Molly Toombs
It's difficult to say exactly how or why Molly and René wound up walking along the sidewalks back toward The Brookstone Apartments. Initially they were just trying to get away from the hospital parking lot, away from the two vampires that were squaring off. Molly had her suspicions about René and how human or helpless he actually was, but knowing what she did she knew even he couldn't hold up in a fight like that. After all, he'd narrowly survived his last encounter, and that was with just one Undead throwing his violence around.
The idea had been just to get away, but soon Molly's feet had discovered the path they were most accustomed to. Neither had wanted to go to a bar to wait for this to blow over-- Molly just wanted to go home, and where Dr. Jacobs went wasn't especially her business.
The walk wasn't entirely silent-- one was bound to say something small here or there, but nothing particularly significant. Not until The Brookstone building was within sight about a block and a half ahead did Molly finally sigh, heavily, and speak up.
"Look, I don't know if you're wanting to hang around and see how your... 'associate' walks away from whatever's going down in our hospital parking lot, or if you just want to get yourself home." There was a pause, brief, the breath before making a step you couldn't take back. "You can come upstairs to wait, either for your friend or for a cab."
She glanced quickly up at him, to gauge how he would react, and hurried to clarify: "It's only polite that you not wait in the cold since you walked me this far already."
René Jacobs
Suffice to say they don't speak much as they walk away from the parking lot whose aftermath isn't yet known to them. After spending the entire day either on the phone or interfacing with residents or communicating with other clinicians via email he doesn't want to pay attention to his smartphone and he doesn't have any real reason to. Few people try to get ahold of him this time of night.
Molly has to prompt Jacobs where to cross or when they're coming up on her building. Driving is different than navigating on foot and he has to keep his eyes open not only for what they might encounter on their way down the street but what might be coming up behind them. He is a more vigilant individual than he once appeared to be. Maybe paranoia or maybe he's just survived this long because he keeps his eyes open.
And then they're there. He's fulfilled his part of the bargain. They're at her front door and nothing harmed her en route. It doesn't faze him that his car is back in the lot and he has to turn around now.
What does faze him is Molly pronouncing the word 'associate' like she's shining a light on it. Or the invitation to come upstairs. Something catches his attention and before he can give her a response to accompany the furrow of her brow she clarifies.
It makes him huff out a laugh and run a hand down his beard. This is the closest he's examined her the entire time they've worked together and he only looks at her face. He doesn't take pains to make eye contact with people when he's addressing them. Most of the time he's staring at an X-ray or lab results or flipping through a chart to figure out where the first-year fucked up before going to talk to the patient himself. It's not an altogether unpleasant experience but the novelty of it would be enough to startle anyone.
"Okay," he says. The windup, and: "I know you hate to be rude."
Can't stop busting her balls now. He's been doing it all night.
Molly Toombs
"Well there's a difference between stirring the work pot and watching my neck so something else doesn't try to." She'd frowned up at him, even while he stroked at his beard and surveyed her. He's had plenty of time to figure out her face by now, given they've had several interactions away from lab charts and medical instruments and moaning patients. It's round and freckled and perfectly normal looking without being breathtaking or gorgeous. Her eyes are clear and blue, though, and behind them is a sharp cold wit and the fast-processing mind of a woman who had to have some reason for surviving the underlying dark of the world for as long as she had.
She plunged a hand into her tote bag while approaching the front door of the building, retrieving keys with one hand while the other hand punched in a code and hit a specific key on the plain old keypad, aluminum and dented in places not unlike a payphone.
"Makes sense the two would get different reactions."
The confirmation buzz to announce her code was accepted was loud and unpleasant enough to think that it was actually rejecting her attempt and warning her not to try again. However, the lock to the heavy front door clicked and Molly yanked it open with practice to head inside. There was an elevator front that looked like it belonged in the 50's. Molly opted to take the stairs. Hey, every little bit helped to stay healthy, right?
Up, up, up on to the fourth story. Had Molly not become so accustomed to the climb she'd probably be at least a little winded by now, but she's been doing this for about two years now, so she's smooth of breath as she brought keys to her lock and opened the door into her home.
"Sure hope you're not allergic to dogs," she'd warned as she let them inside. No sooner did the words leave her mouth than the skitter of little claws on hardwood floor carried a little brown pup from the dark of the living room on the other side of the apartment to come greet them at the door.
René Jacobs
Jacobs is a trim man with energy that he easily supplements with caffeine and cigarettes. For being as mired as he is in a world of modern conveniences though he doesn't lose his breath hiking up the stairs. All the time he's been in this country and he hasn't gotten into the habit of taking the elevator up one floor or driving when he could just as easily walk. A ten-block hike at two o'clock in the morning hadn't even given him pause.
He could be imagining a dog the size of a small car for knowing as much as he does about Molly's disposition. Once the door is unlocked and the puppy tears through the darkness to greet his mistress though that image leaves his mind and Jacobs breathes out a laugh. That's not what he was expecting.
"You have a guard dog," he says. Reflective or just surprised. Either way his tone is muted. He steps out of the way of the doorway and gives Molly space to greet the dog who no doubt will need to go outside once she's done shaking in happiness at Molly's feet.
Whatever they do to greet each other is none of Jacobs' concern. He eyes the animal but doesn't get down on his knees to let her sniff at him. He's removing his cell phone from his pocket with the intent to call a cab when he catches sight of something on the device that needs his attention.
Another frown creases his brow but Jacobs doesn't say anything. He sighs and writes a text message and then thumbs through the phone's screen. Lifts it to his ear.
"Yes, hi, good morning," he says after a moment's pause. "I'd like a cab, please. Corner of Fifteenth and Arapahoe. Thirty? Okay. Thank you bye."
He always sounds vaguely annoyed speaking on the phone. Like if he can't see the person's face he's at even more of a disadvantage than he already is, with his poor social skills being as stunted as they are.
Once the call is over he pockets the phone and takes out his cigarettes but does not light one. This doesn't look like a smoker's home.
Molly Toombs
"Well, she will be someday," Molly explained as she stepped inside and flipped on a light switch that existed to the left of the doorway. This triggered the lights in what would be a dining and kitchen area, into which the door emptied into directly. A straight shot back was the living room, still in shadows, from which the puppy came running. Little Florence, wearing a bright pink-and-yellow collar around her neck, came bowling out. She was a puppy that would clearly grow into being a big dog, for already her ears and paws were beginning to grow at a more accelerated pace than the rest of her, and her limbs were threatening to start becoming lanky as well.
The apartment itself was what one could consider a decent find for what the nurse's price range probably was. It was situated in the downtown area, an easy walk to most central parts of the city. The building was old, brick and five stories tall with anywhere from two to four apartments per floor, varying each story higher you go. Inside, the apartment looked to have been originally designed sometime in the early 1900's, with exposed brick in the kitchen and surprisingly high ceilings for not being the top story.
The puppy hopped up against Molly's leg, stretching paws as high up Molly's thigh as she could get them, and the nurse leaned down to rub the dog's ribs and stomach briskly before thumping her side lightly and moving on. Florence, in return, lapped at Molly's arm a few times and tried to roll over onto her leg to prolong the belly rubs, but wasn't too distressed when Molly walked further. Her interests would shift to sniffing at René's pant legs instead.
Molly, in the meantime, would shed her coat and hang it on a set of hooks jutting out of the wall to the right of the entrance-- the doctor would be invited to do the same by presumption, given that the wait would be a solid half an hour. Choosing to keep her scrubs on, not comfortable with going and changing in the other room while Dr. Jacobs hovered in her entrance, Molly moved to the kitchen and mechanically, as though she does this by default every night when she gets home, scooped up a little pastel pink tea kettle from the back burner on her gas range and filled it at the tap.
"So," she began, not allowing the silence to saturate itself into something uncomfortable and stiff (because she couldn't just kick him outside now and she didn't want to spend thirty minutes twiddling thumbs and feeling the skin-crawly discomfort that came from uncomfortable silences), "what was wrong with that sick vampire to make him start acting like that?"
Her eyes flicked toward Dr. Jacobs face, reading his reaction for only a moment, before going pointedly back to what her hands were busy doing-- filling the tea kettle and putting it back on the burner. "I mean, that kind of behavior has to be uncommon, or more of them would have blown their cover by now, right?"
René Jacobs
Only after Molly hangs up her jacket and moves away into the kitchen does Jacobs shrug out of and drape his overcoat and scarf on a hook beside it. It has him by the door when Molly picks up the kettle but her voice and the inquiry in it gives him cause to traipse into the kitchen after her.
Some of the attending physicians choose to wear scrubs and some of them stay in their business casual clothing depending on if they have to attend meetings or deal with medical students throughout the day. Because he was in the trauma bay today Jacobs wore scrubs until it was time to go home. He'd changed back into dark slacks and a button-down shirt and tied his tie again even though it was two o'clock in the fucking morning and he didn't exactly have to impress anyone.
He's going home to an empty apartment. Everybody knows his wife died back in Chicago. That's why he came to Denver supposedly. A clean break. It's a natural enough reaction when a person suffers a loss like that.
Molly may be the only one who has cause to suspect that she died of circumstances that weren't exactly natural.
When she looks back at him between questions Molly catches Jacobs watching her. His hands are in his pockets and he's a respectful distance away but she's alone in the apartment with him. This was the scenario she pretended to have been fantasizing about when Rameena caught them at the bottom of the parking lot stairs earlier. Prior to tonight she'd only seen warmth in his gaze when he's been talking to patients. Now she's seen how he looks at someone he loves. Or thinks he loves. Or has been compelled into loving.
He's drank the vampire's blood enough times to become addicted to him. That's precedence enough for Molly to feel justified enough in asking him questions. The cast to his gaze is inscrutable.
"An entire bloodline exists that's full of--" He scowls before repeating the word she'd chosen. There's another word he'd care to use but not in front of an outsider. "--vampires who are fractured, mentally. He could be one of them. Or he could be a young one who was disturbed in life and has decompensated now he's off his medication."
It could mean nothing that he's still referring to the creature in the present tense or it could be significant.
"I don't know, exactly."
Molly Toombs
Standing in her kitchen with Dr. McDreamy, Molly should be a lot more concerned about the state of things. There was a glass baking dish soaking off some burned on crust in one side of the sink, and a dirty towel was left bunched up on a counter top. There was mail pushed neatly aside to one side of the counter, a few bills and some offers for loans and credit cards that she would throw away as soon as she saw them. Molly herself was in scrubs and old flaking make-up with her hair coming loose of its own accord from the clip she'd bound it up with.
Instead of being worried about tucking her mail away or fetching the basket of folded laundry tucked out of sight on the other side of the couch in the still-dark living room, Molly was more focused on the topic at hand. She didn't quite drill for knowledge when she asked these questions, but there was a directness there, as though she were a compass for knowledge about the supernatural and was honed in on rooting out secrets and information like a pig hunting truffles.
"I don't know... It seemed like he was going through withdrawl." With the kettle back on the burner, Molly stretched and reached upward into a cupboard to retrieve down a pair of mugs that matched in style but differed in color -- blue and green. She paused at this point and turned back to ask him flatly: "Coffee or tea?" She feels like it's implied that the tea would be the non-caffeinated option.
She didn't behave as though she was on the spot with how he was watching her, didn't blush under his gaze or avert her own to play shy. As ever, she appeared almost defiant of him, tolerant more than anything else (but no longer just barely tolerating at least). She's seen love, or the pained illusion of, on René's face, but it didn't appear to impact her. She understood where that 'love' stemmed from, knew that it was a lie and illusion, empowerment and shackles all one in the same.
She pitied him, when it boiled down to it. Thought less of him for it to an extent as well.
Poor Molly, she was already on the path there and she didn't even know it yet.
René Jacobs
Before he answers her Jacobs looks down at the watch he wears on his right wrist. Like they aren't surrounded by electronic appliances displaying the time. The clocks moved ahead when they left work this morning and he doesn't trust computers to tell him what's going on. It's technically nearly four o'clock.
The wristwatch must tell him he has enough time to sit and keep having this conversation with a woman who respects him only as much as is necessary in order to perform their jobs.
"Yes," he says. No preference stated. He doesn't give a shit what she puts in front of him. Whatever it is he'll drink it.
That's probably how he wound up in this mess to begin with. That creature offered him a drink one night.
With that intermission in the conversation completed Jacobs sighs and looks down at his shoes. Her guess that the creature was going through withdrawal was not improbable. But he also couldn't tell from thirty yards away rushing through the darkened parking lot what was wrong with him.
"I could not tell you what's wrong with him." Like if he doesn't throw that out there now she's going to keep fishing. He looks up from his shoes at that. "And I don't know what is going to happen to him, either, but it's being taken care of, huh?"
He doesn't come out and tell her to drop it but his tone does.
Molly Toombs
It all starts with an offered drink, doesn't it?
For Molly, it was coffee presented by a gangly, but sweet and smart young man on a night-time adventure romp through a cemetery that Molly really should have known better than to agree to in the first place. It was further sealed, further entwined through her being and blood and mind by a second strike of a similar persuasion-- coffee on a night-time date.
Sometime, when Molly manages to put the pieces together, she will beat herself up mercilessly for having not noticed earlier-- for having played right into the trap that was set so perfectly, so willingly and blindly. Until that time came, until someone saw the signs and warned her, she would continue down this path into the Nosferatu's hands.
As for the coffee, the tea, and Vex; a shrug, and Molly reached into the cupboard once more, this time reaching higher, stretching further (tippy-toe, balance braced on counter) to take down two bags of some herbal lavender tea. She would continue to busy herself, moving to a pantry to take down a jar of honey that was packaged in a way that made it appear to have come from a farmer's market or specialty store. That would find its way, one spoonful each, into the mugs.
"Oh, I'm not too worried. Your guy seemed to have it in control, from what I was seeing. I mean, at least he wasn't wracked with shakes and doubled over." When she was finished moving about the kitchen, in and out of cupboards and drawers, never bustling and simply moving at her own pace (she knew what 30 minutes felt like, and how long this man had before his cab would be calling for him), Molly came to rest standing back against the counter, mugs behind her. Nearby the stove, she'd wait for the kettle to boil. Keeping the kitchen island between herself and the doctor, just to be safe.
"I was just curious to know what happened, is all. If that was how it worked."
Thing is, she seems completely honest.
René Jacobs
As she moves around the kitchen Jacobs watches her. He doesn't lean against anything or touch anything or invite himself to sit down anyplace. All they're doing is waiting a sufficient period of time until he can walk his ass downstairs and get into a cab and go home. He isn't going to get comfortable.
Especially not if she's going to keep asking questions or making statements that he has to respond to.
Nothing like having some bloodsucker's thrall standing in your kitchen and looking at you as if everything that comes out of your mouth is adorable in its naïveté. It isn't bad enough that Molly is surrounded by people who know more than she does. None of them want to share what they know with her. Even her lunkhead best friend knows more about the supernatural than she does and all he wants to do is ignore it until it goes away.
That she was just curious strikes him as amusing enough to knock a light snort out of him.
"Yes, well, don't get too curious. If you're lucky, he didn't see you." They're not talking about the twitching vampire anymore. Not with his tone taking on the coloration that it does. "That's all you need, huh? Drawing attention to yourself, one of Them deciding you'd make a fine companion for the next century or so."
Molly Toombs
"I'm not too worried about that."
She's lying. She's terrified by it. He's been able to read her well enough thus far, there's no reason he wouldn't be able to see this-- the night had come to the point where it had to be called 'morning' and her mind had accepted that the date was different now as well. She was exhausted, not at her prime for telling lies. She was less solid and resolved than she usually is. The excitement of the night had worn on her, after all.
"I've got myself a... a couple of contacts. Some get out of jail free cars."
The kettle whistled, giving Molly an excuse to turn back around. She didn't challenge or call him out on it, but she knew that he was looking at her as though she were a child trying to recite the Bill of Rights and mispronouncing all of the multi-syllabic words. She was happy to stop seeing that expression and to focus instead on pouring boiling water over tea bags and honey.
Soon after, Molly was gesturing to the stools on the side of the kitchen island that the doctor was hovering on. She looked borderline begrudging, but not quite, and set the green mug down in front of one of the seats. "You're welcome to hover unhappily, or you can sit down.
René Jacobs
Up go his eyebrows when she says she's not too worried. Not in astonishment or in indication that he's picking up what she's throwing down. They stay up as she fumbles her way through what is possibly the worst lie she's ever told in Jacobs' presence. She has not told so many lies in his presence that he's started losing track of them but she has told enough that he can't quite understand why she keeps insisting on making the attempt.
That expression clearly says Bullshit. He doesn't quite roll his eyes but Molly is turned around a moment later. Whatever his face does after that the nurse has her back to him and can't see it. When she comes back to the island with the mugs of tea he comes closer.
Then she invites him to sit down.
"'Unhappily'?"
Normally the native Francophone would have pronounced the word without the 'h'. He drops the 'h' from nearly every word that needs one and if he has to pronounce a 'th' sound it becomes an 's' or a 'z' by the time he's done with it. The cadence of his speech and his grammar are both confident even though his accent is so goddamn heavy. She knows he's mocking her accent by the way he pronounces the adverb she'd chosen now. It's nasal and higher-pitched. American. He drops the accent when he continues on.
But he does sit down. Picks up the mug she'd designated as his and moves so he's sitting closer to her.
"You've got shit, Molly. That is what you've got. Your couple of contacts care about nothing other than what they can get out of you--" Pointed look at her neck. "--and if I had not walked out with you tonight you would have been in trouble. I can only imagine what you would have said to my associate when you caught him skulking around in the dark."
Molly Toombs
For how thin and unjust her reasoning was to take a dislike to Dr. Jacobs in the first place, she handled being called out to her face surprisingly well. While René settled into a stool on the opposite side of the kitchen island, Molly settled to stand directly across from him-- as though they were at a diner booth instead of standing in her kitchen. Both of her hands curled around the piping hot mug, not pressing to the ceramic but cradling the heat that radiated around it.
This is the kind of comfort that came from being on home court. She was standing in her own kitchen, familiar with the layout and what existed in which drawers. She leaned forward on the counter, weight settled on her elbows, and harumphed dismissively at what René was so kind to point out.
"You don't know my contacts any better than I know yours," she started, and it seemed at first as though she may continue down that path-- defending the honor of her friends who were really more like monsters who found her in the dark.
But, instead, she sees an opportunity and takes a turn-- veering away from herself and her own glaring, gaping holes in knowledge and rounding back onto the man across the counter and the light-haired associate she'd glimpsed earlier tonight.
"If you hadn't walked out with me, I'm pretty sure your 'associate' would have still been there doing what he was doing. And I probably would have just beelined home and nothing would have come of it. If your associate wasn't there, we'd both be fucked I'm sure." Her red eyebrows lifted, as though to further make her point with the expression. If she wore glasses, she'd probably be peering over the top rims at him.
By this point the tea was done steeping. Molly took her own teabag and deposited it in a ramekin she'd produced from some nearby drawer. The little white bowl was pushed toward René to allow him to do the same.
"Is that what happened to you?" The question finally came-- the lift of the eyebrows and the way she looked at him had soon morphed from 'do you get what I'm saying?' to something more studious that eventually turned into this invasive inquisition. "Drew attention to yourself and got reeled in?"
René Jacobs
At the accusation of his not knowing her contacts Jacobs does not react. That smug sense of continuing to know more than she does lingers though. Disappears when she gives her interpretation of how the evening would have gone if he had not been there. Or if his associate had not been there. It makes him flick his eyebrows like to say You can go right on thinking that and drops his gaze long enough to find the teabag's string. He furrows his brow in thought as he looks for a place to deposit the sodden bag once he's removed it from the boiling-hot water.
Whereupon Molly produces a small white dish. Pushes it towards him. Jacobs nods his gratitude and in it goes. He dusts off his fingers over the dish before he turns the mug's handle towards his left hand and runs his right through his hair.
"The only reason I would tell you what happened to me," he says, "is if I thought it would stop you from doing something stupid. Like getting involved with Them any more than you already have."
She's stricken some sort of nerve though. Instead of just ignoring her question he responds to it. Belated. Like trying not to scratch an itch.
"I did not 'draw attention to' myself, thank you very much."
Molly Toombs
Whatever lure it was that Molly set out, she must have thought it was working. She looked like a fisherman who was seeing a nibble reflected in a tiny rock-bounce-rock of the bobber on the water's surface. With that same sense of patience, she slides the little white prep dish away from the both of them, near the center of the counter, and took her mug up for a first sip.
"Are you going to tell me a cautionary tale?"
She asked this in a tone that was bleached enough not to be very revealing, but how she leaned forward with a hint of smugness that only did so much to cover the glimmer of I hope he does betrayed her anyways.
While waiting for his answer, she took a first sip of her tea.
René Jacobs
It's almost endearing how transparent this woman is.
Looking at her straight-on as he is it isn't difficult for Jacobs to see how she thinks he's coming around. That he's trusting her or has been lulled into a false sense of complacency by how blunt she is. Or by surviving a harrowing encounter because she was there to verbally and at one point physically drag him out of the parking lot.
But Molly has difficulty telling what's going through his head as this dawns on him. So far as she can tell it doesn't dawn on him. His dark eyes are earnest as they rest on her blue ones and he doesn't get up from his seat to reassert his height advantage or his age or the education that surpasses hers. If anything he's trying to downplay that sense of superiority that repels her from most other people.
"I was suffering," he says. Begrudging. Like admitting that he actually has feelings is the worst thing in the world. "Grieving, you understand. Awake at night often, unable to sleep. The first time I met him, he stopped me from doing something foolish. The second time..."
He sighs without opening his mouth. Lets his gaze rest heavy on her face like he can see the exact same goddamn thing happening to her. He picks up his mug and takes a sip now that the steam has stopped billowing from it.
"You aren't the kind of woman to heed cautionary tales."
Molly Toombs
She didn't heed cautionary tales, no. He knew that for a fact, despite how little he really knew Molly Toombs. She wouldn't take his words as warning or learn from his mistakes-- not in any way that he may hope that one might, at least. But, all the same, she stood listening intently, hanging on every word. This wasn't the way that he had to be accustomed to people listening to him, playing like they're invested in what he's saying specifically to gain his favor.
Not to say her reasons for listening were any less selfish, though. There's a glimmer of greed in how she drinks what he says. Sponging up details and information for use later, to dismantle and put under a telescope and glean more unspoken truths from later.
He'd sighed, stopping mid-sentence, and expressed that he didn't think she was going to heed any tale that he told, and she just shrugged one shoulder at him, took another sip of her tea, and straightened up. No longer leaning on the counter with both elbows she stood upright instead and turned to offer the man her flank instead of her immediate front. This let her wedge one hip against the counter and lean her weight against it.
"I never promised to heed anything." This is a simple statement at first, but her eyes wander down to a puppy nudging at an empty food bowl. She knew the dog had been fed by the neighbors that she had an agreement with for puppy-sitting while she worked her long shifts, but she still stooped down to retrieve the mostly empty water dish so she could refresh that. Soon enough she was stooping back down, putting a water bowl on the floor so that the puppy could lap and drink as enthusiastically as she would if she'd been left without for days on end. Molly rubbed at the puppy's floppy ears affectionately, and from her temporary post crouched down on the hardwood she interjected out of nowhere (demanding thing when she asks these questions, pushy really):
"How long have you been with Them? I know your sort doesn't age like you ought to."
René Jacobs
It's true. She never promised him a thing.
In the interlude between her statement and the next question Jacobs sits silent and still at the island. Not watching her but gazing distracted across the kitchen out into the living room. Hands wrapped around his mug like just talking about how this all started has him reviewing his own history. Going over everything that's happened and debating whether he wants to tell her to will her back anyway.
Not until she speaks up from the floor does he glance over at her. She has his profile and his eyes turned towards her as he listens to the first part of the question. Then he chuffs out another sighing laugh when she tells him what she knows.
"'My sort,'" he says. He turns towards her now. Stands from his chair but not with the same intent and bleeding determination as he had the day she cornered him in the sick room. He is relaxed. Maybe trying to get her to trust him by not blustering and intimidating her. "Do you know how easy it would be for you and I to be the same sort? Hmm? All it takes is one of your Get Out Of Jail Free cards deciding he wants for you to want him and--"
He snaps his fingers once. Bam.
Molly Toombs
"You think I don't know that?"
Molly shot a scathing look back up at the man, and in that moment she looked most familiar to her work persona than he'd seen since they'd encountered danger in the parking lot. Whatever easing up the night had coaxed her into doing was shaken loose, and she frowned harshly (but at least it wasn't that mean fucking scowl). The pup's side was patted, and Molly stood back up and turned to give Jacobs her front. For a moment, like she might be challenging him. Then, as though specifically to remind him whose home he was in, she feigned comfort once more and gravitated back toward the counter, toward the blue mug she'd previously abandoned.
"I know how it happens." And she knew what it take to fix it, to break it, but she didn't share <i>that</i> insight with him. Knowledge was a tool as much as it was a weapon. You could accomplish precisely as much showing off what you knew, displaying it like a peacock, as you could from withholding and utilizing it to your advantage. She scooped the mug back up and took a sip. Settled her hip to the counter once more.
All the while, mind you, eyeing René like a fucking hawk.
"I watch myself around them. I'm new to...--" assisted by an absent swirling of her hand in the air to indicate 'in general', "--this, but I'm not an idiot"
René Jacobs
"Nobody said you are an idiot."
As chilled as she had been by the sight of him getting to his feet Molly does not see any sign of an impending threat in the taller man's body. Though he's stronger than he looks he doesn't have to do much heavy lifting in the hospital. That's why they have so many people in the ER. To minimize the strain their bodies go through in a day.
She's right to fear for her safety having in her home a man who is bound in some fatal fashion to a creature who is capable of using violence as a means of dispensing justice. Not only physically but in terms of overcoming internal conflict. That creature could find out where she lives. Inviting them in is a bullshit mythology. They don't need invitations.
This man could be an ally. She knows he has to try very hard to make women find him charming if they don't already find him so. Standing in her kitchen is not a walking example of a successful con artist. They're about the same in terms of their social skill and intellect.
"You are new to this, and you have no sense of how deep in over your head you can get without realizing it. This isn't a game, Molly. They--" He says They the way they've been saying They since she found him in the exam room. "--treat it like one because They are very hard to kill and they're bored. Huh?"
He frowns.
"I'm trying to help you, not--"
This he blurts out before he can make the decision not to say it and she can tell from the way he stops halfway through and sighs again and pinches the bridge of his nose that he had meant it and he had not meant to say it.
Molly Toombs
The interrupted sentence and the quiet left to follow was occupied by Molly watching the man. Before that, while he was speaking, she had kept her eyes on the man the whole while. His body language was non-threatening. He wasn't coming toward her at all, so the flare up of defensiveness she'd felt in initial response to the man coming unexpectedly to his feet had passed. By the time René had talked himself too far and stopped himself too late, she was (more or less) at ease against the counter once more.
Sipping at her tea, so the mug would conceal her mouth and whatever expression that might betray her on it. Above the ceramic, her eyes were alert. There was, like the first time when she'd spied him lovelorn for his Domitor, a moment of pity that softened up brows and eyes both. But over top of that, more heavily saturated than anything else, is caution.
Caution, and some odd line straddling the line between distrust and anything but. The path to that Anything But was shadowy and dense with tangled brush and vines, but hey, who said that you need to have trust to have an alliance?
She let him twist in his own sense of god damnit with his fingers to the bridge of his nose for a long drag of some number of seconds before speaking in a voice that finally matched exactly the expression on her face: sympathetic (pitying, really), and firm line-in-the-sand resolution.
"How do you expect me to take help from someone who couldn't help himself?" A flicker of eyes, briefly elsewhere but not, wavering for a second like she knew that was a dick move, but she was going to stand by it anyways.
René Jacobs
Before he can pick up another sentence to roll over the one that he just abandoned Molly speaks. He can see the pity and the brief flash of guilt in her eyes. Now that she's leaning easy against the counter again some of the tension leaves the air between them but neither one of them is exactly trusting of the other. They have no reason to be.
It's altruism that has him doing what he's been doing the last week. Making sure she has another person with her when she walks and making sure she gets home alright. People who do what they think is ethical because that's how they truly are are almost less predictable than people who are selfish. Their standards of behavior aren't in line with the rest of the world's.
"I don't," he says with a mirthless laugh. "But if you had any idea what this is like, if you had any idea what it is to not be able to quit the thing that made you like this without resigning yourself to..."
He winces just thinking about the slow torturous death that would await him if he ever left the blond creature Molly saw tonight. As if he's already tried. The mind cannot remember the actual sensation of even excruciating pain. Only that it ended eventually.
Suicide would be quicker but a person who loves life even though he's in Hell will never commit suicide.
"... you would take help, if you knew."
Molly Toombs
Resolve, distrust, and sympathy roll together as one on her face while she regarded him, and after a couple of seconds she spoke up. Less sharp this time, though. Softer isn't the right word, but the hard edges were smoothing, at least.
"Look. I've already been told that I should leave town-- pack everything up, move out of state where they won't follow, all of that." She shook her head, almost impatient with the advice she was parroting back, as though she was sick of hearing it (but only because she would periodically beat herself with it while tossing restless in the small dim hours of the morning, once or twice a month if not more). "I already know I'm well past that, though.
"Besides, there's things worth staying for here."
She intended for that to mean things like job, friends, comfort and so on. Little did she know that one of those things that had swifted its way across her mind was precisely the kind of Thing that René was trying to warn her against.
René Jacobs
Now he scowls. Not at her but at the shitty advice someone who remains nameless gave her thinking it would help.
"Leave town? No. That will fix nothing. They're everywhere. You would have as much luck trying to move someplace that has no bacteria."
Now that she isn't trying to keep as much distance between them as she can and there isn't any real threat in his coming closer the ghoul abandons his place on the opposite side of the island counter and comes to stand at her elbow. Like physical proximity will do something to catch her attention that logic and reason have been failing to do.
The other nurses would hate her even more than they already do if they knew Dr. Jacobs walked her home and then stayed there afterwards. Even if nothing happened. Even if all they did was stand in the kitchen and drink tea while waiting for a cab at the end of a very long shift. He's right there and she can feel the warmth of his body even though he isn't touching her but he could be touching her is how close they are and he's looking right at her with his stupid intense eyes.
"Listen to me."
His tone is low. Conspiratorial. Like he knows someone could be listening to them from a distance. She does too.
"There are things I can't tell you because it would, ah, violate Their rules. If they didn't kill me they would kill him." Which would kill René. He doesn't say that. "But the more you know about Them, their... powers and their bodies, yeah? The things they can do. You can defend yourself. You know so much already, I'm shocked someone hasn't..."
Hasn't enthralled her. Hasn't Embraced her. He stops himself before he can give her more words to bulk up her vocabulary. But she can read between the lines to find what he isn't saying. He isn't outright saying he'll sneak her information. It's there though.
Molly Toombs
You would have as much luck trying to move someplace that has no bacteria.
Molly made a skeptical sound, almost a chuckle. She was doing a better job of asserting that this was her home and it was her right to be comfortable within it (the illusion of an upper hand), standing now with her left elbow assisting her hip in leaning against the counter (hand left to hover over the counter's edge) and her blue mug cradled by its bottom in the palm of her hand. "Well, yeah, I know that now."
Then he came nearer and bade her to listen, up to her arm and elbow and shoulder, meeting her near the corner of the kitchen island to do so. Her eyebrows hopped up in surprise with the proximity-- he seemed conspiratorial, he thought that someone may be listening in, so he'd crowded nearer to keep his voice low. Molly, on the other hand, perceived them as being alone in her apartment entirely, and if anything was listening through walls to overhear then whispering wouldn't save their privacy.
But she doesn't back up from him or make a sour face at him either. She does stand straighter, though, and frown lightly, clearly quite willing to listen and hear what he has to say.
But, even while she listened, it wasn't what he said that was important quite so much as what was left to be found between the lines-- what was left unsaid paired with how heavily he's looking at her. After a few seconds she realized she was just waiting for him to continue, but it was her time to speak, so she blinked once and clarified in a tone that tried to be flat but didn't entirely manage this time.
"Well, I'm lucky that way I suppose." To his hanging wonder that no one had Ghouled or Embraced her yet. She seemed uncomfortable with the matter, and felt like she had to add: "And careful." But then, to follow that up, she cleared her throat and brought her mug back up to take a drink.
Before sipping, she explained, "Anyways, that's always been my plan. It's not like there's any kind of violence I could bring to the table that would keep me safe." She said this, even though she slept with a grill lighter and large can of hairspray (as well as that damn gun, still) in her bedside drawer.
René Jacobs
"You're smarter than you look, then."
This to her explanation of having recognized the futility of trying to combat the undead by any means other than avoidance. Nothing more to say now after that and the fatigue of the day recognizes its chance. Comes up out of the darkness clung to the windows and settles in on his shoulders.
Jacobs steps back from her now. He seems pacified even if he isn't entirely convinced that she's going to try and keep herself out of trouble. It's late now. Has been late since they left the hospital. He quick-twists his wrist to free the face of his watch from his shirtsleeve and confirms that he still has some time before he has to go downstairs and wait for the cab.
He picks up his mug of coffee and hesitates at the counter. Cat-corner to her now instead of right at her elbow.
"When I was younger," he says, "some years after we came to this country, I hid from him. I thought I could free myself. I thought, If I can just stay away from him, if I can..."
Even as he's talking about trying to escape Molly can hear the love he has for the creature she saw tonight in his voice. Can see the tenderness in his eyes as he stares down at the mug. The dissonance between the loathsome state he knows himself to be in and the supernatural sway over his emotions visible even in amongst the devotion and the passion.
It's easy enough to pity him but there isn't a goddamn thing she can do to help him. He's not telling her this because he wants to be saved. That door has closed for him. He looks back up after the swell of feeling has gone away.
"Half a year, I did this. With every cell in my body screaming for me to find him even as I was keeping away. My... fiancée, then, we married later this year, she thought I was kicking a drug. This is what I told her. She believed me. Without her I would have gone back sooner. And then one day I felt it lift. Not... vanish, you understand, but I woke up and it did not take so much energy to go on with my life as it had all that time until then. Half a year. I was not so strong then, but, ah... I was stronger than most. Most don't last so long."
And yet here he is an indeterminate period of time later even worse off than he was before.
"He found me, six months after she and I married. Over a year after I thought I had seen him last. I was still... dreaming about him, sometimes I would catch myself thinking about him when I was doing other things. He came to the hospital where I was working. It was no effort for him to persuade me to get into the car and leave with him. I could do nothing to harm him, physically, you understand? Over a year I had not seen him, not taken from him his blood. And it was over this fast."
A deep sigh and he stares into the bottom of his mug like he's divining her future in the dregs there. When Jacobs looks back up he pushes away from the counter. He intends to leave now that he's said all that.
"Stay careful. Huh? This, if you get to this, you're no better off than they are."
Molly Toombs
Well, she had asked for a cautionary tale, and here she had one. He knew she wouldn't heed it, she acknowledged this as well, but he told it all the same. Stood by her elbow, looking down into the bottom of his mug through cooling tea while he told her about his failed attempt to leave his Domitor and that particular path of life all behind. She frowned sympathetically to listen to the tale, but did not interject.
When he was done, the doctor set his drink down and stepped backward, away from the counter and a bit closer to the door. Molly didn't move after him or make any effort to stop him-- her eyes did flick to read the digital time on her stove, though. She seemed to be soaking in the woe of the tale, and Jacobs could hope that by some wild chance he'd actually accomplished what he was hoping in vein to do.
Of course, he knew better.
Molly Toombs wasn't going to stop seeking the new-- it was a game of survival now. She kept the neat stack of business cards at her vanity as a reminder of all the names and shadows that she had to watch out for. Because they'd all looked at her with that same piqued almost-curiosity-- the light of a game started, before sleekly handing her a business card (or exchanging numbers outside of a bookstore, how quaint [how ignorant]). Because she knew that she was a blip on their radar, and at any time they could come bearing down upon her. They could do the unspeakable. Her only chance to keep her head above water now was to know enough about them to get how they work, and to use that in her favor when she needed to.
She didn't want to join them.
She didn't want to serve them.
So she had to survive them.
She didn't want to end up like this poor doctor as he backed his way to the door, his story a confession spoken bitterly in the confessional of some bitch nurse's kitchen. He could read most else about her, so of course he saw the pity reflected back upon him before she heh-hem cleared her throat once more and looked distractedly down as though she needed to locate the counter with her eyes to be able to put her mug back down.
"Thanks, Jacobs." She sufficed for that alone. Molly could have inquired more about the wife (she was curious what her fate was, if she had actually died or if he'd left her alone [a gauge on how this new-to-the-area vampire operated]), but she let it go. Instead, she let him have what could be called the closing argument, thanked him, and said: "I'll be sure to. I have to."
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