Participants:
| Scene Title | Pattycake |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Felix briefly intersects with Deckard as the latter escapes from the scene of his most recent felony. |
| Date | February 27, 2010 |
Paranoia. He's been shot at enough times, wounded enough times, that he's gotten a good bit of Liz's acrophobia. So Fel does not quite scuttle across the open spaces or hug the walls, as he skirts the ruin of Midtown. He's in a dark gray overcoat, but he's left that hat at home. He's as skinny as ever, if not quite so starveling gaunt….new glasses, with black frames, and the beginning of a neatly trimmed goatee. It makes him look older….though no doubt the lines he acquired in Russia and Antarctica help, too.
By solid contrast, Deckard prowls down the sidewalk with all the grace and subtlety of a marauding grizzly bear, shoulders hunched broad under the black of his overcoat and buzz-shorn head ducked low against the cold. He's moving with deliberate, purposeful speed away from something, jostling anyone who doesn't get the fuck out of his way with a shoulder and no apology, with flashes of unholy blue in his glare to send them on along their way if they dare to make a fuss. They usually don't, after that.
He's coming up behind Fel. It's….sheer coincidence, but coincidence is an extinct animal in Fel's mental taxonomy. Replaced by justified paranoia. He glances over his shoulder once, twice, picks up his pace as if to see if Deckard's really following him. Where'd he come from…..to Deckard's x-ray vision, he's a familiar pattern, by now. The lacework of healed fractures in his bones is unique, as if he were a plate smashed and then glued back together. And, of course, there's the pistol under his coat. Not in his pocket - he's not actually happy to see Deckard. He never is.
Deckard isn't. Deliberately following, that is. The millisecond Felix's lightning array of familiar fractures spindles across his field of vision, he diverts. His eyes go dim and he steps sideways off the snow-sodden curb, hardly glancing down the street before he starts trudging through the slush strewn across it with his hands pushed deep into his pocket and his expression black.
The instincts say shoot first, never mind the questions, ever. But Fel doesn't. He stops, though, watches Deckard with all the welcome of a cat who sees a dog approaching his face, eyes narrowed.
On the retreat, or at least on a path of wide berths and deliberate avoidance, Deckard pauses in the street's middle long enough for a cab to slither by through the snow. Then it's onward, still further away from Felix until he's whisked a cigarette up into the corner of his mouth and turned sideways into an alleyway about as welcoming as a crocodile's vagina.
His paranoia's in full flower. Fel's looking around as if he were the one with X-ray vision. Hesitantly, because it's against all sense, he turns….and picks his way delicately across the street, poised and wary. What's he doing?
What Deckard is doing is walking away. Down the unlit alley, snow steeped in drifts against both walls all the way down into a right turn once he's lit up and blasted off a bout've smoke with the fog of his breath. It hangs thick in the air behind him, split in his wake after the wet scuff and scrape of his boots that accompanies a turn. Down a side alley, further away still. Not interested in sticking around. Definitely not interested in conversation.
He's not entirely sure why he's following. Maybe out of sheer curiosity's sake. Maybe just to mess with him. Fel doesn't hurry to catch up….but he drifts afterward. Like maybe the question will present itself.
Eventually, Deckard rounds on him. You can't outrun someone with super speed, presumably not even by hailing a cab, and it's cold. He's put enough ground behind him it's probably okay to flag one down, but with the feeb on his heels, niggling tension bites deep into the base of his neck and clamps his jaw. More intimidating than Felix might remember when he turns, he looks less a shambled mess with wiry hair shorn short and brow hooded over the spectral rings of his irises. His overcoat's of decent quality, collar flipped to cover the back of his neck, ears ajut and cigarette end nearly as bright as his eyes through the fog of his breath. What?
…….completely bizarrely, it's literally back to Square One. There's no blustering, no threats, no insinuation from the Fed. "I'm willing to bet," he says, with a deliberation that's unlike his tendency to clipped threats and incipient mayhem, "You still have your ear to the underground. People talk to you who'd never talk to me in a million years." He sighs, and his breath gusts around him. "Same as it ever was. And….people are telling me out of one side of their mouth that Gabriel Gray died a hero's death. And the other says that Sylar's out there, killing again. What've you heard?"
"I don't play pattycake with Sylar. You're looking for Ethan Holden. He's English. Shorter, balder," Deckard is already taking a step backwards again, moving to disengage now that he's established that he doesn't give a fuck about whatever this is, "smaller dick."
Felix snorts. Another name, back from the supposed dead. They're worse than roaches, in this town. Fel just watches him go…..but pointedly neglects to turn his back.
Deckard is less defensive about his rear these days. Or so it would appear. His eyes dim out before he turns in full, probably because it's easier to easier to see ice in visible light. And he walks off without so much as a glance back over his shoulder, intent on moving far enough off to hail a cab closer in to Midtown so that he can melt back into the damp and decay where he belongs.