up the side of his head with a drolly humorous forefinger. "I remember the Midtown Man pretty well, too.
"Don't have anything that good to remember it by." As if compelled by Jedi telekinesis instead of some simple sensor system, the store doors part in front of them on a whoosh of hydraulics. "Guess you didn't have to fight the state too hard to keep her. This city has too many fucking wards as it is."
Raquelle did pay for those lucky charms somehow during this journey to the front door and he shrugs his shoulders. "Heh, memories." Then he gently eases the little girl back some as she starting to look weirdly sleepy and he's quiet as he stares at Bolivar for a few moments. "You have /you/. And you're a gorgeous little thing. Never forget that." He waggles a finger and shakes his head. "Not hard. My other daughter is actually mine so don't deal with the state that much when I can help it." He pats his pockets and awkwardly with one hand manages to pull out his wallet and slip out a business card. "If you won't come for dinner tonight, ah atleast give me your number so I can call to reschedule." A pen is tugged out of another pocket with much child adjustment juggling.
Possibly, slaughtering children has had a negative impact on Bolivar's self-esteem. He is somewhat taken aback by this reminder, if not specifically abrasively so. Well. It's true: Raquelle had been kind of a jerk earlier so it takes the miniature Mexican only a few seconds to finish Judo-wrestling with his sudden attack of decency and decide, albeit uncertainly, that he is deserving.
"I have another dog. She's bigger. Like a little pony. If she can come with too…" Thennn. Bolivar will stop withholding his contact information as if it's the holy fucking grail or something, maybe. His face eases blank for a half-beat, before he iterates his number in quick syllables. Glances at the rows of parked cars, as if trying to guess from the loudest colors and most obtrusive swatches of shag which one could possibly belong to Diana's father.
"Well, don't step on land mines or anything."
"Oh yes, bring po-" Diana has to squeal happily. "Pony!" As Raquelle is quickly scribbling something down on the card and smirking gently to himself, offering a blank one with his own contact info under 'Super Snips' advertising that he is, indeed, a hairdresser but he tucks away the number he was given quickly as he flicks his own card towards Bolivar and after a split second just offers in a lower almost sultry voice…unnaturally so really in his lower registers a soft. "Stay sweet…" Glimmer of his natural ability coloring and flirting with the words as he hikes his daughter up a bit higher, waves to the doggie and reassures little Diana she'll see her again as they head towards the dark purple almost black 4 door small Kia sportage that is the family car. Rather conservative, but he is after all, a family man. Man, he forgot the milk. Lucky Charms are tossed in the backseat though, can't forget those.
It's not the most entirely unbelievable thing in the whooole universe that Raquelle Cambria and Jason Rodriguez-Smith might get along. They do well, as long as they're carefully ignoring about seventy-five percent of everything the other person says.
'Sweet.' Bolivar accepts the card on the same syllable as he'd said 'land mines,' peers at — uhh, 'Super Snips,' before glancing up again with a slight crease on his eyebrows. By then, father and daughter have already sashayed off into the recesses of parking lot, the child's pale hair and princessy primary colors standing out in bright relief to her father's sultry taste in monochrome. Raquelle's ability works. Like Rupe's had worked once before.
"Does this ever happen to you?" he asks Logan Rose, swiveling back on the sidewalk. Bolivar has no groceries on him. None at all. The dog rests her nose on his cheek, and is content to be borne away by the still-novel strength of her master's arms. His words are fond where no one can hear them. "'Course it does. Meddling midget bitch."
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