Participants:
| Scene Title | Ready Steady Go |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Deckard's healing services are required and Gabriel Gray doesn't care if it's 3:00 AM on a Tuesday morning with the alarm set to go off in two and a half hours so he can go to work and sell bagels to retarded cops. |
| Date | August 25, 2009 |
Deckard's Bedroom
It's three AM. And where three AM would normally find Deckard sprawled out on the couch with a bottle of tequila and Billy Mays, or sprawled out in a condemned house on Staten Island, or…sprawled out on the sidewalk outside of a bar unconscious, tonight it finds in him bed. Alseep. In pajamas, so far as a t-shirt and comfortable pants qualify.
His bedroom — because he actually has one, now — is sparsely decorated and sparsely occupied. A beat up old wooden dresser is host to a bottle of jack, the slack of an unoccupied leather holster and a pair of jeans. There's a duffel bag on the floor, and a one-eyed ginger cat that looks like some kind of giant alien caterpillar that tried to insinuate itself inside Deckard's ribcage overnight and succeeded only in smooshing parts of itself flat against his side. Right arm hooked around a spare pillow, left out've sight, he's prone and snoring under the dialed green glow of his alarm clock.
Swift and silent, there's a corner of the room that's getting darker. Whatever room is stationed outside of Deckard's immediate doorway is, apparently, leaking shadow, the slow process of a man-sized swatch of inky blackness squeezing its way through the cracks with all the viscous fluidity of syrup. It gathers and pools upon the carpet, ever moving like the smallest and thickest storm cloud, coursing its way silently across the room. Doesn't make a sound when it gathers up from the ground and becomes something more solid, and only then is there the swish of fabric settling, and a groan on the floor as weight settles upon a creaky wooden slat.
There are worse apparitions, these days, to appear from beneath the door. Just not many. A lamp is switched on with an executive and ordinary click, abruptly cutting through the darkness with spilt yellow light that washes over not only Deckard and his cat, but the darkly dressed Midtown Man standing at the side of his bed with a look slightly too judgmental and analytical for a nice apartment in Chelsea and a respectable time to be sleeping.
The long face that turns over to squint blearily after the swath of ambery warmth cued by the lamp is familiar in its hatchet hewn angles and hollows. Potentially less so in the tidy trim of short shorn hair and only a few day's worth of stubble to balance it out, coarse if rather insubstantial in light of his usual homeless bristle. Chilly eyes thawed clear by the lamplight, Deckard is slow to roll himself over onto his back, unhurried as the ginger tom winding into a position where he's less likely to be smushed.
A revolver lies flat across his chest, muzzle pointed only hazily in Gabriel's direction at the behest of his left hand while the right bumps groggily over in search of his alarm clock. "Listen," light's canceling out the numbers at this angle — he has to squint even harder against the tilt, "can we do this…like. Friday? Or. Saturday, would be…ideal for me."
The gun is looked at quizzically. A surprise, sure, but apparently not as scary as it might have a right to be, whether out of sheer arrogance or a lack of faith in the man's aim, as Gabriel remains unmoving. Something of a difference than the tense, cornered dog wariness with which he'd been the last time Deckard had a weapon pointed in his direction. An eyebrow ticks up in a cynical kind of lift - amused, too, and vaguely wistful, which might be nuances too subtle for a bleary squint being narrowed his way.
Fortunately. "Get up. Get dressed." The instructions are offered firmly, but quietly, Gabriel taking a step away from the bed. "Believe me, there are a lot of unpleasant ways I could be doing this."
Nuances, no. The absence of black-eyed bloodlust and imminent threat of death…maybe moreso. Downplayed tension falls out've the rigid lock of Deckard's rib cage in a long, quiet exhalation while he sizes up the boogie man in his bedroom. The cat yawns, rasp hooked tongue curling out pink under a velvet nose and a broken fang, and slowly, grudgingly, Flint drops the clock on his way to rolling himself over and out've bed onto bare feet.
He takes the revolver with him, right hand free enough to rub sluggish at his brow while he frowns at his dresser and tries to remember if he dragged his clothes in the dryer up before he passed out. "I believe you."
The smile offered for trade across the room isn't particularly pleasant, if only thanks to the source. Gabriel doesn't readily excuse himself out of the room, wandering in a casual pace, nudging things aside with the toe of his boot as he goes, with Flint remaining in his periphery. "Ethan Holden lost a fight with Feng Daiyu."
Some heed is paid towards the cat, Gabriel crouching down beside the bed and eyeing the ginger, extending a hand in an attempt ear skritch although with some respectful wariness, as if expecting a bite and a scratch instead of a purr despite its prior snuggling.
He also thinks to add, "It would make Eileen's life easier if he was back to normal."
It's a tolerant cat. It would have to be, having survived this long under the care of Flint and Brian and various lost children, still young enough that it hasn't grown into the wide spread of its claw-curled paws. Its remaining green eye slits open long enough to be unimpressed with Gabriel, then it's resettling itself in the warm pit left behind by Deckard's shoulder.
The same shoulder that Deckard is groggily eyeing Gray over, now as if he isn't sure why he's still in here when he's supposed to be changing clothes. …Not that he's made much progress in that direction. A few steps towards the dresser to collect the jeans. Two more towards a closet door he hasn't opened yet. "…'S…mmn." Nevermind. "…R'they fucking?"
Long fingers stroke through the ginger fur of the sleepy feline as soon as it proves to be the kind that doesn't immediately scratch and maul, and with Gabriel's track record, he'd want to be wary. He's a friend to cats. But that particular question gains a halt and hesitation, a steely look crossing firmly over towards Deckard from beneath a serious brow.
"No."
The word is dropped between them as if it weighed several hundred pounds and made of cement, before Gabriel is standing up again— and the cat goes with him. Almost a hostage. From warm bed to the arms of the erstwhile serial killer, the ginger has no choice but to splay its large paws against Gabriel's chest and tolerate the slightly irked skritching behind its ears. "There's a boat leaving for Staten Island in forty, fifty minutes," is the brisk prompt, before Gabriel is moving for the door to pace around in the solitude of the front room and let the older man dress in peace.
The one-eyed ginger bobs its neck along with the movement of walking, peering over a coat clad shoulder at Deckard. Halp.
…Oh. Okay then.
Brows tipped up to himself at an awkward angle, Deckard can't even begin to hazard speculation as to the reason for the heavy no before his cat is being taken off as a hostage. Rather than raise the revolver, he watches them both track out with an air of vacant (and perhaps vaguely apologetic, for the cat's sake) helplessness.
Drawers dropped and exchanged for dark jeans first, he has to shuffle around in the closet for a minute or two before coming up with a white dress shirt clean enough to qualify as satisfactory. The shoulder holster is lifted, examined, and dropped again so that he can string a more straight forward model onto his belt instead. Too warm for a jacket, and they're going to Staten anyway.
Water rushes through the pipes that cross cross the ceiling in the living area. He sprays deodorant. Brushes his teeth. Considers a shave and abandons the razor for the fourth day in a row, palming flatly over the light switch and reaching for the abandoned revolver on his way out for the door. Maybe tomorrow.
"You can tell me why the slanty-eyed son of a bitch is so intent on trying to kill all of us on the way."
The cat is released as Deckard emerges, almost soundless as four paws hit the ground, a streak of ginger replacing feline as it takes off from obligatory bonding, leaving Gabriel to calmly pick and wipe stray cat hairs off his coat. "He's former Vanguard," Gabriel answers, looking Deckard up and down as if to check that he's ready as ready can be. "It's kind of their thing. Aside from that, I don't know. Enjoys what he does."
Rather than towards the door, Gabriel steps instead towards Deckard, taking a breath as if bracing himself for something. "Ready?"
Deckard looks like he'd rather be sleeping, and bears some faint resemblance to someone who's spent a couple've days trapped in an elevator shaft in the rumple of his shirt and the crooked sit of his belt weighed down by the revolver on one side. His alligator skin boots are nice, though, especially given that they probably cost more than it'll cost him to live in this apartment for the next month.
"Their thing. Your thing," corrected without real feeling, he twists enough to make sure his cat isn't bleeding out the ears or anything on its way past and hooks a key up off the back of the couch.
Theeen Gabriel steps towards him, and Deckard steps neatly back. One, two. Like a dance, and now he's peering over from beneath the hood of his brows with key held close to chest like he's not sure he likes where this is going.
"You don't know me." Refrain of serial killers everywhere. You don't know me, or why, because that truly does matter as the body count goes up higher, as if perhaps there's a discount involved for really good reasons. Either way, it's a verbal attempt at swatting away the correction, even as Deckard waltzes on backwards as Gabriel waltzes on forward, consternation now writing itself into the crease of his brow.
Gabriel's hand vaguely lifts, with the same amount of caution as he'd approached the older man's cat just before. "You should relax - you won't even have to do anything. I just have— " His head tilts to the side, considering words for a fraction of a pause (shut up). "— preferred methods of getting around."
You don't know me. Deckard starts to smile, or smirk, almost like he's not sure if Gabe's serious, which may be the worst response of all. Except for the fact that he doesn't really have time to let it sink in because the skull slicer is stepping forward again, and he's running out of room to retreat into.
There are no photographs or paintings hanging to jar. When he bump-bumps back into the wall, it's just him and his boots and suddenly a whole lot of characteristic tension winding its way through wiry arms and narrow jaw. In a matter of seconds, he looks more like his old self than he has all morning. "What's wrong with walking?"
It's kind of like dogs detecting fear. Gabriel abruptly stops when Deckard's back connects with the wall, a flash of— some vaguely unreadable expression crossing the younger man's face. Worry and agitation and a sort of bridling kind of demeanor, gaze breaking to look downwards. If this were an encore of a prior instance, Deckard should be running in a few short moments.
"Why walk when you can… actually," and now a crooked smile breaks across Gabriel's face, though his eyes are two circles of blank obsidian in this light, "I don't know what it's called."
And he promptly disappears into an inky cloud, telling a story about a man who had the ability to phase into exactly the same impossible substance and his likely end, if one were to leap to conclusions. It tornadoes in spot for half a moment before lunging for forward in a horizontal cascade, feeling like nothing at all as it envelopes Flint Deckard, gun and all.