Participants:
| Scene Title | On Another Planet For Two Hours |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | New Moon, Avatar, Deckard, Teo, Leonard, Francois, children, future, coffee and post apocalyptic rebound sex. Think there was more in the conversation between Abigail and Francois as they leave the movie theatre and head to the car by way of a coffee shop. |
| Date | February 14, 2010 |
Streets of New York
One of the girls at Old Lucy's told them to go see Twilight. Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattison. Werewolves and Vampires and humans oh my. Abby had agreed, a tame vampire romance might be right up her alley.
Halfway through, they'd walked out and there were questions about Heather's taste in movies. What. The. Hell. Abby and Francois wandered the theatre and slipped into an Avatar showing that was just starting. When they came out at the end of the 2+ hours, they'd both agreed that that should have been the one that they had gone and seen. Blue people, other planets, bad guys in robot suits, lasers pew pew pew. There was a romance subplot for Abby, and action for Francois and a few times she'd clung to his arm and ducked her head against his shoulder. Half naked blue aliens were a little unnerving.
The remnants of her coke in her hand and the last few inches of popcorn are tossed into a garbage can on the way out. There's a question of what to do after the movie, when there's still time before she needs to get him back to where he's staying and decide whether to stay there too or head home to the two love birds.
"So."
The urban winter waiting for them outside is almost refreshingly crisp after the less than classy interior of down town Greenwich movie theatres, and Francois isn't unhappy to be out. The movie was cool, and he'd laughed at Abby for her head ducking, in that warm kind of way where mockery is his version of affection. It didn't demand affection for the characters, whereas New Moon seemed to demand it in such a blood sucking fashion that it was very much like the vampiric creatures it tried to depict. Draining.
And he's exhausted caring for the people he cares about, let alone fictional characters. "So," Francois agrees, putting an arm around her shoulders in the illusion of warmth and companionship. "Thank you for taking me out, I forget to do that sometimes. Being on another planet for two hours was a good idea."
"I think we all forget to just take a few hours for ourselves. So caught up in things, caught up in others" She's gone back to blonde - did I mention that? - and from her pockets she pulls out her cream toque, settling it down around her head and doing up her jacket in anticipation of heading back outside and somewhere beyond. Even if it's just to the car. No complaint made about the arm around her shoulders as Francois has been moved to the short list of people who are allowed to lay a physical hand on her. "You deserve time away from the troubles of the world and a respite from things. We all do."
"I got a job. I haven't told anyone, not even Teo or the girls. I wanted to tell you earlier but the movie was horrid and…" She looks over with a cautious smile on her face, the corners of her lips turned up just a fraction. "I'm one of the few that got into an actual Ambulance company. I'll probably be relegated to driving and helping out whomever my partner ends up being but.. end of this week… I'm an officially employed EMT of the city of New York" A frisson of pride is curled around her and in her voice. She's done it finally, something she thought she'd never do. "Doesn't beat being a doctor but…" Francois will always be better than her in the healing department in her eyes.
"It beats being an unemployed one," Francois says, before he places a swift kiss to her temple, hand temporarily drifting up to her new head of blonde hair before resting on her shoulder once more. It's the unmauled one — the other is, as ever, tucked into a pocket. "Congratulations," is delivered warmly and genuinely, the smile more in his eyes than at his mouth, which is usually the pattern for sincerity when it comes to the Frenchman. "It is a good place for you. Perhaps you should tell the others, allow them to celebrate with you — that way I can delegate buying you drinks and dinner to other people but be there anyway."
He might not have scraped together his own pennies for a bike had he known earlier, but there you go. Thank heavens for small favours. "When do you start?"
"End of this week. I have to buy my uniforms, get the badges and just a bunch of other stuff. I'll get around to telling them. I'm just.. not wanting to bug them right now. Teo and Leonard were just…" Leonard was all over Teo and Teo wasn't rejecting the southerner. IT also occurs to her that Francois might not want to hear about the kissy facing they were doing. "Just busy and they had better things to do. I didn't know then either. I just found out this morning, a voicemail. So… " Could explain why she wanted to go out and see a movie. "Besides, there doesn't need to be a party. I managed to turn twenty-one and avoid a big party, in thanks to Mexico and end of the world thank the lord above"
"And really, you'll be an employed physician. You know what you have to do and how to go about doing it. But I promised you two weeks, before I'd nag you about it so, that's the extent of it tonight" Eyes dip close at the kiss to temple and the corners of her mouth turn up a bit more.
"There's a hotel opening, it's a casino. I promised Robert I'd go, it was something I promised out in Russia. If you feel like dressing up and getting all gussied up in a tuxedo, I could find someone for you to go with, buy you a ticket. I mean, if you want to. No pressure, just… might be fun to play dress up and pretend that we're not… us"
They're talking about how Abby has a new job, not about what Teo and Leonard are busy doing. It seems like Francois remembers this, on the surface, as he only listens, and then smiles a little brighter. "Ah, two weeks," he agrees. "I will mark it on my calendar." And now he releases her, both hands returning to his coat pockets as they walk, and as far as he's concerned, it's directionless. He certainly isn't sure where to go, even if the destination is an inevitable some — same can be said for why he remains Abby's couch sleeping charity live in.
"Tuxedos," he repeats, gently listing into her at a friendly bump to the side with an elbow. "That doesn't sound like me, oui. I'll think about it — I somehow don't think I'll be busy then, but I won't promise I won't decide to be sick. Who else is going?"
"High heels and satin, they aren't me either" She still thinks she's going to look like dressed up white trash, even as her elbow finds it's way into his side and there's a nod towards a generic chain coffee shop. "I don't know who else is going, I've never been to one. Robert had been on the phone saying he was going to one, I made a comment about how some day, I'd go to one, have to buy a dress and he offered to take me to the hotel opening. Now, now I'm thinking I should have kept my mouth shut, cause I don't even know how to dance. I mean, the kind of dancing you do at that sort of thing, if you do dance at a shindig like that"
She called it a shindig. Maybe people will find her endearing instead of white trash. She can hope. Maybe being on Roberts arm will make the different. So many maybe's
"If you get sick, maybe then I can use it as an excuse to stay home." But it won't come down to that. She'll go because she promised and she tries to never break her promises. "How.. are you? I mean.. you've had a lot happen, and.. I'm worried." She glance to the side, watching his face, letting her brain take care of her feet on their own and making sure she doesn't sleep even as she burrows her chin into the scarf. "Before you tell me not to, forget about it. That's like telling a fish not to swim or.. a pig not roll in the mud to cool down. I worry. I'm just…"
"I was joking about being sick," Francois feels the need to press, if facetiously, avoidantly, glancing at her and now the earnest glance upwards, and letting out a sigh that becomes steam when it hits the icy air. He obediently steers them towards the coffee shop, though in no real rush for the warm interior as he grants her query the dignity of being thought over for an answer. "I think I am well. Anxious — I am not used to going fast," and he gives a shrug — she may have noticed this over the past week, "but a part of me feels I should try, now. I won't tell you not to worry, but I'll advise against it. In all ways that matter, I'm fine."
Which is nice to be able to say. "I'm angry at him." There. And he probably doesn't even have to clarify who. "Unrelentingly. And I miss him. But that also isn't a concern for you. How are you?" A smile goes here, an eyebrow raising, as if to encourage it to go by — perhaps in return for honesty.
"Who's him? Teo?" It's an honest inquiry, she's not sometimes the most observant or clued in individual at times. Sometimes things need to be explained to her like a four year old. Sometimes. "And is it the pace of the city? You did devote your life and many years to just following one man and cleaning up after him, helping save people from him. Now… You have time for yourself. You don't… have to keep a nomadic lifestyle unless you want to. You have the chance to live your life and not… it's life. You can get a place and settle there, or you can keep living on my couch. Life is only as fast as you make it. It'll be slow at times. Or it'll fly by"
The door to the place ahead is looming and they probably won't be in there more than enough time pick up a cardboard cup of brewed beans and cream before heading back out into the cold. She wants to walk. Doesn't want to go home yet to the bar and the other guys.
How is she? The news of a job had already been spoken and the obvious elation that came with it. "Waiting for the other shoe to drop. Nothing good happens in my life without something bad to accompany in it's wake." A slight shrug of shoulders beneath the wool that covers them, that leads to her making to grab the door and head in out of the cold temporarily. "I miss… Flint"
In hindsight, the world might not revolve around Laudani. But also, there aren't a lot of he's that apply. Francois' confirmation is only a nod, and allows her silence to fill in with her words that he doesn't disagree with. Ladies first, he steps aside to permit her entry, a hand out to keep the door opened for himself as he ducks inside. "You do?" Francois' utter lack of surprise is apparent, but still, he presses. "You want to talk to him again?"
He doesn't say, maybe he would be the other shoe, because he's only vindictive enough to muse such things, and doesn't honestly feel that way anymore. No territorial alpha male bristling. Someone made sure of that, and so did Abigail. "Find him."
"No.. I don't.. even know where he is. I'm.. I don't miss him in that way" She likes to open the bottle of whiskey at work and just take a small sniff. Not every day, but now and then. "I don't miss him in that way. I… I'm just worried about him too. I left you all in Mexico but it was him that I walked away from and… I didn't even know where he lived when he lived here, and" And.. "For all I know he's dead in a back alley now that he can't heal himself"
The conversation is going to pause as she steps up to place her order for a drip coffee, a gesture for Francois to place his order and card proffered to the cashier to pay for it. "What we had in the future" It's spoken quietly for just his ears. "Is not what we have here. It's not…" There's a wrinkle of her nose. "I just miss him. I miss knowing he's okay. I got like this before we were.. sharing a bed on occasion. Wait for him to show up hurt and stuff him full of food and send him on his way like some stray mutt that knew where to go when he had nowhere else to go"
What a place to pause. But Francois keeps his voice neutral upon ordering a coffee, distractedly plucking something normal sounding off the menu board up above, before turning back towards Abby. Allowing quiet conversation to be shared despite the amount of New Yorkers huddling in here out from the harshest winter anyone can remember. "A bit like a missing limb?" Also not a flattering thing to compare Deckard too, but this time, Francois isn't being snide, not even on the inside. "You are used to him being with you, even as a friend, that breaking the habit is difficult. Phantom pains. It will ease, or you will…"
This analogy just got hard. He shrugs helplessly. "Reattach, I suppose, given time. Perhaps you will both find a way to start again." While we're on the subject, he wanders his gaze over her face before, not without a little bit of guilt, asks, "Will you tell me about Teo and Leonard?"
Two phantom pains that she needs to deal with. One less recent than the other and she wasn't intending to compare him and Deckard and thus, she's oblivious that she might have just done such. In her mind, the two are very different. Ten years in the future, he wasn't married to her and share her bed. Share a future that makes one wonder should it happen or whether that what then and this now. "Knowing the future changes it, I was told that once by Hiro Nakamura. Maybe if I hadn't known. Maybe.. that future won't ever come to be because of things that happened now. I can't know, can only follow my heart" She reaches out, fishing for her cup when her name is called followed by his and they can go back out into the cold.
"Leonard… Leonard's going to go back to being Alexander. He was.. all over Teo. Touching him and kissing his cheek and.. it was uncomfortable to be around a little. He interrupted Teo and I, and" There's another wrinkle of her nose. Once upon a time she told Sonny that she believed that the two belonged to each other, that Sonny was comfort when needed. Now, she's not so sure.
"Once upon a time there was a soldier named Jesse Alexander Knight. He was telekinetic, and was a soldier and a police officer. But the world wasn't ready for him and his telekinetics and he was pushed to the side. And then one day he met a Sicilian named Teodoro. They were asked if they were both with each other by a very naive and young southern blonde healer" She tells it like it's some fairy tale, that it's in a book somewhere. "They denied it and then one day.. they didn't. But there was a man named Kazimir, who wanted to wipe out the world, restart it in his own eyes, his view of how the world should be"
They're outside by now, letting Francois get the door. "Teodoro survived by the very touch that rid the world of Kazimir, but poor Alexander was caught, and thrown into a very dark hole in the ground, interrogated and broken. But Teodoro and others rode to his rescue and add in a dash of time travel, witha s ide of harrowing heroics, he returned. But he had to hide, and how better than in plain sight? So another man helped him, changing his face and he took the name Leonard" Abigail looks over. "They fight, they chafe, they… .. I don't know what they are anymore. People change and i've started loosing track. Maybe I need to live on my own again. Let the two of them be. But that.. is Leonard and Teodoro"
Francois can dig fairy tales. They happen to other people, in far away lands, goes the convention. Outside, where it's cold, and not as cold as Antarctica, Francois walks with her and clasps uneven hands around the paper cup, bringing it up to sip piping hot liquid, cautious not to burn. Such minor things he can't heal away, anymore, something he still isn't used to — he has a paper cut on his left thumb that's been distracting him for this reason, like an itch you should scratch and are not for some unfathomable reason.
Speaking of that— "That is Leonard and Teodoro," he agrees, in a nod of approval at her conclusion. He squinches an eye shut to regard the sky and its pendulous snow clouds. "I was thinking of sleeping at that other place tonight. The Garden? You could come with me. The food is good, if I recall correctly. We can continue being different people for a little while longer."
She shouldn't. What if Kozlow follows her, what if he strikes at the bar. There's cops Matt set on her because of that note, because of everything and while she loves the garden, loves the emptiness and potential of the place. But Kozlow hasn't been seen and so long as she keeps in touch, it might be good to go there. Let Teo and Leonard have the place to themselves.
"I miss the Garden. It took me a long time to get the nerve to go back there after the the Island. Jezebel used to run it. I lived there for a bit" She confesses. "Of all the safehouses, that's my favourite. The hangar is second, but the Garden. I have a soft spot for it" She confesses.
Her own coffee is left untouched for now, to cool a bit before she attacks it. steps carrying them off towards where she parked. No way in hell did she even get remotely close to the theater. "I laid with someone" Her thumb strokes the side of the cup, thin gloves warding off the cold and sucking in the heat. "After I came back to New York. After Tanya. I don't regret it, there were.. a lot of things that lead to it but.. I laid with someone. After I told Flint that I wouldn't unless that person was willing to be with me publicly" Another thing she hasn't told anyone. "He smelled so good and I'd had a few small drinks in the bar at Tanya's wake and.. just.. I know you like me, that you like both men and women and that… you love Teo, Like Teodoro at least and you like me. You asked me earlier how was I and I told you about the other shoe and…" The words spill forth from her lips, tumbling out like water over a ledge of rock to create a waterfall. Her free hand going from one side to the other as if to guide them.
"I'm turning into such a jezebel because even though I know Teodoro likes you and you like him and you like me and I like you, and I still like Flint and then there was Robert. I'm turning into a whore Francois. I go from no interest in men at all, so wrapped up in the healing and then it's gone and there's suddenly.. a few of you, and I got one man who's wanting to worship at my feet and I can't stand the thought of dating him, I have nooooo interest in him and I lied to him to not break his heart. I got a man I'm with in another future, A man who I met when I was five and saved five minutes later when I was twenty, I got a man who works for one of the dirtiest men alive and he's had a terrible trauma in his life and he's afraid of disappearing and I got a guy who.. who sleeps with pokemon bedsheets"
It's not often that Francois blushes. He'll chalk it up to the cool wind nipping at their faces, but it's hard not to feel foolish in this instance. he's studying his coffee, reasonably intensely when statements of his own sexuality are brought up, and he can't even bring himself to correct her about whether Teo likes him. That seems petty to do, actually — most of this seems petty. "I think you know you are not a whore," he says, gently, once he's sure she's run out of words. The smile is back in his eyes, slightly condescending, but he can't help being old. "You are a good Christian woman, because you feel for the men who like you instead of exploiting such a thing."
He lets his own coffee cool in favour of walking and talking, eyes on the pavement ahead with occasional glances at her profile. "I slept with Laurel, between Mexico and New York. I didn't do it because I didn't expect to never see Teo again. Or you again. But sometimes things— are required. Comfort is required. Laurel gave it to me, freely, and Robert perhaps did the same for you. And men will wish it was them," he adds, smile broadening, but still gentle. "And you are not obligated to anyone but yourself. Please don't say such things about yourself — unless you are of the perception that we are all whores.
"I never married, in all my time," seems like a logical addition to throw in there, before he takes a sip of coffee.
Maybe she just needed a bit of re-assurance? It's far easier to talk to her father about that really bad nasty ass terrorist that she obliterated with a prayer and touch than to tell them that she's shared her bed with a total of two men and she wasn't married to either of them. Not a whore. If she doesn't consider Liz a whore, then… she's not one either.
"Robert smelled like Flint. All whiskey and smoke and sweat and he touched my lips while we were in Russia and I couldn't forget that. He smelled like Flint and I wanted it and.. I wanted it. I had a psychologist that told me, that I needed to do stuff for myself, take what I wanted instead of always worrying about others and doing for others. To.. tend to my needs and do something selfish" Robert was defiantly something selfish and something for herself, vodka shooters notwithstanding. Going to the hotel with him, was something selfish.
"Laurel" She could see that. Could see too now even more, why whomever it was that did it, killed her. "Do you have any kids?" It pops into her head, closing off the topic of Robert, and Teo and Magnes away. "In all.. the years, did you ever have any kids? Kazimir managed to have one."
"Non. Well. None that I knew." It's not regret in his voice. Not even wistfulness. It's hard to identify, when you know something is not quite perfect but would not change it even if you could. Francois' shoulders go up under his coat, and he uses the time given while sipping coffee to think of smart words, ones that make that okay in any logical framework. "I know of at least one, but— I rarely stayed in one place for very long and didn't want to interfere with the things I left behind. It was not just the immortality."
He can sense conversational territory ahead, the uncertain, unsteady kind. Still, he speaks plainly as they walk, voice quiet if not as soft as the snow fall. "Or even Volken. After the war, after Dachau, there were some things that I did not feel fit me anymore. I felt like I was shaped only around my ability. A vessel. Like perhaps there was nothing left than that. It took a while, but I was changed."
"And now?" Now that there's no ability and it's just mortality and all that comes with it. "I didn't know about the immortality thing. I don't… I don't know how I would have taken it. Living beyond Teo or my friends. Watching people get older and …" She looks over, putting the cup to her lips and sipping. She's still slightly mortified inside that she's confessed to him that he's one of the ones that makes her twitterpated and that she laid with someone. "I can see why you kept on the move. So you wouldn't have to watch the ones you loved grow older and you stayed the same" There was probably a dozen other reasons why he continually moved, one of them Volken as well.
The vessel comment, she can relate. Very easily. She always felt that she was the Lords vessel with the ability. "I've changed, whether for the better or not, I guess we'll have to wait and see. Changed since I've lost it. Makes.. you wonder what part of you was you and what part of you was it. Influenced or guided, molded by it without you knowing." The car looms within sight and she digs out her keys to start it so that there will be warmth when they get there.
"I think I'll stay at the garden tonight."