Participants:
| Scene Title | From a Worn-Out Picture That My Mother'd Had |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | In which Deckard's bastard son tracks him down in a dive bar and there is some confusion about how he is supposed to react. Fortunately his favorite gays Fairy God Mother(s) are at hand. |
| Date | August 18, 2010 |
A BAR in New York
To call The Marquis a dive bar would probably be giving it too much credit. The floors are dirty, seating is scarce if you mind broken chairs and empty glasses smell suspiciously of wet dog for a reason as of yet undetermined by anyone who drinks here. Probably has to do with how often they change the rinse water.
Or don't.
The lighting's low, smoke is illegally thick in the air and the juke box is loud, currently halfway through the process of ramming Johnny Cash through the skulls of anyone still sober enough to listen.
Now, I don't blame him cause he run and hid
But the meanest thing that he ever did
Was before he left, he went and named me "Sue."
Or so the song goes.
Flint's not really listening. He's not hard to pick out, either — a formidable 6'2" slump of denim and leather near the bar's far end, cigarette in one hand and a glass of whiskey caged under the other. One bootheel keeps time with guitar strums against the leg of his stool and his sunglasses reflect what little light there is to reflect. He could stand to shave.
Amadeus looks down at his picture of Flint Deckard, circa Blackadder, then looks back up at the man. He rubs his chin a few times, also having a bit of stubble himself, wearing a black baseball bat bag on his back with white MLB letters in the middle, the strap wrapping around his black AC/DC shirt.
"This place is a shit hole." he says with the smoking joint hanging from the side of his mouth, then heads over to sit next to Flint. "You Flint Deckard?" he asks as he slides over the incredibly young picture of the man.
The last time Raquelle was in a place like this…he was probably too wasted or stoned to remember anyways. He arrives however, wearing a pair of black cow-boy boots, black fitted jeans with strategically place chains, a black wife-beater under a dark purple and black plaid shirt left unbuttoned under a black leather jacket…there's a theme here. Black and Purple.
He works cherry flavored blow pop however, nails painted purple with black swirls on them and a pair of fingerless gloves on his hands. Scanning the establishment he just rests a hand on his hip and tucks the lollypop into one cheek, adjusting his fedora and sighing softly.
Broader in the shoulders, stiffer in the neck and harder in the face than the gangling 20 year old depicted in the photograph Amadeus pushes his way, Flint takes his sweetass time in dragging warm smoke in and out before he tips the long line of his jaw down to look. And then there's a beat where his brain seems to hang up.
His boot falters away from the beat and stills; the hand he had on its way to dust clumpy ash down into a nearby tray pauses halfway there.
Past that, he's hard to read. Matte black lenses obscure the squint of his eyes and the knit of his brow. He doesn't quite frown — even that much expression smothered by a scuff of his free hand across his mouth.
A couple of younger guys have already leaned to look at Raquelle by the time Deckard finally says, "Nope," and follows suit. Uh oh.
"It was more of a rhet… rhetor… a question that's not a question." Amadeus reaches back into his bat bag, then pulls out a thick folder and drops it in front of the man on the bar top. "Here's a paternity test, oh, and the name's Amadeus Deckard. Wanna go to a baseball game?" he asks with a raised eyebrow and an amused grin, apparently enjoying himself as smoke rises from his joint and overpowers the smell of Flint's cigarette.
Raquelle does note a few looks and just slips the piece of candy from between his lips to blow a air kiss in one direction before rolling his eyes and heading for the bar, sauntering along with a quirk of a slender eyebrow at a familiar figure. He is not shy or afraid to wave a hand in front of his nose and makes a 'whooooo' sound but it doesn't keep him from tugging a stool to pull up behind the two before he straddles it and just looks between the two. "Did Iiiii hear the word Paternity?" He drawls inquisitively. "Whatcha drinkin' hot stuff?" He winks to Deckard. "I'll buy you a double." Amadeus just gets a quick once over before Raquelle sticks the blow pop back into his mouth thoughtfully.
A stir of Flint's left hand finally sends ash tumbling down soft to the naked bar in a flurry of orange and grey that's probably going to leave a mark. That his overall air manages to remain settled firmly in the region of disaffection is impressive under the circumstances, and (probably) due in large part to the amount of hard liquor already burning through his kidneys.
Still. The uneven tilt of his brows has taken on a faintly queasy cant and there's unease written tenuous into the lean of his shoulders back and away from the bar and Amadeus both. "I don't have any kids."
That his voice is coarser in his throat than he might've intended could have to do with the encroach of Amadeus's doobie, but probably doesn't. Tension's creeping in an adamantium crawl up the ridge of his spine by the time he shakes his head distantly at Raquelle's voice and then snaps off a quick doubletake, oil black lenses glancing the hairdresser's face back at him times deux. Cornered.
"Well I'm not quite a kid anymore, but I'm the fruit of your looms. Science said so." Amadeus taps the folder a few times with his index finger, then gives Raquelle a nod and a smile that says he's clearly enjoying this. "I got out of jail a few months ago, but the storm kept me from finding you sooner. I need a place to stay, so I'm gonna crash with you and we can call it even on the missed child support and birthday presents. And I met that little Southern number too, don't know what she's doing hanging out with you, but you know how girls are with bad boys."
He turns around in his stool, leaning back with his elbow on the bar, reaching over to pat Flint on the shoulder. "The ol' Deckard charm."
"Hunh." Raquelle has to adjust his fedora once more, suckling on his lollypop with a thoughtful expression as he continues to look between the two where he's seated behind them and he ahhs softly as he gets an idea of what's happening. "You're lit up babycakes." He points to Amadeus. "So you're making a horrible case for finding ya lil' Daddy here. Because you're high and he's drunk so who's really going to remember this?"
He gestures for the bartender and orders something in the whiskey department before swirling his tongue around his lollypop and just continuing to watch between the two. "Well." He takes a deep breath and eyes Deckard. "You know if this had come outta our lil' mutual cutie pie I would cut your balls off with a straight edge, riiiight?" He laughs and just shakes his head peering at Amadeus again. "It's a boy…yay…"
The sneakers on her feet must be small enough to feet a Pekinese. She had thought so when she put them on, anyway, increasingly dismayed by the decreasing size of her try-ons, until she wound up with these black canvas brown-soled lime-laced things. They look kind of hipster, which fits all right with snug coal jeans and the big tan jacket she pulled on over her T-shirt (and gun. and knives). Somehow, the righteous dedication to black had looked different on her 2019 Teo-body than it does on this sour-mouthed girl with mouse-brown hair.
"Who are you guys talking about?"
She appears at the end of the bar, close to Amadeus, rather abruptly. This has as much to do with the fact that she's quiet on her feet and unobtrusive in her training as that none of the three men have any idea who she is, or reason to suppose she had good reason to insert herself into the conversation. Her eyes go sidways at Amadeus who does, to be fair, look like someone who might have inadvertently knocked up some girl, maybe with the help of dr— "Congratulations."
Flint isn't looking at the folder. He's back to looking at Amadeus, blunt and all, eyes narrowed and shoulders stiffing out under the worn leather of his jacket, scapulae and clavicles cabled upright by wiry muscle drawn out thick in his neck. Blue shows faint behind his glasses, now — x-ray radiation sizzling silent along the arches of skull and spine and ulna in search of resemblance he doesn't want to find.
Things don't really get confrontational until that hand pats at his shoulder and he seizes up and balks back in ill-suppressed alarm. Off the stool and onto his feet, movement quick enough and balance compromised enough he has to grip unconsciously at Raquelle's near sleeve to keep upright. Breathing fast through bared teeth, he only just manages to take in the Girl With Mouse Brown Hair in the midst of everything enough to clip off a ragged, "Shut up."
"Trust me, he's my mother's baby daddy, I've had this picture all my life, and don't ask how, but I got his DNA and had the test done." Amadeus taps both things he has sitting on top of the bar. He tilts his head slightly when Deckard jumps up, then lets out a smokey sigh. He lets Flint work out whatever it is he needs to work out, and instead addresses the new arrival. "Yo." and removes the joint from his lips to hold it out to her. "Want a hit?"
"OhwiwrghhsdweJESUSinamanger!" Raquelle jumps, hand moving to his chest when the woman sneaks up and he stares at her for a few moments, almost losing his lollypop but he doesn't. He just quickly looks to Flint with look of concern, narrowing his eyes and just shifting his arm ever so slightly to help keep the man upright. "Okay, you? You get a bell." He offers to the woman.
Amadeus just gets another look, lashes fluttering and expression pleasantly unreadable as he gets his bearings. "Well you both have horrible /game/ that's for sure. But I'm not sure that's genetic." He glances back to Deckard. "C'mon…lets get you back seated okay? Gets you something to drink…pretend to be a eunuch for the night, then you couldn't ever be a baby daddy. I'd say pretend to be gay but…our shit still works. So." He gestures towards the bartender again before standing up himself, his gift swirling around his words with the concern and worry making his control slip. Its okay, its alright, caaaalllm down. He re-collars and paddles the naughty good feelings though to shove them back aside. This is a booze job damnit.
The girl looks at the doobie, winding her head back a few degrees so that she can keep all three in her field of view while she does so. Annoyance pinches in between the permanently skeptical curls of her eyebrows. Tempted. She'd like to say Yes, but… "Sorry," she says. "I'm starting a new job. We have some drug-testing stuff." She motions slightly with her hand, expressively irritated. She takes the 'shut up' in stride a little better than most girly strangers who wander up to men at a bar would, and not with coy mock-hurt or other clever artifice.
Sidesteps it entirely, winds up balanced on the other side, studying Deckard's state of discombobulation with unsurprised study. The next moment, she looks at the stoner again, examining the size of his nose, the shape of his eyes, his skintone: a protocol that inevitably follows a revelation of lineage. "Do you want them to be eunuchs together?" she asks Raquelle, nodding her mousey head at Amadeus. "Or should I take this one away?"
Resistance twists in anaconda constriction through the bind of Flint's knuckles into Raquelle's sleeve, death grip reminescent of a terrified ape's in its wrought-iron implacability. Artificial calm is enough to keep him from biting but not enough to slow his breathing or sit him down.
His sunglasses hide the whites of his eyes at least, still too wide to match the cold sweat spining at grizzled sideburns and scar-marred neckbeard.
It's the girl's voice that finally focuses his attention enough for him to look like he's actually hearing anything anyone says. Obscure that it should be her out've everything. Something about the diction or lilt — something — and he forces himself to slow down. In through the nose, out through the mouth while the fingerbones he has clawed into Raquelle continue to knead at increasingly out've shape fabric.
"Alright, Poppa Deckard, Flint Daddy, whatever I'm gonna call you…" Amadeus stands up, giving the girl a grin and a nod, then stretches. If nothing else, they both have the being tall thing going on. "My mother's name is Lucy Valentine. But I think you believe me now, so how about a nice roof over my head? I'm perfectly fine with crashing with you." He reaches for the picture and the paternity test, then starts slipping them back into his bat bag. "I can get you free cable, a nice pot supply, and whatever else you need."
"…the hell…" Raquelle is murmuring softly with some concern, watching the man clinging to his arm with a slow blink before he looks up and at the other folks who are around with pursed lips. He squints at the woman. "I'm sorry darlin', who are you?" He asks with a soft little laugh that doesn't quite manage to make it to his eyes.
He takes a deep breath and nods firmly to Amadeus. "I think for now you could just call him Mr Flint or Mr Deckard lil' boy." He gestures towards the bag. "C'mon…let me get a copy of that picture and them records if you please? Then we can find you a nice lil' motel room to stay at for a bit, how about that?" He rolls his eyes at the mention of cable and pot. "Lucy Valentine you say? I'll keep that in mind." He nudges Deckard. "Don't pass out, you need to go? You need to get outta here or…you know what? Nevermind just…don't drool. GAWD when's the last time you shaved…"
A decade later, and the ghost still hadn't had nearly as much exposure to Raquelle's demographic of their culture as he could have had. It's something to behold, a prime specimen within comfortable conversational distance. "Magaret," she says, when she finally moves her attention off the empath. Angles a glance up to indeed confirm: little Deckard and big one, both on the categorically tall side. "You can call me Maggie." Effectively dwarfed, she puts her little hands in her pockets, cuddling up the pistol in her shoulder rig against her ribs. It is reassuring like a teddy bear.
If you're into that kind of thing. "Or T." She pretends it means something other than an initial to the other two, a funny little hike of her eyebrows, a grin. "I never really liked my dad, but I started getting along with him better when I got older. This is kind of awesome. Where's all your stuff?" She bends her head back, twists it around to check the floor around Amadeus' feet, then lets her voice dip a note into enthusiasm: "Do you have a car?"
Lucy Valentine. Flint blinks hard, memory flinching into a jagged recoil that fails to resolve into anything more than a smear of warm color and dive bar ambiance. He looks more brow-beaten and baffled than ever, now, slightly hunched away from his full height and rigid with suspicious, resentful dislike.
Probably for the best that Raquelle's here to do his talking for him, because all he manages to grate out after a long beat are the words: "You can't stay with me." And also, lower, "I'm fine."
Which he clearly isn't.
Especially seeing as he's finally making a move to pry himself off of Raquelle so that he can go and hide in the men's room. Margaret gets a distracted up-and-down as he bumps off his own stool on the way — gun to face with brows knit until he's turned to drag off in earnest.
"Here ya go, they're all just copies anyway." Amadeus reaches back and grabs the folder and the picture again, handing it all over to Raquelle. His number's slipped in with it all as well. He turns back to Maggie and nods, starting to head to the door with a little smile. "My stuff is in my van, that's where I usually sleep. Wanna see?"
His head turns back to Raquelle, offering a casual wave. "Give me a call later, and maybe we can work something out. Make sure my dear ol' dad doesn't skip town."
Raquelle shakes his head slowly as he watches Deckard's reactions with a critical eye, jaw setting. "No you're not…" He sighs and takes the paperwork and picture from the other younger man and then eyes the woman once more. "…riiiight." He drawls softly, this entire situation is both creepy and unsettling before he just smiles sweetly and waves after Amadeus and the woman. "Make sure she's legal honey." Waggle of fingers and then a thoughtful frown as he looks in the direction Deckard is going or will go and then the direction of Amadeus and them and he just takes a deep breath. "…well slap me in a pair of overalls and fuck me with a pitchfork…what in the /hell/ just happened." Eloquence at its best. That's why he's getting his glass of whiskey. BUHLINK.
"What," the girl laughs. "They wouldn't have let me in here if I wasn't… right." Look at this place. Hardly the type to bar entrance for the letter of the law. She glances at one dishevelled-looking bouncer, for a moment, and lets the sound of Amadeus' voice take her after him, a backward step, but she doesn't turn before she manages to intercept Raquelle's second look over at them. There's a little smile, crooked, but an odd touch chilly at the eyes.
(There's only room for one favorite queer in Flint Deckard's life.) "Don't let him overdo it, please?" she requests, lifting a hand to a slight salute. Her small sneakers scuff her, turning, and she follows the younger of the Deckards out, following the scent of burning marijuana.
"Yeah, I'll do something like that." Amadeus says in a mildly dismissive tone, opening the door and leaving it open for her. That's as close to him holding a door as it gets. "So, let's see how legal you are, eh?" is the last thing he says before opening the back of his van and hopping in.
Maggie swings her foot up into the back, ducks her head before it is at risk of clipping the roof of the van. "Legal enough to know what I'm into," comes her answer, light, not as much carol to it as a pretty girl ought to put in her voice. "B-cup, my height, bachelor's degree, preferably an exotic pedigree. But I can settle for a little smaller, a little taller, lower educational requirements and something a little more home-grown if you don't mind talking first."
Her voice is muffled, quieter in the sheltered air of the van. She finds herself somewhere to sit, in a way that doesn't make the grip of her pistol feel like it's trying to insinuate its bulk between her ribs, but she's grinning, openly curious, indifferently comfortable in Amadeus' space because she wants to be. "So what's your story?"