Participants:
| Scene Title | Long Day, Rough Night |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Eileen comes to Old Lucy's in search of a fifth member for her team. Deckard gets five grand and a helping hand, though it isn't clear whether he'll remember either in the morning. |
| Date | July 10, 2009 |
Old Lucy's — Upstairs
This apartment is nice looking, spacious. There is a big TV in the living room with a DVD player on a shelf with a few movies. A kitchen is connected to living room and separated by an island of counters. Down the hall is a bathroom and then three other doors, each different bedrooms. The flooring is dark and hard wood, there are a few paintings around the place and the apartment overall smells of cinnamon and old spices.
Dark wooden flooring, no matter how elegant or expensive, does not make for comfortable rest regardless of position or — anything, really. Deckard's in the no man's land between 'on his side' and 'on his face' with an arm hooked lank under the scruff of his head to keep him and the drool crusted at the corner of his mouth up off the floor.
There's a gun on the floor next to him. Also, a squat glass and an open bottle of whiskey, both mostly empty. The leather cross of the shoulder holster across his back and sides is empty, the white of his dress shirt is unbuttoned and smudged with something that looks conspicuously like too-red lipstick. He smells more like a bar than the open space downstairs — not yet intolerably loud — perhaps helped along by the stale stink of piss that seasons over cigar smoke and Crown.
It looks a little like a murder scene, save for the fact that he still seems to be breathing and the only bright splashes of inappropriate color here take the form of makeup rather than blood. Rough night.
Some people believe that everything happens for a reason, and while Eileen isn't one of these individuals, she's at least grateful that Abigail had the foresight to entrust her with a key to Old Lucy's when she realizes the man she's trying to reach isn't going to answer his door. It squeaks on its hinges a few moments after the deadbolt turns, swinging wide open as the young woman's slim silhouette appears in its wooden frame.
Oh, Flint. She discards her jacket on the back of a nearby chair and closes the distance between herself and Deckard in a matter of brisk strides that carry her from one side of the room to the other and cause the floorboards beneath her feet to creak in protest against the additional weight. Crouching beside him, she seeks out a pulse at his neck with two fingers, then gently closes her opposite hand around his left shoulder — not to shake, but in an attempt to squeeze awake.
"Flint? Can you hear me?"
Isabelle's belongings still litter the apartment. Some of it is in boxes. Most of it is as the pyrokinetic left it + one homeless old guy sprawled out unconscious on the floor of a flat with three bedrooms and three beds. Save for some pillows on the floor that probably started out on the rumpled couch, it doesn't look like Deckard has touched anything.
Closer up, the skin at his neck is soft and cool under the bristled beginnings of unmanaged beard growth, ash grey ever thicker in the coarse patches it occupies on either side of his chin. He doesn't really have the thing going for him that dogs and big cats do where they look cuter when they're sleeping, either. He just looks inert. Corpselike, even. But there is a pulse brushing light over the stringy muscle in his neck, and Eileen's squeeze at his shoulder is enough to inspire a fresh cold sweat to go with the older stuff that's curled his hair and dried stiff in his collar.
For once in his life, he doesn't jump or startle or panic his way into alertness. Clear blue squints bleary through the film in his eyes and the nausea already rising thick in his throat, then closes off again with a long breath and a gravelled mutter. "I gave at the office."
"Okay." Eileen has no idea what that means. Doesn't matter. She pauses to wipe some of the spittle from the corner of his mouth with her shirt's sleeve before bracing her hands against her knees as she pushes herself back to her feet. Footsteps scuff and rattle away, though she doesn't retreat very far — just to the nearest bathroom, and only to fill a basin with lukewarm water from the tap. Pipes knock in the walls as pressurized air flushes through the plumbing, combining with the ambient sounds of rain drizzling against the windows and music filtering upstairs through the flat's floorboards.
When she returns, it's with the basin and a fistful of damp washcloth, which she uses to begin cleaning the stubble on his neck and the sides of his chin. Water runs down his throat in fat rivulets, darkening the less-than-pristine material of his soiled dress shirt. "Long day?"
Left hand raised so that he can try to focus on the watch that hangs slack at his wrist, Deckard knits his brow against the encroach of the washcloth, nose and mouth turning sluggishly away at the beginning of a stiff roll over onto his back. "Don't remember." So. …Maybe?
Another long drawn breath finally leads him to register his own stench, and with dismay too hazy to read as particularly heartfelt, he lifts his head enough to frown dimly down at himself and the conspicuous cold dampness at his right pant leg.
Great.
"Is somebody hurt?"
"Just you." If marinating in one's own piss qualifies him for that category. Given the stale smell of sweat and alcohol accompanying it, Eileen is inclined to think that it does — at the very least, a migraine will be jackhammering at his skull come morning. She sits back on her heels, the basin resting across her knees, and replaces the washcloth in the water.
What he needs more than anything else right now is a hot shower and a change of clothes. Unfortunately, she's in no position to offer either. Instead, she offers what she does have. "Holden and I have a job for you if you want it," she says, owlish in her study of him from behind her lashes. Then, "I brought money."
"Mmnh," says Deckard, skull thumping audibly back against dark wood once he's done a few blurry calculations and determined that his dignity is unsalvagable for the time being. He pissed himself. He knows. She knows. Probably not the first time it's happened.
His tongue is thick in his mouth, inclined to stick at the roof when he swallows against acidic bile and tips his long face over to look at her more directly, basin and all. So she is still with Holden.
"Someone's looking for you."
The batter of alcohol through his rickety system aside, Flint looks better than he has. He's closer to a healthy weight than he's been in weeks. The chill blue of his eyes is lucid despite the hollow vacancy purpled into the sockets around them. Time marches on. "What's the job?"
If that someone is Daiyu Feng, then Eileen already knows — though this doesn't stop the corners of her mouth from pulling down into a slight frown, her anxiety mirrored her eyes and their grayish sheen. She politely keeps her gaze affixed to the man's face rather than allowing it to wander down and settle on the dark stain spread across his pant leg. "Phoenix is moving against Arthur Petrelli and Pinehearst," she explains, water sloshing in the basin as she shifts her weight from one booted foot to the other, restless in the way like a wild animal at the end of a game warden's tether might be. "Cardinal, too, for what he did to Brian and his kids. We're going to help, but we need people. Guns."
"He tried to set me on fire." Not that he's complaining. Just. He did. And it seems like a significant sort of detail. There is an angry Chinese guy after you who sets people on fire. Brows tipped up at an oddly casual cant towards each other while he listens, Deckard takes his time in trying to string only vaguely familiar names together from various conversations he's had with Abby and others. Arthur's the bad guy. Pinehearst sounds like the name of a funeral home. And Brian.
His expression holds steady at cynically polite interest until she trips that lever. There his brow weighs back down into a knit, lines splintered flat across his forehead beneath a sickly sheen of cool sweat and washcloth residue. Brian. "I have guns."
The basin and washcloth are set aside, traded for a hand on the floor with which Eileen secures her balance. The other reaches into the back pocket of her jeans and produces a dark brown envelope with Deckard's name scrawled across its front in a woman's handwriting. "Have you got any inclination to use them?" she asks, turning the envelope between her fingers in an idle gesture that isn't meant to tease but in a different setting might be construed in such a way. "I've Holden, Cardinal and a man named Jensen Raith who used to work for the Central Intelligence Agency. Counting myself, that's four, and I don't want to go in without a fifth."
Eileen pauses, lowering the envelope to the floor, though she does not slide it in Deckard's direction just yet. She scrutinizes him quietly. "Who tried to set you on fire? Arthur or Feng?"
Two terrorists, a thief and a spook versus some guy who shares a last name with the President. Christ. Resignation fogs indistinct into the fuzzy lines around his mouth and muddies eye contact, dragging his attention over onto the envelope like an undertow he isn't sure he wants to fight anyway. Passive aggressively turning down money from Phoenix to heal is one thing. He's been already been paid to do something more like this once before. That, and his hands have never belonged to Abigail.
"Sure." It's a croaky, unenthusiastic agreement if there ever was one, but it's been a little while since he's had good cause to shoot someone. A little while/two weeks. …That's like a month in Deckard years. One hand lifts weakly after the envelope, pinky and ring fingers quivering after the fashion of appendages twice the age of the ones he has. "Second one."
Eileen pushes the envelope over the floorboards until its edge bumps against the very tips of Deckard's fingers. "It's a lot for what we're asking," she says by way of disclaimer as she retracts her hand. "Five grand. Raith is footing the bill. I'd offer you my gratitude too, but you already have that." There's a faint smile crinkling in the crow's feet at the corners of her eyes, nothing unkind about her expression as she continues her subtle study of him.
"When I know more about the logistics of the operation, I'll pass the information along."
She stands again, legs unfolding as she rises to her full height of five feet and a sliver. "I'm sorry," she adds in a softer tone, more sober and subdued. "Daiyu's next on our list. I never thought he might target you."
"'S…fine." He didn't get set on fire, even if he probably should've been. Envelope retrieved, Deckard declines to thumb it open — taking her word for it or too drained to bother. Or…both. "I fought him off. He's quick on his feet but no match for my kung fu." If kung fu is asian speak for bullshit. There's a papery flop when he lets the brown envelope go slack at his side and a rustle when he turns his face back up to the ceiling, adam's apple sliding slow up at the part of his collar.
He isn't looking at her much anymore, save for in the form of fleeting, avoidant glances, especially once she's on her feet and he's…just. Going to lie here and think about not moving for a little while longer, probably. "I'll be here."
Eileen doesn't appear particular inclined to leave. At least not yet. She reaches down, bent at the middle, and offers Deckard her outstretched hands. "You'll be in bed," she corrects him in a mild tone entirely without reproach, "or on the couch. You'll get a crick in your back, sleeping on the floor."
She'd push a glass of water and some aspirin on him, too, but getting him off the ground and onto a softer surface seems to be her priority for the moment. "Come on, Flint. Let me help you up."
"Already have one," is muttered such that it might qualify as an argument where 'I'm three of you,' or 'If I move I'll vomit,' or 'I don't want pissy sheets,' would fit just as easily. Deckard considers the whiskey bottle, glass, gun, basin and envelope he's sharing the floor with in turn, frown pulling sidelong. It stinks down here. He stinks.
A sigh sifts through his claggy sinuses, and with thinly veiled reluctance, he lifts a hand to reach for one of the one's she's offering down, palm damp and rough and stained yellow. From smoking. And bullet lead. Not from — not from the pee.
Eileen seizes Deckard's hand by the wrist and pulls back, using the strength in her upper arms combined with gravity and a little bit of momentum to help the arms dealer to his feet. Her other hand goes to his shoulder, the fabric of his dress shirt clenched between clasping fingers, steadying him in case his balance fails and sends him teetering in a direction other than up.
"I'll be in one of the spare rooms if you need me," she murmurs. "Not going anywhere else tonight. Too wet out." Or that's the excuse, anyway.
For a man who looks like he's made out of rusted out iron railing and driftwood, Deckard weighs more than enough to make the chore of getting him up onto his feet difficult. He helps, obviously. As much as he can, one arm braced automatically around Eileen to stave off the spin and slur of the apartment around him.
He smells worse in close contact, whiskey and the promise of sick heavy on his breath when a wincing gasp gusts out after a pop in his back and another in one knee. Aaahhh god she should have just left him there. When her hand comes away from his shirt, it will do so in the company of rainbow body glitter. Good luck explaining that to the your BFFs in the Vanguard, Munin.
"The couch is fine." The couch is close, is what he means, breath hitched and brow knit. Now his ribs hurt too. "Bring the basin."