Participants:
| Scene Title | Errors In Lovering |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | At least one of them has made a few. |
| Date | April 26, 2010 |
St. Luke's Hospital is known for its high-quality care and its contributions to medical research. Its staff place an emphasis on compassion for and sensitivity to the needs of their patients and the communities they serve. In addition to nearby Columbia University, the hospital collaborates with several community groups, churches, and programs at local high schools. The associated Roosevelt Hospital offers a special wing of rooms and suites with more amenities than the standard hospital environment; they wouldn't seem out of place in a top-rated hotel. That said, a hospital is a hospital — every corridor and room still smells faintly of antiseptic.
Down the hall from Peter's room and the cot in which the Petrelli boy lies enervated as a sack of shit, there's a waiting room. Its amenities are minimal. A pharmacist's counter at one wall, a window into the afternoon's white Winter wonderland perpendicular, a lot of plainly upholstered furniture. Teo's sitting in one of the couches waiting for his second or seventh appointment of the day, he can't remember very well, having failed to sleep except for a two hour nap before Catherine Chesterfield's indignant text message woke him up and drove him to borrow a computer that he might E-mail the Department of Homeland Security.
He isn't the only blood-smeared young man with a scar on his face and sense of entitlement to all facilities and resources that St. Luke's has ever put up with for the duration of a day. He isn't even the one who's stayed the longest. He is, however, one of a precious few who opt to take their social calls in the waiting room after a minor miracle levered the original patient back on his feet. That isn't what the waiting room is for.
Nevertheless, Petrelli's in bad shape. Ergo, Teo's continued presence is tolerated; he is a gaunt specter slouched on the couch, his features blank as he watches the elevator doors.
And out of the elevator doors, after a brief call to talk to Teo where it wasn't completely apparent that Magnes was incredibly drunk, he stumbles out, wearing a thick zipped up black coat over his blue jeans and a pair of black snow boots. He looks as if he just threw it all on, his hair's messy, and he smells of alcohol. "Who the hell do you think you are?" he asks as he shames in Teo's direction.
He's not terribly loud, but he's definitely angry and making a fuss. "You're like, thirty goddamned years old! Bad enough you had to screw Delilah, even though you knew I was gonna go for her, but then like, you got her pregnant! And you got some freakin' nerve, not even wanting to raise it!" This, all followed up by him briefly vomiting into a plant.
Even plants that take to relatively acidic soil probably aren't equipped to deal with the sum total of the gastric acid inside of a wildly drunk Varlane's stomach. Teo sits up, blinking. Hears and interprets what the younger man just said a little belatedly, and then his brow is in a furrow below the tousled shag of his own hair. Behind the service window in the wall, the pharmacist looks up, a pen lifted, poised mid-prescription. An older man carrying a cup of pee pauses to watch.
Pushing back the dislocated surprise that Magnes isn't actually here to shoot him in the head over Minea, Teo roughs the heel of his hand across his eye, blearily forging past embarrassment. "If it makes you feel better, I don't think sleeping with me once 's killed all desire in her to date you," he offers, after a moment, as diplomatically as he can. "I want to raise him. Much as I can, anyway. Every child belongs to the mother first, though; or that's the way I was raised."
"Don't give me all that! I'm not gonna take anymore crap, from guys… stealing… girls!" Magnes stands up from the plant, wiping his mouth on his sleeve, then starts marching over to Teo. "You slept with Delilah and got her pregnant, don't you be all calm and relaxed! You fucking… you! You had no right!" He balls his left fist up, then it goes flying as he swings, aiming for Teo's right cheek. "She's not your goddamned whore! Delilah's special!"
A fist connects with Teo's face. It isn't the side that's already corroded into that permanent, acheing scar-fringed leer by Kozlow's ability, but it still hurts. Sends Teo's brain rocking in its bassinet of cerebral fluid, clunking heavily into the walls of his skull. He tilts sideways on the axis of his sit, winds up hooked over the arm of his chair, blinking, now concussively dazed as well as implosively sleep-deprived. Jesus fucking Christ.
Ahhh. If the woman herself was here, no doubt, she'd be yelling at them a lot. "Happy now?" The words are almost spat, mostly because spitting is what Teodoro tends to do after getting punched in the face. He raises an arm to wave off the pharmacist, who abruptly has a phone to her shoulder, and perhaps also to reassure the man holding the pee. Stupid question, of course. Nobody does 'happy' in New York City.
Francois has arrived.
They're making a lot of noise. People will start staring, or are staring, or possibly interfering around when the younger of the two men goes to punch the other as much as Teo's wave of a hand wards off immediate onlookers. It does nothing for Francois, however, who appeared somewhere the approximate vicinity of Peter's hospital room, now propelled forward in long steps with green eyes ringed with overt indignance. It wasn't so very long ago that Francois did exactly the same thing to Teo, on his scarred, side—
Which doesn't stop him from barking in vicious French, "C'est quoi, ton probleme?" He's had a rough past twenty-four hours and he'd like to get through the rest of it without people hurting his boyfriend. Mid-French, his hands plant on Magnes' shoulder with a shove backed up by the momentum that carried Francois down the hallway.
Magnes is easily shoved, in fact he gets weightlessly pushed back, floating into a wall with a groan. He's still very much bruised up. "Freakin', Francois! You let him do it! You came back to life but you can't even keep him away from a girl who's barely stopped being a teenager! Yeah, I'm only than Delilah too, but… but…" He stumbles forward a few steps again. "But fuck you!" this time he shouts, then rushes to that plant again for yet another vomiting session.
Ah, God. Not Francois. Teo glances up, his eyes unsteady in their pits, his face white and expression uneasy. It had to have been Francois. This is flattering on some level, of course, Teodoro has held the appeal of the ~white knight~ long enough to understand its effect on those in need of aid, but there are better conversations for one's current significant other to walk in on. Better than…
A wrinkle etches into the aquiline contour of the Sicilian's nose. "Maybe they could give him a banana bag," he mumbles, some unresolved knot of guilt bobbing on its string in his belly. He grasps the side of his chair, starts to pull himself up, onto his feet. "His insurance might cover it.
"Or Kershner could foot the bill. He's very drunk." The lattermost comes as a belated explanation, imparted in Francois' direction despite that the situation probably speaks for itself. A nurse launches out from around the corner, powder-blue scrubs flapping around her hackling frame and a security guard on her heels.
"Clearly." Going from anger!! to confusion in three seconds is as abrupt as an elevator dropping in its shaft, though Francois' pale features retain some heat at the words coming out of Magnes' mouth, a warm flush high up on cheekbones.
If he could have a superpower right now, it would be one where he can reverse the last minute or so to change the course of history wherein he stays out of it. His uneven hands come up to demonstrate that he's not following through on any shoving. Drop again at his sides, quizzically regarding the hunched over Magnes. The glance Francois deals to Teo is very quick, the white scarring at his throat, brand new, shifting along a swallow. "I didn't know she had a lover," he says — out loud and everything.
"I lovered Delilah, like, twenty goddamned times!" Magnes exclaims, seemingly not noticing the security on their way. He balls a fist up, on his way to Teo again. "Abby, Claire, Delilah, everyone's always taking one of them away! I just want one, is one so freakin' much to ask?! I'll kick your ass!" He swings a backward heel to hit Teo again, but this one seems to do something to his gravity, since that leg pulls the manipulator all the way up to the ceiling.
He lays there, suddenly curling his body up there, closing his eyes. "I'm gonna take a nap, but then I'm gonna kick your ass!" he announces again, just making himself comfortable on the ceiling, as if it were his bed.
The nurse and the security guard are exchanging bizarre looks, at this point, insofar as the looks were probably meant to be communicative in some constructive way, accompanied by verbalized instruction and orders, but alas. They've stepped into the radius of the Magnes Effect, and like Francois, their collective resolve is too soon dissolving.
This isn't to say they merely bugger off and leave Magnes to dwindle sleepily on the ceiling, of course. There is, however, a good deal more throat-clearing and gentleness to the hand that snares Magnes' sleeve. "We'll have to see your Registration card too, sir, before we call you a cab." It's all very civil, even considering the assassinated plant and its pot, there. Hospital employees acting at the discretion of good judgment and character.
Two areas that Teo is, arguably, lacking in. 'She had several,' seems like the inappropriate defense to rally to his cause, as does 'We had a conclusive conversation about Magnes first,' so he fails entirely to construct one at all. Merely stares at Francois for a moment, before looking away. He flexes his jaw, once, tries to relieve the bone and sinew of that ache. "I should go," he says. "Peter doesn't need to be around anybody else's ass-kicking for the day."
That Francois hasn't really responded to Magnes' words talks more of his own aloofness to this spectacle than what value they may hold — he only looks up, silent. Teo's announcement has that wondering stare up at Magnes jerking back down, vague alarm and confusion showing in equal measures in his expression before he manages to school it back into impassive neutrality.
Mostly. "I think you should stay," is kind of a challenge and request all at once, arms settling to fold, before he glances back up at the gravity manipulator as if deeming how much of a threat he truly is. Not enough of one that Francois doesn't go to duck out without another word or glance to either other man in the room.
There's only an edge of retreat in his departure back to Peter's room.
"I'll show you!" Magnes seems to be running out of steam as the guard takes him down, then he digs into his pocket and into his wallet, taking the registration card out. "You hear me! If Abby gets pregnant, I'm gonna kill John Lennon! I swear! I'm gonna!" I'm not gonna let you guys make all the girls I like get pregnant, I can make a girl pregnant too! You're not special!"
'This way sir,' and the uniforms gently point the gravitokinetic toward the door. However hilarious it may be, a ruckus is still a ruckus, and both the guard and the nurse are obliged to try and keep people healthy what with working at St. Luke's Hospital, and everything. The Registration card is taken at face-value, and the guard radios out the private security equivalent of a stand-down order. Magnes is steered away like an iridescent soapbubble herded with a plastic bottlecap hoop. The situation appears to be in hand.
Teo's expression creaks fractionally toward forlorn as he is abandoned on two fronts. Both the one he was getting punched in, and the one that was, in theory, supposed to have kissed it better. He turns his head to stare at the gravitokinetic first, before tennis-matching over to follow the click of Francois' heels as he leaves him behind.