Nathan Marszalek
Friday morning. Nathan Marszalek
hadn't answered his text messages or his voicemails in over twelve
hours. Three people in the city of Denver have received picture messages
of the young man in a state of danger from a creature who could have
easily killed him. In less than eight hours a car will explode on the
other side of town.
He called Molly around eight o'clock in the
morning. Woke her up if he had to. Left a voicemail if he had to.
Sounded tense and exhausted but not in any kind of distress.
"I'm
fine," was the gist of the communique whether given live or to a
recording. "I'm not hurt. I'm staying with my dad until..." He doesn't
know. If Theodore thinks he's lost his fucking mind he hasn't said so
out loud yet. So Nate cleared his throat and went on: "Where are you
right now? I need you to take Lucy."
Must be he woke up on the couch this morning and decided it was a great day to be a dick.
Molly Toombs
The
night before Molly Toombs had been at work, in a break room, when she
received a text message that sent her evening into a tailspin. She'd
gotten a call from Flood shortly after, ducked away out of earshot and
eyeshot of coworkers and patients, and had a conversation that had
brought her to the edge of tears and back down again. When she'd had a
chance (about an hour after Nate had left that senior community
apartment), she'd tried to call. With no answer, she left a voicemail
that quietly, shakily hoped he was well and asked him to call.
She got off work at two in the morning, made it home and to bed by about three when all was said and done.
Five
hours later her phone was ringing, and she startled awake, fumbled
halfway out of the bed for where her phone sat on the side table.
Nearly knocked over her lamp, cursed, and answered on the third ring.
She was obviously jerked out of sleep when he'd called, and after
expressing that he was fine and asking where she was the confused
urgency slipped away and she just sounded tired and half-asleep
afterwards.
"What? Why?" A groggy grumble, she was rubbing her
eyes and face, looking at the time on her phone with a quick glance then
groaning. Not saying anything, though, she's done it to him too. "Is
your dad allergic?"
Nathan Marszalek
[manip + subt: oh yeah sure he's hella allergic]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 6, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
Molly Toombs
[Perception 3 + Subterfuge 2, +1 diff (groggy it's so early you ass): Nate u liar]
Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (2, 4, 5, 7, 10) ( success x 2 )
Nathan Marszalek
"Yeah, he's got asthma and shit too, I don't want to kill him."
He
lies so easily he doesn't realize he's doing it. His father could very
well be allergic to cats but how the hell would he know. They didn't
have pets growing up. His mother fucking hated animals before she
married Ron and decided they were going to live on a farm.
"I can bring her to the office with me if you want to meet me there later."
The
ease with which he lies also manages to conceal the fact that he's in a
state of heightened agitation. That he hasn't slept much recently
compared to how little he usually sleeps to say nothing of what last
night is doing to his stress levels.
"Will you take her?"
Molly Toombs
"Uhh... Yeah, yeah. Okay."
She
was tired. She couldn't hear the lie in his voice, and the fact that
she couldn't see what he was doing with his body-hands-eyes made it
harder to detect as well. He lied about his dad being allergic (he had
no fucking clue), and he did a fine job of masking the tension and
stress and everything-that-just-happened in his voice. He sounded
tired, of course, but fine otherwise. Some small still sleep-numbed
part of Molly hoped that was a good sign. Maybe things really weren't
that bad? Maybe nothing terrible happened when Flood found him snooping
after all?
He said that he could have her at the office and ready
to go. Molly laid back on her bed, stretched her toes and free arm,
head on her pillow once more. Closed her eyes and sighed.
"What time?"
Nathan Marszalek
"Just call me when you're ready to come over."
And that's the end of that call.
---
Depending
on what time she ends up going to collect an animal that came into
Nate's life because of a woman who died five months ago Nathan may be
out of the office. The problem with his line of work is that sometimes
one does actually have to go out into the world and exercise some
semblance of social competency. He had to go down to the ME's office
after he got off the phone and then run over to the high school to
interview a couple of teachers and whichever students he could find who
were willing to have their statements appear in print.
Whatever
the time may be when he comes downstairs not only is Nathan carting a
cat carrier with him but he has a paper grocery bag presumably full of
things Molly is going to need to take care of the little ginger cat. The
bag rustles as he walks across the front plaza.
It's a dreary day portending rain and Nathan looks like he hasn't slept for two days.
"Hey,"
he says. His brown eyes can turn inscrutable without much effort. Hard
to look into them and see a wall when one is used to seeing warm.
"Thanks for taking her."
Molly Toombs
He said to
call when she was ready to head over. Molly stayed laying in her bed
for maybe another five minutes before Flo whined, reminding her that
there was a puppy who was clearly awake now as well and would very much
like to go outside. So, the nurse groaned and resigned to just having
to drink all of the coffee that night at work. Covers were thrown back,
and she got up and moving.
The phone call would come a little
more than an hour later. Enough time for Molly to have showered and
dressed and actually gotten on her way. Travel was a little slower
without her bike, but public transit helped cut that down quite a bit.
It
was just before ten when Molly showed up at the Denver Post office
building downtown. It was cool and windy, threatening rain, but Molly
was dressed comfortably in a coat and jeans, with a rain hat on her head
(black with white polka-dots). Well prepared for when those clouds
decided to open up and pour. She had her hair in twin braids, twisted,
contained, hovering with tips touching the tops of shoulders. She
didn't bring Florence with her, she was unwilling to manage the pup and
cat both on the way back home.
In the plaza Molly had been
standing to the side of the building, near a bench but not sitting
down. Just kind of... There. Clearly a woman waiting. If pot weren't
legal to buy here it would be easy to think she was waiting for someone
to come by so she could palm them a bill and be on her way. There were
other things still sold on the streets, though, so there's that.
Either
way, it's no drug dealer but Nate Marszalek that comes approaching, and
when Molly spied him she straightened up and brought her hands together
in front of her and waited for him to be near enough to speak to.
She's
greeted with a 'hey' and a 'thanks'. Molly just looks at him like she
wants to ask every question and reassure him that everything is just
fine now they're both alive after all, but all that manifests as is a
brightness and wideness to the eyes. The fact that she presses her lips
together is only due her choosing to say nothing of that like at all.
He was exhausted, he clearly didn't want it.
"No problem."
She put her hands out, offering to take carrier and bag both off his hands.
Let the awkward quiet commence.
Nathan Marszalek
Molly
has a better idea of what Flood is capable of doing than her friend
did. Still does. All he knows is that he saw something that rattled him
even more than everything else he's ever seen in his life has. Nathan
has seen human beings turn into red spray and bits of watery tissue
seconds after uttering a sentence. Knows what gray matter feels like
when it splatters your face. He knows the difference between a young
Shade's strong insistent confused voice and the smoke-thin hiss of one
gone so long it can only leave an uncertain clause in the ear before
knocking out all the lights. Knows what fear tastes like. Knows it comes
up quickest when you're on the other side of a locked door listening to
your friend scream.
He knows what it's like to be unable to move
and sit strapped next to the mangled carcass of what five minutes
earlier was a lively 28-year-old woman who didn't buckle her fucking
seatbelt before she got on the highway.
These women have nothing
in common either in terms of their physical appearance or their
personalities. But Shannon could tell Nathan was haunted even before he
wound up in the hospital twice inside of three months because she had
seen him swallow down his own memories while talking to men who served
in Vietnam. This is the first time Molly has ever looked at him and seen
misery clinging to him.
He hands over the carrier and the bag and clears his throat to bat away the silence.
"And
do me a favor," he says as he steps back. "The next time someone gives
you a business card--" That halting skid just before he goes ahead and
takes a terminal leap. It's a different sentence. "Don't call me again."
Molly Toombs
Molly
had a better idea of a lot of things about the supernatural world,
despite the fact that she hasn't been walking through the mists of it
her whole life, not like how Nate has. Molly had a natural flint of
curiosity, though. She was an Explorer. She saw things new and unknown
and had to walk over to them, look them over, learn their name and then
go read about them later. Have a better understanding and then
approach again with that understanding to see how it's changed. She did
this with medicine, and now had a very firm idea of the human body and
how to keep it together, how to prevent it from falling apart in the
first place.
When she went after the supernatural with this same
attitude, she came away learning so much so quickly that it nearly made
her dizzy. She knew about ghosts now, has read plenty and seen just
quite enough as well. She knew about vampires, from her readings and
her interactions and her conversations. Blood magic, reflections,
mirror worlds, mind control. She could reach into the back of her mind,
shuffle about through the library of occult she kept back there, and
come back with the explanation for the unreal that was happening around
her. She learned quickly.
It was a shame that this didn't always apply with people, though.
He
asked her to do him a favor, and she chuckled quietly and asked: "What,
another?" But the question was humored, a weak jibe, and she let him
continue while taking the carrier and bag, but immediately setting them
both on the ground on either side of her.
While he was speaking
she stood in front of him, hands at her sides as though they were
waiting to move-- most of her looked ready to move, actually. She
appeared to be waiting for him to finish so she could do something.
Walk away maybe? Slap him? Yell? Who knew. He might not get the
chance to find out because whatever building momentum there was behind
her breastbone and in her spine before, it stamped out when he told her
not to call him again.
Molly blinked clear blue eyes at him,
caught off guard. Hurt, confused (but understanding already, she's not
stupid she just doesn't want to accept the request she wants to flip it
around into his face).
"....Excuse me?"
Nathan Marszalek
Nathan
isn't the world's warmest or most caring person. It isn't that he
doesn't care about people or that he doesn't need to love and be loved
like everyone else. But the entire time Molly has known him he has been
distracted if not too banged up to interact with other people in a way
that didn't leave them confused.
Opening up isn't something he
does even when he's buried under a pile of pharmaceuticals. She has
never seen him cry. He raises his voice sometimes but by the time he's
reached that point he's already been through a wringer.
He put
himself through the wringer this time. Can't even really blame anyone
else for what he did but he didn't reach this point in a vacuum. Up
until her confusion kicks in he had been walking backwards with the
intent to turn around and go back inside. Now she's understandably
looking for an explanation.
So he huffs out a breath and holds his
arms out in a shrug conforming to the anatomical position. Pulls a face
like he doesn't want to have to repeat himself.
"I can't do this anymore," he says. "I-I-I'm gonna fucking lose it. Alright? Bad enough I gotta deal with--"
You are out in public, Nathan. Dial it back.
"I don't want to know more than I already do. I didn't want to know what I know now. You think you're
in over your head? Some mornings I wake up and I feel like I can't
fucking breathe because I gotta deal with this shit on top of everything
else." Everything else: the Shades. "You don't want to stop hanging out
with car bombers and psychopaths and taking business cards from people
you meet on the fucking sidewalk at two in the morning? That's fine.
That's your choice. But leave me the fuck out of it from now on."
Molly Toombs
[Clearly we're going to do fine here but... Willpower]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 4, 4, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 3 )
Molly Toombs
It
has long since been established that Molly was kind of a vain
creature. She liked nice clothes, dressed up to go out, and often wore
make-up. Even when she was going to be spending half of a day or longer
in the emergency room, though she knew her mascara would simply flake
away later, she would still put on at least a little. Try to be
somewhat presentable.
Today, with the promise of rain overhead and
needing to go to work later and having to settle animals back together
before she left, Molly didn't put too much effort into painting her face
up. A light touch maybe, but nothing heavy. Nothing that would smudge
if Nate made her cry and for a second there as he was starting to walk
backwards, planning to make that his ending statement, it looked like
she might. Molly's face pulled an expression of hurt, clear and
unmistakable. Like she thought she was simply being abandoned.
Really, she kind of was.
But
then he was coming back, trying to explain himself. Molly's arms had
moved from her body, opened away from her, mirroring his expression on a
smaller degree without really realizing it. He could see her getting
defensive already. But, again, still hurt. That sting of what looked
kind of like betrayal but really shouldn't be was lingering there too.
"Holy shit, yeah, because that's how it works right? You just get left out of it."
She
didn't have nearly so many words as he did right now. She was aware
they were in public, too, and worried that if she got rolling she'd keep
going. She didn't want them to look like a fighting couple in public again. Plus, really, she didn't quite know what else to do just yet.
Nathan Marszalek
Knowing
as he does that every person walking by is a potential coworker or a
potential higher-up or a politician or a person he may need a favor from
someday Nate takes a deep breath after her retort to keep from losing
his temper. His temper having a fuse that is so long it has taken all
this time to start crackling towards the explosion.
But he doesn't
explode. He just stares at her and shakes his head and looks over
towards the parking lot like he's trying to figure out how they reached
this point in their lives. He knows how. He's met the six-foot-three
hook-nosed Italian creature who charmed Molly and could have killed
Nathan.
"How would I know how 'it' works?" he asks when he looks
back. Frowning deep. She can see a hint of self-loathing starting to
creep into his expression. Like he can watch himself doing what he's
doing and he's disgusted but he's going to see it through anyway. He
steps closer to her so he doesn't have to speak across the distance and
his voice drops to a conspiratorial volume. If she decided to hit him
he's right within striking range. "Unlike you, I don't tell every single
walking corpse I meet I know what they are and there's a war going on."
He takes a deep breath and appears ready to step around her and keep walking.
Molly Toombs
She
continues to look bewildered and upset while he continues to speak. He
started walking back toward her, and she straightened up, took a breath
and it filled her chest and lifted that too. She looked like she was
holding her breath, but for what it was rough to say. She still wasn't
positive what to expect from him. If he was going to try to kiss her
again, if he was going to push her, do something to try and piss her off
and make her hate him.
She could see that self disgust on his face. The tired, the misery. It made her ache in sympathy, really.
But
then he kept right past her and tried to make his parting words a shot
at her and what she's been doing. He hadn't quite made hit past before
finishing speaking, so he saw her reaction-- that flash of anger, of
insult that would threaten to make flushed her cheeks and neck.
He
moved past, and she acted without thinking. Reached out and wrapped
fingers around his wrist. Tried to catch his hand, tried to get him to
stay, turned around with him. But fit and healthy though Molly is, she
isn't a brute. Nate jerked his arm, wrenched his wrist from her grasp
and she didn't dig in heels and struggle to keep him. But she did look
all knotted up with some strong emotional storm when she put her hands
into fists and put those at her sides. Her eyes were bright and
shimmery with tears but they weren't falling yet. Lucy meowled,
complaining about being forgotten. She went on being ignored for now.
"You
can't just put your head down and hope that you get forgotten like
that. You've already gone too--... You're just going to leave me and--..."
But, again, she had no idea what she was going to say to convince him.
Not here, not with people around. Especially not with this many
people-- it was a populated street downtown on a Friday. She couldn't
say nearly the things she wanted to say, and frankly in this exact
moment she didn't know how to pull those words out of the muggy stormy
frustrated mess that her thoughts were reduced to.
So, instead,
she huffed and picked up the cat carrier bag and said, angrily: "Fine.
Fuck it. Hope you can live happy just fucking ignoring and hiding and running...."
Nathan Marszalek
"Man, fuck happy!"
He's
still walking backwards. Big guy that he is and with angry tension
written even into his leather-covered back people get out of his way
before he can collide with them on the way around the building. He had
been intending to walk back in the front door but their staging and
their strange censored dance has him heading south along the side of the
building now. Where the other reporters stand and smoke sometimes.
Where he intends to smoke and calm himself down before he takes the
elevator back upstairs.
"I just don't wanna wind up dead."
Between
the Shades and the dangerous nature of the work he does and the suicide
statistics casting a pall over his future even though Nathan does not
and has never suffered from mental illness this seems like the only way
to even his odds a little.
Pain flashes across his face when he
realizes what's happening. Like a sleepwalker jerked out of an episode.
He's about to walk away from her and he can't think of anything to say
that would keep her from crying after he did it. Maybe it's better if
Molly thinks he's a bastard. If she spends the rest of her life angry at
him for doing this to her. Better that than mistaking him for someone
she can rely on.
So he doesn't say anything. He just swallows back that pain and turns around and continues walking south.
Molly Toombs
The
reporter, with broad shoulders and a long reach, walked backwards with
arms open wide. People had to move for him-- they were willing to. No
one wanted to get stepped on, and the fact that he was calling
dramatically after the woman who looked close to angry tears while she
gathered up a pet and its belongings under her arms. Her hat was askew
on her head. It was better that way, it was hiding her eyes from
people.
Nate hoped that this impression would be enough to let her
believe him an asshole and nothing more. That it would be like tearing
off a band-aid, except it was more like setting a crude splint.
Terrible and snapping and painful, but hopefully it would be for the
better. Hopefully it'd let the leg heal straight instead of crooked and
weaker.
He kept walking south, and Molly Toombs struggled to keep
her face free of tears while aiming herself for the nearest bus stop in
the exact opposite direction.
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