What It Was Like - 12.2.2013 [Nate]

Nate Marszalek

So Hanukkah happened.

Over the course of the last month Nate has been somewhat off the radar. He spent the first two weeks out of the hospital in a Flexeril and Vicodin-induced haze punctuated by occasional text-rants about his physical therapist or his professor or his editor. The week of Thanksgiving his little sister who is not so little being as she's nineteen years old and a freshman at Berkeley thank you very much came to visit and she was there for an entire week because she told her professors in no uncertain terms that her older brother was in a car crash and their parents are useless and it's 2013 she can do all the work on her laptop on the airplane deal with it.

Hannah can get away with behaving the way that she behaves because she has their parents' effortless intellect. This is her first semester at college and she's primed to land on the dean's list. She is more like their mother than she really wants to admit. When she saw Nate's apartment in the state it was in she hit him with her suitcase and told him if he didn't stop mixing beer and narcotics she was going to transfer to DU and kick his ass every single day.

That was before she threatened to slash his editor's tires when he wouldn't stop emailing Nate.

She flew out on the first of the December and the silence kicked back in. Nate has been finishing the one course he's taking at DU and keeping his editor off of his back and moving on with his life now that he's finished the last of his controlled substances and blown off one follow-up appointment with the primary care physician his Tricare insurance assigned him but who he's never actually met.

Everyone at work and everyone who knows him through Shannon and still considers him a friend concedes that Nate kind of looks like shit but he always kind of looks like shit so it's hard to gauge if he looks like shit because of his sallow complexion and rumpled clothing and dysthymic disposition or if he looks like shit because his best friend died in a car crash and he didn't.

Molly, by now, has sorted out that he's dealing with the car crash about as well as one would expect someone to deal with a car crash. But this is a guy who dead people have visited since he was a child. He's learned how to cope with sleeping six hours a night. 'Depressed' is his default setting.

He's not too depressed to send back a "!!!" when she texts him a picture of her puppy though. And to follow it up with an "I'm coming over. Lucy thinks she's too good to play fetch."


Molly Toombs

The past several weeks Molly has found some rhythm of normalcy in her life.  She's returned to a pattern of going to work, coming home, and occassionally going out with the few friends that she's retained from college.  The difference now, though, is that she spends her time researching the supernatural, the undead, and the unbelievable.  She used to look into geography and cultures of the world, feeling desperately that maybe moving halfway across the globe and immersing herself in a different place entirely would help kick the funk of 'there's nothing happening with my life' off her back.  Having the business cards of vampires on her dresser and a grill-starting lighter along with a can of hairspray (as well as a gun that she still has never practiced shooting) in her nightstand chased away some of that boredom initially.

But she hasn't seen something without a pulse outside of those that don't make it at the hospital in some time now.  She hasn't had strange encounters since the experience with the ghosts on Halloween.  She's fallen back into the habit of paroosing vacation ideas on her laptop when she's bored at home.

This didn't mean that she wasn't still wary of the night, though.  She was interested, constantly seeking knowledge, but she felt like she'd hit a plateau and didn't know how to get off of it to either continue with a normal human life-- you know, dating and advancing in her career and shit like that-- nor did she know how to continue higher (or deeper) in her travels into the realm of the unreal.

She stayed in contact with Nate, though, because as she'd expressed to him before, he was like her safety buddy when it came to things outside of the normal.  They were both human, both had pulses, and both needed to continue through with life as average people while carrying the knowledge that they did and remaining blips on the radars of the city's vampires.  She'd text him back, apologized for missing out on meeting his sister because Thanksgiving was the time of year that she went back to visit her parents on the west coast.

When she got home, she'd finally made a decision that she'd been waffling on for some time and took the advice of a big rocky vampire she met a while ago and hasn't seen since.  This decision is what leads her to sending Nate a picture of a gangly little brown floppy-eared puppy.

He says he's coming over, and when he reaches the double-doors of the apartment building and presses the buzzer that has 'M. Toombs' marked beside it, Molly greets him through the speakers with a:  "Nate?  Hobble your ass on up.", and the door unlocks for him to do so.


Nate Marszalek

"I'll hobble you," he tells the intercom whether she's still listening through the speakers or not and grabs hold of the door when the magnetic lock undoes itself.

She cannot hear him on the stairwell until he hits the third floor. When his motorcycle boots start to thump on the steps and his not-insubstantial weight makes the old boards croak. If he were to have to explain to someone what a haunted building looks like he could just point to Molly's building and say that this is a typical fucking haunted building.

He already knows though. She already knows he already knows. They've assimilated this into their worldview and moved on.

When Molly opens the door for him she can see he's put some semblance of effort into his appearance. He combed his hair and threw a burgundy sweater on over a yellow button-down shirt. He made sure the collar wasn't askew where it shows over the sweater's neckline. It's colder than hell outside but he's still wearing the same leather jacket he's been wearing since summertime.

Still recluse-pale and haunted-eyed but Nate seems to be in a good mood otherwise. She gets a smile out of him.

"Hey, congrats," he says and holds up a bottle of Malbec to which he's tied a green-and-white rope bone. "Cashier says it's cool to share the toy with the puppy but not the wine." He hands it to her before stepping inside. "Just FYI."


Molly Toombs

This building is totally haunted.  Molly had guessed this herself when she heard the bumping and thumping and dragging happening in the vacated apartment above her at three in the morning.  She and Nate confirmed it when she had him come keep her company and level while they checked it out.  Since that night she hasn't heard much of a fuss yet.  Some people moved in several weeks back and they were probably having experiences of their own, but Molly hasn't reached out to them to find out what.  She felt a little guilty that she wasn't sharing her 'expertise' with the pair of college girls upstairs, but figured it was all for the better.  They could draw their own conclusions, after all.

When Molly greeted him at the door, Nate would find her dressed in a little cotton white dress with yellow-and-red roses splashed about it, belted at the highest point of her waist.  It had capped sleeves and she was wearing thick black winter tights as well.  Bare feet were on the hardwood floor, because Molly didn't much care for wearing her shoes inside anyways.  Her hair was left down, tucked back behind her ears.  If he cared to notice such things, he'd find it noticably longer from when they'd met first-- grown from just below chin length to having the ends skim at her shoulders instead.  It was still dyed dark, though, and her typically red eyebrows were penciled darker to sell the lie that was her hair color as usual.

The wine and dog toy were accepted with a blink and a laugh, and Molly stepped back to let Nate inside.  "Well, not yet anyways.  She is still a minor, after all.  How have you been?  You survived your sister and the no doubt harrowing burden of celebrating two holidays at once, I see."

Nate will barely make it through the door before the thump-thump and skitter-clatter of little claws on the hardwood sounded from around the corner that led to the bathroom and bedroom at the back of the apartment, and a little puppy came bounding and sliding out to greet the stranger.  She was precisely as the picture suggested-- full of energy and clumsy bounding steps, floppy ears, and excitement to see new people.  Molly had already put a little pink collar around her neck.  She wasn't going to have people mistaking the burly breed of dog that she purchased to be a male by default.


Nate Marszalek

Before he can decide whether he's going to take off his boots or leave them on he hears the tear-assing of an excited animal and starts to bend a knee before she even appears at the doorway. He's moved like his back bothers him the entire time Molly has known him but it's more pronounced a month after the car crash that fractured two of his vertebrae and left his ribs wired together.

It isn't obvious he's still wearing the brace yet but Molly helped him the first day he was home from the hospital. Nothing under his clothes is going to surprise her anymore.

By the time the puppy reaches him Nate has gotten himself down to her level and started greeting her with the back of his hand toward her and his voice higher pitched than usual.

"Jesus Christ," he says in his normal speaking voice once the dog has had a chance to investigate him, "she's gonna be a man-eater when she gets bigger. Aren't you?" If she's game he starts to rub the scruff of her neck and her shoulder. "Yes, you are. You're gonna be so ferocious, with your little pink collar..."


Molly Toombs

The puppy doesn't feel any strong need to investigate him and make sure he's safe.  She's young and excitable and hasn't known danger in her life.  She wasn't the cautious one in the litter-- that puppy went to a family out on a farm and was going to be in for a huge surprise when it figured out what cows were.  This puppy, though, pushes its little head right past Nate's hand to sniff and lick excitedly at his arm and try and climb its way up the front of his sweater.  The attempts to climb will cease when her neck and shoulder get scrubbed at, and she settles for leaning heavily (though she wasn't that heavy yet) into the inside of his knee and calf instead.

Molly just smiled while watching the exchange and closed the door behind Nate.  He moved like he had back trouble, but that wasn't news.  As long as he wasn't flinching with sudden spasms of pain she wouldn't fuss.  Instead, Molly went to the island of the kitchen that existed just inside the front door, to the left of the long rectangular-shaped room that was set up not unlike Nate's apartment, but with exposed brick walls inside and somewhat taller ceilings than what would be expected on any floor other than the topmost option available.

The wine and rope-bone were detached from one another, and Molly tossed the bone onto the floor.  She was aiming to have it land next to the man and puppy, and nailed it perfectly.  She did get through college on a sports scholarship, after all.

"She's gonna be mighty," Molly said informatively.  Something about her tone suggested that she was about to lay down knowledge.  "She's a Rhodesian Ridgeback.  They're protective and stern things.  She'll be keeping me safe from the things that go bump in the night in about a year."


Nate Marszalek

"Shouldn't she be called a Zimbabwean Ridgeback now?"

Very funny, Marszalek. He picks up the rope toy from where it fell on the floor and drags it along the floor to see if she'll be more interested in flinging it around than burying her face in his hand. Aside from the fact that he's warm and inoffensive he has unnoticeable cat hairs stuck to his clothing. Lucy came along with him in smell if not in spirit.

"She got a name yet?"


Molly Toombs

Cat fur didn't go unnoticed.  Partway through the rubbings on the loose skin about her neck and shoulder, the puppy had started vigorously sniffing at Nate's pantleg and the cuff of his shirt sleeve.  Then came the 'thump' on the floor, and the toy that had landed was wiggling about, dragging itself like wounded prey over the hardwood.  Naturally, the pup pounced upon it and started gnawing and growling and tugging at one end.

The reporter's comment was smirked at, but not answered.  The bottle of wine was left on the counter for now, and Molly set herself to lean against the kitchen island, standing inside the kitchen and looking out to where Nate and the puppy were.  She set her elbows up on the counter and rested her chin in her hands.  Her weight leaned forward against the counter's edge through her ribs and stomach, and behind her one ankle crossed over the other.

"Florence," Molly answered, and smirked and raised her eyebrows because Nate would no doubt catch the reference.  She clarified anyways.  "Yeah, like Nightengale.  I liked it better than 'Killer' or 'Spot'."

She paused, just for enough time to let the topic feel like it would be switched naturally rather than abruptly, then went on.

"How're you doing, though?  Any new weirdness?  What happened with that envelope?"


Nate Marszalek

Florence.

He huffs out a laugh that she interprets correctly as amusement at the reference. She liked it better than Killer or Spot.

"You are such a nerd," said the pot to the kettle.

If he stays hunched over like this for too long his muscles are going to spasm on him. He's pushing his luck. After a time the puppy figures out she can have just as much fun flinging the rope around as she could have harassing the stranger and Nate braces himself on the island countertop before using what strength he has in his legs to get back on his feet.

Once there Nate coughs a smoker's oops I exerted myself cough into his elbow and starts to slide off his jacket.

"It's sitting in a drawer in my kitchen," he says, "and I'm goddamn ignoring it. Is what happened." The jacket fwumps over a stool and he goes on: "Other than I've had to go into some unsavory places hunting down leads because some moron decided to gun down a fuckin' police officer in the precinct I cover, nothing really weird's going on. I can't really tell though. I figure the safest thing to do is just assume anybody I meet out after sunset is a bloodsucker."


Molly Toombs

At the accusation of being a nerd, Molly raised her eyebrows and tipped her face forward some so that her expression of 'oh, really now?' is as clear as can be.  She's giving him the visual body language of equivilent of Hello, Kettle, I'm Pot, have we met?  All the same, she watches while he holds the edge of the counter and pulls himself up onto his feet, then coughs an exherted hack into his elbow.  Her mouth will press off to one side in disapproval, but that's the kind of look that any medical professional will give someone when they display a smoker's cough.  For many it was a hypocritical stare to give, but Molly wasn't a smoker herself.  The time that she'd given it a try she found it to be quite far away from her liking.

The jacket is hung over the back of one of the three stools at the island, and Molly pays mind whle he explains what he's been up to.  She nodded to show that she related to his last statement and shifted how she was leaning on the counter.  She didn't have to worry about flashing too much cleavage, the dress she was wearing had a neckline that went up near her collar bone.

"I've been doing the same.  It's just... safer that way.  It's not a huge change from walking around at night, really?  It's just now rather than being cautious that some guy might try to stab or rob or rape me, I have to worry about getting enchanted and carted away into a corner to be sucked dry and left for dead."  She looked grim at first, but the expression faded when she continued on:

"But that hasn't been a problem.  I haven't even run into any of them in a while.  I think that maybe they're leaving me alone because they know someone's got... dibs on me, I guess."

Of course, she's talking about Flood.  Nate could guess that himself, based on their past conversations about this.


Nate Marszalek

As clear a sign as any that Nate is feeling better is the fact that he seems to notice Molly has a body underneath the dresses she wears. In the hospital he had been too flattened by pain and medication laid overtop the pain to care what anyone wore when they came into his room. A nurse could have come in ass-naked and he would not have found anything strange about it.

He'd given her a quick once-over when she opened the door and now his eyes dip down when she leans over the counter but they come back up a second later. Without anything in his hands he has to find something to do with them so he hooks them into the pockets of his jeans.

"Hey," he says in a deadpan. "Who knew getting stalked by an undead psychopath came with fringe benefits?"


Molly Toombs

Any notice that Molly might have had to the fact that Nate's eyes dipped under her chin for a moment before hopping back up to her face went undisplayed.  She's been a busty woman for a while now, and if she was going to waste energy on every glance that she drew, innocent though it may be, then she'd have lost a lot of time over the years by now.

The puppy stretched herself out in the middle of the space between doorway and kitchen and gnawed happily on the rope that Nate had brought in with him.  A year from now she would be taking up a hell of a lot more space when she stretched out in the same way, but for now she wasn't much of a tripping hazard while still.

In the meantime, Molly answered Nate's comment as though he'd framed it sincerely rather than with a deadpan and gallows humor.

"I don't know if I'd call it 'stalked' so much as reserved.  I haven't seen or heard from him in a while.  Might be biding his time for something, I have no god damn clue."  She shook her head and moved a hand to rub at her temple and the hairline at her forehead, then dragged her fingers back through her wavy hair to push it away from her face.

"This treading lightly business is exhausting, though.  I feel like I've been waiting for the past two months, but I don't know what I'm waiting for.  Like I'm impatient but I can't say what for, or why."  Her eyes shifted past Nate's pale face and found the puppy on the floor instead.  They softened a little, because how do they not when landed on a puppy that's happily destroying something that it's supposed to be destroying instead of a shoe or pair of underpants?

"Maybe I was just lonesome.  Florence should help with that."


Nate Marszalek

[perc + empathy: fuck it. what is she impatient about?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 5, 5, 9) ( success x 1 )


Nate Marszalek

[i'm rerolling at +1 just for shits and/or giggles]
Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (1, 3, 5, 9, 9) ( success x 2 )


Nate Marszalek

"Yeah..."

His eyes follow hers to the puppy. That's a safe place for them to land. They hadn't had much chance to get to know each other before Molly decided to drop the existence and reality of vampires onto his lap in the midst of a first date. Between the hauntings and the threats and the car crash no one can blame Molly for feeling alone in all of this though she's reached out to Nate before.

"All Lucy does is freak out at three in the morning acting like she's never seen a ghost before. Dogs are way better if you're looking for company."

A thought occurs to him. Nate takes a hand out of his pocket and rests the elbow on the countertop and leans into the elbow. He looks like he's studying her face. Not to settle an internal argument as to whether that's her natural hair color but teasing out the implications of her words.

"Y'know..." He drums his fingers against the countertop's grout and watches them while he figures out what he's trying to say. "Something I've figured out, just from going overseas, not even from..." From hearing dead people. He frowns and works his lower lip with his teeth and stops drumming his fingers. Looks back over at her. "The nothing happening is the worst part. That's what war is, is long stretches of being bored out of your fucking skull and then..."

Some of the greatest minds of the modern age have devoted their literary careers to summing up war and not even come close. He gives up.

"You should just enjoy the quiet, while it lasts. Not that I'm a psychic or anything--" He kind of is. Just ignore that. "--but I don't see it lasting that much longer."


Nate Marszalek

Jess asked me to roll 4d6 so I'm doing that for her I'm not nervous at all.
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )


Molly Toombs

"Well, there's that, and I don't think that taking a cat out for a walk to accompany you to the store or bank would work out in your favor.  I've seen one person successfully walk a cat before, and that's because they were letting it lead."  They were both leaning on the counter by that point, Nate on one elbow and Molly on both of hers.  He led into what he was going to say with a 'Y'know', and Molly's eyes left the puppy on the floor to land on the man in front of her instead.

As always, she listened to what he said, and was attentive while doing so.  He compared the world they walked in to war, and Molly figured he wasn't too far off.  More than one of the Undead has mentioned to her that there's an old war going on-- a rivalry of factions, if you will.  Church versus State, was how Flood had framed it.  She wasn't sure if Nate was clued in on that fact of the world that Vampires were pulling them into, but he had drawn a fairly accurate comparison on accident if he didn't.

The advice that she should enjoy the quiet is answered with a small, ironic kind of a grin.  Molly had settled her chin in to the palms of both hands again, and her head bobbed just a little along with the movement of her jaw when she spoke.  "Sure you are."  A psychic, she meant.  "Just not that kind of one, is all."

With that statement made she straightened up and turned about and pulled the fridge door open.  She didn't have to work that night, so she pulled a beer out for herself.  Beer was just like adult soda after all, right?  She raised her eyebrows at Nate and lifted the beer bottle some, asking with body language if he wanted one while continuing on what they were talking about verbally instead.

"I've been trying to enjoy the quiet, sincerely.  But I get bored with it.  Before all of this--," of course, she meant the supernatural, "started happening, I was looking to leave the country for the sake of mixing things up.  Like, in a permanent way.  I was going to go to Spain or France or something."

If he accepted the offer, two beers would be cracked open.  If he declined, she'd shrug and only one top would find its way into the sink.  Either way, she's leaned back against the counter and sipping her beer.  "It's the hum-drum that gets to me."


Nate Marszalek

At the offer of a beer and the raised eyebrows Nate raises his eyebrows back at her. Yeah sure he'll take a beer. Twist his arm.

And he listens to her as she counters his advice on how to deal with the boringness of life continuing on. This is a woman who works in an emergency department and sees folks on their worst days. People who work in healthcare are among the most easily jaded. They burn out that fuse that makes most people run away from other people's pain and suffering and start to run on adrenaline and when the adrenaline starts to wear off they're left either chasing it or accepting that they'll never feel anything as acutely as they did the first real thrill they ever lived through.

It isn't that Nate doesn't understand it. He joined the Marine Corps just to piss off his stepfather. It's just that he is one of the ones who burnt out fast. He isn't still chasing the rush he got the first time or fifth or fiftieth time he got shot at.

He accepts the beer when it comes his way and takes a modest slug off of it.

"Yeah, well." He stands up straight instead of leaning on an elbow or his forearms. "There's hum-drum over in Europe, too." He points the neck of his beer bottle at her. "Europeans get laid a lot, though. That's a good way to pass the time. Maybe you're onto something."


Molly Toombs

"Oh, I know that now."

The beer they're drinking is a seasonal pale ale that Molly picked up the other night.  Nate took a modest slug of his, and Molly drank slow and casual as she usually did, unless she was actively trying to get shitfaced, of course.  If that were the case, though, she'd be going for shots instead of beer.  No need to waste time or ruin the jogs that she takes when she first wakes up in the late morning, after all.

His comment about Europeans having lots of sex is answered with a laugh and a shake of her head.  "I'm not planning on it anymore, not now that I know what's really out there in the world."  She isn't done talking, but Nate can already sense that she isn't framing this in any way to suggest that she was afraid of what was out there.  She wasn't saying she didn't want to travel for fear of her own well being.

"Here I have my ins already.  I've learned a hell of a lot in the past couple months.  If I were to leave, it'd waste the alliances I've built and protections I've gained, you know?  I'd have to start from scratch, and that's riskier than staying here where I'm on Their radar."

Ah, there it is.  She simply didn't want to be 'normal' again.


Nate Marszalek

"Well..."

One of the dangers of being a voice of reason amidst all the fighting and the skulking and the madness that goes on in the night is watching other people fall victim to the allure of the undead. Nate has been bitten once before. Though he cannot clearly remember what happened afterwards he can remember what it felt like.

He's been bitten by a vampire about as often as he's gotten laid this year.

"See? It's not all hum and drum."

Big swig.


Molly Toombs

Through some odd twist of luck Molly has managed to go this whole while without feeling fangs at her throat.  Tommy Lynch had warned her not to be interesting to the Vampires and that would be the best way to keep herself safe.  These days, and even back then to an extent, she couldn't disagree more.  If anyone were to ask Molly what it was she thought was keeping her from becoming food or a victim, she would say it was specifically because she kept the interest of the Undead that she encountered.  Vampires didn't want to waste something that managed to pique their interest.  New and interesting things were too precious a commodity, after all.

She had no idea what to expect from it.  She was curious, to an extent, but hoped to never have to actually find out.  She liked having a pulse.  She imagined it was painful, though, and terrifying.  Any romanticism that happened she figured came from literatry interpretations and make believe.

Nate was struggling to be her voice of reason and keep her anchored down.  Without grounded reason he could expect that Molly would go seeking danger and trouble.  But still, she had this habit of getting excited and wordy and bowling him over with the mute passion when it came to this subject.  To convince her to stay normal and safe was an uphill battle on the best of days.

"Well, not as bad at least.  Except this waiting."

Molly took another drink of her beer, then glanced down.  Florence the Puppy had come into the kitchen to scratch at the baseboard of the kitchen island.  Her woman stooped down to scrub at a floppy ear and lightly thump on her ribs affectionately.  The puppy licked at her wrist happily before plodding over to her food bowl and crunching away on what was left over from her morning meal.

A thought occurred to her, and Molly decided to fill up that gap in experience with the experiences of another.  She knew about the vampire factions and their war.  She knew the details of being a Ghoul and what it took to become one.  But there was still one very basic part to the mythos of vampires that she lacked.  So she straightened up and looked at Nate and, bluntly, perhaps even a little insensitively, asked:  "What's it like when you get bitten?  You survived it."


Nate Marszalek

Although he was not in the midst of taking a swig of beer when Molly asked what being bitten is like he still looks as startled as he would have had he been. His hand tightens around the base of the beer bottle and he fixes her with a quizzical expression that borders on wounded.

One day she's going to stumble out of the bedroom before the sun has come up and accidentally knock Florence in the ribs or the flank and it isn't going to actually hurt the animal but the shock of it is still going to cause her to yelp and look at Molly as if to ask how could you do such a thing fuck Molly I trusted you.

Nate quickly transitions into laughter. He shakes his head and looks down at the beer bottle as he cobbles together a deflective comeback.

"Jesus," he says. Looks back up. "Yeah, you know, I survived being in a car crash, too. Wanna talk about what that was like?"

He takes a deep breath as he realizes how that comes off and closes his eyes for a moment to berate himself.

"I'm sorry." He pinches the bridge of his nose and looks back at her. No bubbling up of emotion despite the reflexive rawness of his response. "I'm sorry. It wasn't like a car crash. It was the complete opposite of a car crash. You ever hear someone compare shooting up dope for the first time? How it's better than sex?"


Molly Toombs

For some reason, the wounded expression on Nate's face takes Molly by surprise.  Apparently she didn't realize how insensitive the question was.  This kind of thing happened sometimes, in particular when it came to her persuit of knowledge.  If she transitioned herself into a researcher's mindset, the human emotion side of things could occasionally get left behind.  She was a smart woman, willfull and strong and sharp as a goddamn tack.  She could keep her head cool in the worst situations, and that was a part of what helped her be so good at her job.

She once had to tear an eight month old out of his mother's arms and put her back to the woman while she wept and clawed at her clothes and screamed that she wanted to be able to hold her baby and be there with him.  It should have torn at Molly's heartstrings.  She should have looked pained and been apologetic and maybe even cried about the stress of it.  Instead, Molly ignored the woman bluntly while flipping the child upside down onto her forearm and thwacking the hell out of it's back to dislodge the lego block that had become stuck in its airway.  She didn't cave and give the baby back after the deed had been done, either, but got it hooked up to oxygen and continued as she was supposed to.

Occasionally, humanity had to fall to the side.  She didn't intend for that to happen here, though, and the surprise and rubberband snap of guilty hurt was clear on her face even before Nate had nervously laughed and shot back at her.

He brought up the car crash, and the apology that had been on her face fades quickly away.  Molly wrinkled her nose at him, scowled instead.  But Nate caught himself before she had to hit him with any sort of 'was that necessary?' remark.  He apologized quickly, and Molly squeezed in an: "Me too," following his 'I'm sorry'.

But he was willing to share anyways.  He knew Molly well enough to get that she had a hunger for this kind of knowledge.  His answer, though, had her looking puzzled.  Her brow knitted together some, and she wrapped her arms across her chest, looking a tiny bit uncomfortable all at once.

"Really?  I thought that was just shit they put in trashy romance novels.  I thought it would hurt like a bitch."


Nate Marszalek

Apology accepted. But she doesn't drop it.

Considering the fact that she's shoved a tube down his throat to keep him breathing and seen him in little more than a backwards hospital gown Nate really doesn't have much more to be modest or embarrassed about. But he was hypoxic and blood-let when they rolled him into her trauma bay and zonked out of his mind on painkillers in the ICU. Right now he's of sound mind and body and she's asking him to talk about a moment that still doesn't make much sense to him.

Nate's coloration doesn't leave him with much mystery. A slight flush comes to his cheeks but her guest isn't angry or defensive anymore. He huffs out another sardonic laugh and takes a bracing swallow of his beer. It's half empty now.

"It did hurt like a bitch," he says. "And then it didn't. And I gotta be honest, considering he--" Nate pantomimes someone grabbing him by the back of his head. "--had me by the hair and was saying some mildly fucked-up stuff right before he did it--"

Demonstration's over.

"--it wasn't one of my finer moments."


Molly Toombs

They haven't even had a second date and already Molly knew more about Nate than he would probably be comfortable letting most people onto.  She knew about his back, about the fact that he'd served in the Marines, about his car accident and the fact that he lost a very good friend in it.  She knew about the fact that he's been able to hear (and maybe see, sometimes) ghosts since he was very young, and she knew that he'd been made a victim by the very Vampire that had outright told her that he felt territorial over her (which was another story entirely, which put Molly in a very difficult place when it came to sorting out that loneliness that she'd nearly confessed to but Nate pretty much figured out himself anyways earlier in the conversation).

All the same, he blushes, and Molly wondered for a moment if that was the only way that color ever touched his face.  Her arms squeezed a little tighter over her chest, but she was quiet and attentive while he explained the experience and went so far as miming out getting seized by his hair and having his head yanked back.

Molly looked terribly uncomfortable, like she was seeing into someone's love life and finding a fetish that she couldn't share herself.  She shifted her eyes away from Nate's and moved her weight between her feet a little.

"I'm sorry," she apologized again, but this time around it was hard to tell if she was apologizing for making him recall the situation, or if she was apologizing for what Flood had done.  Some weird connecting thread of a relationship that she had with the Lasombra made her feel like she was responsible for apologizing in his stead, or for continuing what strange, murky, distrusting relationship she did have with the Vampire at all.

She looked like she felt like she was supposed to change the subject or distract him with something else, but that was a hard act to follow.  So, instead, she left one arm wrapped under her considerable bustline and used the other hand to take her beer bottle and drink enough from it to catch herself up to where Nate was with his.


Nate Marszalek

After he'd held her on his couch the day she helped him home from the hospital it had seemed as though they'd reached a point in their friendship where they wouldn't be uncomfortable around each other anymore. But for as much as she knows about him that other people don't know that doesn't make the things she hasn't heard yet any easier to bear.

The last time Molly had brought up Flood and the bloodsucker's knowledge of Nate's investigative activities the reporter had chosen to close himself off and let her out of his apartment rather than telling her what all he'd found out on his own and what he suspected and what he was hoping to find out. He'd let her go and then he'd shown up two weeks later nearly dead at the hospital where she worked.
He doesn't reek of old cigarette smoke. She cannot see through his clothes to know he has a nicotine patch on his upper arm or to guess that the coughing is caused by his lungs having enough of a break from soot for the cilia to overcome their paralysis and start trying to clear themselves out. With everything that's happened he's still trying to be considerate.

She isn't talking now but he isn't just seeing himself out like he would have a couple of months ago. He looks down at his beer bottle and decides to cool it.

"I thought about killing him," he says. Snorts at the ridiculousness of it. "Afterwards. I really did, even before I had figured out what he'd actually done. And I know you and he are... whatever, but. I mean if he has to do that to stay alive, and he doesn't always leave the person alive afterwards?"

Before she can spring to Flood's defense Nate reels in and lets go another deep breath.

"He'd kill me faster than I could even blink. But I thought about it." He drags his hand down his face and glances at the door. "That's what it was like, when I got bitten."


Molly Toombs

There are levels of discomfort that Molly finds herself relatively immune to anymore.  Nudity doesn't phase her, blood and broken bones and injury doesn't either.  Most things pertaining to the physical human body are matter of fact-- the sight of bone protuding from skin is enough to make most people cringe and avert their eyes, but Molly has no fear or reluctance in handling the injury and setting it to heal.  It's these skills that Flood and Kragen both have highlighted in specifying what they wanted from her in their respective alliances.  Molly has agreed to be of service if/when needed, but so far no favors have been asked.

She will still sometimes wake up around five in the morning expecting a call of urgency, for assistance before the sun begins to come up, but it has never happened.

Other things, deeper and more personal ones, will still make her uncomfortable.  In this case in particular, it's because of that writhing sensation of guilt that flopped about in her stomach.  She didn't like seeing Nate as the victim, even though she had made him breathe and helped him live when he was precisely that to a car accident.  Hearing the survivor's story, though, had her steadily drinking until her beer was down to a third of the way full.  It was only when Nate mentioned that he'd thought about killing him that she broke the bottle from her lips with a small, nigh-silent quick exhale and gasp for air.  The bottle was put back down on the counter, and she set her grim expression upon Nate to hear him out.

I know you and he are...

Molly looked embarrassed, like she was going to interject and clarify, but Nate settled for saying 'whatever' and continued on.  Whatever words Molly had in her defense were swallowed.

When Nate fell quiet again, Molly chewed at the inside of her cheek a little before speaking up.  Her voice was low, tone was soft.  Most things about her were apologetic as they would be if she had, in fact, stumbled over her peacefully sleeping puppy in the middle of the morning and was trying to make amends for it.

"I don't blame you for thinking about it.  I'm glad you haven't tried, though.  I'd hate to see you gone."  She was holding her beer bottle with one hand now, and her eyes were focused on it as it served a decent distraction for them.  The other hand was working on peeling the label slowly.

"I won't bring it up again."


Nate Marszalek

At least that makes two of them who are uncomfortable in social situations where someone ends up confessing to something deep-seated.

The man is a reporter and is used to hearing people tell stories that are wrenching and graphic. Some folks find him disarming and open up to him because even when they tell him about the worst moments of their lives he appears sympathetic but he does not recoil from what he hears. Other folks take longer to open up to him and be inspires outright hostility in certain people. People who have learned to snap their teeth at the world before anything can hurt them.

All the same: he's not used to exposing this much of himself to another person. Women he's known for years never find out about his 'gift' and Molly had learned about that before he confessed to seeing a dead person in the corner of his hospital room.

He's gathering his thoughts when Molly starts to work at the label with her nails. She says she won't bring it up again and he looks equal parts relieved and skeptical. Nothing much else to tell her about it but Nate doesn't trust the same thing won't happy to her one day.

With a third of his beer gone he is starting to look as uncomfortable as she has since he painted a more vivid picture of what Flood's assault had looked like. If we're going to call a spade a spade. He clears his throat but that doesn't smooth the frown from his brow.

"Alright," he says, and indicates the door with a thumb. "You want me to go?"


Molly Toombs

He asked if she wanted him to go and jerked his thumb toward the door.  A mix of the question and the motion he made brought her eyes back up to him and stilled the short, unpainted fingernails that worried away at the bottle label.  He was frowning uncomfortably, and there's a strange moment of almost deja vu where she feels like she's looking into a mirror but knows that she isn't.  Molly figured quickly that she was making the very same face right back at him.

Over by the food and water dish in the kitchen corner the puppy made a little hiccupping burp noise, then plodded away to go lay down on a tan dog bed that was beside the love seat in the living room.
Molly looked at Nate for a couple of seconds before her expression relaxed some.  She wasn't smiling for him or trying to lighten the situation any, but she did coach herself to let go of some of that discomfort lest she want to actively risk creating a rift in her friendship with Nate.  That was something that she wanted very little.  He was her safety buddy through all of this.  The kid in preschool whose hand you hold onto when marching two-by-two on a field trip to the library, to the park, to the pool, wherever it was your class was going that day.

"Only if you want to."  Her mouth pulled up at one corner in a half-smile that didn't reach anywhere else on her face.  It was for show and nothing more.  "I'm not going to hold you hostage after dragging that out of you.  My suggestion was going to be that we watch this Christmas movie that one of the orderlies told me about.  Apparently Santa Claus is a demon monster in it.  It's forgein, so it has to be good."


Nate Marszalek

He can go if he wants to.

Nate pointedly picks up the beer bottle and tosses the last third of it down his throat before coming around the island that's been between them all this time. He doesn't park himself in her space like he has completely forgotten all semblance of decorum but as she goes on speaking he does stand at her side by the sink and reach across her torso to remove the empty beer bottle from her hand.

It seems he's perfectly alright with accepting that this happened and moving on with their lives. That's how he handles most major upsets. He accepts them and he moves on.

Foreign equates with good and Nate laughs harder than he has all afternoon. Which isn't saying much. He's just breathed out laughter all afternoon. Now it isn't a riotous laugh but it does show teeth and he does seem charmed by her.

He rinses and empties the bottles before leaving them in the sink and turning towards her. A hand rests on the countertop and now he is closer than would be considered remotely appropriate if they had just met. His body language is open. Trusting, given what they've been talking about for the last half hour. Barefoot he would stand a head taller than her but the soles of his boots are thick and push him up over the six-foot mark.

"Well, hell," he says. "If it's foreign."