Participants:
Also featuring:
NPCs by Abby.
| Scene Title | The Girl In Question |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Where the fuck, Abby? |
| Date | February 10, 2009 |
Confucius Plaza: Abigail and Alexander's Apartment
It's not overly spacious, It's a New York area apartment. But it suits it's residents purposes. An open kitchen, crammed with all the accoutrements needed to cook, a dining table shoved against the far wall with chairs tucked in. A living room with a fairly new red suede couch shoved up against a window and TV set opposite on a stand makes up the rest of the communal living area. It looks fairly newly occupied and the personal touches not put to it yet. Five doors down a hall lead to three seperate bedrooms, a bathroom and linen closet. What's behind the doors remains a mystery unless one of the residents leaves a door open, though if someone knows the residents, the simple gold cross above one door indicates where the woman in this place lives.
Binge-drinky mid-week vacation over, it is time for Teo to pretend to be a grown-up again.
This tends to make him want to go straight back to drinking, but man, he's out of practice with hard liquor and beer feels like a more social event. Thus, uncomfortably sober if not quite as uncomfortably cold as he was feeling the week previous, he's stuck doing the mental arithmetic around some more worst case scenarios. Distracting. He nearly gets hit by morning traffic on his walk through Chinatown. A barked apology and seven minutes later, he arrives at Confucius Plaza, inhaling the syrupy chemistry of the moth balls and rat poison that litter the halls, thickening the thin notes of cat urine.
He curls a fist and knocks on the door. Rap-rap-rap. "Buongiorno. Ewan?" He lets his head hang half a foot from the eyehole, studying a crack in the door's cheaply painted face absently.
No teenager should be up at this sort of hour - unless, of course, they're still up from last night. There is no answer to the knocking on the door, but there's sounds from inside the apartment, someone moving and the not-so-faint sound of music. Abby's raided CD collection no doubt. That, or somehow, someone managed to bring Sarah Mclachlan into the apartment, which doesn't seem entirely likely.
Seems like one would need more and louder knocking, or possibly a key, to get the attention of whomever's in there.
The line of Teo's mouth curls at one corner, before he forces it straight again. After a protracted moment, he reaches into the lining of his coat, pulls out a key. Scratches it into the doorknob, and eases his weight against it. The hinges squeak slightly, and a bar of dull hallway light falls in through the gap along with the inquisitive trajectory of the Sicilian's eye. He greets the immediate wash of central heating with a slight settling underneath layers of clothes. Repeats: "Buoooongioooornoooo."
As the door opens, squeaking, there's the sound of a not-quite stumble, feet comming to an abrubt halt on floorboards, and then an intake of air. The Sicilian's eye will find an Ewan in the common area, where furniture has been gently pushed back towards the walls, as far as they can go, leaving an open space in the middle where the boy… well, stands and looks surprised, to tell the truth. And in the background, the music flows towards an end, leaving awkward silence to be filled. "Oh, um, bongiorno…" he finally manages to squeeze out, arms comming up in front of him, hands going to his shoulders, to cover up the fact that he is only wearing a pair of black jeans, apparently nothing more. He desperately scrambles through his brains for what little… spanish? italian? … probably italian… crap… he knows. That's not much.
"Ehhh… parlare Inglese?"
Brava. Topless nubile boy left in an apartment jiggling around to Christian rock. Either Abby left Teo some truly considerate gift of reciprocation for the coat, or the comedy of errors persists through the Sicilian's life. "Eh, si," he says, after a moment spent blinking stupidly and attempting to decipher Ewan's accent. Fortunately, he's spent enough time sifting through translatory processes that said moment doesn't stretch too long. "I'm Abby's friend.
"She's keeping a pet of mine—" he steps into the apartment, turns around to shut the door. Doesn't turn back around again, affording the younger man's apparent modesty some margin, albeit somewhat stiffly: he doesn't like having his back to anybody he doesn't know. These days, he doesn't even particularly like having his back to people he does know. "And I wanted to make sure she was being taken care of. The bird is mine. It's nice to meet you."
Thankfully unaware of any such ambiguities about his being there, Ewan nods a little, the mention of Abby and 'friend' definitly helpful in letting him relax. "Oh. Hi." he offers up, cracking up a smile even as Teo turns his back, "She said someone might stop by. Um, the redecoration ain't permanent, I'm not breaking anything and I'll put it right back, okay?"
Oh, here's to hoping he hasn't put himself into trouble here. He will, however, pad on over to the couch, to pull a tshirt from under the kitten sleeping on it. What is it with cats and sleeping upon clothing, hm? "Hey, kitty, sorry, I need that now, no, let go.." Claws. Yay. After a brief moment of struggle with the kitton not at all willing to give up her warm, cuddly bed, Ewan can pull the blackness of cotton over his head and cover up all that pale skin of his. Or, well. Most of it.
Non-present goes back into wrapping, and Teo is left to turn back around and study the heroin-chic boy with a pleasantly blank expression. Just looking, mind you. Not even focusing particularly on the contents of the jeans. Teodoro is Sicilian. They always look. It's as much aesthetic as anything else, and doesn't preclude him being perfectly mannered in the meantime.
"Grazie," he replies, far as putting everything back in its right place goes. "She loves keeping house."
He picks one foot up off the floor, shunts his boot off into his hand, and then the other. Starts to lope toward the back of the apartment, craning his head to and fro in search of his bird, zeroing in on her twitter with the accuracy of a hunting cat. A small knot of relief loosens in his stomach the moment he catches the first parrot notes— that the actual cat had learned her lesson. His foot thumps audibly when he brakes to a sharp halt. "There's no water in her cup," he observes, stiffly.
Ewan brushes some of the cathairs from his shirt, looking up at see Teo wander further into the apartment, and decides to head on over to the kitchen area, not about to get into his way. Friend of Abby's, and all that, probably has more right to be here than some random charitycase and what not. And what with him apparently owning the bird, well..
He continues his move, already halfway there as Teo's stiff comment turns the boy's head, and he arches an eyebrow slightly. "Oh? Um… She only said I shouldn't let the bird out… I think.." Abby had been in a bit of a hurry, far as he could recall, and he can definitly not remember being told to water plants, birds or other things in the apartment. Could be selective memory, could be him being a bit of a teenager, who can tell? He brings up a hand to brush his hair from his face, looking a mite concerned. Or possibly prepared to bolt for the door. Depends a bit on how Teo responds. "..should I get 'er some new water?"
Mind you, Teo loves his bird. He has beat the ever-loving tar out of people for much less. His bird is awesome. She walks sideways, sings, sleeps on one foot, moves her little wings around, plays bead games, and does so many other completely amazing things. However, his memory is good enough that he doesn't immediately attribute this catastrophic! catastrophic failure to Abby's informal tenant. "No." Hooking a finger into the roof of the cage, the older man hefts Pila and her square home out to the kitchen, socked feet taking him easily toward the sink.
He proceeds to do that thing by himself, his brow knotted with displeasure, pale eyes carefully pointed away from Ewan lest his temper be misdirected. Somebody sure as fuck warrants a stern talking to, though. "You been indoors much lately?" he glances up casually from the sink, reseats the cup of water into its holder. "When was the last time Magnes came in?"
Moving on over towards the kitchentable, to take up a perch on top of it, with bare feet resting on the chair, Ewan could be considered a little birdlike himself, as he watches Teo go about the care and tending of Pila and her cage. He arches an eyebrow slightly, and then lifts a shoulder, a shrug. "Magnes? I.. don't know? I've been in and out, now and then, running errands and stuff.." Going to places he definitly shouldn't. "..but I think I've been the only one here since Abby left." he offers, a little quietly, still keeping an eye on that temper, lest he'd get in the way of it. "If you don't count the cat and bird, they're good company and all, but… I haven't been letting them out."
As Ewan speaks, his cantankerous companion cycles through emotions. As the emotions progress, the movement of Teo's hands slows down. The column of fizzing water out of the faucet ends up hitting motionless wrists, fingers that twitch only erratically; his eyes are on the tile wall before the sink, either studying some insignificant segment of mortar or seeing something else completely. After Ewan concludes with reassurances, he remains extremely still, uneasily silent. Angry, paranoid—
Hard to say. Last Teo heard, Magnes Varlane was hunting Sylar. Weird kid. Abruptly, he grasps the sink handle, shuts off the water, gives Pila a one-note whistle. Looks at Ewan with a somewhat pinched expression. "I'm sorry— excuse me a moment, bambino. I think I have a pet-sitter to scold. Possibly also a blonde Southern belle." As if Teo is physically capable of scolding Abigail. "Just need a minute." He steps away with an apologetic dip of his head, reaches into his jacket for his phone.
While not prone to outright cowardice, Ewan has trained all his life to recognize the signs of it being time to get out of the way of violence. Some would say that has made him overly sensitive to the minute signals people send out, others would call it survival instinct, yet others wouldn't give a damn what you call it, the kid gets out of the way and that's the important bit. Only… this doesn't seem to be directed his way, and as such, he's going to stay seated on the table, bending forwards a little to rest his elbows on his knees, his chin enwrapped by his fingers as he rests it in the palms of his hands. His expression growing a little in concern, as he watches Teo go for his phone.
Did he just get Abby into trouble, as thanks for her letting him stay here? …he hopes not. "No worries.." he murmurs, although a glance is thrown over to the bird, as if she could give him a clue or two to her Master's behaviour. He won't be musing alone, though. The kitten, apparently taking the human on the table as a 'free for all' invitation, pads over quietly to join him, via the route of the chair, and hopefully mews at him. Food?
A curled forefinger beats through Teo's address book, locates Magnes' number.
Dead line.
His brow grows progressively darker, afforded to Ewan in profile view as he lopes into the bathroom door for a little privacy. Second, he dials out of State, and all the way down to Weezyanna, assuming Abigail hadn't suddenly decided to start lying to him. Hundreds of miles away, the Beauchamp residence's phone begins to ring.
A ring or two occurs before there's an answer. Decidedly southern, decidedly older, a voice that matches the smiling people that flank abigail on a picture that rests beside her bed most of the time when it's not packed away. "Beauchamp residence, Doreen speaking, may the good lor dbless you this day how can I help you?" THe you drawn out so it sounded more like yewwwwwwww.
Ewan straightens up a little as the tiny feline calls for his attention, and then, with Teo deciding to go for a bit of privacy, he slowly gets up and, for once, decides to not dip his nose too far into business that ain't his. Instead, he goes to search the kitchen for catfood, because if no one has been minding the bird, odds are, no one has been minding the cat, either.
Yeeewww. That would be Teodoro, greeted in the style which he had expected. "Buon— uhh. Good— morning, ma'am," he says, pitching a glance sidelong at the miniature LCD screen that he can't see. The time is — ungodly in Louisiana, he realizes, but it doesn't particularly surprise him that the womb from which Abigail was sprung is up and at 'em already. "My name is Teodoro. I'm a friend of your daughter Abby's, up in Manhattan. I was wondering if I could speak with her.
Ungodly means that the woman is up making breakfast for her husband and supposedly her daughter and getting on with the daily chores. "Well now" talking on the phone does not prevent this woman from doing her morning duties either as it's easy to hear. "I can give you her number Teodoro" mangling it with her accent just like Abigail does. 'She's always changing her number for some reason. Give me jsut a moment so I can fetch mah book."
She helps terrorists out sometimes, Teo thinks but knows better than to volunteer aloud. "I— that's all right, signora, I actually have her number." His eyes sweep the wall, up to the showerhead and down to the pristine albeit cheap enamel of the tub. He leans his hip on the sink; avoids looking at himself in the mirror. He teeters on the demarcation between outright deception and a certain unwillingness to cause outright panic. "She said she was going to take a vacation off work and switched Sim cards or something, so I thought she went home."
"Was she really?" Sheer joy bubbles up in the womans voice. "That'd be a surprise then, she hasn't been home in a dog's age. Praise the lord almighty my baby is coming home? Musta been a surprise then cause we haven't had no calls from her. When did she say she was coming? Lordy lordy, I need to make some baloney cake if she's coming."
Days ago. It's been days. You can be all the way around the world or six feet through the ground in far less. Teo's eyelids beat out a steady rhythm against his cheekbones. "Mi disp — I'm sorry, I'm not sure. I've been out of the loop with her for awhile," he says. He isn't sure if it's the porcelain echo in here, or if his voice really sounds fucked up on the edges. "I'll phone-tag with a few people and try to figure it out, get back to you as soon as I hear anything. Wouldn't get started on that b—baloney just yet, eh?"
"Could yew do that for me?" Ever so sweetly sung into the phone. "Just have her call her momma soon as she can. So I can plan things out. Oh the ladies at the church'll be so heppy to hear that she's gonna visit!" Likely cause it means that thier ail's will be fixed. "Thank you for calling Tee doh rah. You have yourself a blessed day now, you hear!" Two years of living in manhatten had tempered Abigail, it's plain to hear now. One could imagine what she sounded like fresh off the bus from weezyana. And just like that, the phone is :click: on the other end. Hung up. No time wasted, not in Doreen's life.
If Teo had been raised by such a woman, he might have turned out better. On the other hand, Amadora was a formidable woman who had taught him to respect similar, so—
He has no one to blame for the time wasted in his life but himself.
He's pale by the end of that call. When he emerges from the bathroom, he's paler still, going gaunt around the gills from the five word exchange with Hana Gitelman. The look he had squared on the sink wall is magnified tenfold now, the angles and lines of his face harsh and white as hewn marble. "You mind if I smoke?" he asks Ewan, somewhat faintly.
Ewan seems to have done well in the kitchen on his own, having taken out a plate and poured some catfood onto it, sitting next to a purring, eating kitten on the floor as Teo reappears. He looks up, an eyebrow arching as he takes in the paleness, and then shakes his head a little. "I don't, but I figure Abby might. Just, you know, crack a window, or something." His shoulder moves, as he gets back up on his feet, looking at the man just a little expectantly.
"Everything alright?" Or is it time to panic?
Panic must wait until after Teo gets his dose of nicotine in, which he's doing now, after he's shoved the window open and felt the clawed finger of wind down the edge of his face. Cheap lighter is jammed back into his pocket, a mouthful of smoke expelled, invisibly, camouflaged into the ash-colored sky. He is trying to think.
It is rather difficult. "I don't know," he says, hollowly. And then, "Bambino." Cancer stick in fingers, he turns his head back, pallid eyes flitting to the hook by the front door. He jerks his shaven head toward it; looks like more of a hooligan's gesture than it is, the way he's cropped now. "Was there a key on there when you moved in? Might've fallen? Do you remember?"
No answer. Which means, Ewan is going to have to wait, and be patient. He's good at neither. He watches Teo open the window, peers at the bird and cat, and then moves, leaving them both to enjoy their water and food. Heading on over towards the window, despite the cool wind nipping at his bare toes, glancing over his shoulder as Teo indicates his head towards the hook, nodding a little. "Yeah, a keyring." he replies, reaching into his pocket to haul it out and show it, with all keys Abby left for him still attatched to it.
"What's going on, signore? Should I be getting the hell out of dodge, or is stuff about to blow up again, or what?" He sounds a little wary, but ain't asking out of curosity, he's concerned. "And do you have a name, by the way? Or should I just call you something random that sounds nice?" Nervous smile, there one moment, gone the next, as the young man comes to join him by the window. Stoic in jeans and tshirt against the winter outside. Brr.
Smoke curls from Teo's nose and mouth like the temper of a seething dragon. He studies the ring and its little cluster of keys through wintry blue eyes, his elbow crooked, resting on the edge of the window sill in deceptive passivity. "Non, I believe you're safe here," he answers, half-grin, a little rueful, acknowledging that he might not seem like the most reliable source of information on Earth. His cants a glance up at Ewan's face.
"I'm Teo." Tee-oh. It comes easier to American tongues that way than the original, and the way Ewan's been struggling through what Italian he knows seems to constitute good reason not to add to the pressure. He offers a handshake. "Abby's gone missing. Prefer if you wouldn't mention that to many people — that could be dangerous. I'll think of something."
"Teo." The boy echoes the name with roughly the same pronounciation, canting his head a little to study the face, the smoke curling out of the man's nose. "…huh." Whatever that's supposed to mean. He turns his gaze out, towards the grey of the skies, a frown forming as Teo shares his suspicions. "I don't mind dangerous for me, but.. you think Abby is in danger? I could help, looking for her.."
The suggestion is only a little hessitant, mostly because he's not sure how it'll be recieved. But it's sweet Abby, who gives up a place to stay, without question. Somewhere in what should be his conscience, Ewan feels a slight tug.
For Teo, it feels more like the event horizon of a black hole, a tidal wave, being chained to a runaway train, attached not only to his conscience but the hooligan construct of loyalty and a sense of duty that's only grown stronger after three months of duress, after Helena showed him her slender Southern friend and named Teo his new job.
And she hasn't stopped getting into trouble since. "You could," he admits, cutting through the thickening screen of smoke with five fingers. There's a scab healing on one of them, thin, a knife-prick. He squeezes a blink out of his eyes, grates four blunt fingertips down the line of his jaw. "Not yet, though, eh? I don't know what happened. I'd prefer to know something.
"If it's the Triads or terrorists or some shit, that — you might need more to go on." Or not to go at all, comes the gentle implication, though Teo isn't audacious enough to say so aloud. He knows that he doesn't look much older. Isn't.
A long, quiet moment, Ewan's expression remains the same, thoughtful, as he continues to study the skies. Then he sighs, and nods briefly. "Okay. So you want me to not to do anything." he sums up, and looks to Teo, before continuing, "I'm not good at doing nothing at all. But if you think that'd be better…"
Terrorists. Triads. He's not entirely unfamiliar with the words, but in the same sentence as Abby? They seem odd. "..why would they be after Abby?" he echoes his own thoughts, outloud.
"Not yet," Teo clarifies, his head stooping slightly in apology. He knows that reticence can be hard to swallow when one's wiery blond benefactor has been unaccountably subtracted from the visible world. He's barely suppressing the urge to flip over the furniture and run around Manhattan holding up probable persons at gunpoint. "Nothing yet. Fuck, I should probably just go to the cops."
Tee Oh doesn't like cops. There's nothing ambiguous about the way he pulls his cigarette out of his sneering mouth, flicks ash disdainfully through the gapped window. Pulls away from it the next moment, scowling, striding across the apartment to retrieve Pila's chittering cage. "She's an Evolved healer, beautiful girl, mixes good drinks and has all the Psalms memorized. I think two out of those four would be easy reason to douche on her, but fuck if I know for sure—
"There are a lot of assholes in this city more imaginative than I am." His voice emanates out from the inner recesses of the apartment when he concludes on that idea, disembodied, ominous with cantankerous portent. Teo doesn't know; he's so angry he could spit. He offers Pila a gentle nudge of his pinkie, good-bye, and comes out to the living room again.
He looks better by then. Not by much, but better. Gesturing to close the window, he asks: "You own a phone, bambino?"
Fade.
 February 10th: Paradise Sickness |
 February 10th: If It's Not One Thing... |