Skinned

Participants:

abby_icon.gif deckard_icon.gif sonny_icon.gif teo_icon.gif

Scene Title Skinned
Synopsis A Ferryman gets mauled by a truck and requires superpowered assistance from two who can offer it. Duty done, Abby leaves when Deckard and Teo talk about hookers. After Abby leaves, they stop talking about hookers and instead about her, sex, not having sex, and who's worse off, or something awkwardly like empathy.
Date December 15, 2008

Another Ferryman Safehouse


A Ferryman got fucked up. Something about a truck on a highway, a 'fugee's abilities going willy-nilly— something graphic and loud that probably would have warranted at least a four-inch article in the paper any other year in Manhattan, but at the end of 2008 it'll be but a one-line generalization in a story about something else.

There were cops, but there aren't anymore; just one fucked up Ferryman in the makeshift medbay of a safehouse. The apartments are otherwise hushed above, the basement-turned-lounge still empty from the fleeting wave of panic that the injured man's arrival had inspired in the wary fugitives who are staying here.

By 8 PM, he's been wheeled up to the second floor, doped up, laid out on a bed with eyes closed, IV plugged into his wrist, his left side a twisted wreck of lacerations, bones pointing the wrong way and in incorrect segments despite the bandages and splints, and road rash exposed where his clothes have been cut away. This is where the call of duty brings you, if you're lucky.

Teo is walking Abby down the hall. "I think there's another guy in too. I'm not sure why they called him in and needed a healer like you, both, but…" a shrug moves through his densely bundled shoulders.

Sonny's pretty fast to respond to the Ferryman's call. He's usually second on the list after Abby, of course, but what with her kidnapping, he was able to get down here first. The young doctor, with his ability to rearrange injuries and medical knowhow has stabilized the man, but he's still going to need long-term healing or Abby's magic touch to do any better. He's dressed in a simple white dress shirt and a pair of black slacks. He wears gloves as he checks the man's vitals and his dressings and makes a few notes on a chart. It's just like a hospital except, you know, at a secret location.

Abby, new pack, loaded with Red Bull walks beside Teo. "How many people know that I'm back from Brooklyn? And Teo, it's not like I can get to anyplace right quick. They're right in having someone who can get him to where he's not going to die. Wasn't like with Brian and I was right there." Her hands tighten on the straps of the backpack. Right now, four walls aren't high on the list of her likes right now. "At least their calling me. It sounded bad." Her brunette hair bound back, black jacket, her booted feet thump through the halls.

Secret location, secret doctor, secret witnesses, secret patient. "I'm aware. The week would've been easier if you could teleport," Teo says, wryly, before shrugging one shoulder at her question. "Phoenix. Wireless does — is probably why they knew to call for you. Here." It was probably obvious which door was it; the one slightly ajar and stinking of antiseptic. The Sicilian puts a hand out to push it open, ushering the young woman in before he pokes his rumpled skull in to take stock of its contents for himself. The man on the bed warrants an uncomfortable stare, before his gaze shifts to the young man beside him. "Ciao. You're the doctor?"

The doctor looks up as Teo and Abby approach. "Yes. I'm Sonny." No formalities of his title in this environment. "Is one of you the healer? I…can't do much more for this man. I've moved his injuries around, but he's still in bad shape. He needs surgery and intensive care."

There's something muttered under Abby's breath about how she wishes she would have teleported indeed. Still touches of frostbite on her own ears that'll either disappear when she wants them to, or on her own. Upon her pushed entry into the room though, sonny's ignored and Teo's ignored, save for the formers words that he's rearranged the injuries and the man will need surgery. Now she's feeling a bit guilty for her driv eby time spent with her homeless people. "He won't. He'll be fine, are the bones set? any gravel or stuff out of the wounds?" She's shedding her coat, bag, sweater by the door and makes her way to the injured side of the Ferryman refugee.

Grey suit freshly pressed and shirt clean, if open over a less-clean undershirt, Deckard is the last to appear in the doorway. He is smoking a cigar. Why is he smoking a cigar? There is no telling.

Uncharacteristically quiet, he hangs back unannounced and watches, eventually leaning himself over into the frame to better balance his study of the recently (and presumably soon to be not) crippled guy he's currently sharing a safehouse with.

Despite having the finely-honed sixth sense you'd expect a career terrorist to have, Teo doesn't realize there's a lanky kinda-hobo standing behind him until the reek of cigar cuts in through the bitter tang of pharmaceutical chemistry. With a start, he glances back. Distractedly answers Sonny, a moment belated: "Yes— she's the healer. I'm Teo. What are you doing with that in here?" Consternation is as unsubtle a visitor to his facial expression as the next. Scowling, he reaches to snag the burning column from Flint's lips.

"So you're the one putting me out of work," Sonny says to Abby with a small smile as he steps aside to make room for her to tend to the man. "The bones are set to the best of my ability. Some are shattered. I did my best to clear the wounds of debris." He too smells cigar smoke. He's glad Teo's the one telling Deckard to butt out.

"I'm not putting anyone out of business, just doing gods work when asked for. Sorry…" It's truly apologetic, as if the very thought that what she does might actually be offending someone and putting them out of work. Shattered bones though. Sleeves pushed up, and hair out of the way, Abby sets into doing what she does so well. Besides the noise the others make, her hushed prayer adds to the ambience as she peels away the bandages and the like, checking with fingertips where the shattered bone is. Leg, not so bad. One can only hope it's big pieces and lot little. Big would form back up. The prayer is finished, and no, no blinding flash of light, Abby just settled her hands first over the rent flesh exposed by the discarded bandages. Slow, not fast, that's how she's going in case she needs to stop and have Sonny readjust bones or the light. "Teo, can I have a stool? It's gonna be a a bit." She doesn't ask Sonny, or Deckard, just used to Teo being there and the one catering to her needs in these instances. It starts to trickle into the fallen man and relaxation falls over Abby's face, little gold cross dangling like a pendulum over the man's chest.

"We have healers with super powers," Deckard manages to muffle out, head turned at a slight tilt to Teo in the second or two before he's relieved of the cigar. Annoyance creases in around his mouth, but immediate argument is put off for situations more defensible than smoking a cigar in a room with a really fucked up guy. Trying to make a grab for the stump of it is discarded as an idea as well. Not worth burning his fingers over.

Resigned to focusing back on artistically shattered and scattered bone, he watches the ruined leg rather than the guy's face, or Abigail. Bones shifting, repairing themselves, however slowly. It's kind of cool.

Cool. Gross. Synonyms, when you're a boy. Now Teo is clutching a cigar and simultaneously being asked to bring the healer a stool in the room that he's trying to not have a cigar in. His mouth flattens in foul perplexity. He picks up his right shoe and puts out the stump against the soppily scudded sole, then flicks the sodden remains over Deckard's shoulder.

It bounces dispiritedly off the far wall of the hallway with a thok and rolls across the floor to halt on some indistinctly shadowed slat, while Teo gets his ass in gear to retrieve Abby a stool from the side of the room, characteristically forgetting reproval or verbal response. The seat comes rattling up behind the girl on legs that quiver slightly against the joints they're screwed into. Parking it behind her, the Sicilian straightens. Offers Sonny a hand to shake.

Sonny is a scientist, and his knowledge doesn't quite know how to define what Abby's doing. So he stays back and out of the way and lets her work her healing magic. Once Teo's done his gophering, the doctor snaps off a bloody glove and offers the hand for him to shake.

Miracle, that's how you define it. Evolved ability, divine ability. Abby pulls her hands away from the guy when the stool's put under her. "Thanks" and she slides down a bit to the mans leg. Her hands are covered in blood and unlike Sonny, she's not caring a whit about gloves. onto his leg she trails her fingers, searching for something and a smile flits across her face as she carefully massages a bone back into place and just like that, carrys on. Each blink shows more flesh coming back to what it was, healing, regrowing. Those who know her, can see the toil though, in the way she has her shoulders and her face. "Twenty minutes. What happened to him and is there anyone else?" She can talk while healing, surprise! "You have more shirts for me to iron flint?"

Deckard looks hard at Teo when the perfectly good cigar is snuffed out and tossed over his own shoulder. That was his. What a jerk. Says the look. "I bought new ones," directed at Abby with a glance, Deckard gives Sonny a distracted looking-over while he reaches into his coat. "Some Hispanic lady at the washeteria is doing the rest. Or stealing them. I don't know."

Jerk nearly got a handful of bloody latex glove, if that's any consolation. Despite this, and the fact that Flint is cutting up the side of his head with angry eyes, Teo turns up the corners of his mouth at Sonny the way Madre taught him to do with strangers. Smile because you mean it.

Releasing, he unbuttons and unzips the front of his jacket, scooting away from the injured man, either out of some ordinary instinct to do no harm or some belief in his own inherent capacity to break stuff even if he doesn't mean to. He isn't sure what else went sideways with the fugitive transfer, so he doesn't answer Abby that. "New place okay, signor?" he asks Deckard, instead.

Sonny turns his attention from Abby's miracle (because he can't quite understand it) to the other two men. Deckard especially gets a long, long look. A squinted look. "Hey…" He lifts a finger towards the older man. "You…look…kind of familiar. Have we met before?" Because he reads the papers. And his father loudly complains about fugitive Evolved over Sunday brunch. But the doc sees a lot of faces in the day (and changes many too) so Deckard could say he knows his cousin Susie and he'd probably buy it.

"Sorry," that's uttered to Decakrd. "I got a little chained up and couldn't visit. let me know when you need the new stuff ironed and cleaned." Dead seriousness in the woman's voice. Legs done to where there's no little bits, that's good. Back to the rest of him she goes, shoes scuffling and pulling her up towards the head of the bed. "You'll be better in no time, I promise." Abby murmurs to the unconscious man.

"More people," says Deckard, which simultaneously says much and nothing at all. Kind of like the fact that he's managed to extract a box of cigarettes from the confines of his suit coat says a lot without actually saying, 'Hi, I'm a box of cigarettes.' He eyes Sonny when he says it, then the sick guy, which is just mean, but there you are. He sets to tapping out a fresh smoke.

"It's fine, Abigail. We're not married yet, and I'm sure you were just busy in the kitchen." The lighter comes next, out of its own special pocket, and flick. He's already on his way to lighting up again. "Boris Benton. I sell paper."

Some part of Teo knows that Flint's too bright not to know that the fact that there are more people speaks of the man's changing status within the Ferrymen. Something about trust. Nothing you could fit into a Hallmark card or need to mention aloud, so he doesn't. A bright blue eye shifts from Mr. Benton to Sonny, a wary shade of curiosity filtering through. He straightens his face once he remembers to, and looks back at the bits of Ferryman on the cot. Discovers he feels somewhat better now that there's less red and muscle exposed.

Sonny's beeper goes off. He looks down at his belt and frowns at the code displayed there. "If you believe this man will be all right, I've got to be going. Please call me if you need me." 'Boris' is given another look. "Paper, huh?" doesn't sound like the kind of person he'd have run-ins with, but you never know. But he's off the hook for now, because the doctor's making sure his gloves are discarded, his equipment is gathered and then he goes for his coat.

"Thank you for keeping him alive till I got here." Now she's tired sounding and there's discernibly less open flesh. most of the damage now just inside. "If you need me for anything, just call. Ferryman have my number." Wait, the guy's Ferryman. "Err I mean.. you.. have.. my number." Abby looks up to Sonny, studying him as he did Deckard before back to the man her attention goes. "We'd never marry Deckard, I'm too nice. I'd drive you crazy. I drive everyone crazy after a time. But i'll still come take care of your shirts" Cause she's nice that way.

"Copy paper. Nice to meet you," says Boris, with a very un-Deckard-like smile that is quickly made more Deckard-like by the addition of a cigarette and the cup of one hand around the lighter that rises after it. The same smile is then turned over at Teo — maybe a little creepily so before he sets the process of buttoning up his shirt. "Are you suggesting that I'm not nice?"

Despite that Teo hasn't tooled on anybody with any sort of sincerity for a long time, he can tell when he's getting tooled on. He reacts primarily by not reacting, watching the corpus on the bed while his callused hands ball in his jacket and his hearing strains at the three in the room with the furtive paranoia of a mother wolf. He glances up only to cede Sonny a nod of salutation and a half a smile. "Buona notte."

And with one last nod, Sonny's out of the safehouse to tend to an emergency of the cosmetic kind.

Sonny has left.

"I'm too nice, and too preachy," Abby answers. "I'd still drive you nuts. I drive Teo nuts. The place always clean, taking care of the bird, which will be fat by the end of the month, I'm sure. Though I don't iron his clothes." She would, if he put it out. Abby rolls her head, arching back to stretch the muscles there before she refocuses her attention on the man on the bed.

Smoke in, smoke out. Deckard exhales through his sinuses, briefly draconic in the more familiar flavor of cigarette smoke over the dirty taste of cigar in the back of his throat. His smile is retained in more subtle and stealthy form, tipped down at something interesting on the ground before it's lifted back up at Abigail and Patient, hardly there at all. "He has a bird?"

For whatever reason, this is getting toward unbearably awful. Teo's head snags upright, a minute jerk that almost throws a muscle in his neck, momentarily divulging the bruises fading off his throat through the gap in his jacket, his features momentarily hewn roughly into a scowl.

She's either giving Flint the wrong idea or the right one, and over the course of various and sundry misadventures, Teo has come to understand that giving Flint ideas is unwise.

Or something. What. At least Abby's patient has no wounds exposed to the particle-clogged air, now. Lung cancer, she can heal. "Enough," he gestures with a hand. "Please stop talking about your underqualifications for making an eligible bride. That drives me nuts. Do you have anything to do tomorrow evening?" he stares at Deckard somewhat more brazenly than is, strictly speaking, necessary.

She's suitably chastized and abby promptly shuts up, about to fire back something about Pila. She's sure the question at the end isn't pointed towards her, so instead, she concentrates on just starting to heal a little bit faster. She's err'd and Teo's not happy with it, so she thinks.

"Me? Not unless you guys are going to drag another shattered body in here for me to ogle tomorrow night." Deckard stares back, because that is what he does, stark eyes clear through the haze he's already accumulated for himself. "Or were you asking Abigail out on a date?"

Leaping out of the second story wouldn't accomplish much, Teo's aware. Can't run away with broken legs. Can't die, either, though he does have his .45 stowed, coincidentally, exactly in the place where Flint told him not to put it. He'd be glaring, which is what an Italian does when so thoroughly disconcerted, but Abby looks a bit like he'd just slapped her upside the head so he's disinclined to do anything too loud, even facial expressions.

"There's a woman who'd like to meet you. Her schedule's clear for tomorrow evening." By now, he's accumulated almost enough awkward emotions to give him a headache, and he's started doing that unhelpful thing where he looks at the person he isn't speaking to. He's speaking to Deckard.

Little bit more, one, two, three and… the healing tapers off to nothing. The man still sleeps, drugs running through his blood and frankly, she's not in the mood to deal with fawning and thankfulness from someone. She does have her limits. Abby pulls her hands back, peering at where hte wounds were and satisfied, shoves herself back from the bed to look for something wash her hands down with.

What a weird thing to hear from someone when you're Flint Deckard. There's a woman who'd like to meet you. Forehead furrowed and brow knit where it wasn't before, Flint lets smoke drift dumbly out of the corner of his mouth while he eyes the younger man. It takes him a little while to guess. A few seconds. Which is a long time when everyone's busy being awkward. "Is…she a hooker…?" His brows raise with the speculation, clearly further speculating on Teo's inability to call her one if she is.

But there are other mysteries afoot here, and Deckard's probing look doesn't last for too painfully long. His head twitches back after Abby, and at long last, he exhales, smoke twisting and falling back over itself in the well-lit room. "What kind of bird does he have?"

"An Abby bird that sings too much, who will be fat by the end of the month because he feeds her so much." Well, it's not a lie. She's wiping what blood she can off her hand, before washing them off in a basin of water for what won't come off easily. "She's brown and peach and was recently caged. But she got free and came home. Just an Abby bird."

Alternatively, Teo could just shoot Deckard. He breathes in and out and fails completely to understand the point of this wildly meandering line of questioning — a fact which somehow doesn't mitigate the surfeit of annoyance it's causing. His gaze follows Abby to the sink. "You're making her uncomfortable," he finally says in a tone of voice that sounds kind of ground out.

It turns out, he's bright enough to move his eyes from the young healer and back to Deckard in time to confirm, "Yes, she's a prostitute. Do you want to see her tomorrow?" Turning, he stoops at a cabinet to find the sleeping Ferryman a blanket.

"Oh no. Should we use code words?" Clean breath disrupts the smoke still further, and Deckard lifts a hand to tug the cigarette away. His eyes trail after Abby while the rest of him stays facing Teo, taking their own suspicious measure before they rejoin the aforementioned 'rest of him.' "What's the code word for 'yes?' Are you two…living together?"

"Yes, we are. In separate rooms. because my old place was compromised and I couldn't find a place on my own to afford. You know, the place you took my utility bills from flint and was poking around the cupboards? This place at least doesn't have cockroaches. I'm going to leave and you can both talk about having sex with strange people when I'm not in the room. I know, natural function of life, I just really don't want to hear it. I'll be upstairs when it's time to get me home" Abby dry's her hands off on a clean towel before trundling over to take her bag and sling it over her shoulder. "Go see if there's anyone else that needs my help." Her elbows bumped into teo, and the same for Deckard. "I'll come next week, fix your shirts."

Predictably, Teo is left looking somewhat at a loss. He closes and opens his eyes, answers the nudge of the woman's elbow by blowing air in her ear, mischief for minor mischief. "That's really it, ragazza. That's all that needs to be said," he says, half in protest and half in relief: she doesn't have to go, but it could be better that she does. Or if he does. The two sentiments war on his face, before he settles for a general-purpose frown and lumps folds of cotton over the newly-healed Ferryman.

Ouch. Deckard doesn't literally flinch, but there's a certain unconscious recoil in posture and expression alike. The one he ransacked for the Vanguard while she watched right after healing him. THAT one. He seems to have forgotten he's holding a cigarette. No response to the elbow bump, smart-assed or otherwise. His chin lifts aside after Teo's impression of a nurse-maid eventually, serving as proof that his brain hasn't suddenly slid out of a hole in the back of his head, but not much else.

"I'll still be helping the others. Seems no rest for the wicked or the weary." And with that, the healer disappears around the door, presumably to go see to the minor injuries that would have remained after the healthy ones took off. Least she could do in exchange for the hospitality that Ferrymen have showed her.

"Brava," Teo offers the one who remains. It's a mutter with his shoulder turned, less out of overt rudeness — as if — than the vague expectation that the older man figures he probably has places to go or stuff to do. His hand flattens the blanket hem on the Ferryman's shoulder then starts rooting through his jacket in an unsubtle search of his own cigarettes.

Still nothing from Flint. He recalls the cigarette at Teo's patting and pushes it back into the corner of his mouth, then turns to watch Abigail's retreat through the wall. His nose wrinkles.

Abby has left.

Eventually, Teo finds what he's looking for. He shakes one cigarette out. Two, actually, but he pushes one back in with his nose before snagging another with his lips. Snik snik twice, and he gets his lighter to cooperate, proceeds away from the cot in a fashion that approximates conscientious. By the time he's halfway across the floor, he's staring at Flint.

Feeling eyes on him without actually having a sensory presence on a plane of existence where things have eyeballs, Deckard turns his attention from the wall to drill into the hollow sockets where Teo's eyes should be instead. "What?"

The door is still ajar, so Teo doesn't need to do anything except put himself outside of it. He trods on the stump of cigar on his way across the hallway's breadth, and sets his back to the wall. Abigail's footfalls dissipate over distance. "You're staring," he points out, always one to be tactful.

"At the wall," Deckard lies, because…that is another thing that he does. Sometimes. A hand is lifted to the studs in the wall in question, then further lifted to scratch at the back of his head. "I'm thinking. Shut up."

Teo bends his mouth around a frown despite the fact that he's extrapolated, by now, that while the X-vision is on, Deckard can't really appreciate that. His skull doesn't change configuration and the cigarette burns inches beyond his snout. "What do you think?" he asks, apparently going off a belligerent assumption about whom Flint is thinking about.

"About walls?" Deckard's eyes slide into focus, tightly constricted pupils slacking into a less psychotic configuration. He is a man that is used to inspiring belligerence in people. Seeing the scowl isn't strictly necessary to know it's there. YET. He lifts a brow, too late to be innocent. Not that it would have been innocent if it was early or right on time, either.

If the topic of conversation was about something else, maybe. "No," Teo answers, trying to focus on meeting the man's eyes instead of, you know, staring at the gymnastic pupil exercises going on in them. "About Abby." He turns his head to the right and plumes smoke out thataway, for his own benefit. Tight as the safehouse has been battened down, the coils take their time to rise and fade.

After a calculating pause, Deckard lifts one shoulder into an ambiguous shrug. "I'm not going to rape her or anything, if that's what you're worrying about." No defensiveness there, just plain statement of fact, eye contact and all.

"No."

It might be either agreement or denial. Both, possibly: that Teo wasn't worried, and he doesn't think that's what's going to happen. Though his tone and affect remain aggressive in their audacity, there's an absence of actual hostility in there. He was the same way poking his .45 into Deckard's neck, once upon an alley. His mouth splits around the cigarette, on the verge of saying more but nothing emerges. He glances away, down, resigning himself to the probability that the moment has passed, if there actually was one.

"If she came onto me…" he would…what? It is an exciting fill-in-the-blank adventure for Teo's imagination. Deckard's brows lift again — both of them, this time. There really is no resisting the temptation to poke the bear. Not while the gun is still tucked into Teo's waistband, anyway.

Ash falls down off Teo's cigarette in almost a straight line. Nobody wants to know what Teo's thinking. Ever. He drags his shoe across the hallway floor, and the cigar rolls bumpily underneath the ridges of his boot sole. "You'd do the honorable thing," he finishes the sentence after enough time to consider how to. For reasons that may or may not make Deckard sneer, his tone carries sincerity of belief.

Deckard's reaction isn't quite a sneer. Not even a leer, really, though there are shades of both to help keep the slight upturn at the corner of his mouth from reading as good-humored. There is a minor staring contest, then: "The version of me that lives in your head is boring." His cigarette, by now a sad degenerate midget version of its former self, is dropped and stepped on. His gaze follows it down.

"At least he doesn't have to pay money for sex," Teo replies with what could be interpreted as aplomb. Apparently aggravated by the precarious bob of his own cigarette in his mouth, he finally tugs it out to shake at the floor. Holds it at his side. "And lives," he adds next. Blankly.

"Good on him for finding women who'll sleep with him for free. Bonus points if they're sober." Deckard and Teo have strange conversations. This one has veered into territory that's enough to kill Flint's staring habit. He's turned almost completely around and is looking at the sleeping guy instead.

That is rude, Teo observes without rancor. The cigarette rotates in his fingers like a teeny tiny baton, heat swooping past under his fingertips from one end, saliva stickiness at the other. He doesn't know what to say to that, frankly, but silence is worse. Unless you're the sleeping guy, pleasantly deaf and blind and immune to this uncomfortable inkling of pity. Fuck.

Fuck that. "He took some advice from my Abigail," he says, shifting his gaze away from Deckard's back despite having won that little contest. "About waiting. Apparently she isn't wrong about everything. Boring," instinctively retreating into self-deprecation, "I know. Boring." He shutters his right eye against a twinge that comes from the inside and rubs his knuckle in it, nearly burns his cheek by accident.

"Having pragmatic expectations tends to cut down on disappointment, Teo. A good lesson to learn for any up and coming idealistic terrorist," Deckard tells the unconscious Ferryman, critical eyes taking in his fresh new lack of injury with curiosity at a grey remove. He advances, glances at the IV drip, does nothing. Nothing quickly deteriorates into a lift of the guy's hand. No response. He drops the hand. No response. He considers, waits, and lifts the hand again.

"What am I supposed to be waiting for?" The hand in his grasp is weighed, then placed neatly across Mr. Ferryman's corresponding man teat. Deckard has to lean across him to retrieve the second hand.

Smoke funnels up the inside of Teo's sleeve until he remembers to take another drag from his cigarette, smoothing down the slow fraying of his nerves with another lungful of acrid chemistry. This time, he exhales over his left shoulder. Glances down to examine the dwindling length of his cancer stick, then up at Deckard and the Ferryman, fleetingly.

"Free, consensual, sober sexual intercourse was mentioned. If you settle for that, I think things look pretty bright, signor." It is probably unlikely that the gentleness of Teo's voice is ironic. You're not supposed to ironize sarcasm unless you mean to negate it anyway. Predictably, he doesn't have a personal response that comes from the heart for that question. He is, after all, twenty-six.

"How's your sex life?" Mr. Ferryman's is looking increasingly dismal, as Deckard curls the fingers of his unplaced hand slightly before settling it around the region of his crotch. Head tilted to examine his handiwork, he hesitates a moment before readjusting it slightly. For maximum realism. Ignoring the fact that he's in a bed hooked up to an IV, smeared in drying blood, and very unconscious. "It's just, you know. You seem so interested in mine."

Alternatively, in Teo-cam, Mr. Ferryman looks at peace. And like he could use a little laugh, after the scare of x hours ago. Perhaps because of this— or because he's a coward, hard to tell— the Sicilian doesn't do a thing about it.

"I'm not," he answers. For a moment, that seems to be about it, keeping in line with his reasonably consistent practice of not discussing his personal life with Deckard, be it the pet budgie or the current roommates. The moment after that, it apparently occurs to Teo that some sort of give-take should be involved here, in the interest of politeness, and the topic is tactically irrelevant besides.

His teeth clack like a puppet yanked on a string and he grins. "Don't have one."

"You're the one who asked for help, vecchio," Teo corrects. He picks up his right foot and puts it on the wall, momentarily forgetting the mess of cigar and shit underneath his shoe that is probably going to make him feel bad in a few seconds, to flex the knee that had started getting stiff from standing in one spot for so long. He pulls a face, a five-year-old's grimace when confronted with some spinach thing, a moment too tardy for it to betray Deckard had really struck a nerve. "I'm Catholic. What's your excuse?"

"Don't have one." Opting to loiter around the sleeping guy for as long as he can, Deckard takes his time in finally meandering his way back across the room to the door. And Teo. "Nobody really cares about excuses anyway. Least of all nasty old people like me."

And Teo shifts to balance his weight across his feet again. A beat. "I'm not going to rape her either. Is probably more the point, amico," he says belatedly. Either sensitive to the older man's discomfort or because he heard something, he turns to look down the hallway that Abby had departed along. Drops the remains of his cigarette and mooshes it out with his shoe, an elaborate charade of can-go-away-now-if-you-want.

He's obliging like that. "You're younger than my mother," he adds. Pushes himself upright and off the wall. "That's a bad excuse."

"I know you're not going to rape her. You're just some nice Italian kid with a pet budgie and a gun stuffed down the back of your diaper." Crossing the room means Deckard doesn't have to talk as loud. The change in volume almost makes the insult more heartfelt than the typical loud offhand comment he flings out at random. He's feeling bold enough to make direct eye contact at closer range, too. Nearly smug. "How old's your mother? Maybe she'll do me."

Predictably, Teo frowns when his momma is sassed though, perhaps just as predictably, the other insults don't quite manage to find purchase in the selectively slimy bulwark of his ego. "A few years older than you, I think." Based on the newspaper and police reports, or what he recalls of them. The world of ex-convicts is a reasonably well-documented one. "And she's faithful to her husband." 'My father,' he'd meant to say; occasionally, he forgets. Dryly, "Also, too far away to approach without devices." He meets Deckard's stare with something that resembles a resurgence of his earlier annoyance. Brow knotted, jaw set obstinate, clamped shut around some knee-jerk instinct to retroactively prove he isn't that nice.

Exasperation slacks at the lines written out aggressively across Deckard's forehead in return. It is hard to start shit with Teo. Even now that he has a few cracks to pry at. Resigned to his own failure and an evening without a fist fight, he reaches up to fidgit with the back of his collar and looks away again.

When the older man looks away, Teo automatically turns his head to see what he's looking at. By the time he rotates his head back around on its axis, his frown hasn't gone away. As nonverbal communication goes, they are probably being either very fuzzy or perfectly crystal. One of those extremes.

No telling. Par for the course, Deckard appears to be looking at nothing at all. His eyes trace over architecture that hasn't really had time to become familiar, and with one last annoyed glance at Teo, he moves to step around him. Out the door, to do what Deckards do. In this case maybe get drunk and watch the news.

Wordless censure is harder to retaliate at or to fend off, somehow. Lacking any words to retort to or rationalize away, Teo's brow darkens further even as he shifts himself out of Flint's way even if there was already adequate maneuvering room already. "Five o' clock?" He pelts the query at Flint's back like it is a snowball.

"Seven," says Deckard, who may sleep until five anyway. If hookers are snowballs, then throwing one at his back is about as effective as throwing one at the rear of an already sizable pile of snow. No flinch, glance back, or hesitation. He keeps on walking, kicking at the cigar butt as he goes.

Whether or not Teo can tell the difference between absorbing and bouncing a hooker snowball remains to be seen. He's frowning still; possibly now at himself. "A dopo, Deckard," he manages finally. Inclines his head, and goes to retrieve a Southerner, wherever she's dozing.


Possibly unfinished! DECKARD WHERE DID YOU GO :( HONEY oh no

IDK my internet experienced CRITICAL FAILURE. Hopefully it was just an outage and it is fixed now. SORRY :<

P.S. I think Teo said that he was Catholic and asked what Deckard's excuse was in that third to last pose and that is why he says 'Don't have one.' T WHAT DID YOU DO?

I FIXED IT IS WHAT I DID

Fin.


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December 15th: One Burger, Two Burgers, More?
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December 15th: Code 21.25
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