Participants:
Scene Title | What Now |
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Synopsis | Zachery and Faulkner discuss the events of the morning, and what's to come. |
Date | August 24, 2019 |
Park Slope Street
"Honestly, if you ask me, my life gets classier with every passing day."
The comment leaves Zachery with enough joviality dragging his tone of voice upward that he might actually sound like he believes it.
When he told Isaac they wouldn't go far, he meant it. Within sight of the apartment building Isis got whisked away from mere minutes ago stands an old Cadillac hearse, black with flame decals trailing behind the front wheels, and parked piss-poorly, one wheel bumped up onto the sidewalk.
It hints at a rush that Zachery does not seem to be experiencing at the moment. After a clean twist of a key, he pops the hearse's rear door open and swings it outward on its hinges, little curtain and all. The vehicle's owner wastes no time reaching past a variety of neatly stacked plastic containers to what looks like it… might be an ice box next to a pile of neatly folded clothes. "Going from running an illegal clinic to living out of my car, to very much …"
There's a pause and a grunt as he leans further into the car to rummage, parking himself on the edge of where corpses may once have been wheeled into it. "Very much breaking that whole… 'first do not harm' rule, yeah?"
Finally, he re-emerges, twisting around with a beer in either hand and sitting on the edge, still - slightly hunched over - to offer a drink out to Isaac. It's nothing fancy, but it's cold. Hooking a middle finger around the collar of his dress shirt and idly pulling it outward, Zachery stares at Isaac as if he's only just now managing to study him thoroughly enough for his liking, both eyes narrowing but the slight cant of his head only benefiting one. "I figure I probably owe you an explanation. So. Where to start."
Isaac accepts the offered can with a faintly bemused expression, popping the top and taking a drink. Normally not his thing, but after today — after the last week — yes, a drink or two sounds just fine.
"I… appreciate that," Isaac says, regarding Zachery in turn. "I feel like that entire scene was something out of… I don't know. Star Trek or something. 'Enterprise, three to beam up'…" he trails off. There are a lot of questions he could tack on to that, now that he thinks about it; questions like 'will she be okay', or maybe 'will we ever see her again'. But he's pretty sure that if Zachery had precognition, this whole mess never would have happened to start with… so he settles for something that might actually have a useful answer. "Who were those guys, even?"
The answer to this question does not come immediately. After a cursory swipe of fingers through hair (something that must have once slicked it back but now fails to do much of anything but mess it up more) Zachery has lifted his drink and seems intent on… finishing the whole can in one go. All the while still peering at Isaac from over the aluminum.
He doesn't quite manage, spluttering out a cough before replying while unceremoniously thumbing something away from the corner of his mouth, "Before I answer that - how, ah - how much do you know about Isis and her… affiliations?"
There's a slack to his posture where he sits, and the effects of almost-sleepless nights linger on his words, but his gaze stays stuck to Isaac's face with a keenness.
"She mentioned a 'book club'," Isaac says slowly, taking a slow drink. "She also said it was something about a pro-evolved group. Working for a better future, and that the New York 'sect'," he says, frowning as he takes a moment to consider the implications of that choice of words, "was headed by this 'Garza'. Whom she attempted to contact, and instead got Zhao, Grumpy Spice, Doctor Ford."
He pauses again to take another drink, and to consider his words. "She also mentioned something about Evo-hatred getting, ah, uprooted, rota-tilled, and set on fire?" he says, a flicker of a wry grin touching his lips for a moment. "That's… something I can respect, honestly. I wasn't exactly in the middle of things during Civil War II, but I still heard plenty of horror stories."
Zachery listens with a largely neutral expression, though the trio of names dredges up a slightly foggy memory with renewed clarity and a twitch downward of his eyebrows. Right. When the words 'respect' reach his ears, he finally smirks, finishes off his drink and sets the empty can down beside him.
"You know a lot more than I was expecting, so that's good. For me, anyway." One of his shoulders pops up in a halfhearted shrug, grin widening as his attention darts momentarily across to some windows in Isaac's apartment building. "And tell you what, if Isis lives, I'll put in a good word for you as a…"
His eye snaps back to Isaac's face with a sneer that's more idle cluelessness than anything else. "An… errand boy?" Maybe?
Isaac lets out an unamused laugh. "Everyone starts somewhere," he says darkly… then he laughs again, this time with a little more genuine humor. "That's how I met her, you know. Delivering a package…" he says, and then, recalling the name of the person that package had been addressed to, he laughs yet again, a borderline hysterical laugh that's due as much to the stress that's suddenly not on his shoulders as it is to the fact that there is actually someone in the world with a name as unfortunate as Dirk Dickson.
That sudden surge of hysteric humor evaporates nearly as quickly as it had come, though, leaving him with a glum expression. He takes another drink, falling silent for a moment. "How much of a mess do you think this is going to end up being?" he finally asks; it feels like an awkward question, but it keeps the conversation going. It keeps him from having to go back to his apartment, from having to cope with the silence that marks Isis's absence and all the useless worrying that it will bring with it.
"About… six beers' worth of a mess?" Zachery answers in a slightly bitter laugh of his own, with no beat missed. He's already sideways and stretched further into the car again, and with a thump of closing lid, he's grabbed a second can.
"Maybe - ffh," he starts, pulling back into the light of day to face Isaac with his prize in hand. "Maybe more. Probably more." FsSsSH goes the can. "I think… I think you'll be fine, for what it's worth. So long as you behave. Something I - I'm afraid, have absolutely no advice on." Something pulls his grin a little brighter than necessary, amusement saturating his voice more with every word he lets out.
It does not let up in the least when he continues with, "So. You two, then. What are you?"
"Reassuring," Isaac says, taking another drink… though as Zachery adds the bit about not knowing how to behave, he glances over at him with a sardonic side-eye, one that suggests that if he weren't drinking right now he'd be smirking at that one.
Zachery's question prompts some consideration. "Dating," Isaac says after a moment. "We were dating. And then…" he gestures vaguely. "This." He takes another drink, and now his can's empty; he frowns at it, crushing it flat. He glances back to Zachery. "She trusted me enough to come here when she started getting really sick. And I cared enough to take care of her through it; the vomiting, the fever, the delirium…"
He smirks. "Heh. I told my boss that I wouldn't be able to make it for awhile because I was taking care of my sick girlfriend. I'll stick with that," he says, shrugging… but he can't quite hide the grin that keeps trying to form on his face. "Say, how many do you have in that cooler, anyway?"
"Not as many as I'd like," Zachery answers, leaning back to rest a shoulder against a pale blue plastic box. "I think this is the last one, actually. It's awful stuff, though, right?" Alas, gas is expensive, and with how he's somehow lost both his incomes recently, well.
Without waiting for an answer, melting slowly back into the innards of his car as a sign of what might either be laziness or some amount of paralysing stress, he continues thoughtfully, "Dating, dating…" Spoken as if it's been a while since he's heard the word, with a matching blank expression to boot. Then, simply and flatly, "You should be up there." He nods his head toward the apartment, then tips the can upward and begins finding out how quickly he can down a second one of these awful things.
Isaac's face twists into something bitter at that; the prospect of going back into that empty apartment again is something he's very much not wanting to do. "She's not gonna be back soon," he says quietly, seeming to deflate a bit. "As crazy as your guys may be, there's no way they can fix what she's got that quickly," he says, looking to Zachery with a flat expression.
"How's it going to look if someone comes back after warning about a follow up, and there's no one there?" This time it's Zachery who barks a laugh into his drink, lowered only just enough for him to speak over the top of it. The first words still a chuckle, he asks, "You're not scared to go back up there, are you?"
"Pfft," is Isaac's response to that, paired with an expression of dry amusement. "Not a bit." And if there's going to be a followup, it sounded to me like you're going to be the one getting it, not me, he is on the verge of saying, when it occurs to him that that might be exactly Zachery's intention. Isaac pauses to regard the doctor for a moment, considering.
Then he nods. "But… I do need to get started on cleanup," he sighs morosely. "At least if I ever want to be able to live in that apartment again, which I guess I'm going to have to since that's our callback location until or unless they get Isis back here," he sighs, rubbing at his brow. He folds his arms, the fingers on his free hand tapping on his elbow as he considers. "Alright. Are you going to be staying around, or heading back out?"
Having finished off the second can of beer, Zachery sets it down where he'd set one already - causing that first one to go tumbling onto the street with a tinny clank that sends it rolling under the car. Whoops.
"It would be incredibly unwise for me to drive out of here right now." He's somehow melted further into the car, torso crammed in between uncomfortable angles and arms awkwardly propped up. It's not necessarily a useful answer, but Isaac gets a searching look leveled at his face either way.
Isaac eyes that beer can as it rolls under Zachery's car. He reaches out, focusing on the shadow beneath the hearse, giving the beer can a light push and sending it rolling back his way; when it bumps against his toe, he reaches down and picks it up, setting it beside the other one.
That comment about leaving being incredibly unwise draws a flat look from Isaac for a moment. There's a temptation to say something there, but — no. As incredibly unwise as some of the past behavior Isis has told him about is — on both of their parts — the fact is that Zachery actually did show up to own this. Which might also count as incredibly unwise, but as far as Isaac is concerned it's enough to buy Doctor Necromancer the benefit of the doubt. Isaac decides to take him at face value.
Besides. He's pretty sure it's all the answer he's going to get.
"Probably so," Isaac agrees. "Alright then. If you need a place to crash, let me know. Not that my place is going to be an upgrade at the moment, all things considered," he says with a momentary smirk of self-deprecation, "but I'll see if I can find some blankets that don't need to be burned. Otherwise… keep me posted if you hear anything."
With that, Isaac takes a step back, getting ready to take his leave.
"You've got my num—" Zachery begins to say, but his words trail off and grin fades. "Just a second."
He KICKS a heel down into the carpeted flooring, against a bit of metal - a vestige of where once may have been some installed railing. He pushes himself up to the front of the car, just past two plastic containers that go rattling sideways and spill out a variety of books, pages a-flutter. One of them hits both the cans and they both roll sideways and back onto the street.
"Here!" Half climbed over the back of the front seats and wedged in between a box and black leather lies the very image of a man who well and truly has ceased to care about any level of composure. A small white card is flung in Isaac's direction.
'No insurance? No problem,' it states at the top. Three more lines printed underneath have been messily scribbled out, and a phone number penned in their stead. "You've got my number!" Calls the voice from within the hearse in sing-song, this time correct.
Isaac watches as both cans go rolling into the street, regarding them with a look that can best be summarized as why, Zachery? why?. But this time he doesn't bother to pick them up… which is fortunate because Doctor Necromancer is taking the moment to throw things at him. Isaac manages to catch the card, at least, snatching it out of the air and glancing at it. No insurance, no problem, it says; well, that's certainly true, he supposes, for a given value of 'problems'.
"Right," Isaac says. "I'll send you a text later. For now… back to the apartment. Cleaning awaits." He thinks about adding something about staying out of trouble, but as the man himself has said, he has no advice on the whole 'behaving' thing. "Thanks for coming. And for the beer," he says, raising the hand with the card in a gesture of farewell and turning to walk away. He'll see about getting the cans later, if they're still here; for now, he has a much more pressing cleaning project to worry about.