Participants:
| Scene Title | Miscalculation |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Amidst uncomfortable discussion of what and why with Abigail, Deckard makes a couple of minor miscalculations, mostly concerning distance. Teo is there to sweep Abby up after. |
| Date | March 14, 2009 |
Village Renaissance Building, Safehouse Floor
Deckard hasn't changed much since last night. Clothing or appearance-wise. He's pulled on an open button-down on white over the faded blue of his ROOT UNTIL SPARROWFART t-shirt, courtesy of Teo's baffling taste in mottos, but that's about it. He's still in jeans and socks, and he hasn't showered or shaved, which has the twofold effect of making him smell less offensively girly while at the same time further cementing the asylum escapee aura that's keeping him confined to this room. His greying hair is bristled up in roughly every direction, and his hedgehogesque stubble growth is close to qualifying as an actual beard.
Having spent most of his morning bullying some hapless employee of Cat's into buying him an actual bottle of whiskey, he's rather relaaaxed at the moment, chilling on his couch with a copy of today's paper sprawled open across his lap. The glass and bottle he's been nursing is just out of reach on the coffee table.
Although the staggered, halting progress going up the back maintenance stairs blindfolded had been sort of entertaining for about six seconds, Teo gave up on the seventh and plucked the blonde healer off his feet. Pulled her up in his arms, raising her small feet above the level of the stairs and angling her cloth-bound head away from the railing.
Managing the key card had been difficult. Fortunately, by the time they get into the hallway and Teo has to deal with actual keys, logic dictates that Abigail is free to see whatever there is to look at as long as she would be so kind and cooperative as to refrain from looking very intently out of the windows. And then the door hiccups open, and he gently pulls the knot of bandana out of the rumpled back of her head.
"Buongiorno."
Teo's voice rebounds off the solid pigment and density of walls and lacquered floor. The safehouse isn't exactly labyrinthine, but its tendency toward drawn shades and theatrical security protocols occasionally makes it feel that way. "Flint?"
Not that it's that hard to pick her up. She's featherweight right now. Was the first time they'd actually done the protocols since she'd given the instructions to Helena. It wasn't that bad getting her up stairs she's just very cautious. Abigail squints into the room when she's finally deposited upon her own two feet again, adjusting from darkness to light and looking around the room, but yes, not out the window before her eyes seek out Deckard. She never actually saw him in the brothel, a fleeting glance as he disappeared through a wall and she didn't know quite what to expect. Lounging on a couch, in a strange t-shirt, with the paper… Not what she expected. In her scooter jacket, jeans, shirt, boots, someone had gone to her apartment and dug her stuff back up for her, the painfully thin woman just stands inside the threshold, taking in Deckard and that eyepatch with nary a word.
Unkempt head lifted at the sound of Italian echoing through the marble passage beyond his cracked door, Deckard is slow to fold his paper over while x-rays work to confirm the identity of the voice's owner. Also, the identity of his more diminutive companion, who's inside before he has time to think of something to do with himself past just…staying on the couch.
He's unusually gaunt himself, having moved rapid fire from the unwilling captive diet to the fugitive diet to the in jail diet, but sturdy enough for that. He doesn't look sickly when he stands on the other side of the couch. Just kind of awkward and poorly groomed. The eye patch in itself isn't that horrible to look at — it is what it is, and the worst of the inflammation that marked its edges initially has faded.
When she doesn't say anything, he…doesn't say anything either. A glance lingers a little longer than is probably polite while it takes her in, a gesture from Teo not quite caught in detail before the younger man slips back out the open door.
"Hi" Flatly spoken, unwilling to move a little closer, except to shift out of Teo's way with a nod to his apologies. "Your sister moves through walls" Duh. But she's at a loss for what else to say. 'hey, good to see your out, how about I regrow your eye?' or 'soo, how about that brothel? Which one did you like better, cause I preferred Mona'. Nope, instead, the silence ensues as Abigail's fingers grip the secondhand purse in her palms and shifts from one foot to the other.
"…Hey." Hi, hey. His sister walks through walls. Guilt twitches down at his brows and turns his face away at the memory — Abigail hefted into the room the instant before he was dragged out of it. It'd be nice if he could use that as an excuse for not having anything intelligent to say, but he was already floundering, and still is. Once or twice in quick succession he pulls in a breath like he's about to say something, only to go with a croaked, "Yeah," in the end. Hardly the stuff of communicative legend. "Yeah," he repeats a little more clearly, unconsciously mirroring her shift of weight with one of his own. "S'kind of a secret, though."
"I won't tell" There's a harsh swallow, rampant awkwardness that no amount of pills can squash to below some level in her head to hide it from her. "I.. came, I mean, if you want, I can see. About your eye. So you don't need to wear the patch. And anything else, that's happened." There's more purse twisting, though this time it accompanies a small shuffle forward. "I uhh…" Her thumb strokes across the denim strap. "I got his eye. With a plastic spoon handle" Logan that is.
"I didn't think you would, just. She worries about it. So." Persistently hangdog despite himself, Deckard fails to explain things in an unintelligibly dismissive gesture. 'Don't worry about it,' maybe. As for Logan's eye: "Good." It's a little weird to imagine her trying to plow a spoon into his socket with any amount of force, but definitely not bad.
There is a pause, then. Predictably, it's awkward. Like most everything else about this entire interaction. The same hand he gestured with is lifted, the dark line under his wrist where he bashed it against his cuffs indicated as something else that needs some fixing. "If you want to try…"
Out in the hallway, Teo is making the noise of boots. More boots than he has, which is an interesting feat, but he's a big boy and tends toward physicality besides; if anyone could do it, he could.
"Beer," is the first thing he says, ratcheting the door open with his knee. He probably said so because he actually has beer. One bottle in each hand, green glass dripping perspiration down on either side of his boot heels. "Put coffee on, too. There anything else you need?" His right eyelid squeezes a narrow space and he peers out at the old man and the young woman, apparently trying to determine how quickly he should make his getaway from here out.
Awwwwkward.
"I could. They.. The ferryman.. people, said I shouldn't for a few days, but… it's been.. a few days" And it's something to do to occupy herself and not be standing there looking like some refugee from an internment camp who's having a shit hard time adjusting to not being in a cargo container with an electrified fence. So it is that Teo's clumping his way back and Abigail's shedding jacket and purse to start shuffling her way to Deckard and perch on the edge of the couch, touching distance from him.
"Just.. a cup. No more. They, he, the uhh doctor said not to much right now. Caffeine" Which means limited massive healing for a little bit too. Abigails hand trembles slightly as she takes up that palm of Deckard's, but t's cut off soon enough as she squeezes it. No audible prayer for anyone to hear, no closed eyes or singing, just her, spinning off a gratitude in her head. Nothing, That prompts a frown, before another try at starting to heal Deckard. Second time works, though it's a rocky start. The feeling is there though, the light warmth, tingling. Healing.
Beer. Deckard's head turns after Teo and his glassy green bottles, blunt-edged gratitude for the interruption as well as the booze distilled from out the long lines in his face while Laudani moves back in and Abigail moves for the couch. "I don't think so." Cigarettes would be nice, but he's already facilitating one addiction. Probably best not to push his luck.
Meanwhile, Deckard's palm is cool, the usual lead and brass staining yellowed in over the padding having had plenty of time to fade. His fingers curl reflexively around hers, the stink of whiskey on his breath at this proximity not as overpowering as it could be when he tips his head down to watch her. He doesn't seem likely to relax any time soon, but manages to do so with surprising speed once the familiar sensation starts itself up.
Beer goes to Deckard's free hand, or the nearest level surface— whichever one is available and does not look prone to deterioration under a little bit of moisture. Teo's gaze moves between the knot of their hands combined, then off to some interchangeable portion of wall.
The canine thump-thump cadence of his feet circles the edge of the furniture, looping precariously close to the door. He looks out of the frame, swivels flat, pale eyes toward the kitchen, gauging the small point light of the coffeemaker from across the flat. One cup of coffee. He can manage that, no problem. The bottle cap comes off in his mouth, is spat into his opposite palm. "How'd it go with the Polizia, Abby?"
"It went. I'd like to not talk about it. Not yet" Abby answers Teo. "Elisabeth is letting me stay with her for a few days. I didn't scare her off last night so, I can't be that bad a roomate. There's some places that look like they'd be good for me for right now and for Al when he gets out" Abigail watches the line on Deckard's arm fade with her ability, the healing wending it's way through all the injuries to work on his eye. There's that sinkhole. The healer's blonde brows furrow, her free hand moving slowly, cautiously towards Deckard's cheek. "Her healing. It just.. sucks it all away. I need to.. touch your cheek, sorry" it's a fluttering of her finger, landing on his cheekbone, just south of the eye patch.
"It's okay." The touch, that is. Deckard doesn't pull away from it, even if there is a shade of unease about the swallow that follows contact, cheek grizzled and coarse. Behaving himself. His hand fails to grasp at the offered bottle, though he glances down after the bump of it against his knuckles — there's plenty of room on the coffee table. The glass of whiskey he'd been working on is even on a coaster.
The empty socket where his eye used to be is still a mess. At least one small pocket of infection is still in operation, fueled by an inconsistent application of antibiotics between Mu-Qian, Constantine, and the NYPD's medical staff. A few mangled strips of muscle still twitch weakly in automatic tandem with whatever is going on with the other eye — a blink, a squint, tension or ease, but overall it's finally started to dry out and heal itself in earnest. The old fashioned way, with no replacement eyeball forthcoming.
As for the rest of him, it seems to have forgotten one of two things. One, that Teo is still here, or two, that there is such a thing as a socially acceptable distance away from a person to stand. Especially when said individual is sickly, female, and half your age.
That is to say, he's leaning. A little. Close.
Perhaps surprisingly, there is no eruption of Catholic furor or brotherly protest instantly forthcoming, or even a flustered insinuation of an arm or a leg in some theatrical and poorly-disguised accident, oops, what, oh I'm sorry I just fell, hope I didn't hurt anybody, what did I miss? No.
None of that. Instead, Teo is a turned shoulder, a lazy left foot, a scruffy, off-blond head tipped casually out into the walkway, the calculated — far too calculated — indifference of peripheral vision. Refreshingly, he doesn't know how he feels about all this, but don't think he doesn't notice just because he isn't staring.
The older man, twice her age really, leaning in close goes unnoticed by Abigail, or writes it off as whatever. That and frankly the funny feeling of an eyeballgrowing back in Deckard's eye socket might be a little disconcerting. unlike Mu-Quian's, there's no feeling of wrongness, no empty organ that eventually fills. It's just the warmth and tingling as bit by bit the eyeball regrows from it's anchor point, Deckard's eyeball. She watches the area before she lets go of his hand to carefully slip off the eye patch. "Hows Pila and Scarlett?"
Close enough to have adopted a nose avoidance head tilt when Abby reaches up for the patch, Deckard settles back half an inch or so. Exasperation is exhaled thin through his sinuses, breath whiskey-tainted enough to be offensive at this range. He's still conspicuously close, but forward progress has stalled out into something along the lines of frustration and even impatience with himself while she inspects her handiwork.
It's not all the way back, yet. Even more than halfway returned, what occupies the hollow under his brow is not for the faint of heart. The white of his eye is building itself back up, blood vessels snaking their brittle way through soft tissue while more complex functions rearrange themselves behind the pinned out black of his pupil. Muscle laid bare cinches, reconnects, and strengthens its plant against his skull before skin has room to creep over it. It might be a little like watching something rot, but in high-speed reverse.
Or like a seedling, pushing out from the soil and regrowing in timelapse. It's Deckards eye, not some random non evolved eye. The DNA is Deckard's, the structure, everything, even right down to superman x-ray vision. Abigail leans up, looking in with worry, as the rest of Deckard's visual orb comes into being completing it's resurrection, and the rest of his wounds have since gone away to the land of make believe. 'How does it feel?" After a minutes, studying, watching. "Does it work?"
Unrelated distraction accompanies the sudden bleed of the other half of the room to his range of vision, and Deckard straightens away further still. Blurry at first, everything sinks gradually into focus once his fresh eye has adjusted to the light. He blinks hard, almost disoriented. He has two eyes again. And they both work. "It feels…fine." No more itching. The hollow, sourceless pain in the side of his head is gone.
Honest relief doesn't soften the shadows around his face until his eyes light blue, though. The left follows the right on a flickering delay, like a fluorescent bulb that isn't quite sure of itself. Hard to see from their point of view with sufficient lighting, but for him, everything is there. Nails in the furniture, screws in the walls, muscle and bone and various other layers of tissue. "It works."
It works… One of the few smiles she's graced anyone with that wasn't pain medication induced flickers much like the light in his eye, haltingly onto her face as she swallows hard. "That's good. That's really.. good" The eye patch plucked away fully, watching the slight luminescence that comes to life in the healed eyed. A rough start but, it's there. So's lines around her own eyes but it's worth the tiredness to give the man back something John Logan thought to take away.
Neither the cat nor the budgie warranted an answer, apparently. Unwontedly rude for the Sicilian in question, but he'd probably thought he could get away with it, just this once, giving somebody else their moment. By the time Deckard swivels his repaired eye through the room to test the transparency of the walls with the strength of his sight, Teo is a familiar skeleton trodding soundlessly down the hallway, tipping beer back down his throat. The coffeemaker crouches ahead of him like a luminous gargoyle on the frowning lip of kitchen tiles.
"Thank you." Apparently Deckard's distaste for pleasantries doesn't apply fully to minor miracles, even if there is a little twitch at the back of his jaw, as if it pains him a little to say it. Teo's skeleton is watched in its beery retreat, one eye narrowed after him, but it's probably safe enough to assume he isn't going too far. And with an imminent change of subject lined up in his sights, it might be better that he's out of earshot.
"I need to know more about John." His voice is a little flat — something a swallow fails to rectify. He sure is swallowing an awful lot. "I'd like to know what it is he does. With his ability."
"You want to know more about John," everyone wants to know more about John. "John is evolved. He can mess with your body. Turn your ability off, I assume turn it on. He can make you panic, calm you down, or make you…" There's a shudder of revulsion that goes through the blonde. "Make you incredibly pleased and happy and everything in that line. Like you just want to lay down and let him keep touching you"
Anger is an impulse reaction increasingly common in the set of Deckard's jaw and the creases dug into it. His brow levels and his lungs lock a breath in just long enough to give him time to think before he says something. Which…is…likely for the best. Suddenly all the more aware of just how close he is to Abby, he brushes a glance quickly down over her face and turns around to lower himself down onto the couch. Deep breath, inhale, exhale. "Do you know the mechanism? Telepathy, or touch…"
"He has to be in the same room at least.. touching for sure, but not always. He would touch my wrist, or put his hand right at my neck, fingers around it" Abigail's hands go up to the back of her neck, fingers interlaced and stay there, elbows pulled in. Something to ease the discomfort that comes with discussing John Logan like it's the weather.
Deckard's diction is less suggestive of weather-related conversation than it is discussion of a snake someone's seen in the back yard and what the patterning looked like. He stops there, though, a sidelong look taking in discomfort before he lifts a hand to rub at his left eye. The one he didn't have ten minutes ago. It's still there. Still working. He's quiet.
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry you had to come looking for me, and that he caught you. I really am, you can't imagine how sorry I am. That you lost.. you lost you eye because of me. I hope, I know that giving it back to you, doesn't negate that it still happened, but.. " She can't quite look up at him. "Thank you. For looking."
"You and Teo. Always sorry." Maybe it's a religious thing. Resigned to it one way or the other, Deckard leans forward enough to retrieve his beer, cap twisted off and flicked aside without much care for where it lands. "I haven't been forced into anything I've done. Nobody's held a gun to my head or promised that everything would be fine, or even that I'd be compensated." The beer isn't as cold as it could be now that it's been sitting out for several minutes, but he takes a long swallow anyway. Still tastes okay. "I dunno. I dunno why I keep doing things. I don't think it matters, in the big scheme of things. Getting my eye back is nice, though."
She's always sorry because she is sorry. Sorry for bad shit happening to people. "because I'm a beautiful blonde who always bumbles into trouble and my innocence makes people want to help me. If I was fat and ugly, they'd turn away and not care." His words, casually laid back before him. Abigail leans back on the couch, closing her eyes for a few moments.
"I never said you were beautiful. …Just that you weren't fat and ugly." Deckard the lady's man. Brows lifted and beer tipped to that point, he pushes the heel of his socked foot against the disembodied remote control on the floor and takes another sip.
Abby nods. Maybe he did, maybe he didn't. She remembers just enough. "Your out. I'm out. We're both safe, so Teo says. Huruma wants me to go back to work, when I can, she says i'll be safe there. What do you think?" Because Deckard is the paragon of good advice.
"I think we're both fucked. But at least if you're working you won't be bored." Only one brow still lifted, Deckard reaches back up to his eye again, preoccupied by its ongoing existence. He's not looking at her anymore.
More than he realizes. The fucked part. 'They're trying to get evidence that he kidnapped me. They need others to come forward. Testify. They're looking for Magnes. If they don't find someone.. it's.. my word, against theirs." Abby keeps her eyes closed. "Why can't this all be a nightmare and i'll wake up from it. Don't you ever wish it was that? That someone would just pinch you, and .. you'll wake up and it's a joke, look haha, cute, they cut out my tongue, shot me a few times to teach me a lesson. no, I wasn't really beneath a brothel being stared at and tormented by slipskirts."
"There's no point to anything if it's not real." Deckard plants the damp base of his bottle on his knee, not terribly bothered one way or the other. "You already know my opinion of the legal system." It's poor, for those who haven't been paying attention.
"Yeah, I know." It's never done right by Deckard and she's not sure that they'll do right by her. "I'm tired," a complaint, more than observation. "He came down, after Leah got you. Teo and Eileen scared him. Then you escaped. I hit him with the bible Conrad gave me."
"There are two bedrooms in this place. I haven't used either of them." As far as offers go, it's a hazy one, but there all the same. "Logan will get what's coming to him, sooner or later." Deckard's more confident on that point than he's been on others, beer deposited back on the coffee table as he leans to push to his feet. "I'm sorry you had to learn about what people are capable of the hard way."
"Now your the one saying sorry." The rail thin hand comes out for him to help her up. "I already knew Deckard I just…" She just what. Merrily ignored it all and hoped it would never happen? Didn't believe it would happen to her. "I always thought it would be homelands that did it. Not… them."
"Might as well be a hypocrite while I'm being an alcoholic and a pervert. The more I can get at once, the higher my score is." Hhhup. Deckard tugs her up, his hand firm in its wrap around hers despite some leftover condensation from the beer clamming up his grip. "I liked Logan at first. Next time I'll be more pessimistic and suspicious." The fact that he apparently isn't already enough of either is kind of a sad statement.
"He tipped good. He was real nice in the bar" Abby is in full agreement there. It's easy enough to get her up, upright, looking up at him. "You're too thin. You need to eat."
"So do you." Deckard's looking at her face when he says it though, measuring eye contact more carefully there than he is the rest of her figure. Now that he has two eyes to do it with, it's…not actually any easier to judge. In the end, the whiskey on his breath might be blamed, or the fact that he really just — doesn't care as much as he should if it goes terribly wrong, but he braces his free hand at her hip and leans in again to brush his lips to hers. No hesitation this time, but he doesn't exactly push his way in either. He really should have shaved, first.
First instinct is to lift her knee and aim for his crotch. Wouldn't be the first time that anyones done this particular thing to her. you don't work in an all night diner or a bar and not know how to fend off advancing drunk men. But it's Deckard, and it's shock that holy Hannah he's just gone and done that. he's just, his lips are brushing hers. Abigail stiffens, rigid as a board, frozen in place. Like any movement might send her running like a deer in the forest at a crack, white tail flipped up as it retreats. She breathes through her nose, quick shallow breaths, eyes slanted towards the door in case Teo comes marching back in then back up to the grizzle bearded man.
It doesn't take very long for it to become apparent that she isn't meeting him at the 3/4 point or — the 7/8 point or however much ground Deckard left her to cover, seeing as he made it well past the halfway mark on his own. His lips pull back away from his teeth at close proximity, and he chuckles through them. Bitter, derisive. The kind of sound nobody wants to hear out of someone twice their size who's just potentially done a Bad Thing, even if it is at his own expense.
He doesn't linger for more than a second or two. It seems longer, probably, but soon enough he moves to shoulder past her.
There's no Magnes, foot up, a foot off the ground kind of kiss. No rough, give it to me, I want it that Brian got at the birthday party. It's a frozen young woman unknowing what to make of the advance, much less one at such a time. And who it is. So when he shoulders past her, Abby turns, trying to catch his arm, fingers gripping tight to the shirt. "W..why? your always yelling at me, swatting at me, you're.. you're twice my age and a whole h..host of other things."
Deckard's arm tenses up at the start of an unfortunate arc away — the kind that typically ends in somebody on the floor, but he doesn't get far enough to drag out of her grasp, and definitely doesn't get far enough to knock her flat. Not even close. That the reflex was there is bad enough, though. He scowls at her, gruffs a sullen, "I don't know," and twists away more forcefully to pad for the door. Still no shoes. That's going to be a pain.
She's not strong enough to stop him when he forcibly pulls away, nor does she intend to try, just frown, she's doing that a lot while she's been here. "Stay, I'll go out, call for Teo. I need to get back to Elisabeth's. In case the police need me, for something. Just.." Now was not the time to have done that, and it shows on her face. She has not a clue what to do,w here to go, should she slap him now? scream at him? truth, she hasn't the energy or even the mental capacity to much. "Just.. don't try that again. Not… I like you but… It's… " Abby grabs her purse, the blindfold. "he cut off my tongue Deckard and they shot me and i'm so messed up and I'm on medication so I don't fall into a ball and scream and .. I didn't.. you shouldn't have done that"
With a head start on the whole door thing and no baggage to gather up along the way, it's Deckard who gets there first. He's still in socks rather than shoes, but seems determined enough to head out for that, back crossing the threshold between apartment and hallway while Abigail's still talking. Sure-footed enough on slick marble, he directs himself towards the rear exit and shows no signs of slowing down, single-minded irritation keeping his footfalls measured and his glare aimed firmly ahead.
Which leaves the blonde standing in the middle of the apartment, lost looking, confused, oh hell, lets add slightly panicked to that list. Clutching blindfold and purse, watching the fleeing man. "Fuck" She looks ready to loose it.
Coffee arrives in Teo's left hand, his fingers closed around the ceramic handle and an expression of not-so-inscrutable confusion wreaking asymmetry to his eyebrows. It took him a few minutes to locate the sugar jar, which was sort of reassuring. To think that Delilah doesn't commit to regular doses of sweetened caffeine, that was.
This other whole thing is just all over perplexing. "Flin— Abigail?" Big boy-shoes hustle a rubber-squeaky course across kitchen tiles, and his head darts this way and that, trying to reverse-engineer the events most recent based on the current trajectory of bodies. "What happened? Are you guys okay? How'd the? Where are?" Teo aborts out of the latter query in favor of staring at the old grave-robber, even as he begins to approach.
"Ciao," says Deckard, shoulders braced against any incoming effort to slow him down beyond the calling of names. He has places to be, people to see, things to buy, innocents to rob and supplies to unbury. Maybe this mess will somehow get better instead of worse while he's gone. Because that's held so true elsewhere in his life. He's soon gone regardless, the tell-tale swipe swing and click of his exit faintly audible from further on down the hall.
What happened. what happened is the guy who's booking for the door like it's the end of the world he's leaving behind him tried to lock lips with her. Abby's shoulders lift with each quick breath she sucks in as she turns away from the door out, and the imminent Italian arrival to try and find the bathroom in the place. It's coming, she can feel it. As bad as what Logan forced on her. "Fuck. Fuck. oh god. Fuck" The bathroom is in the hall, and her purse is left on the floor as her hands work the doorknob enough to open the door and close it behind her. No click of the lock, she needs somewhere, in the back of her mind, to know there's a way out. But she sinks down enough on the middle of the floor to wrap her arms around her knees and start to rock.
The younger man's expression flattens instantly into annoyance when his mother tongue is thrown back at him, but Teo is rescued from some having to trot his temper out because everybody else's seems to be galloping around bloody-flanked and fire on the hooves and shit. Abigail never swears. Over-generalization. But Abigail never swears.
"Watch your back, vecchio," he calls out. The door slams shut behind Deckard halfway through one of the words, and Teo isn't tracking well enough to know which. The foamy level of the coffee seesaws frantically in the cup as he hastens after the way the girl had gone. Somehow, he doesn't spill. "Oy.
"Tesoro." Mug clinks the bathtub's edge and then there's a familiar face, dopey with concern, crawling closer on tentative hands and noisy knees. The bath mat ruches up under his shin. "Are you okay?"
"I'm not" it comes out as a wail. "Oh god Teo. I wanna wake up. I want it all like it was. He tried to kiss me, I…" Back and forth the blonde rocks, the last straw breaking her down. "Can't breath, oh god. Oh god, what did I do?"
The assembled pieces of Abby's explanation make a handful of things clear to Teo. Why Deckard ran for one thing. The old man isn't much of a bastard that he'dve done anything crass, and loathes himself enough that this stinging rejection probably felt like a lungful of acid. Teo stops in a Puckish crouch in front of her, his face all knotted up in gentle fretting, his fingers deep in the long, tendriling fibers of the floor mat.
He doesn't reach for her because that seems counterintuitive in a way not merely limited to his long-standing dearth of faith in himself to touch without making harm. "Breathe— through your nose. J'ss close your eyes, think about slowing your heart down. There's enough air. You can breathe. Just in 'nd out. Shit happens and we fix it, si?" It would probably constitute a lie if he hadn't phrased it as a question. "Everything's going to be just fine. Deckard, and you."
'There's not enough air, or least it doesn't feel that way. There's no bible to smack Teo with, but then, she's not in flight mode, or even fight mode. Everything will be fine between her and Deckard. maybe. possibly. Was it the alcohol that made him do it? Does he get a kick off of anorexic blondes? Attempts to breathe through her nose like he instructs are met with dismal failure, and probably the sounds similar to some injured water buffalo drowning in water. Nothing feels like it will be fine. fine means being able to go home and sleep, fine means to not need the little pills in the orange bottle to function. Fine means everything opposite of right now.
More and more often, Teo's efforts to do the right thing seem to elicit in other people a certain desire to smash his head with held objects. Big religious books, beer bottles, the backside of an open hand. Means either the world's getting uglier and his assurances proportionally more farcical, or that his assurances are just getting more farcical. His throat moves, swallowing something the consistency of slime.
His hands walk across the floor on their fingertips, open out, with agonizing hesitation to touch her feet. It is pretty goofy, but for the moment, Teo doesn't know what else to do. His instructions were terrible.
Teo's rewarded with his risk by a hand coming down on one of his holding tight, still making the horrid noises that wouldn't appeal to anyone, but he's not being attacked. If anything, she drags that hand forward and him, like he's a life preserver, that solitary hand clutched to her chest, and the resultant arm trapped there too.
For whatever reason, Teo had been expecting more of a show of claws. That might have been easier, on some existential level somewhere, but on the only one that counts, he is simply and tactlessly relieved. He breathes a little easier, and his hand folds easily in the circle of her grip despite the absence of strength one would expect from a girl so slight. Calluses and minor injury texture his half of their handclasp, familiar, as careworn as the rest of him.
He could probably explain if she asked out loud. Why a guy would try to kiss her. Could; probably wouldn't, by now. Sometimes, he can take a hint.
When a boy, likes a girl… That's why. She's not stupid. Naive sometimes, not stupid. Eventually over who knows how long since seconds seem to drag on forever, but in truth, ten, fifteen minutes, Abigail's eventually got the whole of herself, against Teo, with considerably less dying sounds and more settled into ragged breathing. His hand, then arm still clutched tight as oxygen seems a little easier to come by and she's wet her shirt and his. She's probably going to likely need one or two of the little pills in her purse, but whatever passed, the catalyst for the mess that the bathrooms become emotionally, is starting to fade.
Man and woman would've been Teo's choice of words, but yeah. That would've been it. Less dying sounds is good. Breathing, however ragged, is an improvement over not breathing.
Hugs are conventionally appropriate prescription too, and this is seems like that, one arm wound around her reed-thin waist and a palm dropping a toneless rhythm on the starkly boney dip between her shoulderblades, steady, steady. It's odd, how only in the presence of such intense fragility that he really feels his own inadequacy. Other times, there are bombs and sociopathic criminals from England and Federal penitentiaries to break into and he's perfectly out of his league, but there are superpowers and other bombs for that.
His five-o'-clock shadow is scratchy. There is no more steam rising from the coffee.
Hugs, pressure, apparently has something to do with the body, releasing chemicals that produce calm. Sympathetic nervous system. "Tell him i'm sorry" It comes out hoarse, scratchy. "I should get back to Liz's" Though she doesn't make a move from where she is staring at the shower curtain. Just the rhythmic pressure of his hand to her back. Some day she'll return the favor, some day, why his world comes crashing down and the weight he's carrying suddenly snaps.
"He'd kill me." There's no room for doubt when Teo says so. He can imagine it. Fists first, guns second. His voice is a rumble, tangible as it is audible, every syllable measured in infinitesimal reverberations against her arms and inner-ear. "First time he ever really hit me was over you.
"Just the other week. I mean, there've been guns and strangle-holds and sh— stuff before. Threatening me, making sure I wasn't Sylar or something. But that's the only time he ever really tried to kick my ass 'cause of something I did. 'M sorry to be a coward, donna, but given my druthers, I'd rather not be killed." He is neither humorless nor joking. He is staring at the opposite part of the room from the shower curtain.
Towel bar. Pink one's probably Delilah's.
Teodoro's shoulder tilts up an inch then, abrupt, a philosophical shrug, hapless effort at humor. "Though if you really want me to…"
<fade>
 March 14th: Honorary Blonde |
 March 14th: All About Miranda |