Participants:
| Scene Title | Found, Still Lost |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Ghost is sent to collect an errant bouncer, who proceeds to confess to a complete stranger. |
| Date | June 16, 2009 |
It's early in the evening, appropriately enough, although still early enough in the day that there is some light to be seen. Late enough that Satoru should be at work, and indeed, he hasn't shown up for the second day in a row. Quite the troublesome employee indeed; at least he hasn't actually left the island, not that that's a certainty for anyone who may be looking for him, but he has never made it a secret that he has a place somewhere on Staten where he stays most nights.
Although tonight isn't one of them, if somehow Ghost may have been able to track it down. Instead, any further, thorough sort of search will turn up a particular street that isn't terribly different from all the others. General disarray, abandoned cars gutted and pillaged, many homes graffitied and similarly broken into, one with the front window conspicuously broken outwards, a wooden chair on the lawn outside amidst shattered glass. Further investigation shows a couch hanging partially out of that same window, someone having started to push it out onto the porch before giving up on that pursuit for whatever reason.
This may be a good place to check for errant bone folk.
The house looks like a kicked puppy, which is kind of impressive given Ghost last recalls that the man allotted that name— 'Satoru'— was only a little bit bigger than a puppy. He is embarking on a walk across the most suspicious of derelict porches now, that is, the one that happens to have all of its destruction inverted. Tiny triangles and pips of broken glass careen away from his shoes, scatter under the lazy kick of his stride.
He has a gun in his hand though, thus far, dropping Logan's name and the word 'security' around has been enough to nudge the people who knew about it to talk about it. Very cooperative neighborhood, really. Logan isn't nearly the monolithic monstrosity that so many of the mainlanders seem to think that he is, but there's enough mess implied by the polite middle-aged bouncer stomping around, armed and garbed black, that people don't want to get into it.
"Oy." His voice grates rough and loud out into the air. When Ghost talks louder, he notices again that it isn't his own and this makes him wince, if only briefly. Craning his head, he examines the exploded gap of window, before trying the door with a push of his shoe. "Konnichiwa?"
The door opens easily enough; neither locked nor latched. Really, Toru had kind of figured someone would come looking for him eventually, and all things considered, he doesn't feel a need to make it difficult. He had fled out of fear, but not for his life - instead for preservation of some vague concept of 'identity' that he struggles to hold onto.
'Angst' was an appropriate way of putting it, really.
So when Ghost steps into the house, what he finds is a small spattering of glass just inside the door, some armchairs and a coffee table shoved against various walls along with any other items that may have been left in the house, and a wee half-Jap towards the center, lying on his side. A too-large hoodie covers most of his torso, hood pulled up and over his face, legs half-curled and arms splayed out in front of himself. He doesn't really stir at the greeting, and from beneath the confines of wrinkled cloth there comes a mumbled, "It sounds stupid when you say it like that."
This is quite possibly the most pathetic thing Ghost has ever seen, and he has manifested quite a few pathetic spectacles in the duration of his life, between the torturing of thugs who nevertheless probably did not deserve it and being a really awful boyfriend who warranted ill treatment in return. There's a half-Chinee. Lying in the middle of a floor. Literally— on the floor— with his hood covering his face, and apparently Satoru also broke his house.
Jesus.
"Is it VD?" Ghost asks, trodding over an overturned scrap of unidentifiable fabric. "Money? If you do a little more for him, I'm sure John would be able to sort something out for you." The heartlessness of his words is entirely inadvertently, really: the quizzicality of his voice lacks nonchalance, and there's no new layer of rough added to his voice or a rebuke at Satoru's assessment of his accent. "If you don't come to work, you will lose your job." The reiteration of obvious logic may seem rather droll but, honestly, it's the least Ghost could be doing. He has a gun. And Logan for a boss.
Of course, some part of Toru had rather assumed that Logan wouldn't list details of why, precisely, he had run off. Of course, he doesn't realize that he didn't, but the majority of Ghost's reply does coincidentally make it look that way. Which will make things all the more embarassing once Toru replies, "I didn't ask," to the first question, and curls up a bit more in response to the second. Arms are hugged around chest, head folded down and legs drawn closer to self.
"I can't.. I don't" Toru shakes his head. "I don't wanna get fired but I don't wanna go back neither. I can't justwhat did he tell you?" He thinks to ask that question a bit too late. "If he wants me back so bad, why didn't he come get me? He knows why I left." He pushes himself up to his knees as he says that, arms still folded around himself, but the hood falls down, exposing mussed hair and dirty face. "How much did he tell you?"
"Nothing. Said you were sad, that's all. Figured if it was death in the family, you…" '…wouldn't be at home, whimpering about what Logan knows,' Ghost means but doesn't say, now that he has established himself on a square of floor in the same room as the one Toru's corpus has collapsed. It is not really differentiated in terms of function from any of the others he's glanced through by presence of furniture, art, electronics, implements. Just Toru, toppled down in the middle of the floor.
With his face all streaked and soiled. Frowning, Ghost finally squats down, staying out of arm's reach more out of habit than any conscious paranoia. Turning his head downward, the shadows catch along the edge of his jaw, brows, emphasizing the distinctions of his superior— if largely artificial age. "Did something happen at work?" he asks, forehead stooping low over his eyes.
"I don't wanna talk about it," Toru mumbles, casting eyes askance. Except that he does, really. Just. Strangers. "I'm not sad." The word is almost spat out, spoken derisively at the very least. "I just.. I don't really.. know what happened." He takes in a deep breath, sighs, lowers himself to the floor a bit, legs still folded but feet splayed to his sides. "I mean, I kinda worked out the gist." And more explicatively, "I had too much to drink."
Gnawing on his lower lip, there, the Asian youth shakes his head and lowers his eyes. Arms are still folded across chest, curiously immobile, and would look almost terribly poetic if not for his swimming in a sea of poly-cotton blend. "Look. I don't know what he told, you, okay?" Apparently he doesn't find 'nothing' to be a particularly believable answer. "I was scared. I didn't know what was going on. It just.. It just happened." And from the way his speech starts to hasten, voice shaking a bit, he's scared again.
That sounds like something Ghost can identify with. The having too much to drink, thing, except when people mean that they're usually referring to either a catastrophic headache or some ill-conceived humiliation— which folds the older man's forehead into a zig-zag of perplexed wrinkles, now, heavy with subconscious disbelief which rapidly erodes into conscious suspicion. Wait a minute.
VD, Logan, tears. The intellectual recollection of that progression of evidence actually comes second. First— well.
Yes, Teodoro Laudani's mind immediately gravitates toward sex. Who is surprised? No one, that's who. You can shut up!
Besides, maybe he's wrong. Probably? Hey— Ghost's pale eyes swizz sideways at Toru's eyes again, as if asking for confirmation— despite that the Asian youth is unlikely to confer that to him given the lack of verbal context. Not everybody's minds immediately gravitate toward sex. "What," he hedges, after an instant, considering the phrasing more than the possibility of knocking more cabinets over in the delicate tea room of Toru's bruisable sensibilities, "were you like— a virgin or something?"
"I'm not gay!" This is almost shrieked, fear shooting abruptly over to anger. "I'm not! He knows that, but he— he knows that! And he d.. he knew but he did it anyway." Specifics probably aren't necessary; the phrasing does somewhat unintentionally spell it out. Shaking his head, he grumbles to himself, turns away from Ghost and bites his lip. This is embarassing. "I'm not gay, I can't be—" Sighing once more, Toru shifts around a bit, moving to sit cross-legged, and stares at the floor.
Nothing any more interesting than there was when his face was down there earlier, but it's better than eye-contact.
"What am I supposed to do, just go back like nothing happened? 'Hey, boss, sorry I missed work, I had stuff to take care of but it's all good now'? I can't just.. what do you say?" A few furtive glances are cast in the Ghost's direction, Toru closes his eyes, tilts his head up, swallows. Slow breaths. Never let anyone see tears. "It's not like you or him care anyway, he's probably just ticked 'cause I ain't workin'."
Suddenly, there's smithereens of tea china everywhere. Yyep.
After a thoughtful instant of hesitating on the brink of habit over exception, Ghost finally thumbs his gun off safety. Click. His tongue purls up against the roof of his mouth around the beginning of a response— No, not exactly. Well, all right: maybe the part about Logan's heartlessness, but— that's not particularly helpful to anybody's purposes. Satoru isn't bitching and wringing his hands like he's waiting for someone to tell him he's wrong. No, his is the crushing weight of realization, a brutally clinical assessment of facts.
Ghost scratches his head with the cold nose of his Glock and looks elsewhere for inspiration. Floor gives nothing. Wall gives nothing. Ruptured window— poetic but uninspiring to the purposes of the problem thus presented. Now that he's ten years past losing his virginity during a casual fuck with a certified asshole, he should probably have some pearls of wisdom to visit upon those in similar dilemmas. "First," he says, slowed from certainty, "be sure that you don't want to do it again. Second, don't do it again. Then— I guess? Fuck a girl.
"You should probably try to throw a shower in there somewhwere," Ghost adds, an afterthought, blankly.
Toru perks up a bit at the sound of the safety clicking off, moves to fold his legs up. Arms still immobile, he's fidgeting with his legs instead. It all works out somehow. "I can't do that either," he mumbles, lowering head down towards the crossing of forearms. "I've never really— I've tried doing it with girls before but it never—works." Somehow, the way he alludes to it is more awkward than just stating the matter plainly. "I want to, but I can't, and.."
"..I don't want to be gay." He closes eyes, breathes, bites lip. If nothing else, this is a more productive conversation about the issue than he's ever had with anyone; relative anonimity of his partner possibly helps with that. They aren't friends, so Toru doesn't have to worry about awkward moments later on, and while they work at the same business — well, they've gone this far without having any meaningful discussions before. "I'm already fucked up enough. Pretty much all my ancestors'd kill me, even the ones're already dead, and they already don't like me anyway."
From the standpoint of a secuarized Catholic lecher, that mish-mash of statements is confusing and perfectly clear on so many levels you could probably ascend to the top and find yourself looking down on the Tower of Babel, with a one-one ratio. "You're what," he says, wiggling the nozzle of his firearm beside his head in a punctuative sort of way, "seventeen years old? Nineteen?
"You don't know what the fuck you want, or if you do, I'm pretty sure this shithole" indicating the gutted home around them, "isn't it. Hell. Your ancestors sound like selfish psychotic pricks anyway. Maybe John Logan is exactly the kind of person they would want you to bring home. That's a joke." Not to be unconstructive or anything. Just trying to honor the wishes of the dead and gone is a nightmare. Ask the ghost. No matter what Doctor Ray says, the moniker isn't facetious; it's relevant. Ghost frowns, palming his Glock this way then that.
And the least reliable source in the world points out: "It's okay."
Unfortunately, something in Ghost's response is what gets the waterworks going. Toru sniffles a bit to try and hold back, but ultimately he just ends up shaking with stifled sobs. "I'm twenty," he wails, eyes closed tight. "I'm twenty and I'm a halfbreed and people're dicks enough about that without me being a fag halfbreed and I can't even have sex with a girl.."
He pauses, for breath, although those breaths are shallow, fast, and wet-sounding. He turns his head and wipes his nose on the inside of his hood, which is kind of gross when you think about it.
"But I think I liked it," which is a horrifying concept, "and— and I don't like Mr. Logan, not like that, but I always come out feeling better when I talk to him, and I shouldn't have drank so much." Fortunately enough, the awkwardness passes when he manages to calm down a bit, but there are still tiny sniffles at the end of his diatribe. "I think I— well I mean I guess I always kind of.. knew. Y'know. But I don't want it." Homosexuality, that is to say.
"Well, you can chemically castrate yourself if you feel that fucking strongly about it, but— that doesn't sound like fun," Ghost answers in a grinding sort of voice that seems to originate principally from the molars. He scrambles the interior of his jacket with his other hand, thumbs past a sheathed blade in favor of locating a paper napkin he had automatically purloined to go with the last hotdog he'd eaten.
Which was a couple of days ago. Despite that the ghost can't know for sure that Toru had responded so badly to his joke, specifically, he decides against cracking another one about mystery meat. This happens, sometimes, when he's been by himself too long. The rectangle of soft white paper is flipped down onto Toru's lap.
"You should come back to work, though," Ghost states, reasonably. "I think Logan's going to order me to shoot you or rape you or some ugly shit like that if you don't. Besides, you'll probably feel better talking to him… again by that logic, s— eh?" Italian; he slaps a lid on it, haphazardly, and points out the doorway with the brute ugly black gun still in his hand. He suspects that, somewhere in the backrooms of his mind, his younger analogue is trying not to laugh. "Then you make some fucking money, figure out where else you want to work someday, if you want to work somewhere else.
"And find someone who isn't a dick. Buy them a drink, with your money. And get over the bigotry bullshit. It's fucking… rude."
'Bigotry shit' gets somewhat of a wry chuckle from the boy, but he doesn't respond in words— he just ultimately sort of shrugs, shakes his head. "I kinda.. figured something like that, yeah. He's just sort of hard to talk to." A vague sort of shrug. "You can tell he doesn't care, so you wonder why you're bothering, yeah?" He looks down at the napkin, then over at Ghost, makes a pained sort of expression, but doesn't reach for it. Arms still crossed, he just sits there still for a bit, thinking. Sniffs a bit more snot, swallows. All very gross, really.
"I'll go back, I guess I just kind of wanted to see how long it'd take before something happened." Breath. "I sort of figured he'd send Eloni to break my neck, so I s'pose I won on that one, huh?" There's another pained smile at that, but finally he nods to the door and twists to turn around, in an awkward series of wriggly movements. "Go ahead and tell him you found me or whatever, I'll go back later and… talk to him, I guess. Before next shift. Maybe after it's closed tonight. I'unno." He takes in a deep breath, sighs, lowers his head. "I need sommore time to think it over."