Nobody
[Mask?]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 3 )
Nobody
How
does Nobody want to appear tonight? Nobody wants to appear like
somebody who would be found on the Santa Fe stretch. That doesn't narrow
it down a whole Hell of a lot, does it? This is Nobody, on a Monday
night:
Approaching six feet, but not quite there. Built like a
brick shithouse, pardon the French, ma'am, they don't know any better. A
square-ish face, a thrice-pierced eyebrow, a nose like a lopsided
banana that somebody used just their toe to press down in the middle so
the banana has spread just there, like it wants to escape its peel, but
the basic banana shape holds.
He is sitting outside of a gallery,
in an alcove, a storefront that is closed for repairs whatever that
means, and there is a little toy piano on the sidewalk next to him, a
piece of cardboard that says Please No Coffee next to a cup, and he is
scruffing the chin of an ungainly sprawl of tomcat which is purring in
his lap and oozing around his knees and rubbing against his ankles and
might be convinced to dance if Nobody thinks that'll draw in the coins.
He's
been here a time or two before, and although some people stop to see if
he can 'do' anything, or will 'do' anything, most of the walk-by
traffic (and it is cold, cold) don't stop for very long, especially not
on a Monday.
Amber
Amber's around. She doesn't
live in the area, precisely, but she stays somewhere nearby. In
someone's house a few blocks to the east, on their couch. She should be
nervous walking out at night, she has been nervous walking out at night
before, but lately she's not so worried as she was. Or at least she's
not worried for the reasons she was worried before.
So when she
wanders out into the cold dark streets, naturally just shy of six feet
herself though her boots help her up those last two inches, hands
stuffed in the pockets of a hooded sweatshirt that is all she has
against the chill of Denver's temperamental spring, she isn't walking
with Great Purpose. She does not need to go grab an emergency refill of
smokes and then jet the hell back to where she's staying.
That
doesn't mean she's not mindful of where she's going, or who's on the
street with her where she walks. Monday means not too many people are
out and about offering coin to the Nobody seated in the crook of some
closed space, with his cat and his little toy piano. Those who don't
know the tempestuous woman well might expect her to blow on past him,
ignoring him just the same as everyone else.
But Amber knows
things. And she knows things because she's acquainted with the Nobodies
of Denver, the lost and the forgotten, the petty street gangs, the
homeless, the beggers and the buskers. She pauses just beside the man
with the squashed banana nose and she roots around in her jeans pocket
for whatever spare change and loose bills she has on her, not because
she's a good Christian girl (hah). It is a combination of
goodness-of-her-heart (man has a cat jesus fucking christ) and
knowing better than to simply walk past someone on the street. Someone
else can be the judge of what percentage of which is the greater, Amber
doesn't think on it too much. She just acts, like she usually just
acts. Part-heart and part-instinct.
A couple coins drop heavily into the cup followed closely by the whisper of a crumpled five dollar bill.
Nobody
Amber
stops and begins to search her pockets for some spare lucre. Nobody
does not give her a fixed stare or glance down in embarrassment or stare
off or start in on a schpiel. He looks up at her once, and she can hear
the rusty tin-can rattling around motor-cycle rrr rrr rrr purr of the
cat from where she is standing hitch up a notch when Nobody looks back
down and uses both hands to scruff the tomcat's cheeks and chin instead
of just the one. The tomcat has his paws on Nobody's knees, its eyes
closed in ecstasy, and it is leaning as up as it can get because it
likes being pet. Indeed, when Nobody begins scritching the top of the
tomcat's head instead, it pushes up so hard that it unbalances itself
and falls off of his knees and onto the sidewalk. Proceeds to lick its
paw as if nothing happened, and purr receding slightly lean forward to
sniff delicately at Amber's boots.
"Thanks, miss," Nobody says,
certainly not a Jack that Amber has been told about, oh no. Certainly
not that Jack. Nobody at all. His voice is like a warm swallow of
brandy, a spoonful of honey left out by the stove, attendant though it
is by a plegm-y cough which he covers with one fist. "Say thanks, Boots.
Wet food tonight." His throat's clear now. "What'll it be? A song or a
dance?"
Amber might of course say neither; she just dropped the
coins and the five because she felt like it. But this Nobody has a toy
piano and a cat, things perhaps to make accepting charity something
other than charity. Perhaps like most street performers he does it for
love.
Amber
[Amber B do you have the self-control to resist a cat? +1 diff because who can resist a cat sniffing their shoes, honestly?]
Dice: 3 d10 TN7 (2, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )
Amber
[Amber apparently can resist a cat sniffing her shoes, whatadick]
Amber
The
cat'll have wet food tonight and that makes Amber's bitter little
broken heart swell a bit. She is not so swept up in a moment of
goodwill that she drops into a crouch to scritch at the cat herself.
And besides, the cat's the man's and the man's the cat's. Amber would
as soon initiate a Boots-petting as she would a hug for Nobody.
A
Nobody she does not recognize, because this mask is not the one he wore
in the bar (is it? no, and even if so she wouldn't recognize him). And
it's been months and months since she was told about a Jack with a
smooth voice who loves music. Hm, maybe something starts to stir at the
back of her mind, but nothing catches, not just yet. Time, it fades
things into the background, it does.
Nobody asks her if it'll be a
song or a dance and her eyes, a storm-tossed-sea green that's murky in
the low light of the street, narrow thoughtfully.
"Whose dancing?"
she asks, aware now that she's not given charity but paid for a
performance. "You or the cat?" Her voice is a low, throaty rasp. Some
might call it sultry, others might tell her she needs to stop smoking
so many cigarettes.
Nobody
[Animalism Things. -1 Diff.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN5 (1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )
Nobody
"Who's
dancing?" Nobody at all looks down at Boots. This Face's eyelashes are
too stubby and too pale to lend anything attractive to the look. There
is a certain fondness. "Boots? Is it your turn or mine?"
The
tomcat's nose is still twitching as he sniffs at Amber's boots. Amber
doesn't sweep in to pet him and that's just fine. The tomcat is not the
finest specimen of cat: looks like a street cat that's been taken good
care of, since then. More muscle under that fur than soft house-cat
flesh, fur sleek but only because it happens to be between fights at the
moment. The tomcat takes one of those twitch-hesitation-hesitation
steps forward, sniffing more forcefully at Amber's bootlaces, when
Nobody addresses the cat. Its ears flick back and it circles around,
the
better to roll onto its belly, shoulder first (how the heck do cats do
that?), body rolling after, a C on the ground that clearly does not
intend to move.
"Apparently myself."
Amber
The
tomcat continues to sniff determinedly at Amber's boots and she can't
help but wonder what he's finding. The scent of some other animal,
maybe? A whiff of paint or the smell of cooked food lingering from time
spent in some eaterie or another? Whatever he's found, she holds still
for him to investigate it further, or rather she makes a conscious
decision not to shuffle her feet until he's finished.
If Amber
decides on a dance then it seems that Nobody is dancing, not the cat
whose twisted himself around on the ground. Her mouth quirks into a
grin and she takes a couple steps back to clear some space in case it's
needed.
"Alright. Dance, then." Which is less a command and more
her stating her choice, but as intense a force as Amber is even at
rest, even when her temper isn't a squall whipping in the air around
her, it'll be taken as it will be taken.
Nobody
[You get what you pay for, doll. Dex + Perf.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 7, 9, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )
Nobody
[... Or like... A lot more.]
Nobody
Dance
then. Nobody takes it in the spirit it was meant. The earthy
(attractive [solid, Pentacles, Harvest, Fecundity?]) slice of
gorgeousness is intense. That's just fine; it doesn't rub Nobody the
wrong way.
"Uh oh, I hope you're pleased with yourself, Boots."
He
clambers to his feet. He winces as if his back hurts. He practically
creaks, an old man in a young man's body, hrms. "A little music, at
least?" He starts to hum with that rich ol' honey voice of his. And then
his left foot seems to get an idea in its head, and he starts
soft-shoeing it.And then his right foot starts to get into it, and Fred
Astaire ain't got nuthink on Nobody, whose feet are dancing while he
just looks like he's trying to keep up, arms wind-milling, body
contorted, and then the feet take a running tap-tap-tap leap for the
alcove's wall and he's like no no not the wall so his feet swagger back
toward the mini piano. Boots continues to look unimpressed. To get away
from the dancing feet he goes up onto one hand, the other hand twinkling
(tinkling) out a quick trill on the piano, but his feet've gotta come
back to earth sometime, right? Naw, he flips over the mini piano, and
then the feet tap-dance him all the back to the wall, up the wall, up
the wall, then boom, hit the ground, soft-shoe it, soft-shoe-it, Boots
gets up and puts a paw on the piano, clink-clank, mrowl, and Nobody hums
himself into a quick rapid-tempo
fastfastfastfastfastfastfastfastfastfastfast crescendo BOOM
And then the Muse of Dance abandons the building, and a bow. Huff, puff, huff, puff.
Amber
Amber
said dance like dance was supposed to be on the menu, but when the old
man starts to rise and he creaks with the rising she gets a pang in her
gut. That pang in her gut starts to travel upwards, is just about to
wrap itself around her spinal column in a shiver of guilt when the old
man starts a humming, and then starts a dancing.
Brows like two
soft, sweeping wings lift above the storm-sea of her eyes and Amber
takes a few steps to the side because a few more steps back might take
her into the street. She steps to the side and she gives him some
goddamned room because wow.
Wow.
Wow.
Boots
may not be impressed but Amber sure as hell is. When the dancer
finally stops, he gets applause not just from the woman what paid for
the show, but from the other pedestrians walking the street who stopped
first because their way was blocked and stayed stopped because Wow. A
few other coins and bills find their way into his cup, and Amber holds
back, waiting for the tide of onlookers to wash back out again. Once it
has, she asks, "There's a Conoco down the block, you want me to get you
a bottle of water or something?"
Because huff puff huff puff the guilt comes crawling back into her insides.
Nobody
He
tugs on one of his eyebrow piercings with just the air somebody else
might twirl a mustache, smiling a little because who doesn't like to
have money rain into one's money cup. Much better than coffee. And his
breathing, it regulates quickly, and he retreats back into the shadows
(the metaphorical shadows, for the most part, although it is a shady
alcove), sitting down hard on his tailbone. And nobody was prepared to
get a shot of him with their camera phone.
Having caught his
breath, he begins to say, Oh no, until, "Actually, I'd greatly
appreciate it. Here," and he reaches into the cup and takes out a couple
new dollars, holding it out. "You're a nice lady."
Amber
[percept+med diff 7: after all that exertion did you really just regulate your breathing so fast?]
Dice: 3 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 2) ( fail )
Amber
[yep, totally normal, that's a human, everybody]
Nobody
Behold: The healthiest human that Amber has ever met.
Amber
Nobody
gets themselves back to a baseline breathing rate like that, and yet
somebody has. And Amber thinks nothing more of it than that perhaps the
creaky rise is part of an act. People (suckers (like Amber)) think
he's weaker, less adept than he is so that when he breaks out it seems
like magic is happening. And then the moeny pours in, money enough for
Amber to wander off to get him a bottle of water.
He says she's a
nice lady and she blinks at that, perplexed. Though she supposes she's
done some things without thinking of personal gain (uh, saving a certain
journalist's life perhaps? and keeping him company in the hospital a
few times?), but no one's ever called her nice. Or if they have it's
been a long, long time between then and now. Her smile is a bit warmer
than it might have been otherwise as she takes the dollars and stuffs
them into her pocket, a little of the storm blown out of her (but only a
little). She looks at Nobody and she looks at Boots, and then she nods
her head the once as though coming to a decision. A decision to simply
accept the words rather than deny them or try to deflect.
She
wanders off to get that bottle of water for him (and one for his cat
(and a pack of Marlboro Lights for herself)). And as she goes she
thinks about how weird her life's gotten, and lately. Like maybe she
had to have a taste of immortality, of a home, of a person to return to
and then lose all of it in order to let her life really start to turn
around.
Nobody
Amber wanders off.
Nobody
thinks that she'll probably return with a bottle of water. He won't
drink the bottle of water. He doesn't remember really what water tastes
like; does bottled water taste differently today than the stuff he used
to drink, back when he was still part of the Day's world? He knows what
sewer water tastes like. He knows what rain water tastes like. Sometimes
that stuff, it still gets on his mouth, on his tongue. He remembers the
idea of swallowing salt water; remembers that he didn't really like
that. But water, the taste of? It looks like it tastes really nice, but
not as nice as blood. That's how he knows he's still part of the dark
kingdom, that he's still a Jack; blood always looks like it tastes like a
dream; looks like it is the answer to hunger; like hunger is the
answer.
He sets his spine back up against the building, and coaxes
Boots back into his lap. Boots is a cat, but Boots is more than a cat.
A servant. A blood-slave. A ghoul.
And the ghoul purrs, and purrs, and purrs, and purrs, in Jack's lap, its ears flattened like a devil's.
Amber
Amber
is gone for some small while. It takes time to get to the gas station
at the corner, and perhaps it is a different corner gas station than the
one where she met Flood last. Either way, she can't help looking
around, peering at the shadows with a suspicious sideways glance, hands
stuffed in the pockets of her hooded sweatshirt. Her gait is quick
because she is going to meet up with the dancing Nobody, and she makes
it to the gas station without incident.
A ghoul purrs, and a
once-ghoul makes her way back to his shadowed alcove. She does not
realize the potential danger he could be to her, how easy it would be to
overpower her to steal a little sip, a taste, a drink of her to sustain
him for another night. That's the only thirst he has, and the only
liquid that can slake it. She thinks him ordinary, not harmless, but an
ordinary kind of harmful.
The bottles of water slosh from the
pouch of her messenger bag. Smoke trails in her wake as she wakes,
peeling away from the burning orange-red cherry of a cigarette held
between her lips.
Nobody
There are Jacks who enjoy
their blood terror-laced and pumping hot from veins while the heart the
heart tries to run right out've the chest tries to beat its way to
safety. This is not one of those Jacks. There are Jacks who enjoy their
blood pulled from the throat of a beautiful girl and only from a
beautiful girl because it adds a certain piquancy to the vintage. This
is not one of those Jacks, either, this Nobody of a Jack, this Nobody's
Jack.
He does wonder if water tastes good though. He's still
thinking about it when Amber swings back into sight, trailing smoke, and
he smiles faintly, because look how his faith in humanity is rewarded.
She didn't make off with the two bucks, but came right back, and perhaps
she'll even give him a cigarette, and he coughs like he's got smoker's
lung in preparation of asking.
His scritch-scritch of the tomcat
has ceased, and the little devil-faced thing puts its pointed chin on
his knee, eyes blissfully closed, purring less obvious now that it is
segueing into the 'cat nap' portion of this evening. Instead, Jack
braces a hand against the sidewalk, patting his coat down with the other
in order to find -
- a smooshed-up starbucks cup lid, which he sets down. That'll do as a dish for his cat, huh?
"Thanks
again, miss," he says, when Amber's near enough. "Don't suppose I could
implore a smoke, too?" He reaches up and over to pick up the cup of
coins, and Boots flexes his claws into Nobody's leg, lifting his head in
protest, shake out a quarter or two because cigarettes are expensive.
Flood
Flood
is too late to come upon the watering hole that springs up around
nobody in particular's (certainly somebody peculiar's) performance
before it dries up and this stretch of Santa Fe returns to its usual
state of travel and transience. The oasis is forgotten as quickly as it
is paid for. He sees the man who was once its source and does not yet
have suspicions its truly a honey pot if we're talking means of
sustenance.
And even at a distance he is, of course, too late to
see that familiar woman's shape marching away on her supply run. Not
past the dispersing crowd and the persistent flow of somebodies and
anybodies.
No, by the time the stiletto of a man (not to be
confused with that lazily smiling man in stilettos passing by or that
still man from the ghetto painted in silver and busking as a statue for
tourists) makes his way there the street has become altogether less
enticing. That is until the sound of a voice from the past that has
reappeared in the present. That is until a shape from the nearer present
reveals herself sauntering back with a pack full of water bouncing at
her hip. That is until the many things that make this world's denizens
enticing to a Beast and its Hunger, to a monster and its
even-more-monstrous loneliness, to a walking possible-to-be-eternity and
its boredom-possibly-eternal.
Flood does not slink out from the
shadows as Amber might think he would. Instead he continues in his gait
and in the direction that has brought him to both. Why? Because what is
the night if persistent to his kind and what choice have they but to
persist against it? And to run away from it brought him such turmoil so
many last times he has lost count.
Flood goes on and like his namesake rushes to meet it and crash upon it instead.
Flood
does not need to straighten his black tie or adjust his white linen
peeking from beneath the cuffs of his charcoal wool suit. He does not
need to adjust his hat, it looks fine where it is, so it's a nod to this
mindset that makes him bring a finger and thumb to punch it at its peak
and push it back. This will manage to open up his countenance to
interaction, or so Sinatra would argue, and even Flood has his
influences (and contemporaries). He stops and looks between the pierced
bull with a cat on his lap and the woman returning to join him like that
are both equally interesting (and of interest to him) as any of the
night's varied populace could be. More so, actually, because he has
taken the time and stopped instead of letting his eyes sift over.
Gold
in the pan. A panhandler and a woman he'd once treated as precious as a
stone that could ransom a king or befit a queen. A polite smile and a
nod.
"Evening," begins his mandolin song smoothly enough.
Amber
Amber
doesn't come back with something to pour the water into for Boots, her
niceness only stretches so far. It ended mostly with the second bottle
of water, because she was given a couple of dollars and water's usually
only a dollar a bottle. If the dancer man makes an issue of it Amber's
got another dollar...somewhere. In her wallet, maybe, because her
pockets are now mostly empty.
She does not shy away from his
request for a cigarette, but neither will she refuse a coin or two in
repayment. Again, niceness only goes so far and then someone starts
looking like easy prey for predators. She pulls the bottles free of her
bag when another comes upon them, interrupting what has so far been a
pleasant random encounter.
There is Flood, tall dark stranger in a
suit, and there is Amber, once-precious creature he succeeded in
pushing from him. And the way that Amber's eyes widen and her head
comes up and turns toward that voice, it's like nobody is there instead
of Nobody. For a half of a half of a second, vampire and once-ghoul are
almost alone.
But of course they're not alone, and Amber catches
herself staring a second after it's obvious. She frowns and looks away
to hand over a cigarette to Nobody's Jack. "Hey." That must be for
Flood. She digs her lighter from her pocket.
Nobody
A
polite smile and nod. Nobody's polite smile and nod. A mirror image,
accompanied by a whisper of recognition. Acknowledgment. In Nobody's
lap, the cat wakes up. The fur goes bristle-up, bristle-up, but the
tom-cat does not react to vampires as an animal who has never tasted
Caine's blood might and so though the tom comes alert and ceases purring
it does not scratch Nobody's lap up to launch itself into a streak of
fleeing this popsicle joint.
No; the tomcat stares at Flood and
its tail twitches but it stays in Nobody's lap, until Nobody shifts from
one asscheek to the next, hand held out with a coin or two for Amber to
take -- Amber, who has frozen in order to stare at Flood, in just that
way, and this is dejavu, isn't it Jack? There's a certain rue to the
expression in observant Jack's observant eyes -- and also to take that
bottle of water. Then the cigarette.
The tomcat oozes into a
puddle of fur by Jack's side, and Jack sticks the cigarette into the
side of his mouth like he's a scarecrow, says around it after another
clearing of his throat, honey-voice warmed over, liquid gold of a thing,
"Evening yourself, sir. Nice one isn't it."
The sort of
fade-into-the-background commonplaces one says when one is going to
fade-into-the-background and let the sharp-dressed man and the beautiful
woman who know each other talk.
Nobody's nothing, you know, go ahead and talk, Nobody surely won't.
Flood
Someone
with a voice like that doesn't simply fade away. That voice befits a
chorister, a narrator, or both. Once it's come to leave it quiet without
action or return simply seems rude. That is why Flood takes Amber's
greeting in return with a moment of his own attention, in the form of a
long look, before leveling its equal again back toward the now-somebody
once he begins commenting on the night.
Flood seems intent on
forming nobody into somebody. Forging it and tempering it into something
with edges he can recognize. There's no question in his tone, no
inherent inquisitiveness, but that doesn't keep him from answering. Or
at least recognizing there's room for interpretation:
"I'm not
sure yet, but I'll let you know, friend," that last word carrying no
more or less familiarity than it would with a stranger.
"What do you think? Has the night be nice to you?" The questions comes after he has turned his attention back to Amber.
"A
night for making friends?" And again it shifts with a look to a man
given water, offered cigarette, and back to coming flame when it's again
cast like a fishing line upstream (she has been upstream for so long)
toward Amber.
Amber
[am I still in tune with your feels, Flood-san?: percept+empathy (on the long look, or whatever)]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (5, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )
Flood
Flood is dripping with familiarity. A tinge of nostalgia.
A
dangerous playfulness, but even that seems like the second half of a
game that she isn't in on, though the stakes are higher than anything
sport-like. Anything with sportsmanship. No, there's the shrewdness of a
poker player there, one who cares about his chips and will do anything
to keep them on his side of the table.
And oh, is he curious,
because when he asks if it's a night for making friends he is observing
for the answer in more than whatever words might come out of Amber's
lips.
Amber
Flood gives her that first long look
and Amber tries to keep her attention pointedly away, though her whole
body is tense with his nearness it's probably pointless. At least she
doesn't fly at him and pummel him uselessly with her weak little mortal
fists, nor does she scream at him, asking him why he can't just leave
her alone. She thinks that maybe she's figured out why, though it took
some time to get to that point.
Not that she can tell him that, not with the way the air is suddenly alive with some higher game beyond her sight.
"Maybe,"
she answers, because really she isn't sure. She doesn't have a name
for the man with the cat and the toy piano, nor does he have one for
her. There's more to friendship than an exchange of names, though, and
Amber has been kind.
But while Amber has spent most of the
beginning of this year feeling like a unwanted and discarded piece of a
chess set, his blood still has its grip on her heart. She is still one
of his chips, whatever she might want otherwise. She offers Jack her
lighter, and whether he takes it or not, it makes its way back into her
pocket and she rises. Her lips part and her lungs fill with a breath
meant to say...something. Instead, Amber's eyes shift to Jack, then
narrow back on Flood.
Her gaze drops away. If he's in a sporting
mood then this is not a place she should hang around. She looks at
Jack, but when she says, "I'll see you around," it sounds like it could
be for both of them.
Molly Toombs
Much like the
night before, the weather in Denver was pleasant and mild for an early
March day. Even as the sun had set and taken its warm glow along with
it, the air still maintained some of the warmth from the day. It wasn't
a skirt evening, not like the night before. Molly didn't have any
dates lined up tonight, not like she did yesterday evening when she so
patiently waited outside of a speakeasy-styled bar and club for a gangly
young man carrying gifts. Tonight, her second consecutive night in a
row with good weather, was Molly's night.
She'd charmed (somehow,
clumsily) the bus driver into letting her bring her adorable puppy
(let's face it, she did most of the charming) with her to Santa Fe
District. She'd walked and enjoyed the weather and found a park and
flirted with a stranger and had a fine afternoon with herself and her
pup.
She was dressed in a pair of dark well-fitted jeans over
which brown riding boots were zipped up. She had a gray tee-shirt on
(V-neck, certainly), and a heavy knit southwestern styled cardigan to
keep warm. Hair down, but tossed and messed to simply be as it would
after being tormented by wind throughout the day, Molly walked along
the night's sidewalk on her way back home. The puppy had long since
given up on the journey, little paws sore from the long day's walk, so
Molly was carrying the sleeping thing curled up under and about her
chest.
She looked to be in the best of moods!
Until she
rounded a corner and spied a familiar specter. Then her step slowed,
faltered, and the sunshine that her face had still been carrying from
the day sapped out, overcome instead by apprehension's shadow to, at
last, match the night around her.
"Well, shit."
Nobody
[A Molly, too? Let's have alertness before I finish this post.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 5, 5, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 3 )
Nobody
Flood
seems intent on forming nobody into somebody, so somebody nobody's got a
name for (that's not true [the truth wears many faces]), this somebody
right here, this crooning crooner of a nobody who is if nothing else a
somebody who can dance quite well, there is a: slight nod. As if to
punctuate the little nothings properly, oh, Flood'll let him know.
He
does accept Amber's lighter. He turns his head when he lights the
cigarette. He turns it away from the cat and he turns it away from the
Lasombra and he turns it away from the beautiful woman, and he closes
his eyes while flame catches on paper, then hands the lighter back.
"I'd
like that," says Jack, says Nobody at all, to Amber or perhaps also to
Flood, regarding friends and the making there-of. His teeth are still
clamped down tight on the cigarette so the words are a little smooshed,
bitten-off, though the voice is still honey. "As long as next time it's a
song, not a dance. Or least Boots here, he can do the dancing, I think I
threw my back out."
He waits a beat; his gaze ticks from Amber,
who is turning to leave, to Flood. "Got a request sir? Something to set
the appropriate tone."
Perhaps for when the sharp-dressed man goes
chasing after the beautiful woman, eh? Like this is a movie, and just
like this is a movie, here's a Molly and a Florence cradled in her arms.
Boots is unamused by the appearance of a dog; slinks underneath
Nobody's knees, glares balefully out at Flood, then even more balefully
out at the woman holding a dog.
Nobody: quietly, quietly, a watchful thing.
Flood
That
man in the gutter of an alcove with his cat has his answer to Amber's
farewell, though for Flood is feels more like a goodbye, and that's
maybe why Flood chases after her with a question instead.
"Will
you?" That is if she's already set herself to not looking at him an to
turning away from them. But it comes one way or the other, whether after
or straight to her if he gets a final look. Sound comes faster and he
reaches out with it instead.
And then there is Molly with her dog
and filth in her mouth at seeing him and it seems like the world is
turning further upside down. Wasn't there once a cult? Weren't there
once hangers on in another life? Intelligent men and women he sat and
spoke with before they died and he continued to be dead.
Another life. Yes, that was it. He sees it all and there's a look in his eyes like he's waking up from a dream.
Restlessness
and wit turns to restfulness and a smile. A new kind of a smile, so new
it even feels like a coat that hasn't worn in on his lips, because for
all the calm on his face there's excitement blossoming behind it.
"You
have to get up very early in the morning if you want to please
everyone, don't you, friend?" And a beat. He's asked for a request,
hadn't he? A fiver effortlessly finds itself out of his pocket and in
his hand. His forefinger presses it through middle and thumb, folding it
one last time before he drops it into the piano player's cup.
"Surprise me again," leaving it to the musician's choice.
Flood
[ Manipulation + Subterfuge: Zero. Fucks. Given. ]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 9) ( success x 1 )
Nobody
[Really? Percept + Emp.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )
Amber
Amber
hasn't quite taken flight just yet. She lingers as though waiting for
something, or maybe hoping. Either would be pretty terrible, as one is
even more pathetic than the other, but she can't help it. She lingers.
And is gifted with a question that reaches out to her and halts her.
It's a struggle not to let it show how that affects her, but she does
try to hide it.
"Yeah," she answers, and means it. Maybe he'll
see her sooner than expected, and on purpose for the first time in
ages. Months, a blink to him, but ages for her.
She looks from
him to Jack and then to Boots balefully staring at- ah, her. Nathan's
friend. Amber takes off in the direction of Molly Toombs. Unlike last
time Molly saw the tall Israeli-American, Amber doesn't approach like a
thundercloud, though there is always an intensity about her. It's in
the set of her jaw, the tightness of her mouth, the set of her
shoulders. And she's not coming straight toward the woman, because
while Amber is not the worst and most heartless human being on the
planet, and while she does actually give a fuck about Nathan's friends,
she does not have it in her to try to convince an almost total stranger
of anything.
Her eyes shift toward the woman holding her pup, and
she says to her, "Molly, right? I'd pick a different street if I were
you." She herself is already wandering off into the night to some other
place.
[manip+subt+WP because she is actually trying real real
hard yo! so take that as you will: I am not all full of feels because
you asked me a question, nuh uh no way no how]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (8, 10, 10) ( success x 4 ) [WP]
Molly Toombs
Following
that initial moment, and an adjustment of a sleeping pup in her arms,
Molly's eyes flitted to take in the others right quick. Amber, noticed
seconds later, recognized immediately (you don't forget a face like that),
remembered and placed for the woman at the bar, Nate's friend, they
were introduced. Granted, Molly spent a large chunk of that evening
socializing with other friends she'd seen there by chance, but she
circled back around to spend a little time hanging out at least.
The man smoking a cigarette with them noticed, taken account of, but not recognized-- not considered as carefully, therefore.
And wouldn't you know it, two blocks past them was the bus stop she needed.
So,
she resumed her pace (she never actually stopped walking, really, only
slowed) and continued forward. When Amber had started coming toward
her, the red-haired ER nurse coaxed a smile on to her freckled face to
greet Nate's friend (curious, how they associate one another to that
title exclusively at this point [soon to change]). The smile is polite,
she really is trying to be nice, but it's tight none the less.
As
Amber came up and expressed that she should pick a different street,
Molly blinked at her in surprise and came to a stop. Full halt, but not
immediately turning about just yet. Instead, she laughed, as though
struck in some twanging funny-ironic way by the statement. The laugh
wasn't boisterous, though. The pup in her arms snoozed on undisturbed.
"Jesus Christ, wouldn't you know I was just thinking the same thing?"
This,
followed soon by a flicker of eyes toward Flood and the man
(transient?) with his cat, and a question to match that brought Molly's
gaze back onto Amber again. "Is there... ah, something going on?"
Nobody
[We perform things. We're vain enough to willpower it. Specialty: Singing. Totally a go.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 4, 5, 6, 6, 7) ( success x 4 ) [WP]
Nobody
Nobody
pushes the tomcat out from under his legs. The tomcat pushes against
Nobody's hand but then slinks down the road: drifting across it like a
pale, sepia ghost -- fur still a-bristle -- before a-slinking underneath
a car and disappearing there-after. Nobody straightens instead of
staying spine-curved against the wall, wiggling his fingers. He's
wearing fingerless gloves, but it looks as if they're fingerless because
the fingers got torn off through various misadventures, not because
it's a fashion statement. Nobody, he folds his big frame so he's seated
cross-legged, he's seated in front of that toy piano. He is keeping an
eye on Molly [hello, little project, you don't know me now] and
Amber, but: forgive him. There was something like amusement ghosting
there. The amusement diminishes in the face of Flood's excitement.
"My
honest opinion, Daniel?" Now that Amber's out of earshot. "Load of
bullshit. You can please everyone regardless of the hours you keep,"
and he starts to pull a tinkling, ghosts-in-the-attic, bluesy sort've really out of THAT instrument song from the toy piano.
"Of course, helps if they don't know everything, huh? What've you been doing with yourself?"
He
asks a question that seems to want an answer; it does want an answer.
But that doesn't mean Jack doesn't sing, too, like he can do both, like
he can pause and play between stanzas: with some effort thrown in, thank
you, sings a Bessie Smith song, sings it slow like it really is honey
dripping from a spoon, like an ache, Nobody Knows You When You're Down and
Out...
Amber
[percept+alert: IS SHE OUT OF EARSHOT HMMM]
Dice: 4 d10 TN10 (5, 5, 6, 7) ( fail )
Flood
It
is a strange pairing left behind. There are alternatives that could
have resulted from this handful of strangers-to-some-and-not-to-others,
but Flood's smile remains and he remains looking content enough to even
cross his arms and find the outer frame of that doorway, that recess
where nobody is sitting, yet still the music and that voice comes
singing out of. He leans sideways against it and watches the man's
fingers tickle away at the keys and make them sing a sad song to join
his voice. Wrings more emotion to join it from the little toy.
And
he listens to the words drip out and if they're honey he soaks them up
like sweetened tea. His smile grows a little more genuine even as the
song goes on. He just doesn't shut his eyes. There's another question
that needs answering and it seems he can't set himself adrift in the
music and the words and especially their meaning.
"If I were to
take your advice I'd leave you blissful in your ignorance of what I've
been doing with myself, wouldn't I?" And his face looks surprised,
though only a carefully caricature of the expression, before he crosses
his arms a little looser and leans forward to correct himself and allay
any concern that his words have or haven't nurtured.
"But nothing
so nefarious as what you might expect. I've either been distracted or
found something to distract myself with," watching from afar as the two
women begin to talk if one answers the other.
Amber
Amber's
plan had been to keep on going, hit up some other bus stop or find some
other way of getting to where she wanted to go - to wait, foolish girl -
but Molly speaks and that stops her. In her own thick-soled boots the
painter is a good half-foot taller than the ER nurse, and she looks like
she has a chip on her shoulder the size of the Continental United
States. That look eases as she looks back over her shoulder and down.
Then she looks back to where the men are, where Flood stands listening
and the homeless man with the cat begins to sing.
The skin around her stormy eyes tightens, her gaze rested on the tall thin man.
"Men,"
she says around her cigarette, with a sense of finality that doesn't
come coupled with an annoyed or disgusted roll of her eyes. No, there
is a wariness in her as she watches Flood and Nobody together. There
was that sense of familiarity between them, and that sense of dangerous
playfulness in Flood. Closing her eyes she turns her face away from
them, opens them again when she looks at Molly. Something compels her
continue beyond that single word. Maybe she's worried this friend of a
friend will want to brave going past them. It seems so harmless, yeah?
One man is singing the other is listening, surely they won't pay any
mind to someone else. "Playing games people like us don't wanna get
near or we'll get sucked in and come out mangled." She should probably
clarify that it's more one than the other they'd need to worry about, at
least so far as she knows. And probably it's just her that needs to be
concerned. But she doesn't do these things. Instead, she looks back
at Molly and says,
"I'll walk you where you wanna go." It sounds
like a statement, because it's Amber who has only recently started
calming down to a point where she can talk to other people without
sounding like she wants to rip their heads from their shoulders and drop
kick them across the street. But really it's just an offer.
Molly Toombs
For
what it was worth, Molly was invested in what answer Amber had to
give-- the question was not posed just conversationally, or distractedly
at all. She was almost keen on the answer she got, as though checking
it to make sure that no foul play had come upon this woman (whom, as far
as Molly knew or understood, was a friend of Nate's and not at all
dripping with supernatural affairs), or anyone else perhaps that may
have been left behind.
The answer she received was met with a huff
that sounded like it could have bloomed into more of a chuckle if there
were enough humor to be found. As Amber expressed specifically that
they may get sucked in and mangled, Molly looked back down the street to
where Flood stood in a doorway where music and movement but not much
else seemed to come from.
Oh, he's in that sort of mood, is he?
She mused, but had the sense not to utter aloud as she may have were it
still just her and Florence out on this stroll. But instead she made a
face that portrayed concern, but not enough to do anything about it--
self-preserving concern, not the vigilante sort.
"Yeah? I'd
appreciate that. I just need to catch a bus to swing me downtown...,"
is how Molly led the conversation, and it would doubtless continue from
there (this is the bus you'll want, here we can walk this far-- hey, how
did you meet Nate anyways? whatever happened with that flock of
bachelorette girls?). The nurse opted to turn instead, to take the
convincing woman's advice and offer alike and walk with her back the way
she came.
One short block corner later, and the women were out of sight.
No comments:
Post a Comment