Participants:
Scene Title | Play Doctor Tomorrow |
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Synopsis | Deckard show sup anemic and bloodlost so he can spend the night. |
Date | October 1, 2009 |
Old Lucy's - Upstairs
It's after eleven, which means it's after curfew when a familiar knock sounds thrice at the closed brunt of the door to the apartment above Old Lucy's. Ever increasingly shabby overcoat stiff with cold dried drying blood around the collar, he looks about as undead as a person can get without literally being undead. Or just dead. He's emaciated and pale, eye sockets pitched dark into his skull and blue dress shirt soaked through muddy red from shoulder to hip. Also, he's holding a metal briefcase. Only it looks perfectly fine, so. One hopes it's of less immediate interest.
Someone who the staff let up and yet they're knocking. Abigail's in flannel, pink flowers on a cream background and worn blue ballet slippers, jersey bathrobe and hair back in a braid when Deckard knocks and she answers with a peer through the door and a surprised look. "Sweet father above Flint, you are covered in blood" State the obvious Abigail. The door thrown open so the man can come in, she looks to the hall where joseph had disappeared and Alicia had followed. Leonards door closed too. "I got towels, you can use the bathroom. Lord on high" There's worry, plain and simple, haunting her voice as she waits till he's in before closing and locking the door again.
"Thanks," graveled out at a mutter, Flint steps in with a distracted sideways glance after Abby and her flannel pajamas with the pink and the — flowers. But he isn't long in lingering past that. He knows where the bathroom is and he knows where the towels are in the bathroom so that it's only a matter of seconds before he's in and water's running at the sink and he is trying to close the door between her and him (and the briefcase.)
They may be buffing each others shoes as they say, but Abby hasn't graduated to sharing the shower with him. So he gets in with nary a complaint nor a demand to follow. She's seen the look on her own face when she had the ability, and even when she hasn't had the ability. So Deckard makes for the bathroom and Abigail… makes for the bar downstairs for first, some whiskey. Followed by back upstairs to her kitchen to set about to making a sandwich and grabbing chips, hot tea and some chocolate pudding cups.
Bit by bit it's all transported from the kitchen to her bedroom, the safe haven of the room with it's new windows, the couch in there, bed, desk. This isn't the master bedroom, that's the room Joseph is in, with it's own bathroom. Flint keeps clothes, a stash here. Those are fetched as well and brought to the bathroom door and averting eyes, they're slid into the bathroom and onto the counter before the door is closed again as quietly as they opened. Fresh clothes, a note on top that says she's got food and drink in her bedroom. And that's where she waits, expecting that he'll spend the night in her room, and likely in her bed since Joseph's got the spare room.
Deckard…takes a long shower. It's a good thirty minutes at least before water cuts off again and the curtain is shirked aside so that he can blur past the fog-obscured mirror to get dressed, and a full hour before he's slung his bloody clothes into the shower and re-emerged into the apartment proper. Wherever he's hurt, if he's still hurt, the faded brown t-shirt he's drawn down over the scruffy damp of his head is enough to buffer it out of easy view. It does a poorer job of hiding how sickly thin he's gotten in the last couple of weeks, but fluctuations in his weight have been common since he became host to Abigail's ability.
Sort of.
His jeans are too big too, but with the assist from a belt salvaged from the flop of his abandoned pants they seem likely to stay up at least long enough for him to pad his way into Abby's bedroom, holster looped over his left arm over the grip he still has on his briefcase.
"Eat"
When Deckard finally surfaces from the bathroom and all the hot water is used. There's non floral shampoo and honest to go toiletry that she's started keeping for when Deckard makes unplanned overnight visits. Actually Abby keeps spare toothbrushes and such for any unplanned guests she has that might not have their things with them.
She's parked on the couch, the bottle of whiskey and a class laid out for him on a TV tray by the couch. Sandwich, chips, baby carrots, things to eat. The TV in her room - yes, she does have one - is set to some late night programming that she frankly had turned on to kill time about twenty minutes earlier.
"Spending the night or just a pit stop?" Questions about who's blood is now sitting on the bottom of her bathtub is ignored, will be ignored when she bleaches it down some time tomorrow morning before Leonard wakes.
"come sit, you look like I did after Logan shot me up and you plucked out all that buckshot out of me"
Still too pale and too drawn and not enough of a lot of other things, Deckard turns himself 'round to sink down on the side of the couch where there is food. He takes his time in draping holster over arm rest and snugging briefcase down off to the side somewhere reasonably inconspicuous, then he's reaching for the tray. One arm is stiffer about the retrieval process than the other, but he voices no complaint in pulling it over into his lap so that he can hook a baby carrot up and nip it in half to chew on while he sorts out the lay of the sandwich.
"Staying," is opted without much fanfare, and he's about a second out from biting off the corner of his sandwich when he hesitates to tack on a hazier, "if that's ok."
"Always okay" Abigail responds, content with her side of the couch and content to watch him. Take the whole of him in. The way he moves, stiffly on the one side, the care he's taking with the briefcase. The urge to ask if he's got cocaine in there is stifled, even though she looks like she might ask.
But wisely, she doesn't. "I don't have a spare room, Joseph's got it, but you can stay in my bed, if you want. Or I can dig out the airbed if you don't" She had called him up and yelled at him via voice message, then apologized two days later. She doesn't know exactly where they're standing right now.
"You going to be okay or do I need to get out my gear?"
"You don't think Joseph'd want me climbing under the covers with him?" inquired too earnestly to be earnest, Flint sallies forth upon his sandwich. Bite, chew, swallow. Try not to look like he's starving. Even that much is too much to think about on an under supplied brain, and it takes him longer than it should to register that the stuff about the bed was sort of secretly in the form of a question. That he should answer. Probably sooner rather than later.
Still chewing at what was probably a part of the poor sandwich's left flank, he hesitates mid-mastication long enough to look her over sideways again, bone structure and sunken hollows all exaggerated most un-sexily around the icy scrape of his stare.
"We can play doctor tomorrow. Do you want me on the airbed?"
"Rather in my bed where I can keep an eye on you. Don't rightly care that the pastors in the next room over since I hardly doubt you'll be having enough energy to do more than lay your head on my chest if at all that" Likely he'll sleep like the dead and maybe no bad dreams. "Wanna talk about it or would you rather I pour you some whiskey? Or I can get you some coffee"
The TV plays some obnoxious late night host telling jokes about the world and celebrities but she's not paying attention. If anything, she's shifting in her seat till she's on her knees on the couch and trying to get a look at the stiff arm.
Deckard's brows adopt a resigned slant where she's probably right several times over re: his current aptitude. If she hadn't plied him with food he'd probably already be passed out where he's sitting so that she could pry his sleeve back or his collar down and have a peep —
But he's awake, and eating, and leaning unconsciously away when peripheral awareness detects that he's being studied closer now than he was when he first walked in. "Water's fine. How's he doing?" He presumably being Joseph, who is conveniently something they can talk about that isn't him.
Fine, fine, she can take a hint when he's leaning away and steering the topic onto the other wounded male in the house. Actually, there's three of them, just the other two it's more spiritual and mental as opposed to the physical and likely mental that Deckard is enduring. "He's… I dunno. He's real twitchy and really … I don't know. I'm going to take him to hokuto tomorrow, let her get a look at him and maybe his dreams, see if that will help him" She's prepared for scorn at Hokuto's name.
"I offered to take him to my shrink if he wants to. Talk to someone about what happened, but he's just… He's a man who's been kidnapped for a month and he's trying to adjust"
Is he really so predictable? Apparently he is. Annoyance and skepticism furrow into his brow the moment Hokuto's name is out of the bag as a potential stopgap, but — that's as far as he gets. Truth be told he can't actually be said to be doing better on his own end so far as wrangling Joseph around is concerned, so.
Past the look, he clips another baby carrot in his teeth and forces himself to look elsewhere until he can force irritation over into a milder 'fair enough' kind of look.
"Or you can tell me what I can do to help him, I don't know. I'm not a shrink. After Staten I had.. friends and I had church to go to and I had.. the rest of you and Joseph doesn't have many friends, he's got the Ferry and church, his church is burned to a crisp. I'll be taking him to St. John at least till I can convince him to come with me and see what Pastor McCoy can offer in way of service and help in the baptist faith"
She settles back onto her side of the couch, unsure of any physical contact with the other man. Eyes the carrot that he's consuming before she sighs softly. He's in curmudgeon mode, even more quiet than usual. "Finish your food, we can go to bed. I'll look you over in the morning"
Carrot ground down and swallowed, Deckard moves on to poke at the next one, plate already nearly clear. "I dunno either," is more of an honest sentiment than it sounds like it should be, croaked dry ahead of a final run of tongue over teeth. Then he leans to offer the plate with its remaining wee carrots out to her. In case she wants them. Or something.
The carrot is plucked up between thumb and forefinger save that she doesn't take it to eat it herself. The food was for him, she'd eaten already earlier. It's offered up to him to take, eat from her fingers so to speak while her other hand grabs the whiskey glass and offers it up. She' worried, concerned, and yet, satisfied. He came here instead of hiding out god knows where and not getting anything good to eat or possibly half freezing in the cold evening air. She doesn't say a thing though, now's the time to shut the hell up since he seems to prefer quiet.
Her return offer of the final carrot is met with the slant of half a smirk, tolerant as it is tired, and Flint leans stiffly over sideways enough to pluck it out of her grip with his teeth. Less gracefully than he might have liked, what with the wiry gangle of his good arm and the dragging counterweight of the bad on his way to pushing up onto his feet. The whiskey is snubbed entirely in favor of his side of the bed, which he sets himself down onto with less care than he spared the couch.
Something to make her smile. The smirk, the eschewing of whiskey in favor of bed. More the smirk than anything as the whiskey thing makes her worry none the less. She'll clean up the plate and everything else in the morning, for now, it's off to her side of the bed, the TV still on, remote picked up and put beside her bed. She's not going to sleep yet, but Flint will likely drop off soon enough. "Have to be up at any specific time in the morning? So I can set the alarm" Stating the obvious again as she pushes back the covers and crawls up onto her side. Normally the middle is her side when he's not here so there's some pillow rearranging to be made till she's sitting cross legged and looking over. "You okay?"
"I cal…" says Deckard, only to catch himself and correct with a one-eyed squint when he pushes the sheets back with a bare foot, "can sleep in." Settling back supine is a trickier prospect than just sitting down, which certainly serves as distraction enough to remove him from the near slip while he tries to keep his weight gingerly off his right side.
"Yep. Are you?"
There's hands there, arms behind the lower back and a hand placed against the back of his neck to support. "Relax, I'll help you lay down." He's hurt and not enough fucking energy to heal himself. Thin as hell too. Happily, and frankly easily thanks to what she's been learning, she bear the brunt of his weight to help Flint lay down before in beside him she goes, dragging the sheets up over the both of them.
"I slapped Magnes" That's defined apparently as okay.
"He shot John Logan in the leg, twice. As retribution it seems and came to tell me about it" A hand slips to his forehead, checking to make sure there's no fever. "Do you want some tylenol before you sleep? I have some in my nightstand"
Caught off guard, Deckard tenses against unexpected support only to relax into it almost as readily once he recognizes help for help and decides he's too tired to be buggered with fending her off. In fact, he's almost got his eyes closed before he parses the thing with Magnes and Logan and shootings and they flare open again. First at the ceiling, then halcyon blue over at Abby as if he's not sure he heard her correctly or. Any number of potentials that are more or less incriminating in regard to his sudden interest.
The hand at his forehead shakes him out of it before it can become a Thing, though, brow clammy and too cool against her touch. He's definitely kind of fucked, but probably not in any kind of way that's going to see him dead overnight. "Tylenol would be great."
"All that blood was yours wasn't it" The hand is taken away, likely warm against his brow and the sound of a drawer opening, rummaging till there's the rattle of pills caught in their bottle become more loud adn the lid is being popped. Four of them taken out since she takes two of them herself and he's significantly taller and more heavier than herself. The bottle of water ever present is uncapped and passed over.
The already flat line of his mouth flattened still further, Deckard watches her rummage around until the lid is popped and he forces himself to focuus blearily on the ceiling instead. No answer isn't really an answer, except for how it kind of is.
Yeahh, it was his. She should have known. The pill bottle passed back onto the nightstand, the TV's blue glow taking over as the lamp is turned off with a touch of the metal. Nothing further to be said other than "Good night Flint" and her head settling on her own pillow instead of his shoulder. "we'll take care of it in the morning"
"Night," offered out as a lame sort of olive branch in place of his usual dull silence at around this point in the falling asleep process, Flint waits until she's down to lift his head enough to swallow the pills down. The rest of what's sloshing around in the water bottle follows all the way until the damn thing's empty and he reaches out to drop it lazily off over the side of the bed.
He's going to have to get up to pee. :(