Participants:
Also featuring:
| Scene Title | Ménage à Trois |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Abby wakes up to a stranger. |
| Date | October 21, 2009 |
The neon green light of the alarm clock states some early morning hour when Abigail starts to rise to the surface of consciousness. Monday morning filters up as well, and a mental list of everything that she has to do today. Get weeks paperwork off to the accountant, pack for class, hit up Hokuto to spend the night instead of driving back. Breakfast for Flint, Leonard if he's there. On and on and one her mind whirls without even the need for coffee.
Her mental wheels start to dwindle with the warmth at her back and the arms over her hip. Deckard spooning which is something that she's never quite experienced with him. More affection than frankly, he normally shows in the morning. She's used to him spread out on his side and her curled up on her side facing him. The corners of her mouth twitch upwards in the vague facsimile of a smile as she shifts her head to look over at him. Do the creepy Edward Cullen thing.
He's been awake for a little while, now, in a sort of half-conscious limbo, disconnected. There is blonde hair on the pillow and a warm body, not an entirely uncommon thing to open his eyes to as much as he closes them again and shifts enough to put his arm around it. A bristled jaw nudges against her shoulder, breathes in the scent of hair. Relaxes.
And. Snaps his eyes open again, startlement manifesting in this subtle action and this alone. Well. Perhaps Flint Deckard isn't into snuggling.
Meeting Abigail's glance, he doesn't move away. In fact, Francois draws in a deep breath and eases his arm tighter around around, a hand skimming across her stomach. There's a shimmer of something, a warmth that is very much akin to healing power - and is, in fact, a shine of unnecessary healthiness transferred from him to her.
That sinking feeling, the warmth and tingle at tongue and thigh give off what he's doing, and she's brain muzzy from sleep and doesn't register that it's being done voluntarily, for no good reason. "Morning Flint. If it's too cold I can turn up the heat. I didn't think I was that much of a heat source at night" She won't say a thing about the healing. If he's doing it, he's doing it, she'll let it pass. It's probably making him feel better. It's making her feel better. Little morning aches and pains. Headaches.
Perhaps it's an age old trick he'd learned over the many, many decades. No one can say that the gift does not feel good, after all. A small smile carves into an expression softened from sleepiness, and the healing warmth lapses. No need to drain himself for token gestures, no matter how healthy, comparatively speaking, he's been lately. "Bonjour," is a soft greeting in return. "I don't feel cold. Perhaps you should sleep, it is still early."
"Too much to do today Flint. No rest for the wicked" THough she says it, Abigail doesn't make a move to leave et, just lift her arms up, arch back and point toes as she stretches. All is fine, all is great all is - Wait a moment. Bonjour. Maybe if Francois hadn't already reared his head before she wouldn't have noticed. But Flint gets strange and self destructive when he's saying french in bed to her. That and the not quite fit of Francois's pronunciations when he's at the helm so to speak.
"You will get your hands off me right now, and get some clothes on, or so help me god I will…" Do something to Flint that will likely have flint wondering why his balls hurt and how they came to be in such a state.
Far be it from Francois to touch a woman who doesn't want to be touched. His hands retract easily, although he's not dashing off to get clothing, shifting to lean his shoulderblades up against the head of the bed. "The hands are the same as the ones that were touching you last night," he feels inclined to point out. A moment later, he adds; "My apologies. My intention was not to deceive you."
"They may be the hands, but right now, it's not FLint at the front so I'd appreciate it oh so much, and I'm sure he would, if you didn't put your hands on me when I'm not wearing anything" The platinum blonde hisses. under the covers she sinks, bringing them up to her neck while she fishes an arm over the side of the bed to get a hold of her robe. "What in gods green earth now brings you out. And please don't tell me it's becuase he couldn't face me the morning after"
Francois lifts said hands, as if to display the complete lack of naked flesh beneath them, before they settle again on the covers pooling over him, from his belly down downwards. "Je ne sais pas. I could ask him later, if you do not wish to. For what it's worth, I don't believe it's for that reason. Perhaps I am just more of a morning person." His smile is warm, enough to deep the lines at his eyes, although said eyes remain guarded and watchful.
"I'd rather not him know about this. Things are awkward enough between us without you asking him that and him finding out that you were" There's a gesture with her hand, forefinger out and pointing towards his head, middle then lower body. Success comes in the form of worn blue flannel and jersey and she's wriggling into the robe under the bed, hiding herself from him as best she can till she can sit up and not an inch is shown/visible from mid calf up. THe belt is tied with a vicious yank that would almost cut her in half if it had been wire.
"I shouldn't have done it. I should have just told him not tonight, I got a headache, told him something. Are you going to be the one in the morning all the time? Because if you are, I can't do this. I didn't sign up for a threesome"
"Non, not all the time," Francois is hasty to correct, a placating hand out. If it placates, well, that's Abby's choice, and it falls away a moment later as he casts a look around for clothing. What he finds seems to angle a look of displeasure in his face, but all the same, he snags up a discarded pair of boxers and the accompanying pants, drawing himself out of the bed. "I think you give me too much credit."
Francois is shown her back, not as an insult but more because it just wrong. It's fifty levels of wrong and sure she's seen it all before, but it's just the whole .. Flint is absent mentally and there's a stranger in his place.
Okay wait, not so much a stranger and if you go by that thinking, Francois has been far more closer to her than Flint has or ever will. 'What do you want for breakfast?"
The sound of him getting dressed reaches her ears, fabric sliding over flesh, the sharp draw of a zipper. By the time he is moving closer, he's donned a white undershirt, and over that, hanging loose, an unbuttoned dress shirt with which he fidgets with the cuffs. "I would like breakfast," Francois agrees. "Would you join me?"
'Francois, I was asking you what you wanted, not if you wanted it. If it was Flint, he'd have no choice still and be parked to eat and stuffed" Small feet slide into well worn slippers and a scrunchie from the nightstand is wound around her hair. "If you're lucky, Leonard won't be up and I won't have to explain you to him" There's a gesture to the door while she edges there, not sending him a look while he's dressing. God, strike her down, she's mortified, horrified and wants a hot shower. "French toast?" Har har.
Har har. "Perhaps something simpler. You know, the first time I had that was in America," Francois says, with a brighter smile than before. Button his shirt enough for it to not hang open, his pads barefoot towards the door after her, his hands up to rub over and run through the ashy brown of his hair, too bristle for him to really fix in any way he'd prefer. "I could, of course, leave if you prefer. I will be sure to feed myself if I do. But we haven't spoken in a little while."
"I'm feeding him. It's what I do when he stays over. It will make me feel better to know that he's gotten a good meal" And if anyone knows how to feed that ability, it's the two of them. "No french toast, then go look in the fridge and tell me what you want and i'll make it." No comment about not having spoken in a while. That's because Flint hadn't been near her since the night they fought and he left. "I need to brush my teeth. you can use the master bathroom, Flints stuff is in there" She disappears out the door, down the hall and around the corner as fast as her feet can carry her. There's just a pause at Leonards door to see if he's awake or whether he's sleeping, hell if he's even there. Whatever the answer, the bathroom door closes a few moments later, quickly followed by the shower running.
Francois's mouth goes into a line as Abby heads away without another word, rubbing his palms together in some sort of in built nervous gesture that may or may not belong to the man who owns said palms. Moving to the fridge, he finds bread, eggs, butter, putting these things out on the kitchen counter, catching his own reflection in the window. Opaque as it might be, it's still jarring, although what face Francois could expect—
He lifts a hand to touch at his grizzled jaw, angling this way and that. Resolving to shave. His gaze drops to his hands, spreading out his fingers wide, before his eyes shut a little and that inner warmth starts to flood through his body in the way adrenaline might, though his heart doesn't race.
It's not quite the cleansing of a shower, brief and ritualistic, and by the time Abby has emerged, there's the sound of sizzling from the oven and someone moving about the kitchen.
Pink from near scalding, hair wet and smelling of lavender, Abigail emerges with pajama's on beneath the bathrobe and skin damp. She wasn't expecting the cooking from him, but one supposes that if you'd had many many many years of living, one has garnered a certain flair for cooking. The kitchen is large enough for two people to function in it and Abigail sets about to making a smoothie, green and filled with everything they both shall need.
"What did you want to talk about then, since you've surfaced."
There's the sharp sound of a fork coming down on an egg, splitting the shell over the fying pan, and onto a buttered slice of bread with its middle cut out somewhat raggedly, but it will serve its function. Egg instantly starts to whiten and set beneath it, and Francois goes to toss the shell away. "Je ne sais pas," is an almost coy answer, as he uses a spatula to nudge the egg/bread concoction to one side, freeing up more frying pan space. "We could talk about Flint. Myself. Yourself. The weather. Would you like one of these?"
"Birds in a nest. Momma made those all the time when I was little. She has a little heart shape cookie cutter she'd use instead of a biscuit cutter" No, she doesn't want to talk about Flint. "I'll take two, over medium. IF this ever happens again Francois, and by this, I mean if I ever get into bed again with Flint, and you're there in the morning, just, don't lay there and spoon. It may not be unnerving to you, but it is to me. You're not Flint and i'm in a relationship with flint, not with the memory of the sentient thing that used to reside in me"
There's a pause in his movements during Abby's words, his forehead laddering in some consternation as he casts her a puzzled glance as if to ask: spoon? But it never gets voiced, Francois busying himself with cutting more bread, buttering what's left of it and dropping it into the pan with an excited sizzle of heat and fat. There's some silence, almost uncomfortable, before he says, quietly, "But I am a part of Flint." Crack. Another egg is opened with its contents spilling into the bread.
"But you're not him. Do you not understand that? Can you not see how going to bed with Flint and waking up to Francois might be a bit more than one person can take? It's like going to bed with one person and some body jumper taking their place while I sleep and while I understand that maybe it might be something uncontrollable, it doesn't make it any more … easy to deal with okay. Not right now." A big knife is pulled from the butchers block and she sets about to chopping up fruit, picking out seeds nad dropping them into the blender. Spirulina meets a similar fate, the very thing that turns the smoothie green.
"Non." His voice is a little sharper, though he doesn't turn to her, dropping a small stick of butter into the second pan so that they can eat at approximately the same time. "It is not like that. If I am not him, than I am less than what you think I am. You think I deserve a name and that it is fair to judge and dislike me as you might an invader, but I could not leave if I wished to."
Passive aggressive breakfast making. The sounds of his movements have taken a slightly hard and sharp tone to them, brisk rather than unnecessary. He manages to add, "But I am sorry if you were distressed. Touching you seemed correct, at the time."
"I liked you better when you were a part of me and you didn't talk. You never talked to me. I never sprouted French, or had to deal with how.. how you are. I don't know what you are. Hiro calls you a Kami, Peter calls you something else, Xiu calls you a spirit, but I don't know how to deal with you. I hate you, I dislike you and I'm trying to deal with you and I do that by treating you as sperate from Flint, because to me, you are. You were not a part of him before Tyler Case. He could see through things. You were shoved into him, instead of going naturally"
The lid is plunked onto the blender with no small measure of gentleness and she pokes the buttons on the machine and lets the sound of the grinding cutting blades take over. Satisfied with the consistency after a minute, she turns it off and pulls the pitcher away from the base, tapping the base to settle it a bit. "What do you want me to do Francois? Welcome you with open arms? Have complete understanding for the predicament that you're in, taken before you were supposed to and having to deal with an imperfect body that wasn't ready for you. If there's some lesson I have to learn, then teach me, but don't… don't be like you are being. It's coming off as condescending and … like.. and Like I didn't have you for eight years" Babbling. He knows babbling means she's all emotional. Might start crying into the stupid smoothies.
There is some silence, Francois keeping his gaze on his cooking as opposed to her, expression drawn and troubled as she speaks to him, spatula in hand and the other wrapped around the handle of a frying pan. Eventually, he states, "Perhaps." To what is unclear - there's a lot to respond to. "Perhaps you could understand me, and my predicament, if you chose to. Perhaps you could understand that where I go is not my choice, and that I could not return to you if I had a want to. I am not unhappy to be a part of Flint. I do not think he is undeserving. I do not think. I just am."
He nudges around the toast in the pan, lifting the edge to check it, as he lets out a sigh. "I would like you not to hate me. We were, after all, together for eight years. And I might need you."
'How could you possibly need me. You need Flint. Without Flint, unless you can find someone else to go to, you won't exist" Something she's managed to glean between folks. What she hadn't gleaned was that he can't go back to her. "I shouldn't have gone in the alley. I should have stayed in the bar. None of this would have happened if I had just stayed in the bar." The last is murmured more to herself, than to him.
Green pours into two glasses, one slid towards him and the other is picked up as she pads towards the table in the kitchen so she can sit down, stare into her cup and rub her temples.
"What do you need me to do" eight years, and she'd never felt this way towards it.
Picking up the smoothie, Francois takes an uncomplaining pull of it, as he tends to his cooking. Two of them are flipped, a slight wrinkle of annoyance in his brow as the white run off from one egg splashes a little despite his best efforts to be quick, and patiently uses the spatula to gather it all together. He'll just have the broken one for himself. "Would you save a dying man?"
"You know I would, in a heartbeat Francois" Abigail answers into her swamp sludge.
Checking the temperature of the oven, Francois nods a little, looking back towards Abby and her hunch over her smoothie. He takes another few mouthfuls of his own beverage, only now allowing a grimace to twist his features, before flipping over a third piece of toast. He observes the spatula, shining as it is in grease, and takes a breath only to release it in a sigh. "Yes, I do know. Merci."
And just like that, he's gone, sinking back beneath the surface with as much willpower as he didn't have in getting there. Without fanfare, or particular obviousness to anyone in the kitchen save for perhaps one man.
Blondie is oblivious, resignation coming in waves these days, alternating with disgruntlement and dislike. She doesn't notice the switch. Just a very deep sigh followed by the clink of cup meeting table as she chugs down the green liquid. Like as not, she'll probably not even touch the eggs ina nest. "Why do you ask?"
Someone's making toast. It smells nice. One thought coalesces warm after the other, halcyon eyes fixed pleasantly ahead for the few seconds it takes Flint to register the frying pan in the bottom of his peripheral vision. And the spatula. That he's holding. In his hand.
Oh. Someone's making toast with eggs in them, and it's him. Brow furrowed, he…does the only thing that seems natural and bends his arm awkwardly to pick up where Francois left off, only. He's never actually made whatever this is and can only poke someone frownily and ineffectually at the nearest bit of burning bread without registering that he's been asked a question.
God damnit, he's doing it again. Not answering questions. Abigail's jaw tightens and she turns in her seat to look over at him. "Well? You say you need my help, ask me if i'd save a dying man, then acknowledge that I would and yet, when I ask you why you ask that… I get //silence?/"
Scruffy lower jaw ajut at the conundrum something as simple as toast and eggs being made at the same time in the same frying pan, Deckard — prods another piece of toast slightly over towards the first. Then Abigail is talking, and with an intake of breath sharper than he probably intends, he finds himself looking round-eyed at her across the stove and only just manages to actually tune in somewhere around 'when I ask you why you ask that.'
Mouth caught open at an answer or inquiry gone unspoken while he frantically tries to remember waking up this morning, he eyes her a few seconds, lifts his brows, and goes with a hopeful, "…Qoui?"
The smell of burning that is gradually overtaking egg and toast probably does not help his case.
God Damnit all to hell and back five times over.
"Flint?" Please don't be flint, please don't be flint.
There's a twitch at grey-touched brows, nearly a wince as they fall back into a hood and he transfers his sizzling pan over onto a range that's fixed comfortably at 'off.' Spatula hand scuffed over the back of his head once said tool has been deposited somewhere out of the way, he diverts his stare down after his left hand turning the hot range click-click-click into an off position as well.
It's Flint. Abigails lips purse as she rises from her chair, the remains of the smoothie abandoned as she makes her way to where the older man stands. His silence is answer enough. Up on toes she goes, pressing a kiss to his cheek then veers away, heading for the doorway. 'Francois was here. We didn't get along, as usual. He's promised not to touch me again. I'm going back to bed. Fresh towels are out, clothes are in the spare room. Leonard's not here so you're good. Morning Flint" All tossed over her shoulder before disappearing around the corner on him like she did his counterpart earlier.
Deckard :<