Participants:
| Scene Title | Unfortunately Not Gay |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Being straight doesn't stop Corbin from asking Flint Deckard to move in with him, though. |
| Date | June 14, 2010 |
A stone's throw away from the little makeshift harbor on the foreshore of the Arthur Kill river is this little even more makeshift bar. Little more than a shack, the interior barely fits more than its own stock of alcohol and kitchenware, and the seating spaces are outdoors under a rickety wooden cover decorated with fishing paraphernalia and nets. The chairs and tables are broken down cheap things that look like they've been scavenged from all over the place, mismatched but comfortable with some cushions or blankets thrown over them. The ground is sandy and dirty, as if the beach extends right under your feet, and despite being outdoors, the place is cluttered. Simple alcohol is provided - whiskeys, rums, and beers - without a chance of food, and you'll mostly find yourself in the company of thieves, considering the kinds of boats that dock here.
Horrific cold, undesireable location and chaotic glimpses of the future aside, The Angry Pelican has changed very little in the last year. Shitty chairs are scattered apathetically under an open ceiling of rigging and net. The bar is shoddy and cramped; broken glass glitters here and there across the sandy floor.
This afternoon, Flint is stretched out long in a computer chair with holes long-since worn into the seat. Leather jacket, jeans, boots, grizzled beard growth and sunglasses. He looks like he belongs here in the humid sea breeze and harbor stink, two brown bottles already empty on the table at his right hand.
He is on vacation.
As recommended by Bella. As determined by him. As authorized by Ryans.
Given that he ditched the Company vehicle and has no place to stay and hasn't had the phone on much or been in contact at all, granted, there may be some understandable concern about the conditions he's making himself comfortable in.
Staten Island isn't a place that Corbin expected to visit, even on short term. Luckily the south end of the island cleaned up easier than the north end, allowing him to make use of roads to get out here, by way of New Jersey. Still, the car that parks on the side of the road stands out like a shiny sore thumb. The alarm on it may be one of the things that could keep it from being molested, but only if there's not a molestor who happens to know how to bypass those things.
The sand gets unsettled by his footsteps, as he makes his way through the shoddy bar to find a seat at the grizzly old man's table. The chair he gets is even worse, with metal sticking out in uncomfortable places, causing him to shift as he settles down.
Clothing drab, mostly browns, the one thing that's changed since the last few weeks would be the trimmed beard on his face. Less scraggly. "You pick interesting places to go for vacation."
"Think so?" fielded back without energy or enthusiasm, Flint doesn't get up to say hi, and definitely doesn't offer the cushier seat of his chair for the benefit of Corbin's ass. One of his beers — the less luke warm and empty of the two — is tipped and sipped, remnant backwash dumped out over into the sand around the table's base with a trickle and plop.
Nobody so much as glances his way.
Not that there are many people here. Pretty much them and the bartender, who's too busy fucking around with the TV to pay his patrons much heed.
Not touching either of the beers, Corbin keeps his uncomfortable seat, while watching the older man. There's an uncomfortable shift of his buttocks, as he tries to find an arrangement that doesn't pinch, but he eventually just gives up, dealing with the prodding onto his left cheek. It could be worse, after all. "I moved into a new apartment, now that the snow's cleared up mostly, and the flooding is settling. The roads and stuff are still crap, but it's better than it was."
And no longer a frozen wasteland, too. That helps.
"I have extra room. It's not a vacation, but the extra room is yours if you want it. You'll have to share it with the cat and an occassional visitor, but, I think it'd be more comfortable than the arrangements you had before. You can come and go as you wish."
Flint watches uncomfortable shifting and metallic irritation as only a dickish entity with x-ray vision can. That is, with detached interest and still no move made to offer up something better while glute stuggles against stainless steel.
News of a new apartment is absorbed in much the same manner, with no easily read reaction through the length of his face to mitigate the insectoid sheen of his sunglasses all unbroken black and soulless in the shade.
Suspicion doesn't come in until the extra room does, subtle in a tip of his scruffy chin as it is a knit pulled carefully into his brow. He doesn't say anything.
Silence can mean anythings, or nothing at all. Corbin shifts once again, to reach into a pocket and pull out a key. No keychain to go with it, just the key itself, which gets sat down on the table. "It's up to you, but it's less out of the way and secluded than the last place you were staying. Closer to bars and… and people you might want to see."
Little does he know how close it is to at least one of those people, but he doesn't know half his neighbors.
"I understand if you don't want to, but it might be better than the alternative. We got cable, even." He smiles a bit and shakes his head. "I suddenly feel like a used car salesman after that."
Even with the silence and the sideways staring, Flint reaches to take the key once it's offered out, bony fingers caged around cold metal and drawn back to his side of the table with flat affect. There he squints at carved teeth and smooth ridges at close range, brow knit at the key such that his interest seems to have diverted away from Corbin entirely.
It's a long time before he says, "I like being secluded."
The already flat line of his mouth thins ahead of a work at his jaw; the key turns over once in his palm and then is dropped carelessly back to the table with a cheap-sounding clatter. "The last time I saw you, you were shooting at me. And now you want to be roomies."
"Those were extreme circumstances. Hopefully you won't get possessed again," Corbin says, trying to sound upbeat about it, though the situation had bothered him a great deal too. So had killing the man who was behind the possessing. Hokuto's own father. "I'd never killed anyone before," he confesses outloud, keeping his eyes down on his hands. "I guess I kind of responded to it by secluding myself for a while."
And perhaps it hit a little close to home in some areas.
"You'll have your own room, and you won't have to be bothered often, but I don't think seclusion is healthy for either of us anymore. You can think about it for a while, though, finish your vacation."
This is when he finally gestures at the beers. "Is one of those mine, or do I have to order another round?"
Flint watches and listens in a judgmental kind of silence, chin dipped back down again. The hard angles and edges of his face even more difficult to read than usual with sunglasses to screen out his eyes in all their tell-tale scraping around after subtler signs of deceit.
"Hopefully," eventually agreed with a dour lack of enthusiasm that roughs his already coarse voice further still, Flint stretches his legs long and then one arm to set the older beer bottle closer to Corbin's person. There's about a half inch of filmy old beer in the bottom. Cheers.
Half and inch of filmy old beer. Even with it likely having backwash to go along with it, Corbin takes up the bottle down downs what's left of it, even if he makes a face in the process. Not bitter, so much as just plain stale.
"I'm sorry I didn't come see you afterwards, once you recovered," he finally says, looking down where the half-inch of old beer has already disappeared. "I buried myself in files for a while, and— it's no excuse really. I'm also sorry I shot at you. I wasn't sure if you even remembered it, but I guess he was jumping around people fast enough that you might have been out of his control by the time I did."
Still sounds a little bothered by it. All he did was make their fake friendship feel even more fake, but it's not like he can fix it now. "Can I get you a bottle of whiskey to make up for it— if this place even has whiskey…" With that, he turns around to address the bartender in the room, "You got anything stronger than beer? Like whiskey or something?" And he might tip a little extra in hopes of getting new chairs put in here.
Brows hooding into even deeper disconcertion when Corbin picks up the dead beer and downs its contents, Flint adjusts his slouch backwards into more of an awayward lean, like he can't quite believe he actually did it. He lifts a shoulder into a shrug at the apology on a short delay accordingly, unease smothered down into reticence and even more resilient mistrust.
It takes a subtle turn of his head to expose the glance away Corbin's suggestion that he was possessed at any point during the altercation provokes, but it's there with a slight rankle of his nose and a shift of wiry shoulders to chair back. Not quite a squirm.
Happily(?) for him, he's soon gifted the distraction of Ayers offering to buy him a bottle of whiskey so that he can lift his brows and scrub a hand over his face while the bartender grunts an affirmative. "Thanks."
After standing up from his uncomfortable chair, Corbin walks over to the bar to pay for a bottle of probably some of the only whiskey they got. On his way back he ends up feeling the butt of a couple seats before he pulls a different one over to sit in, while he drops the bottle in front of Flint. "That should be a little better than the beer, though still all room temperature. You'd think there'd be plenty of ice still after the weather we had."
Whiskey has a familiar taste and smell, and it may not be appropriate, but it's also what Abby served him, when he was searching for information on the man he suspected could have been behind the attack on the bookstore. Or at least the weapon used.
"Have you contacted any of your old friends from before you were brought— back?"
Flint sizes up the whiskey bottle for longer than seems typical before he reaches to unscrew the cap with his left hand, base drawn heavily over onto his near leg to up his leverage. Contents sniffed and then sniffed again, he weighs the bottle in his grip and finally takes a swig, brows knit against the burn even before he's thunked it back down onto the table.
He's slow to wipe amber dribble from the scruff at his chin too, swallowing the way a dog swallows medicine while its nose is being held and it doesn't have much of an option. There's guilt in the lax wave of relief that follows too, pleasure withdrawn from easy view in still another turn of his face away towards the black slosh of the scummy shoreline and all the humid stank it entails. "Not sexually."
"Well, that would have been a little personal to ask about directly," Corbin says with sudden laughter as he leans back in his torn, but more comfortable chair. "Was more meaning talking and catching up with— you spent over a year with some of them, and probably forged some good friendships. When I was trying to… to find you… I even got to know a couple of them. Teodoro and Abigail, mostly. I'm sure they'd want to see you again, if you think you're ready for that. They don't have to know everything that happened to you, but— they were your friends, and they still could be."
There's a pause as his eyes drift down, perhaps in guilt. "And I didn't bring you here to take you away from them. I just wanted to help you…" The way his blue eyes shift back up, there's something else there— guarded anger and frustration, that dissolves a moment later into guilt. Helping the man who took someone important from him, it causes issues…
"When I was unwittingly infiltrating their ranks to collect intelligence on them, you mean." Somehow this has turned into a drinking game, because Flint feels compelled to take a shot after saying so. The bottle goes glunk and his adam's apple bouys thick in his throat, like one of the algae-green contraptions rolling sickly in the garbage-strewn surf nearby.
Not used to people literally laughing at things he says, the older man gives Corbin a warier after look and curls whiskey close into the crook of his elbow, already less than willing to share. "I used to hate Teo for assfucking a traitorous fed on the side. Now I'm technically a traitorous fed and a murderer."
"Would it make you feel better if the intel you were gathering didn't cause any of them to come to harm?" Corbin glances away to the bartender, back to fucking with the television, before he leans forward across the table and lowers his voice down to a softer whispery sound. "Hell, thanks to the connection with Abigail when I was trying to find you, we saved a guy from getting grabbed by the Institute and hauled off in a coffin where he would be used for god knows what— the guy could ressurrect people. Could you imagine what that would do in the wrong hands? Despite whatever they might think, we're not the worst things out there— we're not dragging them all in and forcing them to register." They could be a lot, a lot worse…
"And your connection with them can help even more, because we can warn them of things, or help them, or they can help us. It doesn't have to be traitorous."
That Deckard fails to look convinced probably doesn't come as much of a surprise, but he doesn't argue either. Playing the part of the asshole too intoxicated to do more than loll apathetically with Corbin's figurative hand shaking his figurative shoulder, his disinterest probably qualifies as acceptance. Or something near enough not to cause immediate problems in its stead.
He's already gotten more slouchy since whiskey became a contender in the conversation. Still taking pain medication. And whatever Sheridan has him on. His current ability to tolerate alcohol is somewhere between a kangaroo rat's and a jackrabbit's on top of the fact that it's been several weeks since he's had a go at drinking himself unconscious. "Are you gay?" he asks suddenly, as if earnestly curious for whatever reason. "I can't remember."
In another situation, the question may not be funny, but for Corbin, it seems to be. There's that smile again, almost a laugh. "No, I'm not, though I think my dad has concerns about that, considering I left my first wife and never ended up remarrying, cause I fell in love with a coworker I didn't have the balls to actually ask out outside of dreams." If his 'pal' is going to be blunt in his questions, he might as well get honest answers.
"If I were, I don't think you'd be my type. I like them petite and cute, and a little on the perky side. Not rugged and scrawny and tall and grouchy like you." That's a tease, one he actually feels oddly genuine about. For a change, it almost feels like a friendship moment— rather than an akward one. Even considering the topic.
"Oh." says Deckard.
For a slouchy beat he looks slightly disappointed. Then he takes another slug of whiskey off the bottle and reaches numbly for the cap, fingers grasping ineffectually on the first and second try. He gets it on the third, Corbin's key skittering with a sweep up his thumb to remind him of its existance.
He can do little more than twitch up a brow of Corbin's assessment of his preferences vs the Reality of Deckard, still all acknowledgement and no feeling through the long slate of his face while he finishes up with the cap and takes the key up in his hand instead. "…Did you drive?"
"I did, yeah," Corbin says, beginning to stand up from the chair, half to spare his bum the forever uncomfortableness, but also just cause it seemed like a good cue to stand up. There's a moment when he's visibly adjusting his pants, too, as if to try and get rid of the uncomfortable pokings that had been bothering him since he sat down.
"I don't hear the alarm going off, so hopefully it's still in one piece out there. But it's hard to tell." With Staten Island the way it can be sometimes. "Ready to go?"
"Yeah."
Deckard is.
Problem being he's also intensely comfortable where he's currently sitting.
Odds are he'll make a decision about standing up before someone manages to get one of the doors unlocked, though. Maybe once that last shot has had a few seconds to sink in.